1 00:00:01,242 --> 00:00:03,244 Viewers like you make this program possible. 2 00:00:03,382 --> 00:00:05,557 Support your local PBS station. 3 00:00:12,771 --> 00:00:16,637 Lucy Worsley: December 1776. 4 00:00:16,775 --> 00:00:23,161 In a rented room, a man works cautiously. 5 00:00:23,299 --> 00:00:27,786 He's building an 18th-century homemade bomb. 6 00:00:30,271 --> 00:00:32,204 The target... 7 00:00:32,342 --> 00:00:38,314 Britain's largest and most vital naval dockyard. 8 00:00:40,109 --> 00:00:43,146 Just five months after America declared 9 00:00:43,284 --> 00:00:47,185 its independence from Britain... 10 00:00:47,323 --> 00:00:51,292 the American Revolution is about to escalate. 11 00:00:51,430 --> 00:00:53,674 For the first time, the revolutionaries 12 00:00:53,812 --> 00:00:56,953 are striking at Britain itself. 13 00:01:01,095 --> 00:01:03,546 In this two-part special, 14 00:01:03,684 --> 00:01:07,343 I'm re-investigating one of the most explosive breakups 15 00:01:07,481 --> 00:01:09,966 between two nations in history. 16 00:01:10,104 --> 00:01:11,243 This is The Stamp Act. 17 00:01:11,381 --> 00:01:13,970 The whole mess starts here, Lucy. 18 00:01:14,108 --> 00:01:16,145 It's a story that's become part 19 00:01:16,283 --> 00:01:18,008 of the mythology of both Britain 20 00:01:18,147 --> 00:01:20,080 and the United States... 21 00:01:20,218 --> 00:01:22,392 Oh, look at that. 22 00:01:22,530 --> 00:01:23,566 You can just imagine 23 00:01:23,704 --> 00:01:24,912 inviting your friends around 24 00:01:25,050 --> 00:01:26,155 for a seditious tea party. 25 00:01:26,293 --> 00:01:29,192 Told as a bitter loss of empire... 26 00:01:29,330 --> 00:01:30,745 It was the closest we came to an anarchy. 27 00:01:30,883 --> 00:01:33,852 Or the triumphant birth of a new nation. 28 00:01:33,990 --> 00:01:36,958 He is outnumbered just about two to one. 29 00:01:37,097 --> 00:01:42,309 But 250 years since America's Declaration of Independence, 30 00:01:42,447 --> 00:01:45,312 there's an untold version of the story, 31 00:01:45,450 --> 00:01:48,142 the British perspective. 32 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:51,594 That's what I want to investigate. 33 00:01:51,732 --> 00:01:55,839 Think James Bond wearing a powdered wig. 34 00:01:55,977 --> 00:01:58,497 Listen to this. He's giving up the throne. 35 00:01:58,635 --> 00:02:00,189 He's resigning his job. 36 00:02:00,327 --> 00:02:03,295 I'm going to uncover forgotten witnesses. 37 00:02:03,433 --> 00:02:04,745 It's like opening a present. 38 00:02:04,883 --> 00:02:07,886 I'm going to reexamine the original evidence... 39 00:02:08,024 --> 00:02:09,715 Damn you. Fire! 40 00:02:09,853 --> 00:02:13,340 And follow new clues... Aah! 41 00:02:13,478 --> 00:02:17,620 To get closer to the truth. 42 00:02:17,758 --> 00:02:19,449 Historians have very different views. 43 00:02:19,587 --> 00:02:20,795 What do you think? 44 00:02:36,846 --> 00:02:39,642 In July 1776, 45 00:02:39,780 --> 00:02:43,473 the American Revolution was raging on, 46 00:02:43,611 --> 00:02:46,959 and the fighting had now reached New York City. 47 00:02:48,927 --> 00:02:51,309 The 13 colonies had declared 48 00:02:51,447 --> 00:02:54,415 their independence from Britain... 49 00:02:55,796 --> 00:02:59,351 And had begun referring to themselves 50 00:02:59,489 --> 00:03:02,699 as the United States of America. 51 00:03:05,115 --> 00:03:07,014 Just seven weeks later, though, 52 00:03:07,152 --> 00:03:09,637 this enthusiasm for independence 53 00:03:09,775 --> 00:03:12,364 would be brutally tested 54 00:03:12,502 --> 00:03:14,677 in the battle for Long Island. 55 00:03:14,815 --> 00:03:16,679 It happened just over there 56 00:03:16,817 --> 00:03:19,302 in the Prospect Park area of the city. 57 00:03:19,440 --> 00:03:21,339 This was the biggest battle yet 58 00:03:21,477 --> 00:03:23,168 of the American Revolution, 59 00:03:23,306 --> 00:03:25,170 and the British won it. 60 00:03:27,137 --> 00:03:28,518 In this very park, 61 00:03:28,656 --> 00:03:31,107 20,000 freshly landed British troops 62 00:03:31,245 --> 00:03:35,491 squared off against a force of only 10,000 Americans 63 00:03:35,629 --> 00:03:39,495 led by General George Washington. 64 00:03:41,807 --> 00:03:46,329 The battle ended with Washington's forces surrounded, 65 00:03:46,467 --> 00:03:48,538 their backs to the East River 66 00:03:48,676 --> 00:03:51,403 and nowhere left to run. 67 00:03:51,541 --> 00:03:53,163 What saved the Americans 68 00:03:53,302 --> 00:03:57,340 was one of the boldest and most successful retreats 69 00:03:57,478 --> 00:03:58,997 in military history. 70 00:03:59,135 --> 00:04:02,483 Under the cover of darkness and in thick fog, 71 00:04:02,621 --> 00:04:05,175 the Americans went quietly slipping away 72 00:04:05,314 --> 00:04:07,695 across the East River to escape. 73 00:04:07,833 --> 00:04:11,043 It's said that the last man to leave Brooklyn 74 00:04:11,181 --> 00:04:14,495 was George Washington himself. 75 00:04:20,984 --> 00:04:23,193 I think this battle here in Brooklyn 76 00:04:23,332 --> 00:04:26,645 was a real wakeup call for the American colonists. 77 00:04:26,783 --> 00:04:28,854 They weren't guaranteed to win. 78 00:04:28,992 --> 00:04:33,065 It's one thing to declare your independence on paper, 79 00:04:33,203 --> 00:04:37,173 and it's quite another to win it on the battlefield. 80 00:04:40,349 --> 00:04:41,867 At this point, it looked 81 00:04:42,005 --> 00:04:43,662 like the Americans stood little chance 82 00:04:43,800 --> 00:04:47,494 of defeating the might of the British Empire. 83 00:04:51,014 --> 00:04:53,016 Most people believe the Americans 84 00:04:53,154 --> 00:04:54,673 did eventually triumph, 85 00:04:54,811 --> 00:04:58,988 thanks to their guerilla tactics and their local knowledge. 86 00:05:01,162 --> 00:05:05,028 But I think that's only part of the truth. 87 00:05:05,166 --> 00:05:08,929 That's why I'm continuing my investigation 88 00:05:09,067 --> 00:05:11,345 not in America... 89 00:05:11,483 --> 00:05:14,866 but 3,000 miles away across the ocean. 90 00:05:19,664 --> 00:05:21,493 There's another side to the story 91 00:05:21,631 --> 00:05:23,357 that gets told less often. 92 00:05:23,495 --> 00:05:25,359 While all the battles were unfolding 93 00:05:25,497 --> 00:05:27,050 over there in North America, 94 00:05:27,188 --> 00:05:29,708 American revolutionaries were also working 95 00:05:29,846 --> 00:05:34,092 here in Britain to destabilize this nation. 96 00:05:37,475 --> 00:05:38,924 The royal dockyard at Portsmouth 97 00:05:39,062 --> 00:05:41,996 was the main naval depot for the British 98 00:05:42,134 --> 00:05:44,516 during the American Revolution, 99 00:05:44,654 --> 00:05:49,556 and it was right here in December 1776 100 00:05:49,694 --> 00:05:55,527 that an act of arson set the docks ablaze. 101 00:05:57,633 --> 00:06:00,670 I'd like to dig into the detail of this attack 102 00:06:00,808 --> 00:06:05,848 to find out if it was an American inside job. 103 00:06:08,402 --> 00:06:12,993 I'm descending to the gun deck of HMS Warrior 104 00:06:13,131 --> 00:06:17,549 to meet a terrorism expert. 105 00:06:17,687 --> 00:06:19,586 So, we've got a wonderful description here 106 00:06:19,724 --> 00:06:22,174 from one of the investigators. 107 00:06:22,312 --> 00:06:25,005 He's brought with him trial documents, 108 00:06:25,143 --> 00:06:27,317 including a confession, 109 00:06:27,456 --> 00:06:32,184 that reveal exactly how this attack was carried out 110 00:06:32,322 --> 00:06:34,704 and by whom. 111 00:06:34,842 --> 00:06:37,017 James, can you tell me about this bomb? 112 00:06:37,155 --> 00:06:39,191 How did it work? What did it do? 113 00:06:39,329 --> 00:06:41,021 The bomb was quite ingenious for its time. 114 00:06:41,159 --> 00:06:44,196 So, this is a document from the prosecution. 115 00:06:44,334 --> 00:06:45,957 Wow. 116 00:06:46,095 --> 00:06:49,201 The most ingenious bit is this in the middle here, a candle. 117 00:06:49,339 --> 00:06:51,376 So, it's a timed wick. 118 00:06:51,514 --> 00:06:53,654 It's not just what we call today 119 00:06:53,792 --> 00:06:57,175 an improvised incendiary device, an IID. 120 00:06:57,313 --> 00:06:59,522 It's a timed IID. 121 00:06:59,660 --> 00:07:01,559 A candle would have been slowly moving 122 00:07:01,697 --> 00:07:03,319 towards the zero hour, and then poof. 123 00:07:03,457 --> 00:07:05,873 - Very ominous. - Gosh. 124 00:07:06,011 --> 00:07:07,599 That sounds quite effective, then. 125 00:07:07,737 --> 00:07:08,842 It really worked. 126 00:07:08,980 --> 00:07:11,500 How much damage did it cause? 127 00:07:11,638 --> 00:07:13,225 In Portsmouth, pretty substantial damage. 128 00:07:13,363 --> 00:07:14,813 He gutted an entire building. 129 00:07:14,951 --> 00:07:16,919 I guess that the people in charge of the navy 130 00:07:17,057 --> 00:07:19,369 must have felt immensely vulnerable. 131 00:07:19,508 --> 00:07:21,544 Very. It was a panic. 132 00:07:21,682 --> 00:07:23,339 I mean, we're talking about a spate of attacks 133 00:07:23,477 --> 00:07:25,548 at key ports in the space of a couple of weeks. 134 00:07:25,686 --> 00:07:27,170 The navy is being used 135 00:07:27,308 --> 00:07:29,241 to run fresh troops and munitions 136 00:07:29,379 --> 00:07:30,726 across the Atlantic, 137 00:07:30,864 --> 00:07:32,521 and that's the vital point here, 138 00:07:32,659 --> 00:07:34,039 is that it is the literal lifeline 139 00:07:34,177 --> 00:07:35,731 for the crown forces over there. 140 00:07:35,869 --> 00:07:37,698 Sounds like the work of a cell to me. 141 00:07:37,836 --> 00:07:39,804 Well, that was the assumption. 142 00:07:39,942 --> 00:07:41,357 The second these fires start, 143 00:07:41,495 --> 00:07:43,359 they believe there's a team of saboteurs at work 144 00:07:43,497 --> 00:07:45,085 and that they are indeed American-backed. 145 00:07:45,223 --> 00:07:47,846 Turns out that it is just one man, 146 00:07:47,984 --> 00:07:49,848 and that comes across in his testimony 147 00:07:49,986 --> 00:07:51,574 when he's put on trial, 148 00:07:51,712 --> 00:07:53,369 that he has no accomplices. 149 00:07:53,507 --> 00:07:55,405 He sounds like a proper criminal mastermind, 150 00:07:55,544 --> 00:07:56,579 doesn't he? 151 00:07:56,717 --> 00:07:57,960 Well, he is, and he isn't. 152 00:07:58,098 --> 00:07:59,962 Contrary to the rumor at the time, 153 00:08:00,100 --> 00:08:02,965 he was not American. He was Scottish. 154 00:08:03,103 --> 00:08:05,070 He went by the name of John the Painter. 155 00:08:05,208 --> 00:08:07,210 His real name was James Aitkin. 156 00:08:07,348 --> 00:08:09,730 His plan was to attack the Royal Navy 157 00:08:09,868 --> 00:08:11,732 at a pretty sensitive time in the war, 158 00:08:11,870 --> 00:08:14,252 when the Royal Navy has commenced a blockade. 159 00:08:14,390 --> 00:08:16,081 Was he recruited by the Americans 160 00:08:16,219 --> 00:08:17,876 to help their cause, then? 161 00:08:18,014 --> 00:08:20,223 He claims that he was there in Boston 162 00:08:20,361 --> 00:08:23,019 in December of 1773 to see the Tea Party, 163 00:08:23,157 --> 00:08:24,745 perhaps even participate in it, 164 00:08:24,883 --> 00:08:27,817 and on that basis, he claims that he was radicalized. 165 00:08:27,955 --> 00:08:29,474 He's not officially American, 166 00:08:29,612 --> 00:08:31,718 but he's definitely acting in American interests, isn't he? 167 00:08:31,856 --> 00:08:33,547 Oh, very much so. I mean, he really thinks 168 00:08:33,685 --> 00:08:37,033 that he is a fighter for the cause. 169 00:08:40,381 --> 00:08:42,522 So, the bombing of Portsmouth dock 170 00:08:42,660 --> 00:08:48,769 was an attack designed to cripple the Royal Navy at home. 171 00:08:48,907 --> 00:08:54,119 And it was carried out by a British citizen... 172 00:08:54,257 --> 00:08:56,708 radicalized by America's new ideas 173 00:08:56,846 --> 00:09:01,817 about liberty and putting an end to monarchy. 174 00:09:01,955 --> 00:09:04,060 For the British, what must have felt 175 00:09:04,198 --> 00:09:07,029 like a little skirmish happening on the other side of the world 176 00:09:07,167 --> 00:09:09,031 had suddenly crossed the Atlantic, 177 00:09:09,169 --> 00:09:12,034 become much closer to home, 178 00:09:12,172 --> 00:09:15,693 and turned much more troubling. 179 00:09:15,831 --> 00:09:18,385 Here are the 13 colonies. 180 00:09:20,352 --> 00:09:24,943 This is New York. 181 00:09:26,531 --> 00:09:28,084 This was the front line 182 00:09:28,222 --> 00:09:30,708 of the conventional war in America, 183 00:09:30,846 --> 00:09:35,057 where soldiers were clashing in open battle. 184 00:09:35,195 --> 00:09:37,197 By December 1776, 185 00:09:37,335 --> 00:09:41,891 George Washington's army was in retreat, 186 00:09:42,029 --> 00:09:45,377 pursued relentlessly across New Jersey 187 00:09:45,515 --> 00:09:49,899 by superior British forces. 188 00:09:50,037 --> 00:09:53,903 Five months after the Declaration of Independence, 189 00:09:54,041 --> 00:09:56,388 Washington now feared the worst, 190 00:09:56,526 --> 00:10:02,084 saying, "I think the game is pretty nearly up." 191 00:10:03,844 --> 00:10:07,365 In desperation and not a moment too soon, 192 00:10:07,503 --> 00:10:13,716 the Americans began to devise a bold new strategy. 193 00:10:13,854 --> 00:10:16,754 They were trying to get into bed 194 00:10:16,892 --> 00:10:21,379 with Britain's oldest enemy, France. 195 00:10:21,517 --> 00:10:25,555 Benjamin Franklin, their most experienced diplomat, 196 00:10:25,694 --> 00:10:30,457 was sent on a top-secret mission to Paris 197 00:10:30,595 --> 00:10:34,910 to try to secure French support for the Revolution. 198 00:10:37,429 --> 00:10:40,225 Franklin had once lived in London 199 00:10:40,363 --> 00:10:43,504 and been a big fan of Britain. 200 00:10:43,643 --> 00:10:49,062 But now it seems he's become Britain's nemesis. 201 00:10:52,790 --> 00:10:54,205 I've come to the archives 202 00:10:54,343 --> 00:10:56,966 at the Royal Society in central London 203 00:10:57,104 --> 00:11:00,073 to take a closer look 204 00:11:00,211 --> 00:11:04,422 at Franklin's dramatic transformation. 205 00:11:04,560 --> 00:11:07,356 How is he today? 206 00:11:09,703 --> 00:11:11,601 Meet Benjamin Franklin 207 00:11:11,740 --> 00:11:14,881 in the London phase of his life. 208 00:11:15,019 --> 00:11:17,297 He looks like a man who'd be, as he was, 209 00:11:17,435 --> 00:11:19,920 completely at home here in the Royal Society, 210 00:11:20,058 --> 00:11:21,715 where he enjoyed electrocuting himself 211 00:11:21,853 --> 00:11:23,924 in the name of scientific progress. 212 00:11:24,062 --> 00:11:25,754 This is Franklin, 213 00:11:25,892 --> 00:11:28,757 the loyal subject of the British Empire. 214 00:11:28,895 --> 00:11:31,276 But you've got to see this. 215 00:11:31,414 --> 00:11:34,038 This is the transformation in his appearance 216 00:11:34,176 --> 00:11:38,076 that happens when he goes full-on American. 217 00:11:38,214 --> 00:11:41,424 When he's in Paris representing the colonists, 218 00:11:41,562 --> 00:11:44,186 he's created a totally new look for himself. 219 00:11:44,324 --> 00:11:48,224 He would now wear a furry hat 220 00:11:48,362 --> 00:11:50,261 from some North American animal. 221 00:11:50,399 --> 00:11:53,195 He had a beaver one. He had a raccoon one. 222 00:11:53,333 --> 00:11:58,234 And he was famous for wearing a homespun shirt. 223 00:11:58,372 --> 00:12:01,790 There was nothing of the courtly 224 00:12:01,928 --> 00:12:03,895 or the kingly about him anymore. 225 00:12:04,033 --> 00:12:08,762 He was channeling rough-law American simplicity. 226 00:12:08,900 --> 00:12:10,764 I suppose what he was doing 227 00:12:10,902 --> 00:12:12,386 was presenting himself as the... 228 00:12:12,524 --> 00:12:15,562 the human face of this new nation 229 00:12:15,700 --> 00:12:18,427 in the process of being born. 230 00:12:21,361 --> 00:12:24,709 To the French, this was extremely enticing. 231 00:12:24,847 --> 00:12:30,991 They found him a sort of exotic embodiment of liberty. 232 00:12:32,993 --> 00:12:35,409 Franklin's look was so different 233 00:12:35,547 --> 00:12:38,102 to the normal formal powdered dandy thing 234 00:12:38,240 --> 00:12:40,276 they had going on at Versailles 235 00:12:40,414 --> 00:12:43,245 that the French ladies found him rather attractive. 236 00:12:43,383 --> 00:12:47,594 They would come up to him and stroke his furry hat, 237 00:12:47,732 --> 00:12:50,424 which he found amusing 238 00:12:50,562 --> 00:12:53,082 but also he was quite pleased about 239 00:12:53,220 --> 00:12:55,740 because he was winning them over to his cause. 240 00:12:55,878 --> 00:12:58,432 But underneath his furry old hat, 241 00:12:58,570 --> 00:13:03,610 Franklin was hiding a dark secret. 242 00:13:05,370 --> 00:13:08,132 America was on the brink. 243 00:13:08,270 --> 00:13:11,100 Washington's army was running out of money 244 00:13:11,238 --> 00:13:15,242 and gunpowder and time. 245 00:13:15,380 --> 00:13:17,727 In a final attempt to turn the tide, 246 00:13:17,866 --> 00:13:22,594 Washington launched a surprise night attack on Trenton, 247 00:13:22,732 --> 00:13:25,080 closely followed by Princeton. 248 00:13:25,218 --> 00:13:27,945 The Americans fell back on guerilla tactics, 249 00:13:28,083 --> 00:13:33,433 using their local knowledge to strike fast and disappear. 250 00:13:34,883 --> 00:13:36,574 But despite these small victories, 251 00:13:36,712 --> 00:13:40,474 Washington's army had shrunk from 10,000 252 00:13:40,612 --> 00:13:44,340 to just 3,000 men. 253 00:13:48,689 --> 00:13:53,177 America's hopes now lay in the salons of Versailles. 254 00:13:53,315 --> 00:13:56,007 To the French elite, 255 00:13:56,145 --> 00:13:58,216 Franklin was a living legend, 256 00:13:58,354 --> 00:14:02,772 the master of scientific experiments. 257 00:14:04,429 --> 00:14:06,604 But behind his showmanship, he knew 258 00:14:06,742 --> 00:14:10,194 that if he didn't secure French support, 259 00:14:10,332 --> 00:14:13,369 the American cause would fail. 260 00:14:15,233 --> 00:14:18,788 But Franklin was being watched 261 00:14:18,927 --> 00:14:22,102 by the British. 262 00:14:22,240 --> 00:14:23,448 I'm interested in the man 263 00:14:23,586 --> 00:14:26,762 standing just behind Franklin, 264 00:14:26,900 --> 00:14:30,939 his protege, Edward Bancroft. 265 00:14:31,077 --> 00:14:34,943 Bancroft wasn't just Benjamin Franklin's right-hand man; 266 00:14:35,081 --> 00:14:38,636 he was also a spy working for the British. 267 00:14:38,774 --> 00:14:41,811 The Americans thought that he was working for them, 268 00:14:41,950 --> 00:14:43,952 but the British had recruited him 269 00:14:44,090 --> 00:14:45,677 as their secret agent. 270 00:14:45,815 --> 00:14:48,473 Think James Bond but wearing 271 00:14:48,611 --> 00:14:52,098 an 18th-century powdered wig. 272 00:14:53,927 --> 00:14:58,242 To uncover what Edward Bancroft was really up to in Paris, 273 00:14:58,380 --> 00:15:00,796 I've called in reinforcements... 274 00:15:02,556 --> 00:15:08,424 A professor who specializes in secret intelligence. 275 00:15:08,562 --> 00:15:11,427 We're meeting at Imperial College London 276 00:15:11,565 --> 00:15:15,224 to examine the Bancroft papers. 277 00:15:15,362 --> 00:15:19,263 These were once classified documents, 278 00:15:19,401 --> 00:15:23,577 sealed for over a century. 279 00:15:29,652 --> 00:15:31,309 I can see then that things 280 00:15:31,447 --> 00:15:33,070 are really hotting up in Paris. 281 00:15:33,208 --> 00:15:34,588 We've got this possible alliance shaping up 282 00:15:34,726 --> 00:15:36,590 between the French and the Americans. 283 00:15:36,728 --> 00:15:38,454 How does Bancroft, who's the spy 284 00:15:38,592 --> 00:15:40,318 for the British in the middle of it all, 285 00:15:40,456 --> 00:15:42,769 get his information out and back to London? 286 00:15:42,907 --> 00:15:44,288 It's classic spycraft. 287 00:15:44,426 --> 00:15:47,291 He is copying material, stealing material 288 00:15:47,429 --> 00:15:50,259 to copy it and then secretly return it. 289 00:15:50,397 --> 00:15:54,263 And he gets the messages out by using secret code. 290 00:15:54,401 --> 00:15:56,093 Oh... 291 00:15:56,231 --> 00:15:59,027 And you can see... you can see here 292 00:15:59,165 --> 00:16:01,305 in... in this document 293 00:16:01,443 --> 00:16:03,134 where he refers to Franklin, 294 00:16:03,272 --> 00:16:06,034 but to have a bit of tradecraft again, 295 00:16:06,172 --> 00:16:07,656 he doesn't use the word "Franklin." 296 00:16:07,794 --> 00:16:10,245 He uses his code number, which you can see there is 58. 297 00:16:10,383 --> 00:16:11,763 58. 298 00:16:11,901 --> 00:16:16,147 And here we have 58 and 45 were up to something, 299 00:16:16,285 --> 00:16:19,495 and 45 is Bancroft's code for Silas Deane, 300 00:16:19,633 --> 00:16:21,877 who worked with Franklin in Paris. 301 00:16:22,015 --> 00:16:24,328 And what's particularly lovely about this document-- 302 00:16:24,466 --> 00:16:26,502 it makes the historian's life a lot easier-- 303 00:16:26,640 --> 00:16:29,091 is someone has cracked the code 304 00:16:29,229 --> 00:16:30,920 and written in the answers for us. 305 00:16:31,059 --> 00:16:32,198 Number 89 refers to... 306 00:16:32,336 --> 00:16:34,510 - The king. - Yes. 307 00:16:34,648 --> 00:16:36,650 What sort of thing was he sending, then? 308 00:16:36,788 --> 00:16:38,652 He was a fantastically placed spy 309 00:16:38,790 --> 00:16:40,792 with access to amazing material, 310 00:16:40,930 --> 00:16:42,484 because he was living... 311 00:16:42,622 --> 00:16:44,141 he was living with Ben Franklin. 312 00:16:44,279 --> 00:16:46,212 He was living with the people he was spying on. 313 00:16:46,350 --> 00:16:48,869 His job was to copy their work. 314 00:16:49,008 --> 00:16:52,942 He was sending material about the relationship 315 00:16:53,081 --> 00:16:55,980 between France and America. 316 00:16:56,118 --> 00:16:57,533 He was sending material 317 00:16:57,671 --> 00:17:00,260 about various French ships are setting sail 318 00:17:00,398 --> 00:17:01,951 to go and support the fighters. 319 00:17:02,090 --> 00:17:05,334 He's telling them that a deal is on the cards. 320 00:17:05,472 --> 00:17:07,474 He's telling them that the French are, 321 00:17:07,612 --> 00:17:09,649 at first secretly and then increasingly openly, 322 00:17:09,787 --> 00:17:11,858 supplying weapons and artillery 323 00:17:11,996 --> 00:17:13,756 to the... to the rebels. 324 00:17:13,894 --> 00:17:16,621 It sounds like Bancroft is sending pure gold 325 00:17:16,759 --> 00:17:19,624 back to London then in terms of information. 326 00:17:19,762 --> 00:17:23,076 What do the government ministers do with it? 327 00:17:23,214 --> 00:17:25,113 He would be feeding intelligence back, 328 00:17:25,251 --> 00:17:27,770 which made its way all the way up 329 00:17:27,908 --> 00:17:29,151 to the king himself. 330 00:17:29,289 --> 00:17:31,981 But one of the challenges that spies have 331 00:17:32,120 --> 00:17:34,812 is to tell truth to power. 332 00:17:34,950 --> 00:17:36,848 And King George didn't like the truth 333 00:17:36,986 --> 00:17:38,643 that Bancroft was telling him. 334 00:17:38,781 --> 00:17:41,163 He was telling him the French are gonna get involved properly 335 00:17:41,301 --> 00:17:43,165 and it's going to be pretty messy. 336 00:17:43,303 --> 00:17:45,443 And George III thought, 337 00:17:45,581 --> 00:17:47,652 "I think that you are exaggerating. 338 00:17:47,790 --> 00:17:49,654 "I think that you are trying to give me 339 00:17:49,792 --> 00:17:51,553 "as pessimistic an account as possible. 340 00:17:51,691 --> 00:17:53,831 I don't want to hear this." 341 00:17:59,423 --> 00:18:04,152 King George III was increasingly uneasy. 342 00:18:04,290 --> 00:18:06,326 Bancroft's intelligence was clear, 343 00:18:06,464 --> 00:18:10,468 but George was still clinging onto the belief 344 00:18:10,606 --> 00:18:12,850 that one final decisive victory in America 345 00:18:12,988 --> 00:18:14,472 would end the Revolution 346 00:18:14,610 --> 00:18:17,993 and make the French threat go away. 347 00:18:19,753 --> 00:18:21,997 Yet, as the war dragged on, 348 00:18:22,135 --> 00:18:25,311 the French became bolder, 349 00:18:25,449 --> 00:18:29,798 smuggling arms and uniforms to the rebels. 350 00:18:33,146 --> 00:18:38,427 But I think France was playing a very risky game here. 351 00:18:39,980 --> 00:18:42,742 So, we've got the Americans fighting for liberty 352 00:18:42,880 --> 00:18:46,677 and against the whole concept of monarchy. 353 00:18:46,815 --> 00:18:51,509 But who is secretly bankrolling them from the shadows? 354 00:18:51,647 --> 00:18:54,685 Well, it's only King Louis XVI from France, 355 00:18:54,823 --> 00:18:57,998 the most absolute monarch in Europe. 356 00:18:58,137 --> 00:19:01,174 It's almost surreal that a struggle against monarchy 357 00:19:01,312 --> 00:19:04,177 is being funded by another monarch. 358 00:19:04,315 --> 00:19:06,697 What could be in it for Louis, then? 359 00:19:06,835 --> 00:19:09,217 Well, what he wanted was revenge. 360 00:19:09,355 --> 00:19:10,804 If the Americans could drive 361 00:19:10,942 --> 00:19:13,324 the British out of North America, 362 00:19:13,462 --> 00:19:16,327 it would reset the balance of power in Europe, 363 00:19:16,465 --> 00:19:19,606 and France would once again be dominant. 364 00:19:19,744 --> 00:19:22,230 By 1777, 365 00:19:22,368 --> 00:19:24,335 it had been over a year 366 00:19:24,473 --> 00:19:27,994 since the Americans first asked France for help. 367 00:19:30,134 --> 00:19:33,517 But before officially declaring their support, 368 00:19:33,655 --> 00:19:37,831 the French wanted to see results on the ground. 369 00:19:39,799 --> 00:19:43,354 The British strategy was to isolate the rebellion 370 00:19:43,492 --> 00:19:46,840 in New England and to crush it quickly. 371 00:19:46,978 --> 00:19:49,360 But in the autumn of 1777, 372 00:19:49,498 --> 00:19:52,984 that plan unraveled at Saratoga. 373 00:19:53,122 --> 00:19:57,161 Using hit-and-run tactics, the Americans picked off 374 00:19:57,299 --> 00:19:59,681 around 2,000 of the British troops 375 00:19:59,819 --> 00:20:03,857 before engaging the rest of them directly. 376 00:20:03,995 --> 00:20:06,274 After two bloody battles, 377 00:20:06,412 --> 00:20:12,556 the British surrendered nearly 6,000 men. 378 00:20:19,977 --> 00:20:21,323 The French thought 379 00:20:21,461 --> 00:20:24,671 they could smell blood in the water. 380 00:20:24,809 --> 00:20:28,572 They calculated that the British were doing so badly 381 00:20:28,710 --> 00:20:30,815 on the military front in North America 382 00:20:30,953 --> 00:20:34,336 that the Americans might well be able to beat them 383 00:20:34,474 --> 00:20:36,407 if France helped out. 384 00:20:36,545 --> 00:20:40,308 And on the sixth of February 1778, 385 00:20:40,446 --> 00:20:44,726 George III's nightmare became real. 386 00:20:44,864 --> 00:20:50,352 France signed a formal alliance with the American rebels. 387 00:20:50,490 --> 00:20:52,320 I want to dig into 388 00:20:52,458 --> 00:20:54,874 how this news went down in Britain, 389 00:20:55,012 --> 00:20:59,672 and I sourced the newspapers from 250 years ago. 390 00:20:59,810 --> 00:21:02,709 The papers are full of reaction to the news 391 00:21:02,847 --> 00:21:06,989 of this new alliance between France and America, 392 00:21:07,127 --> 00:21:10,199 and the reaction is bad. It's negative. 393 00:21:10,338 --> 00:21:12,201 People are frightened. 394 00:21:12,340 --> 00:21:13,996 In this article, it's described 395 00:21:14,134 --> 00:21:18,518 as "a crisis of national peril and insult, 396 00:21:18,656 --> 00:21:21,072 "a menace from the ambition and treachery 397 00:21:21,210 --> 00:21:23,316 of a perfidious enemy." 398 00:21:23,454 --> 00:21:25,698 It's described as "a moment of danger 399 00:21:25,836 --> 00:21:28,217 "that threatens the very destruction 400 00:21:28,356 --> 00:21:29,633 of the British empire." 401 00:21:29,771 --> 00:21:32,808 And this is just how perfidious the enemy is. 402 00:21:32,946 --> 00:21:36,398 Here's a letter that's been written 403 00:21:36,536 --> 00:21:38,711 by a French major general. 404 00:21:38,849 --> 00:21:42,335 He says, "How glorious will it be to France 405 00:21:42,473 --> 00:21:44,544 "to establish American independence 406 00:21:44,682 --> 00:21:49,342 and by that means, ruin the naval power of England." 407 00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:51,931 It's clear where he's coming from. 408 00:21:52,069 --> 00:21:55,521 And people are really angry as well as fearful. 409 00:21:55,659 --> 00:21:57,488 They're angry with the cabinet 410 00:21:57,626 --> 00:21:59,490 who got them into this position. 411 00:21:59,628 --> 00:22:02,044 People are complaining here about the folly, 412 00:22:02,182 --> 00:22:05,910 the imbecility, and the pusillanimity-- 413 00:22:06,048 --> 00:22:08,188 that's the timidity, the rubbishness-- 414 00:22:08,327 --> 00:22:12,538 of the British cabinet for allowing this to happen. 415 00:22:12,676 --> 00:22:14,678 And Britain is in big trouble, 416 00:22:14,816 --> 00:22:17,853 because now it's got to fight two wars at once, 417 00:22:17,991 --> 00:22:20,028 one over the sea in America 418 00:22:20,166 --> 00:22:22,996 and another much closer to home. 419 00:22:23,134 --> 00:22:25,378 Weapons are issued to local people. 420 00:22:25,516 --> 00:22:27,035 The militia is roused. 421 00:22:27,173 --> 00:22:29,693 And the coastal towns of southern England 422 00:22:29,831 --> 00:22:33,524 get ready for a possible invasion by the French. 423 00:22:33,662 --> 00:22:36,009 How had it got to this point 424 00:22:36,147 --> 00:22:38,702 where Britain was not only in danger 425 00:22:38,840 --> 00:22:40,704 of losing its 13 colonies, 426 00:22:40,842 --> 00:22:45,847 but also of being at war with its oldest enemy? 427 00:22:45,985 --> 00:22:48,263 Makes you turn to drink. 428 00:22:51,508 --> 00:22:58,342 Sixteen French ships set off for North American waters. 429 00:22:58,480 --> 00:23:03,520 Their aim was to protect America's ports and supply lines 430 00:23:03,658 --> 00:23:08,283 and to smash through Britain's naval blockade. 431 00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:13,184 But it turns out that France 432 00:23:13,322 --> 00:23:16,153 was only just getting started. 433 00:23:20,433 --> 00:23:24,368 In the spring of 1778, something crucial happened. 434 00:23:24,506 --> 00:23:29,338 King Louis XVI of France declared that the 13 colonies 435 00:23:29,477 --> 00:23:30,857 were now to be called 436 00:23:30,995 --> 00:23:34,205 the "United Provinces of America." 437 00:23:34,343 --> 00:23:36,691 They'd become a proper country with a name 438 00:23:36,829 --> 00:23:40,039 that was being recognized by other countries. 439 00:23:40,177 --> 00:23:42,904 And at this point, they also got themselves 440 00:23:43,042 --> 00:23:44,699 a new flag. 441 00:23:44,837 --> 00:23:47,218 Remember these stripes from before? 442 00:23:47,356 --> 00:23:50,567 Well, instead of that Union Jack in the top left, 443 00:23:50,705 --> 00:23:55,364 they've now got 13 stars for the 13 colonies, 444 00:23:55,503 --> 00:23:57,712 not the 50 stars that there are today, 445 00:23:57,850 --> 00:24:00,024 but this is getting recognizable, isn't it? 446 00:24:00,162 --> 00:24:04,373 We're well on our way to the Stars and Stripes. 447 00:24:06,099 --> 00:24:10,034 Almost two years after the Battle of Long Island, 448 00:24:10,172 --> 00:24:14,004 mainly thanks to Franklin's master diplomacy, 449 00:24:14,142 --> 00:24:18,422 Britain was suddenly the one on the defensive. 450 00:24:20,182 --> 00:24:23,634 King George was receiving intelligence reports, 451 00:24:23,772 --> 00:24:27,224 including from that spy, Edward Bancroft, 452 00:24:27,362 --> 00:24:30,883 warning him that Louis XVI was encouraging 453 00:24:31,021 --> 00:24:33,195 his uncle, Charles III of Spain, 454 00:24:33,333 --> 00:24:36,371 to join the war as well. 455 00:24:36,509 --> 00:24:42,964 Prime minister Lord North now feared the worst. 456 00:24:43,102 --> 00:24:45,069 Britain was on the brink 457 00:24:45,207 --> 00:24:48,556 of a much larger and more costly conflict, 458 00:24:48,694 --> 00:24:51,869 one it might not be able to win. 459 00:24:52,007 --> 00:24:55,873 What was going through George's mind? 460 00:24:59,394 --> 00:25:02,570 George III's letters to his prime minister 461 00:25:02,708 --> 00:25:05,365 still survive today in the Royal Archives 462 00:25:05,504 --> 00:25:07,782 at Windsor Castle. 463 00:25:09,335 --> 00:25:11,717 To help decode them, I found someone 464 00:25:11,855 --> 00:25:13,719 whose time in politics 465 00:25:13,857 --> 00:25:16,238 makes her knowledgeable about affairs of state. 466 00:25:16,376 --> 00:25:18,586 Ruth, what are his particular concerns 467 00:25:18,724 --> 00:25:21,278 about the campaign and the way it's going? 468 00:25:21,416 --> 00:25:22,866 What's really interesting in this letter 469 00:25:23,004 --> 00:25:24,695 is he works through his thinking. 470 00:25:24,833 --> 00:25:27,077 So, he's seeing at one point that, 471 00:25:27,215 --> 00:25:30,977 oh, this only came out from a little tax issue, 472 00:25:31,115 --> 00:25:32,738 but now it's grown into the thing 473 00:25:32,876 --> 00:25:34,118 that's the most challenging conflict in the world. 474 00:25:34,256 --> 00:25:35,879 He says that really specifically here. 475 00:25:36,017 --> 00:25:37,570 "Should America succeed, 476 00:25:37,708 --> 00:25:39,779 "the West Indies must follow them. 477 00:25:39,917 --> 00:25:41,298 "Ireland would soon follow the same plan 478 00:25:41,436 --> 00:25:44,025 "and be a disparate state, and then this island 479 00:25:44,163 --> 00:25:45,647 would be reduced to itself." 480 00:25:45,785 --> 00:25:47,304 Basically says, "If we lose North America, 481 00:25:47,442 --> 00:25:48,892 "we lose everything. 482 00:25:49,030 --> 00:25:50,549 "The West Indies are gonna go. Ireland's gonna go. 483 00:25:50,687 --> 00:25:53,206 "All our merchants are gonna live somewhere sunnier. 484 00:25:53,344 --> 00:25:55,968 You know, the entirety of Britain will be ruined." 485 00:25:56,106 --> 00:25:58,039 It was going to be one country falls 486 00:25:58,177 --> 00:25:59,765 and then another and then another, 487 00:25:59,903 --> 00:26:02,733 a domino effect right around the British Empire, 488 00:26:02,871 --> 00:26:05,218 which will leave the... as he calls it, 489 00:26:05,356 --> 00:26:08,532 the "mother country" as a rampant isolated state. 490 00:26:08,670 --> 00:26:11,086 So, what should George do, then, 491 00:26:11,224 --> 00:26:13,192 in this situation, do you think? 492 00:26:13,330 --> 00:26:16,195 I mean, I can imagine that you would send in 493 00:26:16,333 --> 00:26:18,093 more and more and more resources, 494 00:26:18,231 --> 00:26:19,578 wanting to avoid 495 00:26:19,716 --> 00:26:21,200 this domino effect from happening. 496 00:26:21,338 --> 00:26:23,064 Well, we see from the conversations 497 00:26:23,202 --> 00:26:24,755 that are recorded in George's voice 498 00:26:24,893 --> 00:26:26,585 in these letters that his prime minister 499 00:26:26,723 --> 00:26:27,965 is telling him, 500 00:26:28,103 --> 00:26:29,760 "Look, we can't actually afford this war. 501 00:26:29,898 --> 00:26:32,004 "We would need to send 40,000 new soldiers 502 00:26:32,142 --> 00:26:33,902 "to... to kind of put a rebellion down 503 00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:35,559 in a land war over there." 504 00:26:35,697 --> 00:26:37,699 And let's remember, in the 1700s, 505 00:26:37,837 --> 00:26:39,736 our population was only eight million people. 506 00:26:39,874 --> 00:26:42,048 This would be a huge army that we would send 507 00:26:42,186 --> 00:26:44,395 on top of the troops that are already there. 508 00:26:44,533 --> 00:26:45,707 Is there anything else 509 00:26:45,845 --> 00:26:47,847 he could have done instead? 510 00:26:47,985 --> 00:26:49,538 The way usually that you try and avoid 511 00:26:49,677 --> 00:26:51,575 conflicts around the world is by signing treaties 512 00:26:51,713 --> 00:26:54,371 and doing deals, but he's got no allies in the world. 513 00:26:54,509 --> 00:26:56,891 France are supporting the colonists. 514 00:26:57,029 --> 00:26:59,238 Spain are also trying to help out. 515 00:26:59,376 --> 00:27:02,586 So, he's isolated, trying to fight a continent away, 516 00:27:02,724 --> 00:27:04,761 when he's got a mess at home. 517 00:27:04,899 --> 00:27:07,591 He's got almost no money in the public coffers, 518 00:27:07,729 --> 00:27:09,420 and he's got no friends in the world. 519 00:27:09,558 --> 00:27:10,870 That explains something 520 00:27:11,008 --> 00:27:12,596 I'd always not really understood. 521 00:27:12,734 --> 00:27:14,529 which is why he was so intranscedent 522 00:27:14,667 --> 00:27:16,013 as a war leader. 523 00:27:16,151 --> 00:27:17,912 The thing about George was 524 00:27:18,050 --> 00:27:19,534 he took time to make the decision, 525 00:27:19,672 --> 00:27:21,743 but in a sense, the decision almost made itself. 526 00:27:21,881 --> 00:27:23,434 You can read it in his thinking. 527 00:27:23,572 --> 00:27:25,264 "There are things that cost more than money to our country," 528 00:27:25,402 --> 00:27:27,369 even as he's being warned that we can't afford to have 529 00:27:27,507 --> 00:27:30,234 a war in a continent across the sea. 530 00:27:30,372 --> 00:27:33,721 So, things can cost a nation more than capital. 531 00:27:33,859 --> 00:27:35,584 "So, what am I going to do? 532 00:27:35,723 --> 00:27:36,965 "I'm gonna risk it all. 533 00:27:37,103 --> 00:27:38,691 "I'm gonna just throw resource at this 534 00:27:38,829 --> 00:27:40,244 "and see if we can make it win, 535 00:27:40,382 --> 00:27:42,937 and I won't take a backwards step." 536 00:27:47,562 --> 00:27:50,634 Ruth's given me a lot to think about. 537 00:27:50,772 --> 00:27:57,606 George clearly feels he has no choice but to fight. 538 00:27:59,712 --> 00:28:01,749 And the threat he faces 539 00:28:01,887 --> 00:28:06,719 comes from not one, but two different sets of problems 540 00:28:06,857 --> 00:28:09,895 lining up at the same time. 541 00:28:12,311 --> 00:28:14,623 One of them is a threat that he's familiar with 542 00:28:14,762 --> 00:28:16,108 from the old world, 543 00:28:16,246 --> 00:28:18,075 the ancient rivalry with France, 544 00:28:18,213 --> 00:28:21,078 and Spain, too, is out to grab Britain's colonies. 545 00:28:21,216 --> 00:28:24,081 But then there's a new threat in the New World 546 00:28:24,219 --> 00:28:25,773 that's much less tangible. 547 00:28:25,911 --> 00:28:27,740 It's an idea. 548 00:28:27,878 --> 00:28:29,777 The Americans don't want to grab lands. 549 00:28:29,915 --> 00:28:31,917 They want to bin the monarchy. 550 00:28:32,055 --> 00:28:34,057 It's an ideology, isn't it? 551 00:28:34,195 --> 00:28:38,337 And ideologies can be contagious. 552 00:28:44,653 --> 00:28:48,899 George III had every reason to be worried. 553 00:28:49,037 --> 00:28:51,281 America's revolutionary ideas-- 554 00:28:51,419 --> 00:28:55,941 liberty, self-rule, a republic without kings-- 555 00:28:56,079 --> 00:29:00,531 they were starting to spread. 556 00:29:05,916 --> 00:29:09,437 250 years later, historians have worked out 557 00:29:09,575 --> 00:29:12,405 that there was an American plot-- 558 00:29:12,543 --> 00:29:15,098 Benjamin Franklin was pretty involved in it-- 559 00:29:15,236 --> 00:29:17,756 to fan the flames of revolution 560 00:29:17,894 --> 00:29:20,620 in other countries beyond America. 561 00:29:20,759 --> 00:29:23,762 They wanted to cause trouble for George III 562 00:29:23,900 --> 00:29:26,419 in countries much closer to the heart 563 00:29:26,557 --> 00:29:28,249 of the British Empire. 564 00:29:28,387 --> 00:29:31,321 And you don't need a PhD in history 565 00:29:31,459 --> 00:29:37,534 to work out which country their eyes were looking towards. 566 00:29:40,019 --> 00:29:43,126 That's why I've come to Dublin. 567 00:29:43,264 --> 00:29:47,095 In 1778, Ireland was tense. 568 00:29:47,233 --> 00:29:51,030 Unemployment was soaring after Britain imposed 569 00:29:51,168 --> 00:29:55,241 an embargo on trade to the American colonies. 570 00:29:55,379 --> 00:29:58,555 I've dug out a pamphlet that shows exactly 571 00:29:58,693 --> 00:30:01,558 how Franklin capitalized on this moment. 572 00:30:01,696 --> 00:30:04,906 This may look like just another boring political pamphlet, 573 00:30:05,044 --> 00:30:07,115 but this one was dynamite. 574 00:30:07,253 --> 00:30:09,255 It was a best-seller. 575 00:30:09,393 --> 00:30:11,430 It's purportedly by Benjamin Franklin, 576 00:30:11,568 --> 00:30:14,743 and he's addressing the good people of Ireland 577 00:30:14,882 --> 00:30:17,091 on behalf of America. 578 00:30:17,229 --> 00:30:20,922 It's basically a rant against the British government. 579 00:30:21,060 --> 00:30:23,407 He says that tariffs should not exist, 580 00:30:23,545 --> 00:30:25,444 and it says that the Irish 581 00:30:25,582 --> 00:30:28,102 should make common cause with the Americans. 582 00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:32,761 It calls the Irish people "our dear and good friends." 583 00:30:34,556 --> 00:30:38,319 Franklin's prose wasn't just flattery. 584 00:30:38,457 --> 00:30:41,460 It was fuel. 585 00:30:41,598 --> 00:30:43,462 I'm at Collins Barracks, 586 00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,154 now part of the National Museum of Ireland, 587 00:30:46,292 --> 00:30:50,089 to examine a rare weapon. 588 00:30:50,227 --> 00:30:53,472 It was wielded by a citizen army, 589 00:30:53,610 --> 00:30:59,685 the volunteers that formed at this tense time. 590 00:31:02,101 --> 00:31:04,103 This is a really beautiful sword head. 591 00:31:04,241 --> 00:31:07,106 Did this belong to one of the volunteers? 592 00:31:07,244 --> 00:31:10,316 This was actually a gift, a gift sword. 593 00:31:10,454 --> 00:31:11,973 And it is... it's stunning. 594 00:31:12,111 --> 00:31:14,251 It says on it, "The sacred rites 595 00:31:14,389 --> 00:31:17,634 "of Ireland obtained by the union, 596 00:31:17,772 --> 00:31:20,982 courage, and value of its volunteers." 597 00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:23,709 And so, this... this likely was a gift 598 00:31:23,847 --> 00:31:25,262 given to an officer 599 00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:27,851 or a leader of the volunteers. 600 00:31:27,989 --> 00:31:29,473 What does it say here? 601 00:31:29,611 --> 00:31:31,096 It says, "God, religion, and liberty." 602 00:31:31,234 --> 00:31:33,098 Aha. So, this is like a manifesto 603 00:31:33,236 --> 00:31:34,927 for the volunteers, is it? 604 00:31:35,065 --> 00:31:36,515 Yes. 605 00:31:36,653 --> 00:31:39,276 How did they work, then, these companies of volunteers? 606 00:31:39,414 --> 00:31:41,796 So, the Protestant subjects of Ireland 607 00:31:41,934 --> 00:31:43,591 set up these volunteer companies, 608 00:31:43,729 --> 00:31:46,421 which are a militia, a group of men that are 609 00:31:46,559 --> 00:31:49,769 going to defend Ireland in the place 610 00:31:49,908 --> 00:31:52,289 of the military that's gone away. 611 00:31:52,427 --> 00:31:54,636 Oh, because British soldiers have gone to North America 612 00:31:54,774 --> 00:31:56,845 to do fighting there, is that right? 613 00:31:56,984 --> 00:31:58,951 That's right. So, typically, there would have been 614 00:31:59,089 --> 00:32:01,298 a large... kind of garrison in Dublin 615 00:32:01,436 --> 00:32:03,645 and the military stationed around the island. 616 00:32:03,783 --> 00:32:05,130 And so, that's where 617 00:32:05,268 --> 00:32:07,235 the volunteer movement begins. 618 00:32:07,373 --> 00:32:10,135 In Belfast, the first companies begin to form. 619 00:32:10,273 --> 00:32:12,102 And across the island, there's kind of 620 00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:13,966 this rage for volunteering. 621 00:32:14,104 --> 00:32:16,106 But the volunteers see early on, 622 00:32:16,244 --> 00:32:19,213 with the military forces gone, we have 623 00:32:19,351 --> 00:32:21,525 this opportunity to push for political demands. 624 00:32:21,663 --> 00:32:23,769 And so, the first big political demand 625 00:32:23,907 --> 00:32:27,566 that they kind of gather behind is free trade. 626 00:32:27,704 --> 00:32:29,257 Yeah. So, they shift 627 00:32:29,395 --> 00:32:31,777 to demanding political concessions 628 00:32:31,915 --> 00:32:33,641 from their British masters. 629 00:32:33,779 --> 00:32:35,263 That's right. 630 00:32:35,401 --> 00:32:37,852 But what they're really getting at is this idea 631 00:32:37,990 --> 00:32:41,131 of pushing the British parliament to kind of 632 00:32:41,269 --> 00:32:43,547 release or to get rid of this embargo 633 00:32:43,685 --> 00:32:46,171 on Irish goods being sent to America. 634 00:32:46,309 --> 00:32:49,484 So, what did the volunteers do? What happens? 635 00:32:49,622 --> 00:32:51,176 So, in 1779, 636 00:32:51,314 --> 00:32:53,143 the volunteers decided to stage 637 00:32:53,281 --> 00:32:54,696 a big free-trade protest. 638 00:32:54,834 --> 00:32:57,320 Over a thousand volunteers marched through the city 639 00:32:57,458 --> 00:32:58,942 to the beat of drums, 640 00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:00,633 and they marched to College Green, 641 00:33:00,771 --> 00:33:02,325 which is the heart of the city. 642 00:33:02,463 --> 00:33:04,706 They shoot off a volley with their rifles 643 00:33:04,844 --> 00:33:07,295 right in front of the Parliament building, 644 00:33:07,433 --> 00:33:08,745 right in front of Trinity College. 645 00:33:08,883 --> 00:33:11,886 The volunteers also hung signs around, 646 00:33:12,024 --> 00:33:15,303 the last of which read "A free trade or else." 647 00:33:15,441 --> 00:33:17,857 "Or else?" That's threatening. 648 00:33:17,996 --> 00:33:21,171 A threat that "We want to see these concessions. 649 00:33:21,309 --> 00:33:23,104 "And we've got guns." 650 00:33:23,242 --> 00:33:24,450 Yeah. If not, what will happen? 651 00:33:24,588 --> 00:33:26,797 And in that sense, it's actually just 652 00:33:26,935 --> 00:33:29,317 a kind of desire to fight 653 00:33:29,455 --> 00:33:31,181 for the liberty of Ireland. 654 00:33:31,319 --> 00:33:33,114 They've got political demands. 655 00:33:33,252 --> 00:33:35,772 They've got guns. That's almost a revolution. 656 00:33:35,910 --> 00:33:39,672 If I were George III, I would be seriously worried. 657 00:33:43,918 --> 00:33:45,471 Joel is taking me 658 00:33:45,609 --> 00:33:47,577 to a special temperature-controlled room 659 00:33:47,715 --> 00:33:49,337 in Collins Barracks 660 00:33:49,475 --> 00:33:51,615 to show me a piece of evidence 661 00:33:51,753 --> 00:33:54,273 that reveals how the king responded 662 00:33:54,411 --> 00:33:57,518 to this wave of unrest. 663 00:33:57,656 --> 00:33:59,244 There it is. 664 00:33:59,382 --> 00:34:02,316 Isn't that lovely? 665 00:34:02,454 --> 00:34:05,077 This is a volunteer flag 666 00:34:05,215 --> 00:34:07,286 celebrating free trade 667 00:34:07,424 --> 00:34:10,565 and legislative independence. 668 00:34:10,703 --> 00:34:11,808 Beautiful, isn't it? Really lovely. 669 00:34:11,946 --> 00:34:13,568 Yeah, it's incredible, 670 00:34:13,706 --> 00:34:16,226 the detail, the intricacies. 671 00:34:16,364 --> 00:34:17,814 Hoorah for the volunteers. 672 00:34:17,952 --> 00:34:22,301 They've established Ireland's legislative rights. 673 00:34:22,439 --> 00:34:24,959 What a lovely thing. 674 00:34:25,097 --> 00:34:27,824 Threatened on all sides, 675 00:34:27,962 --> 00:34:31,138 George III and his government capitulated 676 00:34:31,276 --> 00:34:35,625 and allowed Ireland to trade with America. 677 00:34:35,763 --> 00:34:39,663 This was clearly a different strategy 678 00:34:39,801 --> 00:34:41,976 than Britain has followed in North America. 679 00:34:42,114 --> 00:34:43,460 Instead of crushing dissent, 680 00:34:43,598 --> 00:34:46,498 there was evolution going on here 681 00:34:46,636 --> 00:34:51,123 in the hope of avoiding revolution. 682 00:34:51,261 --> 00:34:53,332 George had made concessions in Ireland, 683 00:34:53,470 --> 00:34:57,681 but America was a different matter entirely. 684 00:34:59,304 --> 00:35:02,341 He had staked everything on victory there, 685 00:35:02,479 --> 00:35:04,723 convinced that losing would mean 686 00:35:04,861 --> 00:35:07,174 the collapse of his entire empire 687 00:35:07,312 --> 00:35:10,453 and everything he stood for. 688 00:35:12,110 --> 00:35:16,459 Yet the reports from across the Atlantic were grim, 689 00:35:16,597 --> 00:35:19,669 and things were about to get even worse. 690 00:35:21,912 --> 00:35:27,642 In 1779, Spain officially entered the war, 691 00:35:27,780 --> 00:35:31,681 and Gibraltar was now under siege. 692 00:35:31,819 --> 00:35:35,305 In the Caribbean, Britain was locked in combat 693 00:35:35,443 --> 00:35:38,308 with the French navy, trying to keep hold 694 00:35:38,446 --> 00:35:40,345 of its lucrative sugar colony 695 00:35:40,483 --> 00:35:43,486 in the Battle of Martinique. 696 00:35:45,626 --> 00:35:50,148 And war in America entered its fifth year. 697 00:35:50,286 --> 00:35:54,497 Britain had been forced to abandon the northern colonies, 698 00:35:54,635 --> 00:35:57,672 and casualties were mounting. 699 00:36:02,090 --> 00:36:04,679 Britain was on the run, 700 00:36:04,817 --> 00:36:08,787 and tensions exploded in the heart of its capital. 701 00:36:08,925 --> 00:36:12,342 I've come to one of the targets of the unrest, 702 00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:14,379 the Bank of England. 703 00:36:16,795 --> 00:36:18,969 So far, we've seen protests in Ireland, 704 00:36:19,107 --> 00:36:22,628 but if you really want to see uncontrolled political violence, 705 00:36:22,766 --> 00:36:26,529 you need to travel to London in 1780. 706 00:36:26,667 --> 00:36:29,497 The Gordon Riots were the biggest 707 00:36:29,635 --> 00:36:30,809 and most destructive riot 708 00:36:30,947 --> 00:36:33,018 that's ever happened on English soil. 709 00:36:33,156 --> 00:36:34,951 Here's a picture of it. 710 00:36:35,089 --> 00:36:37,022 They're fighting with swords. 711 00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:41,509 Here's a man with a huge sort of hatchet-ax-type thing. 712 00:36:41,647 --> 00:36:45,548 Look, he's injured. He's down. He's hurt his head. 713 00:36:45,686 --> 00:36:48,171 Here's a man holding up a little pamphlet 714 00:36:48,309 --> 00:36:52,934 that says "England in blood." 715 00:36:53,072 --> 00:36:56,800 This violence was triggered by a new law. 716 00:36:56,938 --> 00:36:59,872 Parliament were desperate for more troops. 717 00:37:00,010 --> 00:37:01,702 So, for the first time, 718 00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:04,636 they allowed Catholics to join the army. 719 00:37:04,774 --> 00:37:07,846 But in a country divided by religion, 720 00:37:07,984 --> 00:37:10,918 this lit the touch paper. 721 00:37:13,610 --> 00:37:17,407 I'm on the trail of a firsthand account 722 00:37:17,545 --> 00:37:21,169 of these riots, the diaries of Ignatius Sancho, 723 00:37:21,308 --> 00:37:25,726 an account which has obsessed one of Britain's leading actors. 724 00:37:25,864 --> 00:37:29,557 We've got this shopkeeper, Ignatius Sancho in Westminster, 725 00:37:29,695 --> 00:37:33,147 and I think he witnesses the Gordon Riots, doesn't he? 726 00:37:33,285 --> 00:37:34,873 Yeah, he more than witnesses it. 727 00:37:35,011 --> 00:37:36,944 What he does, Lucy, is he writes 728 00:37:37,082 --> 00:37:39,498 to his friend John Spink about what he sees. 729 00:37:39,636 --> 00:37:40,948 So, he doesn't just see a bit of it 730 00:37:41,086 --> 00:37:42,708 or hears a bit of it. He literally sees it 731 00:37:42,846 --> 00:37:44,503 through the shutters of his door. 732 00:37:44,641 --> 00:37:46,160 The shops are all shuttered up, 733 00:37:46,298 --> 00:37:47,506 because the mob has been going 734 00:37:47,644 --> 00:37:48,749 for a few days by this point. 735 00:37:48,887 --> 00:37:51,165 And what's really terrifying to me 736 00:37:51,303 --> 00:37:52,891 is that he's got kids upstairs. 737 00:37:53,029 --> 00:37:54,479 So, there's this terrifying picture, 738 00:37:54,617 --> 00:37:56,653 not just of a man delivering facts, 739 00:37:56,791 --> 00:37:59,760 but of the man terrified of his own safety 740 00:37:59,898 --> 00:38:02,107 and the safety of his black family upstairs. 741 00:38:02,245 --> 00:38:04,316 These letters, what do they say? 742 00:38:04,454 --> 00:38:06,801 Well, they talk about this narrow... 743 00:38:06,939 --> 00:38:09,045 fairly narrow street next to Parliament. 744 00:38:09,183 --> 00:38:10,322 This mob, "thousands 745 00:38:10,460 --> 00:38:11,806 of poor, miserable, ragged rabble"-- 746 00:38:11,944 --> 00:38:14,637 so, the poorest of the poor-- 747 00:38:14,775 --> 00:38:18,088 "from 12 to 60 years of age," 748 00:38:18,226 --> 00:38:19,538 sees them attack a carriage 749 00:38:19,676 --> 00:38:20,712 and try to pull... 750 00:38:20,850 --> 00:38:22,334 I think it's Lord Sandwich, 751 00:38:22,472 --> 00:38:23,577 out of his carriage. 752 00:38:23,715 --> 00:38:25,579 And he thinks, "What is this?" 753 00:38:25,717 --> 00:38:26,925 This is Britain, the land of liberty. 754 00:38:27,063 --> 00:38:28,340 Liberty to pull people's carriages apart. 755 00:38:28,478 --> 00:38:29,721 Exactly. This isn't freedom. 756 00:38:29,859 --> 00:38:31,723 This isn't what freedom should be. 757 00:38:31,861 --> 00:38:32,793 This is anarchy. 758 00:38:32,931 --> 00:38:34,415 And he says, "This is liberty, 759 00:38:34,553 --> 00:38:35,899 genuine British liberty!" 760 00:38:36,037 --> 00:38:37,384 And he's got his exclamation marks 761 00:38:37,522 --> 00:38:38,592 to sort of mark it out. 762 00:38:38,730 --> 00:38:39,800 But then it turns violent. 763 00:38:39,938 --> 00:38:41,284 Then it turns super-violent. 764 00:38:41,422 --> 00:38:43,459 They just went and attacked everything, 765 00:38:43,597 --> 00:38:45,530 particularly areas of authority. 766 00:38:45,668 --> 00:38:46,945 You know, they build these monuments 767 00:38:47,083 --> 00:38:48,774 to be strong and to say, "Keep away from us. 768 00:38:48,912 --> 00:38:51,018 We're powerful," and this mob just... 769 00:38:51,156 --> 00:38:52,675 wanted to crack it open. 770 00:38:52,813 --> 00:38:54,677 I love the idea that they were going 771 00:38:54,815 --> 00:38:56,506 for places like the Fleet Prison. 772 00:38:56,644 --> 00:38:57,990 They were going to release 773 00:38:58,128 --> 00:38:59,509 people who were rioters 774 00:38:59,647 --> 00:39:01,546 but ended up releasing everybody. 775 00:39:01,684 --> 00:39:04,203 Ah. Bad move. Let all the murderers out. 776 00:39:04,342 --> 00:39:06,102 Let all the murderers out 777 00:39:06,240 --> 00:39:07,655 and all the people who just wanted to 778 00:39:07,793 --> 00:39:10,002 cause total chaos, and so it was. 779 00:39:10,140 --> 00:39:12,660 I guess a lot of people who owned property, 780 00:39:12,798 --> 00:39:15,007 had a stake in society were feeling vulnerable 781 00:39:15,145 --> 00:39:16,526 for the first time 782 00:39:16,664 --> 00:39:19,046 or for the first time in ages at least 783 00:39:19,184 --> 00:39:20,530 when the riots started. 784 00:39:20,668 --> 00:39:22,601 Yeah, I can't think of any conflicts 785 00:39:22,739 --> 00:39:24,500 that we've had as a nation 786 00:39:24,638 --> 00:39:28,504 where the property of the rich was attacked, 787 00:39:28,642 --> 00:39:30,540 to actually go to Buckingham Palace, 788 00:39:30,678 --> 00:39:32,128 which is what they were trying to do, 789 00:39:32,266 --> 00:39:33,578 to actually go to St. James' Palace, 790 00:39:33,716 --> 00:39:34,855 to go to Parliament, 791 00:39:34,993 --> 00:39:36,546 to come to the Bank of England, 792 00:39:36,684 --> 00:39:38,583 to attack the lord chief justice. 793 00:39:38,721 --> 00:39:41,033 This is very... It was very pointed. 794 00:39:41,171 --> 00:39:43,795 Do you think, though, that maybe Sancho 795 00:39:43,933 --> 00:39:47,177 might have had some sympathy with what was going on? 796 00:39:47,315 --> 00:39:50,526 Oh, no. Sancho was a proper man 797 00:39:50,664 --> 00:39:52,217 of the status quo. 798 00:39:52,355 --> 00:39:53,701 He was a monarchist. 799 00:39:53,839 --> 00:39:55,565 He really enjoyed the fact 800 00:39:55,703 --> 00:39:56,911 that America was our colony 801 00:39:57,049 --> 00:39:58,706 and was in outrage they were leaving. 802 00:39:58,844 --> 00:40:00,501 No, no, he would have wanted this, 803 00:40:00,639 --> 00:40:01,882 and he says it. 804 00:40:02,020 --> 00:40:03,504 He thinks this is lawlessness. 805 00:40:03,642 --> 00:40:05,713 So, it's got no chance of turning into 806 00:40:05,851 --> 00:40:07,301 a proper revolution really, 807 00:40:07,439 --> 00:40:09,476 because the stakeholders in society are not behind it. 808 00:40:09,614 --> 00:40:11,029 I mean, it could have been close, 809 00:40:11,167 --> 00:40:12,927 but, as I say, it was so incoherent 810 00:40:13,065 --> 00:40:14,584 that it couldn't really have taken off. 811 00:40:14,722 --> 00:40:16,517 But it was the closest we came to an anarchy, 812 00:40:16,655 --> 00:40:18,070 where it was like there was nothing 813 00:40:18,208 --> 00:40:20,176 you could do about it. 814 00:40:22,005 --> 00:40:24,456 For six days, London was effectively 815 00:40:24,594 --> 00:40:26,838 in the hands of the rioters... 816 00:40:29,530 --> 00:40:33,361 Until George III sent in the army. 817 00:40:38,988 --> 00:40:40,610 Fire! 818 00:40:40,748 --> 00:40:43,751 The troops opened fire on the crowds, 819 00:40:43,889 --> 00:40:47,341 killing hundreds in these very streets. 820 00:40:47,479 --> 00:40:50,482 By the time order was restored, 821 00:40:50,620 --> 00:40:54,244 more than 500 people were dead. 822 00:40:56,488 --> 00:40:58,904 The Gordon Riots could have been 823 00:40:59,042 --> 00:41:01,735 this tipping point, the moment that Britain 824 00:41:01,873 --> 00:41:04,358 actually had a revolution. 825 00:41:04,496 --> 00:41:06,705 But for revolutions to work, 826 00:41:06,843 --> 00:41:09,536 you need the people in the middle part of society 827 00:41:09,674 --> 00:41:11,399 to be on board with it all, 828 00:41:11,538 --> 00:41:14,920 people like Ignatius Sancho, 829 00:41:15,058 --> 00:41:17,060 and in London, they weren't. 830 00:41:17,198 --> 00:41:20,063 They maybe just wanted to change the system a bit, 831 00:41:20,201 --> 00:41:21,548 not bring it down. 832 00:41:21,686 --> 00:41:25,690 So, in Britain, the center held. 833 00:41:30,004 --> 00:41:33,836 Franklin was still in Paris, 834 00:41:33,974 --> 00:41:37,011 plotting his next move. 835 00:41:37,149 --> 00:41:42,810 At last, French troops had landed on American soil, 836 00:41:42,948 --> 00:41:47,228 and not just soldiers, but elite siege specialists. 837 00:41:47,366 --> 00:41:50,266 Every diplomatic gamble Franklin had made 838 00:41:50,404 --> 00:41:53,303 had been leading up to this moment. 839 00:42:02,105 --> 00:42:05,384 Britain had stopped fighting in the northern colonies. 840 00:42:05,523 --> 00:42:10,735 New York City alone remained under crown control. 841 00:42:10,873 --> 00:42:14,014 All hopes were now pinned on retaining the south, 842 00:42:14,152 --> 00:42:17,569 where General Cornwallis had over 7,000 men. 843 00:42:17,707 --> 00:42:21,228 That's a third of Britain's remaining force. 844 00:42:21,366 --> 00:42:24,196 But after six brutal years of war, 845 00:42:24,334 --> 00:42:26,578 both sides were spent, 846 00:42:26,716 --> 00:42:31,928 each desperate to strike the final decisive blow. 847 00:42:35,173 --> 00:42:40,074 In August 1781, the British general Charles Cornwallis 848 00:42:40,212 --> 00:42:42,214 brought his men here to Yorktown, 849 00:42:42,352 --> 00:42:44,562 on the banks of the York River. 850 00:42:44,700 --> 00:42:46,218 This is a super-strategic spot, 851 00:42:46,356 --> 00:42:48,738 and his orders were to dig in, 852 00:42:48,876 --> 00:42:51,258 to create a stronghold, and to wait. 853 00:42:51,396 --> 00:42:54,054 He was to wait for the Royal Navy to come, 854 00:42:54,192 --> 00:42:58,748 either to bring supplies or to evacuate him. 855 00:42:58,886 --> 00:43:01,958 This plan went wrong. 856 00:43:06,894 --> 00:43:10,070 A battle took place here in Yorktown, 857 00:43:10,208 --> 00:43:12,244 which brought the American Revolution 858 00:43:12,382 --> 00:43:15,627 to an unexpected end. 859 00:43:15,765 --> 00:43:17,871 History remembers it 860 00:43:18,009 --> 00:43:21,253 as America's greatest triumph over Britain, 861 00:43:21,391 --> 00:43:25,810 George Washington achieving the impossible. 862 00:43:25,948 --> 00:43:28,226 Yet, as with all great victories, 863 00:43:28,364 --> 00:43:32,057 the truth is a little more complicated. 864 00:43:32,195 --> 00:43:33,680 Who's where? Who's where? 865 00:43:33,818 --> 00:43:35,716 All right, so, we've got the British back here 866 00:43:35,854 --> 00:43:37,545 with the British flag. That's Cornwallis. 867 00:43:37,684 --> 00:43:39,237 We've got the Americans over here 868 00:43:39,375 --> 00:43:41,101 and the French in this direction. 869 00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:43,586 And this is called The Surrender Field. 870 00:43:43,724 --> 00:43:45,381 It is called The Surrender Field, 871 00:43:45,519 --> 00:43:46,934 I'm sorry to say. 872 00:43:47,072 --> 00:43:50,248 To understand how the British campaign 873 00:43:50,386 --> 00:43:51,732 unraveled right here, 874 00:43:51,870 --> 00:43:55,771 I've enlisted a military historian. 875 00:43:55,909 --> 00:43:58,394 Why did this place, Yorktown, end up being 876 00:43:58,532 --> 00:44:02,398 so important, the location of the last battle? 877 00:44:02,536 --> 00:44:04,745 And what goes wrong? 878 00:44:04,883 --> 00:44:06,920 The French send a naval fleet 879 00:44:07,058 --> 00:44:10,268 from the Caribbean to come occupy 880 00:44:10,406 --> 00:44:12,546 the waters in the Chesapeake. 881 00:44:12,684 --> 00:44:15,929 The British come down to try to fight them off, 882 00:44:16,067 --> 00:44:19,760 and they fail, and so, he ends up trapped. 883 00:44:19,898 --> 00:44:21,244 He's cut off in there. 884 00:44:21,382 --> 00:44:23,074 He is cut off in the water, 885 00:44:23,212 --> 00:44:26,008 and Washington comes down, the Americans and the French 886 00:44:26,146 --> 00:44:29,011 come down on land, so he's trapped here, 887 00:44:29,149 --> 00:44:31,738 on land by the Americans and French 888 00:44:31,876 --> 00:44:34,879 and then by sea by the French. 889 00:44:35,017 --> 00:44:36,708 Cornwallis is doomed, right? 890 00:44:36,846 --> 00:44:37,951 Because no supplies 891 00:44:38,089 --> 00:44:40,160 can get to him by sea anymore. 892 00:44:40,298 --> 00:44:42,058 That's right. He is surrounded, 893 00:44:42,196 --> 00:44:45,061 and he is outnumbered just about two to one. 894 00:44:45,199 --> 00:44:47,270 And what's so difficult to imagine 895 00:44:47,408 --> 00:44:49,410 when you see this beautiful field 896 00:44:49,548 --> 00:44:52,759 is that there were more than 25,000 people, 897 00:44:52,897 --> 00:44:57,108 maybe up to 28,000 soldiers here. 898 00:44:57,246 --> 00:44:59,179 There were horses. There are cannon 899 00:44:59,317 --> 00:45:02,907 of different types and sizes that are booming. 900 00:45:03,045 --> 00:45:04,632 There's smoke. There are cries. 901 00:45:04,771 --> 00:45:06,255 So, the French-- 902 00:45:06,393 --> 00:45:07,566 Oh! Goodness me. 903 00:45:07,705 --> 00:45:09,189 They keep firing guns here. 904 00:45:09,327 --> 00:45:12,226 Who were the key players, Christy? 905 00:45:12,364 --> 00:45:14,781 The who's-who of the American Revolution 906 00:45:14,919 --> 00:45:17,093 are all here. So, this means 907 00:45:17,231 --> 00:45:19,233 General George Washington is here, 908 00:45:19,371 --> 00:45:22,098 General Rochambeau of France is here. 909 00:45:22,236 --> 00:45:25,584 Who exactly is this General Rochambeau? 910 00:45:25,723 --> 00:45:29,623 He is an expert in the modern European ways 911 00:45:29,761 --> 00:45:31,245 of large-scale war 912 00:45:31,383 --> 00:45:34,214 and... and things like conducting sieges. 913 00:45:34,352 --> 00:45:36,285 He knows how to beat the British. 914 00:45:36,423 --> 00:45:38,149 He knows how to beat the British. 915 00:45:38,287 --> 00:45:41,083 The French are the ones who brought the tools 916 00:45:41,221 --> 00:45:44,086 to dig the deep trenches, to build ramparts. 917 00:45:44,224 --> 00:45:46,398 They're the ones who arrived 918 00:45:46,536 --> 00:45:48,228 with the different sizes of artillery, 919 00:45:48,366 --> 00:45:52,128 the very large cannon down to mortars that would 920 00:45:52,266 --> 00:45:55,097 rain shrapnel down into the British lines. 921 00:45:55,235 --> 00:45:57,237 And then they have Rochambeau, 922 00:45:57,375 --> 00:46:00,550 who knows how to conduct a siege. 923 00:46:00,688 --> 00:46:02,621 Now, he's in charge of the French army, 924 00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:05,417 but he's subordinate to George Washington. 925 00:46:05,555 --> 00:46:06,694 That's exactly right. 926 00:46:06,833 --> 00:46:08,558 How did that work out? 927 00:46:08,696 --> 00:46:10,733 Well, uh, I will say that, uh, 928 00:46:10,871 --> 00:46:13,287 when we talk about Yorktown, 929 00:46:13,425 --> 00:46:17,602 it's often touted to be Washington's greatest victory. 930 00:46:17,740 --> 00:46:19,777 But in so many ways, 931 00:46:19,915 --> 00:46:22,952 because it was the force of the French, 932 00:46:23,090 --> 00:46:25,748 the navy, the army, this knowledge, 933 00:46:25,886 --> 00:46:28,268 and the equipment and the artillery 934 00:46:28,406 --> 00:46:31,098 for how to conduct a siege, 935 00:46:31,236 --> 00:46:33,238 in so many way, Washington's victory 936 00:46:33,376 --> 00:46:36,448 was based on him listening to the French. 937 00:46:36,586 --> 00:46:38,209 Right, yeah. 938 00:46:38,347 --> 00:46:40,418 And so we could actually consider Yorktown 939 00:46:40,556 --> 00:46:44,560 to be France's greatest victory over the British, 940 00:46:44,698 --> 00:46:47,425 and it's the one that led to the establishment 941 00:46:47,563 --> 00:46:51,532 of a new nation and a new world power. 942 00:46:51,670 --> 00:46:57,297 The loss at Yorktown was catastrophic news. 943 00:46:57,435 --> 00:47:02,889 The scale of the victory stunned the British public. 944 00:47:04,545 --> 00:47:05,753 In the short term, 945 00:47:05,892 --> 00:47:07,583 the British could have gone on fighting 946 00:47:07,721 --> 00:47:10,862 a little bit longer, but in the long term, 947 00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:13,071 this war was now lost, 948 00:47:13,209 --> 00:47:15,625 which is why, right here in Virginia, 949 00:47:15,763 --> 00:47:19,491 they pull out all the stops to reenact the battle, 950 00:47:19,629 --> 00:47:21,597 with hundreds of people coming to watch. 951 00:47:30,468 --> 00:47:33,471 The British government now knew that peace talks 952 00:47:33,609 --> 00:47:36,301 were inevitable. 953 00:47:36,439 --> 00:47:39,304 But George III refused to accept 954 00:47:39,442 --> 00:47:42,238 that Yorktown was the end. 955 00:47:42,376 --> 00:47:44,447 He couldn't face the fact that, 956 00:47:44,585 --> 00:47:45,966 after a hundred years of expansion, 957 00:47:46,104 --> 00:47:50,522 the British Empire was now shrinking. 958 00:47:53,111 --> 00:47:56,252 He ordered a detailed map of Yorktown, 959 00:47:56,390 --> 00:48:02,431 which showed the exact spot where Cornwallis surrendered. 960 00:48:07,436 --> 00:48:10,818 The Royal Archives at Windsor Castle 961 00:48:10,957 --> 00:48:16,100 hold intriguing evidence of what the king did next. 962 00:48:16,238 --> 00:48:19,275 There are thousands of maps and artifacts here 963 00:48:19,413 --> 00:48:23,590 from George III's personal collection. 964 00:48:26,938 --> 00:48:29,285 But I'm looking for a document 965 00:48:29,423 --> 00:48:33,462 that could have changed the course of British history, 966 00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:38,846 an early draft written in George's own hand. 967 00:48:41,263 --> 00:48:42,816 Listen to this. 968 00:48:42,954 --> 00:48:45,439 This is extraordinary. 969 00:48:45,577 --> 00:48:50,272 "His majesty, with much sorrow, finds 970 00:48:50,410 --> 00:48:54,103 "he can be of no further utility 971 00:48:54,241 --> 00:48:55,967 "to his native country, 972 00:48:56,105 --> 00:48:59,764 "which drives him to the painful step 973 00:48:59,902 --> 00:49:03,423 of quitting it forever." 974 00:49:03,561 --> 00:49:06,426 He's abdicating. 975 00:49:06,564 --> 00:49:10,119 He's giving up the throne. He's resigning his job. 976 00:49:10,257 --> 00:49:13,157 And I guess when he says he's quitting the country forever, 977 00:49:13,295 --> 00:49:15,607 he probably means he's going to go back 978 00:49:15,745 --> 00:49:17,437 to live in Hanover in Germany, 979 00:49:17,575 --> 00:49:20,302 where his family came from. 980 00:49:20,440 --> 00:49:22,614 So, what's going on? Why? 981 00:49:22,752 --> 00:49:26,687 He explains it up here. He says that 982 00:49:26,825 --> 00:49:29,311 "the change of mind that the legislature--" 983 00:49:29,449 --> 00:49:30,657 that's his government, 984 00:49:30,795 --> 00:49:32,555 about going on with fighting the war, 985 00:49:32,693 --> 00:49:34,972 they don't want to fight the war anymore. 986 00:49:35,110 --> 00:49:37,146 He says that this decision of theirs 987 00:49:37,284 --> 00:49:39,286 has totally incapacitated him. 988 00:49:39,424 --> 00:49:41,909 He can't go on with the war effort 989 00:49:42,048 --> 00:49:46,155 or obtain any peace but on terrible conditions. 990 00:49:46,293 --> 00:49:47,985 So, he's fallen out with his government. 991 00:49:48,123 --> 00:49:50,642 He thinks that they don't want him. 992 00:49:50,780 --> 00:49:52,920 So, he's going to go. 993 00:49:53,059 --> 00:49:57,063 But this is just a draft 994 00:49:57,201 --> 00:50:00,307 of his memorandum of abdication. 995 00:50:00,445 --> 00:50:02,620 He didn't actually press "send" on it. 996 00:50:02,758 --> 00:50:05,140 He didn't actually abdicate in the end. 997 00:50:05,278 --> 00:50:07,556 So, what on earth was going on here? 998 00:50:07,694 --> 00:50:09,592 I think that when the government 999 00:50:09,730 --> 00:50:12,043 didn't want to go on fighting the war, 1000 00:50:12,181 --> 00:50:13,976 this went against his wishes. 1001 00:50:14,114 --> 00:50:16,634 It hurt him. It bruised his pride. 1002 00:50:16,772 --> 00:50:19,119 He was angry. He was upset. 1003 00:50:19,257 --> 00:50:21,777 This, to me, is a moment of high emotion 1004 00:50:21,915 --> 00:50:24,331 in the heart of the king. 1005 00:50:24,469 --> 00:50:26,782 It's such an insight. 1006 00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,647 And I think that once he'd calmed down a bit, 1007 00:50:29,785 --> 00:50:32,822 he realized that the best thing for him to do 1008 00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:35,170 was, in fact, to carry on, 1009 00:50:35,308 --> 00:50:38,380 to see things through, to sort things out. 1010 00:50:40,416 --> 00:50:42,798 And that's really important. 1011 00:50:42,936 --> 00:50:47,665 He knows when to bend a bit and not to break. 1012 00:50:51,669 --> 00:50:55,569 With the war now finally over, 1013 00:50:55,707 --> 00:50:57,399 George III had changed approach 1014 00:50:57,537 --> 00:51:00,471 from defiance to diplomacy. 1015 00:51:00,609 --> 00:51:02,300 And in 1783, 1016 00:51:02,438 --> 00:51:05,269 he officially recognized America 1017 00:51:05,407 --> 00:51:08,306 as an independent nation. 1018 00:51:11,585 --> 00:51:15,279 At the time, the nation's mint for making coins 1019 00:51:15,417 --> 00:51:17,660 was at the Tower of London. 1020 00:51:17,798 --> 00:51:20,111 It's the perfect place to examine 1021 00:51:20,249 --> 00:51:23,321 two small objects which reveal a lot 1022 00:51:23,459 --> 00:51:25,841 about the countries that produced them. 1023 00:51:32,192 --> 00:51:33,538 This tiny thing 1024 00:51:33,676 --> 00:51:37,197 is a bog-standard British penny from the 1780s. 1025 00:51:37,335 --> 00:51:40,304 It's such an everyday object. 1026 00:51:40,442 --> 00:51:42,582 And anybody who did handle it 1027 00:51:42,720 --> 00:51:45,792 would have known who was in charge of their empire. 1028 00:51:45,930 --> 00:51:48,484 It's King George III. 1029 00:51:48,622 --> 00:51:51,315 He's shown here as an emperor, 1030 00:51:51,453 --> 00:51:54,076 a Roman emperor in his laurel wreath. 1031 00:51:54,214 --> 00:51:56,320 This, on the other hand, is something 1032 00:51:56,458 --> 00:51:58,287 much more exciting and novel. 1033 00:51:58,425 --> 00:52:01,911 In 1787, North America got 1034 00:52:02,049 --> 00:52:03,292 its first official coin. 1035 00:52:03,430 --> 00:52:05,329 This is the first cent. 1036 00:52:05,467 --> 00:52:07,331 And guess who designed it. 1037 00:52:07,469 --> 00:52:09,022 It was Benjamin Franklin. 1038 00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:10,782 He gets everywhere, that man. 1039 00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:13,337 Instead of putting somebody's face on it, 1040 00:52:13,475 --> 00:52:15,304 because in a republic, 1041 00:52:15,442 --> 00:52:17,134 the people are the sovereign-- 1042 00:52:17,272 --> 00:52:20,551 Instead of a face, he's put 1043 00:52:20,689 --> 00:52:22,518 13 interlinked circles to represent 1044 00:52:22,656 --> 00:52:25,349 the 13 different colonies all working together. 1045 00:52:25,487 --> 00:52:29,663 Down at the bottom, it says, "Mind your business." 1046 00:52:29,801 --> 00:52:31,665 Mind your own business. Look to yourself. 1047 00:52:31,803 --> 00:52:35,152 It's a very sort of individualistic way 1048 00:52:35,290 --> 00:52:37,499 of looking at things, isn't it? 1049 00:52:37,637 --> 00:52:40,502 These two little things aren't just pieces of money. 1050 00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:42,331 They're mini manifestos 1051 00:52:42,469 --> 00:52:45,645 for two very different ways of looking at the world. 1052 00:52:45,783 --> 00:52:50,650 The British one is all about ancient power and stability. 1053 00:52:50,788 --> 00:52:54,343 But the American one is racing towards a future 1054 00:52:54,481 --> 00:52:57,726 in which the individual can flourish. 1055 00:52:59,935 --> 00:53:04,353 Franklin's penny was a tiny coin with a radical promise. 1056 00:53:04,491 --> 00:53:07,149 The power belonged not to a monarch, 1057 00:53:07,287 --> 00:53:09,807 but to the people... 1058 00:53:12,292 --> 00:53:15,778 A promise that became a reality 1059 00:53:15,916 --> 00:53:18,505 when citizens of America returned to Britain 1060 00:53:18,643 --> 00:53:22,578 not as subjects, but as equals... 1061 00:53:22,716 --> 00:53:24,822 opening their first embassy 1062 00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:28,791 right here in Grosvenor Square in London, 1063 00:53:28,929 --> 00:53:30,862 the capital of the country 1064 00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:35,350 they fought so hard to free themselves from. 1065 00:53:35,488 --> 00:53:38,422 The American Revolution is usually described 1066 00:53:38,560 --> 00:53:42,633 as a heroic struggle taking place on American soil. 1067 00:53:42,771 --> 00:53:46,188 But that's only half the story. 1068 00:53:46,326 --> 00:53:49,674 America didn't just challenge British power overseas. 1069 00:53:49,812 --> 00:53:54,783 It also shook the foundations of Britain itself. 1070 00:53:56,750 --> 00:54:00,306 But Britain didn't fall apart. 1071 00:54:00,444 --> 00:54:01,824 It burned, it bled, 1072 00:54:01,962 --> 00:54:05,276 but in the end, George III survived 1073 00:54:05,414 --> 00:54:09,556 by adapting to a new world. 1074 00:54:09,694 --> 00:54:14,251 250 years ago, both nations were remade, 1075 00:54:14,389 --> 00:54:17,461 one by casting off a crown, 1076 00:54:17,599 --> 00:54:20,843 the other by reshaping it.