A solemn and formal declaration of the independence of the United States of America was made on July 4th, 1776, but all that year and the greater part of the next the fighting went hardly for the colonists until, in October, 1777, the British under Burgoyne suffered their first serious--and it was very serious--defeat at Saratoga. It was a disaster to the British arms which had far-reaching effects. France was still seething with discontent over the loss of colonies in the Seven Years' War. Now, encouraged by the event of Saratoga, she declared war on Great Britain. Spain shortly followed her lead. And in the same year Lord Chatham died. A little later Holland took the side of the enemies of Great Britain also, provoked by the claims of Britain to search the ships of neutral nations for arms or other "contraband of war" which they might be carrying for the Americans. Sweden, Russia, and Denmark united in an "armed neutrality" compact against her, to enforce the freedom of the seas and the right which they claimed for their ships to cross the ocean without liability to be searched. A further effect of Saratoga was that the British armies took the field no more in the northern States, but concentrated in the south. There they held their own, if not more than their own, until in 1781 a second blow, even more calamitous than that of Saratoga, befell them. The generals in command of the sections of the British did not work in harmony. Lord Cornwallis was disappointed in the support which he had expected, and entrenched himself behind {144} defensive lines in York Town in Virginia. The French fleet held the sea. Washington marched round and cut him off from supplies by land. He was driven by famine to surrender, with all his army. It was the end of the war. It was the establishment, never again to be shaken, of the independence of the United States of America. It looked grievously like the end of Great Britain as a leading power in the world. Ireland rose against her in a clamour for what virtually was independence, Spain claimed Gibraltar as the price of peace, and France demanded that Great Britain should give over to her the greater part of British India. Then, in that very dark hour for England, deliverance came, as more than once before, from the sea. Lord Rodney had already struck a disabling blow at a main portion of the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent; and now, in 1782, he dealt what really was a shattering stroke on the French fleet in the West Indies. These naval victories and the repulse of the French and Spanish ships beleaguering Gibraltar disposed those nations to agree to terms of peace in which England could acquiesce without dishonour. She lost nothing to France; to Spain she resigned the island of Minorca and gave back Florida; and--she lost the United States. {145} CHAPTER XI HOW THE STAGE WAS SET FOR THE FRENCH REVOLUTION