George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[248] for remaining in office without assuming the proper

Chap. XI.} 1779.

responsibility of his station. Confiding in the ruin of the American finances and in recruiting successfully within the states, the king was certain that, but for the intervention of Spain, the colonies would have sued to the mother country for pardon; and ‘he did not despair that, with the activity of Clinton and the Indians in their rear, the provinces would even now submit.’ But his demands for an unconditional compliance with his American policy riveted every able statesman in a united opposition. He had no choice of ministers but among weak men. So the office made vacant by the death of Lord Suffolk, the representative of the Grenville party, was reserved for Hillsborough. ‘His American sentiments,’ said the king, ‘make him acceptable to me.’ Yet it would have been hard to find a public man more ignorant or more narrow; more confused in judgment or faltering in action; nor was he allowed to take his seat till Weymouth had withdrawn.

To unite the house of Bourbon in the war, France had bound herself to the invasion of England. True to her covenant, she moved troops to the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, and engaged more than sixty transport vessels of sixteen thousand tons' burden. The king of Spain would not listen to a whisper on the hazard of the undertaking, for which he was to furnish no contingent, and only the temporary use of twenty ships to help in crossing the channel. Florida Blanca, who dared not dispute his unreasoning impatience, insisted on an immediate descent on England without regard to risk. Vergennes, on the other hand, held the landing of a