we and
they are apt to think it now, but a British civil war that divided
people in Britain as well as in America. In both countries there were
two parties, the Government and Opposition, each against the other; the
only difference, though a very great one, being that while the
Opposition in America took up arms the Opposition in Britain did not.
Both countries were then parts of the same British Empire; and so this
war was really the link between the other two great civil wars that
have divided the English-speaking peoples. Thus there were three civil
wars in three successive centuries: the British Civil War in the
seventeenth, between Roundhead and Cavalier in England; the
British-American Civil War in the eighteenth, between the King's Party
Government and the Opposition on both sides of the Atlantic; and the
American Civil War in the nineteenth, between the North and South of
the United States.

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 thir