The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war in 1748, settled nothing and satisfied nobody. It was, in fact, only a truce to let the tired opponents get their breath and prepare for the world-wide struggle which was to settle the question of oversea empire. The British in America were very angry with the Mother Country for giving back Louisbourg. But they were much too narrow in their views; for their own fate in America depended entirely on the strength of the Royal Navy, which itself depended on having a safe base in the Mother Country. Now, France had conquered those parts of the once Spanish but then Austrian Netherlands which included the present coast of Belgium; and Britain could no more allow the French to threaten her naval base from the coast of Belgium then than she could allow the Spaniards before or the Germans in our own time. Therefore both she and her colonists won many points in the game, when playing for safety, by giving up Louisbourg, from which there could be no real danger, and so getting France out of Belgium, from which the whole Empire might some day have been struck a mortal blow. CHAPTER XVI PITT'S IMPERIAL WAR (1756-1763) The British part of the Seven Years War was rightly known as The Maritime War, because Pitt, the greatest of British empire-builders, based it entirely on British sea-power, both mercantile and naval. Pitt had a four-fold plan. First, it is needless to say that he made the Navy strong enough to keep the seaways open to friends and closed to enemies; for once the seaways are cut the Empire will bleed to death just as surely as a man will if you cut his veins and arteries. This being always and everywhere the Navy's plainest duty it need not have been mentioned here unless each other part of Pitt's fourfold plan had not only depended on it but helped to make it work. The second part of his plan was this: not to send British armies into the middle of Europe, but to help Frederick the Great and other allies to pay their own armies--a thing made possible by the wealth brought into Britain by oversea trade. The third part was to attack the enemy wherever British fleets and armies, acting together in "joint expeditions," could strike the best blows from the sea. The fourth was to send joint expeditions to conquer the French dominions overseas. But lesser men than Pitt were at the head of the Government when the fighting began; and it took some time to bring the ship of state on to her proper course even after his mighty hand began to steer.