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73 - Montcalm and Wolfe by Francis Parkman, Jr. · Montcalm and Wolfe

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  Speaker 1: Section seventy two of Mont Carmen Wolf by Francis Parkman.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Chapter thirty two,
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  Speaker 1: seventeen sixty three, eighteen eighty four. Conclusion, this said Earl Granville,
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  Speaker 1: on his death bed, has been the most glorious war
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  Speaker 1: and the most triumphant peace that England ever knew. Not
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  Speaker 1: all were so well pleased, and Manny held with Pitt
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  Speaker 1: that the House of Bourbon should have been forced to
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  Speaker 1: drain the cup of humiliation to the dregs. Yet the
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  Speaker 1: fact remains that the Peace of Paris marks an epoch
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  Speaker 1: than which none in modern history is more fruitful of
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  Speaker 1: grand results. With it began a new chapter in the
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  Speaker 1: Annals of the World. To borrow the words of a
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  Speaker 1: late eminent writer, it is no exaggeration to say that
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  Speaker 1: three of the many victories of the Seven Years War
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  Speaker 1: determined for ages to come the destinies of mankind. With
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  Speaker 1: that of Rossbach began, the recreation of Germany with that
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  Speaker 1: of Plassey, the influence of Europe told for the first
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  Speaker 1: time since the days of Alexander on the nations of
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  Speaker 1: the East. With the triumph of Wolf on the heights
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  Speaker 1: of Abraham began the history of the United States. So far, however,
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  Speaker 1: as concerns the war in the Germanic countries, it was
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  Speaker 1: to outward seeming but a mad debauch of blood and rapine,
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  Speaker 1: ending in nothing but the exhaustion of the combatants. The
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  Speaker 1: havoc had been frightful. According to the King of Prussia's reckoning,
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  Speaker 1: eight hundred fifty three thousand soldiers of the various nations
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  Speaker 1: had lost their lives, besides hundreds of thousands of noncombatants
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  Speaker 1: who had perished from famine, exposure, disease, or violence. And
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  Speaker 1: with all this waste of life, not a boundary line
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  Speaker 1: had been changed. The rage of the two empresses and
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  Speaker 1: the vanity and spite of the concubine had been completely foiled.
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  Speaker 1: Frederic had defied them all and had come out of
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  Speaker 1: the strife intact in his own hereditary dominions, and master
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  Speaker 1: of all that he had snatched from the Empress Queen.
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  Speaker 1: While Prussia, portioned out by her enemies as their spoil,
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  Speaker 1: lay depleted indeed and faint with deadly striving, but crowned
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  Speaker 1: with glory and with the career before her, which, through
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  Speaker 1: tribulation and adversity was to lead her at last to
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  Speaker 1: the headship of a United Germany. Through centuries of strife
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  Speaker 1: and vicissitude, the French monarchy had triumphed over nobles, parliaments,
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  Speaker 1: and people gathered to itself. All the forces of the
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  Speaker 1: state beamed with elusive splendors under Lewis the Great, and
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  Speaker 1: shone with the phosphorescence of decay under his contemptible successor,
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  Speaker 1: till now robbed of prestige, burned with debt, and mind
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  Speaker 1: with corruption, it was moving swiftly and more swiftly towards
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  Speaker 1: the abyss of Ruin. While the war hastened the inevitable
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  Speaker 1: downfall of the French monarchy, it produced still more notable effects.
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  Speaker 1: France under Colbert had embarked on a grand course of
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  Speaker 1: maritime and colonial enterprise, and followed it with an activity
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  Speaker 1: and vigor that promised to make her a great and
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  Speaker 1: formidable ocean power. It was she who led the way
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  Speaker 1: in the East, first trained the natives to fight her battles,
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  Speaker 1: and began that system of mixed diplomacy and war which
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  Speaker 1: imitated by her rival, enabled a handful of Europeans to
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  Speaker 1: master all India. In North America, her vast possessions dwarfed
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  Speaker 1: those of every other nation. She had built up a
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  Speaker 1: powerful navy and created an extensive foreign trade. All this
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  Speaker 1: was now changed. In India. She was reduced to helpless inferiority,
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  Speaker 1: with total ruin in the future, and of all her
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  Speaker 1: boundless territories. In North America, nothing was left but the
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  Speaker 1: two island rocks on the coast of Newfoundland that the
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  Speaker 1: victors had given her for drying her codfish. Of her navy,
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  Speaker 1: scarcely forty ships remained. All the rest were captured or destroyed.
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  Speaker 1: She was still great on the continent of Europe, but
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  Speaker 1: as a world power, her grand opportunities were gone. In England,
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  Speaker 1: as in France, the several members of the state had
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  Speaker 1: battled together since the national life began, and the result
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  Speaker 1: had been not the unchecked domination of the crown, but
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  Speaker 1: a system of balanced and adjusted forces in which king,
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  Speaker 1: nobility and commons all had their recognized places and their
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  Speaker 1: share of power. Thus, in the war just ended, two
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  Speaker 1: great conditions of success had been supplied, a people instinct
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  Speaker 1: with the energies of ordered freedom, and a masterly leadership
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  Speaker 1: to inspire and direct them. All and more than all
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  Speaker 1: that France had lost, England had won. Now for the
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  Speaker 1: first time, she was beyond dispute. The greatest of maritime
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  Speaker 1: and colonial powers, Portugal and Holland, her precursors in ocean enterprise,
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  Speaker 1: had long ago fallen hopelessly behind. Two great rivals remained,
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  Speaker 1: and she had humbled the one and swept the other
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  Speaker 1: from her path. Spain, with vast American possessions, was sinking
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  Speaker 1: into the decay, which is one of the phenomena of
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  Speaker 1: modern history. While France of late a most formidable competitor,
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  Speaker 1: had abandoned the contest in despair. England was mistress of
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  Speaker 1: the seas, and the world was thrown open to her merchants, explorers,
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  Speaker 1: and colonists. A few years after the peace, the navigator
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  Speaker 1: Cook began his memorable series of voyages and surveyed the
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  Speaker 1: strange and barbarous lands, which after times were too transform
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  Speaker 1: into other Englands, vigorous children of this great mother of nations.
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  Speaker 1: It is true that a heavy blow was soon to
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  Speaker 1: fall upon her. Her own folly was to alienate the
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  Speaker 1: eldest and greatest of her offspring. But nothing could rob
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  Speaker 1: her of the glory of giving birth to the United States.
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  Speaker 1: And though politically severed, this gigantic progeny were to be
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  Speaker 1: not the less a source of growth and prosperity to
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  Speaker 1: the parent that bore them, joined with her in a
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  Speaker 1: triple kinship of laws, language, and blood. The war or
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  Speaker 1: series of wars that ended with the Peace of Paris
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  Speaker 1: secured the opportunities and set in action the forces that
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  Speaker 1: have planted English homes in every clime and dotted the
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  Speaker 1: earth with English garrisons and posts of trade. With the
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  Speaker 1: Peace of Paris ended the checkered story of New France,
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  Speaker 1: a story which would have been a history if faults
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  Speaker 1: of constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had
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  Speaker 1: not dwarfed it to an episode. Yet it is a
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  Speaker 1: noteworthy one in both its lights and its shadows, in
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  Speaker 1: the disinterested zeal of the founder of Quebec, the self
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  Speaker 1: devotion of the early missionary martyrs, and the daring enterprise
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  Speaker 1: of explorers, in the spiritual and temporal vassalage, from which
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  Speaker 1: the only escape was to the savagery of the wilderness,
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  Speaker 1: And in swarming corruptions which were the natural result of
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  Speaker 1: an attempt to rule by the absolute hand of a
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  Speaker 1: master beyond the Atlantic, a people bereft of every vestige
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  Speaker 1: of civil liberty. Civil liberty was given them by the
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  Speaker 1: British sword that the conqueror left their religious system untouched,
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  Speaker 1: and through it they have imposed upon themselves a weight
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  Speaker 1: of ecclesiastical tutelage that finds few equals in the most
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  Speaker 1: Catholic countries of Europe. Such guardianship is not without certain advantages.
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  Speaker 1: When faithfully exercised, it aids to uphold some of the
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  Speaker 1: tamer virtues, if that can be called a virtue which
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  Speaker 1: needs the constant presence of a sentinel to keep it
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  Speaker 1: from escaping. But it is fatal to mental robustness and
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  Speaker 1: moral courage. And if French Canada would fulfill its aspirations,
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  Speaker 1: it must cease to be one of the most priest
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  Speaker 1: ridden communities of the modern world. Scarcely were they free
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  Speaker 1: from the incubus of France. When the British provinces showed
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  Speaker 1: symptoms of revolt. The measures on the part of the
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  Speaker 1: mother country which roused their resentment, far from being oppressive,
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  Speaker 1: were less burdensome than the navigation laws to which they
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  Speaker 1: had long submitted, and they resisted taxation by Parliament simply
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  Speaker 1: because it was in principle opposed to their rights as freemen.
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  Speaker 1: They did not, like the American provinces of Spain at
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  Speaker 1: a later day, sunder themselves from a parent fallen into decrepitude.
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  Speaker 1: But with astonishing audacity they affronted the wrath of England
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  Speaker 1: in the hour of her triumph, forgot their jealousies and quarrels,
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  Speaker 1: joined hands in the common cause, fought, endured, and won.
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  Speaker 1: The disunion righted colonies became the United States. The string
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  Speaker 1: of discordant communities along the Atlantic coast has grown to
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  Speaker 1: a mighty people joined in a union which the earthquake
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  Speaker 1: of Civil War served only to compact and consolidate. Those who,
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  Speaker 1: in the weakness of their dissensions, needed help from England
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  Speaker 1: against the savage on their borders. Have become a nation
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  Speaker 1: that may defy every foe, but that most dangerous of
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  Speaker 1: all foes, herself destined to a majestic future. If she
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  Speaker 1: will shun the excess and perversion of the principles that
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  Speaker 1: made her great prate, less about the enemies of the past,
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  Speaker 1: and strive more against the enemies of the present. Resist
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  Speaker 1: the mob and the demagogue. As she resisted Parliament and King.
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  Speaker 1: Rally her powers from the race for gold and the
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  Speaker 1: delirium of prosperity, to make firm the foundations on which
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  Speaker 1: that prosperity rests, and turn some fair proportion of her
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  Speaker 1: vast mental forces to other objects than material progress and
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  Speaker 1: the game of party politics. She has tamed the savage continent,
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  Speaker 1: peopled the solitude, gathered wealth, untold, waxed, potent, imposing, redoubtable,
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  Speaker 1: and now it remains for her to prove, if she can,
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  Speaker 1: that the rule of the masses is consistent with the
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  Speaker 1: highest growth of the individual, that democracy can give the
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  Speaker 1: world a civilization as mature and pregnant idea is as
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  Speaker 1: energetic and vitalizing, and types of manhood as lofty and
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  Speaker 1: strong as any of the systems which it boasts to supplant.
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  Speaker 1: End of section seventy two. End of Montcarmen Wolf by
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  Speaker 1: Francis Parkman, Junior.