The majority in the House of Commons had escaped the government. Nine voices only had rejected a vote of want of confidence. On the 20th of March, 1782, a new proposal of Fox excited a violent storm. Lord North entered the hall, and a great tumult arose; Lord Surrey disputed speech with the minister. "I propose," cried Fox, "that Surrey should speak first." "I demand to speak on this motion," said Lord North, eagerly, and as he arose, "I would have been able to spare the House much agitation and time, if it had been willing to grant me a moment's hearing. The object of the present discussion was the overturning of the actual ministry. This ministry no longer exists; the king has accepted the resignation of his cabinet." The surprise was extreme. A lengthy sitting had been expected; the greater part of the members had sent away their carriages. That of Lord North was waiting at the door: the fallen minister mounted it, always imperturbable in his witty good humor. "I assure you, gentlemen," said he, smiling, "that it is the first time I have taken part in a secret." The great Whig coalition came into power. Lord Shelburne had refused to charge himself with it; he consented, however, to become secretary of state. The Marquis of Rockingham, the Duke of Richmond, and Mr. Fox occupied the most important posts. Like William Pitt and Henry Fox previously, Burke had been named paymaster-general of the forces by land and sea. In spite of political principles utterly opposed to those of his colleagues, Lord Thurlow remained chancellor.
The era of concessions was approaching. The first were granted to Ireland, which had violently risen up against the restriction placed upon its commerce, and against the act of George II., which attributed to the English Parliament, in conjunction with the king, the right of legislating on the condition of Ireland without the participation of the Irish Houses. The eloquence of Henry Grattan potently served the national cause; oppressive or arbitrary laws were abrogated. The king at the same time announced his intention of entering on the path of economic reforms. Already young and ardent spirits foresaw other reforms, but Burke, who was a passionate friend of the retrenchment of expenses and pensions, was beside himself with anger when parliamentary privileges appeared in question. Fox had with difficulty restrained him on the subject of a motion of young Pitt, who had recently entered the House, noticed and esteemed by all. He soon blazed forth with all the customary transport of his character and talent. "Burke has at last unburdened his heart with the most magnificent improvidence," wrote Sheridan to Fitzpatrick. "He attacked William Pitt with cries of rage, and swore that Parliament was and had always been what it ought to be, and that whoever thought to reform it wished to overturn the constitution."
In the midst of parliamentary discords and shocks of power, other preoccupations continued to weigh upon the nation, saddened and humiliated by the state of affairs in America, and daily more convinced that peace, however sorrowful, was indispensable. A brilliant success of Admirals Rodney and Hood against the Count de Grasse had for an instant reanimated the pride and the hopes of the English. Although a good sailor, and for a long time fortunate in war, the French admiral had at various times shown himself short-sighted and credulous. He let himself be driven away from St. Christopher, which he was besieging, and of which the Marquis de Bouillé took possession some days later. He was embarrassed by his ships, which had suffered heavy damages. The two fleets met between St. Lucia and Jamaica; the combat lasted ten hours without stoppage of cannonading; the French squadron was cut up; one after another the captains were killed. "We passed near the Glorieux," wrote an eye-witness; "it was almost completely dismasted; but the white flag was nailed to one of the shattered masts, and seemed in its ruin to defy us still. Henceforth incapable of action, the enormous mass presented a spectacle which struck the imagination of our admiral. As he spends his life reading Homer, he exclaimed that he was now working to raise the body of Patrocles." The vessel of the French Admiral, the Ville de Paris, was attacked at once by seven hostile ships; his own could not succeed in approaching him. The Count de Grasse, full of sorrow and anger, still fought when all hope was long since lost. "The admiral is six feet every day," said the sailors, "but on days of battle he is six feet one inch." When the admiral's ship at last hauled down its flag, it had suffered such damage that it sank before arriving in England. Since Marshal de Taillard, the Count de Grasse was the first French commander-in-chief made prisoner during the combat. "In two years," wrote Rodney to his wife, "I have taken two Spanish admirals, one French, and one Dutch. It is Providence who has done all; without it would I have been able to escape the discharges of thirty-three ships of line, who were all set upon near me? But the Formidable has shown herself worthy of her name."
The Bailiff de Suffren was at the same time sustaining in the Indian seas that honor of the French navy so often heroically defended against the most formidable obstacles. He succeeded in landing at the Cape of Good Hope the French garrison promised to the Dutch, when he received command of the fleet from the dying hands of Admiral d'Orves. A clever and bold adventurer who had become a great prince, the Mussulman Hyder-Ali, was obstinately combating English power in the Carnatic. He had rallied around him the remnant of the French colonists, almost without asylum since the ruined Pondicherry had been retaken by the English in 1778. A treaty of alliance united the nabob to the French. On the 4th of July a serious battle was fought before Negapatam between the French and English fleets. The victory remained dubious, but Sir Edward Hughes withdrew under Negapatam without renewing hostilities. The Bailiff had taken possession of Trincomalee. As had already happened several times, whether it were cowardice or treason, a part of the French forces yielded in the middle of the action. A combination was formed against the admiral; he fought alone against five or six assailants; the mainmast of the Heros, which he commanded, fell under the enemy's balls. Suffren, standing on the bridge, shouted, being beside himself, "The flags, let the white flags be put all round the Heros." The vessel, bristling with the glorious signs of its resistance, responded so valiantly to the attacks of the English that the squadron had time to form around it again. The English went to anchor before Madras. M. de Suffren freed Bussy-Castelnau, who had just arrived in India and who had let himself be closed up by the English in Gondelore. Hyder-Ali died on the 7th of December, 1782, leaving to his son, Tippoo Saib, a confused state of affairs, which was soon to become tragic. M. de Suffren alone defended the remnants of French power in India.
England had just gained in Europe a success most important for her policy as well as for her national pride. Twice revictualled, by Rodney and by Admiral Darby, Gibraltar had resisted for two or three years the united efforts of the French and Spaniards. Each morning, on awaking, King Charles III. asked his servants, "Have we Gibraltar?" And, at the negative answer, "We shall soon have it," the monarch would assure them. It was finally resolved to have satisfaction of the obstinate defenders of the place: the Duke de Crillon brought on a body of French troops. He was accompanied by the Count d'Artois, brother of the king, and by the Duke de Bourbon. Their first care, on arriving, was to send to General Eliot the letters addressed to him which had been delayed for some time at Madrid. The Duke de Crillon had added to the correspondence a present of game, fruit, and vegetables, asking at the same time the hostile general's permission to renew this gift. The distress in the besieged town was terrible, but General Eliot responded to the duke with thanks and a refusal. "I have made it a point of honor," said he, "in the matter of plenty and of dearth to make common cause with the last of my brave soldiers: this will be my excuse for begging your Excellency not to overwhelm me with favors in the future."
Some floating batteries, cleverly constructed by a French engineer, the Chevalier d'Arcon, threatened the ramparts of the place. On the 13th of September, at nine o'clock in the morning, the Spaniards opened fire; all the artillery of the fort replied: the surrounding mountains echoed the cannonade. The entire army, which covered the coast, anxiously awaited the result of the enterprise. The fortifications were already beginning to give way, and the batteries had been firing for five hours. All at once, the Prince of Nassau, who commanded a detachment, thought he perceived that the flames were reaching his heavy ship. The fire spread rapidly, and one after another the floating batteries were dismantled. "At seven o'clock we had lost all hope," said an Italian officer who had taken part in the assault; "we no longer fired, and our signals of distress remained without effect. The red balls of the besieged rained on us. The crews were threatened on all sides. Timidly and in weak detachments, the boats of the two fleets glided into the shadow of the batteries, in the hope of saving some of the unfortunates who were perishing. The flames which blazed over the ships doomed to perish served to direct the fire of the English as surely as if it were full day. Captain Curtis, at the head of a little flotilla of gunboats, barred the passage of the rescuers up to the moment when, suddenly changing his character, he consecrated all his strength and the courage of his brave sailors to contend with the flames and waves for the life of the unfortunate Spaniards who were on the point of perishing. Four hundred men owed their existence to his generous efforts. One month after that day so disastrous for the allies, Lord Howe, favored by chance winds, revictualled, for the third time and almost without a fight, the fortress and the town, under the very eyes of the enemy. Gibraltar remained impregnable. The siege no longer continued except in form."
Negotiations were being carried on in Paris, secretly and in private between America and England by Messrs. Oswald and Franklin, and officially between Mr. Grenville and M. de Vergennes. Lord Rockingham had just died, at the age of fifty-two, and the cabinet was re-formed under the leadership of Lord Shelburne, deprived of the brilliancy which Charles Fox had brought to it. The latter seized a pretext to withdraw. He had demanded that the independence of the American colonies should be recognized at once and without relation to a treaty of peace. Lord Shelburne, while admitting the same basis, wished to pursue a more complete negotiation. Fox gave in his resignation, and William Pitt took his place in the cabinet. The first care of Lord Shelburne was to recall Sir Henry Clinton, who was too much compromised in the heat of the American war to be in a position to shape the peace. Party and territorial feuds were grafted on the fertile trunk of national enmities. Everywhere in Georgia and Carolina the ambuscades and reprisals of loyalists and patriots fostered a state of irritation and cruel disorder to which Washington was resolved to put an end. The loyalists of Middletown captured a captain in the service of Congress, and he was hanged. The general-in-chief demanded that the English officer who commanded the detachment should be given up to him. On the refusal of Sir Henry Clinton, who had himself caused the delinquent to be arrested, Washington decided to employ the system of reprisals. Up till then he had studiously avoided it. "I know better than to think of the system of reprisals," he wrote to General Greene; "I am, however, perfectly convinced of this: when one has not the criminal himself at hand, it is the most difficult of all laws to execute. It is impossible that humanity should not intervene in favor of the innocent condemned for the fault of others." The council of war and Congress had, however, adopted the principle and condemned to death Captain Asgill, son of Sir Charles Asgill, an amiable young man of nineteen. Washington seemed to have made up his mind and to have hardened his heart against the appeals of pity. "My resolve," said he, "is based on so long reflection that it will remain immovable. Whatever my feelings of sympathy for the unhappy victim may be, the satisfactory conduct of the enemy can alone cause a ray of hope to arise for him." He delayed, nevertheless, to have the sentence executed. Lady Asgill, in her maternal despair, addressed herself to Marie Antoinette. The latter charged M. de Vergennes to transmit to Congress and to Washington her pressing entreaties in favor of the unfortunate young man. "If I were called to give my opinion," said the general, "I would be of opinion that he should be released." On the 7th of November a vote of Congress pronounced the pardon of Captain Asgill. M. de Vergennes had provided against fresh acts of vengeance. "In seeking to deliver the unfortunate young man from the fate which threatens him," he wrote, "I am far from pledging you to choose another victim; for the pardon to be satisfactory, it is of importance that it should be complete."
Washington did not manifest any confidence in the pacific advances of Great Britain. In taking command of the English troops, Sir Guy Carleton had been charged with the most conciliatory proposals. He had tried to open negotiations with Congress. The latter voted a new resolution, confirming its first declarations of never treating without the concurrence of France. Washington wrote, in the month of May, 1782, "The new administration has caused overtures of peace to be made to the various belligerent nations, probably with the design of detaching some one from the coalition. The old infatuation, the duplicity, and the perfidious policy of England render me, I avow, quite suspicious, quite doubtful. Her disposition seems to me to be perfectly summed up in the laconic saying of Dr. Franklin—'They are said to be incapable of making war, and too proud to make peace.' Besides, whatever may be the intention of the enemy, our watchfulness and our efforts, far from languishing, should be more than ever on the alert. Defiance and prudence cannot harm us. Too much confidence and yielding will lose everything." He said at the same time, with a bitter feeling of his impotence in view of the sufferings of his troops, "You can rely on it, the patriotism and courage of the army are at their limit; never has discontent been greater than at this moment; it is time to make peace."
Peace was on the point of being concluded at Paris, and without the French, between England and the United States. By a diplomatic calculation, or by the insinuations of the English agents, the American negotiators—Franklin, Jay, John Adams, and Laurens—pretended to have conceived some suspicions as to the disinterestedness of France. "Are you afraid of serving as tools to the European powers?" asked Mr. Oswald of John Adams. "Yes, truly." "And what powers?" "All." The suspicion, it is true, was unjust, and Washington felt so without ever expressing it frankly. The preliminary articles of the treaty, which formally reserved the rights of France in a general peace, were secretly signed on the 30th of November, 1782.