Le Croisic and burned his own vessel;
seven ships remained blockaded in the Vilaine. M. de Conflans' job, as
the sailors called it at the time, was equivalent to a battle lost
without the chances and the honor of the struggle. The English navy was
triumphant on every sea, and even in French waters.

The commencement of the campaign of 1759 had been brilliant in Germany;
the Duke of Broglie had successfully repulsed the attack made by
Ferdinand of Brunswick on his positions at Bergen; the prince had been
obliged to retire. The two armies, united under M. de Contades, invaded
Hesse and moved upon the Weser; they were occupying Minden when Duke
Ferdinand threw himself upon them on the 1st of August. The action of
the two French generals was badly combined, and the rout was complete.
It was the moment of Canada's last efforts, and the echo of that glorious
death-rattle reached even to Versailles. The Duke of Choiseul had, on
the 19th of February, replied to a desperate appeal from Montcalm,
"I am very sorry to have to send you word that you must not expect any
re-enforcements. To say nothing of their increasing the dearth of
provisions of which you have had only too much experience hitherto, there
would be great fear of their being intercepted by the English on the
passage, and, as the king could never send you aid proportionate to the
forces which the English are in a position to oppose to you, the efforts
made here to procure it for you would have no other effect than to rouse
the ministry in London to make still more considerable ones in order to
preserve the superiority it has acquired in that part of the continent."
The necessity for peace was, beginning to be admitted even, in Madame de
Pompadour's little cabinets.

Maria Theresa, however, was in no hurry to enter into negotiations;
her enemy seemed to be bending at last beneath the weight of the double
Austrian and Russian attack. At one time Frederick had thought that he
saw all Germany rallying round him; now, beaten and cantoned in Saxony,
with the Austrians in front of him, during the winter of 1760, he was
everywhere seeking alliances and finding himself everywhere rejected.
"I have but two allies left," he would say, "valor and perseverance."
Repeated victories, gained at the sword's point, by dint of boldness and
in the extremity of peril, could not even protect Berlin. The capital of
Prussia found itself constrained to open its gates to the enemy, on