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

[251] Marie Antoinette to her mother.¹ There was nothing

Chap. XI.} 1779.

but the capture of the little island of Grenada for which a Te Deum could be chanted in Paris. Maria Theresa continued to offer her mediation, whenever it should best suit the king. ‘We shall feel it very sensibly if any other offer of mediation should be preferred to ours.’ So she wrote to her daughter, who could only answer: ‘The nothingness of the campaign removes every idea of peace.’²

During the attempt at an invasion of England, the allied belligerents considered the condition of Ireland. ‘To separate Ireland from England and form it into an independent government like that of America,’ wrote Vergennes, ‘I would not count upon the Catholics, although they form the largest and the most oppressed part of the nation. But the principle of their religion attaches them specially to the monarchical system. It is otherwise with the numerous presbyterians who inhabit the north of Ireland. Their fanaticism makes them enemies of all civil or religious authority concentrated in a chief. They aspire to nothing but to give themselves a form of government like that of the United Provinces of America.’³ ‘It is not easy to find a suitable emissary. Irishmen enough press around me; but, being all Catholics, they have no connection except among their countrymen of their own communion, who have not energy enough to attempt a revolution. The presbyterians, being by their principles and by their characters more enterprising, more daring, more inimical to royal authority, and even more opposed to us, ’