The American Opposition had no chance of winning their Independence, however much they might proclaim it, so long as the Royal Navy held the sea against them. Washington knew this perfectly well; and his written words are there to prove it. The Revolutionists fought well on land. They invaded Canada and took the whole country except the walls of Quebec. They also fought well at sea; and Paul Jones, a Scotsman born, raided the coasts of Great Britain till nurses hushed children by the mere sound of his name. But no fleet and army based on the New World could possibly keep up a war without help from the Old; because, as we have seen all through Pitt's Imperial War, the Old World was the only place in which enough men, ships, arms, and warlike stores could be found. Stop enough supplies from crossing the Atlantic, and the side whose supplies were stopped would certainly lose. And more than that: whichever side commanded the sea would soon command the land as well. Quebec held out under Carleton till relieved by a fleet in the spring. But, even if Quebec had fallen, the American invaders would have been driven out again by the mere arrival of the fleet. For whichever side lost the use of the St. Lawrence lost the only means of moving, feeding, arming, and reinforcing an army in Canada well enough to stand the strain. The turn of the tide of fortune came, and only could come, when all the foreign navies in the world took sides against the King's party in this British civil war. France, Spain, and Holland were thirsting for revenge. So when they saw a vile creature like Lord George Germain bungling through a war Pitt never would have made; when they saw British generals half-hearted because belonging to the party that opposed the King's; when they saw how steadfastly Washington fought; and, most of all, when they saw how much the Royal Navy was weakened by the Opposition in Parliament, who stopped a great deal of money from being voted for the Army and Navy lest the King should be too strong against the Americans; when foreigners whose own navies had been beaten by the British saw such a chance, they came in with navies which they had meanwhile been strengthening on purpose to get their revenge. France, Spain, and Holland all fought on the side of the Revolution, their big navies joining the little one formed by Paul Jones; while Russia, Sweden, Denmark (which then included Norway), Prussia, and the Hansa Towns, all formed the Armed Neutrality of the North against the weakened British Navy. The King's Party Government thus had nine navies against it--four in arms and five in armed neutrality; and this checked the British command of the Atlantic just long enough to make Independence safe for the American Revolutionists.