This brilliant action had restored the affairs of the Americans, and was a preparatory step to the formation of a new army.

On the 30th of December, 1776, Washington was invested by Congress with the full powers of a dictator.
Europe, meanwhile, was following with increasing interest the vicissitudes of a struggle which at a distance had from the first appeared to the most experienced an unequal one.

"Let us not anticipate events, but content ourselves with learning them when they occur," said a letter, in 1775, to M.de Guines, ambassador in London, from Louis XVI.'s minister for foreign affairs, M.de Vergennes: "I prefer to follow, as a quiet observer; the course of events rather than try to produce them." He had but lately said with prophetic anxiety: "Far from seeking to profit by the embarrassment in which England finds herself on account of affairs in America, we should rather desire to extricate her.

The spirit of revolt, in whatever spot it breaks out, is always of dangerous precedent; it is with moral as with physical diseases, both may become contagious.

This consideration should induce us to take care that the spirit of independence, which is causing so terrible an explosion in North America, have no power to communicate itself to points interesting to us in this hemisphere." For a moment French diplomatists had been seriously disconcerted; remembrance of the surprise in 1755, when England had commenced hostilities without declaring war, still troubled men's minds.