1763 | Political Events
Political Events
The Treaty of Paris signed February 10 ends Europe's Seven Years' War. Mme. de Pompadour has been vested with virtually all the powers of a prime minister and sees France regain territories in Africa and India, plus the sugar-rich islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the West Indies, while losing to Britain her territories in Canada, plus Grenada in the West Indies and Senegal in West Africa.
The Treaty of Hubertusburg signed at a castle in Saxony February 15 makes peace between Austria and Prussia. The latter retains possession of Silesia, emerges as the leading German power, and promises in return to support the archduke Josef as Holy Roman Empire (see 1765). The treaty restores Saxony to her prewar limits.
The Treaty of Paris recognizes the Mississippi River as the boundary between the British colonies and the Louisiana territory, ceded last year by France to Spain. All of New France east of the Mississippi is ceded to the British except for New Orleans and its environs (see 1800). The French retain only the little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon near Newfoundland and fishing rights in Newfoundland; the treaty leaves Britain in control of everything else in North America from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.
Spain cedes Florida to Britain and regains all of Britain's conquests in Cuba, including Havana (see 1762). Spain also recovers the Philippines, but she loses Minorca.
Britain's prime minister Lord Bute resigns in April (journalist John Wilkes, now 37, has supported a campaign by Richard Grenville, 52, 1st Earl Temple, to discredit Bute's ministry). A new Tory ministry headed by George Grenville, 51, younger brother of Earl Temple and brother-in-law of William Pitt, takes office with the younger Grenville as first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer, but Earl Temple has no use for the new ministry and encourages Wilkes to publish an article in the North Briton April 23 containing libelous suggestions about Bute's relations with the mother of George III and saying that some statements in a speech by the king were false. A general warrant is issued at the behest of the secretary of state for the northern department George Montagu Dunk, 46, 2nd earl of Halifax, and 48 persons are seized in a search for evidence; Wilkes himself is arrested on a charge of sedition and confined to the Tower of London, but he is released a week later with popular approval after a ruling by the lord chief justice Charles Pratt, 49, of the Court of Common Pleas, who says that Wilkes's arrest was a breach of parliamentary privilege and issues a writ of habeas corpus. Wilkes and others file suit for trespass against Halifax, and they will be awarded damages, establishing the illegality of general warrants that do not name the persons to be arrested, and the principle of punitive damages (the government will be held liable for a huge sum in the area of £100,000). But John Montagu, 4th earl of Sandwich, reads a scurrilous essay by Wilkes to the House of Lords in November, his article of April 23 draws condemnation in the House of Commons as a seditious libel, Wilkes is wounded in a duel during the Christmas recess, and he steals off to visit his daughter in Paris rather than face charges (see 1764).
Russian troops invade Lithuania in September.
Poland's Augustus III dies at Dresden October 5 at age 66 after a 30-year reign. He has returned to Saxony following conclusion of the Treaty of Hubertsburg in February; his crown is offered to Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, 28, who refuses it; and Augustus will be succeeded next year by Czartoryski's cousin Stanislaw Poniatowski, 31, a favorite of the Russian czarina, Catherine, whose influence will gain him election to the throne. The new king will reign until 1795 as Stanislaw II Augustus while Czartoryski becomes a patron of the arts.
Ottawa chief Pontiac, 43, leads tribesmen of the American northwest in an uprising intended to drive British settlers back east across the Alleghenies. Unlike the French, who were friendly to the tribes, the British have treated them with nothing but contempt, barring them from entry into forts, cheating them in trade, and settling on their lands. Pontiac last year enlisted the Chippewa, Sac, and all but a few of the other trans-Appalachian tribes into a confederacy; he attempts a surprise attack on Fort Detroit May 7, but the British have learned of his plan and reinforced the 35-man garrison, whose commander, Major Henry Gladwin, repels Pontiac's attack. The tribesmen take eight other British forts, committing atrocities that provoke a British retaliation with comparable atrocities (soldiers at Fort Pitt give Delaware and Shawnee tribesmen two smallpox-infected blankets and an infected handkerchief June 24); a 500-man British force marches 250 miles from Fort Niagara under the command of Swiss-born mercenary Colonel Henry Bouquet to bolster the defenses of Fort Pitt and Fort Ligonier, whose garrisons hold out against attacks (see 1764).
A British royal proclamation issued October 7 declares that New France is to become the colony of Quebec, with a royal governor empowered to convene an assembly, and although the colony's 70,000 French inhabitants become British subjects, they are Roman Catholic and are therefore not entitled to vote or to sit in the assembly. Military leader James Murray, 42, is appointed governor, but his sympathies are with the French. He ignores the demands of the 500 or so British Protestants who want an assembly, and he will be replaced in 1766 by the Irish-born General Guy Carleton, now 39 (both men fought with the late General James Wolfe in 1759; see Quebec Act, 1774).
General Thomas Gage, now 42, is appointed commander in chief of all British forces in North America. His headquarters are at New York, and his position makes him the most important and influential public official in the colonies, responsible for more than 50 garrisons extending from Newfoundland to Florida and from Bermuda to the Mississippi (see Coercive Acts, 1774).