Pitt the Elder by Edward Pearce

Author:Edward Pearce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pimlico

Fn1 He was, though, a footballer on loan, wanted back in July.

Fn2 For a defence of Sackville’s conduct, see Mackesy, The Coward of Minden.

14

Patriots Betrayed

LOUISBOURG, HAVING BEEN taken, was excellent news but it would not be London news until September. Meanwhile, St Malo was miserable news postponed only three days. Delayed two weeks by Pitt’s gout, then agreed on 19 May, landing on 7 June, limping back at the end of that month, it was another clear failure and a fringe failure at that. The Monitor treated the general policy of coastal actions to a catalogue of self-congratulation. ‘Though not crowned with the utmost advantages as might have been expected from their force and commission’, the long weekends on the Norman and Breton coast had scotched ‘all hopes … of an invasion upon our dominions; protected our trade and navigation; ruined their commerce from the four winds, and cut off their last efforts, for continuing the war, and favouring their usurpations on our settlements in America’.1

Beckford’s office poet cannot disguise total untruth. The ships and soldiers had been sent for political reasons to register some sort of victory, an excuse for bonfires and a parliamentary vote of thanks. Naturally, episodes which actually were creditable, like the encounter off Cartagena in February and the successful blockade of the Basque Roads, did not escape gilding. They were fit to take a place ‘prior to the emblazoned trophies of Blenheim and Ramillies’.2

Horace Walpole is sometimes wrongheaded, but his comments about the latest expedition, when writing to Conway on 16 June, says it all about the first St Malo raid of the first half of June: ‘Well in half a dozen wars we shall know something of the coast of France.’ And as he relayed later military news to Horace Mann in Florence: ‘I was awakened with an account of our Army having re-embarked after burning some vessels at St Maloes. This is the history, neither more nor less, of this mighty expedition. They found the causeway broken-up, stayed from Tuesday night till Monday morning within sight of the town; agreed it was impregnable, learned that ten thousand French (which the next day were erected to thirty thousand) were coming against them, took their transport and were gone … to play at hide and seek somewhere else. The campaign being rather naked, is coloured over with the great damage we have done and with the fine disposition and despatch made for getting away.’3

The events leading to the Battle of Krefeld on 23 June were only a modest time lapse behind the glories of St Malo. But for the purpose of underwriting Pitt’s great shift of policy by Pitt, their timing was immaculate. He had spoken to Dodington only two years before of every Englishman resisting ‘with his body’ the sending of any British troops to Germany. It had been a major theme of his Patriot days. However, having accepted the King’s initiative in commissioning Ferdinand to command Hanoverian and Hessian troops resisting French attacks on the Electorate, Pitt had agreed in February to heavy subsidy.

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