About the middle of the eighteenth century occurred three famous battles which did much to determine the destinies of men for ages to come. The first of these, was the great victory achieved by the English arms on the plains of Plassey, June 23, 1757, which laid the foundation of the empire of British India, an empire which comprises more than one hundred and twenty millions of people. The second was the victory of Rossbach, which determined the re-union of the German states and laid the foundation of the present German empire. The third was the triumph of Wolfe on the plains of Abraham, September 13, 1759, for with it virtually began the history of the United States. France had ever been an enemy whose dread had knit the colonists together and to the mother country, England. By wresting Canada from her grasp and breaking through the line with which France had barred the British colonists from the basin of the Mississippi, Pitt laid the foundation of the great republic of the West. {156} Hitherto the possessions of France in North America had been twenty times as vast as those of England; henceforth they were destined to dwindle into insignificance and eventually become extinct. The close of the seven years' war, which ended at the peace of Paris, 1763, was a turning point in the history of the world. England was no longer a mere European power. Her future action lay in a wider sphere than that of Europe. Mistress of North America, the future mistress of India, claiming as her own the empire of the seas, Britain suddenly towered high above rival nations whose interest and position, being on a single continent, doomed them to comparative insignificance in the after history of mankind. It is this that gives William Pitt so peculiar a position among the statesmen of the world. It was his faith, his daring--shall we not say his inspiration?--that called the English people to a sense of the destiny that lay before them. With England on one side and her American colonies on the other, the Atlantic was dwindling into a mere strait within the British realms; but beyond it to the westward lay a vast ocean where the British flag was almost unknown. True the Pacific ocean had been discovered by Balboa in 1513, and crossed by Magellan in 1521. Dutch voyagers had discovered that "Great Southern Land," which they had named New Holland and also the northern extremity of New Zealand. But the discoveries had remained unheeded for more than a century.