Louis XIV. between the partisans
of England and France, despite a century of alliance with the former,
drew the especial attention of Great Britain. They had been asked to
join the Armed Neutrality; they hesitated, but the majority of the
provinces favored it. A British officer had already gone so far as to
fire upon a Dutch man-of-war which had resisted the search of
merchant-ships under its convoy; an act which, whether right or wrong,
tended to incense the Dutch generally against England. It was
determined by the latter that if the United Provinces acceded to the
coalition of neutrals, war should be declared. On the 16th of
December, 1780, the English ministry was informed that the
States-General had resolved to sign the declarations of the Armed
Neutrality without delay. Orders were at once sent out to Rodney to
seize the Dutch West India and South American possessions; similar
orders to the East Indies; and the ambassador at the Hague was
recalled. England declared war four days later. The principal effect,
therefore, of the Armed Neutrality upon the war was to add the
colonies and commerce of Holland to the prey of English cruisers. The
additional enemy was of small account to Great Britain, whose
geographical position effectually blocked the junction of the Dutch
fleet with those of her other enemies. The possessions of Holland fell
everywhere, except when saved by the French; while a bloody but wholly
uninstructive battle between English and Dutch squadrons in the North
Sea, in August, 1781, was the only feat of arms illustrative of the
old Dutch courage and obstinacy.

The year 1781, decisive of the question of the independence of the
United States, was marked in the European seas by imposing movements
of great fleets followed by puny results. At the end of March De
Grasse sailed from Brest with twenty-six ships-of-the-line. On the
29th he detached five under Suffren to the East Indies, and himself
continued on to meet success at Yorktown and disaster in the West
Indies. On the 23d of June De Guichen sailed from Brest with eighteen
ships-of-the-line for Cadiz, where he joined thirty Spanish ships.
This immense armament sailed on the 22d of July for the Mediterranean,
landed fourteen thousand troops at Minorca, and then moved upon the
English Channel.

The English had this year first to provide against the danger to
Gibraltar. That beset fortress had had no supplies since Rodney's
visit, in January of the yea