52. Two Young Men Unleashed: James

The original jewel in the British imperial crown wasn't India but North America. And William Pitt the Elder, Prime Minister in all but name since our last episode, was going to make sure the armed forces there were up to the task of breaking the stranglehold of the French. That meant spending what was needed, but also making sure that forces were well-led. Pitt was ready to do whatever it took to make that happen, even if it meant breaking with centuries of tradition, and promoting men on merit not aristocratic background.

That made it possible for the first young man unleashed, of the two in this and the next episode, James, or General Wolfe as he came to be known, to win a comprehensive and decisive victory over the French in Canada.

Plus, in this episode: the extraordinary victory of British and Hanoverian infantry over French cavalry at the Battle of Mindon, was as spectacular as it was unprecedented.

Illustration: The Death od General Wolfe, by Benjamin West - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=160192

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License