During the first part of the war, the English were unsuccessful.  In an attempt to take Fort Duquesne, General Braddock met with a crushing defeat (1756) from the combined French and Indian forces, which would indeed have proved his utter destruction had not a young Virginian named George Washington saved a remnant of Braddock’s troops by his calmness and courage.  Not long afterwards, a second expedition was sent out against the French fort, in which Washington led the advance.  The garrison fled at his approach, the English colors were run up, and the place was named Pittsburg, in honor of William Pitt, later, Lord Chatham, Secretary of State, but virtually Prime Minister (S534) of England.

About the same time, the English took the forts on the Bay of Fundy, and drove out several thousand French settlers from Acadia, or Nova Scotia.  Other successes followed, by which they obtained possession of important points.  Finally, Canada was won from the French by Wolfe’s victory over Montcalm, at Quebec, 1759.[1] where both gallant soldiers verified the truth of the words, “The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"[2] which the English general had quoted to some brother officers the vening before the attack.  This ended the war.

[1] See “Leading Facts of American History,” in this series, S142.
[2] “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
     And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
     Await alike the inevitable hour;
     The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” 
                                Gray, “Elegy” (1750)
“I would rather be the author of that poem,” said Wolfe, “than to have
the glory of beating the French to-morrow.”  Wolfe and Montcalm were
both mortally wounded and died within a few hours of each other.

Spain now ceded Florida to Great Britain, so that, when peace was made in 1763, the English flag waved over the whole eastern half of the American continent, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.  Thus, within a comparatively few years, England had gained an empire in the east (India) (S544) and another in the west (America).

Six years later (1769) Captain Cook explored and mapped the coast of New Zealand, and next the eastern coast of the island continent of Australia.  Before the middle of the following century both these countries were added to the possessions of Great Britain.  Then, as Daniel Webster said, her “morning drum beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours,” literally circled “the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.”

546.  Moral Condition of England; Intemperance; Rise of the Methodists,
     1738.

But grand as were the military successes of the British arms, the reign of George II was morally torpid.  With the exception of a few public men like Pitt, the majority of the Whig party (S479) seemed animated by no higher motive than self-interest.  It was an age whose want of faith, coarseness, and brutality were well protrayed by Hogarth’s pencil and Fielding’s pen.