He resumed the offensive at Germantown (October 10), and
if he was not a conqueror, he at least escaped defeat. This
persistency saved his country, for thus retaining Howe in
the vicinity of Chesapeake Bay he hindered him from unit-
ing with Burgoyne, who was marching with a splendid army
from Canada. The militia of the west, whom Washington
had re-enforced by some of his best troops, stopped Burgoyne
at Saratoga (September 19), surrounded his army, and
obliged him (October 17) to lay down his arms.
France had hailed with enthusiasm a revolution wherein
she recognized herself. She received the American pri-
vateers in her harbors, and Holland sold them munitions.
To determine France to convert this indirect assistance into
an alliance the United States sent a deputation to Paris, at the
head of which was the illustrious Franklin, who during his
stay in France was the object of a constant ovation. The
young nobility, exalted by philosophic ideas, and all on fire
to efface the shame of the Seven Years' War and to fight
against a detested rival, wished in a crowd to set out for
America. The Marquis de la Fayette, aged hardly twenty,
quitted his enceinte wife, and himself chartered a vessel
which he loaded with arms. But the government dreaded
a rupture with Great Britain. Turgot had demanded that
France remain neutral, well foreseeing that England would
gain more by acknowledging the independence of her colonies
than by holding them restive under the yoke. De Ver-
gennes, in accord with the cabinet of Madrid, was satisfied
at first by sending indirect assistance; he secretly advanced
Beaumarchais the money necessary for him to dispatch to
the colonists the arms and munitions which they lacked.
The defeat of Saratoga decided Louis XVI. to yield to
the solicitations of Franklin and of his ministers. On
February 6, 1778, he signed with the United States a com-
mercial treaty, fortified by an alliance offensive and defen-
sive if England declared war against France. The English
ambassador was at once recalled.
45 2 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [BOOK VI.
Lord North to avert the peril offered the colonies by a
conciliatory bill more than they had asked at the outset of
the war. It was too late; the Americans rejected all con-
cessions which did not include the recognition of their inde-
pendence; the war continued.
France fortunately had passed through the hands of
Choiseul, who had restored her navy. A fleet of twelve
ships and four frigates under Count d'Estaing set out
from Toulon for America (1778); another was formed at
Brest to fight in European waters; finally, an army was got
ready to make a descent in England. The victory of the
frigate La Belle Poule, which dismasted an English frigate,
gloriously opened hostilities. Count d'Orvilliers, sailing
out of Brest with thirty-two vessels, brought the indecisive
battle of Ouessant against Admiral Keppel (July 27).
England was appalled at seeing France reappear upon the
sea on an equal footing with her, and summoned the admiral
before a council of war. Not to have obtained the victory
was to her the same thing as defeat.
In America Clinton, threatened with being surrounded
in Philadelphia by the army of Washington and the French
fleet of d'Estaing, retired upon New York, which he entered
only after a check experienced at Monmouth.
To divide the forces which pursued him he sent Colonel
Campbell into Georgia, and the war then extended to the
southern colonies. It reached the Antilles; the Marquis de
Bouille there captured Domenica, but the English seized St.
Lucia, which d'Estaing could not retake. In India France
lost Pondicherry.
Then were reaped the fruits of the policy of the Duke de
Choiseul, who had renewed the alliance of France with Spain.
The latter power offered its mediation, which England
refused. Persuaded by the Count de Vergennes, who
pointed out Gibraltar, Minorca, and the Floridas ripe for
reconquest, she declared war against England and united
her fleet to that of France (1779). The Count d'Orvilliers
with sixty-six ships of the line sailed toward Portsmouth;
great disaster may have been spared England by a tempest
which dispersed his fleet. Having gained nothing by this
great armament France sought consolation in the capture
of Grenada, which, after a victory over Admiral Byron, was
seized by d'Estaing, who was the first man to leap into the
enemy's intrenchments.
CHAP. XXVII.] FOUNDATION OF UNITED STATES. 453
This event resounded prodigiously in Paris. Admiral
Rodney was then there, detained for debts which he could
not pay. One day while dining with Marshal de Biron he
spoke contemptuously of the successes won by the French
navy, saying if he were free he would soon bring it to rea-
son. The marshal immediately paid his debts. "Depart,
sir," he said to him, "endeavor to keep your promises.
The French have no wish to win through means of obstacles
which prevent your fulfilling them."
This chivalrous generosity cost France dear; Rodney
almost kept his word. He beat a Spanish fleet, revictualed
Gibraltar, which a Franco-Spanish army was besieging, and
in the Antilles the following year (1780) fought three battles
with the Count de Guichen. But the count rendered the
victory uncertain and captured on his return to Europe an
English convoy of sixty ships with a booty worth 50,000,000
francs.
The year 1780 was favorable to the English arms. The
diversion attempted by Clinton in the south had succeeded;
Georgia was occupied. This success emboldened him to
attempt another enterprise. He saw the Americans, already
weary of the war, intrust to France and Spain the task of
their salvation, and Washington reduced to inactivity by
the misery of his army. He quitted New York with a part
of his forces, captured Charleston in South Carolina, where
he made 5000 prisoners, and there left Cornwallis, who
defeated all the generals charged by congress with the
recovery of the province.
A check of Count d'Estaing before Savannah, which he
wished to enter before the breach was opened, for a moment
compromised the American cause. But a vast coalition
was forming against the maritime despotism of England.
To hinder France and Spain from receiving from the north-
ern states the naval munitions necessary to their arsenals,
the English arrested and searched neutral ships. Hence
arose a thousand vexations and abuses and the ruin of the
trade of neutrals. Catharine II. was the first to proclaim
the freedom of the flag (1780) on condition that it did not
cover contraband of war, such as powder, balls, and can-
non; to support this principle she proposed a scheme of
armed neutrality which was successively accepted by Sweden
and Denmark, Prussia and Austria, Portugal, the Two
454 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [BooK VI.
Sicilies, and Holland.* England forthwith declared war
against Holland, the weakest and most vulnerable of the
neutral states. Rodney threw himself upon St. Eustatius,
a Dutch colony, where he made the seizure of more than
16,000,000 francs' worth, which the brave Lamothe-Piquet
retook in sight of the English shores.
England bowed under the burden. France having sent
to the Americans money and an army under Rochambeau,
the allies had a succession of victories (1781). The Span-
iards captured Pensacola in Florida, and Count de Grasse
laid waste the English Antilles. "He is six feet tall," said
the French sailors, "and six feet one inch on the day of
battle." His victories contributed to those which Washing-
ton, Rochambeau, and La Fayette gained on the American
continent. On October n, 1781, they forced General Corn-
wallis to capitulate in Yorktown with 7000 men, 6 ships of
war, and 50 merchant vessels. This was the second English
army which had been made prisoner during the war. This
exploit was decisive for American independence. The
English, who still held New York, Savannah, and Charles-
ton, thereafter acted only on the defensive. At the same
time Marquis de Bouille took from them St. Eustatius;
the Uuke de Crillon, Minorca; and Suffren, one of the most
illustrious French sailors, who had been sent to the East
Indies to protect the Dutch colonies, gained there four
naval victories (February and September, 1782). Already
he was forming with Haidar Ali, Sultan of Mysore, vast
plans for the destruction of the English domination on that
continent when he was arrested by peace.
In the Antilles the English retained no other important
possession than Jamaica; this island de Grasse endeavored
to sieze in 1782, but, attacked by superior forces under
Rodney, he was defeated and captured; on his ship there
were only three men unwounded. That battle of Les
Saintes, which was without serious results, was given great
* The league proposed to defend these principles, which were finally
recognized by England in 1854 in the treaty of Paris : The neutral flag
covers merchandise except contraband of war which might serve the
enemy ; neutral vessels can go anywhere save into ports blockaded by
an effective force ; the neutral, unless convoyed by a vessel of war, is
liable to search, but the ship exercising that right must remain a cannon
shot distant and send alongside only a boat with three men on board.
ED.
CHAP. XXVII.] FOUNDA TION OF UNITED STA TES. 455
importance in public opinion. It was forgotten that this
was the first lost in that war by the French.
The skillful defense of Gibraltar against the combined
forces of France and Spain was another check. That siege
had excited universal expectation. Count d'Artois, a
brother of Louis XVI., obtained from the king permission
to proceed thither. The place was blockaded by 20,000
men and 40 ships. Two hundred pieces of ordnance from
the land side and ten floating batteries opened (September
13) a tremendous fire against the rock, which was defended
by its formidable position and by the courage of the English
governor, Eliot. The fortress, attacked as no other had
ever been, soon found its condition hopeless. It had
hurled 600 red-hot balls in vain against the floating batteries,
when one of these last projectiles pierced unperceived the
weatherboards of the Tailla Perdra, where all the precau-
tions enjoined by the inventor had not been taken. It
made its way silently, reached the powder and blew it up.
The fire gained the two neighboring batteries; the Spaniards
under the pretext of preventing the English from capturing
the rest set them on fire. In this siege 12,000 men perished
and Gibraltar remained with the English.
However, England had lost her reputation of invincible
upon the seas; her commerce had enormously suffered;
her debt had increased over 100,000,000 pounds sterling.
Lord North, leader of the war party, resigned from the min-
istry and was replaced by the Whigs, who made proposals
of peace to the cabinet of Versailles. France, for her part,
had spent 1,400,000,000 francs, but at least she had
obtained a grand and noble result, the independence of
the United States. Peace was signed (September 3, 1783).
It was honorable for France, who caused the shameful
article of the treaty of Utrecht relative to Dunkirk to be
erased; it obtained for Spain Minorca; for France, Chan-
dernagor, Pondicherry, Karikal, Mahe", and Surat in the
Indies; Tabago and St. Lucia in the Antilles; the islands
of St. Pierre and Miquelon with the right of fishery on the
coasts of Newfoundland; finally, Gore"e and Senegal in
Africa. This war, the last triumph of the ancient mon-
archy, carried with it a lesson : that lesson is that France,
when seriously resolved, can in a hand to hand conflict with
England dispute the empire, or at least secure the liberty,
of the sea.
45 6 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Peace did not terminate the labors of Washington. He
had to appease the murmurs of his soldiers, who believed
themselves forgotten the moment they were no longer use-
ful. Their lot regulated, he tendered his resignation; a
plain, private individual on the banks of the Potomac in the
shade of his vine and fig tree, he lived tranquil in his man-
sion of Mount Vernon in Virginia, with the glory of having
founded the independence of his country and with the purest
name of modern times.
By the freedom of the United States England lost a
large part of her American colonies ; but she retained British
North America and the Antilles; she had possessions in
Africa, many forts or factories on the Gambia, the colony
of Sierra Leone, Cape Coast on the Gold Coast, and the
island of St. Helena; she opened herself a new world in the
Pacific Ocean, where at Botany Bay she established a con-
vict station, and where she founded Sidney in 1788; she
continued her aggrandizement in the Indies, where Tippoo
Sahib resisted her in vain; so that despite her defeats she
remained the foremost maritime and commercial power of
the world.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
DESTRUCTION OF POLAND. DECLINE OF THE OTTO-
MANS. GREATNESS OF RUSSIA.
Russia from Peter the Great to Catherine II. Catherine II. (1762-96);
First Partition of Poland (1772). Treaties of Kainardji (1774) and
Jassy (1792). Second and Third Partitions of Poland (1793 and 1795).
WHILE a new nation was being born on the other side of
the ocean an ancient nation in aged Europe was dying in
the fatal embrace of a power which only a
Russia from u r u j * i *. i
Peter the Great few years before had taken its place among
to Catherine II. the great stateg>
The real successor of Peter the Great was Catherine
II. Let us, however, indicate the line of Russian princes.
Catherine I., wife of the founder of the empire, ruled
after him for two years, under the guidance of Ment-
schikoff, who continued the work of the master to whom he
owed all. Under Peter II., son of the unfortunate Czare-
vitch Alexis, the influence of the minister seemed to increase.
But a young favorite, Ivan Dolgorouki, of a family which
claimed to descend from Rurik, captivated the mind of the
Czar, and the veteran minister was overthrown and exiled
to Siberia. Peter II. having died prematurely at the age of
fifteen (1730), the Dolgoroukis and the Galitzins gave the
empire to Anne of Courland, a niece of Peter the Great,
imposing upon her conditions which, if observed, would have
destroyed the work of Peter to the profit of the aristocracy.
This was the first attempt made by the nobility to reseize the
power; the second was the great conspiracy of 1825, but
in the interval the nobles butchered three emperors, Ivan
VI., Peter III., and Paul. I.
Anne had no great difficulty in freeing herself from the
restrictions placed upon her power. The Galitzins were
banished, the Dolgoroukis sent to Siberia, and everything
yielded to the favorite Biren, son of a peasant of Courland,
who put to death with torture all those who gave him
umbrage. Siberia even did not protect the princes Dol-
457
45 8 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [Boon VI.
gorouki against his hate. Four of them were quartered,
others beheaded; 12,000 of their partisans died painful
deaths; 20,000 were exiled. In 1737 Anne caused her
favorite to be chosen Duke of Courland, despite the resist-
ance of the nobility of that province; who a few years before
had declined to recognize him as a plain gentleman. This
reign, however, did not lack a certain splendor. Anne, fol-
lowing the example of Peter the Great, surrounded herself
by foreigners, many of whom showed marked talent. Russia
successfully interfered in the war of the Polish succession,
and caused Augustus III. to be recognized in spite of the
claims of Stanislaus Leczinski, the choice of the nation,
whom in 17343 Russian army besieged in Dantzic. "Never,"
says a contemporary, "during this war did 300 Russians
turn aside to avoid encountering 3000 Poles." The Porte,
which had allowed the Poles to be oppressed, suffered for
its mistake. The Irishman Lascy entered Azof; in 1736
the German Munich forced the defenses of Perecop and
traversed the Crimea without being able to hold it. The
following year, after the alliance concluded with the Aus-
trians, he carried by assault Otchakof, the rampart of the
Ottoman empire on the Dnieper; in 1739 he took Khotzim
on the Dniester, crossed the Pruth, which had been so fatal
to Peter the Great in 1711, and entered Jassy. He wished
to go farther still, to cross the Danube, the Balkans. He
counted upon an insurrection of the Greeks; he did not
doubt that with their aid he could seize Constantinople.
But the reverses experienced by the Austrians in the loss of
Orsova (1738) and the defeat of Krotzka near Belgrade
(1739) obliged the Russians at the peace of Belgrade (1739)
to restore all these conquests. Munich has remained cele-
brated like Suwarrow for a sometimes savage energy. In
front of Otchakof a column refused to advance, appalled
by the terrible fire of the enemy: he had cannon pointed
against it. Seeing that the soldiers counterfeited sickness so
as to remain in the rear, he prohibited sickness in his army
under pain of being buried alive. The following day three
soldiers suffered the penalty in front of the camp.
Anne had designated as her successor her nephew, Ivan
VI., who was still in the cradle, the son of her sister, the
Duchess of Brunswick. Biren was to be regent. The
duchess gained over Munich and after a month's reign Biren
was sent to Siberia. The national vanity was irritated at see-
CHAP. XXVIII.] DESTRUCTION OF POLAND. 459
ing foreigners thus dispose of the crown and the power.
Elizabeth, second daughter of Peter the Great, with 105
grenadiers from the Preobrai'enski regiment under the com-
mand of the German Lestocq, went to the palace, took pos-
session of it, committed the duchess to prison and confined
in it Ivan VI., who twenty years after was butchered by his
keepers.
A terrible reaction broke out against the foreigners.
Biren was recalled from Siberia, but Munich took his place
and remained there twenty years. Many others had a simi-
lar lot. Some few more fortunate escaped, such as Keith,
Lascy, Lowendall, and the mathematician Euler, who put
their talents at the service of less barbarous governments.
Besides, there was only a change of men, for favoritism con-
tinued. In place of the German Munich there was the
Russian Bestucheff. The reign of Elizabeth (1741-62)
was on the whole disastrous. At home she allowed the
institutions of Peter the Great to perish. She abolished the
death penalty, but replaced it by deportation to Siberia,
which was worse ; though heads could no longer be made to
fall as under Peter the Great, yet entire peoples could be
transported to that icy tomb, where, it is said, she exiled
80,000 persons. Abroad she conquered Finland, of which
the English mediation prevented her retaining more than a
part (1743); for frivolous motives she made against Fred-
erick II. a war as furious as it was impolitic. Her death
saved Prussia from almost inevitable ruin. Peter III., who
succeeded her, was son of a duke of Holstein-Gottorp and
of an elder daughter of Peter the Great. He was the great-
great-grandfather of the present Czar. Peter III. had for
the Prussian hero an admiration as unreasonable as had
been the hate of Elizabeth. He declared himself the ally
of Frederick and placed the Russian troops at his disposi-
tion. But this incapable prince did not reign long; at the
very time when he was about to punish the disorders of his
wife she forestalled him, dethroned and strangled him.
She took the name of Catherine II.
Three peoples were an obstacle to Russia, barring the
west against her: Poland, Sweden, and Turkey. Catherine
II. was to take possession of the first; Alexander I. of half
of the second. Nicholas afterward desired to absorb the
third in its entirety, and only at this last attempt did
Europe rise to arrest the Muscovite ambition.
460 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. [BOOK VI.
How could this people, born yesterday, prevail against its
glorious neighbors? Through their weakness rather than
by its own strength, although that was enormous.
Sweden, too poor by herself to carry on war, which had
become so costly, too scantily populated to make head as
formerly with her small armies against the multitudes which
after the time of Louis XIV. it became the fashion to put
on foot, had just expended with Charles XII. her last sol-
dier and her last coin. She needed time and repose in
order to restore her strength. Meanwhile Russia purchased
a party among the Swedes, and till the time of Gustavus III.
by her intrigues and her gold kept Sweden in dependence.
The Ottomans had strong frontiers and rich provinces.
But they had lost their warrior dash. After a century of
furious marches and victories over Europe and Asia this
people, born under the tent and ill prepared for wealth and
domination, had fallen back into Oriental apathy, whither its
religious doctrine of fate \vas inevitably to lead; after excess
of activity and ambition there came excess of repose and
indolence. The sultans, who passed from the prison to
the throne, carried there no acquaintance with men or
things, and their ministers were like them. Venality cor-
rupted everything in both the civil and military orders.
While the world was marching around them the Otto-
mans had stopped. Their military organization, which was
superior in the fifteenth century to that of the Europeans,
not having been improved, had become exceedingly
inferior. The janissaries were no longer a defense against
danger from without; at home they were a continual menace
by their turbulent disposition. Finally, Mussulman disdain
for the Christians had prevented fusion, so they were less a
great people than an army of occupation camped north of
the Bosphorus; but the conquered, allowed by Ottoman
tolerance to exist as a national body, formed over against
them a mass of populations two or three times more numer-
ous, who opened the ear and extended the hand to every
foreign intrigue. So in Turkey there was forcible superposi-
tion of the smaller number upon the larger; the masters,
whom so many perils surrounded, wasted two centuries in
losing their aggressive qualities, in increasing their vices
and consequently in diminishing their strength. Is it any
wonder, then, that the recollection of Mohammed II. and of
Soulei'man I. no longer excited any terror in Europe?
CHAP. XXVIII.] DESTRUCTION OF POLAND, 461
In Turkey there was a center, an authority, which has
made it endure. In Poland there was none whatsoever.
An immense plain, but without natural boundaries, Poland
was a state, geographically badly made; furthermore and
above all, it was a state badly organized which moved in an
opposite direction from Europe and civilization. A heroic
struggle, continued three or four centuries, against the Mon-
gols, the Russians, and the Ottomans, had developed a
most brilliant and warlike nobility, but no burgesses, no
people. The peasant was a serf. One hundred thousand
nobles esteemed themselves all equal and claimed the same
rights. In the general diet the opposition of a single
deputy blocked everything liberum veto; if the diet
unanimously voted some measure which a few nobles did
not approve they banded themselves together to resist it
and these armed insurrections were legal. A Pole obeyed
only the law which he approved. In theory this was beau-
tiful; in practice, detestable; from it resulted perpetual
anarchy. They had adopted in 1572 for their monarchy the
elective system, a sort of government which would be the
best if it were not the most difficult, and which can only be
good for a far-advanced and well-established nation, whom
political and social education has rendered capable of its
exercise. In Poland this regime engendered only weakness
and confusion, and opened the door to every intrigue of the
foreigner. Besides they had reduced this elective royalty to
nonentity, leaving it neither the law to make, nor the army
to command, nor justice to administer, and that too at a time
when all Europe bestowed absolute power upon its kings,
when Europe concentrated in a single hand each national
force. While Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Frederick II.,
were making over the art of war, the Poles remained a magnifi-
cent chivalry, destitute of fortresses, artillery, or engineer-
ing. While religious hatreds were subsiding they renewed
in the full eighteenth century against the Lutheran and the
Greek dissenters the laws of the most evil days of intoler-
ance, and they, contemporaries of Voltaire, manifested all
the furies of the league. It costs something to utter so
severe words concerning that great national calamity.