After the prince's death, the old king had transferred his dislike to his son's widow and his grandson. George III. had therefore been brought up almost in seclusion. The most notable point in his education was that his mother, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, had taught him to despise his grandfather and his grandfather's position in the State. He had been told from his earliest years that the position of a sovereign who allowed himself to be led and governed by his ministers was degrading. "When you come to the throne," we are told that his mother said, "George, be king." The idea had taken root, and the young prince had made up his mind that he should rule his ministers, not his ministers him. That the cabinet should be responsible to the king as well as to Parliament, was the keystone of his theory. He would have the choice of his ministers lie in his own hands, not in those of the great Whig houses. George did not wish to rule unconstitutionally, to fly in the face of Parliament, or to govern without it, as the Stuarts had tried to do. He had, indeed, such a belief in his own good intentions, that he thought that they must coincide with the nation's will, and there were circumstances which for some time bore him out in his view.

George's main bent was to assert his individuality, and take the chief share in the governance of the country. The other features of his character are easy to describe. His tastes were frugal, and his private life strictly virtuous, a thing which had not been known in an English king for more than a century. He was sincerely pious, though, as some critics observed, he was better at scenting out other persons' sins than his own. He had an enormous capacity for hard work, though no very great brain-power to guide him through it. He had a great share of self-restraint and reticence, so that it was not easy to guess what plans he had in hand when he did not wish them to be known. Above all, he was terribly obstinate, with the obstinacy of a good-hearted man, who feels he is in the right, and believes that he will be doing wrong if he gives up his own opinion. Lastly, though he had no power of appreciating greatness of any kind (he called Shakespeare "sad stuff, only one must not say so," and thought Pitt a bombastic old actor), yet he had great penetration in measuring littleness in others. This made him exceedingly fitted to cope with the average Whig statesmen of his day.

When George came to the throne he was greeted with the usual popularity which attends a new and untried sovereign. He showed himself affable and good-tempered, a model of decorum and respectability, and won all hearts by his English habits and prejudices. His grandfather and great-grandfather had been Germans in mind and language. George III. took the first opportunity of declaring that he was English born and bred, and that "he gloried in the name of Briton." By so doing he won all men's hearts. Thus in the beginning of his struggle with the Whigs he had the inestimable advantage of personal popularity with the nation.

The king had, as we have already said, passed his youth in seclusion, with few friends and no organized band of retainers. He had to build up his own party, if he wished to carry out his schemes. This he at once began to do. Descending into the arena of politics, he set to work to make himself a following, much as Newcastle or Walpole had done in a previous generation. But George, unlike those statesmen, had not to rely on bribery or borough-mongering alone. He could count on all the prestige and attraction which surrounds the crown, to draw men into his net. Some of the "King's Friends" (as his followers grew to be called) were politicians bought by pensions or titles, but many were honest supporters, who found their pleasure in displaying their loyalty to the crown.

In especial George won to himself from the first the very considerable remnants of the old Tory party. Jacobitism had now become such a thing of the past, that the vast majority of the Tories were ready to accept with enthusiasm a king whose views exactly coincided with their own old doctrines. For George was a stout defender of the Church of England, in which his godless old grandfather had never professed any interest. He held the ancient Tory doctrine that the royal prerogative should be actively exercised in the affairs of the nation. Most important of all, he hated the Whig oligarchy, a fact which could not fail to recommend him to their long-oppressed rivals. Hence it came that the most prominent element among the "King's Friends" was drawn from the Tory party. One condition was demanded of all who joined that body—implicit obedience to George's will, the will of a man of limited abilities and narrow mind. This fact sufficiently accounts for the result that the "King's Friends" never included any men of marked talent; to obey George in all things would have been too trying for any one of real genius or breadth of spirit.

The king's first and most injudicious way of attempting to interfere in politics was worked out through the medium of Lord Bute. That nobleman was a Scottish peer of respectable character, moderate abilities, and a rather pedantic disposition. He had aided the Princess of Wales in giving George such instruction in statecraft as he had received. Bute was almost absolutely unacquainted with Parliament or practical politics. Yet a few months after his accession, the king insisted that the Pitt-Newcastle cabinet should take his old tutor into partnership. Bute was made one of the Secretaries of State, and at once began to show a great independence of the nominal prime minister. He rebuked Newcastle for keeping the details of his political jobbing from the king, and for filling posts without consulting royalty. At the same time he spoke strongly against the continuance of the war with France, and most particularly against the lavish subsidies with which the great war-minister was maintaining our much-tried ally, the King of Prussia. The fact was that George had observed that the Whig ministry depended for its strength on the combination of Newcastle's corrupt influence over Parliament with Pitt's hold on the nation, secured by successful war. To end it he wished to deprive the duke of his patronage, and to close the war, so as to make Pitt no longer indispensable.

In this matter the king's private designs clashed most unhappily with the interests of England, for Pitt's vigorous policy was still bearing the best of fruits. Ere King George had been a year upon the throne, Pitt could announce to him that Pondicherry, the last French fortress in India; Belleisle, a large island off the coast of Brittany; and Dominica, a rich West-Indian island, had fallen into his hands. After these last disasters the ministers of Lewis XV. began to make overtures for peace, which Bute wished to accept; but Pitt withstood him, partly because he thought that England had yet more to gain, partly because he had secret knowledge that France was trying to create a diversion by stirring up Spain against us. Charles III., the king of that country, was an old enemy of England, and had offered to renew with his cousin, Lewis XV., the "Family Compact" of 1733—the old pact of the Bourbon princes for the checking of English maritime supremacy. Having news of this transaction, Pitt advised instant war with Spain. But Bute opposed him, and when the king openly gave his support to his old tutor, Pitt was forced to resign the office which he had held for five years with such credit and distinction (October 5, 1761).

The king received the great minister's resignation with joy, and next set himself to get rid of Pitt's unworthy colleague, Newcastle. That old jobber clung to his place till May, 1762: but, finding that the king was determined to strip him of his crown patronage, and thwart him in his management of the House of Commons, he was finally forced to follow Pitt into retirement. Thus Bute became the chief minister of the realm.

The king's favourite was to hold power for less than two years, but into that short space many important events were compressed. The war with Spain, which Pitt had declared to be imminent, broke out in 1762, and the French hoped for a moment that they might be saved by their new ally. But Spain's power proved to have declined so low, that her interference made no difference to the fate of the war. The able generals and admirals whom Pitt had discovered and promoted, made short work of the Spanish fleets and armies. Ere he had been a year at war with England, Charles III. saw two of his greatest colonies fall into the hands of his enemy. Havanna, the richest city of the West Indies, and Manilla, the capital of the Philippine Islands in the far East, were both in English hands by the end of 1762. In the same space of time Admiral Rodney captured Martinique, St. Lucia, and all the rest of the French West Indies. Meanwhile Ferdinand of Brunswick, with the Anglo-Hanoverian army in Germany, had maintained his old superiority over the French army of the Rhine.

Stripped of her colonies, with her fleet entirely destroyed, her armies on the continent beaten back, and her exchequer completely drained dry, France was now compelled to sue for any terms that Bute and King George would grant her. Her ally Spain, equally disheartened by the turn which the war had taken, followed her example.

Nothing could please the English king better than the conclusion of peace. He gave Bute a free hand, and readily consented to the conclusion of the treaty of Paris (February, 1763). By this agreement France ceded to England the vast province of Canada, and all her American claims east of the Mississippi, retaining only some fishing rights on the coast of Newfoundland, which have proved very troublesome in our own day. At the same time, the West Indian Islands of St. Vincent, Tobago, Grenada, and Dominica were surrendered, as well as the African settlement of Senegal. France also undertook to keep no garrisons in her factories in Hindostan, when they should be restored to her. She gave back Minorca, which she had held since Byng's disaster, and withdrew her armies from Germany. But she received back much that she had lost, and had no power of recovering—Belleisle in Europe, Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe in the West Indies, Goree in Africa, and all her Indian establishments. In a similar way Spain ceded to us the swampy and uninhabited peninsula of Florida, which rounded off the line of our North American colonies; but she received back the two wealthy settlements of Havanna and Manilla, which she could never have regained by force of arms.

The peace of Paris was not received with enthusiasm in England. It was said, and truly, that Pitt would have asked and obtained much better terms, and that it was weak and futile to restore to France and Spain their lost colonies. Yet, looking at our enormous gains, it seems absurd to complain. The treaty made England supreme in America and in Hindostan, and ratified her permanent ascendency at sea. When so much was secured, it appeared greedy to ask for yet more, for never by any previous treaty had England won so much or brought a war so triumphantly to a close.

But one blot on Bute's reputation can not be passed over. He deserted, most shamelessly, our useful if unscrupulous ally, King Frederic of Prussia. Having gained what England required, he left Frederic to shift for himself, withdrawing our armies from Germany, and stopping the liberal subsidies which had maintained the king's famishing exchequer. If fortune had not favoured him, Frederic might have been ruined by the loss of his only ally. He was saved, however, by the unexpected withdrawal of Russia from the hostile ranks. He proved able to hold his own against Austria, his one remaining foe, and brought the Seven Years' War to an end by the treaty of Hubertsburg ere the year 1763 had expired. But he never forgave England for the mean trick which Bute had played him, and would never again make an alliance with her.

When the war was over, Bute found his position as prime minister quite unbearable. He was clamoured at by Pitt's numerous admirers for making peace on too easy terms. At the same time the Whig borough-mongers, who followed Newcastle, took their revenge on him in Parliament by rejecting all his bills. He was decried as an upstart Scot, a mere court favourite, "the Gaveston of the eighteenth century," and the enemy of the greatness of England. Though he lavished the public money and the crown patronage on all sides, even more shamelessly than Newcastle had done, he could not hold his own. Bute was a sensitive man, and apparently could not bear up against the odium which his position as a court-minister, disliked both by the nation and the Houses of Parliament, brought upon him. In April, 1763, he laid down the seals of office, much to the regret of his royal master.

Thus King George had been defeated in his first contest with the Whigs. He was compelled to draw back for a moment and to rearrange his plans. His next scheme was to try the effect of playing off the various clans and factions of the Whigs one against another. For the fall of the great Pitt-Newcastle cabinet had split the Whig party into a complicated series of family groups and alliances—divided by no difference in principle, but only by matters of personal interest. The king thought that he could make and unmake ministries by the unscrupulous use of the votes of his "friends" in Parliament, and so hold the balance between the various sections of his enemies, till he could reduce them all to powerlessness.

To succeed the Earl of Bute, George made choice of the Whig leader whom he thought least objectionable, a narrow-minded statesman named George Grenville, who had hitherto shown himself fairly amenable to the royal influence. But the king had made a mistake; Grenville was as obstinate as himself, and when he found his master interfering in his patronage and intriguing with his followers, he allied himself with one of the great Whig clans, that headed by the Duke of Bedford—a faction which was jocosely called the "Bloomsbury Gang," because it centred at the duke's residence, Bedford House, Bloomsbury.

The Grenville-Bedford ministry only lasted two years (1763-1765), and was overthrown by another Whig alliance, whose principal leaders were the Duke of Grafton and the Marquis of Rockingham. But short though its tenure of office was, it left its mark on history. In England itself the act of this cabinet which made most noise was the prosecution of Wilkes. John Wilkes was a member of Parliament, a party journalist of gross scurrility and a man of scandalous private life, but he had the good fortune to be made twice in his life a martyr to oppressive government. He had grossly libelled Lord Bute in his newspaper, the North Briton, but his chief offence in the eyes of Grenville was that he had, in No. 45 of that publication, made abusive comments on the royal speech at the end of the session of 1763. For this he was illegally seized and imprisoned, under a "general warrant," a document issued by Grenville, not against him by name, but against "the authors, printers, and publishers of No. 45 of the North Briton." He was acquitted when put on his trial, under the plea that he had been illegally arrested. "A general warrant is no warrant, because it names no one," was the decision of Lord Mansfield, the Chief Justice; and so this dangerous and tyrannical form of arrest was declared illegal. Wilkes posed as a victim of arbitrary government, and obtained great popularity in spite of his infamous character. But Grenville then prosecuted him for publishing a blasphemous and obscene poem. Feeling sure that he would be condemned, Wilkes absconded to France, and lived there four years; he was accounted by many a victim of malicious political persecution, and never lost his favour with the mob of London.

But while raising this storm in a teacup about the worthless Wilkes, George Grenville was committing another and a very different mistake in a matter of the highest importance. It is to him that we must attribute the first beginnings of the quarrel between England and her North-American colonies.

The Seven Years' War had left behind it a heavy burden of debt and taxation, and George Grenville, while searching around for new sources of revenue, was struck with the bright idea that he might tax the colonies. Accordingly, he brought forward in 1764, and passed in 1765, a bill which asserted the right of Parliament to lay imposts on our possessions over-seas, and proceeded to prescribe that certain stamp duties on legal documents were in future to be paid by our American colonies. The proceeds were to go to maintain the British troops quartered among them.

The Stamp Act was bitterly resented by the inhabitants of America. It was the first circumstance that really taught the thirteen colonies, which lay scattered along the coast from Massachusetts to Georgia, to combine in a common movement. Hitherto they had been without any formal bond of union between themselves. Legally, New York had no more to do with Virginia than in our own day Jamaica has with Tasmania. Each was administered as a separate unity depending immediately on the English crown. Their origins and the character of their population were very different. The Puritan farmers and seamen of Massachusetts, the slave-owning planters of Virginia, the Anglo-Dutch of New York, and the Quakers of Pennsylvania had few sympathies in common. Hitherto they had been jealous of each other; colony quarrelled fiercely with colony, and the chief tie that had kept them together was the common dread which all felt, of the aggression of the enterprising French governors at Quebec. It was this fear of the French which had enabled William Pitt to induce them to join loyally in his great scheme for the conquest of Canada.

Now that the restraining influence of their dread of France was removed, the colonies were no longer compelled to lean so closely on England. They were rapidly growing in population, wealth, and national spirit. It only required some common provocation to make them forget their petty local jealousies and turn fiercely to defend what they believed to be their rights. This provocation the pedantic George Grenville now proceeded to supply.

Grenville had much to say on his side. It was quite fair that the colonies should pay something towards the expenses of the Seven Years' War, which had largely been incurred for their benefit. It was rational that they should be asked to maintain the troops still quartered in America for their protection. And the Stamp Act imposed on them a very small tax, only some few thousands a year. Moreover, Grenville had studied the old precedents, and could show clear instances of imperial taxation levied in the past from various possessions over-sea. But, above the letter of the law, statesmen are responsible to the nation for the wisdom as well as for the legality of their actions. It is no excuse for the unwise minister to plead that he has the statute-book on his side, if it can be proved that he has common sense against him. It is for this reason that Grenville and his two successors, Grafton and North, are held to have incurred a graver load of responsibility than any other British statesman has ever borne.

The main line of protest which the colonists adopted was grounded on a favourite maxim of William Pitt, that "there should be no taxation without representation"; that is, that any persons taxed ought to be represented in Parliament, and allowed a share in voting their own contributions. It was, of course, impossible in those days to ask that American representatives should appear in the House of Commons, an idea which the remoteness of their country and the slowness of communication with it rendered absurd. What the colonists therefore meant was that, being unrepresented, they ought not to be taxed. They were growing so strong that they would no longer endure to be treated as mere dependencies, and governed solely for the benefit of England.

Serious trouble would have ensued if George Grenville had been able to persist in his schemes. But he was overthrown in 1765 by the machinations of George III., who bade the eighty or ninety "King's Friends" in the Commons to vote against him, and combine with the Opposition Whigs to turn him out of office. Grenville was evicted and dismissed. He was replaced by a new combination of Whig clans. The new cabinet was formed by the junction of the Marquis of Rockingham and the Duke of Grafton, to whom the old Duke of Newcastle was for the moment allied. Lord Rockingham was a more moderate man than Grenville, though a less able one. He disliked trouble, and, to silence American complaints, took the very wise step of repealing the Stamp Act. But the Rockingham administration lasted only a year, for in 1766 the "King's Friends" once more received orders from their master to overthrow the cabinet of the day. Rockingham was left in a minority, and forced to lay down his seals, and a second Whig faction had felt the weight of King George's hand.

The next ministry marked a new shifting of the political kaleidoscope. Pitt, who had been out of place since 1761, was now invited by the king to take office. He consented, believing (as he always did) that he was the one man able to administer the British empire. To fill up his cabinet he chose some of the younger Whig leaders, who were ready to serve under him from their admiration for his personality. The chief of them were the Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne. But the Pitt-Grafton ministry lasted for a few months only. Pitt was growing old, and his powers were weakening. He felt the hard work of the House of Commons too much for him, and on taking office retired to the House of Lords as Earl of Chatham (July, 1766). But even there the strain over-taxed his strength. Less than a twelvemonth after he had taken office he was stricken down by illness, which took the form of brain-trouble. He grew incompetent to transact any business, and the cabinet which he had formed passed entirely under the control of his colleague, the Duke of Grafton.

The ministry of the Duke of Grafton proved the most disastrous that England has ever known, with the single exception of that of Grafton's immediate successor, Lord North. It was this Whig administration that finally renewed the struggle with America, which had been suspended since the repeal of the Stamp Act. With the duke's assent, Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, brought in a bill for raising in America duties on tea, glass, paper, and painter's colours. The whole was to bring in about £40,000 a year. Like the Stamp Act, this measure distinctly affirmed the right of England to tax her colonies without their consent. The Americans remembered that their previous resistance had been crowned with success, and commenced an agitation against the new act. A brisk fire of petitions was kept up by the houses of representatives of the various colonies, who besought the king—both publicly and privately—the House of Commons, and the ministers to remove the tax, restating their old theory of "No taxation without representation." Moreover, the colonies began formally to correspond with each other, and to find that the same spirit of discontent prevailed in all, a fact very ominous for the home government.

At the head of the thirteen colonies was Massachusetts, whose capital Boston was the largest town in America, and a very thriving port. Its seafaring population had the greatest objection to the new customs duties. Mobs were continually filling the streets to demonstrate against England, and as early as 1768 the rioting grew serious. In 1770 Boston saw the first bloodshed in the American quarrel. A party of soldiers, stoned by a mob till they could no longer keep their temper, fired and shot four or five rioters. This "massacre," as the colonists called it, brought the bitter feeling against England to a head.

The Grafton cabinet at home could not at all understand the feelings of the Americans. They supposed that it was the mere amount of the tax that was causing discontent, and contented themselves with pointing out that it was insignificant, not seeing that it was the principle of taxation, not the small sum actually levied, that was exasperating the colonists.

But the duke and his followers were not to see the end of the matter. In 1770 their day of reckoning with their master, the king, had arrived. George III. had been perpetually increasing his band of followers in the Commons, and the new Tory party was grown large enough, not only to hold the balance between two Whig cliques, but to make a bid for power on its own account.

The Grafton ministry fell before a double assault. Pitt, whose health had now recovered so far that he was able to appear in his seat in the House of Lords, was thundering at them for their misconduct of American affairs. But another difficulty was far more actively operative in their overthrow. The irrepressible John Wilkes had returned from France, had stood for the county of Middlesex, and had been elected. The cabinet declared him ineligible, on account of his old outlawry, and made the House of Commons expel him. Nothing daunted, Wilkes appeared as a candidate again, and was re-elected. Then Grafton and his majority enacted that the defeated opponent of Wilkes, who had received only three hundred votes, was the legitimate member for Middlesex. This iniquitous step roused public feeling; it was said that liberty was at an end if the ministry could appoint members of Parliament in defiance of the votes of the electors. Even Charles I. in his worst days had not falsified the results of elections, as the Whigs of Grafton's party were doing.

Stormed at by Pitt, scurrilously libelled by the able but malignant political writer who signed himself Junius, hooted down by the mob of London, and abandoned by the "King's Friends" in his moment of distress, Grafton resigned. It was generally thought that another Whig ministry would appear on the scene, probably an alliance between Pitt and Lord Rockingham. This, however, was not to be so. The king had been counting up his forces. Having upset in succession four different Whig ministries, he now thought himself strong enough to renew the experiment which he had tried in Bute's day.

Accordingly, the nation was surprised by the news that George had made Lord North prime minister. North was a parliamentary jobber of the same type as Newcastle. He was a good-natured, indolent man, of limited intelligence, but shrewd and business-like. He made his bargain with the king, and undertook to carry out his policy. He was the tool, George the hand that guided it.

For the next twelve years (1770-82) George ruled the nation according to his own ideas, and led it into the most slippery paths. His compact body of "King's Friends," aided by mercenary helpers from among the Whigs, preserved a constant majority in Parliament under the astute management of North. The old Whig clans raged in impotent wrath, but could not shake the ministry. Their expulsion from power had one good effect—it taught them to put some reality into their old assertion that they were the people's friends and the guardians of constitutional liberty. In their day of adversity they began to advocate real reforms, though in fifty years of power they had executed none. The younger men among them, such as the eloquent Edmund Burke, began to stir the questions of constitutional reform which were to be brought into play later on, as the new principles of the Whig party. They denounced parliamentary corruption, ministerial jobbing, and attacks on the liberty of the press, or the rights of the constituencies. Hints were dropped that the old rotten boroughs might be abolished, and more members given to the populous counties and cities.

But while the Whigs were talking of reforms, North and his master were actually engaged in bringing a much more exciting topic to the front. In four years they succeeded in plunging England into a desperate war with her Transatlantic colonies. The new ministry was determined to persevere with the old scheme of the Grenville and Grafton cabinets for taxing America. North, under his master's orders, remitted the taxes on paper and glass, but insisted on retaining that on tea. His persistence led to open violence in America. In 1773, a mob disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the tea-ships in Boston harbour, and cast the chests into the sea. The local authorities pretended that they could not discover the rioters. In high wrath, the Government resolved to punish the whole city of Boston. North produced a bill for closing its harbour to all commerce, and compelling the ships that had been wont to trade with it to go to the neighbouring port of Salem.

This unwise and arbitrary bill was followed by another yet more high-handed, which annulled the charter of the State of Massachusetts, depriving it of its house of representatives, and making it a crown colony, to be administered by government officials and judges sent out from England. This punishment far exceeded anything that the people of Boston had earned by their rioting, and made all the other colonies tremble for their own liberties.

The Massachusetts Government Act was the last straw which broke down the patience of the Americans. The representative bodies of all the colonies passed votes of sympathy with the people of Boston, and ordered a general fast. Soon after, they all resolved to send deputies to a "General Congress" at Philadelphia, in order to concert common measures for their defence against arbitrary government. This body, which had no legal status in the eye of the law, proceeded to act as if it were the central authority in North America. It issued a "Declaration of Rights," which set forth the points in which the liberties of the colonies were supposed to have been infringed. But it also took the strong step of declaring a kind of blockade against English commerce, by forbidding Americans to purchase any goods imported from the mother-country.

In view of this threatening aspect of affairs, Lord North began to send over troops to America, foreseeing that a collision might occur at any moment. He was not wrong; while fruitless attempts were being made to pacify the offended colonists without giving in to their demands, actual war broke out.

The House of Representatives of Massachusetts, when abolished by royal mandate, had migrated to Concord, and resumed its sittings there. Seeing that this act of contumacy must lead to an attempt to dissolve it by force, it called out the local militia, and began to collect munitions of war. General Gage, the governor of Boston, on hearing of this, sent out 800 men to seize and destroy these stores. This force was fired on by a small body of Massachusetts militia at Lexington, where the first blood shed in the war was spilt. After burning the stores, the British troops started to march back, but were set upon by the levies of the district, who kept up a running fight for several hours, and drove the regulars into Boston with a loss of 200 men (April 19, 1775).

This skirmish proved the beginning of a general war. When the news spread, all the colonies sent their militia into the field, and the Congress at Philadelphia formally assumed supreme authority, and named a commander-in-chief. This was George Washington, a Virginian planter, who had seen much service in the last French war, and was almost the only colonist who possessed a good military reputation. No choice could have been better; Washington was a staid, upright, energetic man, very different from the windy demagogues who led the rebellion in most of the colonies. His integrity and honesty of purpose made him respected by all, and his readiness of resource and unfailing cheerfulness and perseverance made him the idol of the willing but undisciplined bands who followed him to the field.

Ere Washington reached the seat of war in Massachusetts, a battle had been fought. The colonists were defeated, but not discouraged, for at the fight of Bunker's Hill (June 17, 1775), they maintained their entrenchments for some time against the regulars, and were only beaten out of them after a very stiff combat. General Gage, a very unenterprising man, was so disheartened by the losses of his troops that he did not follow up his victory, and allowed Washington to reorganize the beaten colonists and blockade Boston.

The struggle was now bound to be fought out to the end. When the Congress sent to London the "Olive Branch Petition," a last attempt at a peaceful settlement, the king bade Lord North return it unanswered, as coming from a body which had no legal existence. The small regular army of England—some 40,000 men scattered all over the world—was obviously unable to cope with so great a rebellion, so the government had to begin raising new regiments, and enlisting Hessian and Hanoverian auxiliaries in Germany.

While these new forces were being got ready—a whole year was consumed in preparation—the Americans had all their own way. In March, 1776, the royal troops were forced to evacuate Boston, the only stronghold that they held in the colonies. Three months later the Congress took the decisive step of throwing off all allegiance to England, by publishing the "Declaration of Independence," and forming the thirteen colonies into a federal republic (July 4, 1776).

Very shortly after, the English reinforcements began to appear, and General Howe with 20,000 men landed on Long Island, in the State of New York. For a moment it appeared as if the rebellion would collapse before this formidable army. Howe beat Washington at the battle of Brooklyn (August, 1776). He retook New York, and then landed on the mainland and overran New Jersey. The colonial army disbanded in utter dismay, and only four or five thousand men kept together under Washington.

But in the moment of victory the English began to realize the difficulty of their task. The land was everywhere hostile, and could only be held down by garrisons scattered broadcast. But America was so vast that enough men could not be found to garrison every port and city. When Howe began to distribute his men in small bodies, Washington swept down upon these isolated regiments and destroyed them. The English general was forced to halt, and to send home for yet further reinforcements.

He was not denied them, for George III. had set his heart on teaching the rebellious colonists that he could not be defied with impunity. While Howe was sent fresh regiments, and ordered to take Philadelphia, a new army of 8000 men was despatched to Canada under General Burgoyne, and bidden to march by Lake Champlain and the Hudson river, to attack the colonies in the rear. Meanwhile a third force from New York was to ascend the Hudson and lend a helping hand to Burgoyne.

Half of this plan only was executed. Howe won the battle of Brandywine over Washington and took Philadelphia, but Burgoyne failed lamentably. The distance he had to cover was too great; after struggling with difficulty across the wilderness that divided Canada from the States, he found himself with a half-starved army at Saratoga. Here he was beset by all the militia of the New England States under General Gates. They outnumbered him by two to one, and held strong positions in woods and hills which he could not force. The troops from New York failed to come to his aid, his retreat on Canada was cut off, and after hard fighting he laid down his arms, with 5000 starving men, the remnant of his much-tried army (October 17, 1777).

The news of the surrender at Saratoga flew all round the world, and had the most disastrous consequences. Judging that England had at last involved herself in a fatal struggle, her old enemy France resolved to take her revenge for all that she had suffered in the Seven Years' War. The ministers of the young king, Lewis XVI., thought that they might now win back Canada and India, and shatter the commercial and colonial supremacy that Britain had gained by the treaty of Paris. In December, 1777, France recognized the independence of America. In February, 1778, she declared war on England. Spain, bound as of old by the "Family Compact" of the Bourbons, and eager to win back Minorca and Gibraltar, followed suit in the next year. Holland was added to our enemies in 1780.

The interference of France profoundly modified the face of the war. Instead of a mere local struggle between England and her colonists, it became a general contention all over the world for the same prize that had been disputed in the Seven Years' War—the empire of the sea. But this time England had not only to fight her old foes, but her own children. Moreover, she was deprived of the aid of Frederic of Prussia, the most useful of allies in the old contest; for, disgusted by the conduct of Bute and George III. in 1762, he refused to hear of any renewed alliance with England.

Nothing could have been more difficult than the problem which England had now to face. With all her disposable army over-sea in America, she found herself threatened by an invasion at home, and saw her possessions all over the world beset by France and Spain. Gibraltar and Minorca, the West Indies, and all our other outlying posts, were held by garrisons of wholly inadequate strength. The fleet, which, owing to the continental character of the American struggle, had been hitherto neglected, was suddenly called upon to act as our main line of defence, and proved too small for its task.

King George was as obstinate and courageous as he was narrow-minded. With a firm resolution that was admirable but unwise, he stood forth to face the whole world in arms, without yielding an inch. It was in vain that the aged William Pitt, whom the news of foreign war called out from his retirement, came down to the House of Lords to speak for reconciliation with America at all costs. He urged that we must not fight our own kith and kin, but seek peace with them, and turn all our forces against the foreign foe. After an impassioned harangue he fainted in his seat in the House, and was carried home to die (May 11, 1778).

The French commenced the war by sending supplies and money to America. Soon after, they despatched a fleet and an army to the same quarter. This had a marked effect on the face of the war. The English lost, in 1778, all their strongholds in the colonies except the island city of New York. But this reverse only led the king to try a new attack on the Americans. The southern states of Georgia and Carolina were known to be less zealous for the cause of American independence than the other colonies, and to contain many loyalists. It was resolved to transfer the English army to this quarter (1779).

Accordingly Lord Cornwallis, an able and active officer, was charged with the invasion of the South. For a time the English carried all before them. They took Savannah and Charleston, and overran all Georgia and South Carolina. Many of the loyal colonists took arms in their favour, and it seemed that England would save at least a part of her ancient inheritance. The American Government was much alarmed, and sent southward all its disposable troops, headed by Gates, the victor of Saratoga. But Cornwallis beat this large army at Camden (August, 1780), and added North Carolina to his previous conquests. But with a mere 10,000 men scattered all over three vast States, he was unable to maintain any very firm hold on the country, and his flanks and rear were harassed by predatory bands of partisans, who slipped round to raise trouble behind him. He treated these guerillas as brigands, and shot some of them when captured, a proceeding which served no end but to exasperate the Americans.

Persevering in his ideas of conquest, Cornwallis in 1781 collected his army, and, leaving a very scanty garrison behind him, set out to invade Virginia. He beat the Americans at Guildford Court House (March 15), and chased La Fayette, a young French officer who was commanding the colonists in this quarter, into the interior of Virginia. But finding his army worn out with long marches and incessant fighting, he dropped down on to Yorktown, a seaport on the peninsula of the same name, to recruit himself with food and reinforcements from the English fleet, which had been ordered to meet him there.