ly
in 1780 Denmark, Sweden, and Russia entered into an agreement known as
the Armed Neutrality, by which they pledged themselves to unite in
retaliating upon England whenever any of her cruisers should molest any
of their ships. This league was a new source of danger to England,
because it entailed the risk of war with Russia.

[Sidenote: Paul Jones, 1779.]

During these years several bold American cruisers had made the stars and
stripes a familiar sight in European waters. The most famous of these
cruisers, Paul Jones, made his name a terror upon the coasts of England,
burned the ships in a port of Cumberland, sailed into the Frith of Forth
and threatened Edinburgh, and finally captured two British war vessels
off Flamborough Head, in one of the most desperate sea-fights on
record.

[Sidenote: St. Eustatius, Feb., 1781.]

Paul Jones was a regularly commissioned captain in the American navy,
but because the British did not recognize Congress as a legal body they
called him a pirate. When he took his prizes into a port in Holland,
they requested the Dutch government to surrender him into their hands,
as if he were a mere criminal to be tried at the Old Bailey. But the
Dutch let him stay in port ten weeks and then depart in peace. This
caused much irritation, and as there was also perpetual quarrelling over
the plunder of Dutch ships by British cruisers, the two nations went to
war in December, 1780. One of England's reasons for entering into this
war was the desire to capture the little Dutch island of St. Eustatius
in the West Indies. An immense trade was carried on there between
Holland and the United States, and it was believed that the stoppage of
this trade would be a staggering blow to the Americans. It was captured
in February, 1781, by Admiral Rodney, private property was seized to the
amount of more than twenty million dollars, and the inhabitants were
treated with shameful brutality.

[Sidenote: How the Americans were weakened and hampered. The want
of union.]

As England was thus fighting single-handed against France, Spain,
Holland, and the United States, while the attitude of all the neutral
powers was unfriendly, we can find no difficulty in understanding the
weakness of her military operations in some quarters. The United States,
on the other hand, found it hard to carry on the war for very different
reasons. In the first place the country was really weak. The military
strength of t