Excerpt from The Victories of the British Armies, Vol. 1 of 2: With Anecdotes Illustrative of Modern Warfare In looking back on past events, perhaps the gloomiest period of British history will be found between the outbreak of the war of independence, in Seventeen hundred and seventy-five, and that' of the French revolution at the close of the last century. Conquest deserted those banners which for ages she had crowned with victory, and the days Of England's glory seemed departed. Her military dispositions were rendered nugatory by a thousand accidental occurrences, which no human prudence could foresee. Disciplined valour was defeated by the raw levies of her own colonists, and her Continental influence placed in abeyance for a time by those splendid victories, achieved by the armies Of the French Republic, over the best organised and best commanded troops in Europe. 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.