ness which their independence foretold. With these apprehensions he combined a subtle jealousy of the good faith of the French, who, as a colonial power, were reduced to the lowest rank among the nations of western Europe, and who could recover their share in commerce only through the ruin of colonial monopoly.

When, in April, the French ambassador pressed Florida Blanca to declare at what epoch Spain would engage in the war, the minister, beside himself with passion, exclaimed: "I will take the opinion of the king. Since April of last year France has gone counter to our advice. The king of Spain seems to be looked upon as a viceroy, to whom you put questions as if for his opinion, and then send orders. The American deputies are treated like the Roman consuls, to whom the kings of the East came to beg support. The announcement of your treaty with them is worthy of Don Quixote." The first wish of Spain was to prevent the self-existence of the United States, and, as mediator, to dictate the terms of their accommodation with their mother country; if this was no longer possible, she hoped to be able to concert in advance with England how, in the negotiation for peace, to narrow their domain and erect barriers against their ambition. No sooner had Louis XVI. and his council resolved to brave England than they made it their paramount object to reconcile the Spanish king to their measures. His need of protection, his respect for the elder branch of his family, and some remnants of rancor against England, concurred to bind him to the alliance with France. Moreover, Florida Blanca, who from the drudgery of a provincial attorney had risen to be the chief minister of a world-wide empire, had a passion to be famous in his own time and in history, and was therefore willing to join France in the war, if he could but secure Spain against the United States. Avoiding an immediate choice between peace and war, he demanded the postponement of active hostilities in European waters that he might gain free scope for treating with England. Britain was unprepared. The French were ready for action; yet they consented to wait for Spain.

To ascertain the strength of the fleet at Brest, a British fleet of twenty ships of the line put to sea under Admiral

Keppel, so well known to posterity by the pencil of Reynolds and the words of Burke. On the seventeenth of June, meeting two French frigates near the island of Ouessant, Keppel gave orders that they should bring to. They refused. One of them, being fired into, discharged its broadside and then lowered its flag; the other escaped. The French government, no longer able to remain inactive, authorized the capture of British merchantmen; and early in July its great fleet sailed out of Brest. Keppel put to sea once more. On the twentyseventh the two admirals, each having thirty men-of-war in three divisions and each professing the determination to fight a decisive battle, met off Ouessant. D'Orvilliers was better fitted for a monastery than for the quarter-deck; and the British admiral wanted ability for so great a command. After an insignificant action, in which neither party lost a ship, the French returned to Brest, the British to Portsmouth. The French army encamped in Normandy under the Count de Broglie, as if to invade England, and wasted the season in cabals. In India, Chandernagor on the Hoogley surrendered to the English without a blow; the governor of Pondicherry, with a feeble garrison and weak defences, maintained a siege of seventy days in the vain hope of relief. The flag of the Bourbons disappeared from the gulf and sea of Bengal, and from the coast of Malabar.

Florida Blanca proposed to the British minister at Madrid to obtain a cessation of hostilities in order to establish and perpetuate an equilibrium on the continent of America. This was an offer to secure to England the basin of the St. Lawrence, with the territory north-west of the Ohio, and to bound the United States by the Alleghanies. Lord Weymouth answered "that, while France supported the colonies in rebellion, no negotiation could be entered into;" but, as both Great Britain and Spain were interested in preserving colonial dependency, he invited Spain to an alliance.

Spain was unprepared for war; her ships were poorly armed; her arsenals ill supplied; and few of her naval officers were skilful yet Florida Blanca threw out hints to France that he would in October be ready for action, if she would undertake a descent into England. To the British proposal of

an alliance he returned a more formal offer of mediation between the two belligerents, with the avowal that the king of Spain would be forced to choose his part if the war should be continued.

Weymouth, in October, warning Spain of the fatal consequence to the Spanish monarchy of the independence of the United States, put the proposal aside. Yet Florida Blanca continued to fill the courts of Europe with the declaration that Spain would never precede England in recognising the separate existence of her colonies.

In this state of the relations between the three great powers, congress, tired of the dissensions of rival commissioners, on the fourteenth of September, with the cordial approval of John Adams, abolished the joint commission and appointed Franklin their minister plenipotentiary at the court of France. In him the interests of the United States obtained a serene and wakeful guardian, who penetrated the wiles of the Spanish government, and knew how to unite fidelity to the French alliance with timely vindication of the rights of America.

"I observe with pain," so reported Count Montmorin in October, and so he was obliged continually to report of the younger branch of the house of Bourbon, "that this government singularly fears the prosperity and progress of the Americans; and will be much inclined to stipulate for such a form of independence as may leave divisions between England and her colonies." To this end Florida Blanca wished England to retain Canada and Nova Scotia, that they might prove a perennial source of quarrels between the British and the Americans. "On our side," wrote Vergennes simultaneously, "there will be no difficulty in guaranteeing to England Canada and all other American possessions which may remain to her at the peace. The king has recognised the thirteen provinces as free and independent states; for them we ask independence, but without comprehending other English possessions. We are very far from desiring that the nascent republic should remain the exclusive mistress of all that immense continent."

The French minister at Philadelphia zealously urged members of congress to renounce every ambition for an increase of

territory. Gouverneur Morris assented to the necessity of a law for setting a limit to American dominion. "Our empire," said Jay, then president of congress, "is already too great to be well governed; and its constitution is inconsistent with the passion for conquest;" and as he smoked his pipe at the house of Gerard he warmly commended the triple alliance of France, the United States, and Spain.

From the study of their forms of government, Vergennes represented to Spain that "there was no ground for seeing in this new people a race of conquerors. Their republic," he said, "unless they amend its defects, which from the diversity and even antagonism of their interests appears to me very dif ficult, will never be anything more than a feeble body, capable of little activity." To allay the fears of Florida Blanca, Vergennes, in October, without demanding the like confidence from Spain, enumerated as the only conditions which France would exact for herself at the peace: the treaty of Utrecht wholly continued or wholly abrogated; freedom to restore the harbor of Dunquerque; the coast of Newfoundland from Cape Bonavista to Cape St. John, with the exclusive fishery from Cape Bonavista to Point Riche.

From this time Florida Blanca was in earnest in wishing Spain to take part in the war. But his demands, in comparison with the moderation of France, were so extravagant that he was ashamed himself to give them utterance; and in November, saying that the king of Spain could not be induced to engage in the war except for great objects, he requested Vergennes to suggest to him the advantages which France would bind itself to secure to Spain before listening to propositions for peace. To Montmorin he verbally explained his demands in both hemispheres. As to Europe, he said: "Without Gibraltar, I will never consent to a peace." "How are you to gain the place?" asked Montmorin; and he replied: "By siege it is impossible; Gibraltar must be taken in Ireland. or in England." Montmorin rejoined: "The English must be reduced very low before they can cede Gibraltar, unless the Spaniards first get possession of it." "If our operations succeed," answered Florida Blanca, "England will be compelled to subscribe to the law that we shall dictate." At the same

time he frankly avowed that France must undertake the invasion of Great Britain alone; even the junction of the fleets to protect the landing must be of short duration.

Early in February 1779, Lafayette, after a short winter passage from Boston to Brest, rejoined his family and friends. His departure for America in the preceding year, against the command of his king, was atoned for by a week's exile to Paris, and confinement to the house of his father-in-law. The king then received him at Versailles with a gentle reprimand; the queen addressed him with eager curiosity: "Tell us good news of our dear republicans, of our beloved Americans." His fame, his popularity, the influence of his rank, were all employed in behalf of the United States. Accustomed to see great interests sustained by small means, he grudged the prodigality which expended on a single festival at court as much as would have equipped the American army. "To clothe it," said Maurepas, "he would be glad to strip Versailles." He found a ministry neglecting the main question of American independence, and half unconscious of being at Public opinion in France had veered about, and everybody clamored for peace, which was to be hastened by the active alliance with Spain.

war.

All the while the Spanish government, in its intercourse with England, sedulously continued its offers of mediation. Lest its ambassador at London should betray the secret, he was kept in the dark. Lord Grantham, the British ambassador at Madrid, was completely hoodwinked; and wrote home in January 1779: “I really believe this court is sincere in wishing to bring about a pacification." At the end of March the king of England still confided in the neutrality of Spain. Acting from her own interests alone, Spain evaded the question of American independence, and offered England her mediation on the basis of a truce of twenty-five or thirty years, to be granted by the king of England with the concurrence of Spain and France. This offer called forth the most earnest expostulations of Vergennes, till Lord Weymouth put it aside; for he held that, if independence was to be conceded to the new states, it must be conceded "directly to congress, that it might be made the basis of all the advantages to Great Britain which so desirable