Not till 1757 was the first attempt made to break this last sea link with France. There was a very natural anxiety, among the British on both sides of the Atlantic, to do conspicuously well against Louisbourg. Fort Necessity, Braddock's Defeat, and Montcalm's daring capture of Oswego, coming with cumulative effect, in three successive campaigns, had created a feeling of bitter disappointment in America; while the Black Hole of Calcutta; the loss of Minorca, and, worse still, Byng's failure to bring a British fleet into decisive action, had wounded the national pride in England. But 1757 turned out to be no better than its disconcerting predecessors. True, England's ally, Frederick the Great, won consummate victories at Rossbach and at Leuthen. But that was at the end of a very desperate campaign. True, also, that Clive won Plassey and took Chandernagore. But those were far away from English-speaking homes; while heavy reverses close at hand brought down the adverse balance. Pitt, the greatest of all civilian ministers of War, was dismissed from office and not reinstated till the British Empire had been without a cabinet for eleven weeks. The French overran the whole of Hanover and rounded up the Duke of Cumberland at Kloster-Seven. Mordaunt and his pettifogging councils of war turned the joint expedition against Rochefort into a complete fiasco; while Montcalm again defeated the British in America by taking Fort William Henry. The taking of Louisbourg would have been a very welcome victory in the midst of so much gloom. But the British were engaged in party strife at home. They were disunited in America. And neither the naval nor the military leader of the joint expedition against Louisbourg was the proper man to act either alone or with his colleague. Speed was of prime importance. Yet Admiral Holbourne did not sail from England for Halifax till May. General the Earl of Loudoun was slower yet. He drew in the troops from the northern frontier, concentrated them in New York, and laid an embargo on shipping to keep a secret which was already out. Finally, he and Sir Charles Hardy sailed for Halifax to keep their rendezvous with Holbourne, from whom no news had come. They arrived there before him; but his fleet came limping in during the next ten days, after a bad buffeting on its transatlantic voyage.