356 Chapter 19
Lexington and Concord began the military phase of the
revolution.
Although the British had won a global war in 1763,
they were in a weaker position in 1775. They were de-
prived of the help that Americans had given them dur-
ing the Seven Years’ War. There was now no continental
war to preoccupy and divide the European powers. One
by one, the European powers exploited Britain’s vulnera-
ble position and declared war upon her. France entered
the war in 1778, Spain in 1779, and Holland in 1780.
The financial and military assistance of these states—
especially the French—plus the division of British opin-
ion over the war, helped to decide the war. France sent
increasingly larger armies, such as the force of six thou-
sand men that arrived with Count Jean de Rochambeau
in 1780. By the later phases of the war, French forces
were decisive. In the battle fought at Yorktown, Vir-
ginia, in 1781, the largest army was neither British nor
American but French. Facing such growing forces, the
British accepted the independence of thirteen of her
American colonies in 1783.
The American Revolution obliged the British to re-
consider the situation in other territories. Both nearby
(in Ireland) and around the world (in India), Britain
faced problems. The Anglo-Protestant domination of
Ireland had grown steadily during English battles with
Catholicism at home and abroad in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, especially after the Protestant
victory in the battle of the Boyne in 1690. One striking
consequence of these struggles could be seen in land
tenure. In 1603 Catholics had owned 90 percent of the
land in Ireland; in 1778, they owned 5 percent.
Catholics protested their execution, which had left
them at the mercy of absentee landlords who collected
extortionate rents. When Parliament considered im-
proving conditions in Ireland, such as the Relief Act of
1778, the result was a Protestant backlash. Protestants
in the northern counties of Ulster founded the Protes-
tant Volunteers, a paramilitary force of forty thousand
armed men to defend their privileged position. The
House of Commons capitulated to the Protestants by
creating a Protestant-dominated parliament in Ireland
known as Grattan’s Parliament, which survived until Ire-
land was merged into the United Kingdom in 1801.
The Vulnerable Monarchy
of Bourbon France
In contrast to the situation in England, the French
monarchy carried the powers of absolutism into the
eighteenth century: Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil(the Sun
King), the most powerful of the seventeenth-century
monarchs, died in 1715 after the longest reign in the
history of European monarchy, nearly seventy-three
years. Advocates of limiting absolutism had placed their
hopes in the heirs of Louis XIV, but within a single year
(1711–12), Louis’s son, grandson, and eldest great-
grandson all died. The death of Louis XIV conse-
quently brought to the throne his five-year-old
great-grandson, Louis XV, who would reign for most of
the eighteenth century (from 1715 to 1774).
Louis XIV had practiced the distrustful but shrewd
administrative principle of fragmenting power near to
the throne, and he extended this policy after death by a
will dividing the powers of the regency to rule France
until Louis XV came of age. The regent of France dur-
ing the childhood of Louis XV was his cousin,
Philippe II, the duke d’Orléans, a liberal and tolerant
man, although profligate enough to be considered dis-
sipated even in the context of royal families. The duke
skillfully obtained full power by making a deal with the
chief judicial body in France, theparlement of Paris: The
parlement invalidated the will of Louis XIV, and in re-
turn, Philippe d’Orléans allowed the fifteen parlements
of France greater powers to review (and block) royal
decrees. Thus, when Louis XV reached age thirteen and
began to rule without a regent in 1723, he inherited a
streamlined government, but he faced well-entrenched
opposition from the aristocratic parlements.
Louis XV was an intelligent and capable young
man, amiable enough to be called Louis “the Well-
Beloved.” He was not interested in controlling the gov-
ernment as his great-grandfather had; he liked the idea
of absolutism but lacked enthusiasm for the daily
chores of governing. Consequently, at age sixteen
Louis XV entrusted the government of France to his
tutor, Cardinal Fleury, who served as the virtual prime
minister of France (without the title) between 1726 and- Louis, who had been married at age fifteen for
reasons of state, amused himself with a variety of
women while Fleury used his long tenure, as Walpole
did in Britain, to stabilize and organize the government.
When Fleury died, Louis XV tried to restore the
system of Louis XIV—ruling personally instead of trust-
ing a minister to govern. Like George II of England, he
took command of his army and led it into battle in - Ministers who wanted too much power were re-
duced to the shadows, as was a finance minister of 1759
who left behind his name for that condition: Etienne de
Silhouette. Instead of trusting a prime minister and a
cabinet, Louis chiefly took advice from his official mis-
tress, the Marquise de Pompadour. She exerted a gener-