eat at Kolin drove
him to retreat again into Saxony. In the same year the Duke of
Cumberland, who had taken post on the Weser with an army of fifty
thousand men for the defence of Hanover, fell back before a French army
to the mouth of the Elbe, and engaged by the Convention of Closter-Seven
to disband his forces. In America things went even worse than in
Germany. The inactivity of the English generals was contrasted with the
genius and activity of Montcalm. Already masters of the Ohio by the
defeat of Braddock, the French drove the English garrison from the forts
which commanded Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain, and their empire
stretched without a break over the vast territory from Louisiana to the
St. Lawrence.

[Sidenote: William Pitt.]

A despondency without parallel in our history took possession of our
coolest statesmen, and even the impassive Chesterfield cried in despair,
"We are no longer a nation." But the nation of which Chesterfield
despaired was really on the eve of its greatest triumphs, and the
incapacity of Newcastle only called to the front the genius of William
Pitt. Pitt was the grandson of a wealthy governor of Madras, who had
entered Parliament in 1735, as member for one of his father's pocket
boroughs. A group of younger men, Lord Lyttelton, the Grenvilles,
Wilkes, and others, gradually gathered round him, and formed a band of
young "patriots," "the Boys," as Walpole called them, who added to the
difficulties of that minister. Pitt was as yet a cornet of horse, and
the restless activity of his genius was seen in the energy with which
he threw himself into his military duties. He told Lord Shelburne long
afterwards that "during the time he was cornet of horse there was not a
military book he did not read through." But the dismissal from the army
with which Walpole met his violent attacks threw this energy wholly into
politics. His fiery spirit was hushed in office during the "broad-bottom
administration" which followed Walpole's fall, and he soon attained
great influence over Henry Pelham. "I think him," wrote Pelham to his
brother, "the most able and useful man we have amongst us; truly
honourable and strictly honest." He remained under Newcastle after
Pelham's death, till the Duke's jealousy of power not only refused him
the Secretaryship of State and admission to the Cabinet, but entrusted
the lead of the House of Commons to a mere dependent. Pitt resisted the
slight by an attitude of oppositio