unequal; but the number of French in
America was small; the home Government of Louis XV seemed wholly lost in
sloth and indifferent to the result. The English Government was doggedly
resolute. Its unwilling subjects, the French colonists of Acadia, were
driven from their homes.[18] Troops were poured into America, and in
1759 Wolfe won his famous victory at Quebec.[19] The next year Montreal
also fell into the hands of the British, and the conquest of Canada was
complete.

The treaty of 1763, which ended the Seven Years' War for Prussia,
brought peace also between England and France. The latter surrendered
her colonial pretensions, partly in India, wholly in America, without
having really exerted herself to retain them. Perhaps her experience in
the Mississippi Scheme of Law had convinced her they were of but little
worth.

SUPREMACY OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

The latter half of the reign of Frederick the Great was very different
from its beginning. He had encountered war sufficient to satiate even
his reckless appetite, and he clung to peace. Prussia became for a while
the centre of European government and intrigue; and Frederick, by far
the ablest sovereign of his time, remained until his death (1786) the
leader in that system of paternal government, of kindly tyranny, which
typifies the age. He husbanded the resources of his country with jealous
care; he compelled his people to work, and be provident, and prosper,
whether they would or no. Maria Theresa treated her subjects with much
the same benevolence; and her son and successor Joseph II became the
most ardent of the admirers of Frederick. Russia also came under a ruler
of similar ideas, Catharine II,[20] a German princess by birth, who
wedded a czar, deposed him, and, ruling in his stead, became the most
Russian of the Russians. She ruled her land wisely and well, with a
little more than Frederick's tyranny, a little less than his
benevolence. She was cynical, as was the fashion, and her moral life
shocked even that easy-going age. Also she was a philosopher, and
invited Diderot, chief of the French Cyclopaedists, to dwell at her
court, much as Voltaire had dwelt at Frederick's. French literature was
still the literature of Europe, and both Frederick and Catharine openly
despised the tongue of their own lands.

It was among these three congenial rulers, of Russia, Prussia, and young
Joseph of Austria, that the scheme arose of dividing Poland among
themselves.