The British Lion Is Rouzed

• Main Author: Jones, Brad A.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Cornell University Press 2021
• Subjects: Indian; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501754012.003.0007

This chapter assesses how the Franco-American alliance of 1778 consolidated popular definitions of loyalism. As news of Congress's alliance with France circled the Atlantic in the summer of 1778, Britons rallied around a renewed and more resolute defense of Protestant Whig loyalism that helped to blur local and regional divisions by recasting their foes as political and religious enemies. They were shocked by the hypocrisy of a rebellion whose leaders had claimed a greater appreciation for personal liberty but were now allied with an oppressive and arbitrary Catholic nation. If, from the spring of 1775, runaway slaves and Indian warriors gave meaning and importance to a shared American common cause, then the image of Congress and rebellious colonists celebrating a union with Catholic France served similar purposes for a new, shared British common cause. The alliance had also extended the geographic reach of the war, drawing Britons from all corners of the North Atlantic into the conflict. From the summer of 1778, residents of the four colonial port cities faced repeated threats of invasions and were required to commit a greater number of men and resources to the widening war. In consequence, the loyal British Atlantic experienced a sort of rage militaire that rivaled the arming of rebellious colonists three years earlier.