inst
England. It has no naval interest for our purposes here. The peace
of 1748, however, leaving things exactly as they were when the war
began, settled none of the existing grudge between Great Britain
and France. Eight years later, hostilities began again in the Seven
Years' War, 1756-1763, in which Great Britain entered on the side
of Prussia against a great coalition of Continental powers headed
by France.

_The Seven Years' War_

The naval interest of this war is centered in the year 1759, when
France, having lost Louisburg on account of England's control of
the sea, decided to concentrate naval and military forces on an
invasion of England. Before the plans for this projected thrust
were completed, Quebec also had fallen to the British. The attempted
invasion of 1759 is not so well known as that of Napoleon in 1805,
but it furnished the pattern that Napoleon copied and had a better
chance of success than his. In brief, a small squadron under the
famous privateer Thurot was to threaten the Scotch and Irish coasts,
acting as a diversion to draw off the British fleet. Meanwhile
the squadron at Toulon was to dodge the British off that port,
pass the Straits and join Conflans, who had the main French fleet
at Brest. The united forces were then to cover the crossing of
the troops in transports and flatboats to the English coast.

This plan was smashed by Admiral Hawke in one of the most daring
feats in British naval annals. Thurot got away but did not divert
any of the main force guarding the Channel. The Toulon fleet also
eluded the English for a time but went to pieces outside the Straits
largely on account of mismanagement on the part of its commander.
The remnants were either captured or driven to shelter in neutral
ports by the English squadron under Boscawen. On November 9, a
heavy gale and the necessities of the fleet compelled Hawke to lift
his blockade of Brest and take shelter in Torbay, after leaving
four frigates to watch the port. On the 14th, Conflans, discovering
that his enemy was gone, came out, with the absurd idea of covering
the transportation of the French army before Hawke should appear
again. That very day Hawke returned to renew the blockade, and
learning that Conflans had been seen heading southeast, decided
rightly that the French admiral was bound for Quiberon Bay to make
an easy capture of a small British squadron there under Duff before
beginning the transportation of the invading army