Now, instead of a single minister bowing before him, King George speaks to the hundreds of members of Parliament, all of whom listen with a skeptical ear.
“It is the most pusillanimous speech ever produced,” royal observer Horace Walpole scoffs. “Far from announcing the complete conquest of America, which had been promised this campaign, it only talked of hoping for important success.”
The arrogance that once defined the British attitude toward waging war in America is slipping away. George is deeply anxious about losing the colonies, but well aware of the growing public hostility regarding the millions of pounds being spent on the war in America.3 Now comes word from British spies in Paris that France seems to be willing to join the conflict. This is no longer a civil war, with the rebels seen as unhappy British subjects rising up against king and Parliament. The Americans are now a military nation all their own, soon to have very powerful allies.
The very future of the British Empire is in doubt.
Should French and American troops succeed in pinning down the British Army and Navy in America, the island colonies of Great Britain will be undefended. The French are already making plans to invade England, and hope that their Spanish allies will simultaneously invade Ireland, a nation that shares their Catholic faith.
This is not a scenario King George and his prime minister, Lord North, could have foreseen when they began squeezing the Americans for more tax money a decade ago. Indeed, there is a small but growing sentiment in Parliament that the taxation against America ought to be repealed.
“I still hope that the deluded and unhappy multitude will return to their allegiance,” the king continues. “And that the remembrance of what they once enjoyed, the regret for what they lost, and the feelings of what they now suffer under the arbitrary tyranny of their leaders will rekindle in their hearts a spirit of loyalty to their sovereign, and a spirit of loyalty to their mother country.”
Concluding his speech, King George now stands, per tradition, and leaves the House of Lords so that Parliament might debate without him present. But, already, his critics are deriding his speech as “timid, feeble, and disheartening.”
One frail old man rises to define the moment. The words he speaks, uttered in a low whisper but with brilliance and clarity, will stand forever as one of history’s greatest testimonials to the character and power of the American citizen, and to the futility of waging war against him.
The speaker is William Pitt the Elder, known as Lord Chatham. At sixty-nine and in failing health, the man who served as prime minister from 1766 to 1768 is now a political pariah. He rarely appears in Parliament these days—but today is a different story. Lord Chatham once helped expand the military might of Great Britain. Now he prefers to limit that power.
“I rise, my Lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject.… I love and honor the English troops. I know their virtues and their valor. I know they can achieve anything except impossibilities.” Chatham pauses, measuring the mood of the chamber.
“And I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility.”
* * *
The crowd murmurs, but Chatham continues:
My Lords, you can not conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst, but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. Besides the sufferings, perhaps total loss of the Northern force, the best appointed army that ever took the field, commanded by Sir William Howe, has retired from the American lines.…
As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly, pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow, traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince—your efforts are forever vain and impotent. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms.
Never. Never. Never.
Chatham has just months to live. He does not speak for political gain, but for the sake of England’s future.
Voices of opposition ring out in the House chamber, but Chatham ignores them. He knows his words are falling on deaf ears, for he has few allies in Parliament. Still, there is no sense of futility in his message as he draws to a conclusion: “I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country.”
Then Lord Chatham sits, exhausted.4
For all the passion in his plea, his appeal goes unheard. The House of Lords votes 97 to 24 to reject the resolution to repeal the colonial taxes and recall the king’s army.
Even with the very real threat of a French invasion, Parliament once again chooses to align itself with King George and his continued suppression of American citizens.
* * *
It is the evening of December 2, 1777, when the shocking news arrives from America: Gen. John Burgoyne has surrendered 5,895 men at Saratoga and suffered another 1,300 dead.
“The King went into agonies on hearing this account,” Horace Walpole will write. The horrific news soon triggers a minor return of the king’s mental illness. George ceases to behave like a sovereign and, much to the embarrassment of all who witness his behavior, instead becomes a giddy madman—“so indecently merry that Lord North endeavored to stop him,” Walpole adds.
And while minority voices in Parliament continue to rise up in protest of the war, the “national indignity” of Burgoyne’s failure stiffens the resolve of the king and his legislative majority.
The killing of England continues.
17
HÔTEL LAUTREC
PARIS, FRANCE
FEBRUARY 6, 1778
EVENING
Benjamin Franklin is having his revenge.
Clad in the same suit of soiled Manchester velvet that he wore during his public humiliation in London’s cockpit four years ago, the aging diplomat sits down at the desk of French foreign minister Charles Gravier, the Count of Vergennes. Two documents are placed before him: the Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States, and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. Franklin and Vergennes have labored over the details for a month. Now it is time to sign.
Since Saratoga, Franklin has done his best to be coy about America’s deep need for military assistance. The French, however, have aggressively pursued this new military alliance. They fear that the British will seek peace with the rebels, thus preventing the French from regaining territory in North America.
The young French king, Louis XVI, has ordered this new partnership between nations. On January 8, 1778, Vergennes confirmed this through a letter to the French ambassador in Spain: “The supreme decision was taken by the King. He did not take it under the influence of his ministers.”
It has been four years since the British Privy Council sought to embarrass Benjamin Franklin. The suit of Manchester velvet he is wearing was brand-new on that day, and the Doctor has not worn it since. This is intentional. Though the jacket and breeches have long since gone out of style, Franklin has saved them especially for the day he might exact “a little revenge.”
That day has come.
He dips his quill into an inkwell and then signs his name.
France is now America’s war partner.
* * *
For Dr. Franklin, the Paris stay has not been all about diplomacy. His social life is the talk of Paris—especially his relations with the opposite sex.
“It is well for my penitent to know that there are seven grave sins, and of the seven, my dear brother, you commit only one,” the lovely Anne-Louise Brillon writes to Franklin one month later. She is just thirty-three, and Franklin is now seventy-two. Their relationship transcends age and circumstance: Brillon is the married mother of two.
; In a flirtatious moment, the Doctor has engaged Madame Brillon in a conversation about his soul. Her response is a recounting of the seven deadly sins, of which the seventh is lust.
“All great men are tainted with it: it is called their weakness.… You have loved, my dear brother. You have been kind and lovable; you have been loved in return! What is so damnable about that? Go on doing great things and loving pretty women—provided that, pretty and lovable though they may be, you never lose sight of my principle: always love God, America, and me above all.”
Franklin waits three days to return her letter. On Tuesday, March 10, writing from his new home in Passy, he admits:
I am charmed with the goodness of my spiritual guide, and resign myself implicitly to her conduct, as she promises to lead me to Heaven in a road so delicious, when I could be content to travel thither even in the roughest of all the ways with the pleasure of her company.
I lay fast hold of your promise to absolve me of all sins past, present, and future, on the easy and pleasing condition of loving God, America, and my guide above all things. I am in raptures when I think of being absolved of the future.… God forgive me, as often as I see or think of my lovely confessor … I am afraid I should never be able to repent of the sin, even if I had the full possession of her.
But Franklin’s passion for Madame Brillon will not be consummated. He is allowed to watch her bathe, and has even played a game of chess while she soaked in the tub next to him, but Madame Brillon will forever remain the unrequited object of his desire.
“You are a man and I am a woman,” she writes in her response. “There is no great harm in a man having desires and yielding to them. A woman may have desires, but she must not yield.”
This is not the end of the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and Madame Brillon, for he delights in the mental stimulation almost as much as the physical. Their rhetoric will continue for the many years he will remain in Paris, even as he surrounds himself with a bevy of other lovers: Madame Helvétius, Madame Le Roy, Mademoiselle Le Vieillard, Madame Chaumont, to name a few.
With the negotiations for France’s involvement in the war at an end, Franklin fills his days brokering affairs of the heart. Despite his advanced age and odd habit of wearing his fur hat and a brown puritan smock, the widower has no trouble attracting ladies’ attention.
King Louis XVI, who has a growing dislike for Franklin due to the latter’s preference for democratic governments over monarchies, even goes so far as to mock the American’s philandering ways by presenting one countess who has fallen under Franklin’s spell with the gift of a chamber pot, a picture of the Doctor lining the bottom.
“The life of Dr. Franklin was a continual scene of dissipation,” the visiting John Adams will write, cataloguing a schedule filled with hangers-on, social calls, dinners, recitals, and liaisons.
* * *
John Adams has arrived in Paris on congressional business. At first, he is taken aback by Franklin’s debauched lifestyle, but soon he sees a practical side to it.
“This course of life contributed to his pleasure—and I believe to his health and longevity.”
Which, of course, the good Doctor would affirm. But while this American patriot absorbs the many pleasures of Paris, other patriots are suffering a terrible ordeal—at a place called Valley Forge.
18
VALLEY FORGE, PENNSYLVANIA
FEBRUARY 16, 1778
MID-MORNING
George Washington’s army is desperate.
It has been a miserable winter, with rebel troops camped just eighteen miles away from the British Army, which is comfortably housed in Philadelphia. While the English are enjoying the luxuries of a big city, Washington’s men are suffering grievously.
“For some days past, there has been little less than a famine in our camp,” says Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton, writing on behalf of George Washington. The bond of trust between the general and his young aide-de-camp has grown substantially since Hamilton’s arrival on the staff nearly one year ago. Now, rather than dictate letters or take the time to write them himself, Washington very often directs the twenty-three-year-old Hamilton to compose his correspondence, after which Washington simply signs his name.1
This particular letter is a cry for help. The Continental Army is starving. Hamilton’s missive, addressed to New York governor George Clinton, is an urgent plea for food.
George Washington and Alexander Hamilton
On the surface, the situation in Washington’s headquarters is almost serene. A small blaze roars in the fireplace of this massive stone cottage. Martha Washington has recently arrived from Mount Vernon, to the general’s delight. She joins the slave cook, Hannah Till, and the aging Irish housekeeper, Elizabeth Thompson, in adding a feminine touch to the general’s current situation. All around Washington, his staff bustles about, keeping themselves busy, and warm, during this long winter encampment.
Outside the cottage, however, things could not be direr. Row upon row of small log huts fill a broad meadow, tongues of wood smoke curling out of hundreds of makeshift chimneys. Half-dressed men scurry outside to openly relieve themselves, not caring who sees them, and then quickly race back inside to the warmth of their shelters. The average hut is a log cabin with a ceiling height of six and half feet. Each structure is fourteen feet long and sixteen feet wide. The men sleep twelve to a hut, on straw spread across bare dirt floors, inhaling the fireplace smoke filling their dank quarters. There is nothing clean or comforting about these hovels. When a man dies, his body is removed, but it is common for the remaining men to continue sleeping on the same straw—which, in many cases, is infected with lice, maggots, or even smallpox. There is no furniture, and no kitchens.
Even if the huts were equipped with kitchens, there is very little food. The men are supposed to be issued a pound of meat or fish per day, along with flour and peas, but there is frequently not enough to go around. Most often, the soldiers make do with “fire cakes,” flour and water mixed together and cooked in a skillet over the fire or on a heated flat rock. If a hut runs out of food before the next allotment, the soldiers starve.
It is a situation that is quickly becoming untenable. The men while away the frigid days playing cards and dice, cooking whatever food they can find, and, in the unlikely event that a libation is made available, drinking. When called upon to perform military duties such as standing guard, many soldiers stick their heads out their hut door and shout the familiar refrain “No bread, no soldier!”
If they were to fight in their present condition, there would be little hope of victory. Their firearms are covered in rust and lack bayonets. Many weapons can’t even fire.
And then there is their attire.
The soldiers themselves provide their own clothing. The men from New England seem better prepared for the winter, while soldiers from warmer states such as North Carolina suffer in their thinner garments. The states are supposed to provide clothing for their soldiers, but many have failed to do so. Therefore, even if the temperatures drop close to zero, most of Washington’s men do not have overcoats and many do not even have shoes—footwear having rotted away months ago.
Throughout the camp, field hospitals stand amid the rows of huts. They are nine feet high and twenty-five feet long, with a chimney at one end. As in the cabins, the sick sleep on straw. General Washington has issued an order that each hospitalized man be visited daily by a representative from his brigade, but this directive often goes unheeded; the men are afraid of catching a disease. The doctors themselves have no such qualms, treating the ill and also making regular visits to the hovels the soldiers call home. Every Wednesday and Saturday, the physicians make a report of the sick, whether hospitalized or not. This number continues to grow with each passing day.
Sentries stand duty in the freezing rain, clad in blankets, dressing gowns, and any other sort of clothing they can find, their frostbitten feet wrapped in rags. Soldiers have resorted to sharing clothing, offering the few gar
ments they own to the men stepping outside to stand guard. Upon returning to the cabin, the man leaving guard duty will be expected to offer those same rags to the next soldier on duty.
These are the lucky ones: as Hamilton, writing for Washington, recently noted in a letter to Virginia governor Patrick Henry, a quarter of his twelve-thousand-man army is “unfit for duty by reason of their being barefoot and otherwise naked.”
Hundreds more are dead already or are dying from starvation, typhus, smallpox, dysentery, and influenza. Almost all suffer from an insidious condition known only as “the itch,” brought on by lice infestation. The army’s malnourished artillery horses are also perishing at an alarming rate, due to a lack of forage. They are quickly butchered for their meat, and their carcasses, which now litter the frozen ground, left to rot.
Adding to Washington’s responsibility are the wives and camp followers who have made their way to Valley Forge. Their role is to offer physical comfort and emotional support, but these women and children must also be fed and housed.2
It is in this dismal environment that Washington now signs his letter to Governor Clinton. This is not the first time he has written to an influential official asking for help. With the Congress doing very little to provide for his men, the general has cast a wide net in search of provisions, sending letter after letter in the hope of securing food and clothing.
“A part of the army has been a week, without any kind of flesh,” Washington writes, referring to the lack of meat and protein in the daily diet. “Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been … excited by their sufferings, to a general mutiny.”
* * *
It has been two months since the Continental Army retreated into its winter quarters northwest of Philadelphia. Washington himself observed that the British could easily track their location by following the trail of blood in the snow left by the bare, frostbitten feet of his battered force.
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