Ram; being the tale of one Ramillies Anstruther, 1704-55 .. (68 page)

Before general peace was established during 1713-1714, the War Party in Britain was overthrown; Marlborough was dismissed and the Peace Party in 1712 withdrew Britain from the struggle. Marlborough's friend and comrade-in-arms, Eugene of Savoy, a French Prince and a relative of Louis XIV who had joined the Austrians to become a Marshal of the Austrian Empire, continued to command what remained of the Alliance until the general peace of 1714. Thereafter Eugene, as Marshal of Austria, fought against the Turks, longstanding allies of France and a perennial menace to Austria and to Hungary. Disbanded professional soldiers from the other armies of the Alliance sought service with Eugene in his eastern campaign which included the capture of Belgrade in 1717.

Europe was just beginning in the early eighteenth century to find, because of its far-flung maritime and trading interests, that every war became a global war. The sparks of many conflagrations occurred more often than not on the other side of the world—in India or on the American Continent. Austria, too, had for a time a trading company in India, the Ostend Company (1722-27), and to its military service in the East were recruited officers of many origins who had been under Eugene's command in Europe.

In the years from 1713 to 1763, although hot war sporadically broke out, a cold war of unofficial skirmishes was nearly continuous in the overseas outposts. Private citizens, like Oglethorpe, who felt that the next formal outbreak was imminent, were often concerned, however negligent their own governments, to secure better defensive positions before the next conflagration. And so, Georgia was established in the New World in quite genuine philanthropy by Oglethorpe and others as a refuge to give debtors a new chance. Georgia was, however, also intended, privately by the disbanded and field-service veterans, to prevent the Spaniards in the succeeding war from sweeping northwards through the English provinces on the eastern American seaboard, while the French, now since 1701-14 allies of the Spaniards, closed in upon them from the north and from

the Ohio-Mississippi valleys. From the beginning, Spain attempted to undermine the newly-established English colony in Georgia as part of her cold war manoeuvres. Irish refugee officers, who plotted everywhere for the destruction of England and the restoration of descendants of James II, were equally busily engaged in Spanish espionage and served with distinction in the frontier skirmishes.

An incident in 1754 near what is now Pittsburgh between Virginian militia and the French touched off the French and Indian War, which rapidly expanded into a European and indeed a global struggle. There were initial British reverses such as Braddock's disastrous march on Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg) in 1755. However, by 1763, Fort Duquesne, Louis-burg, Canada, Florida, the French posts in India, French Senegal in Africa, several West Indian Islands, Havana and the Philippines had been taken from the French and Spaniards. Many of these possessions remained in British hands although some were returned at the treaty of peace (1763)—a settlement remarkable for its gentility.

The stage was set for the American Revolution, in which France sought revenge—only herself to be contaminated by the spores of modem revolution.