The ultimate cause of the disaster was Lord George Germain. Here is Carleton’s judgement upon the matter, contained in a letter to Burgoyne dated the following Carleton on Lord George Germain. 12th of November, ‘This unfortunate event, it is to be hoped, will in future prevent ministers from pretending to direct operations of war, in a country at 3,000 miles distance, of which they have so little knowledge as not to be able to distinguish between good, bad, or interested advices, or to give positive orders in matters which from their nature are ever upon the change.’ The more Character of Burgoyne. immediate cause was the character of Burgoyne. His condemnation is written in his own dispatch.

‘The bulk of the enemy’s army was hourly joined by new corps of militia and volunteers, and their numbers together amounted to upwards of 16,000 men. After the execution of the treaty General Gates drew together the force that had surrounded my position, and I had the consolation to have as many witnesses as I had men under my command, of its amounting to the numbers mentioned above.’

Why had the 16,000 men gathered round him? Because he had given them time to do so, because in the hour of need his thought was rather of saving his own reputation than of saving the force under his command. Would Wolfe, weakly and suffering, have waited helplessly for something to turn up, looking for co-operation from Amherst in the far distance, as Burgoyne looked for it from Clinton? Would he have found consolation in allowing the enemy’s numbers to grow and counting up how far superior they were to his own? Would he have been at pains to make the story plausible and dramatic, so that he might hold up his head thereafter in London circles and retain the favour of those who were in high places? It was not English to court surrender, and to cast about for excuse for surrender. Had Chatham been in Germain’s place, no such foolhardy expedition would have been ordered cut and dried from England. Had Wolfe been in Burgoyne’s, if success was possible he would have achieved it, if it was impossible he would have redeemed failure or died. Military skill, daring, manhood, self-reliance, leadership of soldiers and of men, were the qualities which less than twenty years before had shone out in dark days round Quebec; the same qualities seemed dead or numbed, when Burgoyne bade his men lay down their arms by the banks of the Hudson river.

The story of this ill-fated expedition has been told at some length because it is part and parcel of the history of Canada. The scene of the later years of the War of Independence was the Atlantic seaboard; and Canada, except on her western borders, though threatened, was unmolested. The surrender of Burgoyne’s army by no means finished the fighting, the English were still to win Consequences of the disaster. barren successes before the final catastrophe at Yorktown; but after Saratoga the war entered upon a wholly new stage. The surrender in itself was serious enough. No colonists had in modern history achieved so great a triumph, no such disaster had ever clouded British arms in the story of her colonization. The Preface of the Annual Register for 1777 refers to the ‘awful aspect of the times’, awful indeed to a country whose best men had no faith in her cause. But the great practical result which followed on the reverse of Saratoga, the result which eventually decided the war, was that the French The French intervene in the war. now joined hands with the Americans, and the latter thereby secured the help of a fleet, strong enough, when the Spaniards at a later date also entered the ranks of England’s enemies, to compete with the British navy on the western seas.

While, however, the intervention of France greatly increased the difficulties with which Great Britain had to contend at this critical time of her history, for the moment it made the war more popular in England, inasmuch as Englishmen were now called upon to fight against their The French alliance with the Americans tended to protect Canada from invasion. old rivals and not merely against their kinsfolk. In another respect too it was of distinct advantage to the British Empire, in that it brought to Canada immunity from invasion. The American colonists welcomed French aid in securing their independence, but they had no mind to restore Canada to France, and they looked with suspicion on any proposal or utterance which might seem to point in that direction. Though the French in their treaty with the United States disclaimed any intention of national aggrandizement in America,[149] Admiral D’Estaing, in October, 1778, a few months after his arrival in American waters, issued a proclamation to the Canadians, appealing to their French nationality; and Lafayette proposed a scheme for an invasion of Canada which Congress accepted but Washington set aside. There was sufficient uneasiness in American minds with regard to French designs to restrict French co-operation in the main to the Atlantic side; and, though the Canadians were excited by their countrymen’s appeal, they did not rise in arms themselves, nor did the Americans attempt to repeat the movement by which Montgomery had over-run the country up to the walls of Quebec.

It would not indeed have been easy for them to do so, for Carleton and his successor Haldimand, though badly in need of reinforcements, were yet better prepared and had more men at their command than when the war first broke out. Immediately after Burgoyne’s capitulation Precautions taken in Canada against invasion. Ticonderoga and Crown Point were abandoned, and the troops were withdrawn to the northern end of Lake Champlain. A year later Haldimand directed the whole country round the lake to be cleared of settlement and cultivation, as a safeguard against American invasion. At various points, where such invasion might take place, he established posts, on an island at the opening of Lake Ontario, which was named Carleton Island; at the Isle aux Noix at the head of the Richelieu river, and at Sorel at its mouth: on the river St. Francis which joins the St. Lawrence below Sorel, flowing from the direction of Vermont: and on the Chaudière river over against Quebec, lest Arnold’s inroad by the line of that river should be repeated.

Nor was this all. As in Count Frontenac’s time, and with much the same ruthlessness as in those earlier days, Canada was defended by counter attacks upon the border settlements of the revolting colonies, Loyalists and Indians dealing the blows and bearing the penalties. In May and June of 1778, Brant harried the New York frontier and burnt the town of Springfield; in July, in order, it was said, to counteract American designs against Niagara, Colonel John Butler, with a force of Rangers and Indians, carried war far into the enemy’s country and uprooted the settlements at Wyoming, on the eastern branch of the Susquehanna river within the borders of Pennsylvania. Fact and fiction have combined to keep alive the memories of the massacre at Wyoming; and, together with the even more terrible tragedy of Cherry Valley which followed, it stands to the discredit of England in the story of these most barbarous border wars.[150] In September the Mohawk leader burnt to the ground the houses and barns at the German Flatts, though the settlers had been warned in time to take refuge in Fort Dayton. In November Brant joined forces with Walter Butler, son of the raider of Wyoming; and together they carried death and desolation into the Cherry Valley settlement in Tryon county. In the following year the Americans took a terrible revenge for these doings, and a strong force under General John Sullivan turned the country of the Six Nation Indians into a wilderness. ‘General Sullivan,’ wrote Washington to Lafayette, ‘has completed the entire destruction of the country of the Six Nations, driven all the inhabitants, men, women, and children out of it’.

Further west, in 1778 and 1779, the Illinois region and the settlements on the middle Mississippi fell into American hands, never to be regained, the leader of the backwoodsmen in this quarter being George Rogers Clark, a young Virginian, one of the pioneers of settlement in Kentucky, a most able leader and a hard determined man. In July, 1778, Clark surprised and took the fort and settlement of Kaskaskia standing on the river of that name a little above its junction with the Mississippi, and immediately afterwards he received the submission of the post at Vincennes on the Wabash river. A few months later, in December, 1778, Vincennes was re-occupied by Hamilton, Lieutenant-Governor of Detroit, with a handful of men. Before the following February ended, Hamilton was in turn attacked and overpowered by Clark who carried out a daring winter march; and, being forced to surrender at discretion, the English commander was, according to English accounts, treated through long months of imprisonment with unmerited harshness. The truth was that, as the war went on, bitterness increased, and when, as in the West and on the border the combatants were backwoodsmen, Rangers and Indians, the fighting became a series of ruthless reprisals.

Later again, in 1780 and 1781, parties sent out from Canada retraced the routes taken by Burgoyne and St. Leger, harried the country at the southern end of Lakes George and Champlain, and laid waste the settlements in the Mohawk valley. In one, commanded by Major Carleton, brother of the late governor of Canada, Fort Anne and Fort George were taken with their garrisons; in another, on the line of the Mohawk, Major Ross, advancing from Oswego, inflicted heavy loss on the Americans. In all these expeditions on either side there was the same object, to prevent invasion by counter invasion, to destroy stores, and to terrorize the adherents of the enemy; but none of them, except the exploits of Clark, contributed materially to the issue of the war.

On or near the Atlantic coast-line of Canada, in 1779, fighting took place which might well have had lasting results. An expedition was sent in that year from Halifax to the Penobscot river, commanded by Maclean, who had done good service under Carleton at the time of the American invasion. In June he established himself at Castine at the mouth of the Penobscot; and, inasmuch as the place was then within the borders of Massachusetts, he was towards the end of July attacked by a small squadron and a force of militia sent from and paid for by that state. For between two or three weeks the Americans besieged the British post until, towards the end of the second week in August, British ships under Sir George Collier appeared on the scene, and all the American vessels were taken or destroyed. Maclean’s expedition was repeated with equal success by Sir John Sherbrooke in the war of 1812, but neither enterprise produced the permanent result of making the Penobscot river, as it should have been, the boundary between Canada and the United States.

It has been seen that in June, 1777, Carleton sent in his resignation of the governorship of Canada. Burgoyne wrote privately to Germain at the end of July, before he started on his expedition, to decline the appointment in case it should be offered to him; and in August, 1777, General Haldimand, who was then at home in Switzerland, was nominated as Carleton’s successor. He was ordered to go out as soon as possible in a ship which, as Germain wrote to Carleton on the 19th of October, was to bring the latter home, but did not leave England till the end of April or beginning of May following, arriving at Quebec at the end of June, 1778. Carleton then immediately returned to England, and was received with honour by the King to the disgust of Lord George Germain.

General Haldimand, Sir Frederick Haldimand as he afterwards was, governed Canada till the end of 1784, and he governed it, in thankless times, strongly and well. In the year 1778 he was sixty years of age, having been born in 1718. Like his great friend Henry Bouquet, he was a Swiss. His birthplace was Yverdon at the south-western end of the lake of Neuchâtel, and there he died in 1791, the year in which the Canada Act was passed. There is a tablet to his memory in Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. His career was that of a soldier of fortune. With Bouquet, he served the Stadtholder of the Netherlands in a regiment of Swiss Guards; and in 1754[151] the two officers entered the British service as lieutenant-colonels of the newly-raised regiment of Royal Americans. He fought under Abercromby at Ticonderoga, and afterwards served under Amherst; and in 1759, while rebuilding the fort at Oswego, he beat off a force of Canadians and Indians commanded by St. Luc de la Corne, who in later days was a member of his Legislative Council at Quebec. After the capitulation of Montreal, being a French-speaking officer, he was selected by Amherst to take possession of the city. He subsequently acted as governor of Three Rivers, and when to his great grief Bouquet died at Pensacola in 1765, Haldimand, in 1767, succeeded his friend in the command in Florida. In 1773 he went to New York to act for General Gage while the latter was on leave in England. In 1775 he was brought back to England, and in 1778 he went out to govern Canada.

Haldimand was a man of the Carleton type; and, before he left London to take up his appointment, he wrote to Germain to the effect that he should be given full discretion in military matters, and, as civil governor, have the nomination to all appointments. Like Carleton, he was attacked by the partisans of Congress in Canada as a military despot, the enemy of civil liberties, the best known case against him being that of Du Calvet,[152] a French Protestant, who was in 1780 arrested and imprisoned for encouraging and abetting treason, and who subsequently published his case against the governor in London. That Du Calvet was a traitor there seems to have been no doubt, but his charges against the governor coloured the view which was commonly taken in after years of Haldimand’s administration. None the less, whatever may have been the technical merits of this and other individual cases, it is beyond question that, at a time when England was badly served both at home and abroad, in the most critical years, and in Canada where the position was most difficult, she was conspicuously well served by Carleton and Haldimand. Haldimand governed a community, in which the minority, as in Carleton’s time, was largely disaffected, and the loyalty of the majority was undermined by French appeals. From day to day the danger of attack at this point or at that was imminent, while there was constant risk that the supplies which came over the sea would be intercepted by French ships or American privateers. In England Haldimand’s master was still the same self-willed, half-informed minister Germain. In Canada there were few that he could trust. Yet solitary in public as in private life—for he had no wife or child—he held the reins of government with a firm and an honest hand, a good servant of England though of foreign birth. If Canada at the present day be compared with the province of Quebec which the Peace of 1763 gave into British keeping, the three main elements in the evolution of the great Dominion will be found to have been British immigration, canals, and railways. Railways, opening the North-West and linking the two oceans, date from long after Haldimand’s time; but he was governor when the first steps were taken to improve the waterways of Canada, and he watched over the incoming of the United Empire Loyalists.

Not the least of Haldimand’s difficulties was that he had to negotiate peace and wage war at the same time, for, while directing or controlling border raids at other points on the Canadian frontier, he had on his hands, from 1779 onwards, troublesome and in the end abortive negotiations with the settlers in the present state of Vermont. Of the character of these settlers he seems to have had but a poor opinion, their lawless antecedents no doubt not being to his mind. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys had not been animated by American patriotism alone when at the beginning of the war they took Ticonderoga. They had in their minds to put themselves in evidence and to vindicate their claim to be free of New York. While the war went on, and after it ended, their determination to be an independent state was as strong as ever; and their negotiations with Canada were an intimation to Congress that the price of their continued adhesion to the continental cause must be recognition of their local independence. The policy had the immediate merit of giving them a respite from Canadian raids, and it left open a choice of future issues. The Vermont men knew the value or the weakness of their geographical position as regards Canada. It was patent then as it was in the later war of 1812. In a private letter to Lord North, dated the 24th of October, 1783,[153] Haldimand wrote, ‘Since the provisional treaty has been made public, several persons of influence in the state of Vermont have been here at different times, they all agree in describing these people as very averse to Congress and its measures.... They made no scruple of telling me that Vermont must either be annexed to Canada or become mistress of it, as it is the only channel by which the produce of their country can be conveyed to a market, but they assured me that they rather wished the former.’ The Vermont settlers were, in short, like many states and many individuals before and since, on the fence; but in the end they were neither annexed to Canada nor did they become mistress of her, for in 1791 Vermont became a state of the American Union, and Canada worked out her own salvation.

Haldimand’s dispatches might have been written by Carleton. There is the same point of view, almost the same turn of expression. On the 25th of October, 1780, in a long dispatch to Lord George Germain, giving an account of the general conditions of men and things in Canada, he wrote, ‘As it is my duty, it has been my business to inform myself of the state of the country, and I coincide with the majority of the Legislative Council in considering the Canadians as the people of the country, and think that in making laws and regulations for the administration of these laws, regard is to be paid to the sentiments and manner of thinking of 60,000 rather than of 2,000—three-fourths of whom are traders and cannot with propriety be considered as residents of the province. In this point of view the Quebec Act was both just and politic, though unfortunately for the British Empire it was enacted ten years too late. It requires but little penetration to discover that, had the system of government solicited by the old subjects been adopted in Canada, this colony would in 1775 have become one of the United States of America.’[154] Three years later, when the war was over, in his letter to Lord North referred to above, he wrote ‘This province can only be preserved by bringing back the Canadians to a regular subordination, and by rendering them useful as a well-disciplined militia. In order to effectuate this, the authority of government must be strengthened and not diminished’.[155]

Like Carleton and like Murray, Haldimand had it at heart to provide the people of Canada with an upright and kindly administration. Among the various grievances, real or alleged, which were ventilated from time to time, one of the most substantial, so far as the French Canadians were concerned, was the excessive amount which was exacted from them by officials and lawyers in the form of fees of office. In 1780 Haldimand assented to an ordinance regulating the fees for two years, at the expiration of which time he hoped that the Legislature would, from the experience gained in the meantime, be able to draw up ‘a more perfect list of fees, more permanent and less burthensome to the people’ for, he wrote, ‘the fees in general are by far too high and more than the people of this province can bear.’[156] A favourite complaint of the British minority, who had as little to complain of as they were loud and persistent in complaining, was that there was no statutory provision for the right of Habeas Corpus, which was supposed to have been abolished by the Quebec Act. When peace was restored and the step could safely be taken, Haldimand met this grievance by passing, in 1784, an ordinance ‘for securing the liberty of the subject and for the prevention of imprisonments out of this province’.[157] When reporting the passing of the fees ordinance Haldimand wrote, ‘Sir Guy Carleton had in the sessions 1775 proposed to regulate the fees of office, and had that business very much at heart. Committees were appointed for that salutory purpose and, though many obstacles were thrown in the way, great progress was made. The ordinance was lost for that time by Sir Guy Carleton’s putting an end to the session in consequence of motions made in council by Mr. Livius and others’.[158] He himself suffered from similar obstruction; his dispatch goes on to refer to members of his council, ‘who, however willing they may be to circumscribe the King’s authority in measures of general utility to his service and the welfare of his people, are for carrying on to the greatest height his prerogative to grant Letters Patent for the emolument of individuals though to the oppression of the people’. As the outcome of the Livius case, two additional Royal Instructions had been issued to Haldimand, dated the 29th of March, 1779. The first prohibited him from interpreting the words in the general instructions ‘It is our further Will and Pleasure that any five of the said council shall constitute a board of council for transacting all business in which their advice and consent may be requisite, acts of legislation only excepted’, as Carleton had interpreted them, namely, as authorizing the governor to select five particular members of the Legislative Council to form an Executive or Privy Council; and it instructed him to communicate this decision to the council. The second instructed him to communicate to the council ‘such and so many of our said instructions, wherein their advice and consent are made requisite, with such others from time to time as you shall judge for our service to be imparted to them’.[159] Haldimand did not at once communicate these additional instructions to his council. He thought that at the time it was not for the public interest to do so, and he wrote to Germain to that effect, but only brought upon himself a severe reprimand alike from Germain and from the Board of Trade. Equally he thought it inadvisable, under existing circumstances, to communicate to his council certain clauses in the general instructions, in which the Home Government practically invited the Quebec Legislative Council to modify the Quebec Act, recommending the introduction to some extent of English civil law and also statutory provision for Habeas Corpus. Like Carleton he saw things face to face, as a soldier not as a constitutional lawyer, and he gave advice according to existing conditions, which were those of war and not of peace. These two governors may have been technically wrong in this point or in that, but they had the root of the matter in them, they governed with a single eye, a firm hand, and with most generous and humane intent. ‘Party spirit,’ Haldimand wrote to Germain, ‘is the enemy of every private as well as public virtue. Since my arrival in the province I have steered clear of all parties and have taken great care not to enter into the resentments of my predecessor or his friends, but this present occasion obliges me to declare to your lordship that in general Mr. Livius’ conduct has not impressed people with a favourable idea of his moderation.’[160] There was no party spirit about Carleton, nor yet about Haldimand. In a bad time, when partisanship was rife, they stood for the good name of England, and for the substance of sound and honest administration.

At the same time that Haldimand relieved Carleton, Sir Henry Clinton took over from Howe the command of the army at Philadelphia. He arrived there at the beginning of May, 1778, and at the end of the month Howe left for England. The abandonment of Philadelphia had been ordered from home, in view of the new complications produced by the intervention of France in the war. All the available ships carried off to New York, stores, baggage, and numbers of Loyalists, while Clinton retreated with his army overland through New Jersey. On the 18th of June he left Philadelphia, which was immediately re-occupied by the Americans, and for a fortnight, closely followed by Washington, he slowly made his way in the heat of the summer through the enemy’s country. On the 28th of June in what is known as the battle of Monmouth, near Freehold Court House, he fought a rearguard action with Lee, who commanded the advance of Washington’s army: and, thereby covering his retreat, reached Sandy Hook, and on the 5th of July carried over his troops to New York.

D’Estaing and a French squadron had now appeared on the scene, threatened New York, and in co-operation with the American general Sullivan attacked the English in Rhode Island. Bad weather, the skill and seamanship of Admiral Howe, and the preparations made by the English commander on shore, rendered the expedition abortive, and the summer closed without decisive success on either side.

Later in the year, an expedition under Colonel Campbell, was dispatched to the south, and landing at the end of December near Savannah, the capital of the colony of Savannah taken by the English. Georgia, by a skilful movement took the town and captured the whole of the garrison and stores. General Prevost, who arrived from Florida shortly afterwards and took over command of the British troops in Georgia, advanced into South Carolina and, in May, 1779, threatened Charleston, but was compelled to retreat. In September D’Estaing’s fleet appeared before Savannah; on the 9th of October a combined French and American force attempted to re-take the town, but were beaten off with heavy loss: and in the spring of 1780 Clinton arrived with Clinton takes command in the south. a large body of troops from New York to direct operations in the southern states. A year and a half had passed since he had brought off his army from Philadelphia, and little had been done. There had been fighting on the Hudson, the coasts of Virginia and the New England colonies had been harried, small towns had been sacked and burnt, and stores and ships destroyed, causing damage and distress to the Americans but also unwisely embittering the war. Now the English garrison at Rhode Island had been withdrawn and, while New York was still strongly held, the main efforts on the British side were directed to re-conquering the southern states, where Loyalist sympathies were strong and widely spread.

Charleston was the main point of attack. It was bravely defended for several weeks by General Lincoln, but his communications were cut by Clinton’s stronger force, the investment was gradually completed, and on the 12th of May, 1780, the town was surrendered and the garrison became prisoners of war. This success was followed by the annihilation of another small body of American troops, on which occasion Tarleton, the British commander, was accused of indiscriminate slaughter. Clinton having returned to New York, the command in Cornwallis. the south devolved on Cornwallis, whose campaigns in 1780 and 1781 were the closing scenes of the war. He began with a great success. General Gates had been sent south to take command of the American forces in the Carolinas, and, having collected an army which largely outnumbered the troops at the disposal of Cornwallis, The battle of Camden. marched to attack the latter at Camden to the north-west of Charleston. Cornwallis resolved on a counter attack; and, after a night march on either side, the two forces came into collision near Camden at dawn on the 16th of August. After hard fighting the Americans gave way before a British bayonet charge and a rout ensued, which was supplemented by a further small victory gained by Tarleton over the American general Sumter, who had previously intercepted Cornwallis’ communications and captured a convoy and some prisoners. Cornwallis now advanced into North Carolina, but behind him the backwoodsmen gathered, and on the 7th of October overwhelmed, after heavy fighting, a strong detachment of Loyalists under Major Ferguson at a place called King’s Mountain. This reverse had the same King’s Mountain. effect as the fights at Trenton or Bennington. Cornwallis had to fall back, the American cause revived in the south, and the extraordinary difficulty of dealing with guerilla warfare in an immense territory was once more effectively illustrated. In December Gates was superseded by an abler and more trustworthy general, Nathaniel Greene.

In the north no decisive action took place during the year. The English made an incursion into New Jersey, without producing any effect. A French fleet and army under de Rochambeau arrived at Rhode Island, where Clinton would have attacked them in force but for want of co-operation on the part of the English admiral Arbuthnot. The American cause received a heavy blow in the treachery of Arnold, and on the other hand, before the close of the year, the Dutch were added to the long list of enemies against whom England was maintaining an unequal struggle.

With the opening of the new year, 1781, Cornwallis moved northwards. In the middle of January the light troops from his force, who were under Tarleton’s command, were heavily defeated by the American general Morgan, at Cowpens near the border line between South and North Carolina. Having received reinforcements, Cornwallis Cowpens. still advanced, Greene falling back before him until he had collected a larger number of men than the English general had at his disposal. The two forces met near Guilford Court House on the 15th of March, under much Guilford Court House. the same conditions as had preceded the fight at Camden; and after an even fight the English were victorious, though with a loss of about one-third of their small army. After the battle, Cornwallis fell back for a while towards Wilmington, and, as the Americans were again active behind him in South Carolina, debated whether to continue his efforts to stamp out resistance in the south, or to march forward into Virginia where there was now a strong British force, commanded at first by Arnold and Cornwallis in Virginia. afterwards by Burgoyne’s colleague General Phillips, who were opposed by Lafayette. He determined on the northward movement and effected a junction with Phillips’ troops, their commander having in the meantime died at Petersburg in Virginia late in May.

The fighting went on in the Carolinas with varying success. On the 25th of April Lord Rawdon, who was then in command, defeated Greene at Hobkirk’s Hill. In September his successor Colonel Stuart fought a drawn battle at Eutaw Springs, but the Americans secured one point and another, and the balance of the campaign was against the British cause. In Virginia Cornwallis and Lafayette manœuvred against each other, the British operations being hampered by the apprehension of a combined attack in force by the French and Americans on New York, which led Clinton to order the return of a part of the army in Virginia. The order was countermanded, but Cornwallis was instructed to take up a Cornwallis takes up a position at Yorktown. defensive position in touch with the sea, and in August he concentrated his troops at Yorktown on the bank of the York river, where a peninsula is formed by that river and the James flowing into the mouth of Chesapeake Bay; the village of Gloucester on the opposite side of the York river was also held. It was not a strong position, and all depended on keeping command, of the water. For once the English lost the command, and the consequence was the loss of the army.

At the end of March a strong French fleet under de Grasse sailed from Brest for the West Indies. After a few weeks’ operations among the islands, and taking Tobago, de Grasse made for Cap François in Hayti and found dispatches from Washington. Taking on board 3,500 French soldiers, he sailed for the North American coast and reached the Chesapeake at the end of August. The object was to co-operate with Washington and de Rochambeau in blockading Cornwallis and compelling him to surrender. Meanwhile a French squadron at Newport in Rhode Island, under de Barras, put out to sea with a convoy containing the siege train, making a wide circuit in order to escape detection by the English ships and join de Grasse in Chesapeake Bay. On land Lafayette, strengthened by a body of Pennsylvanians, already harassed Cornwallis, especially charged to prevent as far as possible a retreat to the south; while de Rochambeau from Rhode Island joined Washington who was facing New York, and the combined army, after threatening an attack on Clinton, crossed the Hudson in August, marched through New Jersey to Philadelphia, and passing on to Virginia, with the help of French transports appeared before Yorktown in the latter end of September. Cornwallis besieged at Yorktown. Cornwallis was now besieged by 16,000 men on land and an overwhelming fleet at sea.

The movement had been well planned and skilfully executed. Clinton at New York had been misled by a feint of attack, and on the sea the English had been found wanting. When Rodney learnt that de Grasse had left the West Indies for the North American coast, in ill health himself and about to leave for England, he dispatched Sir Samuel Hood in pursuit with fourteen ships of the line. A stronger force was needed and had apparently been intended by Rodney. Hood reached the Chesapeake three or four days before de Grasse arrived, and passing on to New York came under the Ineffective movements of the English fleet. orders of a senior officer, Admiral Graves, who had at the time but five ships with him. The combined squadron sailed for the Chesapeake, and found that de Grasse had forestalled them with a stronger fleet. They attacked on the 5th of September, with no decisive result on either side: for three or four days longer the two fleets faced each other, then Graves returned to New York and de Grasse went back to block Cornwallis, his manœuvres having enabled de Barras in the meantime to bring in his ships in safety to the Chesapeake.

Cornwallis was now in hopeless case, unless Clinton could relieve him. Expectation of relief was given, the 5th of October being named as the day on which the relieving force would probably leave New York. On the night of the 5th the Americans began their trenches, on the 9th the guns opened fire: after a week’s fighting, on the 17th, Cornwallis treated for surrender; and on the 19th, the day on which Clinton actually sailed from New York to bring the promised aid, the British army laid down their arms, sickness having reduced the number of fighting men from 7,000 to barely 4,000.

Four years had passed almost to the day since the similar disaster at Saratoga. The second surrender practically finished the war, though there was still some small fighting in the south, the English being driven back to Charleston and Savannah. Savannah was eventually evacuated in July, 1782, and Charleston in the following December, by which date terms of peace between Great Britain and the United States had already been signed. Meanwhile in England Carleton had been Carleton succeeds Clinton. nominated to take the place of Clinton as Commander-in-Chief in America, Germain resigned, and in March, 1782, Lord North’s ministry came to an end. The Whigs came in pledged to make peace, Rockingham being Prime Minister and Shelburne and Fox Secretaries of State. Within four months Lord Rockingham died, and Shelburne Negotiations for peace. became Prime Minister, Fox leaving the Government, and the younger Pitt joining it as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Already negotiations for peace were proceeding at Paris, where Richard Oswald, a nominee of Shelburne’s, had been treating with Franklin, complaisantly entertaining every American demand. Rodney’s great victory over de Grasse in the battle of the Saints, on the 12th of April, 1782, enabled England to speak with a firmer voice. The failure in September of the combined efforts of France and Spain to take Gibraltar again added strength: and Shelburne’s ministry was enabled to conclude a peace, which, if it contrasted sadly with the triumphant Treaty of 1763, was at least far from being the capitulation of a ruined Power. On the 30th of November, 1782, articles were signed between Peace concluded and the Independence of the United States recognized. Oswald, on behalf of Great Britain, and the Commissioners of the United States, ‘to be inserted in and to constitute the treaty of Peace’ which was to be concluded when Great Britain and France had come to terms. On the 20th of January, 1783, Preliminary Articles of Peace were signed between Great Britain and France on the one hand and between Great Britain and Spain on the other; and on the following 3rd of September the Peace of Versailles was finally concluded, treaties being made by Great Britain with France, Spain, and the United States, a treaty with the Netherlands having been signed on the previous day. Under the first article of the treaty with the United States the King of England acknowledged the thirteen colonies then forming the United States to be ‘free sovereign and Independent States’.

At the time of the late war in South Africa an analogy was sometimes drawn between that war and the War of American Independence. In some respects there was similarity. In either case a group of British colonies was primarily concerned, and in either case the British Government was faced with the difficulty of transporting large bodies of troops across the sea to a distant scene of war, America in the eighteenth century before the days of steam being for all practical purposes more remote than South Africa in our own time. There were two distinct spheres of operations in America in the earlier years of the war, Canada and the Atlantic states, just as in South Africa the war was divided between Natal and the Cape Colony; and the Boer invasion of Natal and investment of Ladysmith to some extent recalls the overrunning of Canada by Montgomery’s troops and the hemming up of Carleton inside Quebec. In both cases there was the same kind of half knowledge of the country and its conditions in the public mind in Great Britain, and, curiously enough, in either case the estimate seems to have been most at fault where fighting had been most recent; in Natal, where less than twenty years had elapsed since the previous Boer war, and on the line of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, presumed to be well known to many who had served at a somewhat shorter interval of time under Abercromby and Amherst, and who encouraged Germain to give his confident instructions to Burgoyne for a march to Albany. Distance, transport, supplies, communications, rather than hard fighting, were the main elements of either war; and the description of the American war given in the Annual Register for 1777, which has been already quoted,[161] that it was ‘a war of posts, surprises, and skirmishes instead of a war of battles’, would apply equally to the South African war. But here the likeness ceases, and no real parallel can be drawn between the two contests. The American war was a civil war, Englishmen were fighting Englishmen. The war in South Africa was a war between two rival races. In the earlier war the great forces which have been embodied in British colonization, mental and physical vigour, forwardness and tenacity, the forces of youth, which have the keeping of the future, were in the main ranged against the mother country: in the later war they contributed, as never before, to the sum of national patriotism. In the earlier war foreign nations intervened, with fatal effect, and the sea power of England was crippled. In the later, the struggle was kept within its original limits and British ships went unmolested to and from South Africa. Not least of all, while on the former occasion ministers at home tried to do the work of the generals on the spot, Carleton’s bitter comments on the disastrous result, which have been quoted above[162], could in no sense be applied to the later crisis. As bearing on this last point, Effect on war of submarine cables. it is interesting to speculate what would have happened had submarine cables existed in the days of King George the Third. The telegraph invites and facilitates interference from home. It tends to minimize the responsibility, and to check the initiative, of the men on the spot: and if the cables which now connect England and America, had been in existence in the years 1776 and 1777, it might be supposed that the commanders in America would have been even more hampered than they were by the meddling of the King, and his ministers. But the evil was that, in the absence of the telegraph, interference could not be corrected, and co-operation could not be ensured. Germain laid down a rigid plan: a second-rate man received precise instructions which he felt bound to follow against his own judgement; and for want of sure and speedy communication the cause was lost. It is impossible to suppose that even the King and Germain would have refused to modify their plans, had they known what was passing from day to day or from week to week: in other words, the invention which more than any other has opened a door to undue interference, would probably in the case in point have done most to remedy the ignorant meddling which was the prime cause of the disaster at Saratoga.

The War of American Independence was ‘by far the most dangerous in which the British nation was ever involved’.[163] It was seen at the time that its issues would colour all future history and modify for ever political and commercial systems, but no prophet seemed to contemplate a colonial future for Great Britain, and Benjamin Franklin said ‘he would furnish Mr. Gibbon with materials for writing the history of the Decline of the British Empire’.[164] Yet the present broad-based Imperial system of Great Britain was for two reasons the direct outcome of that war. While the United States were still colonial possessions of Great Britain, they Effects of the American War of Independence on the British Empire as a whole. overshadowed all others; and, had they remained British possessions, their preponderance would in all probability have steadily increased. It is quite possible that the centre of the Empire might have been shifted to the other side of the Atlantic; it is almost certain that the colonial expansion of Great Britain would have been mainly confined to North America. Nothing has been more marked and nothing sounder in our recent colonial history than the comparative uniformity of development in the British Empire. In those parts of the world which have been settled and not merely conquered by Europeans, and which are still British possessions, in British North America, Australasia, and South Africa, there has been on the whole parity of progress. No one of the three groups of colonies has in wealth and population wholly out-distanced the others. This fact has unquestionably made for strength and permanence in the British Empire, and it is equally beyond question that the spread of colonization within the Empire would have been wanting, had Great Britain retained her old North American colonies. Unequalled in history was the loss of such colonies, and yet by that loss, it may fairly be said, Great Britain has achieved a more stable and a more world-wide colonial dominion.

But this result would not have been attained had not the lesson taught by the American war sunk deep into the minds of Englishmen. It is true that for a while the moral drawn from this calamitous war was that self-governing institutions should not be given to colonies lest they should rebel, as did the Americans, and win their independence: but, as the smart of defeat passed away and men saw events and their causes in true perspective, as Englishmen again multiplied out of England but in lands which belonged to England, and as the old questions again pressed for solution, the answer given in a wiser and a broader age was dictated by remembrance of the American war, and Lord Durham’s report embodied the principles, on which has been based the present colonial system of Great Britain. It was seen—but it might not have been seen had the United States not won their independence—that English colonists, like the Greek colonists of old, go out on terms of being equal not subordinate to those who are left behind, that when they have effectively planted another and a distant land, they must within the widest limits be left to rule themselves; that, whether they are right or whether they are wrong, more perhaps when they are wrong than when they are right, they cannot be made amenable by force; that mutual good feeling, community of interest, and abstention from pressing rightful claims to their logical conclusion, can alone hold together a true colonial empire.