It is sometimes the good fortune and glory of great men, under the hand of God, to baffle the doleful prognostications of their contemporaries. As a constitutional minister, the first William Pitt should occupy a lower position than the noble career of his son. He was overbearing, whimsical, personal, and theatrical. Abroad he could push national pride as far as the most impolitic insolence. He sacrificed his country's interests for the sake of humiliating her enemies. He made England feared, but he isolated her in Europe and in the world by a proud and obdurate policy, for which he was to pay cruelly later. At home he was unbalanced and violent, carried away by opposing and always extreme passions, without limit and without foresight. The greatness of his mind, ability, and character, however, overcame all his defects. He governed his country through a long and difficult war in stormy times which demanded painful sacrifices, making constant appeals to the most noble passions of the human soul by the prestige of eloquence, rectitude, patriotism, and glory. It is his honor to have re-established the fortune of England in the war; it is no less a service to have lifted hearts to the level of fortune in order to sustain a great cause. Pitt's first warlike efforts were not happy. An expedition attempted against Rochefort was unsuccessful. The King of Prussia, lately victorious in Saxony, whence he had driven the elector, the King of Poland, found himself in turn closely pressed by the Austrian Marshal Daun, who had conquered him at Cologne. Marshal d'Estrèes, slowly occupying Westphalia, had entrapped the Duke of Cumberland on the Weser. On the morning of the 23d of July, 1757, the marshal summoned his lieutenant-generals. "Gentlemen," said he, "I do not assemble you to-day to ask you whether we must fight M. de Cumberland and invest Hameln. {235} The honor of the king's arms, his wish, his express orders, the interest of a common cause, bind us to take the firmest resolutions. I only seek, therefore, to profit by your light, and to concoct with you the best means of successful attack." The Duke of Cumberland's troops were of various races. He had not under his command any English regiment. His warlike spirit was not sufficient to compensate for the defects of his military organization. On the 26th of July Marshal d'Estrèes forced him into the intrenchment at Hastenbeck. He retreated, without being pursued, to the marshes at the mouth of the Elbe, under the protection of English vessels. Marshal d'Estrèes was recalled by a court intrigue. Marshal Richelieu and the Duke de Soubise divided the command. Richelieu systematically pillaged Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Brunswick. He threatened the position of the Duke of Cumberland, and the latter asked to capitulate. On the 8th of September, by the intervention of the Count de Lynar, the minister of the King of Denmark, who remained neutral between the