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

[42] and without fortune, ambitious and fanatical, and

Chap. I.} 1778.

likely to attract to their support ‘all the rogues and the worthless from the four parts of the globe.’¹ He had warned Lafayette against leaving his wife and wasting his fortune to play the part of Don Quixote in their behalf; and had raised in the council his feeble voice against the alliance of France with the insurgents. He regarded a victory over England as of no advantage commensurate with the dangerous example of sustaining a revolt against established authority. Besides, war would accumulate disorder in the public finances, retard useful works for the happiness of France, and justify reprisals by Great Britain on the colonies of the Bourbon princes.

It was against the interior sentiment of the king,² the doubts of Maurepas, and the vivid remonstrances of the minister of war, that the lingering influence of the policy of the balance of power, the mercantile aspirations of France, its spirit of philosophic freedom, its traditional antagonism to England as aiming at the universal monarchy of commerce and the seas, quickened by an eagerness to forestall a seemingly imminent reconciliation³ with the colonies, forced the French alliance with America.

Just thirty-eight years before, when Maurepas was in the vigor of manhood, he had been famed for his aversion to England, and for founding his glory on the restoration of the French navy.⁴ In the administration of Cardinal Fleury, he was thought to have had the mind of the widest range; and it was in those