Prelude to Glory, Vol. 2 Page 2

  King George considered Lord George Germain for a moment. Born George Sackville, he had lately changed his name to George Germain to receive a vast inheritance from Lady Betty Germain. At age sixty the man stood well over six feet, with broad shoulders, strong build, prominent nose, masculine face. He had been accused of cowardice years earlier in the battle of Minden, Germany, for executing an attack order later than expected. Incensed at how his reputation was being destroyed by subtle undertones, he demanded a wide-open court-martial to clear his name, and finally got it. The case against him failed, and he began rebuilding his image. Then, when Lord Dartmouth proved to be a failure as secretary of state for the American Department, King George had moved Dartmouth to lord privy seal in the cabinet, and turned to George Germain to replace him as the secretary of state for the American colonies. Germain had accepted only days earlier and had not yet been sworn in, nor would he be until two months later, November of 1775. No man in the king’s cabinet was under greater pressure, greater scrutiny at that moment than Lord George Germain, and no man was more keenly aware of it than he.

  Opposite, on the right of the table, stood the earl of Sandwich, first lord of the Admiralty, followed by the earl of Gower, lord president of the council; then the earl of Dartmouth, lord privy seal; and last, the earl of Bathurst, lord chancellor.

  Though but thirty-seven years of age—and by his own admission not yet matured in the ways and wisdom of war—King George had no illusions about his place in the hopelessly complex inner structure of the English government. The political world where wild, cutthroat patronage allowed one to buy a colonelcy in the British army for five thousand pounds, and with it a seat in the House of Commons, had turned politics into a cauldron of bitter experience that had taught George the hard truth. His leadership was more visible than real, more moral than direct. He could set policy, and no more. The power to execute his policy and turn the wheels of government, and of war, lay in the cabinet. He could inspire the men who filled these positions, or cajole them, or order them, or frighten them, or he could replace them. But in the end, the machinery of the British Empire ground on only if the cabinet functioned. He knew that North was vacillating and indecisive regarding the crisis in America; yet the king chose to let him remain at the head of the cabinet simply because it was easier to struggle with North’s inadequacies than to go through the wrenching experience of replacing him. As for the newly appointed Germain and the American Department of State, King George could only desperately hope that he had found the man for the most critical task of the decade.

  King George’s eyes flashed as he took his rightful position at the head of the table, settled onto the largest of the ornate chairs, and waved his hand. Only then did the cabinet members sit, each man on the front edge of his chair, backs like ramrods, faces turned to the king in silence so thick flies could be heard buzzing near the high cut-glass windows along the right wall.

  “My lords,” the king said.

  “Your Majesty,” came the instant chorus of replies.

  The king’s chin quivered slightly as he struggled, and then he lost his tenuous hold on his deep anger and bolted to his feet. “How dare they! How dare they!” His hot words rang off the stone walls and the high ceiling as all eight men flinched. “A century and more we nurtured, protected, defended, fed the American colonies! They have grown rich on British wealth and British blood! And what in return? They have wounded us!” His face was flushed, eyes alive, voice too high as he slammed his open palm on the table and repeated himself. “How dare they!”

  He paused as his words echoed, and he trembled as he slowly brought himself under control. He drew and exhaled a great breath before he continued. “Today we are going to address the bringing of our errant offspring to heel. To do so will require what I calculate will be extremely frank and painful admissions of our own willingness to accept fiction as fact when it pleased us, and to remain blind to what was so plainly before us when it was convenient to do so.”

  Every man at the table felt the brutal cut. They blanched, and their eyes diverted as the king looked into their faces before continuing.

  “I shall attempt to lay out some of the principal events that will provide an appropriate background for my conclusions.”

  His aide handed him a document, which the king quickly scanned and then laid on the table before him.

  “For seven years we waged war with France and her Indian allies to save our colonies, and we won at a high price in lives and money.”

  His aide handed him a note and he glanced at the figures.

  “The national debt was 122,603,376 pounds when the French surrendered. Bankrupt, my lords! We drove the empire into virtual bankruptcy to save our colonies, and our armed forces sacrificed thousands of lives.”

  He cleared his throat and went on. “They prospered because we brought them into the world trade centers, and under our protection they became strong, wealthy. The time came when it was just and fair for them to pay their share of the burdens of success, and Parliament was most benevolent in inventing the lightest tax levy in the entire empire for our young and tender colonies. And what was their response? They destroyed the tax stamps and hung the tax collectors in effigy!”

  For a moment he struggled again for control. “We sought no reprisal. With the fond heart of a mother towards a stubborn but beloved child we abandoned the Stamp Act but felt compelled to pass the Declaratory Act, which stated that the empire retained the power to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. Accordingly we levied the Townshend Acts, which were but slight taxes on imports. We were forced to send troops to maintain the peace, and they attacked them with sticks and stones and snowballs, and when the troops defended themselves, they called it a massacre. ‘The Boston Massacre.’ Did they expect our soldiers to do nothing in the face of a maniacal mob intent on destroying them?”

  He was breathing heavily, face flushed. “But again, in our compassion we repealed the Townshend Acts and left remaining only a miniscule tax on their tea. And what did they return for our kindness? They threw three shiploads of tea into Boston Harbor, and then defied Parliament when demand was made of them to pay for their insurrection.”

  His aide passed him another document, and he quickly glanced at it and bobbed his head violently. “Then we heard the radical voices raised against us, and they left us no choice. Parliament passed a series of acts that should have brought the colonies to their senses and made them realize that, until they came to heel, they would feel the consequences of their rebellion. We closed down Boston Harbor, and Boston ceased to function as a major port of commerce.”

  His aide passed him two documents, and as he scanned them, the eight men moved on their chairs and cast guarded glances at each other, uneasy, nervous, frantically trying to make sense of why the king had thus far said nothing that they had not known for months, years. He continued and they settled down, hanging on his every word, waiting for something, anything, that would suddenly burst forth to clarify what was so far meaningless rhetoric.

  The king tossed one of the two documents onto the tabletop and it skittered to a stop. None reached to touch it.

  “They called those laws the Intolerable Acts, and the voices of the radicals multiplied and fairly screamed, ‘Tyranny.’ Samuel Adams. John Adams. Hancock. Patrick Henry.” His voice was raised, his jowls trembling as he paused to breathe deeply. The eight men did not stir, caught up in the sudden passionate explosion.

  “ ‘Liberty!’ they cried. They have enjoyed more liberties under the kindly hand of the mother empire than any colonies in history. If they are given any more liberty, they will drown in it. What did they do then to strike back at the empire? Lost in their own infantile world of political fantasy, they organized a Continental Congress! Recently they drafted and sent to us their Olive Branch Petition.” He thrust out his hand and his aide placed a document in it.

  “Here is a copy.” The document went sliding onto the tabletop to join the others, and
King George thrust his arm forward, pointing an accusing finger at the document. “With all their prating of ‘liberty,’ now they have the gall to pretend to approach me on bended knee, groveling before me, beseeching my mercy, begging me to intervene between my colonies and my own government in Parliament! How dare they! Do they think they can mock me to my face? They did not even have the integrity to declare that this document, this petition, is the work of their Congress! Their gimcrack Congress is nothing more than a gathering of men whose sole ambition is to jostle their Congress into my throne and pretend to rule the empire by my side!”

  He paused to gather his thoughts. “But well before they sent this so-called Olive Branch Petition, in their state of delusion they began preparations to engage the empire in war. We, my lords, we concluded that if any sane man were given one hundred years, he could not invent a thought so far removed from the light of reason. We inquired into the hard truth regarding the radicals and were assured they were only a small but loud segment of the colonial population, certainly nothing to raise concern. We inquired regarding their militia, and were told the soldiers were rather effeminate, totally undisciplined, almost without musketry or cannon, ill-clothed, with officers who had been farmers and fur traders and merchants until the day they joined. We were told most of them were poor rabble who could never threaten our army and navy.”

  He paused, and North, and then Germain, suddenly sucked in air as the thought struck home. He’s going to crush them. He’s going to send an army and a navy, and he’s not going to stop until there are no more radicals or colonial militia left. Their faces turned white with the sudden, sure conviction. At the sound of their gasps, King George studied each man for a moment, and he knew they had somehow divined where he was going with them. The corners of his mouth turned upward for one fleeting moment before he moved on.

  “We accepted what we were told because we wished to accept it. Send over a few troops and flex our muscles—they’ll come to heel soon enough. So we sent over some troops. They responded by preparing for war. General Gage executed our plan to take their arms and ammunition and capture two of their leaders, Adams and Hancock, and put down the insurgents before they had begun to fight.”

  His face dropped and he shook his head and spoke with quiet intensity. “Lexington. Concord. Their militia gathered overnight and took down Gage’s army in a single day! The longest running ambush in the history of the North American continent.”

  For a moment his mouth clenched and then relaxed. “But was this the only consequence of our self-deception and indolence?”

  He leaned forward, and his eyes were slits, points of light, cutting to the core of each man like a sword.

  “Three weeks later forty-five colonials took Fort Ticonderoga from us without firing a shot.” He spoke quietly but his voice pierced. “Benedict Arnold with Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys.” A look of cynical disgust flitted across his face. “How utterly quaint. How colonial. The Green Mountain Boys. A gathering of undisciplined, drunken illiterates, I was told. Fort Ticonderoga! Key to control of the vital Hudson River corridor. Lost in less than five minutes because we convinced ourselves the Green Mountain Boys were nothing.”

  Humiliated, stripped of any pretenses by the verbal assault of their king, not one man in the cabinet dared move.

  King George stared at them for a full fifteen seconds in thick, stifling silence, then continued. “We learned of Lexington and Concord and of the fall of Ticonderoga, and what did this august body do about it? We let them fortify Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill near Charlestown, and then we unleashed the full strength of Gage’s forces to annihilate them. And they nearly annihilated Gage! They chopped his army to shreds and then retreated from the high ground only when they ran out of ammunition—walked away on their own terms. General Gage sustained forty percent casualties at the hands of this gathering of rabble that could never become an army, or so we had convinced ourselves. Unbelievable!”

  Every man in the cabinet dropped his head in shame to stare at his own hands while the blood drained from his face. They dared not raise their faces.

  For a moment the king covered his mouth with his hand as he once again organized his thoughts. “And what are our current circumstances in the colonies? Their Congress has appointed a forty-three-year-old Virginia foxhunter named George Washington as commander in chief of the Continental army, and he has surrounded Boston, with General Gage’s forces inside his circle—essentially laid siege to our armed forces. And thus far he has succeeded.”

  He rose and paced for half a minute before he settled back on his chair. The room wallowed in a silence filled with pain.

  “George Washington has bottled up our forces! He has them surrounded—running short of all supplies and unable to break out of the circle to get more. And what did this ministry do about it?” His face was nearly contorted in rage. “August twenty-third I issued a proclamation declaring the colonies in rebellion, and then this ministry did nothing about it! With half of our army having becoming casualties at Lexington and Concord and Bunker’s Hill, and with a proclamation giving this august body the official support of the Crown and of all England, we did nothing!” He thrust out his hand, his aide jammed the next document into it, and the king threw it skittering onto the table. “There it is! A proclamation that has thus far been absolutely useless.”

  His chest heaved in anger, neck veins extended, face red. The echo of his words died, and no one breathed while the king battled to regain control and then once again spoke quietly, with restraint.

  “My lords, may I now come to the point. Twelve short years ago—February 10, 1763—we ended the Seven Years’ War by the Treaty of Paris. We gained, and France lost, Canada and the colonies. The French were embittered, humiliated to the core of their national soul. Never have they forgotten or forgiven us for their loss of pride and national honor in the eyes of the world—Russia, Austria, Sweden, Prussia, Spain, and the others.”

  He paused and his aide handed him the last document. “I think I need not remind you of the predictions of the French leader the duc de Choiseul, made in 1765.” He laid the last document on the table before him. “There is his writing. He predicted the colonies we won in America would rise against us in an attempt to break free. He proposed that at the moment they did so, if France would ally herself with Spain, those two powers in combination with the Americans could regain supremacy of the seas, defeat us, and regain the colonies they had lost.”

  He looked into the eyes of each man for a moment, until he was certain they all remembered. “The duc de Choiseul erred in but one thing: his time calculations. He thought the rebellion of the colonies would come soon after 1765. Time has removed him from the politics of today, but in his place has risen the comte de Vergennes—less brilliant than the duc de Choiseul but blessed with patience and a bulldog determination. He has clung to the duc de Choiseul vision relentlessly, and today, my lords, as we sit here, Vergennes is watching every move, every development between the empire and the colonies, and he has steadily strengthened the ties between France and Spain. Should the slightest hint of opportunity present itself, it is a certainty France will join forces with any power to regain her national pride and honor by avenging the losses she suffered to us in the Treaty of Paris in 1763. To do so, she will have to defeat us.”

  He settled back in his chair and waited and watched. All eight men moved in their chairs, faces a stunned blank, and for the first time low murmuring began and then subsided.

  “May I put it in a nutshell, my lords. I believe France saw what we refused to see and has prepared to do what we have not. I am convinced France is prepared to join the colonies to defeat us the instant she can.” King George rose to his feet and waited for absolute silence before he spoke again. “And, my lords, it is not going to happen.”

  North leaned back while he desperately struggled with the question of whether King George had essentially given him notice that he had failed in his leadership
so violently that he was being replaced, and for a moment felt a sense of giddy relief at the thought of being free of the burden. Germain’s chin settled as he pondered whether the king had just delivered some subtle message to him that he had somehow missed.

  The king broke into their thoughts and spoke slowly, touching each word with unmistakable emphasis. “I now charge this cabinet with the total responsibility of raising a military force of not less than thirty thousand trained regulars, the same to be transported to the colonies with not less than thirty men-of-war for purposes of supporting the ground forces with their cannon. This shall be done during the winter season, and the armada and the ground forces shall be in the colonies no later than the spring of next year, 1776. As soon after their arrival as possible, our forces shall proceed to destroy this ‘Continental army’ and all resisting militia until their total and unconditional surrender. Once battle is begun, it shall not cease until our objective is reached. Am I absolutely clear?”

  North closed his eyes as the weight of it sunk in, and he nodded his head in silence. Germain licked suddenly dry lips and swallowed hard.

  “I leave the details to you, however. Your recommendations of who shall command and the general plan of attack shall be delivered to me at the Queen’s House no later than thirty days from today. Are there any questions?”

  North glanced about the table, then turned back to the king. He spoke slowly so that his thick tongue could enunciate clearly. “No, Your Majesty. There are no questions.”

  “Good. I thank you, my lords.” He continued as though reciting a meaningless prepared speech. “May I add, you have my full faith, full confidence, full support. Each of you has been called to this because of your proven abilities. You are not to shrink from this work. Your success is assured if you pursue this with vigor and determination. And, with success, you will enshrine yourselves forever with glory and the gratitude of England.”