have so much influence on human
affairs.

[Sidenote: Spanish army re-embarks in confusion.]

The assembly of South Carolina had voted a supply of money to general
Oglethorpe; and the governor had ordered some ships of force to his
aid. These appeared off the coast while the principal officers of the
Spanish army were yet deliberating on the letter. They deliberated no
longer. The whole army was seized with a panic; and, after setting
fire to the fort, embarked in great hurry and confusion, leaving
behind several pieces of heavy artillery, and a large quantity of
provisions and military stores.

Thus was Georgia delivered from an invasion which threatened the total
subjugation of the province.

The ill success of these reciprocal attempts at conquest, seems to
have discouraged both parties; and the Spanish and English colonies,
in the neighbourhood of each other, contented themselves, for the
residue of the war, with guarding their own frontiers.

The connexion between the branches of the house of Bourbon was too
intimate for the preservation of peace with France, during the
prosecution of war against Spain. Both nations expected and prepared
for hostilities. War had commenced in fact, though not in form, on the
continent of Europe; but as they carried on their military operations
as auxiliaries, in support of the contending claims of the elector of
Bavaria, and the queen of Hungary, to the imperial throne, they
preserved in America a suspicious and jealous suspension of hostility,
rather than a real peace.

{1744}

This state of things was interrupted by a sudden incursion of the
French into Nova Scotia.

[Sidenote: Hostilities with France.]

The governor of Cape Breton having received information that France
and Great Britain had become principals in the war, took possession of
de Canseau with a small military and naval force, and made the
garrison, and inhabitants prisoners of war. This enterprise was
followed by an attempt on Annapolis, which was defeated by the timely
arrival of a reinforcement from Massachusetts. These offensive
operations stimulated the English colonists to additional efforts to
expel such dangerous neighbors, and to unite the whole northern
continent bordering on the Atlantic, under one common sovereign.

The island of Cape Breton, so denominated from one of its capes, lies
between the 45th and 47th degree of north latitude, at the distance of
fifteen leagues from Cape Ray, the sout