THE QUEBEC ACT 709 civil cases that involved trial without jury, and not to force upon them the democratic system which obtained in New England. Religious liberty beyond the mere toleration which had been promised in the Capitulation was granted. Great indignation was caused by these measures among the Whigs at home and the Puritans of New England. Congress protested (September 1774) that this Act, "establishing despotic Government and the Popish religion", must be repealed. In effect it gave greater liberty, better administration and ampler prosperity than the ultra-military form of government which it supplanted. The result was that, when the Americans invaded Canada in 1775, the Canadians remained loyal to Great Britain. They had no sympathy with New England republicanism, the New England creed, or the New England character. The invasion of Canada under Montgomery and Benedict Arnold ended in complete failure. Eager to wound, and yet afraid to strike, the French Government continued to supply the Americans with money and munitions, whilst Vergennes assured Lord Stormont of their peaceful intentions, as sincerely as Cardinal Fleury had been wont to make the same assurances to Lord Waldegrave, and Choiseul to Lord Shelburne. He added and possibly with truth-that he was far from wishing for the independence of the colonies, because that would end in their not permitting any European Power to occupy a foot of land in America. Franklin was soon able to announce that large supplies of guns and other military stores were being shipped under convoy of a French man-of-war. Means were also provided for supplying and refitting American cruisers in French ports. But the American commissioners were not content with such surreptitious aid. They urged the acknowledgment of the United States and the conclusion of treaties of commerce and alliance between the old Monarchy and the new Republic, offering in return to assist in the conquest of the British Sugar Islands. Nothing, it was felt, could save their cause at this critical juncture but foreign intervention. Foreign intervention, however, could not be vouchsafed until some striking military success had lessened the probability of the defeat or reconciliation of the colonies. In November Vergennes informed the commissioners that perhaps the King would lend Congress another million livres and try to persuade his brother of Spain to do the same. He might take off their hands the ship which they had ordered in Holland, but could not pay for or get safely to France. More than this they must not expect until the colonists had obtained some important victory. The attitude of Spain was even less encouraging. Lee was sent thither to raise the wind and to tempt the Spaniards into the war by offering to assist them in obtaining Pensacola, and also in their war with Portugal. This war was already causing embarrassment to Great Britain as the ally of Portugal, and was accordingly encouraged by 1 Franklin, B., Letter to Congress, 8 Dec. 1776. the French. It was occasioned by the ill-defined boundaries of the South American colonies about the Rio Grande de San Pedro; by Spanish delays in fulfilling the treaty of 1763, by which the status quo of the Portuguese colonies in America was to be restored; and by the vicinity of the settlements of the two nations on the Rio de la Plata. Aggressions by the government of Buenos Aires answered and provoked aggressions by the government of the Brazils. Open hostilities were begun by the Portuguese on the Rio Grande. Both parties appealed to their allies, Spain to France, Portugal to Great Britain. But while negotiations were proceeding through them, an expedition sailed from Cadiz, which first seized the island of Sta Catherina on the coast of Brazil (February 1777) and then St Gabriel and the colony of Sacramento. These operations, being followed by the fall of Pombal on the death of Joseph I, King of Portugal, enabled Florida Blanca to negotiate the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777).1 By it the limits of Peru, Paraguay and Brazil were fixed. Spain not only gained Sacramento and great advantages for the military and commercial development of Buenos Aires, but also secured the valuable friendship of Portugal in the coming war with Great Britain. The Spanish court, however, was not as yet prepared for such a war, nor had it the least sympathy with republican ideas. It saw no attraction in fighting to establish a homogeneous, independent Power which would constitute a threat to Spanish possessions beyond the Mississippi. Nor was it obvious why a country which retained so large a colonial empire and was the chief exponent of that system of commercial monopoly, which the triumph of the United States seemed likely to break down, should encourage colonists to revolt. Lee, therefore, met with a cool reception in Spain, though he was granted a sum of money for the purchase of military stores which were shipped from Bilbao.2 General Burgoyne's early successes had filled the American envoys with anxiety almost amounting to despair. But on 1 December 1777 came the news of the capture of his army at Saratoga. It was, said Deane, like a cordial to the dying. That resounding success at once removed all hesitation at Versailles. On 17 December the American commissioners were officially informed that the King was prepared to recognise the independence of the United States and to enter into a treaty of commerce with them. If such recognition should involve war with Great Britain, no compensation would be asked. Any reaction in favour of the British which might have been aroused by fear of France regaining Canada was thereby avoided. After seven weeks of negotiation a treaty of commerce was signed, 6 February 1778, and on the same day a treaty of alliance, the provisions of which were to come into force if, as was inevitable, Great 1 Coxe, II, 381-95; Martens, Recueil des traités, 1, 634; Silva, Historia de Portugal; Becatini, F., Storia del regno di Carlo III, p. 289; St Paul of Ewart, Correspondence, II, 330-97. 2 Franklin, Works, vIII, 209; Lecky, Hist. of Eng. in Eighteenth Century, IV, 5. FRANCO-AMERICAN TREATY, 1778 711 Britain should break the peace. The latter treaty provided that any of the remaining British territories on the continent of America, of which the Americans should gain possession, should be retained by them, whilst France should keep any of the British islands in or near the Gulf of Mexico which she might conquer.1 The treaties were kept secret for some weeks in the hope that Spain might join in them. But it was, indeed, wholly contrary to the wishes and counsels of Spain that France had committed herself and it was only in June of the following year that the naval and military position tempted her to declare war. Lord Stormont had kept ministers well informed of what was happening. On 28 December 1777 he had announced secret comings and goings between Franklin, Deane and M. Gérard. “I have not a shadow of doubt", he wrote, "that this Court and that of Madrid are combined against us and have long been preparing for the execution of some invidious design. I look upon the assistance they give the rebels as but a small part of their plan....Their naval force is already more than sufficient for every purpose of defence, and yet they are continually increasing it. Mr Necker's last arrêt expressly avows an intended augmentation....Where the first blow will be aimed I cannot say, but am inclined to think it will be in the West Indies." It was his view that French and Spanish support of the Americans was given in the hope of exhausting Great Britain and that they would be enabled to strike some sudden, unexpected blow at her colonial Empire. On the night of 6 February he wrote that the treaty "between this Court and the rebels was actually signed”, though the fact was stoutly denied by both Maurepas and Vergennes. On 13 March, however, negotiations with Spain having failed, the Marquis de Noailles announced to Lord Weymouth the signature of the treaties, acknowledging the full independence of the United States and, with scarcely veiled insolence, inviting His Britannic Majesty to prevent their commerce with France from being interrupted. Stormont was promptly recalled from Paris, and the war began. Steps were now taken in France to put into execution those plans for the invasion of England which, as we have seen, had been prepared on the morrow of the Peace of Paris. The retirement of the Comte d'Estaing from Rhode Island, and his campaigns in the West Indies, seemed to show that the eyes of France were naturally directed towards those sugar islands which, if captured, were to remain hers. It was probably no part of her plan to bring the war to a conclusion before some such conquests had been made. Estaing's indiscreet appeal to the Canadians not "to bear the arms of parricides against their mother-country" also heightened the suspicion of the Americans 1 Flassan, vII, 149, 167; Martens, II, 701; Loménie, Beaumarchais, 11, 158-60, 559-66. Mahon, Lord, Hist. Engl. vi, Appendix, p. xxi. 4 Annual Register, 1779, p. 355. 3 Duc de Broglie, The King's Secret, II, 518. that France was preparing to disregard the terms of the treaty, and to recoup herself for the cost of the war by the recovery of Canada. Lafayette, indeed, proposed to Congress a second invasion of Canada in concert with France, and only a very outspoken protest from Washington secured the abandonment of the project (14 November 1778). If once the French regained possession of Canada, he argued, they could easily stay there, holding it as security for their large loans to the United States. Then, in control of Canada and the Newfoundland fishery in the north, with the Indians as their allies in the rear and the Spaniards in the south, and with control of the sea and the West Indies in the west, France would be able to dictate not only to the United States, but to the whole world. Such was the outcome of French and Spanish rivalry with Great Britain which Washington now saw reason to dread. Vergennes, however, was looking at the situation from a very different point of view. He had no desire to see a single, all-embracing United State of America, and instructed Gérard, the French minister in America, to discourage any attempt upon Canada. He informed the French ambassador at Madrid that he was willing to guarantee to Britain her dominion over Canada and Nova Scotia. His view was that, if Spain could be maintained in possession of Florida, then the American States would be kept in a condition of uneasiness by the proximity of foreign neighbours to the north and south, and would therefore place a higher value upon the continued friendship of France. It was not, he believed, to the interest of the French to destroy this principe utile d'inquiétude by seizing Canada. As Stormont had foretold, then, and the action of Estaing proved, the immediate interest of the French lay in the West Indies, and in combining with Spain to destroy the naval supremacy of Great Britain. They were not to have it all their own way. Though Dominica was captured by the Marquis de Bouillé, Governor of Martinique, Admiral Montague destroyed the French settlements on Miquelon and St Pierre, and St Lucia was taken by a campaign as brilliant as it was fortunate. In India, as Clive had declared, the French had only suspended their views, not given them up.2 Surreptitious aid was lent to the enemies of Great Britain. There had been an attempt, as we have seen, to fortify Chandernagore in defiance of the treaty. In 1773 schemes were discussed in Council for the formation of a new East India Company, and for an attack upon the British in Bengal in conjunction with the Mogul, as proposed by the Commandant of Chandernagore, or by putting into execution Choiseul's plan of concentrating an expeditionary force on the Île de Bourbon and Mauri 1 Bancroft, G., Hist. U.S., trans. by Circourt (De l'action commune de la France et di l'Amérique), m, 259-312; Lecky, Hist. Eng. IV, 480 seqq. 2 Speech before Select Committee, 1772. BRITISH SUCCESSES OVERSEAS 713 tius.1 Ever since 1777 a French agent and adventurer, M. de St Lubin, had been at Poona intriguing with the Maratha principalities. He had a clandestine commission from the Minister of Marine to negotiate the establishment of a factory at Poona, supported by military force, and the acquisition of a seaport near Bombay. The welcome he received alarmed the British. Warren Hastings, realising the danger of a combined attack from the Marathas and the French, determined to strike the first blow. He despatched a force under Colonel Leslie to march across India to the aid of a Pretender to the Peishwa-ship who was favoured by some of the Maratha nation. At this juncture (July) news arrived that war had been proclaimed in London and Paris. Hastings acted without a moment's delay. Chandernagore and the French factories at Masulipatam and Karikal were seized. With the aid of a naval squadron, siege was laid to Pondicherry, which surrendered after seventy days (17 October 1778). Fort Mahé, on the coast of Malabar, fell in the following March, and the French flag was swept out of India.2 On the high seas, when all the force of the increased French navy was added to the number of American privateers, heavy losses were expected in the mercantile marine. Evidence given in the House of Lords in February 1778 showed that 173 sail of American privateers had taken or destroyed 559 British ships by that date. Yet even now enterprise and good seamanship continued to bring safely into port large fleets of merchantmen from the Leeward Islands, Jamaica and the East Indies. If the rate of insurance against capture rose higher and higher, British privateers were no less successful on both sides of the Atlantic. By the end of 1778, it has been stated, the Americans had lost no less than 900 vessels. And even as the day drew near when Great Britain was to be compelled to acknowledge that she had lost the thirteen colonies in America, daring navigators were discovering a new world for the expansion of the British race. At the beginning of 1779, a French squadron captured the British forts and factories on the River Gambia and at Senegal. The British retaliated by seizing Goree, which the French had denuded of troops and guns in order to strengthen Senegal. But in Europe the outlook for Great Britain was becoming increasingly black. The entry of Spain into the war had been foreseen, but when it actually came it took the Cabinet by surprise, for they had been lulled into a false sense of security by Spanish diplomacy.5 In Florida Blanca Charles III had chosen a successor to Grimaldi whose conciliatory manner cloaked a character of great energy and determination. Unceasingly he 1 St Paul of Ewart, Correspondence, 1, 55, 129 seqq., 287–99. 2 Forrest, Sir G. W., Administration of Warren Hastings, pp. 146-7; Selections from Bombay State Papers, pp. 291, 296. Hildreth, R., Hist. U.S. 1, 241; New York Col. Docs.; Corr. of Geo. III (ed. Fortescue), II, 275. 5 Correspondence of George III with Lord North, п, 209, 243. 4 Vide supra, chapter xvIII. |