In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  The first order of business was to destroy Lafayette’s army before it could link up with Anthony Wayne’s force on its way south from Pennsylvania. “The boy,” Cornwallis reportedly boasted, “cannot escape me.” But Lafayette, who had absorbed the counsel of both Greene and Washington, was not about to subject his little army to unnecessary risk.

  For Cornwallis, it must have been frustratingly reminiscent of his pursuit of Greene’s army in North Carolina. He might burn and destroy everything in his path as he pursued Lafayette toward Fredericksburg to the north, where the French leader hoped to meet Wayne, but his prey always remained out of reach.

  Part of Cornwallis’s problem was self-created. This was no longer the lean, fast-moving army he had led in North Carolina. Ever since the retreat to Wilmington, he had encouraged his officers and men to acquire as many horses and escaped slaves (who were enlisted as servants) as they wanted. By the time Cornwallis’s force had combined with Phillips’s, the British army in Virginia resembled what Hessian captain Johann Ewald described as “a wandering Arabian or Tartar horde.” When he first saw Cornwallis’s army, Ewald was so stunned by its unmilitary appearance that he “could not grasp it. . . . Every officer had four to six horses and three or four Negroes, as well as one or two Negresses for cook and maid. . . . Every soldier had his Negro, who carried his provisions and bundles.” This meant that behind the army of seven thousand soldiers and their baggage train followed what Ewald estimated to be at least four thousand former slaves. “Any place this horde approached was eaten clean,” he wrote, “like an acre invaded by a swarm of locusts. . . . I wondered as much about the indulgent character of Lord Cornwallis as I admired him for his military abilities. I wished I could reconcile these qualities.” As Ewald sensed, something inside the British general had snapped since the bloody encounter at Guilford Courthouse.

  Making matters worse was the notorious southern heat, which Ewald described as “so unbearable that many men have been lost by sunstroke or their reason has been impaired . . . , [our clothes] soaked as with water from the constant perspiration. The nights are especially terrible, when there is so little air that one can scarcely breathe.” Add to that “the torment of several billions of insects, which plagued us day and night,” and Cornwallis had reason to regret his decision to move the war into Virginia.

  The British general might have been having second thoughts, but that did not prevent him from continuing to ravage the Virginia countryside. Not only did his soldiers burn and loot; in more than one instance they also raped and murdered, inevitably spreading fear and hatred everywhere they went. “We have made people miserable by our presence,” Ewald wrote in disgust. “So, too, have we constantly deceived the loyally-disposed subjects by our freebooting expeditions, and yet we still want to find friends in this country!”

  By early June, Cornwallis had given up his pursuit of Lafayette and begun a gradual movement down the James River toward Williamsburg. As a kind of parting shot, he sent his cavalry in the opposite direction on a two-pronged lightning strike. The state legislature had recently relocated to Charlottesville, which was thought to be a safe enough distance from the British army. Cornwallis ordered Tarleton to ride to Charlottesville and round up as many of the legislators as he could find, including the outgoing governor, Thomas Jefferson, whose home of Monticello stood on a nearby hill. At the same time, John Graves Simcoe, leader of the Queen’s Rangers, headed to Point of Fork on the James, where General von Steuben and a detachment of soldiers guarded a magazine of valuable military stores.

  Riding seventy miles in just twenty-four hours, Tarleton and 180 dragoons captured eight legislators and came within minutes of seizing Jefferson. The governor’s popularity had plummeted since his lackadaisical response to the appearance of Benedict Arnold in January. His subsequent decision to retire from office just when his state needed him the most caused the legislature to launch an investigation into his conduct as governor.

  Neither would it be von Steuben’s finest hour. Rather than confront Simcoe’s smaller force, he abandoned the magazine in a hasty retreat that only confirmed the reputation for ineffectual bluster he had already acquired. “The baron is so unpopular,” Lafayette lamented several days later, “that I do not know where to put him.”

  Virginia was in turmoil, but Lafayette recognized the ultimate futility of Cornwallis’s depredations in the state. “You can be entirely calm with regards to the rapid marches of Lord Cornwallis,” he wrote in a letter intercepted by the British. “Let him march from St. Augustine to Boston. What he wins in his front, he loses in his rear. His army will bury itself,” he predicted, “without requiring us to fight him.”

  While Lafayette saw Cornwallis’s campaign in Virginia for what it was, this did not apply to many of the state’s leading citizens, who feared that in the vacuum left by Jefferson’s departure, and with the legislature temporarily unable to meet because of Tarleton’s surprise attack, only George Washington could save their state from ruin.

  It began with a direct appeal from Virginia’s outgoing governor, who insisted “your appearance among [your countrymen] I say would restore full confidence in salvation. . . . [T]he difficulty would then be how to keep them out of the field.” Even Richard Henry Lee, one of Washington’s political enemies, claimed “that your personal call would bring into immediate exertion the force and recourse of this state and its neighboring one.” Lee went so far as to suggest that Washington be “possessed of dictatorial powers,” a far cry from the days of the Conway Cabal back in 1778, when Lee and a number of delegates to the Continental Congress talked of replacing the beleaguered general with Horatio Gates.

  It was the Temptation of George Washington: the offer to return to the homeland he hadn’t seen in six years as a general with supreme political power. Adding to the urgency of the situation were the recent reports from Europe of a proposed peace conference between France and Britain. Once the two European powers agreed to an armistice, the reports claimed, the thirteen former colonies would be divided between the United States and Great Britain on the basis of uti possidetis, meaning that each side kept whatever territory its army controlled at the time peace was declared. Since the British presently occupied Charleston, New York, and parts of modern Maine, those would go to the enemy, but so, too, might Virginia. “From the most recent European intelligences,” Washington believed the British were “endeavoring to make as large seeming conquests [in Virginia so] that they may urge the plea of uti possidetis in the proposed mediation.” In the likely event of negotiations at the end of the year, he stood to lose his home at Mount Vernon. And with several bastions of British rule contained within its boundaries, the United States would, in all probability, cease to exist. Given all this—especially in light of Rochambeau’s preference for a campaign in the Chesapeake—shouldn’t he heed the call and immediately head to Virginia?

  But as Washington realized, this was not the time to march south, especially with the mantle of dictatorial authority draped across his shoulders. In addition to being wrong militarily (as commander in chief of the allied forces, he must not desert his present post before the arrival of Rochambeau and the French army from Newport), it was wrong from a political perspective. The very existence of a republic depended on the supremacy of civil government. For the military to seize the reins of government, even for a brief period, was the wrong precedent to set—no matter how dismal the present prospects.

  “Nobody,” Washington wrote, “can doubt my inclination to be immediately employed in the defense of that country where all my property and connections are, but there are powerful objections to my leaving this army at this time. . . . [N]o other person has power to command the French troops who are now about to form a junction with this army. Let it suffice for me to add that I am acting on the great scale, that temporary evils must be endured where there is no remedy at hand; that I am not without hopes the table may be turned; but these being con
tingent, I can promise no more than my utmost exertions.” Even as events in Virginia threatened to reach a personally disastrous climax, he refused to let self-interest supersede what he perceived to be the greater good.

  For the present, he would remain on the Hudson, awaiting the arrival of Rochambeau’s Expédition Particulière from Newport, while Lafayette’s army, now twice its original size since the junction with Wayne, followed Cornwallis toward Williamsburg. In the meantime, more than two thousand miles to the south, the warships on which everything depended were gathering amid the islands of the Caribbean.

  PART II

  “THE OCEAN OF HISTORY”

  It is easy to understand that while ever the ocean of history remains calm, a pilot-administrator in a little bobbing boat holding on to the ship of the people with a tiny boathook, and moving along with it, might easily think he is driving the ship that he is clinging to. But the moment a storm comes up, with the sea heaving and the ship tossing about, this kind of delusion immediately becomes impossible. The great ship on its vast course is a free agent, the boathook can no longer reach the moving vessel, and the pilot who had been in charge, providing all the power, finds himself transformed into a creature that is pathetically useless.

  —LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace (1869)

  Great indeed must be the resources of that man who can render himself the most formidable to an enemy when apparently he is the most destitute of power.

  —JAMES THACHER,

  on his way to Yorktown, August 22, 1781

  CHAPTER 6

  “A Ray of Light”

  IN THE YEAR 1781, the Caribbean might as well have been the Mediterranean of Homer’s Odyssey: an island-speckled sea of swirling currents and wayward winds, where unseen gods made sport with the vain ambitions of mortal men, especially if you were British admiral George Rodney. In his youth he had been one of the most adept and lucky young captains in the British navy and had quickly amassed enough prize money from capturing enemy vessels to make him financially independent for life. But Rodney, who had the pedigree of a nobleman without the inherited income, lived life extravagantly, building himself a manor house, gambling, and launching a costly political campaign that ultimately forced him to flee to Paris to escape his creditors.

  By the time France entered the American War for Independence in 1778, the once winning and handsome British admiral had become a shrill old man, hungry for one last chance to restore his reputation and bank account, only to be stranded in the capital of the enemy, where he had been jailed for debt. Then came one of those improbable interventions that make life a never-ending surprise. Even though France was at war with Britain, the Parisian nobleman Marshal de Biron loaned Rodney the money he needed to settle with his creditors. Soon he was back in England and, at the age of sixty-two, placed in command of the British fleet in the Caribbean.

  Almost instantly Rodney became, once again, a hero. Even before crossing the Atlantic, he had destroyed or captured five Spanish men-of-war and brought much needed relief to the British forces at Gibraltar. Once in the Caribbean, he attacked the fleet commanded by French admiral the Comte de Guichen. Although the battle proved indecisive, his unrelenting pursuit drove de Guichen to the brink of an emotional breakdown, and the enemy commander soon returned to France. Rodney was wracked by the pains associated with gout and an enlarged prostate, but no admiral then serving in the British navy had his energy and his ability as a fighter. Unfortunately, there was also no British admiral who could match his lust for money, and on January 27, 1781, he learned that Britain had declared war on Holland. Before the news spread across the Caribbean, he had to attack the island of St. Eustatius, a Dutch trading center teeming with enough contraband to make him, once again, rich.

  The French, he knew, were due to send a large fleet of warships to Martinique under the command of Admiral de Grasse. As the British naval commander in the Caribbean, Rodney must try to intercept the French fleet before the convoy they were escorting reached the base at Fort Royal Bay. And then, come July and the advent of the hurricane season, de Grasse would likely take a significant portion of his fleet north to assist the Rebel army in New York or the Chesapeake. It would be Rodney’s duty to send his own fleet of ships in pursuit so as to maintain British naval superiority along the North American coast.

  These were his primary responsibilities in the winter and spring of 1781. Once he’d taken St. Eustatius (which fell in a day, on February 3), he could have delegated the occupation of the island to his second in command, Rear Admiral Samuel Hood, or to British general John Vaughan. Instead he remained on the island for the next three months, tallying up the booty and loading it into a convoy bound for England.

  It would be left to Samuel Hood to intercept the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEREAS RODNEY WAS SPINDLY and delicate, de Grasse was a great bear of a man with a Rodney-like hunger to succeed. He was so intent on crossing the Atlantic in a timely fashion that he ordered his warships to tow the slower merchant vessels of the convoy, successfully completing the passage in an unheard-of thirty-six days. By the time the French reached the windward side of Martinique on April 28, 1781, the British fleet of eighteen ships had been on blockade duty for almost two months, and their commander, Admiral Hood, was not happy about it. Rodney had ordered him to position his fleet not on the windward side of Martinique, as he had requested, but to leeward so as to provide St. Eustatius with some cover. The likely consequence was clear: because of Rodney’s self-indulgent preoccupation with St. Eustatius (where “the lures . . . were so bewitching as not to be withstood by flesh and blood”), Hood would be placed at a clear disadvantage when de Grasse appeared with his larger fleet of twenty warships.

  Sure enough, de Grasse, whose officers spoke of his “brutal character” and “grim appearance,” quickly put Hood’s fleet on the defensive. By the end of the first day of fighting, four of Hood’s ships had been seriously damaged, with the Russell taking on so much water that she was forced to sail for St. Eustatius for repairs. Hood insisted that de Grasse “has, I thank God, nothing to boast of,” and yet the French admiral had succeeded in delivering every one of the ships in his large and vulnerable convoy to Martinique.

  Luckily, from the British perspective, Hood’s copper-bottomed ships had the same overwhelming speed advantage that Arbuthnot’s fleet had enjoyed the month before at Cape Henry. When de Grasse ordered his warships to pursue the fleeing British, he watched in agonized frustration as the uncoppered vessels in his own fleet, despite being “covered with sails,” fell so far behind that “some were out of sight.” “I saw with grief,” he wrote, “that it was only too true that the sailing of the English was superior to ours.” With only half his ships in range to attack, he was forced to abandon the chase.

  De Grasse’s frustrations were compounded by his belief that several of his captains had been slow to respond to his commands. Even though he had, in this instance, gotten the better of the enemy, an element of bitterness had entered into his relations with his officers that would only increase in the months ahead.

  * * *

  • • •

  FROM A NAVAL STANDPOINT, France needed Spain. Without Spanish warships, France had no hope of defeating Britain, whose fleet was much larger than her own. If France was to count on Spain’s continued support later in the year for an expedition to North America, she had to make sure her ally’s expectations were being met. In the winter of 1781, it was absolutely essential that Spain win back British-occupied Pensacola in West Florida.

  To ensure that its interests were being attended to, the Spanish government sent a thirty-four-year-old envoy named Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis to the Caribbean. A former army officer turned diplomat, Saavedra was the consummate fixer. He had enormous discretionary powers when it came to financial matters. Most important, he was intelligent, tactful, and decis
ive. “It was indispensable,” he recorded in his journal, “that I gain for myself the goodwill of the general officers, not with artifices or intrigues . . . but with a frank and impartial policy.” With Saavedra in the room, even the most antagonistic group of military leaders could be brought to see what was in their mutual best interests.

  Saavedra immediately realized that Spanish general Bernardo de Gálvez needed more troops for the expedition against Pensacola. “I was always of the opinion that the forces he was counting on were not adequate for the purpose,” Saavedra wrote. “The general knew better than I the insufficiency of his resources, but in order not to delay the launching of the expedition, he did not dare to request more troops.” In addition to making sure Gálvez had the troops he needed when the Spanish fleet departed from Cuba on February 28, Saavedra promised to provide him with reinforcements in April.

  For the last three years, France’s conduct of the war in North America and the Caribbean had been characterized by confusion at almost every turn. Beginning in the spring of 1781, however, events started to unfold with an almost preternatural precision, and much of the credit belongs to Saavedra. In addition to coordinating the actions of his own generals for the attack on Pensacola, he would play, as we shall soon see, an indispensable role in French admiral de Grasse’s subsequent expedition to the Chesapeake. His name has been virtually lost to American history, but no one short of Washington and de Grasse, it could be argued, would do more to make the Yorktown campaign a success than Francisco Saavedra.