A School History of England/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
THE AMERICAN REBELLION AND THE GREAT FRENCH WAR, 1760–1815; REIGN OF GEORGE II
Put half a world to flight,
Nor while their new-built cities breathed
Secure behind her might;
Not while she poured from Pole to Line
Treasure and ships and men—
These worshippers at Freedom's shrine
They did not quit her then!
By England o'er the main—
Not till the Frenchman from the North
Had gone, with shattered Spain;
Not till the clean-swept ocean showed
No hostile flag unrolled,
Did they remember what they owed
To Freedom—and were bold!
The Rebellion of the American Colonies, 1776.Soon after the peace of 1763, we began to perceive one result of the conquest of Canada which few people had expected. Our American colonies, having no French to fear any longer, wanted to be free from our control altogether. They utterly refused to pay a penny of the two hundred million pounds that the war had cost us; and they equally refused to maintain a garrison of British soldiers. They intended to shake off all our restrictions on their trade, and to buy and sell in whatever market they could find. When our Parliament proposed in 1764 to make them pay a small fraction of the cost of the late war, they called it ‘oppression’, and prepared to rebel. ‘We are Whigs,’ they said; ‘Whigs always resist Oppression. You English Whigs did so in 1688.’
What the English Whigs thought of it.There were two results from this. In the first place the great Whig families were already sore at King George's attempts to take his ministers without consulting them. And, when they saw the King and his ministers set upon compelling the Americans to pay the tax, they began to denounce the very things of which they had formerly been the champions, namely, the Empire, the Army and the Navy. America was right, they said, to resist such ‘oppression’. Even the great William Pitt, now Earl of Chatham, said this. And so the whole meanings of the words ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ were completely changed. The Whig became a person who cared little for the Empire, and, occasionally, even supported the enemies of his country, just as the Tory of Anne's reign had done. And the Tories became, for a season, the true patriots, as the Whigs of Anne’s reign had been.
War with America, 1775–82.The second result was that we had to fight our Colonies, and that we failed to beat them. It was a hopeless business from the first. The distance was too great, the spaces of America were too vast for us to hold by force, even if we had won in battle. The quarrels in our Parliament were too fierce to allow of success. We had no great minister at home, and no great general in America. The colonists called a Congress at Philadelphia; declared themselves to be independent; The ‘United States of America', 1776.and in 1776 took the name of the ‘United States of America’. Blood had already been shed when this happened. A real hero, patient, resourceful and brave, called George Washington, commanded the American army. We never sent enough troops; we had not, in fact, enough troops to send. Though we often won battles, we suffered some very severe disasters.
They ask French help, 1778.The Americans very soon sought French help, and France was delighted at such a chance of avenging her losses in the former war. The French fleet, though small, had been much improved since that war, and was able to draw away our ships from the coast of America to all quarters of the world. Naval war with France, 1778–83.We were just able to defend the rest of our Empire (except Minorca, which we now lost again); but not to beat our colonists at the same time. Spain, and even our ally Holland, soon joined France; and for a few months, we had the navies of all the world against us. So, when Lord Cornwallis, with seven thousand men, was obliged to surrender to a French and American force at Yorktown in 1781, we determined to withdraw from America; after which, having our hands free, we finished the naval war victoriously in other quarters of the world. Rodney smashed a great French fleet in the West Indies; and Lord Heathfield, at Gibraltar, beat off the siege of that rock, which had lasted for three years. Peace of Versailles, 1783.By a Treaty signed in 1783 we acknowledged the Independence of America, gave back Florida and Minorca to Spain, and some small West Indian islands, as well as Senegal in West Africa, to France. These were serious losses; yet France had been even harder hit by the war than we had been. She had hoped, in return for her help, to receive perpetual trading privileges with America; but the Americans showed no more gratitude to her than they had previously shown to us, and she received none.
The ice on the Delaware,
But the poor dead soldiers of King George
They neither know nor care—
On the sunny side of the lane,
And scuffling rookeries awake
Their England’s spring again.
Or the ice melts out of the bay,
And the men that served with Washington
Lie all as still as they.
In the moist dark woods of pine,
And every rock-strewn pasture shows
Mullein and columbine.
Encountered, strove, and died,
And the kindly earth that knows no spite
Covers them side by side.
She has all the world to make gay,
And, behold, the yearly flowers are
Where they were in our fathers’ day!
When the columbine is dead,
And sumach leaves that turn, in fall,
Red as the blood they shed.
Factions in British Parliament, 1764–83.All this time there were fierce quarrels in Parliament, between Whigs and Tories, on many questions besides the war. Every act of Government, good or bad, was torn to pieces and called ‘infamous’ by the Whigs, some of whom sought for popularity by writing in the newspapers, and even by appealing to the passions of the London mob. That mob more than once broke loose and enjoyed some highly exciting riots, in suppressing which King George showed great personal courage. Cry for reform of House of Commons.One of the cries raised at this time, both in and outside Parliament, was for a better representation of the people of Britain in the House of Commons. It was really a very reasonable cry, for the existing system was absurd.
The ‘Rotten Boroughs’.By that system each county sent two members to Parliament whatever its population. And in the counties only actual owners of land could vote at elections. You might be enormously rich and have a long lease of an enormous estate; but unless you owned land you had no vote. Then the boroughs, which also sent two members each, were still the same towns which had sent members to the Tudor Parliaments. From many of these towns all trade, riches and importance had long departed, and some boroughs had hardly any inhabitants at all! Side by side with these were great cities grown and growing up, which sent no members to Parliament. Now, if the Tories had been wise, they would have taken up this question, and made a proper and moderate ‘reform’ of the House of Commons. The Whigs, who called themselves ‘champions of the people’, could hardly with decency have opposed it. William Pitt the younger.But when William Pitt the younger, son of the great Minister of the Seven Years’ War, took up the question in 1785, he could get very little support from his own party. So this question fell into the hands of noisy agitators outside Parliament, who cried out for a ‘Radical Reform’, and got the name of ‘Radicals’.
His first ministry, 1783–1801.The ten years that followed the peace of 1783 were years of great prosperity in Britain. The Americans continued to trade with us as before, though, of course, we could no longer compel them to do so. Our Indian Empire.Our Indian Empire had been enormously increased since 1761 by Clive and Warren Hastings, and by a long line of heroic soldiers and statesmen. The East India Company was now a sovereign power, and the greatest military power in India. Parliament had begun to take notice of it, not always favourable or wise notice, and passed laws to help it to govern its territories. The Crown now appointed a Governor-General, a council and judges for British India. One of the favourite tricks of the Whigs was to accuse the Company and its agents of cruelty, extortion and so on. The first Governor-General Warren Hastings was so accused, and though he was acquitted, his trial dragged on for many years. Discovery of Australia, 1774–6.Still farther away the voyages of Captain Cook had recently revealed to Europe the huge continent of Australia, the islands of New Zealand and numerous other islands in the Pacific Ocean. Our first colonies began to be planted in Australia in 1787.
The Industrial Revolution.At home great changes were beginning which were going to turn Britain from a corn-growing and wool-growing country into the workshop of the world. These changes have got the name of the ‘Industrial Revolution’. They took more than a century to work out, and the result of them has been that we now buy nearly all our food from distant lands, and buy it with the goods which we make in our great cities, principally iron, cotton and woollen goods. It is sometimes a little difficult to arrange for an uninterrupted supply of food for forty million people. Until about the middle of the eighteenth century the south and east of England had been the richest counties. Iron and coal.Now the north and west, South Wales and Southern Scotland quickly began to supplant them, because in these parts iron and coal are found close together. The invention of numerous machines also began to save hand-labour, and weaving and spinning, which were formerly done in country cottages, were now done in great factories, which could only exist in great towns. Steam engines.The most important of all discoveries of this period is that of the steam engine. For, by the force of steam, all machines could be worked for all manufactures much more cheaply and powerfully than by hand-labour or by water-mills. England used steam in all her manufactures twenty years before any other nation, and so no other nations could at first compete with her. Increase of towns.The sad result has been that the country districts have gradually been deserted and the towns have become of more important than the farming land. But the full result was not generally realized until far into the nineteenth century. Lack of food.At first, the faster population increased in the towns, the greater was the demand for corn to feed it. Very little corn could yet be brought from abroad, because few countries had any corn to spare before the vast spaces of America and Canada were cultivated. So the price of corn began to go up and up; and, though wages went up too, they never went up fast enough. The poor-rate.When the harvest fell short, the poor were often very badly off for food, and had to have relief given them out of the Poor-rates. Poor-rates had existed since the reign of Elizabeth, but had not increased much or been felt as a great burden until this period; now they began to increase enormously. Riots.There were also riots in every year of bad harvest, and many of these riots were directed against the new machinery, which foolish men said ‘took the bread out of their mouths’. In that belief the rioters made a point of breaking the machines. So, side by side with the enormous increase of the country’s wealth, there was often found increase of misery and discontent among the poor. Foolishly, but naturally, the poor used to blame the Government and the laws for their misery. But the condition of the lowest class of the people, both in the old and the new towns, had long been attracting the attention of serious people. In the reigns of George I and George Il, though many bishops and clergy did their duty earnestly, there were many who did not, and perhaps we may admit that the Church of England had, as a whole, rather ‘gone to sleep’. The Wesleyan movement, 1730–91.It was this which gave such effect to the preaching of the brothers John and Charles Wesley from about 1730. They went into the poorest slums and the most deserted parishes and preached, often in the open air, the need of repentance and the duty of listening to that message. The result was the foundation of the ‘Methodist’ and Wesleyan communities, which gradually grew into dissenting churches, separated, much against the original intentions of their founder, from the National Church. John Wesley lived to a great age and continued to preach till the day of his death in 1791.
Pitt’s wisdom and reforms, 1784–93.It was during the long ministry of William Pitt the younger, the son of the man who won Canada for us that these great changes began to bear their first fruit. Pitt was Prime Minister from 1783 to 1801, and again from 1804 to 1806. For nine years he kept the peace, and undertook an infinite number of valuable reforms in every department of the State save one. He simplified taxes and the Customs’ duties and the method of collecting them; he began to pay off the National Debt. He tried to reform the House of Commons, to abolish the cruel trade of carrying slaves from Africa to the West Indies; he tried to pacify Ireland and give it perfect free trade with Britain; and he would have liked to abolish the laws which still shut out the Catholics from Parliament. Every wise and moderate change which took place during the nineteenth century had already been conceived by this great and wise man. But many of his proposals were upset or spoiled either by the opposition of the Whigs, the stupidity of the Tories, or the prejudices of King George. His neglect of the army and navy.The one mistake Pitt made was in refusing to set the army and navy on a proper footing to meet a future war. He seemed to think that Europe was going to be at peace for ever; whereas the greatest war that had ever threatened Great Britain was just going to burst upon her and continue for twenty-two years. Then all Pitt's projects for reform had to be thrown to the winds and the nation had to harden itself to fight to the death.
The French Revolution, 1789.This great war was caused by the ‘French Revolution’. It was the old story of France desiring to dominate the world; and it began in this way. The French people had a series of real grievances against their clumsy, stupid, old-fashioned system of government by an ‘absolute’ King; and they demanded a parliamentary system and a ‘limited’ monarchy like our own. But at the first touch the whole fabric of old France fell to pieces. Kings, nobles, society itself were hurled down; all in the name of some imaginary ‘natural rights’ of everybody to have an equal share in government. France eager for war, 1792.A Republic was set up; King Louis XVI was put to death. A new kind of ‘Gospel’ was preached; ‘all men are equal’, ‘all government is tyranny, all religion is a sham’, ‘down with everything and up with ourselves’ (‘ourselves’ being the bloodthirsty mobs of Paris and other great cities). This precious Republic proceeded to offer its alliance to all the peoples of Europe who wished to abolish their kings and ‘recover their liberty’. It declared war on Austria and Prussia, and began by invading Belgium and threatening Holland, which had been our ally since 1688.
England must fight, 1793.Then, at the opening of 1793, Pitt felt bound to interfere. The nation was heartily at his back. Scenes of the utmost horror and cruelty had taken place in France, and the French people, once the most civilized in Europe, seemed to have gone mad. Noisy Whig politicians.There were a few noisy politicians in Britain, both in and outside Parliament, who sympathized with the French, and cried out for ‘Radical Reform’ and a ‘National Convention’ of the whole British people; but they were very few. The worst of them was the Whig orator, Charles Fox, who had rejoiced over every disaster of his country during the war against America. A good deal of wild nonsense was also written in some of the Whig newspapers. Daily newspapers began early in the eighteenth century; but they were still expensive, and, as yet, few of the poorer classes could read, so the newspapers used to be passed from hand to hand, or read aloud in the public-house. On the whole, the voice of the newspapers was thoroughly patriotic.
Ireland, 1782–1800.But if there were few sympathizers with France in Britain, there were many in Ireland. Ireland still had real grievances, though during the last thirty years they had steadily been removed. She had shown little gratitude for their removal, and many Irishmen had openly sympathized with the American rebellion. In 1782 her Parliament had been declared to be absolutely free from the control of the British Parliament, and there was therefore a real danger that Ireland might refuse to go to war to help Great Britain. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.The Catholics were still shut out from this Parliament; but, excepting in Ulster, nearly all the poorer Irishmen were Catholics. Pitt, as I told you, wanted to admit Catholics to both Parliaments; but it was not the time to make such a great change, when Britain was in the middle of a dangerous war, and when the mass of the Irish peasants, poor, disloyal and ignorant, were quite ready to welcome a French invasion of Ireland. Civil war and rebellion in Ireland, 1798.From 1795 there was almost a state of civil war between Irish Protestants and Catholics; and, in 1798, the latter openly rebelled. England had very few troops to spare, and the rebellion took nearly a year to put down. French invasion was hourly expected, though only once a very few French troops were able to land. The Union of the Parliaments, 1800.When the rebellion was over, Pitt rightly decided that the best thing for both countries was to abolish the Irish Parliament, and to make one united Parliament for the two islands (1800). In this united Parliament Pitt intended to allow the Catholics to sit; Resignation of Pitt, 1801.but King George foolishly and obstinately refused to agree, and so Pitt had to resign the office of Prime Minister, which he had held for eighteen years.
The war abroad.And now for the ‘great war’. For Britain it would necessarily be a sea war, and therefore a war for empire, trade and colonies. France intends to conquer Europe.For France, as far as she could make it so, it would be a land war, since it was Europe that France wanted to conquer, not sea or colonies. At first, as I told you, she professed to be conquering other states for their own good, ‘to liberate them from their tyrants,’ and all that sort of nonsense. But most nations, even those that really were badly governed, soon found out that a French invasion was much worse than any amount of bad government by their own ‘tyrants’. So nation after nation rose and fought against France, either one by one or in great alliances of nations. All were beaten; France was the greatest land power in the world, and her soldiers the bravest, cleverest and fiercest fighters. All the nations in the world appealed to England to help them with the one thing which all knew she had got in heaps, money. We actually paid Dutchmen, Prussians, Austrians, Spaniards, Russians and even Turks to fight for their own Interests against France.
English commerce, 1793–1815.How could we afford to do this? Simply because of the power of our navy, which in a few years became so great, that it was able to crush the commerce and to take the colonies of any nation that would not fight against France. Soon it was only in Britain that people could buy the goods of the far East and the far West, silk, coffee, tobacco, sugar, tea, spice. And at last only in Britain could they buy manufactured articles at all. Even the very Frenchmen who fought us had to buy the clothes and shoes they wore from English merchants!
The Naval War, 1793–7.This control of the worlds trade did not come to us at once, and not without hard fighting. Pitt, as I told you, had neglected the army and navy. Our admirals were old, our generals were at first very stupid. We sent some troops to help the Dutch, and they were very badly beaten. Holland became a daughter-republic of France, and Belgium became a French province. The poor Dutch did not gain much by the exchange, for the British Navy simply took away all their colonies, notably Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope, just as it was taking the French West Indian Islands. Nearer home our fleet did not do so well The French Republic did not have so good a navy as the old French Monarchy had had; but its sailors made up in gallantry what they lacked in skill and efficiency, and it was not until 1797 that we won a great naval battle in European waters. Battle of Cape St. Vincent, 1797.The Spaniards had been forced into the French alliance, and in that year Sir John Jervis and Captain Nelson (soon to be Lord Nelson) utterly defeated a big French and Spanish fleet at Cape St. Vincent on the Spanish Coast.
Napoleon Bonaparte.It was just at this time that the greatest soldier that ever lived came to lead the French—Napoleon Bonaparte. He appeared first as a victorious general in 1796; then as ‘First Consul’ (that is, President) of the French Republic, 1799; Becomes Emperor of the French, 1804.then in 1804 as ‘Emperor of the French’. By this time France had given up all idea of delivering peoples from ‘tyrants’, and simply meant to conquer all the world for her own benefit. Napoleon at once saw that this was impossible as long as Britain remained free and victorious at sea. He means to invade England.To invade Britain, or to destroy in some other way the wealth and commerce of Britain, became his one desire. But to invade Britain while our fleet watched outside all French harbours, while it prevented French ships from sailing out, and smashed them if they did, was not so easy. The mere fear of invasion was enough to set the hearts of all Britons beating. The Volunteers, 1803–5.Volunteers flocked to arms from every parish In our island; and by 1804 we had nearly half a million men in fighting trim in a population of little over eleven millions. If we were to keep the same proportion to-day, we ought to have nearly three millions of men under arms. How many have we got?
Battles of the Nile, 1798, and Copenhagen, 1800.But in truth Napoleon's chances of invading us were not great. Nelson had broken his Mediterranean fleet to splinters at the battle of the Nile, 1798, and had also finished a Danish fleet (which had been got ready to help France) at the battle of Copenhagen in 1800. Peace of Amiens, 1802–3.A few months of peace, 1802–3, followed the retirement of Pitt from the Government. War again, 1803–15.But the war began again in 1803; Pitt came back in the next year, and governed Britain until his death at the beginning of 1806. The years 1803–4–5 were the most dangerous. Napoleon had got a great army at Boulogne (which is almost within sight of the shore of Kent, not three hours’ sail, with a fair wind, from Folkestone), ready to be rowed across the Channel in large, flat-bottomed boats.
The critical year, 1805.But what was the use of that without a French fleet to protect the flat-bottoms? If they had tried to get across unprotected, a single British warship could have pounded them into a red rice-pudding in a few minutes; and so our real task was to watch the French harbours and prevent their ships of war getting out. The final struggle came in 1805. The French admiral, Villeneuve, managed to get out from Toulon; drove off the British force which was watching the Spanish ports, and so freed the Spanish fleet. Battle of Trafalgar, Oct. 21, 1805.He then sailed across the Battle of Atlantic and back again, in the hope of drawing all British ships away from the Channel. After a long
,_p.213.jpg)
chase Lord Nelson met him off the Spanish coast, and won the battle of Trafalgar in October, 1805. It was almost a dead calm all the morning as the English ships crept slowly towards the enemy—they must have looked like moving thunder-clouds. Lord Nelson's famous signal, ‘England expects that every man will do his duty,’ was spelled out in little flags from the mast of his great ship the Victory. And every man did. Almost the
whole French and Spanish fleets were there destroyed or taken prisoners. No such victory had been won at sea since the Greeks beat the Persians at Salamis nearly five hundred years before Christ. Nelson was killed in the battle; but the plan of invasion was over and Napoleon never resumed it. The French Navy hardly recovered from this defeat before our own days. You can see the Victory still moored in Portsmouth harbour, and can go into the little dark cabin in which Nelson died, happy in spite of mortal pain, because he just lived long enough to hear of England's triumph.
French victories on the Continent, 1805–9.The remaining colonies of France and her allies were gradually conquered during the next ten years. But at first this seemed to help little towards freeing the continent of Europe, which, by 1807, France had subdued right up to the Russian frontier. Prussia had been beaten to pieces in 1806; Austria, which, on the whole, had been the most steady of Napoleon's enemies, was beaten for the third time in 1809, and was half inclined to make an alliance with him; but by that time Napoleon had run his head against something which was going to destroy him.
Napoleon attacks Spain, 1808.Much the worst governed, most ignorant, most backward nation in Europe, was Spain. Napoleon thought it would be easy to put one of his brothers on the throne of Spain, and one of his generals on the throne of Portugal. Spain was, besides, the oldest ally of France; but when Napoleon tried this plan in 1808, she became at once his fiercest enemy. She did not want to be ‘reformed ’ or better governed; she wanted to keep her stupid, cruel Catholic kings and priests. British troops sent to Portugal, 1808.Both Spain and Portugal at once cried out for British help; and, as the road by sea was in our hands, we began at once to send help in money, and very soon in men. With the men we sent a man. ‘In war’, said Napoleon himself, ‘it is not so much men as a man that counts.’ Sir Arthur Wellesley.Sir Arthur Wellesley, one day to be known as the Duke of Wellington, was perhaps not so great a soldier as Marlborough or as Napoleon. His previous experience of war had been mostly in India, where, under his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, who was Governor-General of India, he had won, in 1803 and 1804, great victories over enormous swarms of native cavalry called Mahrattas. But he was the most patient and skilful leader we had had since Marlborough, and he had complete confidence in himself and in his power to beat the French.
The Peninsular War; battle of Vimeiro, 1808.He landed in Portugal in 1808, won a great battle at Vimeiro, and early in the next year had driven the French back into Spain. He then made Lisbon (the capital city of Portugal) his ‘base of operations’. The British fleet was able continually to bring supplies, money, food and men to Lisbon. Wellington fortified the approach to the city very strongly, and was able to repel an enormous French army, which came to attack him there in 1810. Wellington’s advance, 1810–11–12.He followed it up into Spain as it retreated; and year by year advanced farther into Spain, winning battle after battle. But each winter he fell back upon his base. The fierce patriotism of the Spanish peasants, who killed every Frenchman they met, helped us enormously, though in the battles their armies were of little use to us, and their generals worse than useless. At last in 1813 came a year in which Wellington did not need to retreat into Portugal. Battle of Vittoria, 1813.He won the great battle of Vittoria In June, and then drove the French back in headlong flight over the Pyrenees. Early in 1814 our men were fighting their way into that French province which, five hundred years before, we used to call ‘English Aquitaine’.
Napoleon attacks Russia, 1812; his defeat.And meanwhile in 1812, at the other end of Europe, Napoleon himself had suffered an even worse disaster. He had invaded Russia, a country whose people were as ignorant, as backward and as patriotic as the Spaniards. The greatest French army that was ever put on foot had starved and been frozen among the snows of Russia. Europe awake to resist France, 1813–14.As its broken remnants retreated through Germany, the Prussians, whom the French had cruelly ill-treated since 1806, jumped upon them, and called on all other Germans to do the same. The Austrians joined in. England poured money into the hands of all who would fight the French. Since Pitts death until 1812 there had only been one great British minister, George Canning; but he had resigned his office in 1809. Lord Castlereagh, 1812–15.Now in 1812 Lord Castlereagh, a minister almost as great as Pitt, came to the front, and it was his Government that really finished the war. Napoleon could, indeed, collect a new army in 1813, but it was never so good as the one he had lost in Russia; and it suffered a fearful defeat at Leipzig. Napoleon abdicates, 1814.After a most gallant defence of the French roads which lead to Paris, Napoleon was compelled by his own generals to resign the throne, and Louis XVII, the heir of the old French monarchy, was recalled to France as king in 1814. Napoleon was allowed to retire to the little Italian island of Elba, but he did not stay there long.
In order to arrange a general peace, the great ,_p.217.jpg)
Battle of Quatre Bras and Ligny, June 16, 1815.The Duke of Wellington and the Prussian general, Marshal Blucher, were waiting for him in a long line to the south of Brussels. On June 16th, Napoleon's left wing fought a fearful drawn battle with Wellington at Quatre Bras, and his right wing just managed to beat Blucher at Ligny. On the 17th there was no fighting; but the Prussians had fallen back northwards, and had lost their close touch with the English. Battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815.So, on the 18th, Wellington with 69,000 British, Hanoverians and Brunswickers had to bear, for seven hours, the attacks of 75,000 Frenchmen at Waterloo. Wellington knew that Blucher would come and help him as fast as he could; but the roads were heavy from rain, and Blucher had been fearfully hard hit two days before. But at last he came, though his men did not get into action till about 4.30 p.m., and did not produce much effect on the French for two hours more. We had then been defending our position since 11 a.m. But soon after seven we began to advance, and the night closed with a headlong flight of the French Emperor and his army on the road to Paris.
Peace at last, 1815.This battle of Waterloo ended the Great War; the last war, let us hope, that we shall ever have to fight against the French, who are now our best friends. Long ago Pitt had said, ‘England has saved herself by her exertions, she will save Europe by her example.’ In 1815 she had indeed done both.
The gains of Great Britain at the Peace.When the final treaty was made in that year, our gains in actual territory were small. We gave back the greater part of the colonies we had taken from France and her allies, keeping only the West Indian island of Tobago, the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the Dutch colonies of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope, and the little Dutch province of Guiana in South America. In the Mediterranean, we kept the island of Malta, but gave back Minorca to Spain. Our real reward, then, came in the commerce of the world, which during the war had passed wholly into our hands.
To Dieppe and Boulogne and to Calais Cross over;
And in each of those runs there is not a square yard
Where the English and French haven't fought and fought hard!
They'd stretch like a raft from the shore to the shore,
And we’d see, as we crossed, every pattern and plan
Of ship that was built since sea-fighting began.
Cogs, carracks and galleons with gay gilded poops—
Hoys, caravels, ketches, corvettes and the rest,
As thick as regattas, from Ramsgate to Brest.
And Nelson's crack frigates are hid from our eyes,
Where the high Seventy-fours of Napoleon's days
Lie down with Deal luggers and French chasse-marées.
With their honey-combed guns and their skeleton crews—
And racing above them, through sunshine or wale,
The Cross-Channel packets come in with the Mail.
Must open their trunks on the Custom-house bench,
While the officers rummage for smuggled cigars
And nobody thinks of our blood-thirsty wars!