r; Brandywine,
where somebody at the time said that the mixture of the two liquors was
too much for the sober Americans [laughter], Camden, Guilford
Court-house, and others, with one tragic and terrible defeat on the
heights of Long Island. There were men who had been the subjects, and
many of them officers of the very power against which they were
fighting; and some of the older among them might have stood for that
power at Louisbourg or Quebec. On the other hand, the French troops were
part of an army, the lustre of whose splendid history could be traced
back for a thousand years, beyond the Crusaders, beyond Charlemagne.
Their officers had been trained in the best military schools of the
time. They were amply provided with the last and choicest equipments of
war. They had gallantly achieved victory, or as gallantly sustained
defeat on almost every principal battle-field in Europe. They were now
confronting an enemy whom that army had faced in previous centuries on
sea and land; and very likely something of special exhilaration and
animation went into their spirit from thought of this, as they assailed
the English breastworks, swarming into the trenches, capturing the
redoubts, storming the lines with that strange battle-shout, in our
republican American air: "Vive le Roi!" [Applause.]

A singular combination! Undoubtedly, to unfold the influences which had
led to it would take months instead of minutes, and occupy volumes
rather than sentences. I think however, that we reckon too much on
national rivalry, or national animosity, when we seek to explain it,
although these no doubt had their part in it. Doubtless the eager
efforts of Silas Dean, our first diplomatic representative in
Europe--efforts too eager for courtesy or wisdom--had a part in it; and
the skilful diplomacy of Franklin had, as we know, a large and important
influence upon it. The spirit of adventure, the desire for distinction
upon fresh fields, had something to do with it. But the principal factor
in that great effort was the spirit of freedom--the spirit that looked
to the advancement and the maintenance of popular liberty among the
peoples of the earth, wherever civilization had gone; that spirit which
was notably expressed by Van der Capellen, the Dutch orator and
statesman, when he vehemently said, in presence of the States-General of
Holland, in reply to an autograph letter of George III soliciting their
aid, that this was a business for hired j