Mackesy P. The War for America, 1775-1783

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But the real trouble was political. During Lord North's Ministry politics reached heights of bitterness unequalled

since at least the later years of Walpole or perhaps the reign of Queen Anne. A comparison with Anson's navy in

the Seven Years War is scarcely valid. Still less so is comparison with the next war, when the ruling class closed

its ranks against a terrifying social threat. For in the American War the political world was still torn apart by the

events of the early 'sixties. The fall of Newcastle had broken the united Whig front, and driven into opposition men

who would have been bought in by the Pelhams, but with whom George III stubbornly refused to come to terms till

they stormed the closet after Yorktown. A fair comparison is with the War of the Spanish Succession, when the

country's political passions had been mirrored in the careers of Marlborough, Peterborough, Argyll and St John.

The appointments which caused most of Sandwich's difficulties were not the commands of ships, but the

Commands-in-Chief to which well-placed political admirals laid claim. Above all, the trouble was rooted in the

Channel fleet, rising out of the disappointments of the first campaign and the breach with a politician-admiral,

Augustus Keppel. Sandwich may have handled the affair unwisely, but he was not the original source of the

mischief.

The Blueprint of the War Machine

Just as the North Ministry inherited political troubles, so it inherited and used the machinery which had operated

with varying efficiency through many emergencies. At the heart of the machine was the Cabinet, which planned;

and the Secretaries of State, who executed. The Cabinet made or approved the policy. The Secretaries of State

carried its resolutions to the King, and transmitted them into executive channels. An official thus explained their

roles:

Cabinet. To consider and determine what expeditions are to take place, and at what periods; what troops are

likely to be sent abroad, when, where, how, and the number. What services are to have preference.

Secretary of State. To issue timely orders, to the Treasury, Admiralty, Ordnance and Commander-in-Chief

of the Army on these heads, so that every necessary preparation can be made, and no delay nor

disappointment happen when the services take place.1

Lord North's Cabinet consisted of the eight or nine chief Ministers. The large Outer Cabinet of the first half of the

century had withered like the Privy Council before it to a purely formal body; and deliberations of state

1 CL, Shelburne, Vol. 151, No. 38 (Sir Charles Middleton to Shelburne).

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were now confined to the responsible holders of major offices. The First Lord of the Treasury presided. With him

at the table sat the three Secretaries of State; the Lord Chancellor, Lord President of the Council, and Lord Privy

Seal; the First Lord of the Admiralty; and from 1778 the Commander-in-Chief. The average attendance was six or

eight; a better number for efficient discussion than the ten or eleven hungry mouths of the second Rockingham

Ministry which succeeded North's. In moments of crisis business was done by hastily convening the four or five

members whose departments were directly concerned with the war. There were weekly Cabinet dinners, and when

the cloth had been removed those who could stay awake discussed the nation's business. Meetings to discuss

specific problems as they arose were called by the Ministers concerned at their own offices or private residences.

Decisions were embodied in a minute or draft despatch and forwarded for the King's approval.

At times the Cabinet was still absurdly said to be unknown to the Constitution. It is true that Ministers were not

bound to lay the business of their departments before it; but they preferred to do so, for its collective decisions

already sheltered them from personal responsibility, and major decisions were rarely taken without its approval.

Though attempts had been made by individuals early in the reign to repudiate their share of responsibility for a

Cabinet decision, or to lay dissenting minutes before the King, unanimity was the rule in matters of national policy.

In the heated political atmosphere of the American War, the shelter of a Cabinet minute was particularly attractive;

and North, Sandwich and Germain all claimed the protection of collective Cabinet responsibility and insisted on

Cabinet authority for inflammatory measures. 'Every expedition', Lord Sandwich declared to the House of Lords,

'in regard to its destination, object, force and number of ships, is planned by the Cabinet, and is the result of the

collective wisdom of all his Majesty's confidential ministers. The First Lord of the Admiralty is only the executive

servant of these measures.'1

This tendency became most marked when the Ministry was crumbling after Yorktown. Neither Germain nor

Sandwich would then order controversial measures without the authority of a Cabinet minute. 'I conclude you have

the minute of a Cabinet to justify my proceedings,' Germain wrote to his Under-Secretary in January 1782, 'for in

the precarious situation in which I stand, I can take no measures of consequence upon myself.'2

Beneath the Cabinet, and controlled through the machinery of the Secretaries of State, were the executive

Departments. Four had major

1 Pares, George III and the Politicians, 160; Sandwich, II, 255, 259; Costin and Watson, Law and Working

of the Constitution, I, 2389.

2 Knox, Extra-Official State Papers, I, Appendix p. 7. See also below, p. 452.

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responsibility for war administration: the Treasury, Board of Ordnance, Admiralty, and what for simplicity may be

called the Army. Between them they dealt with supply and transport, man-power and movements. The planning of

operations lay largely outside their control.

The army was controlled by a system in need of great reforms. The engineers and the admirable Royal Artillery

were administered by the Board of Ordnance. The rest of the army was ruled by a system which provided neither a

regular military leader nor a responsible Minister in the Cabinet, for the army lay within the sphere of the royal

prerogative. The King was Captain-General, and might or might not appoint a professional Commander-in-Chief.

To assist him there was a Secretary at War, a professional politician of the second rank who invariably sat in the

House of Commons but rarely in the Cabinet. His position was ambiguous and ill-defined. Constitutionally he was

the servant of the Commander-in-Chief and a mere agent of the royal pleasure, who could disclaim responsibility

in Parliament; in reality a powerful official who in the absence of a professional Commander-in-Chief might

annexe the whole field of military administration and patronage.1

But administration and finance were all that the Secretary at War could supervise. For the training and discipline of

the army at home there was no fixed provision. The Hanoverian Kings were soldiers who took pride in the personal

exercise of their military prerogative; and like his predecessor, George III preferred to control the army without an

intermediary. From 1770 until 1778 there was no Commander-in-Chief. When France entered the war, the King

was forced to appoint Lord Amherst Commander-in-Chief with a seat in the Cabinet; and Amherst was succeeded

by General Conway on the fall of the Ministry. But as soon as the King escaped from the shackles of Charles Fox,

he resumed his personal control.

There was thus no effective machinery for inspecting the army; and hence no uniformity of drill or doctrine. The

small peacetime army was scattered across the country in regimental detachments. 'A British army', Castlereagh

was to say of this period, ' . . . had no more uniformity of movements, of discipline, and appearance in its various

regiments than one composed of the troops of different sovereign states.'2 Here as elsewhere the French

Revolution was to be a turning point. From 1793 there was always a Commander-in-Chief; and in the following

year was created the office of Secretary of State for War with a seat in the Cabinet.

The operational control of the army was exercised directly by the Cabinet and Secretaries of State. Neither the

Secretary at War nor the Commander-in-Chief were responsible for strategy or for the strength of the army. This

1 Clode, Military Forces of the Crown, II, 25360, 698705.

2 Clode, II, 359.

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has often led to confusion, for the Secretary at War sometimes complained of being left in the dark. But both Lord

Barrington, the Secretary at War in 1775, and his successor Charles Jenkinson, were explicit about the bounds of

their responsibility. 'Augmenting the forces is purely a matter of state', wrote Barrington, 'and the functions of the

War Office do not begin till both the measure and the manner of executing it, have been settled in the Cabinet.'

Jenkinson did not go so far. He had to introduce the Army Estimates in the House of Commons, and felt that he

should be consulted about the method of achieving the strength which the Cabinet had fixed. But about strategy he

was as clear as Barrington: he 'was no minister, and could not be supposed to have a competent knowledge of the

destination of the army, and how the war was to be carried on'. If he was told the destination of troops, it was for

his private information as a matter of administrative convenience. There is no substance in the claim which has

been made for him,1 that he 'furnished what co-ordination there was' between the departments of the war

machine.2

Lord Amherst's departmental responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief were equally circumscribed. He was the

chief military administrator of the army, and commander of the home forces. Though he had his share as a member

of the Cabinet in discussions of policy and strategy, his executive duties were confined to administration. The

Cabinet's strategic decisions were executed through the Secretaries of State; and operational instructions went

directly to the commanders in the theatres of war.

Very different was the navy's position. In matters of patronage it may have been more vulnerable than the army,

since it did not enjoy the same royal protection; but in administration and strategy the Admiralty was united and

formidable. Instead of a dubious official on the fringes of the Ministry, and a Commander-in-Chief appointed

intermittently at the King's pleasure, the navy was ruled by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty; a body in

which professional knowledge was balanced with political power to produce a voice of commanding authority. The

First Lord was no minor figure, like the Secretary at War, on the boundary between politics and public service, but

a magnate with a seat in the Cabinet.

It had to be so. For this department, on whose efficiency England's security rested, controlled one of the most

complex machines on earth: several hundred warships, most of them carrying enough cannon to equip an army; as

many men as the entire British army; a vast network of dockyards, victualling yards and storehouses throughout

the globe; a great purchasing

1Journal of Modern History, XXVI, 123.

2 Lothian, 324; Journal of Soc. for Army Hist. Research, 1959, p. 167; Add. MSS. 38213, f. 243 (11 April

1780, Amherst to Jenkinson); below, pp. 36970.

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organisation; a great recruiting system. Only foresight, authority and professional skill could manage the navy.

The Board itself exercised direct control of operations, and of manning, promotions and discipline. Shipbuilding,

supply and transport were delegated to the subordinate Navy Board over which the Comptroller presided. The

Navy Board built and fitted out ships; purchased shipbuilding materials; managed the dockyards throughout the

world; and transported troops. It had greater autonomy than the subordinate boards of other departments, and the

Comptroller claimed a status second only to that of the First Lord of the Admiralty.1

Unlike the army, the navy retained a high degree of control of its own operations. Though the destinations of

squadrons and reinforcements were determined in the Cabinet, they were determined with the First Lord's advice

and assent. It was most unusual for the Cabinet even to discuss a naval question in his absence, and when they did

so they deferred their decision till his return. Rare, too, were direct instructions to admirals from the Secretaries of

State. It was very occasionally done for speed and secrecy2; but normally the Secretary of State's letter was

addressed to the Board of Admiralty, who made out their own operational instruction from it. We shall find that the

Admiralty's institutional solidarity and professional character made it the department least susceptible to Cabinet

control.3

The contrasting characters of the two service organisations were reflected in the organisation of supply and

transport. In most respects the navy was autonomous in these matters; the army was not. Three separate

departments supplied the armed forces, and four transported them. The navy's provisions were procured by its own

Victualling Board; the army's by the Treasury. Shipbuilding materials were purchased by the Navy Board; and

though other stores and equipment for both army and navy came from the Board of Ordnance, the army having no

political head in the Cabinet could indent only through a Secretary of State.4 Sea transport, which kept open the

Atlantic supply-lines, was yet more diversely organised. The navy's victualling ships were hired by the Victualling

Board; army victuallers by the Treasury till 1779, and thereafter by the Navy Board; troopships by the Navy Board.

Artillery, engineers and ordnance stores were shipped by the

1 'The Comptroller is next in consequence tho' not in rank in the sea line to the First Lord of the Admiralty'

(Sir Charles Middleton, in CL, Shelburne, Vol. 151, No. 40).

2 Commodore Johnstone's expedition to the Cape in 1781 is an instance (see Harlow, III). As soon as

Shelburne became Secretary of State in 1782 he assumed the correspondence with the naval Commander-in-

Chief in America (see below, p. 475).

3 See below, p. 19.

4 Thomson, The Secretaries of State, 757.

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Board of Ordnance in ordnance transports. The problems raised by this multiplication of authorities will become

apparent1; for the moment it is enough that operational planning was linked to this complex system of logistics.

The Machine in Motion

The nexus of the system was the office of Secretary of State. It was the Secretaries who translated planning into

preparation. 'However well your Lordship as conductor of the war may plan', Sir Charles Middleton was to tell

Lord Shelburne, 'it will avail but little if preparation or execution do not go hand in hand.' Legally each of the

Secretaries could sign any act of state; but in practice they divided the world between them. The Northern and

Southern Departments conducted the diplomatic correspondence respectively of northern and southern Europe,

while a third Secretaryship had recently been created to deal with the West Indies and North America.2 Military

and naval plans were divided on the same geographical principle. Operations in the American sphere belonged to

the Colonial or American Secretary; and Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope, for example, fell to the Secretary

of State for the Southern Department. The Secretaries of State alone signified the King's pleasure to the

departments which had to implement a Cabinet decision. Even when the head of a department was in the Cabinet,

he normally required a letter from a Secretary of State to authorise any important undertaking. 'All warlike

preparations, every military operation, and every naval equipment must be directed by a Secretary of State before

they can be undertaken.'3 So wrote the Under-Secretary of the American Department.

The Secretaries of State were therefore much more than departmental Ministers. It was they who powered the war

machine. They provided at once a Cabinet Secretariat and executive supervision. By their hands the complex of

supply and transport, military movement and naval preparation was drawn together and given life. Only their

directing hands could break into the departmental pyramids and keep measures moving down the channels of

administration. If an integrated expedition was successfully assembled with its proper equipment, provisions and

transport, and at the place and time which the Cabinet had decreed, this was the achievement of the responsible

Secretary of State.

Thus the efficiency of the whole system could turn on the efficiency of the Secretaries; and it was from the

Southern Department that the Elder Pitt had directed the Seven Years War. 'It is said our constitution is not well

1 See especially Chapter III below.

2 For the Third Secretary see below, p. 47.

3 Thomson, 75.

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calculated for war', Sir Charles Middleton once wrote to Shelburne. 'I know of no reason why, but because men

cannot be found to attend to business.'1 For in 1775 the Ministry contained no statesman of Pitt's calibre. At the

Southern Department Lord Rochford retired in the autumn to make way for the indolent and easily frightened

Weymouth, a Bedford Whig who resigned with his friends in 1779 and was succeeded in turn by the plodding

inefficient Hillsborough. At the Northern Department was the bibulous Lord Suffolk, who knew no French though

he shared the conduct of foreign policy. He was disliked by the Bedford faction in the Ministry, and proved a

wretched leader in the House of Lords. He died in 1779 after a long decrepitude, and was succeeded by a

professional diplomatist, Lord Stormont.

These men shared the control of military affairs at home. The Mediterranean, South Atlantic and Indian Ocean

belonged to the Southern Department, and were to become important theatres as the war expanded. But the most

important theatre of war lay in the north-west Atlantic, and was controlled by the American Department. The

American Secretary at the outbreak of the rebellion was the pious Lord Dartmouth, a relation by marriage and a

close friend of Lord North. Hating and dreading the struggle, he was unlikely to pursue it with resolution. Nor was

he to remain long at the helm. Before 1775 was out a more resolute leader was sought; and the Ministry turned to

Lord George Germain.

Each executive Department presented a separate problem of control. The Treasury, efficient in itself, was hampered

at every turn by the difficulty of obtaining the co-operation of the army commanders in America. It was charged

with procuring and delivering the army's provisions. But indents from America were late and sketchy, and tonnage

needed for shipping the supply was detained in American ports without authority. The supervision of a Minister

above the two authorities was needed to reduce the friction. The Board of Ordnance was a different problem: its

trouble was its own gross inefficiency. It moved with agonising slowness. Clothing, entrenching tools, or chapel

hassocks whatever the need, months and even years went by before an indent was satisfied. Warships were

detained for weeks and months after they were ready for sea because their armament had not been delivered; and

when the guns at last arrived they might lack their complete equipment. 'Mortifying beyond imagination', wrote

Sandwich of one such delay; and Sir Charles Middleton declared that the only remedy was the creation of a new

office of sea-ordnance controlled by the Navy Board. The Master-General of the Ordnance was Lord Townshend;

and even by the standards of the day he seems to have spent an unconscionable time at his home in Norfolk. He

was not in the Cabinet, and appears to have been

1 Barham, II, 67.

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critical of the Ministry and to have treated his office, like Richmond later,1 as a purely military one on which he

depended for the salary. The Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance was Lord Amherst; a conscientious though

unimaginative administrator, but from 1778 too deep in the duties of Commander-in-Chief to supervise the

Ordnance effectively. In this sphere of the war effort, supervision might have been effectively flavoured with a

dash of Chatham's terror.2

The Admiralty, by contrast, was wayward and independent. By tradition it distrusted Cabinet direction, and

guarded its independence jealously. There was a well-developed technique of obstruction to defeat a Cabinet which

interfered directly in fleet operations and attempted to override the Board. Sometimes it was possible to use the

First Lord against the Cabinet: a pliant one like Lord Spencer in the Younger Pitt's war Ministry was dominated by

the naval members of the Board. A different technique, used in the War of the Austrian Succession, was to feign

ignorance and withhold cooperation. By withholding data or misrepresenting the dockyard situation the Admiralty

could make planning impossible.3

Yet it was the Cabinet's business to control the war: to see the situation as a whole, and to strike the balance of risk

and advantage. Systematic evasion of political control could lead to disaster. And in the Seven Years War Pitt had

effectively asserted his control, ruling through a professional First Lord with close and ruthless personal

supervision which reached down to the subordinate boards. Perhaps a seaman at the head of the Board was the best

answer to the problem of control; for though a professional scrutiny of Cabinet instructions may have been

necessary, a political filter in the shape of an amateur First Lord was not. When Lord Barham became First Lord

in the Trafalgar era, it was arranged4 that he should not attend Cabinet meetings except on naval questions.

A political filter was precisely what Lord Sandwich imposed on his colleagues in the American War. His power as

a party manager was skilfully combined with his special knowledge of the highly technical naval situation to

extend his influence from naval patronage to strategy. 'I must always desire to be understood that I do not speak

with precision as to the time of the readiness of any ship', he wrote in the autumn of 1779. This was reasonable in

itself, for bad weather, the diversion of workmen to tasks with a

1 See below, p. 509.

2 E.E. Curtis, Organisation of the British Army in the American Revolution; Sackville, II, 195; Sandwich, II,

143; CL, Shelburne, Vol. 151, No. 15; WO 34/137, f. 49; Hutchinson Diary, I, 553; Leeds Political

Memoranda, 44.

3 Richmond, The Navy in the War of 173948, I, 82, 1957, 223, 2356; II, 70, 85 878; III, 167.

4 English Historical Documents, XI, 17.

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higher priority, and a hundred other unpredicted obstacles might delay a ship's fitting out. But it could be made a

convenient smoke-screen. 'I never could understand the real state of the fleet', Germain once wrote to North.

Towards the end of the war he declared that if the First Lord approved of a Cabinet proposal there were always

ships to carry it out; but if he disliked it none could be found. To the Prime Minister Sandwich was even more

cavalier. He treated his information and suggestions with such contempt that North was reduced to passing

intelligence through a subordinate to disguise its origin.1

A voice from a different walk of life shows the disjointed nature of the system. In May 1776, the colonial governor

and merchant Thomas Hutchinson visited the American Department. He found the two Under-Secretaries searching

the letter-book to discover by what ship certain orders had been sent. As a merchant he had never written an

important letter without tracking the ship from the moment she sailed; but in government the system was to send

letters from the office of the Secretary of State to the Admiralty, who forwarded them at their convenience. The

appointed ship might be delayed at home for weeks without the Secretary of State being informed. 'This', said

Hutchinson, 'shows the want of one great director to keep every part of the operations of government constantly in

his head.'2

'One Great Director'

'One great director': the phrase was everywhere. The conduct of a great war called for strong leadership in the

Cabinet, and energetic supervision of the executive departments; for strength to weigh the risks and courage for

great decisions. It called for a dominating leader who rejoiced in war. Lord North knew it as well as any. The war,

he told the King at a critical moment, 'can hardly be well conducted unless there is a person in the Cabinet capable

of leading, of discerning between opinions, of deciding quickly and confidently, and of connecting all the

operations of government, that this nation may act uniformly and with force'. But North knew equally well that he

was not the man.3

Neither appearance, nor character, nor interests equipped Lord North to dominate a war administration. His figure

was clumsy and his movements awkward. A large tongue thickened his articulation. Two prominent myopic eyes

rolled about in his face to no purpose, and with his wide mouth, thick lips and inflated cheeks 'gave him the air of a

blind trumpeter'. His skills

1 G 2776; Knox, 180; CL, Germain, 11 Jan. 1779 to North; ibid., 31 Oct. 1781, from Knox; Abergavenny,

25; Sandwich, III, 2445.

2 Quoted by Anderson, p. 87.

3 G 2446.

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were those of peace. He was a man of culture and personal charm; of patience for dull understandings, wit which

never wounded, humour which never ridiculed. He was proud of being a good manager of the House of Commons,

and few surpassed him in the political arts: the manoeuvre by which he jobbed his half-brother into the bishopric

of Winchester ranks high in the tactical annals of patronage. Almost single-handed he defended his Ministry in

Parliament year after year against the bitter invective and dialectical brilliance of a ferocious opposition. His

knowledge of the House, his accessibility, his even temper and his aptitude for raising a laugh baffled and

infuriated his rivals. But of war this civilised man knew nothing: 'Upon military matters I speak ignorantly, and

therefore without effect.'1 He did not enjoy war; nor was he even confident of victory. As misfortunes accumulated

he grew increasingly despondent and weary of responsibility. But the hypochondria which always deepened as

Budget day approached puzzled his friends. He talked of wanting to retire; but they could not tell if this was more

than a temporary symptom of ill-health, and the King could not bring him to a forthright declaration whether he

really meant to go. It has been suggested that duty prevented him from telling the King clearly that he disagreed

with his American policy, and gratitude to the monarch who had paid his debts prevented him from deserting the

ship. But even today one cannot be sure that he was kept unwillingly: his love of the political game was so

mingled with his neurosis.2

There was nothing in the constitution to tie the leadership of a war government to the Treasury. It was not long

since the Secretaries of State had vied with the head of the Treasury for primacy in the Cabinet; and only fourteen

years earlier Pitt had run a great war from the Southern Department. But now things had changed. It was partly that

the weakness of the Ministry increased the importance of the Treasury's patronage; partly that no politician in

office now commanded Pitt's weight with the country; and partly an increasing conviction that finance was

decisive. In the next war, when the primacy of finance was becoming doubtful, Dundas and the Younger Pitt were

to reiterate the doctrine: all modern wars are a contention of the purse, and the war minister should be the Minister

of Finance.3 Thus the leadership of the war government was thrown upon a man who carried the full burdens of

political and financial management. North's position

1 Ritcheson, British Politics and the American Revolution, 198. The great British war ministers have been

men who throve on war. Lord Hillsborough once remarked that the North ministry was too backward in

firing guns for victories and in those marks of triumph which the Elder Pitt had used on all occasions (WO

34/131, ff. 64, 66).

2 Pares, 172; G 2854, 2856, 2872.

3 English Historical Documents, XI, Nos 62, 64.

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