power. But the Commons listened coldly, and by a great majority approved
the preliminaries of peace.

These preliminaries were embodied in the definitive treaty
concluded at Paris on the tenth of February, 1763. Peace between
France and England brought peace between the warring nations of the
Continent. Austria, bereft of her allies, and exhausted by vain efforts
to crush Frederic, gave up the attempt in despair, and signed the treaty
of Hubertsburg. The Seven Years War was ended.

Chapter 32

1763-1884

Conclusion

"This," said Earl Granville on his deathbed, "has been the
most glorious war and the most triumphant peace that England
ever knew." Not all were so well pleased, and many held
with Pitt that the House of Bourbon should have been forced
to drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs. Yet the fact
remains that the Peace of Paris marks an epoch than which
none in modern history is more fruitful of grand results. With
it began a new chapter in the annals of the world. To borrow
the words of a late eminent writer, "It is no exaggeration to
say that three of the many victories of the Seven Years War
determined for ages to come the destinies of mankind. With
that of Rossbach began the re-creation of Germany, with that
of Plassey the influence of Europe told for the first time since
the days of Alexander on the nations of the East; with the
triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham began the history of
the United States."[876]

[Footnote 876: Green, _History of the English People_, IV. 193
(London, 1880).]

So far, however, as concerns the war in the Germanic
countries, it was to outward seeming but a mad debauch of
blood and rapine, ending in nothing but the exhaustion of the
combatants. The havoc had been frightful. According to the
King of Prussia's reckoning, 853,000 soldiers of the various
nations had lost their lives, besides hundreds of thousands of
non-combatants who had perished from famine, exposure, disease, or
violence. And with all this waste of life not a boundary line had been
changed. The rage of the two empresses and the vanity and spite of the
concubine had been completely foiled. Frederic had defied them all,
and had come out of the strife intact in his own hereditary dominions
and master of all that he had snatched from the Empress-Queen;
while Prussia, portioned out by her enemies as their spoil, lay depleted
indeed, and faint with deadly striving, but crowned with glory, and