There was, however, some positive news. In lieu of soldiers, the French government would provide the Americans with a gift of six million livres; it wasn’t as much as John Laurens had wanted, but it was at least something. There was also the promise of significant naval support. In a confidential message that he was instructed not to share with Washington, Rochambeau learned that in March the newly promoted Comte de Grasse had sailed from Brest with a large fleet of warships bound for Martinique. When combined with the French ships of the line already in the Caribbean and those at Newport, France should be able to attain naval superiority in American waters when de Grasse sailed north in July or August to escape hurricane season. Where he was to meet up with the French and American land forces was left to de Grasse’s discretion; however, the French ministers had already indicated they had little enthusiasm for an operation against New York. Not only did the sandbar at the harbor mouth present a problem for the French ships (which tended to be deeper drafted than the enemy’s), the British had spent the last five years fortifying the city. No matter how large a force Washington and Rochambeau were able to put together (and they needed a force at least twice the size of the British army’s to make the attack feasible), it was likely to result in a long and bloody siege, and time was not on the allies’ side.
The French ministers had included a disturbing caveat in their letters to Rochambeau. If, despite Washington’s best efforts, the American army should start to fall apart, thus eliminating any hope of a successful campaign, Rochambeau should use de Grasse’s fleet to transport his army to the Caribbean. The resulting scene in Newport as the French soldiers were loaded into the ships, and America was left to return to the British Empire, can only be imagined. No wonder the French government wanted Rochambeau to keep the particulars of de Grasse’s fleet a secret for as long as possible.
That the French commander in chief saw the collapse of the American war effort as a distinct possibility is indicated by the testimony of the Marquis de Beauvoir Chastellux, the highly educated major general and writer who, in the absence of Lafayette, would serve as Washington’s translator at Wethersfield. According to Chastellux, Rochambeau “sees everything darkly . . . , never foreseeing anything but a total defection on the part of the Americans.” Given how events ultimately turned out, there has been a tendency to portray Rochambeau as Washington’s ideal helpmate: the benign and fatherly general who worked from the start to ensure the independence of the United States. In truth, the French general had grave doubts about the Americans’ ability to finish what they had started. (Henry Clinton’s spies claimed Rochambeau was “utterly against the American Alliance,” while Chastellux insisted that “he has taken an aversion to this whole country.”) Already, Rochambeau and Washington had worked at cross-purposes during the planning of the failed Destouches expedition, and despite mutual protestations to the contrary, both inevitably brought a sense of wariness and distrust to the meeting in Wethersfield. Instead of the glorious melding of two patriotic spirits, this was to be the collaboration that triumphed in spite of itself.
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WASHINGTON, it turned out, had a mole within Rochambeau’s staff. The Marquis de Beauvoir Chastellux had been greatly impressed by Washington ever since first meeting him in November. As his comments about Rochambeau suggest, Chastellux feared his commander lacked the necessary enthusiasm for America. He must provide Washington with access to the information Rochambeau (and the French government) refused to make available. “As my zeal for your country and my attachment for Your Excellency knows no limits,” he wrote on May 12, “I hazard a step that may be conceived as a transgression, acting but an under part in the French army, but I rely on the secrecy of your excellency, as one of [your] numerous virtues.” Chastellux then proceeded to inform Washington that “a large fleet of 26 ships of the line sailed from Brest, March 22, bound for the West Indies.” When they met in Wethersfield, “I should be glad to have some private conversation with Your Excellency, but we must avoid giving suspicion of a peculiar [impression].” In other words, Washington must conceal all evidence of knowing anything about de Grasse’s fleet; he must also, Chastellux instructed, “burn this letter,” a request that Washington chose to ignore.
He may have been well intentioned, but Chastellux, like most informants, had an inflated sense of his own importance. Other than placing Washington in a tremendously awkward position, Chastellux had done little to prepare the American commander in a constructive way for the negotiations ahead. Washington was thankful for whatever information he could get, but he also did not want to imperil his relationship with Rochambeau. As events subsequently revealed, one of his greatest strengths was his ability to keep his own counsel amid the building cacophony of increasingly urgent and often contradictory appeals.
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THE CONFERENCE BEGAN AWKWARDLY when Washington learned that de Barras was not able to attend. The appearance of some British warships off Block Island required the admiral to remain in Newport. Given that problems of communication had plagued the previous French naval expedition from the start, this was not a good sign, particularly when Washington learned that de Barras claimed he did not have enough ships to transport Rochambeau’s army by water.
In his memoirs, Rochambeau depicted Washington as stubbornly attached to the concept of attacking New York despite the obvious problems with the plan and the just as obvious advantages of looking to Virginia. However, it would be another two months before Cornwallis took up the position at the tip of an isolated point that made the victory at Yorktown possible. The appearance of a large French fleet while the British general was still ranging about the interior of the Tidewater would, in all likelihood, have done little more than force him to retreat into North Carolina. Clinton, on the other hand, dug in at New York, had nowhere to go. It is only hindsight that makes Rochambeau’s early preference for the Chesapeake look so prescient. Without the help of Cornwallis, the Chesapeake gambit would have never unfolded as it did. In late May of 1781, Washington was completely justified in his preference for New York.
And besides, given France’s three-year history of failure in providing naval superiority, Washington had reason to wonder whether he would ever see a large French fleet on the North American coast. As he had learned to his repeated regret, the vagaries of wind and weather, along with a lack of resolve on the part of a naval commander, could make even the most assured prospect of success come to nothing. If a superior French fleet was unlikely and de Barras was unwilling to transport any soldiers by water, the only option Washington had was to mass as many soldiers as possible around New York in the hope of taking some of the pressure off Lafayette in Virginia.
It must have been an infuriating exercise on Washington’s part as Rochambeau expressed doubts about New York and yet provided no legitimate reason to believe that Virginia was a better option. Ultimately, they agreed that given “the insurmountable difficulty and expense of land transportation—the waste of men in long marches (especially where there is a disinclination to the service, objections to the climate, etc.) with other reasons too numerous to detail,” their only option, at this time, was “to commence an operation against New York.” It was also agreed that Rochambeau’s army would begin marching south from Rhode Island as soon as possible while de Barras (for reasons of safety) moved his fleet from Newport to Boston until his ships were needed to support the joint American-French force in New York. If conditions should change, however, Washington agreed it might be in their best interests “to extend our views to the southward.”
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WHEN WASHINGTON RETURNED to the “plain Dutch house” that served as his headquarters in New Windsor, he discovered that his wife, Martha, who had been with him since the beginning of the year, had grown dangerously ill. Although her condition improved in the weeks ahead, Washington remained concerned about her
health. “Her complaint was in the stomach, bilious,” he wrote to her son Jacky, “and now turned to a kind of jaundice; but she is better than she has been, though still weak and low.” He had a favor to ask his stepson: “As she is very desirous of seeing you, and as it is about the period for her returning to Virginia, I should be glad if it does not interfere with any important engagements if you could make her a visit.” Jacky did have “important engagements,” and his sick mother would have to fend for herself.
Word of Martha’s illness prompted the widow of a British paymaster in New York (in whose house the Washingtons had lived at the beginning of the war) to send a selection of fruits and “hyssop tea” to assist in her recovery. To avoid a repeat of the Savage incident and be accused of accepting special treatment from the enemy, Washington felt compelled to return the gifts to New York. Not until the end of June would Martha be well enough to begin the journey back to Virginia, accompanied by Dr. James Craik, their family doctor from Alexandria who now served as a physician general in the Continental army.
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IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of the meeting in Wethersfield, Washington wrote letters to the states’ political leaders requesting the soldiers he needed for a siege of New York. “Our allies in this country expect, and depend upon being supported by us in the attempt we are about to make,” he warned, “and those in Europe will be astonished should we neglect the favorable opportunity which is now before us.” Much as he’d done around the time of the Destouches expedition, Washington sent out letter after letter to a wide range of friends and political leaders, this time detailing the plans to attack New York. And just as happened in the earlier instance, the British intercepted several of those letters. Given the unlikelihood of the French fleet appearing any time soon, there was nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by letting Henry Clinton know a combined French and American operation against New York was in the offing. Just as Washington intended, the British commander subsequently ordered the withdrawal of a significant number of soldiers from Virginia to New York. He would get no credit for it from the politicians in his home state, but Washington was doing everything he possibly could on their behalf.
Soon after his return to Newport, Rochambeau had second thoughts about one of the stipulations of the Wethersfield conference. Rather than move de Barras’s squadron to Boston (as had been decided at Wethersfield), the ships should remain in Newport, where they would be closer to the ultimate scene of action, whether it be in New York or Virginia. To change one of the central tenets of the agreement so soon after the conference was guaranteed to anger the already disgruntled American commander, especially since it would require a significant number of American militia to remain in Newport manning the town’s fortifications once the French army marched south. According to the Duc de Lauzun, who delivered Rochambeau’s letter to Washington, the proposal “put him in such a rage that he refused to answer it.” Eventually, of course, Washington had to respond. “I must adhere to my opinion,” he wrote, “and to the plan which was fixed at Wethersfield as most eligible, all circumstances considered.” That said, he knew he had no choice other than to do whatever the French decided, and to no one’s surprise, the French fleet remained in Newport.
Adding to the humiliation of being a commander in chief in name only was Rochambeau’s continued refusal to provide him with any information regarding the whereabouts of de Grasse’s fleet. Why all this mystery, Washington couldn’t help but wonder, if France really had the United States’ best interests at heart? There even were those, such as Washington’s friend George Mason in Virginia, who suspected that the French were purposely holding back naval support with the intention of “spinning out the war.” The longer the war dragged on, Mason maintained, the more dependent the fledgling United States would be upon France once her independence was ultimately won. “France sure intends the separation of the states forever from Great Britain,” he wrote; “but by drawing out the thread too fine and long, it may unexpectedly break in her hands.”
On June 7, Washington received a newspaper account of Admiral de Grasse’s recent activities in the waters surrounding Martinique, which he immediately forwarded to Rochambeau’s headquarters in Newport. Now that Washington had irrefutable proof that a large French naval force had long since arrived in the Caribbean, Rochambeau had no choice but to confess to knowing much more than he had so far revealed. Yes, Rochambeau admitted, he had been in correspondence with de Grasse, but not to worry, he had been careful to communicate everything he and Washington had discussed in Wethersfield. “I have apprized him,” he assured the Virginian, “that the only means which seem practicable to your Excellency is a diversion upon New York.” What he chose not to tell Washington was that the French general had also made it clear that he did not necessarily agree with his American counterpart. “The southwesterly winds and the state of distress in Virginia will probably make you prefer Chesapeake Bay,” Rochambeau had written to de Grasse on May 28, “and it will be there where we think you may be able to render the greatest service.”
This was, of course, completely contrary to what he and Washington had agreed to. In his letter to Washington, Rochambeau felt compelled to at least hint at what he had actually written. “I have [also] spoken to him of the enemy’s naval forces and told him that by reason of the constant [southerly] wind, I thought it would be a great stroke to go to the Chesapeake Bay in which he can make great things against the naval forces that will be there, and then the wind could bring him in two days . . . [to] New York.”
For Washington, it must have felt like the Destouches expedition all over again: No matter what he said, the French were going to do exactly as they pleased. And yet, with so much at stake, now was not the time to surrender to his mounting anger and frustration. “Your Excellency will be pleased to recollect,” Washington reminded Rochambeau, “that New York was looked upon by us as the only practicable object under present circumstances; but should we be able to secure a naval superiority, we may perhaps find others more practicable and equally advisable.” Washington’s fear was that by going to the Chesapeake first, as Rochambeau suggested, de Grasse would lose the element of surprise he might enjoy “by coming suddenly” to New York, where “he would certainly block up any fleet which might be within; and he would even have a very good chance of forcing the entrance before dispositions could be made to oppose him.”
What concerned Washington most in the spring of 1781 was not where they were going to attack, since “it could not be foreknown where the enemy would be most susceptible of impression,” but how he and Rochambeau were going to get the allied army there. It was his assumption that “having command of the water with sufficient means of conveyance . . . , [the French fleet] could transport ourselves to any spot with the greatest celerity.” This—the ability to transport the Continental and French armies by water—was, from Washington’s perspective, the key component to victory. That was how the British had taken both New York and Charleston and how Benedict Arnold had ravaged Virginia—by transporting their armies with lightning speed to wherever the enemy was open to attack. No matter what part of the country proved to be the enemy’s “most vulnerable quarter,” the French fleet should first sail to Sandy Hook at the entrance to New York harbor, where de Grasse could embark at least a portion of the allied army.
Making it increasingly difficult for Washington to insist that Rochambeau adhere to their mutually agreed plan was the realization that he was not going to receive anywhere near the number of recruits he had requested from the states. Unable to hold up his end of the bargain, he was in no position to loftily chastise his ally, especially if that ally could make up for the American troop deficit with French soldiers from the Caribbean. The campaign ahead might not unfold as he wished, but that, he had long since learned, was the way of the world. As he’d written five years before, at the conclusion of the Siege of Boston, which ended not with the
attack on the city he had yearned for but with the anticlimactic placement of several cannons atop Dorchester Heights, “I will not lament or repine at any act of Providence, because I am in a great measure a convert to [the poet] Mr. Pope’s opinion that whatever is, is right.”
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BY THE TIME CORNWALLIS arrived in Petersburg, Virginia, General William Phillips had died of a fever, his last days made even more miserable than they otherwise might have been by the cannonballs that kept ripping through the house in which he lay. Lafayette wasn’t aware of it at the time, but by ordering his artillery to fire on Petersburg from the opposite shore of the Appomattox River, he had succeeded in exacting at least a measure of revenge on the man who had killed his father.
With the conjunction of the two British armies, along with the addition of some recently arrived reinforcements, Cornwallis now had somewhere in the neighborhood of seven thousand soldiers in Virginia, making his force more than two-thirds the size of Clinton’s army in New York. Virginia was renowned for its horses, and Tarleton quickly equipped his four hundred dragoons with the finest mounts he could find. “We have everything to fear from their cavalry,” Lafayette wrote. “They will overrun the country and our flanks; our stores, our very camp will be unsecure.” When Cornwallis learned that Lord Rawdon had beaten Nathanael Greene’s larger army at Hobkirk’s Hill near Camden, South Carolina, and that three British regiments had recently sailed from Ireland for Charleston, the news, Tarleton remembered, “eased his anxiety for South Carolina and gave him brilliant hopes of a glorious campaign [in Virginia].”
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