Episode 7 - To Encourage the Others...

Britain thought it could glide through 1756 on sea power and habit. Minorca proved otherwise. We follow the doomed relief of Fort St. Philip from the Admiralty’s hedged orders to John Byng’s compromised squadron, then into a battle where geometry, hesitation, and a ten‑minute delay cost Britain the initiative. The French didn’t need a glorious victory; they needed a functioning plan. They had one. The result was a tactical draw that became a strategic collapse—and a fortress left to face arithmetic alone.

Inside those walls, William Blakeney managed a shrinking perimeter as French engineers advanced with quiet precision. Beyond the guns, the louder story unfolded in London. The Articles of War demanded death for failure to do one’s utmost, and Byng’s court—officers who knew the truth of his situation—convicted and begged for mercy in the same breath. None came. Voltaire’s bitter line about killing an admiral to encourage the others lands here not as satire but diagnosis: punishment stood in for reform, spectacle for accountability.

We dig into the system that made this outcome feel inevitable under the Duke of Newcastle: delayed decisions, ambiguous orders, and a Navy drilled to preserve formation at the expense of initiative. Then we track how William Pitt the Elder seized the narrative, arguing for coordinated, global action and the courage to spend for victory rather than manage decline. Minorca’s fall becomes more than a lost base; it’s the moment Britain learns that procedure is not strategy and that naval supremacy must be earned, not assumed. As the war’s tempo shifts to North America and Montcalm gathers momentum, the cost of hesitation becomes brutally clear.

If this story challenged your view of “naval supremacy,” tap follow, share it with a friend who loves history, and leave a quick review—your words help others find the show and keep this series sailing.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage For Minorca
• 3:46 Why Minorca Mattered Strategically
• 8:36 France Moves First, Britain Hesitates
• 13:20 Admiral Byng’s Orders And Constraints
• 18:40 The Botched Relief And Delays
• 23:16 Battle Off Minorca Begins
• 27:30 Formation Chaos And Lost Initiative
• 31:20 Tactical Draw, Strategic Disaster
• 35:20 Siege Of Fort St. Philip
• 41:36 London Demands A Scapegoat
• 47:20 Articles Of War And Inevitable Trial
• 52:20 The Court-Martial And Plea For Mercy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

Hello, and welcome to the History of the Seven Years' War. Episode seven to encourage the others. And as always, I'm your host, Rob Hill. First off, I'd like to apologize for the somewhat longer than usual break. Between work and the holidays here in the US, things kinda got away from me a little bit, but we're back on track now and ready to jump right into it. So where were we? Ah yes. In early 1756, Britain still believed it was good at war. This was not an unreasonable belief. Britain had the world's most powerful navy, the deepest credit markets, and an empire that spanned continents. Its admirals were veterans, its dockyards were unmatched, its merchant fleet choked the seas with trade. And yet, if there was one consistent British talent in the eighteenth century, it was this the ability to turn structural advantage into personal catastrophe. Minorca would prove that talent beyond all doubt. Britain was forced to do the thing it had been avoiding for years to admit it was a war. Not officially at first, not with the declarations and formal announcements, but in the way that really mattered by panicking. And nothing reveals panic in an empire quite like the sudden realization that you might lose something you already own. In this case, that something was Minorca. Minorca was not glamorous, and was a dry, sunburnt rock. Didn't produce sugar, silver, or spices. What it did produce was anxiety. Captured from Spain in 1708 during the War of Spanish Succession, Minorca had become Britain's principal naval base in the Mediterranean. Its deep water harbor at Port Mahone could shelter an entire fleet, and its fortress, Fort St. Philip, loomed over the harbor like a stone fist. Whoever controlled Port Mahone could project naval power across the western Mediterranean, watching Toulon and Barcelona, and the sea lanes to Italy all at once. It was the kind of place that was strategically vital, but also terribly inconvenient to explain to the taxpayers. For Britain, Minorca was leverage. For France, it was an insult. Every French admiral sailing past the Balaric Islands knew that Britain's presence there meant French fleets were being watched, harassed, and occasionally embarrassed in their own sea. And in 1756, with the diplomatic revolution complete and alliances reversed, the French government decided it was time to correct that embarrassment. This would be France's opening move of the official war, and it would be Britain's first catastrophe. While British ministers were still congratulating themselves on protecting Hanover, yes, still Hanover, always Hanover, French planners were doing something far more dangerous, acting decisively. The man chosen to lead the operation Armand de Vigno Du Plessis Duc de Richelieu, a name heavy with legacy and a personality heavy with arrogance. Richelieu was not subtle. He was flamboyant, cruelly effective, and deeply convinced that speed mattered more than perfection. His naval counterpart was Admiral Roland Michel Baron de la Glaconnier, a seasoned officer with real combat experience, and, crucially, none of Richelieu's flair. When Richelieu wanted glory, La Glaconniere wanted results. Together they assembled a force that should have set off alarms in London immediately. Fifteen thousand French troops and a powerful Mediterranean fleet with clear, aggressive orders. Take Minorca quickly, force Britain to respond. Expose British weakness before Prussia and Austria could blink. France moved first. Britain hesitated. The man chosen to take care of things was Admiral John Bing. Bing was not an incompetent officer. He was not a coward. He was not, contrary to later caricature, a fool. What he was was something far more dangerous in a crisis. Cautious. If this were a tragedy, and it is, Bing is not the villain. He is something far more unsettling. He is a reasonable man. Bing was the son of Admiral George Bing, a hero of the War of Spanish Succession, a pillar of the Whig establishment, and first Lord of the Admiralty. John had grown up surrounded by ships, commissions, and expectations. Bing had risen through the ranks not by reckless brilliance, but by steady service, political connections, and reputation for professionalism. He was competent, methodical, and cautious, qualities that served well in peacetime patrols and administrative command. He believed deeply in admiralty regulations, fleet discipline, and preserving his Majesty's ships, and that belief would put him on a collision course with reality. What he was, was not bold. However, in seventeen fifty six, boldness was about to be mistaken for competence. Bing was sent into the Mediterranean with a squadron that looked impressive on paper, but alarming in reality. Well he had a fleet of ten ships of the line, vessels that projected power like a nuclear aircraft carrier and punched like a modern battleship, at least on paper. However, most of the ships were undercrewed, and when the crew they did have was most likely sick, green, or a super fun combination of both. And the cherry on top of this sundae of incompetence, they were all in a deep state of disrepair, broken down and half leaking. When the word arrived that the French were preparing an expedition against Minorca, Pink did not receive urgent reinforcement orders. He received conflicting instructions, vague encouragement, and the implicit understanding that failure would not be forgiven. He was told to relieve Minorca, but not risk the fleet, to fight, but not too boldly, to be decisive, but only with caution. It was the eighteenth century naval equivalent of drive to the store and get milk, but don't use the car, and don't spend any money. And also the store's on fire. This, as we will see later on in a courtroom, is important. On march eleventh, seventeen fifty six, Bing received orders to raise a fleet and sail for the Mediterranean. On paper, those looked respectable. Tanships of the line, a clear mandate, and a pressing objective. In reality, only six of those ships were actually present in Portsmouth, and every single one of them was severely undermanned. His own flagship, the Ramilies, was missing two hundred and twenty sailors, having recently loaned its crew to another ship because the Admiralty had simply been shuffling men around, plucking leaks wherever they appeared. And the odors themselves were muddled. Bing was told that his primary objective was to locate and engage a rumored French fleet at Toulon, relieving the British garrison at Fort St. Philip in Minorca. The entire reason anyone cared about the Mediterranean at all was listed as a secondary concern. This is not how you write orders when you want someone to succeed. Bing immediately protested. He liked men, he liked money, he liked time, he liked ships. The Admiralty responded by delaying him for over a month. While Bing waited in Portsmouth, he was ordered to outfit other channel ships before his own fleet, and half the vessels assigned to him were either missing or literally falling apart. One ship, the Defiance, arrived without its four and main topmasts. This is not a typo. The warship without masts was assigned to his fleet. And on april sixth, still short over eight hundred sailors, Bing was told to set sail anyway. To make up the numbers, he took Colonel Robert Bertie's fusiliers aboard. Soldiers pressed into naval service because there simply weren't enough sailors to go around. This was not reinforcement, this was improvisation. While Bing was limping toward the Mediterranean, events moved faster than the Admiralty ever had. On april seventeenth, the French Toulon fleet sailed, not to fight Bing, but to escort a massive amphibious operation. Over a thousand transport vessels carried fifteen thousand French troops to Minorca, landing them on the far western end of the island. By the time Bing reached Gibraltar, the invasion was already underway, and here, somehow, things got even worse. At Gibraltar, Bing encountered General Thomas Falk, who promptly held the war council and refused to supply the Marines that the War Office had explicitly ordered him to provide. This was not a new problem, it was the same pattern repeating itself just further south. Bing wrote to the Admiralty describing the situation as dire. Later historians would read this letter as evidence that he had already given up, that he believed Minorca was lost before he had ever fired a shot. But, read another way, it sounds less like despair, and more like a man documenting the slow motion collapse of a mission he never had the tools to complete. Still, Bing pressed on. On may eighth, he sailed for Minorca. Bing arrived off Port Mahone on may nineteenth and attempted to open communications with the garrison. He never got the chance. The French fleet appeared before contact could be made, forcing Bing into a fleet action under less than ideal conditions. The next day, may twentieth, the two fleets met. Now, let's start with some of the basics of naval combat in the mid-18th century, because this matters a lot for understanding why Minorca goes so badly. Naval warfare at this point is not Nelson, not Trafalgar, and certainly not cinematic chaos. It is ritualized geometry obsessed violence. Fleets form long, tidy lines, sail past each other, and trade broadsides like gentlemen politely taking turns, punching each other in the face. The great tactical obsession is the weather gauge, having the wind advantage, because whoever controls the wind controls when and how the fight happens. And at Minorca, John Bing actually does the hard part right. He gains the weather gauge. This is good. This is the thing you want. This is like winning the coin toss and getting first possession, and finding that the ref is your cousin. So naturally, everything immediately goes wrong. Bing ordered a laughing maneuver, a coordinated turn where the British fleet swings together and charges directly toward the French line, bows first, the wind behind them. Done correctly, this could smash into the enemy van before they can react. It's aggressive. It's risky. It's almost decisive. Except it requires everyone to do exactly what they're told. Captain Thomas Andrews of the Defiance, the lead ship, whose entire job is go where the admiral points, instead decided to sail politely alongside the enemy, as if unsure whether this was a battle or an awkward diplomatic meeting. Several other captains follow his example, because nothing spreads faster in the Royal Navy than confident hesitation. Bing notices he fires cannon shots, not at the French, but at his own fleet, to say in naval terms, no, not that, the other thing. It takes ten minutes to fix the mistake. Which, in fleet combat, is roughly an eternity. And during the delay, the French admiral does what any sensible person would do when they realize the enemy might accidentally attack them properly. He adds sail and pulls away. Surprise gone. Initiative gone. Decisive action vaporized. The battle now becomes what Captain Augustus Hervey later calls a running fight, which is a polite way of saying the French spend the afternoon slowly backing away while the British struggle to keep their formation intact. Because of the awkward angle, the British van, the leading ships, take the worst of the punishment. The intrepid is absolutely mauled, losing three masts and becoming an expensive floating obstacle. The ships behind her refuse to break formation to pass because rules are rules, and nearly crash into each other instead. At one point, a captain threads his ship through a collapsing gap like a man parallel parking a cathedral. The British battle line is now broken. Reforming it takes another twenty to thirty minutes. When they finally succeed, the French, who have no intention of sticking around for Act two, simply sail off at full speed. Bing is advised to set full sail and pursue, leading by example. He refuses. Why? Because a decade earlier, Thomas Matthews tried something bold at Toulon and got court martialed for it. Bing has learned the Royal Navy's most important lesson. It is better to lose the battle correctly than to win it incorrectly. After four to four and a half hours of fighting, neither side has lost a ship. Casualties are roughly even. Tactically, it's a draw. Strategically, it's a disaster. The French fleet remains intact, Minorca remains isolated. And back in London, the government, desperate for someone to blame, will soon discover that losing without drama is far more dangerous than losing heroically. Which brings us to the most important rule of the Seven Years War. If something goes wrong, someone is going to be punished, and it's almost never the people who deserve it. For four days Bing remained near Minorca. He failed to establish communication with the fort, he did not reengage with the French fleet, and on may twenty fourth, he convened a war council. The decision was unanimous. The fleet would return to Gibraltar for repairs, reinforcements, and crucially, marines. The decision would later seal his fate. The fleet reached Gibraltar on june nineteenth, received reinforcements, made repairs, and prepared to return. They never did. Before Bing could set sail, orders arrived from England. He was relieved of his command, recalled home, and placed squarely in the sights of a government that desperately needed someone to blame. And so, without ever abandoning his fleet, without losing a ship, without disobeying a direct order, Admiral John Bing's career effectively ends. What follows is not a military reckoning, but a political one. Because when Minorca falls, someone has to pay. And in London, the gallows were already being assembled. Bing's war was over. The island's war was just beginning. With the British fleet retreating to Gibraltar, the French controlled the waters around Minorca. That fact alone sealed the fate of Fort Saint Philip. The garrison watched helplessly as French ships ferried reinforcements and siege guns across the harbor. With no naval relief possible, the fortress was now isolated, not just geographically, but strategically. The bitter irony of Minorca is this. If Bing had been reckless, he might have been praised. If he had lost ships, he might have been forgiven. If he had died in battle, he would have been immortalized. Instead, he survived. And in eighteenth century Britain, survival without victory was the one sin that could not be excused. Being sailed back to Gibraltar, Fort St. Philip watched the horizon. The rest was mathematics. Fort St. Philip sat above the deep natural harbor of Port Mahone, one of the finest anchorages in the Mediterranean. It was the reason Britain had fought so hard to keep Minorca after the War of Spanish succession, and why France had never accepted losing it. The fort itself was massive, a sprawling eighteenth century star fortress of thick limestone walls and angular bastions, with underground galleries carved directly into the rock. On paper, it was formidable. In reality, it was tiring. Much of its design dates decades back. Improvements had been planned, but many were unfinished. Its outer works were exposed, its defenses incomplete, and its garrison far too small for the task ahead. Commanding the garrison was Lieutenant General William Blakeney, a seventy year old Irish officer whose career stretched back to Marlborough's wars. Blakeney was brave, conscientious, and deeply unlucky, a recurring qualification for British commanders in this period. He had roughly two thousand eight hundred and sixty men under his command, drawn from several regular regiments of foot, along with artillery and engineers, professional soldiers, but far too few for a fortress of this size. Blakeney knew it, his officers knew it. London did not. When word reached him that a French invasion fleet was assembling, Blakeney requested reinforcements. What he received instead were assurances. On april eighteenth, seventeen fifty six, the French landed. Their commander, Richelieu, was not a great battlefield general, but he didn't need to be. He brought with him fifteen thousand troops, including seasoned regiments, engineers, and artillery, more than enough to overwhelm the island. The landing itself was smooth, efficient, and almost leisurely. French troops disembarked, formed up, began marching inland with practiced ease. Local Spanish inhabitants, still resentful of British rule, largely stayed neutral, or quietly helpful. Within days, Fort St. Philip was encircled. Siege warfare. Was not dramatic. It was methodical and relentless. French engineers dug trenches in zigzag patterns to avoid enfilotting fire and established batteries with mathematical precision. Each day, their lines kept closer. Inside the fort, British artillery responded, firing round after round into the advancing works. Stones shattered, earth flew, men died. But the French kept digging. This was the brutal arithmetic of siege warfare. The attacker could lose men and replace them. The defender could not. By late June, the pattern was unmistakable, no relief, shrinking defenses, and time working only for the attackers. Richelieu understood that sieges were as much about morale as masonry. French batteries concentrated fire on specific bastions, reducing them methodically. Shells arced over the walls and exploded inside the fort, not always causing massive damage, but constantly reminded the defenders that nowhere felt safe. Each lost position forced the British garrison to fall back, shrinking their world one wall at a time. Still, Blakeney refused to yield. The turning point came when French guns finally opened a breach in the walls. There was no cinematic collapse, just a widening gap battered day after day until it could no longer be held. French sappers prepared for an assault. Blakeney convened a council of war. The choice was stark, continue resistance and face a bloody storming, or surrender honorably and preserve his men. The magazines were low, disease was spreading, and there was no relief fleet coming. On june twenty eighth, seventeen fifty six, after more than two months under siege, Fort Saint Philip surrendered. The terms were honorable. The garrison marched out with arms and colors, drums beating. They were transported to Gibraltar and later returned to Britain. Blakeney had done everything that he could reasonably be asked to do. Minorca was lost. The fall of Fort St. Philip was not a failure of courage. It was a failure of strategy, preparation, and leadership, the same pattern we saw with Braddock, now replayed in stone instead of forest. Britain had assumed that naval supremacy could compensate for neglect, that fortresses could hold indefinitely, that decisions could be postponed without consequence. Those assumptions died in the dust beneath Fort St. Philip's walls. When dispatches reached London, they caused an immediate political earthquake. The facts were unclear, the tone was grim, and the public reaction was merciless. How, demanded Parliament, had the greatest navy in the world failed to save a fortress from under its nose? The answer that the battle had been fought according to instructions, was not reassuring. To the public it sounded like cowardice dressed up as professionalism. Pamphlets flooded the streets, Bing the bungler, the admiral who wouldn't fight, lost Minorca, saved his ships. The fall of Minorca was a political earthquake in London, not just a military defeat, the loss of a key Mediterranean base, the retreat of the British fleet, and the garrison's surrender were compounded by the confusion in Whitehall over how it happened. Unwilling to seek answers, the British Empire, confronted with failure, began looking for someone to blame. Bing was perfect. Public anger demanded punishment. The law was already prepared to provide it. At this point it's worth pausing to note something crucial. John Bing had not disobeyed orders. John Bing had not fled the enemy. John Bing had not surrendered his fleet. What he had done was fail, carefully, cautiously, and in full compliance with the system that governed him. And that system was already prepared to decide his fate. The Articles of War, recently revised, contain a brutal clause any officer who did not do his utmost to defeat the enemy, or assist a British force in action, shall suffer death. There was no allowance for context, no distinction between error and caution, no room for professional judgment. What did utmost mean? That question would soon be answered, not in battle, but in a courtroom. By the time the lawyers got involved, the public had already made up its mind. Bang had fought cautiously, he had followed orders, and he had survived. That combination made him dangerous. By the summer of seventeen fifty six, the British government was in real trouble. Not the background hum of incompetence that had characterized the Newcastle Ministry for years, but something sharper and more immediate. Minorca had fallen. A British fleet had turned back, and the Royal Navy, the one institution the public believed could not fail, suddenly had. The newspapers were furious. Pamphlets mocked hesitation and restraint. Parliament began asking the most dangerous question in politics. Who is responsible? The true answer that Minorca had been lost through delayed decisions, ambiguous orders, and systemic caution at the top was the one the government could not afford to give. Blaming the Admiralty would require parliament to examine itself. Blaming the ministry would require the king to abandon his political caretakers. Blaming the system would require reform. Blaming an admiral required only a charge sheet. Bing was uniquely convenient. He was senior enough to satisfy public anger, cautious enough to look suspicious, and alive enough to stand trial. Most importantly, punishing him would look like action. The law made this easy. Once the articles of war were invoked, the outcome narrowed dramatically. A court martial could determine guilt, but it had no discretion over punishment. Conviction meant death. The machinery was already in motion. By the time John Bing returned to England, the question was no longer whether he would be tried, but whether anyone in power would dare to stop what had been set in motion. What followed would be presented as justice. In reality, it was something far more revealing, a system protecting itself by sacrificing one of its own. Because Minorca was not lost at sea, it was lost on paper, in committee, and in Whitehall offices long before Bing ever raised anchor. The expedition to relieve Fort St. Philip had been botched from the beginning. And while much is said about the quality and bravery of the men of the fort, the garrison on Minorca had been neglected for years, its defenses decaying while the ministry reassured itself that war could still be avoided. The administration of the Duke of Newcastle, which had delayed decisions, underfunded defenses, and treated war as a problem to be postponed rather than prepared for, now had a remarkable record of so many consistently poor decisions. Minorca did not create these failures, it merely made them impossible to ignore. Under his watch, the British had lost their strategic initiative in North America, culminating in Braddock's annihilation. This had only helped exacerbate the collapse of British influence among native nations after 1755. The expulsion of the Acadians was simply a moral catastrophe disguised as a victory. And now they had just lost Minorca, Britain's most important Mediterranean naval base. That is an impressive resume of underachievement. And yet Newcastle himself remained untouched, still prime minister, still apologetic, still insisting that everything would improve next year. This was the defining trait of Newcastle's war leadership. Nothing was ever anyone's fault, until it absolutely had to be someone's fault. To admit this would have meant admitting that Britain's governing class, aristocratic, complacent, and divided, had failed at the one thing it claimed to do better than anyone else. The truth, awkward, unpatriotic, and deeply inconvenient, was that Bing's failure was systemic. Bing was sent to relieve Minorca late, with too little force, and with no clear authority to risk everything in a decisive engagement. In other words, who's asked to save the situation without being given the tools to do so? But blaming the Admiralty would require parliament to examine itself. Blaming the Prime Minister would require the king to abandon his favorite political caretaker. Blaming the system would require reform. Blaming an admiral, on the other hand, that required only a rope. John Bang had several disadvantages that made him ideal for destruction. Firstly, he had made the mistake of surviving. A dead commander can be mourned, turned into a hero even. Living ones, well, they can be questioned, doubted. Even if he had failed, if he had gone down swinging, gone down like Nelson, it all could have been forgiven, or at the very least, looked at differently given his sacrifice. Secondly, Bing was a cautious man, not a charismatic one. Bing was certainly not a Nelson figure. He had no flair, no heroic legend, no powerful faction of admirers. One of the very traits that endeared him to his command in the first place would now be a part of his undoing. Bing was cautious to the point of obedience, precisely the trait that the system claimed to reward. Thirdly, he came from a naval family. His father, Admiral George Bing, had been a national hero fighting for king and country during the War of Spanish succession. That pedigree made John's failure feel like a betrayal of tradition, and in the tradition obsessed British Navy, that really meant quite a lot. But most importantly, executing him would look like action. And by seventeen fifty six, the Newcastle government desperately needed to look like it was actually doing something. The public mood was turning ugly. Pamphlets blamed corruption, newspapers mocked incompetence, cartoons depicted ministers asleep while forts burned. The phrase lost Minorca became political shorthand for everything wrong with Britain's war effort. Newcastle's greatest fear was not France, it was Parliament. A scapegoat like Bing could help to redirect the public's fury and reassert the appearance of discipline. He could protect the Admiralty, protect the ministry, and crucially, protect the king from any questions about Hanover and misplaced priorities. Bing, by the logic of eighteenth century politics, was not a man. He was a solution. The Articles of War, revised after earlier conflicts, now contained the brutal clause Any officer who failed to do his utmost in battle must suffer death. No nuance, no discretion, no mercy. It was a law designed to enforce aggression, written by men who would never stand on a quarter deck. Once invoked, it allowed the government to claim that the law demanded execution for this crime. The court simply had no choice. The law was a law after all. The ministry was simply respecting naval discipline. In reality, the law provided cover for a decision already made. Bing's greatest crime was not his cowardice. It was obedience within a system that rewarded recklessness and punished responsibility. The Newcastle government did not hang Bing because he had failed. They hanged him because they had failed repeatedly, and he was the first senior officer whose defeat could not be hidden behind distance, delay, or colonial ambiguity. Minorca was too close, the navy was too sacred, and the moment was too dangerous. So the government chose ritual over reform, justice over competence, and an execution over accountability. And so, as Britain reeled from defeat and minister searched for absolution, the machinery of justice began to turn, not to discover the truth, but to manufacture closure. The court martial of Admiral John Bing was about to begin. The court martial convened aboard HMS St. George in Portsmouth Harbor in december seventeen fifty six. It was composed of fellow naval officers, men who understood Bing's decisions all too well. They knew the risks he faced, they knew the weaknesses of his fleet, they knew the Admiralty's failures, and that made the verdict all the more horrifying. Bing was charged with failing to engage the enemy vigorously, failing to relieve Minorca, and bringing dishonor to his Majesty's navy. The proceedings were meticulous. Witnesses testified, logs were examined, signals were reconstructed, and again and again the same truth emerged. Bing had fought, and still, somehow he was going to pay for losing. When the verdict came down it was devastating in its clarity. The court found Bing guilty, and immediately petitioned the king for mercy. They did so unanimously. Their reasoning was simple. The law required conviction, but justice did not require execution. They had no discretion, the sentence was death. And now the burden passed upward to the king and his ministers. At this point, the Newcastle ministry faced a choice. They could commute the sentence, admit systemic failure, and accept shared responsibility. Or they could let the execution proceed, prove that Britain punished failure, and hoped that the blood would quiet the public. They chose blood. George II refused clemency. Not because he hated Bing, but because mercy now would look like weakness. And in seventeen fifty six, weakness was the one thing Britain believed it could not afford. Across the channel, the reaction was immediate and merciless. Voltaire, ever the observer of human absurdity, wrote the line that would immortalize the affair. In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others. It was a joke, and it wasn't. The execution became a symbol, not of justice, but of fear. A government so uncertain of itself that it mistook punishment for leadership. On march fourteenth, seventeen fifty seven, John Bang was led aboard the HMS monarch. Around him were assembled the men and sailors of the monarch and all nearby vessels. He died calmly. Witnesses noted his composure. He knelt, prayed, and then gave the signal, dropping his handkerchief. The volley echoed across Portsmouth Harbor, and with it something broke. As late as two thousand seven, Bing's family has continued to petition the government for a posthumous pardon, and yet it has been refused by the Ministry of Defense. The epitaph on his grave is quite an excellent summary of it all. To the perpetual disgrace of public justice, the honorable John Bing Esquire, Admiral of the Blue, fell a martyr to political persecution, march fourteenth, in the year seventeen fifty seven, when bravery and loyalty were insufficient securities for the life and honor of a naval officer. Wars are often remembered for their victories, occasionally for their defeats, but every so often, a war produces something stranger and far more revealing. A punishment that explains the system better than any battlefield ever could. In the aftermath of Minorca, after the smoke had cleared, after the fleets separated, after the maps were quietly updated, Britain did not immediately ask how the battle had been lost or why the relief effort had failed. Instead, it asked the simpler, more dangerous question Who should pay for it? The answer would not be found in the Admiralty offices, nor in the cabinet rooms of London, but standing alone in uniform, placed carefully between public fear and political self preservation. And so, before Britain truly reckoned with the war it had begun, it declared that one man, John Bing, would have to die, so that the system which failed him would not have to change. By the time the guns fell silent off Minorca, Britain was already in trouble, but didn't quite know how much trouble yet. The battle itself was inconclusive, no ships lost, casualties roughly equal. On the cold, technical ledger of eighteenth century naval warfare, this should have been survivable. Politically, it was catastrophic. Because Minorca wasn't just a failed relief effort, it was the first unmistakable proof that Britain could lose this war, and worse, lose it early, awkwardly, and without heroism. And when a nation built on maritime confidence suddenly doubts its navy, panic follows very quickly. That panic needed an outlet. Enter John Bing. Bing was not chosen because he was uniquely incompetent, nor because he was uniquely cowardly. He was chosen because he was perfectly average, perfectly cautious, and perfectly exposed. He represented exactly the kind of officer the Royal Navy had spent decades cultivating, disciplined, obedient, and deeply aware that initiative without orders could end a career. Bing sailed late because he was sent late. He fought cautiously because caution had been rewarded for years. He declined reckless pursuit because recklessness had previously led to court martial, not medals. And therein lay the problem. The public did not want to hear about structural failure, delayed orders, divided authority, or the fine print of admiralty instructions. They wanted a story with a villain, preferably one wearing a uniform. The Articles of War, recently amended, made this brutally easy. The Clause requiring an officer to do his utmost to engage the enemy carried a mandatory death sentence if the court found failure, with no allowance for context. Once Bing was convicted, the judges themselves petitioned for mercy, openly admitting the punishment was disproportionate. The law did not care. And neither ultimately did the government. Executing Bing accomplished several things at once. It reassured the public that failure would be punished. It redirected anger away from ministers and toward a single individual, and most importantly, it preserved the comforting illusion that Britain's system worked, that the problem had been a man, not a method. Bing's death was not meant to deter cowardice, it was meant to end the conversation. Voltaire's famous line in this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others. It is often quoted for its wit. But its cruelty is the point. Britain killed Bing not to improve performance, but to restore confidence without reform. And in doing so, it sent a chilling message to every officer who remained. Obey orders, avoid initiative, survive politically, even if the battle is lost. Bing had to die because Britain was not yet ready to admit the truth, that Monarco was not a failure of courage, but a failure of leadership, structure, and purpose. Killing him was easier than fixing any of that. If John Bing was the sacrifice, then the altar was the government of Thomas Pelham Holmes, the Duke of Newcastle, a ministry superbly designed for surviving politics and disastrously unsuited for surviving war. Newcastle's government was not incompetent in the blunt sense. It functioned exactly as intended. Its purpose was coalition management, balancing factions, distributing patronage, avoiding parliamentary collapse, and ensuring that no single issue, especially an expensive, divisive one like war, threatened its grip on power. In peacetime, this was a strength. In wartime, it was fatal. War demands decisions. Newcastle's ministry specialized in postponing them. Minorca illustrates this perfectly. The island was strategically important, but not important enough to risk political capital early. Reinforcing it would have required money, ships, and most dangerously, agreement. So that the decision drifted. Warnings for the Mediterranean were acknowledged, filed, and deferred. Orders were issued late, phrased cautiously, and hedged so thoroughly that no one could later be accused of having made the wrong call. By the time action was unavoidable, it was already insufficient. The Admiralty reflected the same pathology. Responsibility was fragmented, instructions were written to protect careers rather than to compel success. Commanders were told to act, but not too boldly, to engage, but without risking the fleet, to succeed, but never at the cost of embarrassment. The result was a structure in which everyone had authority, but no one had accountability. When Minorca fell, the system did what it had been trained to do. It protected itself. Newcastle did not rush to defend Bing, not because he was indefensible, but because defending him would have meant defending the decisions that placed him in an impossible position. To save the admiral would have been to indict the cabinet. To spare the officer would have exposed the ministry. So the logic was simple. If the fleet had failed, the admiral had failed. If the admiral had failed, the government did not. Bing's court martial thus became a kind of political firewall. The more severe the punishment, the safer the system behind it. Its execution allowed Newcastle's ministry to signal resolve without reform, strength without strategy, and justice without introspection. And yet, the damage was done. Minorca shattered the illusion that Britain could stumble into victory through inertia alone. The government survived the crisis, but only barely, and at the cost of credibility. It became painfully clear that this was a ministry built to manage decline gracefully, not to wage a global war aggressively. The tragedy of Newcastle's government is not that it failed suddenly, but that it failed predictably. It was a peacetime machine asked to fight a wartime struggle, and when it broke, it blamed the man closest to the blast. The system endured. Confidence did not. And into that widening gap between survival and success steps the figure who understands that Britain cannot afford to fight this war cautiously any longer. While the Newcastle government scrambled to contain the political fallout of Minorca, one figure was doing something far more dangerous, explaining it. That figure was William Pitt the Elder. At this point in the war, Pitt is not yet fully in command of Britain's strategy. He does not control the Admiralty, he does not direct armies, he does not appoint generals. What he does control is the argument, and in an age of pamphlets, parliamentary speeches, and an increasingly engaged public, that matters more than it sounds. Pitt looks at Minorca and refuses to treat it as an isolated embarrassment. Where Newcastle sees misfortune, Pitt sees inevitability. He understands that Britain is now fighting a global war, whether it admits it or not, one that stretches across the Mediterranean to North America, from India to the Caribbean. A war of half measures will not merely be lost, it will unravel Britain's position in the world entirely. This is the crucial difference. Newcastle's instinct is preservation. Keep the coalition together, avoid panic, minimize scandal. Pitt's instinct is transformation. He believes Britain must stop fighting wars defensively, reacting to crises, apologizing for failures, and sacrificing subordinates by time. Instead, Britain must seize the initiative everywhere it can afford to do so and then afford more. Minorca becomes Pitt's rhetorical weapon, not because he defends Bing as a flawless officer, Pitt is far too shrewd for that, but because he frames Bing's fate as a symptom of systemic cowardice at the top. A nation that punishes caution while rewarding indecision. Pitt argues is a nation that has misunderstood both courage and responsibility. In Parliament, Pitt speaks not as a manager but as a prophet. He invokes Britain's maritime destiny. He talks about empire, not as inheritance, but as obligation. He demands a war effort that is bold, coordinated, and unashamedly expensive. Where others warn of debt, Pitt warns of irrelevance. And crucially, Pitt will begin to sound like a man who expects to be proven right. Minorca accelerates his rise not because it makes him powerful, but because it makes him necessary. The old leadership has demonstrated what it cannot do. The war is expanding. The public is angry. Confidence in incrementalism is evaporating. Someone must offer a different vision, one that promises victory rather than damage control. Pitt does not yet hold the reins, but the direction is set. Soon, Britain will have to choose, continue executing admirals and managing decline, or reorganize itself for conquest on a scale that has never been attempted before. When the chance arrives, Pitt will be ready, not merely to argue, but to act. All that remains is for events to make his leadership unavoidable, and Minorca has already begun that process. Minorca is not remembered for a great battle because there wasn't one. It is remembered because it forced Britain to confront the difference between how it believed war worked and how war actually worked in the mid eighteenth century. And the gap between those two things was far larger and more dangerous than anyone in London had been willing to admit. The first lesson was brutally simple. Procedure is not strategy. The Royal Navy had become a machine optimized for order, not victory. Captains were trained to preserve formation, follow signals precisely, and avoid unilateral action that might expose them to later prosecution. In theory, this produced discipline. In practice, it produced paralysis. At Minorca, captains hesitated to press an advantage, refused to break formation even to avoid collision, and waited for perfect clarity in a situation that demanded improvisation. The system punished error so harshly that it eliminated initiative entirely. The second lesson was even more uncomfortable. A government that fears responsibility will create disasters and then demand sacrifices. Minorca was not lost by a single man at sea. It was lost by late decisions, ambiguous orders, underpowered commitments, and a cabinet more concerned with political survival than strategic clarity. By executing an admiral, Britain avoided confronting the reality. But avoidance has a cost. The message sent to future commanders was chillingly clear. Obedience will protect you politically, even if it fails militarily. Boldness, on the other hand, is acceptable only when success is guaranteed, which is to say, never. The third lesson cut at Britain's self image. Naval supremacy is not automatic. For generations, Britain had relied on the assumption that its navy, by tradition and inertia alone, would be enough. Minorca shattered that complacency. The French fleet was well handled, cautious, and strategically effective. It achieved its objective without needing a dramatic victory. The British, by contrast, discovered that superiority on paper meant little without decisiveness, coordination, and a willingness to take calculated risks. And finally, Monarca taught Britain the most important lesson of all. The battle exposed a system that could manage peace but could not manage war. It revealed the limits of compromise government in a moment that demanded commitment, and it created the conditions for transformation, because once the cost of doing nothing becomes too high, change becomes inevitable. Minorca does not end the war, it does something far more consequential. It ends an era. The Britain that drifts into the Seven Years War, cautious, divided, procedurally obsessed, cannot survive what lies ahead. A different Britain must emerge, more centralized, more aggressive, and more willing to risk everything on the assumption that empire is not something to be preserved carefully, but something to be fought for relentlessly. That transformation will not happen overnight. It will be messy, controversial, and staggeringly expensive. But it will happen, because Minorca had made the alternative impossible. The war has now taught Britain its first real lesson. Next time, the price of ignoring it will only rise. As Britain argued with itself over blame and punishment, the war did what wars always do when politicians pause to reflect. It moved on without them. Across the Atlantic, in the vast interior of North America, the consequences of hesitation were already becoming brutally clear. The British frontier was thin, overextended, and poorly coordinated, its forts scattered like isolated chess pieces with no one quite sure which move mattered most. And advancing toward them was a commander who understood exactly how to exploit that weakness. Louis Joseph de Montcalm. This is where I must admit my bias. I am an enormous fan of Montcalm. Energetic, aggressive, clear eyed about strategy, and refreshingly uninterested in excuses. Montcalm represents everything the British system at Binorca was not. While London debated who should be shot to restore confidence, Montcalm gathered men, allies, artillery, and intent. And his first great move would be aimed at Fort Oswego, a position whose fall would not merely cost Britain a fort, but shatter its control of the interior and announce, unmistakably, that the Seven Years War had found its tempo. Next time, Oswego falls, Montcalm arrives in full, and the war in North America turns decisively and violently against the British. And that's where we'll leave it for today. If you're enjoying the show, the single most helpful thing you can do is to leave a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you happen to be listening. These reviews matter more than they should, help the show reach new listeners, and reassure the algorithmic powers that long form historical narratives about eighteenth century disasters still have a future and that history still matters. You can also tell someone else about it. Send the episode to a friend, post it in a group chat, or casually corner a coworker and explain why an 18th century admiral was executed for following orders too well. Also, hopefully soon, you'll be able to find some maps and supplemental material in the show notes, since it might be helpful for some folks to know where all the things I'm talking about are happening. I will also work to get this whole thing locked down on a somewhat consistent schedule, dropping a new episode every two weeks or so. And thank you, genuinely and truly, for listening. Because without you all, this is just me talking to myself about obscure mid-century incompetence. So, make sure to join us next time as the war shifts continents again. Oswego falls, Montcalm takes the stage, and the Seven Years War stops being something Britain thinks it's fighting and becomes something it very much is. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.