French forbearance is more remarkable, when it is considered that the occasion for the “guaranty” had begun to be urgent. Even before Howe’s great victory of June, over the French fleet, the British navy swept the sea, rendering all French possessions insecure. Martinique, San Domingo, St. Lucia, and Guadeloupe were lost to the Republic in the spring of 1794, so that the British historian has written: “Thus, in little more than a month, the French were entirely dispossessed of their West India possessions, with hardly any loss to the victorious nation.”[169] But the “guaranty” was invoked by the impatient colonists, who, without waiting the slower movement of the French Republic, appealed directly to our Congress for “divers necessary succors, of provision, ammunition, and even men,” and in impassioned language pictured “England come to take possession of the French colonies in the name of a king without dominions, and North America, witness to that political perfidy, not able to lend a helping hand against an unworthy treachery.”[170] The French Government at home did not share the fury of the colonists. According to Mr. Monroe, in his letter of December 2, 1794, whatever may have been their desires at a previous stage, they did not now wish us to “embark with them in the war,” but “would rather we would not, from an idea it might diminish their supplies from America,” and “if the point depended on them, they would leave us to act in that respect according to our own wishes”; at the same time they looked to us for “aid in the article of money.”[171] This moderation, although a temporary waiver, was in no respect a renunciation of rights. According to Mr. Jefferson, in a letter written some months after his retirement from the Cabinet, and addressed to Mr. Madison, under date of April 3, 1794, the “guaranty” was still obligatory. “As to the guaranty of the French islands,” he wrote, “whatever doubts may be entertained of the moment at which we ought to interpose, yet _I have no doubt but that we ought to interpose at a proper time_, and declare both to England and France that these islands are to rest with France, and that we will make _a common cause_ with the latter for that object.”[172] Such was American testimony.