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THE RELIEF OF GIBRALTAR

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without any further activities. Rodney's victory, if not complete, had prevented further British losses in the West Indies.

Meanwhile the allies had suffered another rebuff which went far to secure Great Britain a satisfactory peace. Gibraltar, though harder pressed than before, was still defying its assailants who were preparing a special effort. But North's fall (February 1782) and the formation of Rockingham's Whig ministry had brought Lord Howe back to command, which led to far more skilful handling of the fleets in home waters. The Brest fleet's activities were curbed by a squadron under Kempenfelt: an important French convoy for the East Indies was intercepted and two battleships and many transports taken, and when in July the French and Spaniards from Cadiz reached the mouth of the Channel, Howe prevented the Dutch from joining them by a formidable demonstration off their ports. Then, sailing westward to meet the other allies, though too weak to venture an action, he held them skilfully in play, covering the arrival of a valuable convoy from Jamaica and paralysing their designs till in August they bore up for Cadiz to cover the grand attack on Gibraltar.

This was delivered on 8 September 1782. For five days the Rock was violently bombarded, but the great floating batteries on which the Spaniards had pinned their faith were not proof against Elliot's red-hot shot and finally the completely baffled assailants had to convert the attack into a blockade. Directly the allies had left the Channel, Howe had received orders to proceed to Elliot's relief and on II September he sailed with thirty-four of the line and a vast convoy. His achievement in carrying his convoy into Gibraltar (19 October), despite Cordova's fifty sail which tried to bar his passage, and despite difficulties of navigation and the handicap of the convoy, was a masterpiece of seamanship and tactics. Having outwitted his enemies and accomplished the relief, he could not resist heaving-to off Cape Spartel, when clear of the narrow waters of the Straits, to offer them a fight (20 October). So roughly was their somewhat half-hearted attack received that they soon broke off the action, leaving Howe to return quietly to the Channel.1

The relief of Gibraltar, with which the main struggle virtually ended, is perhaps Howe's finest achievement and went far to restore public confidence and to show that mere numbers could not command success when inefficiently handled by officers imbued with false doctrines of strategy and tactics. It suggests too that, with a more efficient administration and a better use of the forces at the Admiralty's disposal, even the assistance of France and Spain might not have secured independence for the thirteen colonies.

That their assistance decided the struggle is a platitude. The decisive element was not Washington's generalship. If his statesmanship, his tenacity and his power of keeping his forces together merit unqualified praise, his record in the field, apart from Trenton, is not 1 Hist. MSS Comm., Le Fleming MSS, p. 360.

impressive. Decisive victories are not won by a merely defensive strategy, such as he followed after failing to destroy Clinton in July 1778, while the final success at Yorktown was mainly due to the French troops whose presence in America had restrained Clinton from attempting "solid" operations in the north during Washington's difficulties of 1780 and 1781. It was not even Germain's futile and credulous optimism, interference in details and undue dispersion of inadequate forces for whom he was always multiplying tasks, nor General Howe's lethargy and repeated failures to convert success into victory. Clinton's policy of waiting to let the rebellion collapse has been severely criticised, but if unenterprising it nearly succeeded, and his forces were never proportionate to their tasks: his weakness lay less in his head than in his heart, in his character, not in his strategy. Cornwallis must bear much of the responsibility for Yorktown, but he would have put himself within Washington's reach with impunity had not de Grasse's arrival deprived the British of that freedom of movement by sea which, as Clinton was always emphasising, superiority in naval force could alone guarantee. The correspondence of Grant and other generals in the West Indies shows how the only sound plan of operations in that theatre collapsed with the loss of the naval supremacy on which they had been taught to count. Failures and blunders in the British conduct of the war by land there certainly were, but the crucial failure lay in the Navy's inability to retain its challenged control of the seas. The Navy was not beaten, neither Ushant nor the Chesapeake, nor even Grenada, can be reckoned a victory for France, but in certain circumstances not to win a victory almost amounts to defeat, and so long as the allied fleets were not deprived of the initiative, the Army was liable to be paralysed because the Navy could not guarantee it freedom of movement. A signal system which was not equal to emancipating naval tactics from the trammels of an inelastic code of Fighting Instructions more than once robbed British admirals of victory, but graver evils lay in the state of things which prevented some of the Navy's ablest men from hoisting their flags with Sandwich at the Admiralty, and in the administrative inefficiency which bred delays and deficiencies at every turn. These, however, resulted largely from the loss of both of our chief sources for the supply of naval stores, so that Admiral Byam Martin declared there was not in the year 1783 "a sound ship in the fleet. Several returning home foundered on the Banks of Newfoundland".1 The Navy was faced by opponents more efficient and formidable than Nelson ever encountered, and instead of a Spencer at the Admiralty it had "Jemmy Twitcher". "Out Twitcher must...he will certainly annihilate the Navy if he stays in" was the cry after Palliser's trial. It says much for the Navy that if, with Sandwich in charge, it could not prevent the loss of America, it did prevent the further disruption of the Empire.

1 N.R.S. XIX, 379.

• Pembroke MSS, p. 380.

CHAPTER XXV

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND

BRITISH POLITICS, 1776-1783

THE constitutional struggle had ended in war. Motley bands of marksmen and farmers marched to the battle-cry of "Liberty or Death" against the greatest naval and imperial Power in the world. Alliances with France and Spain and the blunders of British commanders were to help them to victory. But in truth it was not a case of colonists unanimous in rebellion opposing a kingdom unanimous in its determination to impose its will upon them. The conflict was not so much a struggle between England and America as a civil war in which the whole British race took sides. Whigs and Tories in Great Britain, Radicals and Conservatives in America, were divided upon the fundamental principles at stake, the relations of Parliament to the colonial legislatures and the unity of the Empire.

The majority at home, Burke was obliged to admit, was, when war began, in favour of coercion.1 Opinion had hardened, as the violence and ever-increasing demands of the Americans and their rejection of each effort at conciliation seemed to point to a determination to throw off their allegiance. The greater part of the propertied and educated classes was definitely in favour of the King and his ministers. The landed interest, the Established Church and the Bar were almost wholly anti-American.2 The majorities in the Universities and in the great towns, except those most deeply involved in American trade, such as London, Bristol and Glasgow, favoured the Government.3 The Corporation of London, indeed, committed to opposition on other grounds, drew up an address strongly approving of the actions of the Americans, and resisted the press warrants. The trading community, however, was by no means united in its opposition, and soon found that openings in other directions more than compensated for the loss of American business. Lord Camden claimed that "the common people hold the war in abhorrence". Certainly the failure of recruiting showed that the people were loath to fight against their fellow-subjects and a cause identified with liberty. Many officers threw up their commissions in the army. Dissenters generally favoured the American cause. There were, of course, exceptions. John Wesley's pamphlet denouncing the pretensions of the colonists indicated the views of a large number of Methodists, whilst David Hume's sympathy with the attitude of the Rockingham Whigs suggests that Tories were not unanimous. The great majority of

1 Burke, E., Correspondence, 11, 48. 3 Annual Register, 1776, p. 38.

2 Walpole, Horace, Last Journals, 11, 90. 4 Chatham Corr. IV, 401.

Scots, both at home and in America, actively supported the claims of Great Britain. "Almost to a man", according to a contemporary writer, "they proffered life and fortune in support of the present measures." The Irish Protestants were equally zealous on the other side. "All Ireland", said Chatham, "is Whig." But this was not true of the Catholic population. And when the war was extended to France and Spain, the feelings of the Ulster Presbyterians underwent a notable change. Many who had refused to treat the Americans as enemies rallied round the Government against the Catholic Powers. The popularity of the war increased as it progressed. The spirit of the nation was stirred by the success of British arms. Resentment grew at the Declaration of Independence, the depredations of American privateers, and the grossly unpatriotic speeches of Fox and his friends. When the war became one with the old hereditary foes, the fighting instincts of the country were roused to make gigantic efforts in a combat single-handed against all the maritime Powers of Europe.

One has, then, the impression of a nation divided against itself, in which a majority constantly recognised the necessity of enforcing imperial unity, but at the same time shrank from applying extreme measures against its own flesh and blood. The same indecision affected the generals in the field. Howe, for instance, instead of hitting hard and then negotiating, probably let slip his military opportunities because he inclined, for sentimental and political reasons, to fight with an olive branch in one hand and a sword in the other. The parliamentary Opposition, though small, was virulent and enthusiastic. Chatham, Burke, Shelburne, Rockingham, Richmond, Charles James Fox, Pitt and Sheridan-seldom has a national assembly contained a group of greater eloquence and force.

As the situation developed, the Tories rallied round the King and his conception of the Empire, whilst the Whigs did their utmost to encourage the colonists in their resistance and to prevent the Government from applying the full resources of the country in the effort to suppress them. In this they were united. But between the followers of Chatham and Shelburne and the Rockingham Whigs a strong line of cleavage persisted over the question of yielding independence. Some, almost from the first, were ready to surrender British sovereignty. As early as 1776,3 the Duke of Richmond took the view that war with America would be ruinous; that it would bring France into the war against us, and that, even if successful, it would not be final. It would be better then, he argued, to grant independence at once. Whigs were moved too, Chatham as well as Fox, Horace Walpole as

[? Burke, E.], Annual Register, 1776, p. 39; Shelburne to Dr Price, Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, 1, 40.

Albemarle, Life of Rockingham, п, 305; Burke, Works, IX, 152.

3 Richmond to Mr Connolly, Nov. 1776, in a letter quoted by Lecky, Hist. of Eng. in Eighteenth Cent. IV, 352.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION-A CIVIL WAR 763

well as Burke and Richmond, by the fear lest the triumph of the King and his "Friends" in America would prove to be the death knell of the Whig party and of English liberty. The victory of the Crown would, it was believed, usher in a reign of despotism. To such extremes did partisanship in this civil war go, that Fox described the British victory at Brooklyn as "terrible news".1 Whigs toasted every American success and every British disaster. They even spoke in Parliament of the insurgent forces as "our army".

In America the same division of opinion recurred. The conditions were those of civil war. Even in the State of New York, where the merchant class for the most part clung to their allegiance to Great Britain, the Provincial Convention of revolutionists decreed that all Loyalists were guilty of treason and should suffer death. The Loyalists were probably at least as numerous as the patriots. They included certainly the larger half of the propertied, educated and professional classes, as well as of the Quakers and Episcopalians. But they were inclined to leave the fighting to the British forces, and lack of organisation placed them largely at the mercy of the extremists. The early step taken for disarming them was perhaps one of the most crucial actions of the war.3

The paucity of numbers engaged in the battles of the Revolution and the ever-increasing difficulty in raising recruits for the continental army indicate that the idea of an independent American Republic did not appeal overwhelmingly to more than a fraction of the American people. Even those who espoused the revolutionary cause were lukewarm and reluctant to fight. Out of 700,000 fighting men in the country, Washington could never muster more than 20,000 for one battle. Whilst those who fought, half-frozen, starving and in rags, knew no limit to their heroism and endurance, many farmers were tempted to prefer British gold to paper "not worth a continental", and to sell their supplies in the best market.

Hardly had the Declaration of Independence been proclaimed when Admiral Lord Howe arrived off Sandy Hook. To the Prohibitory Bill (20 November 1775) a conciliatory clause had been added appointing commissioners to enquire into grievances. They were empowered to raise the interdict of trade in the case of any colony or part thereof which might declare its readiness to return to its allegiance. Howe was the bearer of this conciliatory commission. It was treated with contempt by Franklin, and General Washington, whose title Howe would not recognise since it was not derived from the King, refused to receive any communication from him unless he did so. Lord Howe and his brother, General Howe, had been 1 Fox to Rockingham, 13 Oct. 1776.

2 Amer. Archives, 4th Ser. 1, 1046; II, 451; V, 215; VI, 984, etc.

Fisher, S. G., The Struggle for American Independence, 1, 255 seqq.; Van Tyne, C. H., The Loyalists in the American Revolution, p. 163; Sabine, L., American Loyalists.

▲ Van Tyne, C. H., England and America, p. 152.

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