Throughout the summer Vice-admiral Charles Saunders con ducted operations in the St. Lawrence, which resulted in his en abling General James Wolfe to surprise the French above Que bec, and defeat them on the heights of Abraham. This led to the immediate capitulation of Quebec on Sept. 18 and later to the capture of Montreal and the whole of French Canada. In the East Indies M. d'Ache fought one more action with Pocock, on Sept. 8, and then retired to Pondicherry, which f ell in Jan. 1761. In the West Indies Commodore John Moore failed to capture the important French island of Martinique, but took Guadeloupe on May t, 1759, after which many other islands fell into his hands. During 176o and 1761 the French fleet made no attempt to keep the sea. The British navy went on with the work of con quering French possessions. During 1760 it co-operated on the Lakes and on the St. Lawrence in the final conquest of Canada. Between April and June of 1761 it captured the island of Belle-Ile on the French coast, which both strengthened its means for main taining blockade and gave the British Government a valuable pledge to be used for extorting concessions when the time for making peace arrived. The complete ruin of French merchant shipping and the collapse of the navy left the maritime population free to seek a livelihood in the privateers. Commerce-destroying was carried on by them with considerable success. The number of British merchant ships taken has been put as high as one-tenth of the whole. This was the price paid for the advantage gained by the ruin of the French as commercial rivals.
By the close of 1761 the maritime war was revived for a few months by the intervention of. Spain. A close alliance, known as "the family compact," had been cemented with France earlier in the year. The secret was divulged, and Pitt would have made war on Spain at once. He was overruled and resigned. So soon, however, as the treasure ships from America had reached Spain, the Spanish Government declared war. Its navy was incapable of offering a serious resistance to the British, nor did it even at tempt to operate at sea. The British Government was left unop
posed to carry out the plans which Pitt had already prepared. The only aggressive movement undertaken by the Spanish Government was an attack on Portugal, which was the close ally of Great Britain and gave her the free use of Portuguese ports. Great Britain supported her ally, with a small force, and the Spaniard eventually retired. But the most effective blows against Spain were directed at her colonies. The British troops, left free by the recent success against the French in America, were employed firstly in a combined attack on Martinique under Rear-admiral G. B. Rodney, who captured the whole island by Feb. 1762. This was quickly followed by the capitulation of Grenada and St. Lucia. A powerful fleet left England in March 1762 bringing still more troops, with Pocock, who had recently returned from the East Indies, in supreme command. The expedition was ordered to at tack Havana, and was off Cuba by June. The worst losses of the besiegers were due to the climate of Cuba, aided by bad sanitary arrangements. Of the i o,000 troops landed, three-fourths are said to have suffered from fever or dysentery, and the majority of the sick died. Yet the Moro was taken on Sept. 3o, and Havana, which could have made a longer resistance, surrendered on Oct. 10. In the East Indies, where the surrender of Pondicherry had left other forces free, a combined expedition under Rear-admiral Cornish and Col. Draper captured Manila in Sept. 1761. The blockade of the French ports, and the defeat of their main battle fleets, had ruined all their hopes of invading the British Isles, and left their colonial possessions completely isolated. These were now practically all lost, and they could only set against them the capture of Minorca. The preliminaries of the peace of Paris were signed on Nov. 3, 1762.
See Sir Julian Corbett, England in the Seven Years' War (1918); Sir W. L. Clowes, The Royal Navy, vol. iii. (1898) ; M. Burrows, Life of Admiral Lord Hawke (1896). (G. A. R. C.; W. C. B. T.)