Everywhere the strength of the belligerents was being exhausted without substantial result and without honor; for more than four years now America had been keeping up the war, and her Southern provinces had been everywhere laid waste by the enemy; in spite of the heroism which was displayed by the patriots, and of which the women themselves set the example, General Lincoln had just been forced to capitulate at Charleston. Washington, still encamped before New York, saw his army decimated by hunger and cold, deprived of all resources, and reduced to subsist at the expense of the people in the neighborhood. All eyes were turned towards France; the Marquis of La Fayette had succeeded in obtaining from the king and the French ministry the formation of an auxiliary corps; the troops were already on their way under the orders of Count de Rochambeau.
Misfortune and disappointments are great destroyers of some barriers, prudent tact can overthrow others. Washington and the American army would but lately have seen with suspicion the arrival of foreign auxiliaries; in 1780, transports of joy greeted the news of their approach. M. de La Fayette, moreover, had been careful to spare the American general all painful friction. Count de Rochambeau and the French officers were placed under the orders of Washington, and the auxiliary corps entirely at his disposal. The delicate generosity and the disinterestedness of the French government had sometimes had the effect of making it neglect the national interests in its relations with the revolted colonies; but it had derived therefrom a spirit of conduct invariably calculated to triumph over the prejudices as well as the jealous pride of the Americans.
“The history of the War of Independence is a history of hopes deceived,” said Washington. He had conceived the idea of making himself master of New York with the aid of the French. The transport of the troops had been badly calculated; Rochambeau brought to Rhode Island only the first division of his army, about five thousand men; and Count de Guichen, whose squadron had been relied upon, had just been recalled to France. Washington was condemned to inaction. “Our position is not sufficiently brilliant,” he wrote to M. de La Fayette, “to justify our putting pressure upon Count de Rochambeau; I shall continue our arrangements, however, in the hope of more fortunate circumstances.” The American army was slow in getting organized, obliged as it had been to fight incessantly and make head against constantly recurring difficulties; it was getting organized, however; the example of the French, the discipline which prevailed in the auxiliary corps, the good understanding thenceforth established among the officers, helped Washington in his difficult task. From the first the superiority of the general was admitted by the French as well as by the Americans; naturally, and by the mere fact of the gifts he had received from God, Washington was always and everywhere chief of the men placed within his range and under his influence.
This natural ascendency, which usually triumphed over the base jealousies and criminal manoeuvres into which the rivals of General Washington had sometimes allowed themselves to be drawn, had completely failed in the case of one of his most brilliant lieutenants; in spite of his inveterate and well-known vices, Benedict Arnold had covered himself with glory by daring deeds and striking bravery exhibited in a score of fights, from the day when, putting himself at the head of the first bands raised in Massachusetts, he had won the grade of general during his expedition to Canada. Accused of malversation, and lately condemned by a court-martial to be reprimanded by the general-in-chief, Arnold, through an excess of confidence on Washington’s part, still held the command of the important fort of West Point: he abused the trust. Washington, on returning from an interview with Count de Rochambeau, went out of his way to visit the garrison of West Point: the commandant was absent. Surprised and displeased, the general was impatiently waiting for his return, when his aide-de-camp and faithful friend, Colonel Hamilton, brought him important despatches. Washington’s face remained impassible; but throughout the garrison and among the general’s staff there had already spread a whisper of Arnold’s treachery: he had promised, it was said, to deliver West Point to the enemy. An English officer, acting as a spy, had actually been arrested within the American lines.
It was true; and General Arnold, turning traitor to his country from jealousy, vengeance, and the shameful necessities entailed by a disorderly life, had sought refuge at New York with Sir Henry Clinton. Major Andre was in the hands of the Americans. Young, honorable, brave, endowed with talents, and of elegant and cultivated tastes, the English officer, brought up with a view to a different career, but driven into the army from a disappointment in love, had accepted the dangerous mission of bearing to the perfidious commandant of West Point the English general’s latest instructions. Sir Henry Clinton had recommended him not to quit his uniform; but, yielding to the insinuating Arnold, the unhappy young man had put on a disguise; he had been made prisoner. Recognized and treated as a spy, he was to die on the gallows. It was the ignominy alone of this punishment which perturbed his spirit. “Sir,” he wrote to Washington, “sustained against fear of death by the reflection that no unworthy action has sullied a life devoted to honor, I feel confident that in this my extremity, your Excellency will not be deaf to a prayer the granting of which will soothe my last moments. Out of sympathy for a soldier, your Excellency will, I am sure, consent to adapt the form of my punishment to the feelings of a man of honor. Permit me to hope that, if my character have inspired you with any respect, if I am in your eyes sacrificed to policy and not to vengeance, I shall have proof that those sentiments prevail in your heart by learning that I am not to die on the gallows.”
With a harshness of which there is no other example in his life, and of which he appeared to always preserve a painful recollection, Washington remained deaf to his prisoner’s noble appeal: Major Andre underwent the fate of a spy. “You are a witness that I die like a man of honor,” he said to an American officer whose duty it was to see the orders carried out. The general did him justice. “Andre,” he said, “paid his penalty with the spirit to be expected from a man of such merit and so brave an officer. As to Arnold, he has no heart. . . . Everybody is surprised to see that he is not yet swinging on a gibbet.” The passionate endeavors of the Americans to inflict upon the traitor the chastisement he deserved remained without effect. Constantly engaged, as an English general, in the war, with all the violence bred of uneasy hate, Arnold managed to escape the just vengeance of his countrymen; he died twenty years later, in the English possessions, rich and despised. “What would you have done if you had succeeded in catching me?” he asked an American prisoner one day. “We would have severed from your body the leg that had been wounded in the service of the country, and would have hanged the rest on a gibbet,” answered the militiaman quietly.
The excitement caused by the treachery of Arnold had not yet subsided, when a fresh cup of bitterness was put to the lips of the general-in-chief, and disturbed the hopes he had placed on the reorganization of his army. Successive revolts among the troops of Pennsylvania, which threatened to spread to those of New Jersey, had convinced him that America had come to the end of her sacrifices. “The country’s own powers are exhausted,” he wrote to Colonel Lawrence in a letter intended to be communicated to Louis XVI.; “single-handed we cannot restore public credit and supply the funds necessary for continuing the war. The patience of the army is at an end, the people are discontented; without money, we shall make but a feeble effort, and probably the last.”
The insufficiency of the military results obtained by land and sea, in comparison with the expenses and the exhibition of force, and the slowness and bad management of the operations, had been attributed, in France as well as in America, to the incapacity of the ministers of war and marine, the Prince of Montbarrey and M. de Sartines. The finances had up to that time sufficed for the enormous charges which weighed upon the treasury; credit for the fact was most justly given to the consummate ability and inexhaustible resources of M. Necker, who was, first of all, made director of the treasury on October 22, 1776, and then director-general of finance on June 29, 1777, By his advice, backed by the favor of the queen, the two ministers were superseded by M. de Segur and the Marquis of Castries. A new and more energetic impulse before long restored the hopes of the Americans. On the 21st of March, 1780, a fleet left under the orders of Count de Grasse; after its arrival at Martinique, on the 28th of April, in spite of Admiral Hood’s attempts to block his passage, Count de Grasse took from the English the Island of Tobago, on the 1st of June; on the 3d of September, he brought Washington a reinforcement of three thousand five hundred men, and twelve hundred thousand livres in specie. In a few months King Louis XVI. had lent to the United States or procured for them on his security sums exceeding sixteen million livres. It was to Washington personally that the French government confided its troops as well as its subsidies. “The king’s soldiers are to be placed exclusively under the orders of the general-in-chief,” M. Girard, the French minister in America, had said, on the arrival of the auxiliary corps.
After so many and such painful efforts, the day of triumph was at last dawning upon General Washington and his country. Alternations of success and reverse had signalized the commencement of the campaign of 1781. Lord Cornwallis, who commanded the English armies in the South, was occupying Virginia with a considerable force, when Washington, who had managed to conceal his designs from Sir Henry Clinton, shut up in New York, crossed Philadelphia on the 4th of September, and advanced by forced marches against the enemy. The latter had been for some time past harassed by the little army of M. de La Fayette. The fleet of Admiral de Grasse cut off the retreat of the English. Lord Cornwallis threw himself into Yorktown; on the 30th of September the place was invested.
It was but slightly and badly fortified; the English troops were fatigued by a hard campaign; the besiegers were animated by a zeal further stimulated by emulation; French and Americans vied with one another in ardor. Batteries sprang up rapidly, the soldiers refused to take any rest, the trenches were opened by the 6th of October. On the 10th, the cannon began to batter the town; on the 14th an American column, commanded by M. de La Fayette, Colonel Hamilton and Colonel Lawrence, attacked one of the redoubts which protected the approaches to the town, whilst the French dashed forward on their side to attack the second redoubt, under the orders of Baron de Viomenil, Viscount de Noailles, and Marquis de St. Simon, who, ill as he was, had insisted on being carried at the head of his regiment. The flag of the Union floated above both works at almost the same instant; when the attacking columns joined again on the other side of the outwork they had attacked, the French had made five hundred prisoners. All defence became impossible. Lord Cornwallis in vain attempted to escape; he was reduced, on the 17th of October, to signing a capitulation more humiliating than that of Saratoga: eight thousand men laid down their arms, the vessels which happened to be lying at Yorktown and Gloucester were given up to the victors. Lord Cornwallis was ill of grief and fatigue. General O’Hara, who took his place, tendered his sword to Count de Rochambeau; the latter stepped back, and, pointing to General Washington, said aloud, “I am only an auxiliary.” In receiving the English general’s sword, Washington was receiving the pledge of his country’s independence.
England felt this. “Lord North received the news of the capitulation like a bullet in his breast,” said Lord George Germaine, secretary of state for the colonies; “he threw up his arms without being able to utter a word beyond ‘My God, all’s lost!’” To this growing conviction on the part of his ministers, as well as of the nation, George III. opposed an unwavering persistency. “None of the members of my cabinet,” he wrote immediately, “will suppose, I am quite sure, that this event can in any way modify the principles which have guided me hitherto and which will continue to regulate my conduct during the rest of this struggle.”
Whilst the United States were celebrating their victory with thanksgivings and public festivities, their allies were triumphing at all the different points, simultaneously, at which hostilities had been entered upon. Becoming embroiled with Holland, where the republican party had prevailed against the stadtholder, who was devoted to them, the English had waged war upon the Dutch colonies. Admiral Rodney had taken St. Eustache, the centre of an immense trade; he had pillaged the warehouses and laden his vessels with an enormous mass of merchandise; the convoy which was conveying a part of the spoil to England was captured by Admiral La Motte-Piquet; M. Bouille surprised the English garrison remaining at St. Eustache and recovered possession of the island, which was restored to the Dutch. They had just maintained gloriously, at Dogger Bank, their old maritime renown. “Officers and men all fought like lions,” said Admiral Zouttman. The firing had not commenced until the two fleets were within pistol-shot. The ships on both sides were dismasted, scarcely in a condition to keep afloat; the glory and the losses were equal; but the English admiral, Hyde Parker, was irritated and displeased. George III. went to see him on board his vessel. “I wish your Majesty younger seamen and better ships,” said the old sailor, and he insisted on resigning. This was the only action fought by the Dutch during the war; they left to Admiral de Kersaint the job of recovering from the English their colonies of Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, on the coasts of Guiana.
A small Franco-Spanish army was at the same time besieging Minorca. The fleet was considerable, the English were ill-prepared; they were soon obliged to shut themselves up in Fort St. Philip. The ramparts were as solid, the position was as impregnable, as in the time of Marshal Richelieu. The admirals were tardy in bringing up the fleet; their irresolution caused the failure of operations that had been ill-combined; the squadrons entered port again. The Duke of Crillon, who commanded the besieging force, weary of investing the fortress, made a proposal to the commandant to give the place up to him: the offers were magnificent, but Colonel Murray answered indignantly: “Sir, when the king his master ordered your brave ancestor to assassinate the Duke of Guise, he replied to Henry III., Honor forbids! You ought to have made the same answer to the king of Spain when he ordered you to assassinate the honor of a man as well born as the Duke of Guise or yourself. I desire to have no communication with you but by way of arms.” And he kept up the defence of his fortress, continually battered by the besiegers’ cannonballs. Assault succeeded assault: the Duke of Crillon himself escaladed the ramparts to capture the English flag which floated on the top of a tower: he was slightly wounded. “How long have generals done grenadiers’ work?” said the officers to one another. The general heard them. “I wanted to make my Spaniards thorough French,” he said, “that nobody might any longer perceive that there are two nationalities here.” Murray at last capitulated on the 4th of February, 1782: the fortress contained but a handful of soldiers exhausted with fatigue and privation.
Great was the joy at Madrid as well as in France, and deep the dismay in London: the ministry of Lord North could not stand against this last blow. So many efforts and so many sacrifices ending in so many disasters were irritating and wearing out the nation. “Great God!” exclaimed Burke, “is it still a time to talk to us of the rights we are upholding in this war! Oh! excellent rights! Precious they should be, for they have cost us dear. Oh! precious rights, which have cost Great Britain thirteen provinces, four islands, a hundred thousand men, and more than ten millions sterling! Oh! wonderful rights, which have cost Great Britain her empire upon the ocean and that boasted superiority which made all nations bend before her! Oh! inestimable rights, which have taken from us our rank amongst the nations, our importance abroad and our happiness at home, which have destroyed our commerce and our manufactures, which have reduced us from the most flourishing empire in the world to a kingdom circumscribed and grandeur-less! Precious rights, which will, no doubt, cost us all that we have left!” The debate was growing more and more bitter. Lord North entered the House with his usual serenity. “This discussion is a loss of valuable time to the House,” said he: “His Majesty has just accepted the resignation of his ministers.” The Whigs came into power; Lord Rockingham, the Duke of Richmond, Mr. Fox; the era of concessions was at hand. An unsuccessful battle delivered against Hood and Rodney by Admiral de Grasse restored for a while the pride of the English. A good sailor, brave and for a long time successful in war, Count de Grasse had many a time been out-manoeuvred by the English. He had suffered himself to be enticed away from St. Christopher, which he was besieging, and which the Marquis of Bouille took a few days later; embarrassed by two damaged vessels, he would not abandon them to the English, and retarded his movements to protect them. The English fleet was superior to the French in vessels and weight of metal; the fight lasted ten hours; the French squadron was broken, disorder ensued in the manoeuvres; the captains got killed one after another, nailing their colors to the mast or letting their vessels sink rather than strike; the flag-ship, the Ville de Paris, was attacked by seven of the enemy’s ships at once, her consorts could not get at her; Count de Grasse, maddened with grief and rage, saw all his crew falling around him. “The admiral is six foot every day,” said the sailors, “on a fighting day he is six foot one.” So much courage and desperation could not save the fleet, the count was forced to strike; his ship had received such damage that it sank before its arrival in England; the admiral was received in London with great honors against which his vanity was not proof, to the loss of his personal dignity and his reputation in Europe. A national subscription in France reinforced the fleet with new vessels: a squadron, commanded by M. de Suffren, had just carried into the East Indies the French flag, which had so long been humiliated, and which his victorious hands were destined to hoist aloft again for a moment.
As early as 1778, even before the maritime war had burst out in Europe, France had lost all that remained of her possessions on the Coromandel coast. Pondicherry, scarcely risen from its ruins, was besieged by the English, and had capitulated on the 17th of October, after an heroic resistance of forty days’ open trenches. Since that day a Mussulman, Hyder Ali, conqueror of the Carnatic, had struggled alone in India against the power of England: it was around him that a group had been formed by the old soldiers of Bussy and by the French who had escaped from the disaster of Pondicherry. It was with their aid that the able robber-chief, the crafty politician, had defended and consolidated the empire he had founded against that foreign dominion which threatened the independence of his country. He had just suffered a series of reverses, and he was on the point of being forced to evacuate the Carnatic and take refuge in his kingdom of Mysore, when he heard, in the month of July, 1782, of the arrival of a French fleet commanded by M. de Suffren. Hyder Ali had already been many times disappointed. The preceding year Admiral d’Orves had appeared on the Coromandel coast with a squadron; the Sultan had sent to meet him, urging him to land and attack Madras, left defenceless; the admiral refused to risk a single vessel or land a single man, and he returned without striking a blow to Ile-de-France. Ever indomitable and enterprising, Hyder Ali hoped better things of the new-comers; he was not deceived.
Born at St. Cannat in Provence, on the 13th of July, 1726, of an old and a notable family amongst the noblesse of his province, Peter Andrew de Suffren, admitted before he was seventeen into the marine guards, had procured his reception into the order of Malta; he had already distinguished himself in many engagements, when M. de Castries gave him the command of the squadron commissioned to convey to the Cape of Good Hope a French garrison promised to the Dutch, whose colony was threatened. The English had seized Negapatam and Trincomalee; they hoped to follow up this conquest by the capture of Batavia and Ceylon. Suffren had accomplished his mission, not without a brush with the English squadron commanded by Commodore Johnston. Leaving the Cape free from attack, he had joined, off Ile-de-France, Admiral d’Orves, who was ill and at death’s door. The vessels of the commander (of the Maltese order) were in a bad state, the crews were weak, the provisions were deficient; the inexhaustible zeal and the energetic ardor of the chief sufficed to animate both non-combatants and combatants. When he put to sea on the 7th of December, Count d’Orves still commanded the squadron; on the 9th of February he expired out at sea, having handed over his command to M. de Suffren. All feebleness and all hesitation disappeared from that moment in the management of the expedition. When the nabob sent a French officer in his service to compliment M. de Suffren and proffer alliance, the commander interrupted the envoy: “We will begin,” said he, “by settling the conditions of this alliance;” and not a soldier set foot on land before the independent position of the French force, the number of its auxiliaries, and the payment for its services had been settled by a treaty.
Hyder Ali consented to everything. M. de Suffren set sail to go in search of the English.
He sought them for three months without any decisive result; it was only on the 4th of July in the morning, at the moment when Hyder Ali was to attack Negapatam, that a serious engagement began between the hostile fleets. The two squadrons had already suffered severely; a change of wind had caused disorder in the lines: the English had several vessels dismantled; one single French vessel, the Severe, had received serious damage; her captain, with cowardly want of spirit, ordered the flag to be hauled down. His lieutenants protested; the volunteers to whom he had appealed refused to execute his orders. By this time the report was spreading among the batteries that the captain, was giving the order to cease firing; the sailors were as indignant as the officers: a cry arose, “The flag is down!” A complaisant subaltern had at last obeyed the captain’s repeated orders. The officers jumped upon the quarter-deck. “You are master of your flag,” fiercely cried an officer of the blue, Lieutenant Dien, “but we are masters as to fighting, and the ship shall not surrender!” By this time a boat from the English ship, the Sultan, had put off to board the Severe, which was supposed to have struck, when a fearful broadside from all the ship’s port-holes struck the Sultan, which found herself obliged to sheer off. Night came; without waiting for the admiral’s orders, the English went and cast anchor under Negapatam.
M. de Suffren supposed that hostilities would be resumed; but, when the English did not appear, he at last prepared to set sail for Gondelour to refit his vessels, when a small boat of the enemy’s hove in sight: it bore a flag of truce. Admiral Hughes claimed the Severe, which had for an instant hauled down her flag. M. de Suffren had not heard anything about her captain’s poltroonery; the flag had been immediately replaced; he answered that none of the French vessels had surrendered. “However,” he added with a smile, “as this vessel belongs to Sir Edward Hughes, beg him from me to come for it himself.” Suffren arrived without hinderance at Gondelour (Kaddalore).
Scarcely was he there, when Hyder Ali expressed a desire to see him, and set out for that purpose without waiting for his answer. On the 26th of July, M. de Suffren landed with certain officers of his squadron; an escort of cavalry was in waiting to conduct him to the camp of the nabob, who came out to meet him. “Heretofore I thought myself a great man and a great general,” said Hyder Ali to the admiral; “but now I know that you alone are a great man.” Suffren informed the nabob that M. de Bussy-Castelnau, but lately the faithful lieutenant of Dupleix and the continuer of his victories, had just been sent to India with the title of commander-in-chief; he was already at Ile de France, and was bringing some troops. “Provided that you remain with us, all will go well,” said the nabob, detaching from his turban an aigrette of diamonds which he placed on M. de Suffren’s hat. The nabob’s tent was reached; Suffren was fat, he had great difficulty in sitting upon the carpets; Hyder Ali perceived this and ordered cushions to be brought. “Sit as you please,” said he to the commander, “etiquette was not made for such as you.” Next day, under the nabob’s tent, all the courses of the banquet offered to M. de Suffren were prepared in European style. The admiral proposed that Hyder Ali should go to the coast and see all the fleet dressed, but, “I put myself out to see you only,” said the nabob, “I will not go any farther.” The two great warriors were never to meet again.
The French vessels were ready; the commander had more than once put his own hand to the work in order to encourage the workmen’s zeal. Carpentry-wood was wanted; he had ransacked Gondelour (Kaddalore) for it, sometimes pulling down a house to get hold of a beam that suited him. His officers urged him to go to Bourbon or Ile-de-France for the necessary supplies and for a good port to shelter his damaged ships. “Until I have conquered one in India, I will have no port but the sea,” answered Suffren. He had re-taken Trincomalee before the English could come to its defence. The battle began. As had already happened more than once, a part of the French force showed weakness in the thick of the action either from cowardice or treason; a cabal had formed against the commander; he was fighting single-handed against five or six assailants: the main-mast and the flag of the Heros, which he was on, fell beneath the enemy’s cannon-balls. Suffren, standing on the quarter-deck, shouted beside himself “Flags! Set white flags all round the Heros!” The vessel, all bristling with flags, replied so valiantly to the English attacks, that the rest of the squadron had time to re-form around it; the English went and anchored before Madras.
Bussy had arrived, but aged, a victim to gout, quite a stranger amid those Indian intrigues with which he had but lately been so well acquainted. Hyder Ali had just died on the 7th of December, 1782, leaving to his son Tippoo Sahib affairs embroiled and allies enfeebled. At this news the Mahrattas, in revolt against England, hastened to make peace; and Tippoo Sahib, who had just seized Tanjore, was obliged to abandon his conquest and go to the protection of Malabar. Ten thousand men only remained in the Carnatic to back the little corps of French. Bussy allowed himself to be driven to bay by General Stuart beneath the walls of Gondelour; he had even been forced to shut himself up in the town. M. de Suffren went to his release. The action was hotly contested; when the victor landed, M. de Bussy was awaiting him on the shore. “Here is our savior,” said the general to his troops, and the soldiers taking up in their arms M. de Suffren, who had been lately promoted by the grand master of the order of Malta to the rank of grand-cross (bailli), carried him in triumph into the town. “He pressed M. de Bussy every day to attack us,” says Sir Thomas Munro, “offering to land the greater part of his crews and to lead them himself to deliver the assault upon our camp.” Bussy had, in fact, resumed the offensive, and was preparing to make fresh sallies, when it was known at Calcutta that the preliminaries of peace had been signed at Paris on the 9th of February. The English immediately proposed an armistice. The Surveillante shortly afterwards brought the same news, with orders for Suffren to return to France. India was definitively given up to the English, who restored to the French Pondicherry, Chandernuggur, Mahe, and Karikal, the last strips remaining of that French dominion which had for a while been triumphant throughout the peninsula. The feebleness and the vices of Louis XV.‘s government weighed heavily upon the government of Louis XVI. in India as well as in France, and at Paris itself.
It is to the honor of mankind and their consolation under great reverses that political checks and the inutility of their efforts do not obscure the glory of great men. M. de Suffren had just arrived at Paris, he was in low spirits; M. de Castries took him to Versailles. There was a numerous and brilliant court. On entering the guards’ hall, “Gentlemen,” said the minister to the officers on duty, “this is M. de Suffren.” Everybody rose, and the body-guards, forming an escort for the admiral, accompanied him to the king’s chamber. His career was over; the last of the great sailors of the old regimen died on the 8th of December, 1788.
Whilst Hyder Ali and M. de Suffren were still disputing India with England, that power had just gained in Europe an important advantage in the eyes of public opinion as well as in respect of her supremacy at sea.
For close upon three years past a Spanish army had been investing by land the town and fortress of Gibraltar; a strong squadron was cruising out of cannon-shot of the place, incessantly engaged in barring the passage against the English vessels. Twice already, in 1780 by Admiral Rodney, and in 1781 by Admiral Darby, the vigilance of the cruisers had been eluded and reinforcements of troops, provisions, and ammunition had been thrown into Gibraltar. In 1782 the town had been half destroyed by an incessantly renewed bombardment, the fortifications had not been touched. Every morning, when he awoke, Charles III. would ask anxiously, “Have we got Gibraltar?” and when “No” was answered, “We soon shall,” the monarch would rejoin imperturbably. The capture of Fort Philip had confirmed him in his hopes; he considered his object gained, when the Duke of Crillon with a corps of French troops came and joined the besiegers; the Count of Artois, brother to the king, as well as the Duke of Bourbon, had come with him. The camp of St. Roch was the scene of continual festivities, sometimes interrupted by the sallies of the besieged. The fights did not interfere with mutual good offices: in his proud distress, General Eliot still kept up an interchange of refreshments with the French princes and the Duke of Crillon; the Count of Artois had handed over to the English garrison the letters and correspondence which had been captured on the enemy’s ships, and which he had found addressed to them on his way through Madrid.
Preparations were being made for a grand assault. A French engineer, Chevalier d’Arcon, had invented some enormous floating batteries, fire-proof, as he believed; a hundred and fifty pieces of cannon were to batter the place all at once, near enough to facilitate the assault. On the 13th of September, at 9 A. M., the Spaniards opened fire: all the artillery in the fort replied at once; the surrounding mountains repeated the cannonade; the whole army covered the shore awaiting with anxiety the result of the enterprise. Already the fortifications seemed to be beginning to totter; the batteries had been firing for five hours; all at once the Prince of Nassau, who commanded a detachment, thought he perceived flames mastering his heavy vessel; the fire spread rapidly; one after another, the floating batteries found themselves disarmed. “At seven o’clock we had lost all hope,” said an Italian officer who had taken part in the assault; “we fired no more, and our signals of distress remained unnoticed. The red-hot shot of the besieged rained down upon us; the crews were threatened from every point.” Timidly and by weak detachments, the boats of the two fleets crept up under cover of the batteries in hopes of saving some of the poor creatures that were like to perish; the flames which burst out on board the doomed ships served to guide the fire of the English as surely as in broad daylight. At the head of a small squadron of gunboats Captain Curtis barred the passage of the salvors; the conflagration became general, only the discharges from the fort replied to the hissing of the flames and to the Spaniard’s cries of despair. The fire at last slackened; the English gunboats changed their part; at the peril of their lives the brave seamen on board of them approached the burning ships, trying to save the unfortunate crews; four hundred men owed their preservation to those efforts. A month after this disastrous affair, Lord Howe, favored by the accidents of wind and weather, revictualled for the third time, and almost without any fighting, the fortress and the town under the very eyes of the allied fleets. Gibraltar remained impregnable.
Peace was at hand, however: all the belligerents were tired of the strife; the Marquis of Rockingham was dead; his ministry, after being broken up, had re-formed with less lustre under the leadership of Lord Shelburne. William Pitt, Lord Chatham’s second son, at that time twenty-two years of age, had a seat in the cabinet. Already negotiations for a general peace had begun at Paris; but Washington, who eagerly desired the end of the war, did not yet feel any confidence. “The old infatuation, the political duplicity and perfidy of England, render me, I confess, very suspicious, very doubtful,” he wrote; “and her position seems to me to be perfectly summed up in the laconic saying of Dr. Franklin ‘They are incapable of continuing the war and too proud to make peace.’ The pacific overtures made to the different belligerent nations have probably no other design than to detach some one of them from the coalition. At any rate, whatever be the enemy’s intentions, our watchfulness and our efforts, so far from languishing, should become more vigorous than ever. Too much trust and confidence would ruin everything.”
America was the first to make peace, without however detaching herself officially from the coalition which had been formed to maintain her quarrel and from which she had derived so many advantages. On the 30th of November, 1782, in disregard of the treaties but lately concluded between France and the revolted colonies, the American negotiators signed with stealthy precipitation the preliminary articles of a special peace, “thus abandoning France to the dangers of being isolated in negotiations or in arms.” The votes of Congress, as well as the attitude of Washington, did not justify this disloyal and ungrateful eagerness. “The articles of the treaty between Great Britain and America,” wrote the general to Chevalier de La Luzerne, French minister at Philadelphia, “are so far from conclusive as regards a general pacification, that we must preserve a hostile attitude and remain ready for any contingency, for war as well as peace.”
On the 5th of December, at the opening of Parliament, George III. announced in the speech from the throne that he had offered to recognize the independence of the American colonies. “In thus admitting their separation from the crown of this kingdom, I have sacrificed all my desires to the wishes and opinion of my people,” said the king. “I humbly pray Almighty God, that Great Britain may not feel the evils which may flow from so important a dismemberment of its empire, and that America may be a stranger to the calamities which have before now proved to the mother-country that monarchy is inseparable from the benefits of constitutional liberty. Religion, language, interests, affections may still form a bond of union between the two countries, and I will spare no pains or attention to promote it.” “I was the last man in England to consent to the Independence of America,” said the king to John Adams, who was the first to represent the new republic at the Court of St. James; “I will be the last in the world to sanction any violation of it.” Honest and sincere in his concessions as he had been in his persistent obstinacy, the king supported his ministers against the violent attacks made upon them in Parliament. The preliminaries of general peace had been signed at Paris on the 20th of January, 1783.
To the exchange of conquests between France and England was added the cession to France of the island of Tobago and of the Senegal River with its dependencies. The territory of Pondicherry and Karikal received some augmentation. For the first time for more than a hundred years the English renounced the humiliating conditions so often demanded on the subject of the harbor of Dunkerque. Spain saw herself confirmed in her conquest of the Floridas and of the island of Minorca. Holland recovered all her possessions, except Negapatam.
Peace was made, a glorious and a sweet one for the United States, which, according to Washington’s expression, “saw opening before them a career that might lead them to become a great people, equally happy and respected.” Despite all the mistakes of the people and the defects every day more apparent in the form of its government, this noble and healthy ambition has always been present to the minds of the American nation as the ultimate aim of their hopes and their endeavors. More than eighty years after the war of independence, the indomitable energy of the fathers reappeared in the children, worthy of being called a great people even when the agonies of a civil war without example denied to them the happiness which had a while ago been hoped for by the glorious founder of their liberties as well as of their Constitution.
France came out exhausted from the struggle, but relieved in her own eyes as well as those of Europe from the humiliation inflicted upon her by the disastrous Seven Years’ War and by the treaty of 1763. She saw triumphant the cause she had upheld and her enemies sorrow-stricken at the dismemberment they had suffered. It was a triumph for her arms and for the generous impulse which had prompted her to support a legitimate but for a long while doubtful enterprise. A fresh element, however, had come to add itself to the germs of disturbance, already so fruitful, which were hatching within her. She had promoted the foundation of a Republic based upon principles of absolute right; the government had given way to the ardent sympathy of the nation for a people emancipated from a long yoke by its deliberate will and its indomitable energy. France felt her heart still palpitating from the efforts she had witnessed and shared on behalf of American freedom; the unreflecting hopes of a blind emulation were already agitating many a mind. “In all states,” said Washington, “there are inflammable materials which a single spark may kindle.” In 1783, on the morrow of the American war, the inflammable materials everywhere accumulated in France were already providing means for that immense conflagration in the midst of which the country well-nigh perished.
We have followed the course of good and bad fortune; we have exhibited France engaged abroad in a policy at the same time bold and generous, proceeding from rancor as well as from the sympathetic enthusiasm of the nation; we have seen the war, at first feebly waged, soon extending over every sea and into the most distant colonies of the belligerents, though the European continent was not attacked at any point save the barren rock of Gibraltar; we have seen the just cause of the United States triumphant and freedom established in the New World: it is time to inquire what new shocks had been undergone by France whilst she was supporting far away the quarrel of the revolted colonies, and what new burdens had come to be added to the load of difficulties and deceptions which she had seemed to forget whilst she was fighting England at so many different points. It was not without great efforts that France had acquired the generous fame of securing to her allies blessings which she did not herself yet possess to their full extent; great hopes, and powers fresh and young had been exhausted in the struggle: at the close of the American war M. Necker was played out politically as well as M. Turgot.
It was not to supersede the great minister who had fallen that the Genevese banker had been called to office. M. de Maurepas was still powerful, still up and doing; he loved power, in spite of his real levity and his apparent neglectfulness. M. Turgot had often galled him, had sometimes forced his hand; M. de Clugny, who took the place of the comptroller-general, had no passion for reform, and cared for nothing but leading, at the treasury’s expense, a magnificently scandalous life; M. de Malesherbes had been succeeded in the king’s household by Marquis Amelot. “At any rate,” said M. de Maurepas, “nobody will accuse me of having picked him out for his wits.”
Profoundly shocked at the irreligious tendencies of the philosophers, the court was, nevertheless, aweary of the theoricians and of their essays in reform; it welcomed the new ministers with delight; without fuss, and as if by a natural recurrence to ancient usage, the edict relative to forced labor was suspended, the anxieties of the noblesse and of the clergy subsided; the peasantry knew nothing yet of M. Turgot’s fall, but they soon found out that the evils from which they had imagined they were delivered continued to press upon them with all their weight. For their only consolation Clugny opened to them the fatal and disgraceful chances of the lottery, which became a royal institution. To avoid the remonstrances of Parliament, the comptroller-general established the new enterprise by a simple decree of the council. “The entries being voluntary, the lottery is no tax and can dispense with enregistration,” it was said. It was only seventy-five years later, in 1841, under the government of King Louis Philippe and the ministry of M. Humann, that the lottery was abolished, and this scandalous source of revenue forbidden to the treasury.
So much moral weakness and political changeableness, so much poltroonery or indulgence towards evil and blind passions disquieted serious minds, and profoundly shook the public credit. The Dutch refused to carry out the loan for sixty millions which they had negotiated with M. Turgot; the discount-fund (caisse d’escompte) founded by him brought in very slowly but a moderate portion of the assets required to feed it; the king alone was ignorant of the prodigalities and irregularities of his minister. M. de Maurepas began to be uneasy at the public discontent, he thought of superseding the comptroller-general: the latter had been ill for some time, on the 22d of October he died. By the advice of M. de Maurepas, the king sent for M. Necker.
James Necker was born at Geneva in 1732. Engaging in business without any personal taste for it and by his father’s wish, he had been successful in his enterprises; at forty he was a rich man, and his banking-house enjoyed great credit when he retired from business, in 1772, in order to devote himself to occupations more in accordance with his natural inclinations. He was ambitious and disinterested. The great operations in which he had been concerned had made his name known. He had propped up the Compagnie des Indes nearly falling to pieces, and his financial resources had often ministered to the necessities of the State. “We entreat your assistance in the day of need,” wrote Abbe Terray when he was comptroller-general; “deign to come to our assistance with a sum which is absolutely necessary.” On ceasing to be a banker, Necker soon gave indications of the direction in which his thoughts turned; he wrote an indifferent Bloge de Colbert, crowned by the French Academy, in 1773. He believed that he was destined to wear the mantle of Louis XIV.‘s great minister.
Society and public opinion exercised an ever increasing influence in the eighteenth century; M. Necker managed to turn it to account. He had married, in 1764, Mdlle. Suzanne Curchod, a Swiss pastor’s daughter, pretty, well informed, and passionately devoted to her husband, his successes and his fame. The respectable talents, the liberality, the large scale of living of M. and Madame Necker attracted round them the literary and philosophical circle; the religious principles, the somewhat stiff propriety of Madame Necker maintained in her drawing-room an intelligent and becoming gravity which was in strong contrast with the licentious and irreligious frivolity of the conversations customary among the philosophers as well as the courtiers. Madame Necker paid continuous and laborious attention to the duties of society. She was not a Frenchwoman, and she was uncomfortably conscious of it. “When I came to this country,” she wrote to one of her fair friends, “I thought that literature was the key to everything, that a man cultivated his mind with books only, and was great by knowledge only.” Undeceived by the very fact of her admiration for her husband, who had not found leisure to give himself up to his natural taste for literature, and who remained rather unfamiliar with it, she made it her whole desire to be of good service to him in the society in which she had been called upon to live with him. “I hadn’t a word to say in society,” she writes; “I didn’t even know its language. Obliged, as a woman, to captivate people’s minds, I was ignorant how many shades there are of self-love, and I offended it when I thought I was flattering it. Always striking wrong notes and never hitting it off, I saw that my old ideas would never accord with those I was obliged to acquire; so I have hid my little capital away, never to see it again, and set about working for my living and getting together a little stock, if I can.” Wit and knowledge thus painfully achieved are usually devoid of grace and charm. Madame du Deffand made this a reproach against M. Necker as well as his wife “He wants one quality, that which is most conducive to agreeability, a certain readiness which, as it were, provides wits for those with whom one talks; he doesn’t help to bring out what one thinks, and one is more stupid with him than one is all alone or with other folks.” People of talent, nevertheless, thronged about M. and Madame Necker. Diderot often went to see them; Galiani, Raynal, Abbe Morellet, M. Suard, quite young yet, were frequenters of the house; Condorcet did not set foot in it, passionately enlisted as he was amongst the disciples of M. Turgot, who were hostile to his successor; Bernardin de St. Pierre never went thither again from the day when the reading of Paul and Virginia had sent the company to sleep. “At first everybody listens in silence,” says M. Aime Martin; “by degrees attention flags, people whisper, people yawn, nobody listens any more; M. de Buffon looks at his watch and asks for his carriage; the nearest to the door slips out, Thomas falls asleep, M. Necker smiles to see the ladies crying, and the ladies ashamed of their tears dare not acknowledge that they have been interested.”