and England yielded.  The preliminaries of peace were signed on the 30th of April; it was not long before Austria and Spain gave in their adhesion.  On the 18th of October the definitive treaty was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle.  France generously restored all her conquests, without claiming other advantages beyond the assurance of the duchies of Parma and Piacenza to the Infante Don Philip, son-in-law of Louis XV.  England surrendered to France the Island of Cape Breton and the colony of Louisbourg, the only territory she had preserved from her numerous expeditions against the French colonies and from the immense losses inflicted upon French commerce.  The Great Frederic kept Silesia; the King of Sardinia the territories already ceded by Austria.  Only France had made great conquests; and only she retained no increment of territory.  She recognized the Pragmatic-Sanction in favor of Austria and the Protestant succession in favor of George II.  Prince Charles Edward, a refugee in France, refused to quit the hospitable soil which had but lately offered so magnificent an asylum to the unfortunates of his house:  he was, however, carried off, whilst at the Opera, forced into a carriage, and conveyed far from the frontier.  “As stupid as the peace!” was the bitter saying in the streets of Paris.

[Illustration:  Arrest of Charles Edward——­166]

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had a graver defect than that of fruitlessness; it was not and could not be durable.  England was excited, ambitious of that complete empire of the sea which she had begun to build up upon the ruins of the French navy and the decay of Holland, and greedy of distant conquests over colonies which the French could not manage to defend.  In proportion as the old influence of Richelieu and of Louis XIV. over European politics grew weaker and weaker, English influence, founded upon the growing power of a free country and a free government, went on increasing in strength.  Without any other ally but Spain, herself wavering in her fidelity, the French remained exposed to the attempts of England, henceforth delivered from the phantom of the Stuarts.  “The peace concluded between England and France in 1748 was, as regards Europe, nothing but a truce,” says Lord Macaulay “it was not even a truce in other quarters of the globe.”  The mutual rivalry and mistrust between the two nations began to show themselves everywhere, in the East as well as in the West, in India as well as in America.

CHAPTER LIII.——­LOUIS XV., FRANCE IN THE COLONIES. 1745-1763.

France was already beginning to perceive her sudden abasement in Europe; the defaults of her generals as well as of her government sometimes struck the king himself; he threw the blame of it on the barrenness of his times.  “This age is not fruitful in great men,” he wrote to Marshal Noailles:  “you know that we miss subjects for all objects, and you have one before your eyes in the case of the