by dressing him up like an Irish girl, and calling him her maid "Betty Burke." At last, he got safely away to France, and never troubled the English government again. As years advanced, the gallant spirit of his youth disappeared; he gave himself up to vice and intemperance, and died, nearly forty years afterwards, a despised old man.

The war with France was ended, in 1748, by a treaty signed at Aix-la-Chapelle. But in 1756 it broke out again, and led to very important events both in India and America.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONIES IN AMERICA.-WOLFE.-BATTLE OF QUEBEC, SEPTEMBER, 1759.-CONQUEST OF CANADA.

(From 1756 to 1760.)

BOTH England and France had planted colonies in North America. The English colonies formed thirteen provinces, reaching along the coast from the Bay of Fundy to the 30th degree of north latitude; but it was only in the province of Virginia that the colonists had extended their settlements far back towards the forests which then covered the interior of the country. These forests were the home of the native tribes, who lived by hunting, and whom the Europeans called American Indians. The French colonies lay to the north and south of the English provinces. In the north, the French had Cape Breton and Canada; in the south, Louisiana.

The possession of these countries made the French masters of the two greatest rivers of the continent:

COLONIES IN AMERICA.

265

the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. But this did not satisfy them.

Both the French and the English carried on a profitable trade with the natives,-receiving from them abundance of beautiful furs in exchange for knives and other articles of European manufacture. The French now resolved to keep all this trade to themselves. So they began to build forts on the great lakes of Canada and on the river Ohio, that they might make a complete chain of military posts between Canada and Louisiana, and confine the English to the territory between the Alleghany mountains and the sea. To prevent themselves from being thus hemmed in, the colonists went to war, and troops were sent from England to help them.

The English did not at first conduct the war well, and the advantage was mainly with the French. But there was a great and wise statesman in England then, William Pitt; and when the king put the management of the war into his hands, everything was quickly changed for the better. His plan was to drive the French quite out of the north of America, and make Canada an English colony.

Troops were despatched to several different places, to take the forts which the French had built; and above all, a very clever and brave young general, named Wolfe, was sent against Canada, with orders to take Quebec, the capital city. This was by no means an easy enterprise, for Quebec was well fortified, and very strongly situated on a steep rock, overhanging the river St. Lawrence. The French had also erected fortifications, and stationed troops at every point where the English could land; and their

N

commander, General Montcalm, lay encamped near the city with ten thousand men to guard it. Wolfe's force was not so numerous, but his men were ready to follow him anywhere. He found a little cove under the rocks, where it seemed less hard to effect a landing than at the other points, embarked his men at midnight, and silently, under cover of the darkness, approached within two miles of the city. They landed unseen, clambered quickly up the rocks, and stormed the battery which guarded them; and when daylight returned, the men of Quebec saw with astonishment a British army ranged in order of battle before their entrenchments.

The battle which took place that day, (September 13th, 1759,) won for England a noble territory, three times the size of Great Britain; but it cost the lives of both the commanders. Soon after going into action, Wolfe received two severe wounds, but he suppressed all signs of pain, and continued at the head of his troops, till a third shot struck him in the breast, and brought him to the ground. He was carried to the rear, where he lay faint and bleeding, supported in the arms of a soldier. Just before he breathed his last, he heard the cry, "They run! they run!" "Who run?" said the dying general. "The French," said a wounded man, near him; "they are giving way in all directions." Wolfe roused all his remaining strength, sent a message to the officer who was commanding in his stead, giving him clear directions how to secure the full benefit of the victory; and then, knowing that he had fulfilled all his charge, "God be praised," said he; "I die happy." With these words he expired. Quebec was at once given

up to the English, and all Canada soon followed it; Cape Breton they had taken already.

Two or three years afterwards, the French ceded their colony of Louisiana to the Spaniards, and never again established themselves in any part of North America.

FRENCH SETTLEMENTS IN INDIA.-THE BLACK HOLE-BATTLE OF

PLASSY, 23D JUNE, 1757.

IN India, the English had won great power and dominion during the last few years; and their success was chiefly owing to the astonishing genius of a young man named Robert Clive. Clive had never been trained for a soldier: he was brought up to keep accounts, and went out very young to Madras, as a writer in the service of the East India Company. But when he saw his countrymen in great danger, from the animosity of the native princes and the ill-will of the French colonists in India, he quitted the pen for the sword.

The story of his exploits is like a romance, for he never feared with a few hundred men to encounter thousands, and he was never beaten. More than half of his soldiers were always Sepoys,—Indians, that is, armed and disciplined in the European fashion; but the Sepoys loved him as much as his own countrymen. They showed this in a very beautiful manner once. Clive was shut up in a town with three hundred men, and besieged by ten thousand. There was no food left in the town, excepting a little rice; Clive was

obliged to hoard this up carefully, and to give only a very little to each man for his daily portion. But the Sepoys came to him, and begged that he would take all their share for himself and his European soldiers; they said they did not want so much food as Europeans, and the water which was strained from the rice when it was boiled would do very well for them. Of course Clive did not accept this generous offer; and happily none of them had to endure hunger long, for every attempt of the besiegers to storm the walls was repulsed with such desperate valour, and cost them so many lives, that they lost heart, and went away suddenly in the night, leaving all their guns behind them.

It is necessary to know a little of the history of India, or it will not be possible to understand anything about the wars which have ended in giving England the rule over that vast territory.

At the time that Henry the Eighth was King of England, a very clever Mahometan prince, named Baber, came from Tartary, conquered a large portion of Hindostan, and founded what is called the Mogul Empire. His grandson, the great Emperor Akbar, extended his kingdom yet further, and by his prudent government made the empire exceedingly rich and powerful.

Akbar's great-grandson, Aurungzebe, ruled Hindostan from 1659 to 1707, and the splendour of his court was famous all over Europe and Asia; but when he died, the power and glory of the Mogul Empire died with him. His descendants still bore the name of the Great Mogul, but they were only emperors in name.