Читать книгу Canada and its Provinces - Adam Shortt - Страница 27

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In 1775-76 Guy Carleton saved Canada by operations which were distinctive both in time and place. They were finished in the first two years of a struggle which lasted six more; and they were carried on within or about the frontiers of Canada herself, while the area of strife subsequently spread over most of the civilised world. Nevertheless they were parts of a greater whole, and their special significance cannot be understood without reference to the general war.

This general war was something vastly more complex than any mere struggle between a king and his subjects, a mother country and her colonies, or the British and Americans. On one side stood the home government and the loyalists in America; quite alone throughout the war. On the other stood the home opposition in politics and the American revolutionists in arms, but not alone, except at first. For presently France and Spain and Holland joined the enemy in arms, and later on the Germans, Prussians, Russians, Swedes and Danes formed the hostile armed neutrality of the north. The situation was complicated by the fact that while the opposition thwarted the government unceasingly in the American part of the war, most of them resented the armed intervention of foreign powers in Europe. But the broad line of hostile division remains: on one side, two British parties—the home government and the loyalists; on the other, first, one British party, the opposition, in strong political hostility to everything the government and loyalists did in America; next, another British party, the American revolutionists, waging civil war; then, three foreign powers—France, Spain and Holland—aiding this civil war with forces greater than its own; and, finally, five other foreign powers forming an armed coalition against the British rights of search at sea. The British government and loyalists were defeated. The Americans were on the winning side. They were the original and constant antagonists, the war took its name from them, and its peculiar circumstances naturally gave them more than the lion's share of the spoils. But as they numbered only three millions, some of whom were lukewarm and others fervent loyalists; as their general resources were those of a new and undeveloped country; as they had to evolve an army out of a militia which possessed no higher organization and little else than infantry; and as they never got beyond a new-born navy, though the command of the Atlantic was all-important—it is self-evident that the one purely American factor in determining the victory could not have exceeded the sum total of all the nine non-American factors—the political support of the British opposition, the armed intervention of France, Spain and Holland, and the armed neutrality of the five other powers; which last practically meant that all the navies of the world were arrayed against the British just at the crisis of the war. Thus the Americans enjoyed all the fruits of a victory which was at least half won by other means than theirs.

At the beginning of the struggle, however, they were alone and weak. But the home government was weak too; its forces in the united colonies were weaker still, and those in Canada weakest of all. The Americans lacked political unanimity, military organization and warlike stores. But they fought at home and their leaders knew their own minds. The British leaders, on the other hand, never had a settled policy of any sort, either in England or America. They were second-rate men in parliament, where they were effectively hampered by opponents like Pitt, Burke and Fox. And they were second-rate men at the front, where they were ordered about on all sorts of disjointed expeditions, but never once co-ordinated into a single strategic plan. The government twice tried to make peace at unpropitious times and by offering unacceptable terms. When they did approve the right plan, long foreseen by Carleton, of cutting the colonies in two by holding the line of Lake Champlain and the Hudson, their wretched war minister, Lord George Germain, neglected to order Howe to co-operate from New York with Burgoyne, who was advancing from Canada. Politics and plans were all imperfectly conceived and badly executed; and the generals were no better than the plans. Many of them were politically allied to the opposition and did their work half-heartedly. Howe was a strong Whig; Burgoyne became a follower of Fox; Clinton had Whig connections; and Cornwallis voted against taxing the colonies. It was a makeshift war all round. But foreign aid held the British command of the sea in check long enough to let American Independence become an accomplished fact.

Only four men rose to real distinction in all the eight years of this makeshift war—Washington, Paul Jones, Rodney and Carleton. Washington alone achieved universal fame. British prejudice has dealt hardly with Paul Jones, who was a Scotchman by birth though a Virginian by choice. But he was undoubtedly one of the very best captains ever seen, he gave promise of being an equally good admiral, and he was the original and creative founder of the United States navy. Rodney won a great resuscitative victory in the West Indies. But this, like Carleton's appointment as commander-in-chief of all His Majesty's forces in America, only happened in 1782, when it was much too late to affect the issue of the Revolution. Thus British vacillation and ineptitude denied either a good admiral or a good general all chance of subduing the revolted colonies. However, Carleton found for himself one desperate last chance in Canada, took it with consummate resolution, and so became the one great British soldier-statesman of that untoward time.