d desire for which has served to
immortalize his name. But neither Howe nor Burgoyne nor any one else
could dissipate the ragged regiments that invested Boston, nor baffle
the plans of the great soldier who commanded them. For nearly a year
the world saw with wonder the spectacle of an English army confined in
Boston, and an English fleet riding idly in the Charles River. Then
the end came. Washington, closing in, offered Lord Howe, the English
general then in command, the choice of evacuation or bombardment. The
English general chose the former. The royal troops withdrew from
Boston, taking with them the loyalist families who had thrown in their
lot with the King's cause. The English ships that sailed from Boston
were terribly overcrowded with the number of refugees who preferred
flight, with all its attendant sorrows, to remaining in a rebellious
country. The English fleet sailed away from Boston and the Continental
Army marched in. So far the cause of King George was going very badly
indeed; so far the rebellious colonists had failed to justify the
confident prophecies of Lord Sandwich. With any other king and with
any other ministers one such year's work would have been enough at
least to induce them to reconsider their position. But the King was
George the Third, and his ministers were what they were, and it was
resolved that the war must go on.

{183}

[Sidenote: 1775-81--The Declaration of Independence]

The war did go on. It lasted for five years more, in spite of the
protests of every truly patriotic Englishman, in spite of proof after
proof that nothing could break the spirit or crush the courage of the
colonists. While in England Fox arrayed himself in the blue and buff
that composed the uniform of the Continental Army, while the Duke of
Richmond made it a point to speak, and with excellent reason, of the
Continental Army as "our army," while the eloquence of Chatham and the
eloquence of Burke were launched in vain against campaigns as idle as
they were infamous, the war went stubbornly on. The King and his
ministers proposed new measures of repression and expended vast sums in
the purchase of Hessian regiments to dragoon the defiant colonists.
Soon all pretence of loyalty had to be abandoned by the Americans. The
statue of King George was dragged from its place of honor in Bowling
Green, New York, and run into bullets to be used against his German
levies. In the summer that followed the ev