time had come to part. The tract sold by tens of thousands, and had a profound influence upon popular feeling.1 When the question of independence was first debated in Congress, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York and South Carolina refused to vote in its favour. But on 2 July twelve colonies, New York still abstaining, decided that they "were absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown". On 4 July the Declaration of Independence, drawn up by Thomas Jefferson and revised by Franklin and John Adams, was voted, and presently signed and accepted by all. Premising that "all men are created equal", and attacking with great bitterness "the repeated injuries and usurpations" not of Parliament, the enlargement of whose control had hitherto been denounced, but of "the present King", to whom so much devotion had been expressed, it declared that "these united Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States". "The American Colonies", exclaimed Lord Camden, "are gone for ever!" Gone, indeed, they were; but in their going taught a lesson of profound importance to the Empire they quitted, whilst they themselves, out of the old British ideas of liberty, law, and constitutional government, developed a new and epoch-making form of political life. 1 Washington, Works, m, 276. CHAPTER XXIII INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE BUTE had made peace in a hurry. The history of the next twenty years is in many ways a justification of Pitt's denunciation of it. Spain, retaining all her South American possessions and receiving from France New Orleans and all that remained to her of Louisiana, in compensation for the cession of Florida, was now possessed of the greatest colonial Empire that had ever fallen to the lot of a modern nation. She held three-quarters of the habitable parts of North and South America. The richest and greatest of the West Indian islands were hers. Her Empire stretched from frozen North to frozen South through 110 degrees of latitude, and it contained the richest mines in the world. But this great estate was in hands powerless to use it. Even the gift of half a continent by France was looked upon askance, since it brought Spain into direct contact with the British traders.1 Louisiana, thus grudgingly accepted, was never strongly held. A Spanish governor was sent there in 1766, but it needed an army from Havana to induce the French colonists to accept him (1769). Many of the rich proprietors withdrew to British territory; the prosperity of the country dwindled, and Spain, it was said, had only added another desert to her Empire.2 Amongst her gains in the West Indies, Great Britain had acquired in Tobago an island which was strategically of importance, not only to Barbados, but also as a base from which a squadron co-operating with another off Porto Rico could command all vessels bound for the West Indies. But there had been restored to France, in Martinique and Guadeloupe, two bases from which she could, as hitherto, organise hostile raids, send out privateers, and prosecute contraband trade with the British West Indian islands. The sum of the matter is, that not only were many valuable conquests sacrificed without adequate return, but France was left with starting points in every quarter of the globe-Goree, the West Indies, India, and Newfoundland-from which she might begin to recover her naval, commercial and colonial Empire, so soon as her strength was equal to her determination. The House of Bourbon, then, had not been crushed as Chatham would have crushed it. It was firmly seated on the thrones of France and Spain, united by the Family Compact, and guided for the most 1 Chadwick, F. E., Admiral, Relations of the U.S. with Spain, p. 15. 2 Fantin, O., Hist. France, vi, 377; D'Aubigny, E., Choiseul et la France d'outre-mer. 3 Rodney to Grenville (written before the Peace), Grenville Papers, 11, 18, 25, 26. part by men whose ruling passion was hatred of Great Britain, desire for revenge, and longing to regain what had been lost in the colonies and at sea. In France the long views, the ambitious imperialism and the unscrupulous intrigues of the Duc de Choiseul were counterbalanced by the sluggish nature of Louis XV, and the exhaustion, military and financial, of his kingdom. For war, as one Minister of Finance after another was at pains to explain, must mean bankruptcy. Having made that explanation, one Minister of Finance after another was dismissed. In Spain, the Marquis de Grimaldi was little more than the shadow of Choiseul's sun, and, as is the way of shadows, grew smaller as the sun reached its zenith. His policy is described by acute English observers as absolutely French. But the Spanish monarch was inspired by keener emotions than Louis. Hatred of Great Britain was with Charles III almost an obsession. To personal pique was added jealousy of British naval supremacy, desire to regain Gibraltar and Minorca, and dread of British competition in the South Seas. For apart from the maintenance of the dignity of the Crown, the preservation of the territorial integrity of Spain "Ultramar" and of the commercial exclusiveness of her colonial Empire was the guiding principle of his policy. Moreover, apart from revenge, there was one abiding factor which compelled persistence in the commercial and colonial rivalry of France and Spain with Great Britain, and which Chatham's policy would only have rendered more important. For by all three Governments alike commerce was at once fostered and confined by means of prohibitory systems which limited trade with the colonies to the mother countries. Their object was to secure a favourable balance of trade; a monopoly of the colonial markets for the home manufactures and of the raw materials produced by the colonies; and to stimulate the building up of great mercantile marines and of fisheries as nurseries of seamen for protecting navies. The tighter the system and the greater the preponderance of one country, the fiercer became the necessity for others to recapture their lost colonies. The scene, then, was set for a drama of revanche. After many alarums and excursions, the dénouement was destined to be brought about by the very means which many French observers, from Montesquieu to Choiseul and Vergennes, from Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham to Turgot in his study, had predicted and hoped, namely, the revolt of the American colonies. Whatever may have been the political and economical wisdom or unwisdom of Pitt's ideal of destroying France as a maritime, commercial and colonial rival, loyal fulfilment of the conditions of the peace was no part of French policy. Pitt rightly held that those 1 Harris, James, Diaries, 1770; Lord Rochford to Lord Halifax, 1764, cf. Coxe, W., Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain, vol. ш. POLICY OF CHOISEUL 687 conditions were not severe enough to prevent France from entering at once upon the task of upsetting them. As early as April 1763, Louis XV sanctioned the scheme of the Comte de Broglie, who, acting as the minister of his secret diplomacy, commissioned the preparation of plans for the invasion of England. This was to be the first blow struck at the commencement of a new war, instead of wasting strength, as hitherto, upon distant expeditions. "Officers", says the Duc de Broglie, "were sent to England who reconnoitred the possibilities of invasion, the points of disembarkation, the means of obtaining supplies, and the roads, camping grounds, etc., as far as London. On the French side of the Channel, all means of executing the project were exactly calculated." The two chief agents chosen for this purpose were a young officer of Engineers, the Marquis de la Rozière, and the Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont, first secretary of the French Embassy at London, whose subsequent career is one of the minor curiosities of history.2 All this was done without the privity of Louis' ministers. But it was quite in keeping with Choiseul's policy. That policy throughout this period remained the same. It was to secure France on land by alliances on the continent, whilst making France and Spain strong and prosperous enough to wage a successful war abroad against Great Britain and Portugal. Choiseul's hopes were perpetually cheated. As the crises arose which demanded the action he had prepared for, he was forced to hesitate and hang back, realising that neither France nor Spain was capable of carrying on war successfully. When the moment came to act, therefore, his policy involved him in endless obscurities and contradictions. The peace preliminaries were no sooner signed than Choiseul applied himself to reforming the army. He rendered it capable of being rapidly increased and promptly used. As Minister of Marine (1761-6), he organised the reconstruction of the fleet. Empty dockyards were stirred to life; money flowed where before there was not a sou of credit. He found a force of forty-four ships of the line and ten frigates. He left, at the time of his fall, sixty-four ships of the line and fifty frigates, or grosses corvettes, ready for sea. These and the rehabilitation of French finances, a task in which he was less successful, were necessary preliminary steps towards the accomplishment of his great scheme. His ambition was, briefly, to establish French supremacy in the "two Mediterraneans"—that of Europe and that of the Gulf of Mexico. 3 Before the first year of the peace was out, Lord Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty, was aware that the activity in French naval dockyards was great and alarming. In Toulon alone, twenty-six ships were reported to be more ready for sea than the twenty "intended" guard1 Boutaric, E., Correspondance inédite de Louis XV, 1, 291; Duc de Broglie, The King's Secret, u, 81 seqq. Gaillardet, F., Mémoire sur le Chevalier d'Éon; d'Éon, Mémoires et négociations. 3 Chevalier, Édouard, La marine française, p. 63. ships in all the English ports. A sudden and decisive blow by twenty sail of the line was feared, aimed at the ports and docks of England or Ireland. Secret intelligence revealed that "one of the principal Ministers of France" had stated that the French marine would certainly be re-established by the ensuing year, and that, the moment this was accomplished, France was resolved to wipe off the stains of defeat. Newfoundland was to furnish the pretext for the intended rupture. The point at issue there was whether the English had retained a right to share in the cod fishery about St Pierre and Miquelon, and it was the source of prolonged controversy (1764-83). In the meantime, the development of the Sugar Islands ceded by France was to be encouraged, rather than opposed, "because France was resolved to re-possess them very soon".1 In the colonial sphere Choiseul endeavoured to develop France's possessions overseas by substituting colonisation by bureau for colonisation by companies. The Compagnie des Indes, which was practically bankrupt, was suppressed, and the settlements made under its aegis were transferred to the immediate administration of the Crown. One company alone, the Compagnie de Barbarie, which enjoyed the monopoly of trade on the north coast of Africa, was allowed to retain its privileges. Elsewhere the State now assumed the task of provisioning the colonies and supplying them with negroes and settlers. With Choiseul colonisation was not so much an end in itself as a step towards that war of revenge against Great Britain for which he was always preparing. To this end he never ceased to urge Spain to "increase her naval and colonial power". And at San Ildefonso, he boasted, his influence was more powerful than at Versailles. One result of his advice was an attempt to reform the financial administration of the Spanish colonies, beginning with Mexico. The attempt was answered by insurrections at Los Angeles, Cuba and Quito. Plans, too, were drawn up by the Spaniards for the naval and military defence of their colonies. Choiseul insisted that improvement of the Navy was more vital than the preparation of plans. With this object, French engineers were introduced into the Spanish dockyards. 3 During the Seven Years' War Choiseul had conducted an enquiry into the Spanish West Indian trade through the agency of the Abbé Béliardi. After the Peace of Paris he turned these investigations to account with a view to promoting the prosperity of French and Spanish colonial trade. A convention was signed in January 1768. But Choiseul was not given time to complete his scheme of a farreaching commercial union between the two countries directed 1 Egmont to Grenville, 3 Dec. 1763, Grenville Papers, п, 172. * Béliardi, Abbé, Correspondance, Bibliothèque Nationale. |