Indian dition Perhaps the earliest instance of Imperial co-operation West was in 1655, when Cromwell sent out Venables and Penn levies for from England to take Hispaniola from the Spaniards. the expe'On their arrival at. Barbados', Long tells us in his against History of Jamaica, they beat up for volunteers, and Hispaniola having raised there four thousand foot, and two small in 1655. troops of sixty horse, sailed from thence the 31st of March 1655 for St. Kitts; where they found one thousand recruits, collected partly from thence and from Nevis, and the other adjacent islands.'1 In its main purpose a miserable failure, the expedition none the less achieved the reduction of Jamaica, and thus the Colonies had a hand in the first territorial addition which was made to the Empire by force of arms. But it was not an encouraging essay in co-operation. The Barbadians, lately in arms against Parliament, and apprehensive of losing their white labour supply, had no love for the expedition, and the levies which were raised in the island were found sadly wanting on active service. When a Dutchman became King of England, and Louis XIV was King of France, there came one of the world-wide wars which have threatened the life of, and in the end given new life to, the Empire. The first years of the eighteenth century saw the military power of the Grand Monarch, with its menace to the liberties of Europe, shattered by Marlborough's campaigns; and the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 closed what may be classed as the first of our Empire wars. These were early days in the story of the Empire. Of the present self-governing 1 History of Jamaica, 1774, vol. i, pp. 223–5. The standard histories of Barbados place the number from that island at 3,500. The number which came from St. Kitts, Montserrat, and Nevis was 1,200. Mr. Fortescue, in his History of the British Army (1899), vol. i, p. 261, says that the Barbadians did their utmost to obstruct the raising of levies, and seems to imply that all that was done in the island was that Venables organized a regiment of negroes and a naval brigade'. But see Professor Firth's Preface to the narrative of General Venables, edited for the Royal Historical Society (1900). He says (p. xxiv) that at Barbados between 3,000 and 4,000 men were raised, who filled up the complements of five regiments and constituted a sixth regiment, in addition to two troops of horse, 60 each. See also Dr. Rawson Gardiner's History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649–60 (1901), vol. iii, pp. 354-6. The first Empire and the Peace of Utrecht. The expe. dition to Cartagena. Dominions, Australia and New Zealand had been sighted but were wholly unknown; the Cape was the scene of a Dutch trading station; Canada was a dependency of the French Crown and was known as New France. The Peace of Utrecht in 1713 gave to Great Britain in perpetuity the outskirts of the Dominion of Canada as it stands to-day, Acadia, which had already gained the alternative name of Nova Scotia a sign that Scotsmen had begun to take a hand in Empire work-and Hudson Bay. Exclusive possession of Newfoundland, oldest of all the Overseas Dominions, was also assured by the treaty. Distance was all-powerful before the forces of steam and electricity were brought into play; and the Colonies, young and immature, could only assist the Mother Country in Empire wars, by defending their own homes with their local volunteers and militia, or at most by making ventures into neighbouring lands and seas. The New Englanders did their bit', raiding and raided by Canadians on their own frontiers. They did more. In 1690, led by William Phipps, who had been a ship carpenter, they took the French settlement of Port Royal in the debatable land of Acadia, and in the same year sailed up the St. Lawrence to attack Quebec itself. The Quebec enterprise came to nothing, and Port Royal shortly afterwards reverted to the French; but twenty years later, in 1710, the latter place was again taken by a combined force of ships and men from England and from Boston,1 and, under the name of Annapolis, one of the few place-names in the Overseas Empire which tell of Queen Anne's reign, passed, with the whole Nova Scotian peninsula, into permanent British keeping. The eighteenth century grew older, and in 1739 England was at war with Spain. In this war Colonists co-operated with home forces at some appreciable distance from their own shores. An expedition was designed to take Carta 1 The only British troops employed seem to have been a battalion of marines, which included portions of the present 1st East Lancashires (30th Foot) and Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry (32nd Foot), then serving as marines. gena, a fortified Spanish port in what is now the republic of Colombia; and for this expedition a contingent was raised in the North American Colonies. There were four battalions, numbering some 4,000 in all. Massachusetts provided 500; New York and Virginia a like number in either case. Among the Virginians was the eldest brother of George Washington, Lawrence Washington, and his intimacy with Admiral Vernon, who commanded the fleet, led to the name of Mount Vernon being given to the family estate. The Americans joined the home forces at Jamaica, and in the early months of 1741 Cartagena was attacked. There was initial success, but only to be followed by complete breakdown. Wentworth, who succeeded to the command of the troops, was not equal to the difficulties of the task; there was want of harmony between him and Vernon; and the climate did the rest. Of the five hundred men from Massachusetts it was said that only fifty saw their home again. Great as was the death-rate in the force as a whole, the Americans were reported to have suffered most. They were, moreover, as might have been expected, a gathering of undisciplined men for this reason, and also because many of them were Irish and suspected Papists, they were not trusted and were little used in the actual fighting. They in their turn can have formed no high estimate of leadership from home. It was a miserable story to take a minor part in a disastrous and humiliating failure was not conducive to Colonial loyalty or to Imperial co-operation. ture of The war with Spain became absorbed in the war of The cap. the Austrian Succession, and France and England fought Louisagain, the formal declaration of war being in 1744. Soon In his History of Jamaica, published in 1774 (vol. ii, cap. xiii, pp. 307-8), Long writes: The North American recruits are, in general, unfit for the West India Service . . . for the North Americans are far less hardy than the Europeans, and, during the last and former war, died in numbers whenever they were removed to a distance from home. It is very difficult for them to inure themselves to a climate different from their own; nor do they bear transplanting into the Southern Colonies so well as the British, Irish, Germans, or Swiss.' The American contingent for Cartagena was raised by Governor Spottiswoode of Virginia. bourg in 1745 by the New Englanders. there was a very different tale to tell from that of the fiasco at Cartagena. Though the treaty of Utrecht had given Acadia to the British Empire, the cession did not include Cape Breton Island, which now forms part of the Province of Nova Scotia. The island remained in French possession, bearing the name of Île Royale; and on its shores, at Louisbourg, the French Government reared the strongest fortress on the whole Atlantic coast, spoken of as the Dunkirk of North America. War being declared, the New Englanders, typical English colonists, democratic in politics and religion, dour defenders of local liberties against kings and governors, but withal heart-whole in the cause of the Empire, girded up their loins for the fray, and determined, after some searchings of heart, to set their hands to a memorable enterprise, nothing less than the capture of Louisbourg. Their levies amounted to rather more than 4,000 men, of whom over 3,000 came from Massachusetts, then including Maine; and Maine provided their commander, William Pepperell, a colonel of Militia, a merchant in private life. Ships of war they needed to co-operate with them, and these the Mother Country supplied. There is in the north transept of Westminster Abbey a monument to Admiral Sir Peter Warren. At this time he was commodore of an English squadron in the West Indies, and, having received permission from home, he came to the call of the Colonists. In March 1745 the expedition left Boston, and on the last day of April a landing was made in the neighbourhood of Louisbourg. The fortress was very strong, alike in its natural position and by the handiwork of man. It stood on a promontory, girt by the sea on three sides out of four; on the fourth the western side-protected by ditches, rampart, and marshy ground. The garrison included brave men enough; but they were hardly two thousand in all, of whom between one-fourth and onethird were Regular soldiers. They were an ill-assorted body, French, Swiss, and Colonial Militia; mutiny had lately broken out among them; and the chief command was wanting in resolution. On the British side there |