The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  It would be tempting to claim that the comfort of carriage horses lost America, but distance, time, uncertain planning and incoherent generalship were the greater faults. Lord George’s nonchalant way with despatches was only a symptom of a larger carelessness. It would be tempting, too, to say that this carelessness might be traced to the overprivileged lives of Georgian ministers, but then, what of another famous failure of communications: when American commanders were not warned of probable attack on Pearl Harbor? Failure of communications appears to be endemic to the human condition.

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  The immediate necessity was to relieve Britain of a profitless war in order that she might be free to meet the French challenge, and the only way was settlement with the colonies. With rumors buzzing of a coming Franco-American treaty, North, who had lost hope of victory after Saratoga, was trying to put together another peace commission against the resistance of Germain, Sandwich, Thurlow and other diehards whose minds were set against any parley with the rebels. While North agonized over what terms could be offered—not so mortifying as to be rejected by Parliament yet sufficiently attractive to be accepted by the Americans—word was received through secret intelligence that the alliance of France and America had been signed.

  Ten days later North presented to Parliament a set of proposals for the peace commission so extensive in concessions that had they been ceded before the war they could well have averted it altogether. They were virtually the same as Chatham’s bill of settlement that Parliament had rejected the year before. They renounced the right to tax for revenue, agreed to treat with Congress as a constitutional body, to suspend the Coercive Acts, the Tea Act, and other objectionable measures passed since 1763, to discuss seating American representatives in the House of Commons and to appoint peace commissioners with full powers “to act, discuss and conclude upon every point whatever.” They did not yield, as Chatham had not yielded, independence or control of trade; the intention was to reattach the colonies, not to give them up.

  A “full melancholy silence” fell upon the House as it heard North’s long explanation, which lasted two hours. He seemed to have abandoned the principles the Government had been maintaining for the past ten years. “Such a bundle of imbecility never disgraced a nation,” commented Dr. Johnson acidly. Friends were confounded, opponents staggered, and Walpole, the Greek chorus, sobered. He called it an “ignominious” day for government and an admission “that the Opposition had been right from beginning to end.” He thought the concessions were such as the Americans could accept, “and yet, my friend,” he wrote to Mann, “such accommodating facility had one defect—it came too late.” The French treaty had already been signed; instead of peace there would be greater war. The House was ready to approve the plan “with a rapidity that will do everything but overtake time past.” He was right; historical mistakes are often irretrievable.

  To abandon a policy that is turning sour is more laudable than ignominious, if the change is genuine and carried out purposefully. The peace commission was something less. North, ever amiable but uncertain, was anything but firm. Under the turmoil of debate and the wrath of the diehards in his Cabinet, he wavered, modified terms, withdrew the discretionary powers of the commissioners and promised there would be no discussion of independence; the Americans would have to treat “as subjects or not at all.” He set twelve months from June (it was then March) as the time limit for the mission, which suggested no great anxiety to succeed. Indeed, the fortunes of war were sufficiently changeable and the American situation sufficiently uncertain as to allow the King and the diehards to persuade themselves they might still prevail.

  Many suspected, as was said by John Wilkes (seated in Parliament at last), that the peace commission was only meant “to keep the minds of the people quiet here … not to regain the colonies.” A show was needed to keep the Government’s supporters from fading away. Fall of the Bedfords seemed possible and might have been forced if the opposition’s political action had been as vigorous as their words. In debate they were magnificent, in effect, weak because incurably divided over the issue of independence. Chatham, followed by Shelburne and others, remained utterly and unalterably opposed to dismembering the empire he had brought to triumph in the Seven Years’ War. Rockingham and Richmond had come to believe that the colonies were lost forever and that the only course was to acknowledge their independence “instantly and publicly” in order to win them away from France and concentrate all forces against the major opponent.

  On 7 April 1778, Richmond moved in a speech of passion and urgency to request the King to dismiss the incumbent ministry, withdraw the troops from the colonies, recognize their independence and negotiate to “recover their friendship at heart if not their allegiance.”

  Chatham should have concurred because concentration against France was always his object and because it was obvious that the colonies’ Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation that had followed could not be annulled except by a military defeat, which Chatham himself had declared to be impossible. Yet personal outrage extinguished logic; the break-up of empire was to him intolerable. Informed by Richmond that he was going to move the recognition of independence, Chatham summoned all his flickering strength, invested all the remnants of his once great authority in a sad offensive against his own side and against history.

  Supported by his nineteen-year-old son, soon to make the name of William Pitt again the awe of Europe, and by a son-in-law, he limped to his seat, as always in full dress, with his legs wrapped in flannel. Beneath a huge peruke, the piercing glance still gleamed from eyes sunk in an emaciated face. When the Duke of Richmond closed, Chatham rose, but his voice was at first inaudible and when the words became distinct, they were confused. He spoke of “ignominious surrender” of the nation’s “rights and fairest possessions” and of falling “prostrate before the House of Bourbon.” Then he lost track, repeated phrases, mumbled, while around him the embarrassed peers, whether in pity or respect, sat in silence so profound it seemed tangible. Richmond replied courteously. Unyielding, Chatham rose again, opened his mouth soundlessly, flung a hand to his chest, collapsed and fell to the floor. Carried to a nearby residence, he recovered enough to be taken to his country home at Hayes, where in the next three weeks he sank slowly toward death. At the end, he asked his son to read to him from the Iliad about the death of Hector.

  Forgetting the great statesman’s decline and failings, the country felt a sense of ominous loss. Parliament voted unanimously for a state funeral and burial in Westminster Abbey. “He is dead,” wrote the unknown author of the Letters of Junius, for once forgoing his usual venom, “and the sense and honor and character and understanding of the nation are dead with him.” Dr. Addington thought his death was the mercy of Providence, “that he might not be a spectator of the total ruin of a country which he was not permitted to save.”

  It is striking how often the prospect of losing America inspired predictions of ruin, and how mistaken they were, for Britain was to survive the loss well enough and go on to world domination and the apogee of imperial power in the next century. “We shall no longer be a powerful or respectable people,” declared Shelburne, if American independence were recognized. On that day, “the sun of Great Britain is set.” Richmond foresaw the Franco-American alliance as “a Measure which must be our ruin.” Walpole scattered his letters with gloomy prognoses, predicting, “whatever way this war ends it will be fatal for this country,” or just before the end, foreseeing dire consequences of defeat: “We shall be reduced to a miserable little island, and from a mighty empire sink into as insignificant a country as Denmark or Sardinia!” With her trade and marine gone, Britain would lose the East Indies next, and “then France will dictate to us more imperiously than ever we did to Ireland.”

  These dark expectations derived from two assumptions of the age: that the trade with colonies was essential to the prosperity of Britain, and that the Bourbon monarchies of France and Spain
were a dangerous threat. Though only eleven years ahead, the French Revolution was as yet unimaginable; rather, Englishmen felt themselves to be in a stage of decline. Complaining of public apathy in a letter to Rockingham, Burke wrote that without a great change in national character and leadership, the nation could slide down “from the highest point of grandeur and prosperity to the lowest state of imbecility and meanness.… I am certain that if great and immediate pains are not taken to prevent it, such must be the fate of this country.” Since no conscious effort can arrest a national slide if it is indeed taking place, Burke in this instance was talking nonsense as, given his enormous outpouring of words, he frequently did.

  Chatham’s death in May opened an opportunity for Rockingham to assert leadership, unite factions, win over adherents of the Government who were growing doubtful of the war and its expenses. The King had been advised that some changes were necessary, and this was Rockingham’s chance to press for office on a policy of ending hostilities and recognizing the inevitable independence of the colonies. Fox tried to persuade the hesitant Marquess of this course, suggesting that he propose a partial replacement of ministers to the King so as not to upset him and to retain his support. To refuse office if offered “in a manner consistent with his private honor,” Fox said, “was irreconcilable with the duty of a public man.” Burke too tried to argue the theme of consistent responsibility, but in both Rockingham and Richmond, although they saw the issues clearly and perceived the remedies, the sense of public duty tended to fade when the outlook was depressing or the political necessities distasteful. Rockingham’s followers were unready, and his own principles and conditions for accepting office precluded his obtaining it. The opposition “have been too inert,” wrote Walpole. The opportunity passed and the King’s ministers, “though despised everywhere and by everybody,” according to Fox, “will still continue ministers.”

  A peace commission was duly appointed headed by Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, a young man of wealth and fashion, owner of the splendid Castle Howard and otherwise qualified only as the son-in-law of Lord Gower. He was to be assisted by two more experienced and hardheaded men: former Governor Johnstone, who sided with the opposition, and William Eden, an accomplished politician and under-secretary, manager of secret intelligence in the war, former secretary of the Board of Trade, an old school companion of Carlisle and a friend of Wedderburn, Germain and North. The combined procedures of this group and of the Government that sent them confirm the impression that a pervasive and peculiar folly was controlling events.

  When, on reaching Philadelphia, the Commissioners requested a conference with representatives of the Continental Congress, they were told that the only terms to be discussed were withdrawal of British forces and recognition of American independence. Governor Johnstone thereafter attempted to bribe two leading figures of the Congress, Joseph Reed and Robert Morris, to persuade Congress to accept British conditions of negotiation. This insult, on being exposed, deepened American distaste for the British Government and created a scandal that caused Johnstone to resign from the Commission. In the meantime, without informing the Commissioners, Germain had issued secret orders to Sir Henry Clinton, Howe’s successor, to send 8000 troops to strengthen the West Indies against France, thereby reducing his forces in Philadelphia from 14,000 to 6000, rendering the city no longer defensible, and requiring him in consequence to evacuate it.

  Forced to move to New York, Carlisle was infuriated by the embarrassment and at not having been informed of Germain’s intention in advance. The only instrument that could make the Americans come to a settlement was the prospect of forceful military action if they refused, and this sanction being now withdrawn, he was a toothless tiger. His little daughter Caroline, he wrote privately, could have told the Government that under such conditions the Peace Commission was a farce. “Our offers of peace,” he wrote later, “were too much the appearance of supplications for mercy from a vanquished and exhausted state.” It was not the last case of the peculiar foolishness of withdrawing forces while trying to make an enemy come to terms. In one of history’s malicious ironies, the United States that was born of this folly repeated it against an enemy two hundred years later with the same result.

  Carlisle and his colleagues put as good a face on their mission as possible, pointing out that the causes of the war were now canceled—the tea duty and other punitive acts repealed, “exemption from any tax by the Parliament of Great Britain” declared, representation in Parliament open for discussion and Congress itself recognized as a legitimate body. Short of recognition of independence, however, the Congress maintained its refusal to treat or even confer. In last resort, the Commissioners appealed to the colonies over the head of Congress to deal separately, in the belief that most Americans really wanted to return to their former allegiance. They issued a public proclamation on 3 October 1778, which, after reiterating the removal of the original grievances and promising pardon for all treasons committed before that date, tried to revive the threat of punitive action: for, when a country “mortgages herself and her resources to our enemies … Britain may by every means in her power destroy or render useless a connexion contrived for her ruin.”

  The real intention behind this threat was expressed in Carlisle’s first draft of the proclamation, proposing that as a result of America’s “malice and perfidy” in contracting with France and obstinacy in persevering in rebellion, Britain had no choice but to employ the “extremity of distress … by a scheme of universal devastation” and to apply “this dreadful system” to the greatest extent to which her armies and fleet could carry it. This argument, he believed, “will have effect,” but he was evidently advised to moderate the language. So that the proclamation should be widely known, copies were sent to all members of the Continental Congress, to George Washington and all generals, to all provincial governors and assemblies, to ministers of the gospel and to commanders of the British forces and prison camps.

  Since every colony had already suffered the deliberate pillage and destruction of homes and properties by British and Hessians, the burning of villages and the laying waste of farms, fields and timberlands, the threat from a weakened force carried no great terror. Rather, Congress recommended to state authorities that the British text should be published in local gazettes “more fully to convince the good people of these states of the insidious designs of the Commissioners.” Having reached fiasco in six months, whether by design or blunder, the Peace Commission returned home in November.

  Possibly the mission really was intended to fail. Yet Eden wrote to his brother that if “my wishes and cares” could accomplish it, “this noble country … would soon belong once more to Great Britain.” He regretted “most heartily that our Rulers instead of making the Tour of Europe did not finish their education round the Coast and Rivers of the Western Side of the Atlantic.” Privately he wrote to Wedderburn the astonishing confession that “It is impossible to see what I can see of this Magnificent Country and not go nearly mad at the long Train of Misconducts and Mistakes by which we have lost it.”

  It is a significant letter. Here is a member of inner government circles not only recognizing that the colonies were already lost, but that his government’s mistakes had lost them. Eden’s admission reveals the tragic side of folly: that its perpetrators sometimes realize that they are engaged in it and cannot break the pattern. The unavailing war was to continue at a cost of more lives, devastation and deepening hatred for four more years. During these years, George III simply could not conceive that he might preside over defeat. While Parliament and public grew increasingly sour on the war, the King persisted in its continuance partly because he believed the loss of empire would bring shame and ruin, and more because he could not live with the thought that it would be his reign that would forever bear the stigma of the loss.

  In persisting, he could take heart from the fact that the Americans were often beset by trouble. Without central funds, Congress could not keep the arm
ies in pay or supplies, which meant deserting soldiers and another winter of deprivation worse than Valley Forge, with rations at one-eighth normal and mutinies on more than one occasion. Washington was harassed by political cabals, betrayed by Benedict Arnold, disobeyed by General Charles Lee, subjected to scattered but savage warfare by Loyalist and Indian groups, disappointed by the failure of the attempt in combination with the French fleet to regain Newport and by British success in the Carolinas including the capture of Charleston. On the other hand, he had the immense accretion of French naval and land forces, which altered the balance of the war, and he had been joined by Baron von Steuben and other European professionals who drilled the ragged Americans into disciplined formations. In 1779 Congress appointed John Adams to negotiate peace on a basis of independence and total British withdrawal, but to the King and the hard-line ministers this was still unthinkable.

  The English, under a First Minister who hated his position and longed only to be released and have nothing more to do with the war, and with a War Minister, Germain, whom he disliked and distrusted and who was still under a cloud of investigation, were not well equipped to win. They were incapable of forming an overall strategy for the war and could think only in terms of saving some colonies for the Crown, perhaps in the south, and of continuing a war of harassment and disruption of trade until the colonists were made to yield. Commanders and ministers alike, everyone but the King, knew this was illusion; that to subdue the country was beyond their power. Meanwhile, the French had appeared in the Channel. Though Lord Sandwich had boasted that he had 35 ships ready and manned and fit for war, Admiral Keppel was to find no more than six “fit to meet a seaman’s eye” and dockyards empty of stores when the French entered the war. The battle off Ushant in June 1778 ended in a draw although the British took some encouragement in claiming it as a victory.