the Nabob unless he received £300,000 reward. Clive silenced Ormichund by promising him that sum, and drew up a written agreement to that effect, supposed to be signed by Admiral Watson. After the battle was over, and the danger passed, Clive told Ormichund of the trick which had been played upon him, and the shock was so great that he went mad, and died shortly afterwards. (b) He also received large sums of money from Mir Jaffir, and put them to his own private use. Long afterwards, when he was called in question for having despoiled Mir Jaffir, he remarked that when he recollected the heaps of gold and jewels which he saw piled up in the Nabob's treasure-house at Moorshedabad, he was astonished at his own moderation.

While Clive was busy in

(5) Battle of Wandewash, 1760. Bengal, the French were making a desperate attempt to regain their lost power in the Carnatic. Count Lally had been sent out by the French Government with 1200 trained men, and had taken Fort David and levelled it to the ground. Failing in his attempt on Madras, he abandoned the place, and in 1760 suffered a terrible overthrow from Colonel Eyre at Wandewash. In this battle only European troops were engaged, and the natives, who had hitherto looked upon the French as the better soldiers, now changed their opinion in favour of the English. The surrender of Pondicherry in the following year (1761) completed the downfall of the French power in India. It was now evident that if any European power was to be supreme in India, that power was to be the English.

III. Events in the Seven Years' War in America.

I. Cause. The main cause of the war was the want of a definite boundary line between the settlements of the French and English colonists.

(a) In 1750, the English had thirteen flourishing colonies extending along the eastern coast from New Brunswick to Florida, and from the Atlantic to the Alleghany Mountains.

(b) The French also had founded colonies in Canada and in Louisiana, and claimed the whole of the region west of the Alleghany Mountains as their own. To shut in the English colonists between these mountains and the sea, they had built a line of scattered forts along the Mississippi and its tributary, the Ohio, reaching from Louisiana to Canada.

2. Failure of General Braddock's expedition, 1756. The most important of these forts was Fort Duquesne at the head of the Ohio valley. Its erection caused the greatest

irritation on the part of the English colonists, and Major George Washington was sent with a small body of militia to drive the French from the place. He was, however, attacked by an overwhelming force and compelled to surrender. This so provoked the colonists, that they appealed to the British Government for aid, and General Braddock, a brave and intrepid officer of some forty years' standing, was sent out with two regiments to their assistance. In 1756 Braddock advanced towards Fort Duquesne, but when he was within ten miles of the place he was drawn into an ambuscade of French and Indians, his troops were routed, and he himself mortally wounded. After this the fighting became general, and both the mother countries began to send out reinforcements to their respective colonists. NOTE.-In 1758 Fort Duquesne was taken from the French by a body of Highlanders and Americans under Generals Forbes and Washington. Subsequently its name was changed to Pittsburg, in honour of the great statesman.

3. Campaign in Canada and fall of Quebec. In 1759 Pitt designed a threefold expedition against Canada.

It was arranged

(a) That General Amherst should capture Ticonderoga, and advance by way of Lake Champlain towards Montreal and Quebec.

(b) That Generals Prideaux and Johnson should take Fort Niagara, and passing down Lake Ontario approach Quebec from the west.

(c) That Wolfe should sail up the St. Lawrence, and approach Quebec from the sea.

The plan of concentrating three armies in so vast a territory was, however, impracticable, and Wolfe found himself before Quebec long before the other generals had got there.

NOTE.-Wolfe had entered the army at fourteen, and had fought at Dettingen, Fontenoy and Culloden. He was of a singularly frail and delicate constitution, but he had the heart of a great hero, and sense and energy besides." He was only thirty-three when he was sent out with orders to take Quebec, the strongest city of Canada, and the head-quarters of the French army. But Pitt knew his man. Some one told King George that Wolfe was mad. "I wish," replied he, "that he would bite some of the other generals."

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(1) Position of Quebec. Quebec stands on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, just above its junction with the Charles River. The position of the town is almost im

pregnable. The south and north-east sides are protected by the rivers St. Lawrence and Charles; behind it rise the Heights of Abraham, which terminate abruptly in steep and precipitous cliffs bordering on the river St. Lawrence. All the approaches to the town were strongly fortified, and the French army was under the command of Montcalm, a wise and competent general.

(2) Fall of Quebec and death of Wolfe, 1579. To take a town so strongly fortified by nature and art was a task of no ordinary difficulty. At first Wolfe attempted to storm the enemy's camp, which was strongly posted at Beauport, a place lower down the river, but failed. He then proceeded to bombard the town from the southern side of the river, but this mode of attack also proved unsuccessful, and he began to despair of ever taking the town. At last he formed the bold design of scaling the precipitous cliffs which led to the Heights of Abraham. The desperate nature of the undertaking ensured its success. Re-embarking his troops, he sailed up the river past Quebec, and one dark night in September placed his men in boats, and allowed them to drift silently down the river with the ebbing tide to a point about two miles above Quebec, now called Wolfe's Cove. Here they landed, and with immense toil and difficulty clambered up the rocks on their hands and knees by a steep and zigzag path. As soon as a few of the English soldiers appeared on the top of the cliff, the French sentinels turned out, fired one irregular volley down the precipice and fled. When morning broke, Montcalm saw, to his utter astonishment, the whole of Wolfe's forces drawn up in battle array in the open plain under the very walls of the town. At once he broke up his camp at Beauport and hastened across the river Charles, to give the enemy battle. The contending forces were about equal, each numbering 4000 men.

The French began the attack. For a time the English troops with matchless endurance reserved their fire and stood firm, but when the enemy had advanced to within forty yards of them, they poured forth such a deadly volley that the French ranks wavered and paused. Wolfe seized the opportunity, and gave orders for the whole British line to advance. The French gave way, and in a few minutes the battle was won. Wolfe was mortally wounded in the very moment of victory. Support me," said he to a grenadier officer, who happened to be

close at hand, "that my brave fellows may not see me fall, and he was immediately borne to the rear. In his dying moments he heard an officer cry, "See! they run." The thrilling words caught his ear, and rousing himself, he asked, "Who run?" "The enemy, sir," replied the officer, "they give way everywhere." Then, after giving an order to cut off the enemy's retreat, he fell back in the arms of his comrade exclaiming, "Now God be praised, I will die in peace," and so expired. The brave Montcalm, too, was wounded in the retreat and died the next day.

Results. Measured by its results the battle of the Heights of Abraham must rank with the greatest battles of the world. 1. Five days after the victory Quebec surrendered. When the news reached England, the people were beside themselves with joy strangely intermingled with grief. "Friends embraced each other when they met, coffee-houses and public places were thronged with people eager to talk over the news. When Pitt showed himself the people followed him with shouts and blessings. They did not deplore the dead warrior, they admired his brave and happy death."

2. Meanwhile the French had fallen back on Montreal, where they were closely hemmed in by 16,000 British troops, and on September 8 of the following year (1760) the incompetent French Governor of Canada, de Vaudreuil, was compelled to sign a capitulation, by which all Canada and its dependencies were surrendered to the British Crown, and the French power in North America came to an end. Thus was decided the great and momentous question, which of the two nations, England or France, was to rule North America, and the British flag now waved triumphant from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. Death of the King, 1760.

In the midst of these national triumphs the King died, and was succeeded by his grandson, George III.

Pitt was now at the height of his power; his policy had everywhere been successful; no one dared to oppose him, the very members of the House were afraid to reply to his speeches.

SECTION VI.-IMPORTANT EVENTS.

I. The Great Methodist Movement. The want of energy and spiritual life among the clergy, and the disregard for religion felt by the people generally, were characteristics of the time.

"In England, everybody laughs," said a learned Frenchman,
"if one speaks of religion." It fell to the lot of John Wesley
to become the leader of a great religious revival. Educated
at Charterhouse and Oxford, he was chosen Fellow of Lincoln
College, and made the acquaintance of George Whitefield,
who afterwards became the most eloquent preacher of his time.
These two men, impressed with the need of a deeper spiritual
existence, formed a society, to discuss religious subjects and
attain to a nobler and a purer life. They were laughed at by
their fellow-students, and nicknamed "Methodists." A few
years later, Wesley went out as a missionary to America, and
on his return he and his fellow-worker Whitefield began their
great "missionary" work in England. Passing from place
to place, they addressed thousands of persons of all classes
in the open air and roused them to a sense of sin and repent-
ance. Wesley was a minister of the Church of England, but
there was
no room for such enthusiasm in the Church
of that time. The clergy regarded the movement with cold
indifference and even contempt, and closed their churches
against the "mad Methodist preacher." The result was that
Wesley drifted steadily outside the pale of the Church, and
became the founder of a new sect. The movement was not,
however, without its beneficial effect on the religion of the
time. It roused the Church from its apathy and indifference,
and made an impression upon English life and character
which has not yet been effaced.

2. The Reform in the Calendar, 1752. In 1752 a Reform was made in the Calendar, and the New Style of reckoning introduced. England had up to this time used the "Old Style" or "Julian Calendar," invented by Julius Cæsar eighteen centuries before. But this reckoning was found to be incorrect, and in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII. published the "Gregorian Calendar," in which the error was corrected. England did not adopt the "New Style" till 1752, when it was found that the error in the reckoning" had grown to as much as eleven days. By an Act of Parliament, the change was made on September 2, and the following day became the 14th instead of the 3rd. Popular prejudice was against the measure, and for a long time people thought that they had been defrauded of eleven days of their lives, and the cry was, "Give us back our eleven days."