s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

It was a good plan. The cutting off and crushing of one isolated district after another is just the fashion in
which widespread insurrectionary movements have most generally been suppressed by military force. The
Government accepted it, but, owing as it would seem to the laziness or levity of the English Minister
involved, instructions never reached Howe until it was too late for him to give effective support to his
colleague. All, however, might have prospered had Burgoyne been able to move more rapidly. His first stroke
promised well. The important fort of Ticonderoga was surprised and easily captured, and the road was open
for his soldiers into the highlands. But that advance proved disastrously slow. Weeks passed before he
approached the Hudson. His supplies were running short, and when he reached Saratoga, instead of joining
hands with Howe he found himself confronted by strongly posted American forces, greatly outnumbering his
own ill-sustained and exhausted army. Seeing no sign of the relief which he had expected to the south--though
as a fact Howe had by this time learnt of the expedition and was hastening to his assistance--on October 6,
1777, he and his army surrendered to the American commander, General Gates.
The effect of Burgoyne's surrender was great in America; to those whose hopes had been dashed by the
disaster of Long Island, the surrender of New York and Washington's enforced retreat it brought not only a
revival of hope but a definite confidence in ultimate success. But that effect was even greater in Europe. Its
immediate fruit was Lord North's famous "olive branch" of 1778; the decision of the British Government to
accept defeat on the original issue of the war, and to agree to a surrender of the claim to tax the colonists on
condition of their return to their allegiance. Such a proposition made three years earlier would certainly have
produced immediate peace. Perhaps it might have produced peace even as it was--though it is unlikely, for the
declaration had filled men's souls with a new hunger for pure democracy--if the Americans had occupied the
same isolated position which was theirs when the war began. But it was not in London alone that Saratoga had
produced its effect. While it decided the wavering councils of the British Ministry in favour of concessions, it
also decided the wavering councils of the French Crown in favour of intervention.
As early as 1776 a mission had been sent to Versailles to solicit on behalf of the colonists the aid of France.
Its principal member was Benjamin Franklin, the one revolutionary leader of the first rank who came from the
Northern colonies. He had all the shrewdness and humour of the Yankee with an enlarged intelligence and a
wide knowledge of men which made him an almost ideal negotiator in such a cause. Yet for some time his
mission hung fire. France had not forgotten her expulsion from the North American continent twenty years
before. She could not but desire the success of the colonists and the weakening or dismemberment of the
British Empire. Moreover, French public opinion--and its power under the Monarchy, though insufficient, was
far greater than is now generally understood--full of the new ideals which were to produce the Revolution,
was warmly in sympathy with the rebellion. But, on the other hand, an open breach with England involved
serious risks. France was only just recovering from the effects of a great war in which she had on the whole
been worsted, and very decidedly worsted, in the colonial field. The revolt of the English colonies might seem
a tempting opportunity for revenge; but suppose that the colonial resistance collapsed before effective aid
could arrive? Suppose the colonists merely used the threat of French intervention to extort terms from
England and then made common cause against the foreigner? These obvious considerations made the French
statesmen hesitate. Aid was indeed given to the colonial rebels, especially in the very valuable form of arms
and munitions, but it was given secretly and unofficially, with the satirist Beaumarchais, clever, daring,
unscrupulous and ready to push his damaged fortunes in any fashion, as unaccredited go-between. But in the
matter of open alliance with the rebels against the British Government France temporized, nor could the
utmost efforts of Franklin and his colleagues extort a decision.
Saratoga extorted it. On the one hand it removed a principal cause of hesitation. After such a success it was
unlikely that the colonists would tamely surrender. On the other it made it necessary to take immediate action.
Lord North's attitude showed clearly that the British Government was ready to make terms with the colonists.
It was clearly in the interests of France that those terms should be refused. She must venture something to
make sure of such a refusal. With little hesitation the advisers of the French Crown determined to take the
CHAPTER II 22
plunge. They acknowledged the revolted colonies as independent States, and entered into a defensive alliance
with these States against Great Britain. That recognition and alliance immediately determined the issue of the
war. What would have happened if it had been withheld cannot be certainly determined. It seems not unlikely
that the war would have ended as the South African War ended, in large surrenders of the substance of
Imperial power in return for a theoretic acknowledgment of its authority. But all this is speculative. The
practical fact is that England found herself, in the middle of a laborious, and so far on the whole unsuccessful,
effort to crush the rebellion of her colonies, confronted by a war with France, which, through the close
alliance then existing between the two Bourbon monarchies, soon became a war with both France and Spain.
This change converted the task of subjugation from a difficult but practicable one, given sufficient time and
determination, to one fundamentally impossible.
Yet, so far as the actual military situation was concerned, there were no darker days for the Americans than
those which intervened between the promise of French help and its fulfilment. Lord Cornwallis had appeared
in the South and had taken possession of Charleston, the chief port of South Carolina. In that State the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]