endeavoured to engage the King of Prussia and Catharine of Russia in co-operation against Great Britain. In conjunction with France he continued negotiations with Hyder Ali against the British power in the East. The alliance of the Emperor of Morocco was secured as a valuable aid in the projected attempt to recover Gibraltar. New war taxes were laid, and the alliance with Portugal was used in preparing for the event.1

In the meantime Charles made an offer of mediation to the British Government. The reply was inevitable that it was inconsistent with national honour to solicit the interference of a foreign Power till the views of France were known. Charles then proposed that each Government should transmit its conditions to Madrid, and offered to deduce therefrom a definite proposal for peace. Great Britain replied that, whilst reserving her right to treat with her own colonies without foreign intervention, she would concur in establishing harmony between the two Crowns whenever France would withdraw her assistance from the Americans. On the other hand, the French Crown explained that it could not desist from its engagements. It is evident from the tone and substance of these proposals that their acceptance was impossible and could not have been expected. They were merely intended to gain time, and to put the British off their guard whilst keeping the French satisfied. They served their purpose. By the spring of 1779 France had seventy-eight ships of the line, Spain over forty. The situation seemed to justify the Spanish court in entering the war. Inspired by the motives outlined in the beginning of this chapter, and spurred more than ever by jealousy of Britain's empire of the seas, and irritation at her exercise of the right of search and contraband trade on the Spanish Main, Charles now threw off the mask of mediator. A convention was signed with France in which each party declared the advantages it wished to secure. No peace was to be concluded till Gibraltar was restored to Spain (April 1779). On 3 April Charles issued an ultimatum calling for a general disarmament and a Peace Congress to be held at Madrid. A truce was to be granted to the American colonies through the mediation of His Catholic Majesty, and not to be broken without a year's notice. In the meantime they were to be treated as independent, and commissioners from America and Great Britain were to meet at Madrid. "Such a plan of peace", as British ministers observed, "seemed to proceed on every principle which had been disclaimed, and to contain every term which had been rejected." But before their final refusal reached Madrid, Charles had recalled his ambassador, and written a long and violent letter to Lord Weymouth, charging the British Government with having prolonged negotiations for eight months

1 Florida Blanca, Review and Apology of his Administration to Charles III, 1788, quoted by Coxe, Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain, III, 394, 409. 3 Lecky, v, 6.

2 Lavisse, E., Hist. de France, IX, 63-5.

WAR WITH SPAIN AND HOLLAND

715 whilst continuing to search and plunder Spanish vessels and violate Spanish territory in Honduras Bay (16 June 1779).1 This Spanish rescript and a similar manifesto of wrongs published by Beaumarchais in Paris were answered by Gibbon in his Justifying Memorial, after ministers had replied in Parliament. But the arbitrament had passed from the pen to the sword.

Before the home fleet could get ready for sea, the French slipped out of Brest and, joining the Spanish fleet, appeared in overwhelming force off Plymouth. Siege was at once laid to Gibraltar by land and sea. Spaniards from Louisiana crossed the Mississippi, and took possession of West Florida. The English logwood-cutters in the Bay of Honduras were once more attacked and expelled. But a British force despatched by the Governor of Jamaica took ample revenge by capturing the Fort of Omoa and rich booty in Spanish ships which had sought refuge there. A raid on Jersey by the French was frustrated, but had a serious effect upon the American war, in that it delayed the sailing of an important convoy of stores and reinforcements for New York. In India Hyder Ali was desolating the Carnatic and menacing Madras. In the West Indies Estaing captured St Vincent and Grenada (June and July), but was defeated in an attack upon Savannah in the autumn. So far the part taken by France and Spain in the southern campaign in America had proved ineffective, and had failed to prevent General Clinton from re-establishing British supremacy in the southern colonies.

The following year saw Rodney's victory off Cape St Vincent and the relief of Gibraltar, but also the addition of Holland to the long list of Great Britain's enemies. France had for some time been putting pressure upon the Dutch to enter the war,3 whilst Florida Blanca dangled before them the bait of succeeding to the commercial privileges hitherto enjoyed by the British in Spain.4 Dutch merchants also began to look forward to a share in the future commerce of America. The country was divided between two parties. That of the stadholder favoured the British, but was opposed by a French faction which was particularly strong at Amsterdam. In spite of the three treaties which bound Holland to alliance with Great Britain, Dutch merchants were carrying on an immense trade with her enemies. Holland supplied France largely with naval stores, whilst the Dutch island of St Eustatius was the centre of an enormous traffic in military and other stores for the American colonies. American privateers found shelter in the Dutch West Indian islands, and when the British Government demanded the surrender of Paul Jones as a pirate and a rebel, the States-General refused. The depredations of American privateers on British commerce had proved more harmful than the

1 Adolphus, J., Hist. of George III, 11, 162-72; Mahon, vi, 255 seqq. Stedman, C., Hist. of origin, progress, etc. of the American War, 11, 266–71; Lecky, v, 19. 3 Am. Dipl. Corr. II, 335. 4 Coxe, III, 409.

French and Spanish fleets. Jones was the most famous of these privateers. A Scottish slave trader who had settled in Virginia, he took command of a letter of marque, and was bold enough to harry the English coast, sailing into the Firth of Forth and raiding Whitehaven.1 Then he had attacked the Baltic convoy and carried some prizes into Holland. On the other hand, the Dutch were aggrieved by the high-handed way in which the British exercised the right of search. Their anger rose when their merchantmen were searched and seized under the guns of convoying men-of-war. The breaking point, however, was not reached till papers captured in a vessel in which was Henry Laurens, late President of the American Congress, provided evidence that Amsterdam had been negotiating a treaty with the Americans ever since August 1778.2 On 10 December 1780 Holland joined the Armed Neutrality, the League of the Baltic kingdoms founded by Catharine of Russia to enforce the new doctrine that neutral bottoms made neutral goods. On 20 December Great Britain declared war. The whole maritime power of Europe was now arrayed against her, whilst she was endeavouring, without an ally, to subdue a continent on the opposite side of the Atlantic.

1 Shelburne, J. H., Lije of Paul Jones.

2 Parl. Hist. xx1; Am. Dipl. Corr. II, 335 seqq.; Annual Register, 1780, 1781; Renaut, F. P., Les Provinces Unies et la Guerre d'Amérique, chaps. vii-xv.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE WAR OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION,

1775-1782

It was no simple strategical situation which confronted King

George's ministers when at last the opposition in the North American Colonies developed into armed rebellion. The mother country's superiority in population and resources was virtually neutralised by the geographical conditions. To maintain an army in so distant and difficult a theatre of war was well calculated to tax the most efficient administration, let alone the cumbrous, complicated, haphazard machinery by which the British Army of 1775 was controlled.1 The country was vast in extent, thinly populated, cultivated only in patches, ill-supplied with roads and in large degree forest-clad. Far from being able to "live on the country", the British forces were largely dependent on home for provisions2 as well as for military stores and equipment. At every turn the British generals were hampered by administrative difficulties, arising from the delays and uncertainties then inevitably attending upon the transport of reinforcements and supplies across 3000 miles of stormy seas, while the consequent obstacles to framing and pursuing a sound strategy were considerably increased by the rudimentary political and economic development of the thirteen colonies. If it made them weak for offensive purposes their very want of political union made them hard to hit effectively. Military objectives would have been easier to find and victories in the field more effective against a more centralised and highly organised community. To conquer Canada it had sufficed for Wolfe to defeat Montcalm's regulars on the Plains of Abraham and for Amherst's converging columns to corner Montcalm's successor at Montreal, but Washington's defeats at Brooklyn and the Brandywine mattered little to communities of hardy and self-reliant farmers and fishermen economically independent of each other, on whose stubborn wills the small forces of King George found any lasting impression exceedingly hard to produce.

For the difficult task before it the British army had no advantage in point of numbers, except in the campaign of 1776, or in equipment and arms, or in superior mobility, except so far as the Navy could enable it to move freely along the coast and in tidal waters. Its establishment was low, there was no provision for rapid expansion,

1 Fortescue, J. W., History of the British Army, vol. m; Curtis, Organization of the British Army in the American Revolution, esp. chap. ii.

2 Curtis, p. 81.

it had to rely on improvised transport, and its weapons differed but little from those of its adversaries, who if they sometimes lacked bayonets could equally often oppose "Brown Bess" with a rifled flint-lock. If it included many who had seen active service in the Seven Years' War, the Americans enjoyed this advantage also; and of higher organisation or settled military policy there was no trace. It was "an army of regiments" only, though many of its regiments were well trained and disciplined, and in their discipline, their traditions and their spirit the British army possessed invaluable assets, as the record of the pitched battles of the war was to show. Still the odds against it were heavy, and not the least charge against North and his fellow-ministers is that, while they were not prepared to avoid the otherwise inevitable contest by conceding the colonists' demands, they failed altogether to make adequate preparation for war either by land or sea. Even in September 1774 Gage had at Boston only four battalions, barely 2000 men, not nearly enough to enforce the coercive Acts directed against Massachusetts or to maintain the royal authority which was openly defied that autumn by the seizure at Newport of the cannon mounted to protect the harbour and by the authorisation by Congress of the collection and manufacture of arms.1 Gage had warned Dartmouth plainly that to make New England submit would require 20,000 men, but the Government's measures for asserting its challenged authority fell far short of the requirements, and though during the winter his force was raised to nearly 6000, it lacked transport and camp equipment.2

3

Hostilities actually began when, on 17 April 1775, 800 men whom Gage had despatched to destroy stores which the Provincial Congress had collected at Concord, twenty miles away, encountered armed resistance at Lexington. Overcoming this, the detachment pushed on to Concord, discharged its errand despite further opposition, and then started its return journey to find the whole countryside up in arms. Harassed by superior numbers of sharp-shooters the party only escaped annihilation because Gage had sent four battalions to Lexington to assist it; these, though suffering severely themselves, extricated the survivors of the first detachment. Nearly 300 officers and men were casualties, and the Americans, elated by their first encounter with British regulars, flocked to arms so eagerly that Gage soon found himself beleaguered in Boston by 20,000 men. Moreover, a party of New Englanders under Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had surprised the weakly-held posts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, thereby securing control of Lake Champlain and the direct route to Canada, while from the other colonies the royal governors were driven out headlong, Lord Dunmore in Virginia, where a few regulars were available, alone offering any resistance. Canada, however, though 2 Ibid. m, 216.

1 Correspondence of George III (ed. Fortescue), m, 158–61. 3 Mackenzie, F., A British Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston.

1