The Perils Of Peace

On October 19, 1781, Great Britain's best army surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown. But the future of the 13 former colonies was far from clear. A 13,000 man British army still occupied New York City, and another 13,000 regulars and armed loyalists were scattered from Canada to Savannah, Georgia. Meanwhile, Congress had declined to a mere 24 members, and the national treasury was empty. The American army had not been paid for years and was on the brink of mutiny. In Europe, America's only ally, France, teetered on the verge of bankruptcy and was soon reeling from a disastrous naval defeat in the Caribbean. A stubborn George III dismissed Yorktown as a minor defeat and refused to yield an acre of "my dominions" in America. In Paris, Ambassador Benjamin Franklin confronted violent hostility to France among his fellow members of the American peace delegation. In his riveting new book, Thomas Fleming moves elegantly between the key players in this drama and shows that the outcome we take for granted was far from certain. Not without anguish, General Washington resisted the urgings of many officers to seize power and held the angry army together until peace and independence arrived. With fresh research and masterful storytelling, Fleming breathes new life into this tumultuous but little known period in America's history.

Excerpt from The Perils of Peace In revising the proofs of this book I realise how fast events are moving. The return of Russia, which even when I wrote was as obvious to rrie as it must, one would think, have been obvious to everybody ex cept Mr George, is already an accomplished fact. The offensive in the West, which I speak of as a future event, is already in pro gress. It would be unwise to prophesy concerning these matters. Before my book is out the military situation may have changed for the worse or for the better. But it is important to emphasise. The fact that the peril of which I write in this book is one which increases instead of diminishes with the improved prospects of victory. The greater the measure of our apparent success, the larger the concessions which the Enemy will be disposed to make, and the more dangerous the possible efi'ect'of such concessions upon uninstructed opinion. For, as you and I realise, in dealing with the thing called Prussia, the acceptance of any concession short of unconditional sur render, is an act of suicide. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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