At home too matters were looking very dark. The dull and reactionary government of North had been suffering a stormy trial. In 1780 the strange and fantastic Gordon Riots had seemed for a moment to shake the foundations of society in London. Lord George Gordon, a fanatical and half-crazed member of Parliament, had stirred up an agitation against some bills for the relief of Romanists which had come before the Lower House. He raised a mob which burnt many Catholic chapels, destroyed the houses of unpopular persons, and then turned to indiscriminate plunder. The ministry and the magistrates showed a strange weakness before this outburst of anarchy, and it was left to King George himself to order the troops to act against the mob, and get the streets cleared by the prompt shooting of plunderers.
The Irish volunteers.
In Ireland things were far more dangerous. In the absence of the regular army, the ministry had permitted the Protestants of Ireland to form volunteer corps for the protection of the island from French invasion. But the volunteers, finding themselves the only force in the land, proceeded to follow the example of America, by agitating for the complete parliamentary freedom of Ireland, and the repeal of Poynings' Act, which subjected the Irish to the British legislature. It was only their fear of their own Catholic countrymen which kept them from demanding separation, and all through 1781-82 an open rebellion seemed possible at any moment; nor had England a single soldier to spare to repress such a rising. Indeed, the trouble only ended by the complete surrender of the English Government. North's successors in May, 1782, granted the Irish the Home Rule they demanded, and for eighteen years (1782-1800) the Irish legislature was completely independent of that of Great Britain.
Rodney's victory.—Relief of Gibraltar.
The general break-up of the British empire seemed possible and even probable in 1782. But two great victories saved it. Admiral Rodney on April 12 met the French fleet in the West Indies, and inflicted a crushing defeat on it off St. Lucia, capturing his opponent, De Grasse. This restored English maritime supremacy in America, and led to the recovery of most of the lost West India Islands. A similar triumph in waters nearer home followed in the autumn of the same year. A great French and Spanish army and fleet had been besieging Gibraltar since 1779. It made its final attack in September, 1782, bringing up vast floating batteries to compete with the artillery of the Rock. But General Eliott, the indefatigable governor of the place, destroyed all these cumbrous structures with red-hot shot; and a few days later an English fleet under Lord Howe arrived and relieved the long-beleaguered garrison.
Lord North resigns.—The Whigs make peace with the colonies.
Six months before the relief of Gibraltar, Lord North, seeing all things round him in disaster, and sensible that the king's policy was no longer possible, laid down office. To his grief and humiliation, George III. was forced to call his enemies the Whigs into power, and to surrender the administration of affairs to them. A Whig cabinet under Lord Rockingham was formed, which immediately made overtures of peace to the United Colonies, conceding complete independence. The Americans were half bankrupt and wholly tired of the war; they accepted the terms with alacrity, and, to the disgust of their French allies, made peace in April, 1783.
The Treaty of Versailles.
This left France and Spain committed to a war which was no longer going in their favour. England had reasserted her old maritime supremacy, and seemed very far from crushed. But she was so disheartened that it was well known that she would make vast concessions to end the war. The allies consented to treat, and granted the new Whig ministry comparatively easy terms. England ceded Minorca and Florida to Spain, and St. Lucia and Tobago, Senegal, and Goree to France, besides restoring the Indian factories of the French. So by the treaty of Versailles (September, 1783) ended the disastrous "War of American Independence."