The Glorious First of June
Admiral Lord Howe battered a French fleet far out in the Atlantic, and helped prevent the spread of bloody revolution.
1794
King George III 1760-1820
Admiral Lord Howe battered a French fleet far out in the Atlantic, and helped prevent the spread of bloody revolution.
1794
King George III 1760-1820
As soon as power had been secured after the Revolution of 1789, France’s new government began invading neighbouring countries in Europe, and seeking to evangelize the world with revolutionary fervour. Happily, the seed of republicanism fell on very stony ground on this side of the Channel.
IN 1793, during their year of bloody Terror, the newly republican government in France publicly executed King Louis XVI, and promptly declared themselves at war with Britain unless the oppressed subjects of King George III followed their revolutionary example.
The cheerful British public did no such thing. Instead, the order went out from Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger to strangle French trade in the Caribbean, and to blockade grain imports from the United States of America with the Royal Navy, leading to a bruising confrontation so far out in the Atlantic that it is known only by date, ‘The Glorious First of June’, 1794.*
That particular shipment of grain did get through, but the blockade held thereafter; both fleets withdrew badly damaged, but thanks to Admiral Richard Howe’s innovative tactics the French came off worse.
Moreover, the following November George Washington lent his weight to the Jay Treaty,* confirming Britain as America’s preferred partner in trade and banishing any fears of a Franco-American alliance.
If the name seems grandiose, it should be remembered that there were noisy radicals in England who wanted a revolution in London too, even as the Reign of Terror in Paris saw over sixteen thousand death sentences carried out across the country in only thirteen months, between June 1793 and the end of July 1794. Many, many more people from all backgrounds died in prison, or of disease, or in civil war. The battle was a glorious deliverance indeed.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did the French Republic declare war in Britain in 1793?
To spark a copy-cat revolution in London.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
The French Revolution happened in 1789. The revolutionaries declared war in Britain in 1793. They hoped Britain would have a revolution too.