The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [141]
In persisting, he could take heart from the fact that the Americans were often beset by trouble. Without central funds, Congress could not keep the armies in pay or supplies, which meant deserting soldiers and another winter of deprivation worse than Valley Forge, with rations at one-eighth normal and mutinies on more than one occasion. Washington was harassed by political cabals, betrayed by Benedict Arnold, disobeyed by General Charles Lee, subjected to scattered but savage warfare by Loyalist and Indian groups, disappointed by the failure of the attempt in combination with the French fleet to regain Newport and by British success in the Carolinas including the capture of Charleston. On the other hand, he had the immense accretion of French naval and land forces, which altered the balance of the war, and he had been joined by Baron von Steuben and other European professionals who drilled the ragged Americans into disciplined formations. In 1779 Congress appointed John Adams to negotiate peace on a basis of independence and total British withdrawal, but to the King and the hard-line ministers this was still unthinkable.
The English, under a First Minister who hated his position and longed only to be released and have nothing more to do with the war, and with a War Minister, Germain, whom he disliked and distrusted and who was still under a cloud of investigation, were not well equipped to win. They were incapable of forming an overall strategy for the war and could think only in terms of saving some colonies for the Crown, perhaps in the south, and of continuing a war of harassment and disruption of trade until the colonists were made to yield. Commanders and ministers alike, everyone but the King, knew this was illusion; that to subdue the country was beyond their power. Meanwhile, the French had appeared in the Channel. Though Lord Sandwich had boasted that he had 35 ships ready and manned and fit for war, Admiral Keppel was to find no more than six “fit to meet a seaman’s eye” and dockyards empty of stores when the French entered the war. The battle off Ushant in June 1778 ended in a draw although the British took some encouragement in claiming it as a victory.
Worse than the war were political developments in England. Fueled by the American revolt, the movement for political reform spread through the country with demands for annual Parliaments, manhood suffrage, elimination of rotten boroughs, abolition of sinecures and contracts awarded to members of Parliament. The election of 1779 created bitter feeling between parties. Government majorities shrank. Protest reached a climax in the Yorkshire Petition of February 1780, which demanded a halt in appropriations and pensions until reforms were enacted. Petitions like Yorkshire’s flooded Westminster from 28 other counties and many cities. Permanent reform associations were formed. The King was seen, as he had been since the days of Bute, as the promoter of absolutism. Dunning’s bold resolution on the power of the Crown, that it “has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished,” was actually carried by a narrow majority with many country members among the ayes. In June, in response to the repeal of certain penal laws against the Catholics and the mad agitation of Lord George Gordon, the mobs gathered and burst in frightening riot. To cries of “No Popery!” and demands for repeal of the Quebec Act, they attacked ministers, tore their wigs, raided and robbed their houses, burned Catholic chapels, rushed the Bank of England and for three days held the city in terror until the troops gained control.