Revolution, a History of England, Volume 4

by Peter Ackroyd

  The news of the defeat alarmed and shocked the English who had believed fondly that the colonials would never meet the English army on open ground. It was considered to be a calamity, a national humiliation and a military disgrace. A force of volunteers had overcome a trained and disciplined army. Some now speculated that this battle was an omen of eventual American triumph. General Gage was replaced by General Howe, a transfer which turned out to be that of a blockhead succeeding a dunderhead.

  The two sides now confronted one another, with no chance of conciliation. The king declared that ‘the die is now cast, the colonies must either submit or triumph’. At the beginning of 1776 a pamphlet was being passed among the colonials. The effect of Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ was immediate and profound; in his history of the American revolution, George Trevelyan remarked that ‘it would be difficult to name any human composition which had an effect so instant, so extended and so lasting’. It was in essence a clarion call for America to declare its independence from a brutal foreign power, with the sentiment that ‘the cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind’. How could a tiny island arrogate to itself the control of a great country? America had become a haven for all nations, and should no longer be shackled to England which merely dealt with the colonists for its own benefit and its own interests. To call itself the ‘mother country’ was a gross scandal, for what mother would treat her children so brutally? The king ‘hath shewn himself such an inveterate enemy to liberty and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary power’ that he must be resisted. Paine added that ‘we have it in our power to begin the world over again’. His tone and language were sharp and to the point, thus undermining decades of rational or inconsequential political discourse.

  His appeal was irresistible to the general populace, and at a later date John Adams wrote to Thomas Edison that ‘history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine’. History does not perhaps deal in coincidences but, seven months after the publication of ‘Common Sense’, the continental congress declared its independence with twelve affirmative votes and one abstention from New York. The congress had come to its decision after much hesitation and opposition from delegates who feared that the Declaration was premature and that they needed foreign allies before coming to open confrontation. Yet the final text was passed on 4 July 1776, ever afterwards known to Americans as Independence Day. The Americans absolved themselves from fealty to the Crown, and declared themselves to be free states that had no connection to England, with a ringing endorsement of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. Burke said that he had anticipated that the Americans might disturb authority but ‘we never dreamt that they could of themselves supply it’.

  It became known as ‘the king’s war’ with the obvious presumption that those who opposed it were disloyal subjects; the people were asked to rally to the cause of Church and Crown against rebels and revolutionaries. George III was in fact the driving force of the war against Americans, believing that his crown and country would not be secure if the colonists were able to secede from English rule. Yet there were some in England who supported the American cause. The principle of ‘no taxation without representation’ found an echo among the disenfranchised of a nation where half the towns had no voice in parliament. In the later riots at Peterloo and Manchester, this was the slogan inscribed upon many banners.

  It was believed by many radicals that the attempt to crush the movement for liberty in the thirteen colonies was an experiment that, if successful, could be repeated in England itself. The king and his ministers were supposed to be intent upon invading the rights of the individual, curtailing the liberty of the press, misusing the public funds and engaging in open and widespread corruption of members of parliament. There was even talk of the imposition of military government. Even if these charges were ill-founded they found an audience ready and willing to believe in a conspiracy by the ruling class against the people of England. These were the men and women who supported the Americans.

  Those who supported the king’s war, however, were aware of the historical parallel in the fight against king and Church by the Puritan enthusiasts of an earlier age. They believed the Americans to be traitors and seditionaries, ungrateful for the benefits that had accrued to them and unwilling to pay a fair contribution to the expenses of empire. There were still others who just wanted peace, peace at almost any price to maintain trade and good relations.

  While Washington began to equip and train a voluntary militia, the administration in London found it hard to make up the numbers of soldiers and sailors. A savage ‘press’ for sailors took place in the streets of London and the port cities in 1776; 800 men were seized in the capital alone. A third part of the army to be employed against the rebels were Hessian soldiers, recruited through George III’s German allies; the others were English recruits or loyalist Americans, but a large number of convicted criminals had been released from prison in order to serve their country.

  Despite this show of strength it is not clear that the English administration knew how formidable its difficulties were. The supply lines from England to America were 3,000 miles in length; weapons, ammunition, horses, men and provisions had to be shipped across the Atlantic in a journey that often took two or three months of misery. The men were then faced with an ocean coast many hundreds of miles in length, where the population was distinctly hostile to their presence. The terrain of the interior was also inhospitable both to professional soldiers and to raw recruits. John Hayes, an English combatant, described ‘a country full of marshes and small rivers, woods and insects, and a sun so powerful in heat’ that many men fell sick of a putrescent fever.

  In the summer of 1776 General Howe captured New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island. The failure of the Americans thoroughly demoralized Washington, whose letters are filled with complaints about the unruliness and indiscipline of his troops. It would seem that on paper the English held the advantage, and there were real fears among the Americans that their revolution was close to being lost. But Howe did nothing to build on his success, and during the winter months the English remained in their entrenchments. Paine described it as ‘the gloomy campaign of 1776’, and at the end of the year Washington confessed that without a new army ‘the game is pretty near up’. Yet eight days later he organized a swift descent upon the Hessian troops guarding Trenton, New Jersey, and seized the town; it was only a temporary victory but it restored the morale of his soldiers and officers.

  The air on the other side of the Atlantic was also filled with gloomy prognostications. General Howe had demanded 20,000 men for the next year’s campaign, but he received only 2,500. Parliament had little money, and the king himself was badly in debt. The difficulties of organizing a war at such a distance were becoming more and more obvious. A quick victory had become necessary, but how was it to be achieved?

  The English command sought to regain the initiative by isolating the rebellious New England colonies. An English army under General Burgoyne would sweep downwards from Canada, and an army under Howe would march upward from New York; when they met the colonies would be encircled. But it did not quite go according to plan. By a mixture of bad communications and incompetence the two armies missed each other. Howe had decided to capture Philadelphia instead. Burgoyne and his army, isolated from any possible help, were surrounded by the American forces at Saratoga in what is now New York State. He had no choice but to surrender, in the autumn of 1777, and at the same time gave up any hope of an eventual British victory. It was simply a matter of time.

  The defeat of the English forces brought joy to Versailles and in early February 1778, the French, finding the convenient moment, officially joined the United States in its war against Britain. This of course brought a different complexion to the conflict that now assumed a global aspect. It was the outcome that the British had most feared. The ministry was bankrupt of ideas, and one army was still imprisoned in the United States. The British now had to defend thei
r possessions in India and the West Indies against the French while at the same time pursuing a war in the inhospitable territory of North America. The Spanish joined the new alliance in the following year, with the express intention of reclaiming Gibraltar and Minorca. The English had no allies left, and were hard stretched to cover all the possible theatres of war.

  They offered concessions, including the repeal of the controversial Tea Act and the promise not to levy more taxes on the colonists. The announcement astonished and alarmed the faithful followers of the ministry, who now saw that they had been fighting for nothing but an illusion. But the Americans, having tasted victory, demanded complete independence. Almost at once they appreciated the value of the French alliance, because the British had to divert troops and ships for the defence of the West Indies; the Americans then advanced into Philadelphia and Rhode Island. It was less than likely that the British would eventually prevail.

  Lord North had had enough. His management of the war had been a dead failure. He had made demands only to abandon them under pressure. He had lost an army and a continent. He was forty-six years of age, but he felt tired and much older. In March 1778, at the time France sealed its treaty with the Americans, North wrote to the king that ‘capital punishment itself is, in Lord North’s position, preferable to that constant anguish of mind which he feels from the consideration that his continuance in office is ruining his majesty’s affairs’. Two months later he wrote once more to the king that ‘every hour convinces me more of the necessity your majesty is under of putting some other person than myself at the head of your affairs’. Yet the king did not agree. He needed North. He distrusted and despised most of his political opponents, but knew that he could still rely upon the loyalty of his principal minister; North was, as it were, a bulwark against chaos at Westminster.

  It was at Westminster in this period that Pitt the elder, the earl of Chatham, rose to speak for the last time. There was a sentiment abroad that the time had come for Britain to withdraw all its forces from America. To this the earl was implacably opposed. He came into the chamber on crutches, wrapped in flannel to protect his skin, and supported by friends; to some he looked as if he were already dead. His voice was feeble at first but rose in eloquence. ‘My lords, I rejoice that the grave has not closed over me; that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy!’ The mouth of the grave closed a month later.

  The course of the war in 1779 was neither warm nor cold for either party. The attention of the British was in any case turned to their adjacent seas rather than to the Americas, since the combined forces of the French and Spanish promised some form of invasion. But the ships and the men were needed across the Atlantic. Sir Charles Hardy, commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet, could muster thirty-seven ships against the combined enemy force of sixty-six; the English fleet was in any case poorly maintained and in bad condition. Many guns were without powder. The situation was so grave that the French and Spanish practically controlled the Channel and one MP, Sir William Meredith, wrote of a ‘fatal torpor which hangs like the night-mare over all the powers of this country’. Yet Hardy was saved by chance or good fortune; the season was one of storms, and the conditions aboard the French and Spanish ships were dominated by sickness. He waited them out, remaining for much of the time in the safe haven of Spithead, until they sailed away. And so the summer passed. Hardy died of a seizure in the following spring. The first speech of Sheridan’s The Critic suggests the atmosphere of the time. Mr Dangle is reading from a newspaper: ‘“It is now confidently asserted that SIR CHARLES HARDY” – Pshaw – Nothing but about the fleet, and the nation! – and I hate all politics but theatrical politics.’

  North was once more deep in depression, and he wrote that ‘nothing can be more miserable than I am . . . all is confusion and each department blaming another’. A colleague, William Eden, perhaps exasperated by his continual self-lacerating complaints, wrote to him that ‘if you cannot rouse the powers of your mind you ought to quit as immediately as is consistent with the urgent circumstances in which we find ourselves’. Yet the king was immovable. North had to stay. The chief minister said that he was kept to his task ‘by force’.

  The possibility of a long war without peace or resolution provoked dismay and disquiet among the merchants, the shopkeepers and the taxpayers. Only the iron-masters had some reason to be happy, with the constant demand for ships and munitions. To make matters infinitely worse, Ireland seemed to be going the way of America in the demand for independence. It had occurred to the Irish that the English were in no position to defend them from enemy fleets; so they established Volunteer Associations to protect their shores. Both Catholics and Protestant dissenters joined the cause of national self-defence, and thus created a national army that had more authority than the parliament in Dublin.

  The Volunteers now demanded freedom of trade with England and the ministers, in no position to face riot and insurgency on a neighbouring island, promptly gave way. The Irish did not stop here but, in imitation of their cousins across the Atlantic, also demanded legislative independence. In April 1780, Henry Grattan moved a resolution that ‘no power on earth but the kings, lords and commons of Ireland was competent to make laws for Ireland’. The controversy was of course long and vociferous but the independence of the Irish parliament was formally agreed. At the beginning of 1783 the English ministry accepted ‘the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom’. Grattan rose to his feet in the Parliament House in Dublin and declared that ‘Ireland is now a nation’.

  The controversies in Ireland had in turn an effect upon the English. A movement for the cause of ‘National Revival’ emerged in this period, instigated by the prevailing fear that parliament was becoming subservient to the bribes and corruptions of the government. At the end of 1779, from a county meeting in Yorkshire, emerged the Yorkshire Association which had as its aims shorter parliaments, more equal representation of the people, and a reduction in taxes. It was led by Christopher Wyvill, a cleric and landowner, who soon proved himself to be an expert organizer and propagandist. He drew up a petition and persuaded other counties and county committees to participate in it. He represented the landed interests of the country, not the London crowd that had followed Wilkes with slogans and cat-calls, and thus had to be taken more seriously by the masters of the country. The London Courant carried a letter from ‘The Whig’ in November who observed that ‘the people of original right, as a free people, will vindicate their country, correct their parliament, and reform their throne . . . In England every man is a politician.’ In a similar spirit, in the spring of 1780, the Society for Constitutional Information was established with the express purpose of restoring the ‘lost rights’ of ‘our ancient constitution’ by distributing texts and pamphlets.

  This is the appropriate context for a parliamentary debate of 6 April on the motion that ‘the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished’. It was carried by 233 to 215 votes, but it was what a military observer might call a forlorn hope. The very fact that the motion had passed suggested that the Crown was not as omnipotent as it was proclaimed to be. Nothing came of it, in any case, and in the following month Lord Camden wrote that ‘our popular exertions are dying away and the country returning to its old state of lukewarm indifference’. The radical societies themselves slipped out of view until they were once again aroused by the spectacle of the revolution across the Channel.

  Any movement of popular or urban radicalism was in any case fatally tainted in June 1780, with the worst mob riots of the eighteenth century. Lord George Gordon was a born incendiary of extreme, and almost insane, views. Like the salamander he was born to live in fire. He called himself the ‘people’s pilot’, and no more so than in his denunciation of the Roman Catholic menace in the wake of a parliamentary measure known as the Catholic Relief Act. He was part revolu
tionary, part radical and, if the anachronism may be allowed, part Romantic. He attempted to adopt the status and attributes of all those who had fought through history against tyranny, and became known to his followers as the ‘English Brutus’.

  He established an ‘association’, in the style of the time, and the Protestant Association soon came to include men of property, artisans, London apprentices and all those elements of the city that were known as the mobile vulgus or more colloquially ‘the mob’. On 2 June they accompanied Gordon’s petition to parliament with the burning desire to repeal all the late concessions to the Catholics; only six members of the Commons concurred with them, setting off among the petitioners a lightning bolt that came close to blasting London. About midnight, as the cry of ‘No Popery’ rang through the streets of the city, the irate crowds invaded Broad Street and Golden Square; the chapel of the house of the Bavarian ambassador was put to the torch among what William Blake, a willing or unwilling participant in the riots, described as ‘Howlings & hissings, shrieks & groans, & voices of despair’.

  Five days later Blake was caught up in the rush of an overpowering mob which was careering down Holborn and towards the Old Bailey with the sole intent of destroying Newgate beside it. The huge gates of the prison, sometimes known as the gates of Hell, were attacked with swords, pickaxes and sledge-hammers while the building was itself enveloped in fire begun by arsonists. The prisoners shrieked in terror of being burned alive but the rebels swarmed over the walls and the roof to tear off the very stones and slates. The prisoners were dragged away from the fires, or crawled out by their own volition, the fetters still clinking about their legs. The mob made a path for them shouting ‘A clear way!’, ‘A clear way!’ before leading them to any blacksmith they could find. On the same day houses of wealthy Catholics or Catholic supporters were sacked and burned to the ground.