The American Revolutionary War
EMBOLDENED by the humiliation at Saratoga, Louis XVI, who coveted London’s possessions in India and the West Indies, brought France into the war on the rebels’ side; Spain followed in June 1779, and the Netherlands a year later. Plans were laid for an invasion of England.*
George III’s loyal Prime Minister, Lord North, nevertheless clung to his belligerent policy, defying Parliamentary protest. Then came news that on October 19th, 1781, General Washington had accepted the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, thanks to French ships frustrating the Royal Navy at Chesapeake Bay. Parliament voted to end all military action against the Americans, and North resigned in March 1782.
France’s threat in the West Indies ended with the Battle of the Saintes on April 12th, 1782, and Hyder Ali’s Paris-backed rebellion in Mysore, India, was contained by 1784.* But the King grudgingly accepted that the Thirteen Colonies were irretrievably lost, and the Peace of Versailles on September 3rd, 1783, recognised the United States of America.
The invasion never materialised, owing to an outbreak of disease in the French fleet. But American privateers did harass British merchant shipping in the Irish Sea and even in the North Sea: see The Battle of Flamborough Head.
Hyder Ali, de facto ruler of Mysore, died on December 7th, 1782, but the Second Anglo-Mysore War went on until the Treaty of Mangalore on March 11th, 1784. His son Tipu assumed his father’s mantle and carried the battle to the British until 1799. See Hyder Ali and Tipu.
Îles des Saintes are a small group of islands between Guadaloupe and Dominica on the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea. Whereas Barbados, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis and other Caribbean islands formerly in the British Empire were granted independence many years ago, Guadaloupe and Les Saintes remain French dependencies.