ONE:Completely disheartened by this result, Wolfe for a moment felt despair of his object, and in that despairing mood, on the 9th of September, he wrote to Pitt. He said that, "to the uncommon strength of the country, the enemy had added, for the defence of the river, a great number of floating batteries and boats; that the vigilance of the Indians had prevented their effecting anything by surprise; that he had had a choice of difficulties, and felt at a loss how to proceed; and he concluded with the remark, that his constitution was entirely ruined, without the consolation of having done any considerable service to the State, or without any prospect of it."The calculations of no political party had ever been more completely falsified than those of the Jacobites and their congeners the Tories on the death of the queen. They had relied on the fact that the House of Hanover was regarded with dislike as successors to the throne of England by all the Catholic Powers of Europe, on account of their Protestantism, and many of the Protestant Powers from jealousy; and reckoned that, whilst France would be disposed to support the claims of the Pretender, there were no Continental countries which would support those of Hanover, except Holland and the new kingdom of Prussia, neither of which gave them much alarm. Prussia was but a minor Power, not capable of furnishing much aid to a contest in England. Holland had been too much exhausted by a long war to be willing to engage in another, except for a cause which vitally concerned itself. In England, the Tories being in power, and Bolingbroke earnest in the interest of the Pretender, the Duke of Ormonde at the head of the army, there appeared to the minds of the Jacobites nothing to fear but the too early demise of the queen, which might find their plans yet unmatured. To this they, in fact, attributed their failure; but we may very confidently assert that, even had Anne lived as long as they desired her, there was one element omitted in their calculations which would have overthrown all their attemptsthe invincible antipathy to Popery in the heart of the nation, which the steadfast temper of the Pretender showed must inevitably come back with him to renew all the old struggles. The event of the queen's death discovered, too, the comparative weakness of the Tory faction, the strength and activity of the Whigs. The king showing no haste to arrive, gave ample opportunity to the Jacobiteshad they been in any degree prepared, as they ought to have been, after so many years, for this great crisisto introduce the Pretender and rally round his standard. But whilst George I. lingered, no Stuart appeared; and the Whigs had taken such careful and energetic precautions, that without him every attempt must only have brought destruction on the movers. The measures of Shrewsbury were complete. The way by sea was secured for the Protestant king, and the Regency Act provided for the security of every department of Government at home.
ONE:Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick was more successful. He was at the head of an army of fifty-five thousand men, including ten or twelve thousand English, under Lord George Sackville. As the French had taken Frankfort-on-the-Main, he left the British and Hanoverian troops, amounting to twenty-eight thousand men, to watch the French, under Marshal de Contades, upon the Lippe, and set out to drive back the other divisions of the French, under De Broglie. He found these amounted to thirty-five thousand strong, but he did not hesitate to engage them at Bergen, on the Nidda, near Frankfort. After a hard-fought battle, he was defeated with a loss of two thousand men and five pieces of cannon. De Broglie pushed rapidly after him, formed a junction with Contades, and speedily reduced Cassel, Münster, and Minden. There appeared every prospect of the whole Electorate of Hanover being again overrun by them. The archives were once more sent off to Stade, ready for embarkation. But Ferdinand now displayed the superiority of his generalship. He left five thousand of his troops, with an air of carelessness, in the way of the French, who, unsuspicious of any stratagem, hastened forward to surprise them, when, to their astonishment, they found the whole of Ferdinand's army had been brought up in the night, and were drawn up behind a ridge near Minden.
TWO:Not a thingexcept I learned that the injured pilot was able to sit up and I went to see him. Dick and Sandy waited anxiously for a revelation, but Larry was unable to give one.
