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November.
The king, who had just been made
Chap. XXV.} 1781. Nov. 19. |
happy by the birth of a dauphin, received the glad news in the queen's apartment.
The very last sands of the life of the
Count de Maurepas were running out; but he could still recognise
de Lauzun, and the tidings threw a halo round his death-bed.
The joy at court penetrated the whole people, and the name of
Lafayette was pronounced with veneration.
‘History,’ said
Vergennes, ‘offers few examples of a success so complete.’
‘All the wild agree,’ wrote
Franklin to
Washington, ‘that no expedition was ever better planned or better executed.
It brightens the glory that must accompany your name to the latest posterity.’
The first tidings of the surrender of Cornwallis reached
England from
France, about noon on the twenty-fifth of November. ‘It is all over,’ said
Lord North many times, under the deepest agitation and distress.
Fox—to whom, in reading history, the defeats of armies of invaders, from
Xerxes' time downwards, gave the greatest satisfaction—heard of the capitulation of
Yorktown with wild delight.
He hoped that it might become the principle of all mankind that power resting on armed force is invidious, detestable, weak, and tottering.
The official report from
Sir Henry Clinton was received the same day at midnight. When on the following Tuesday par-
liament came together, the speech of the king was confused, the debates in the two houses augured an impending change in the opinion of parliament, and the majority of the ministry was reduced to eightyseven.
A fortnight later the motion of
Sir James Lowther to give up ‘all further attempts to reduce ’
