THREE:So passed from a long possession of power a Minister who inaugurated a system of corruption, which was not so much abused by himself, as made a ready instrument of immeasurable mischief in the hands of his successors. Had Walpole used the power which he purchased with the country's money more arbitrarily and perniciously, the system must have come much sooner to an end. As it was, the evils which he introduced fell rather on posterity than on his own time.
ONE:Meanwhile, Frederick of Prussia was waging a tremendous war with France, Russia, and Austria. To disable Austria before her allies could come up to her aid, he suddenly, in April, made an eruption into Bohemia. His army threaded the defiles of the mountains of the Bohemian frontier in different divisions, and united before Prague, where Marshal Braun and Prince Charles of Lorraine met him with eighty thousand men, his own forces amounting to about seventy thousand. A most obstinate and sanguinary conflict took place, which continued from nine in the morning till eight at night, in which twenty-four thousand Austrians were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, and eighteen thousand Prussians. The Prussians were destitute of pontoons to cross the Moldau, or their writers contend that not an Austrian would have escaped. But Marshal Daun advancing out of Moravia with another[128] strong army, to which sixteen thousand of the fugitives from Prague had united themselves, Frederick was compelled to abandon the siege of Prague, and march to near Kolin, where he was thoroughly defeated by Daun, with a loss of thirteen thousand of his bravest troops.In Europe, Pitt was still bent on those attacks on the coast of France which long experience had shown were of little use as means of successful war, but highly objectionable, as fraught with excessive inhumanity to the innocent people of the seaboard. This, his second expedition, was aimed at St. Malo. A fleet of eighteen ships of the line, thirteen frigates, with sloops, fire-ships, and bomb-ketches, was put under the command of Lord Howe; but as Sir Edward Hawke, his senior, struck his flag, and refused to serve as second, Lord Anson, to get rid of the difficulty, put himself nominally at the head of the squadron. The command of the troops was given to the Duke of Marlborough, a brave man, but destitute of the genius of his father, and Lord George Sackville and Lord Granby were under him. There were fourteen thousand troops of the line and six thousand marines. With these went a number of aristocratic volunteers, amongst them Lord Downe, Sir John Armitage, and Sir John Lowther, the possessor of fourteen thousand pounds a-year. On the 5th of June, 1758, the transports anchored in Cancale Bay, and next day the troops were landed and led against St. Malo. This town, built on one of a cluster of granite rocks which rise out of the sea on that iron-bound coast, they found too strongly fortified to storm, but they burnt a hundred and thirty privateers and a great quantity of small craft in the harbour, and then returned to their ships. They then sailed for Le Havre, but were prevented by the wind from doing the same damage, and so continued their voyage to Granville and Cherbourg, whence they were driven by storm; and thereupon coasting a considerable way farther, but to no purpose, the fleet returned to Portsmouth, the main result being a heavy expense. Fox and the Opposition in the Commons called it breaking windows with guineas; and the old king, who had expressed his dislike of this sort of warfare, said we should brag of having burnt the French ships, and the French of having driven us away.
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