First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [181]
Agents quickly conveyed news of the Cornwallis catastrophe across the Channel, bringing it first to Lord George Germain, who in turn took it to Lord North in Downing Street. The First Minister flung open his arms “as [if] he would have taken a ball in the breast,” crying in what may be the most quoted words of the war, “Oh, God, it is all over!” and repeating the words “wildly” as he strode up and down the room. Not he but Germain brought the news to King George, who, unshaken in his singleness of purpose, ordered Germain to make plans for the most feasible mode of continuing the war. Apart from diehards in the Cabinet surrounding Germain and Sandwich, few in Parliament and the country offered support. Most acknowledged that the war had been ineffectual, and that to continue it by defensive measures as proposed by Germain, with no hope of winning, but merely to hold out against independence and drive a stiff bargain with the Americans, would be no more effective. It would only mean unacceptable cost to raise new levies to replace the army lost by Cornwallis as well as to pay for the past costs of the war. General opinion concluded, in an excess of gloom equal to the previous apathy in the field, that to recognize the independence of America meant, in Germain’s awful vision, the “ruin” of empire. Equally extreme, the King insisted that to recognize the independence of America would bring Britain to “inevitable destruction” and that he would abdicate rather than be a party to it. The real reason for his frantic resistance was his agony at the prospect of having to call in the detested Opposition men if North’s government, as sponsor of the war, had to go. He could only return to his petulant thunder: “I would rather lose my crown than call in a set of men who would make me a slave.” The inevitable, however, was approaching. North told Germain at this time that to recover America was impossible and he could not continue to finance a war for no purpose except to provide a platform for a stiff stand on peace terms. Since the Americans were adamant for independence, there seemed no way to bring them to peace short of anything less than that demand except by maintaining the pressure of a state of war.
Walpole curiously records in a letter to Horace Mann that “Cornwallis’s disgrace does not make a vast impression, none in Parliament, but a drop will overset a vessel that is full to the brim. Our affairs are certainly dismal and will get worse.” The war was nearing its end, he wrote to his friend, although its consequences were far from conclusion. “In some respects,” he foresaw with a sense of history that went beyond gossip, “they are commencing a new date which will reach far beyond us.” Parliament was already full to the brim. Following Yorktown, and the loss of St. Eustatius and expectation of further French offensives in the West Indies, with potential further loss of sugar islands and their revenue, a sense of military depression took hold. The will to win, never an overwhelming emotion in the nation, subsided to minor key. The City of London, sensitive to the prospect of prolonged and costly expenditure, petitioned the King to end the war. Country meetings echoed the sentiment. Motions in Parliament urging an end were resisted by the government with smaller and smaller majorities. On December 12, a motion by a private member, Sir James Lowther, that “all further attempts to reduce the revolted colonies are contrary to the true interests of this kingdom,” was voted down by only forty-one, less than half the former majority. In February, Henry Seymour Conway, a former Secretary of State, moved that the war in America “be no longer pursued for the impracticable purpose of reducing the inhabitants by force,” and this was put down by a majority of only one. A week later, a second motion by Conway to the same effect was carried. Implacably, a third time, on March 4, Conway moved to inform the King that “this House