The wars of England have usually run the same course. They have begun with blunders and reverses, but ended in success. The English do not love war, and are rarely prepared for it. They begin fighting in half-hearted fashion, before the nation makes up its mind that the cause is worth a real effort and serious expenditure of money and life. There is groping about for a leader, for some one who will say distinctly what is to be done, and will prove as good as {269} his word. If such a man is found, the people will follow; they forgive a man who makes mistakes provided, as the saying is, that he makes something. Then the resources of the country are concentrated and utilized, and under articulate and sympathetic leadership the cause of the nation prospers. If England in the year 1757 needed some one controlling will, much more was the want felt in her North American colonies. The demoralization caused by feeble ministries in England had its baleful effect in America; nerveless government at home strengthened the centrifugal tendencies of the colonies. Nothing but common danger gave them any common life; and, though Pitt's advent to power partially corrected the evil, Pitt was in England not in America. To the end the uniting force came from without rather than from within: the colonies followed the lead of Pitt and his generals, but to the mother country not to the colonies was due the conquest of Canada. [Sidenote: _Distress in Canada._] That Canada must be conquered, when England made her effort, was inevitable. The French appeared triumphant; they had moved forward; they had struck heavy blows; but behind the fighting line, even on the surface, they were in straits. The garrison of Fort William Henry had not been taken prisoners to Canada, because Canada could hardly feed them;[17] and the winter of 1757, which followed the brilliant campaign, was a winter of distress. Bread was wanting; horses were eaten for meat; the troops were mutinous and only kept in order by Levis' firmness and tact; the finances were in a ruinous condition; there were winter gaieties and winter gambling, but Canada before its conquest was in much the same condition as the mother country on the brink of the Revolution. [Footnote 17: Similarly, after the fall of Oswego, Horace Walpole wrote, 'The massacre at Oswego happily proves a romance; part of the two regiments that were made prisoners there are actually arrived at Plymouth, the provisions at Quebec being too scanty to admit additional numbers.' _Letters of Horace Walpole_, vol. iii, pp. 44, 45 (Letter of Nov. 13, 1756).] {270} [Sidenote: _French plan of campaign for 1758._]