392

THE CHANNEL FLEET UNDER ADMIRAL KEPPEL.

(1778. to New York, the French to Boston. The abandonment of the Americans by d'Estaing compelled them to relinquish their enterprise upon Rhode Island; and bitter was their indignation against their allies. The French admiral finally sailed to pursue his own plans of attacking the British West Indian Islands, or defending those of France. The island of St. Lucia was taken by the British, and Dominica by the French.

In the House of Commons, on the 5th of May, Thomas Townshend noticed the sailing of the French fleet from Toulon, whilst our fleet was merely exhibited as a pageant at Portsmouth-a "puppet-show," as Walpole terms it. Lord North said the utmost exertions had been made. Though no fleet had sailed, the ministers were not to be accused of incapacity; for the French at all times, by their mode of supply of seamen from their registers, could man a fleet sooner than England. Admiral Keppel, an experienced officer, and highly popular with the navy, had been appointed to the command of the Channel fleet. This appointment was creditable to the ministry, for Keppel was, as a member of Parliament, strongly opposed to their policy. When he first accepted the command he found only six ships of the line fit for service; but before the middle of June the number was increased to twenty. He sailed from St. Helen's on the 17th of June. Two French frigates, reconnoitring, were attacked by his squadron; one of which was captured and the other driven on shore on the coast of France. Amongst the papers of the Lecorne thus captured, he discovered that anchorage was ordered at Brest for an immense fleet, with which he thought his own unable to contend. He sailed back to Portsmouth. The public feeling is expressed

1778.]

COURT MARTIAL ON KEPPEL.

393

in a letter of Gibbon :-"Keppel's return has occasioned infinite and inexpressible consternation, which gradually changed into discontent against him." The Admiralty made great exertions; and Keppel, on the 9th of July, again put to sea with a reinforcement of ten ships. The French fleet, consisting of thirty-two sail of the line, and a considerable number of

frigates, had come out from Brest, under the command of count d'Orvilliers. After four days' manoeuvring, an engagement took place off Ushaut, which had no decisive result. Night was coming on with a heavy squall. Keppel signalled to the second in command, sir Hugh Palliser, to come up to renew the fight; but that admiral was unable to obey the order, from the damage which his ship had sustained. The French admiral got back to Brest, and Keppel sailed to Plymouth. The conduct of the two admirals became the subject of warm debates when the Parliament met in November. Attacks and recriminations were conducted with all the heat of party; Keppel being upon terms of friendship with the leading members of the Opposition; Palliser a supporter of the ministry, and a lord of the Admiralty. Each admiral blamed the other; and, finally, upon charges made by Palliser against Keppel for misconduct and incapacity, a court-martial was ordered. The trial lasted thirty-two days, and ended in a unanimous verdict of the Court, that Keppel had acted with bravery and judgment, and that the charges were illfounded and malicious. This court-martial has been rendered illustrious by a passage of Burke, in which he describes "with what zeal and anxious affection I attended him through that his agony of glory. . . . . If to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honour and virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from what they did, I should have attended him to the quarter-deck with no less good will, and more pride, than I partook of the general flow of national joy that attended the justice that was done to his virtue." The popular enthusiasm in

*"Letter to the Duke of Bedford."

394

BURGOYNE'S DEFENCE IN PARLIAMENT.

[1778.

favour of Keppel was indeed remarkable. It may be attributed, in part, to a conviction that the government was unequal to the conduct of the war. The people could not be supposed to feel with Burke that Keppel was "one of the greatest and best men of his age; " but they illuminated and rioted for his acquittal; and his portrait became a favourite sign in town and country. Palliser demanded a court-martial upon himself, and received an acquittal of a very qualified character. The extravagant admiration of Keppel, and the proportionate depreciation of Palliser, may suggest the opinion that admirals and generals may receive a more impartial judgment from their contemporaries by withholding their support from extreme parties in politics.

General Burgoyne returned to England in the spring of 1778, Congress having consented to give him passports, upon the condition that he would go back to America, and abide the fate of the rest of the army, should their embarkation continue to be prevented. He was treated coldly by our government, and refused admission to the royal presence. A court of inquiry into his conduct was refused, upon the ground that he was a prisoner on parole to the Congress. As a member of Parliament, he had an opportunity of vindicating the Convention of Saratoga. The blame that had been attached to him for the employment of Indians in his campaign appears to have wounded him very deeply. He stated that he always believed the Indian alliances to be, at best, a necessary evil. He had declined their offers and solicitations to be employed separately. He had presided at one of the greatest councils with the Indians that had been held at Montreal. It was their custom to offer the pipe of war to the representative of the power they meant to serve. It was pressed upon him by the chiefs present; and it was at his option, by a single whiff of tobacco, to have given flame and commotion to a dozen nations. He had acted in this matter under the instructions of sir

1778.]

DESTRUCTION OF WYOMING.

395

Guy Carleton in 1776; and when he came to England in that year he found the system of restraining the impetuous passions of these people unpopular with those official persons who had adopted the reasoning, in their zeal against the colonists, that partial severity was general mercy. He returned to Canada, determined to be the soldier, not the executioner, of the State. The eloquent invective of Chatham, we thus see, had in view the ministerial directors of the war rather than the commander who succumbed to unavoidable difficulties.

Connected with the subject of the barbarities of the Indians, there is an event of the year 1778, which has been rescued from the possible oblivion of History by the more enduring associations of Poetry.* Wyoming, on the Susquehanna, consisting of eight townships, was a new settlement. The soil was fertile; the climate genial; the inhabitants unusually prosperous.

Happy they were not, for a minority amongst them was bitterly opposed to those who resisted the British government. The people were removed from the scene of hostilities; yet the greater number took a deep interest in the contest for independence, and had sent a large proportion of their adult male population to the army of the Congress. The infant settlement was comparatively defenceless; although four forts had been constructed to resist the inroads of the savages. The right to the soil was a disputed point between the States of Connecticut and Pennsylvania; and in the absence of a central control those who were loyalists, or Tories, were exposed to rigorous treat

396

SPAIN DECLARES WAR AGAINST GREAT BRITAIN.

[1778. ment. The mutual hatred between the two parties of Americans was too often marked by persecution; and political differences became the justification for rapine and revenge. Many of the Tories of Wyoming had abandoned the settlement. Some strangers had come amongst the inhabitants of the townships under suspicious circumstances, and had been arrested and sent to Connecticut. At the beginning of July, a body of armed men, amounting to sixteen hundred, appeared on the Susquehanna. One fourth of these were Indians. The whole force was commanded by a partisan known as colonel Butler; and according to the accounts of the time, by one Brandt, half Indian by blood, ferocious and cruel beyond example-"the Monster Brandt." One of the smaller forts was first taken by storm, and all the men were massacred. The commander of another fort was induced to march out with four hundred men to hold a parley; and after a murderous struggle only seventy escaped. In a third fort the men were slaughtered, or burnt alive. In a fourth the same indiscriminate havoc was pursued, with similar cruelty. Then commenced such a wholesale destruction of houses, cornricks, standing corn, as the terrible devastations of what some have called regular warfare could scarcely parallel. The sufferings of those who fled from the scenes of devastation, to endure all the miseries of inhospitable woods, were almost as great as those of the victims of the Indian tomahawk. Other such scenes of havoc took place in back settlements.

The Annual Register of 1779, opens with a sentence that can scarcely be held as founded merely upon vain apprehensions: "The year of which we treat presented the most awful appearances of public affairs, which this country had perhaps beheld for many ages. .... Mankind seemed to wait, with an aspect which at best bespoke indifference, for the event of that ruin which was expected to burst upon us." The writer proceeds to say, that “the expected evil and danger were less dreadful in the encounter than in the distant appearance.' In that year Spain joined France in the alliance against Great Britain. On the 16th of June the king sent a message to parliament announcing that the Spanish minister had delivered a state-paper which amounted to a declaration of war. Invasion was expected; and a proclamation was issued, charging all civil and military authorities to remove horses, cattle, and provisions from the coast in case of a descent. An extraordinary measure was carried through parliament, by a suspension of the Standing Orders, to do away with all exemptions from impressment into the royal navy. Ships of the line were rotting in the harbour for want of sailors, it was affirmed "Will you trust the existence of this country to the fate of a battle on shore?" An encampment of large bodies of militia was formed on Cox Heath. The spirit of the country was again roused, as when Spain threatened England in days of yore. Her fleet, combined with that of France, rode in the Channel, with as mighty a display as when Drake went out from Plymouth to encounter the galleons. The united fleet consisted of sixty-six sail of the line, with a large number of frigates, and smaller vessels. Sir Charles Hardy left Portsmouth with thirty-eight ships; and although the combined armament was insulting the coast, he could not

"Gertrude of Wyoming." Mr. Campbell, in a note to the later editions of his poem, says he was misled by popular accounts, and that Brandt was not present at Wyoming.