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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 220: DISGRACE OF GENERAL LEE.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

DISGRACE OF GENERAL LEE.

When Washington met General Lee in full retreat, he assailed him with some bitter and reproachful words for his conduct. Suspicions were afterwards thrown out that Lee intended to cause the defeat of the army, for the purpose of disgracing the commander-in-chief. The whole conduct of Lee proves that these suspicions were groundless, and he wrote several letters to Washington in vindication of his character. These letters, however, contained language which placed him at the mercy of Washington, and being found guilty by a court-martial, he was sentenced to suspension from his rank for one year. Although a man of great abilities, and although he had rendered the American cause good service, both in the councils-of-war and in the field, he never, indeed, after this disgrace, attracted honourable notice. Yet he appears rather to have fallen from the effects of envy than from his misconduct, for it is a well-established fact, that Washington himself looked upon his abilities with a jealous eye. It was, in truth, the conduct of Washington towards him in the late affair which had betrayed him into the error which laid him beneath his rival’s feet. Gratitude should have taught Washington to have behaved more generously, for more than once Lee had corrected his rashness, and saved him from ruin. Yet before his failure in his attack on the British troops, Washington had attempted to place the raw and inexperienced Lafayette over his head, and he might have been warned by this, that no opportunity would be lost in securing his downfall.