which there could be no real danger, and so
getting France out of Belgium, from which the whole Empire might some
day have been struck a mortal blow.

CHAPTER XVI

PITT'S IMPERIAL WAR

(1756-1763)

The British part of the Seven Years War was rightly known as The
Maritime War, because Pitt, the greatest of British empire-builders,
based it entirely on British sea-power, both mercantile and naval.
Pitt had a four-fold plan. First, it is needless to say that he made
the Navy strong enough to keep the seaways open to friends and closed
to enemies; for once the seaways are cut the Empire will bleed to death
just as surely as a man will if you cut his veins and arteries. This
being always and everywhere the Navy's plainest duty it need not have
been mentioned here unless each other part of Pitt's fourfold plan had
not only depended on it but helped to make it work. The second part of
his plan was this: not to send British armies into the middle of
Europe, but to help Frederick the Great and other allies to pay their
own armies--a thing made possible by the wealth brought into Britain by
oversea trade. The third part was to attack the enemy wherever British
fleets and armies, acting together in "joint expeditions," could strike
the best blows from the sea. The fourth was to send joint expeditions
to conquer the French dominions overseas.

But lesser men than Pitt were at the head of the Government when the
fighting began; and it took some time to bring the ship of state on to
her proper course even after his mighty hand began to steer.

In 1754 "the shot heard round the world" was fired by the French at
Washington's American militiamen, who were building a fort on the spot
where Pittsburg stands today. The Americans were determined to stop
the French from "joining hands behind their backs" and thus closing
every road to the West all the way from Canada to New Orleans. So they
sent young George Washington to build a fort at the best junction of
the western trails. But he was defeated and had to surrender. Then
Braddock was sent out from England in 1755. But the French defeated
him too. Then France sent out to Canada as great a master of the art
of war on land as Drake had been by sea. This was the gallant and
noble Montcalm, who, after taking Oswego in 1756 and Fort William Henry
in 1757, utterly defeated a badly led British army, four times the size
of his own, at Ticonderoga in 1758.

Meanwhile war had be