The Allies again took the field in the summer of 1748, but hostilities were at length terminated by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which was signed on the 7th of October, 1748. By it all the great treaties, from that of Westphalia in 1648, which first recognised the principle of a balance of power in Europe, to that of Vienna in 1738, were renewed and confirmed. Prussia retained Silesia, and the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa was guaranteed in the possession of her hereditary dominions, according to the Pragmatic Sanction. France surrendered her conquests in Flanders, and England those in the East and West Indies; all therefore Great Britain gained by the war was the glory of having supported the German sovereignty of Maria Theresa, and of having adhered to former treaties. Several regiments were disbanded in consequence of the termination of the war. On the disbandment of Colonel Spotswood's (afterwards Gooche's) American Provincial Corps, then numbered the _forty-third_ regiment, and of the ten Marine regiments from the _forty-fourth_ to the _fifty-third_, the numerical titles of six of the seven regiments raised in 1741, were changed, and the _fifty-seventh_ became the FORTY-SIXTH regiment.[11] [Sidenote: 1749] In the year 1749 the FORTY-SIXTH regiment proceeded to Ireland, where it remained for eight years. [Sidenote: 1751] In the Royal Warrant, dated the 1st of July, 1751, for ensuring uniformity in the clothing, standards, and colours of the army, and regulating the number and rank of regiments, the facings of the FORTY-SIXTH regiment were directed to be yellow. The first, or King's colour, was the Great Union; the second, or Regimental colour, was of yellow silk, with the Union in the upper canton; in the centre of the colour the number of the rank of the regiment, in gold Roman characters, within a wreath of roses and thistles on the same stalk. [Sidenote: 1756] While the regiment was stationed in Ireland, the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was interrupted by the aggressions of the French on the British territory in North America, and early in 1756 the King of France prepared a powerful armament for the capture of the island of Minorca. In consequence of this attack on Minorca, hostilities became inevitable on the part of Great Britain, and on the 18th of May war was declared against France. [Sidenote: 1757] On the 7th of May 1757, the FORTY-SIXTH, and other regiments, embarked at Cork, for Nova Scotia, being intended to form part of an expedition under Major-General the Earl of Loudoun, for the attack upon Cape Breton, an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. On arriving at Halifax, the seventeenth, forty-second, FORTY-SIXTH, and the second battalion of the sixtieth regiments were formed in brigade under Major-General James Abercromby; but the French at Louisburg having been reinforced, the expedition was deferred until the following year, and the regiment remained in Nova Scotia during the winter. [Sidenote: 1758]