ly of the Duke of
Richmond, and again rose to his feet. But he had hardly risen when he
pressed his hand upon his heart, and falling back in a swoon was borne
home to die.

[Sidenote: England against Europe.]

How well founded was Chatham's faith in the power of Britain was seen in
the strife that now opened. From the hour of his death England entered
on a conflict with enemies whose circle gradually widened till she stood
single-handed against the world. At the close of 1778 the Family Compact
bore its full fruit; Spain joined the league of France and America
against her; and in the next year the joint fleets of the two powers
rode the masters of the Channel. They even threatened a descent on the
English coast. But dead as Chatham was, his cry woke a new life in
England. "Shall we fall prostrate," he exclaimed with his last breath,
"before the House of Bourbon?" and the divisions which had broken the
nation in its struggle with American liberty were hushed in the presence
of this danger to its own existence. The weakness of the Ministry was
compensated by the energy of England itself. For three years, from 1779
to 1782, General Elliott held against famine and bombardment from a
French and Spanish army the rock fortress of Gibraltar. Although a
quarrel over the right of search banded Holland and the Courts of the
North in an armed neutrality against her, and added the Dutch fleet to
the number of her assailants, England held her own at sea. In her
Eastern dependency, where France sought a counterpoise to the power of
Britain in that of the Mahrattas, freebooters of Hindoo blood whose
tribes had for a century past carried their raids over India from the
hills of the Western coast, and founded sovereignties in Guzerat, Malwa,
and Tanjore, the tenacity and resource of Warren Hastings, the first
Governor-General of British India, wrested victory from failure and
defeat. Though the wide schemes of conquest which he formed were for the
moment frustrated, the annexation of Benares, the extension of British
rule along the Ganges, the reduction of Oudh to virtual dependence, the
appearance of English armies in Central India, and the defeat of the
Sultan of Mysore, laid the foundation of an Indian Empire which his
genius was bold enough to foresee. Even in America the fortune of the
war seemed for a while to turn. After Burgoyne's surrender the English
generals had withdrawn from Pennsylvania, and bent all their efforts on
the