Revolutionary War Letters at Sotheby’s Show Gloom

From NYT:

"Despite King George’s boast that “once these rebels have felt a smart blow, they will submit,” back-channel messages from British generals and diplomatic officials in America during the Revolutionary War, some of them previously unpublished, turn out to have been decidedly more pessimistic.

As early as June 1775, after the Battle of Bunker Hill — which the Redcoats technically won — Gen. John Burgoyne pronounced British military prospects in America “gloomy” in what he called “a crisis that my little read in history cannot parallel.”"

How fascinating. I especially like Strachey's letters, quoted extensively in the article. I wonder if Lytton was a descendant. If so, it seems oddly fitting...