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..