As the battle of Monmouth Courthouse began, Lee led the troops in disastrous ways, giving contradictory orders and refusing to attack at a prime opportunity to capture a large Clinton contingent. Washington then rode up to Lee, cursed him out, relieved him of command, and directed the troops in retreat and re-formations, aided by Lafayette and Wayne. Steuben, who arrived moments later, rallied troops in disarray and marched them back into battle—a testament, Hamilton observed, to the value of the discipline that Steuben had instilled. A potential debacle became a battle in which the British lost twice as many troops as the Americans.
That night Clinton stole a march, taking his men through Sandy Hook and into New York, ceding New Jersey to Washington. In the morning Washington had just been apprised of this when he was handed a Lee letter of protest:
Nothing but the misinformation of some very stupid, or misrepresentation of some very wicked person coud have occasioned your making use of so very singular expressions.… They implyed that I was guilty either of disobedience of orders, of want of conduct, or want of courage.… [You have] been guilty of an act of cruel injustice.… I have a right to demand some reparation for the injury committed.
Washington ordered Lee’s arrest for insubordination. A court-martial featuring the detailed memories of Lafayette and Wayne cost Lee loss of command for a year.
On July 4, 1778, the American forces celebrated the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. During the festivities Cadwalader and Conway exchanged words. Conway had resigned but had been unable to book passage home. Cadwalader managed to do what other officers had tried but failed to accomplish: successfully challenge Conway to a duel for his slights to Washington. In the duel Cadwalader shot Conway through the mouth.
Conway, believing he would shortly die, wrote to Washington:
I find my self just able to hold the penn During a few Minutes, and take this opportunity of expressing my sincere grief for having Done, Written, or said any thing Disagreeable to your excellency. my carreer will soon be over, therefore justice and truth prompt me to Declare my Last sentiments. you are in my eyes the great and the good Man. May you Long enjoy the Love, Veneration and Esteem of these states whose Libertys you have asserted by your Virtues.
Washington made no reply. Conway’s wound was disfiguring, not fatal. He recovered enough to sail for France, where he was welcomed back into the military. A sizable portion of France’s army was massed along the northern coast for potential action against Great Britain. Versailles sent Conway to that command, in a lower rank than he thought appropriate to his experience, but he decided to keep his injured mouth shut about that.
* * *
On July 5, 1778, the long-awaited French savior knocked at America’s door: Admiral d’Estaing and his fleet arrived off Virginia, and on July 7 reached the mouth of the Delaware, downriver of Philadelphia. Their presence was tremendously important, evidence to America that France’s commitment consisted of more than cheers and excess inventory. And that commitment had immediate consequences; as Lord Carlisle explained in a letter to his wife, “The arrival of this [French] fleet makes every hope for success in our [peace] business ridiculous.”
D’Estaing knew that the alliance partners’ moment together would be brief. His moderate-size flotilla would enjoy naval superiority only until more ships from Great Britain arrived to supplement those in New York Harbor. He was also constrained by orders. One stressed caution over initiative in action, a second positioned his fleet’s mission as less important than those of the fleets sent to the Caribbean, to India, and the English Channel, and a third mandated that he take his ships to the Caribbean well before the end of the year.
Before embarking for New York, at Philadelphia he sent an opening letter to Washington by the hand of a distinguished carrier, his aide, a marquis who was a relative of Sartine’s. D’Estaing said he looked forward to “concerter mes opérations avec un général tel que Votre Excellence” (concerting my operations with a general of Your Excellency’s repute), whose “talents and great actions … have insured him in the eyes of all Europe, the title, truly sublime deliverer of America.”
Washington’s response got right down to business: he was planning to cross the North River fifty miles above New York, and “shall then move down before the Enemy’s lines, with a view of giving them every jealousy in my power … and facilitate such enterprizes as you may form and are pleased to communicate to me.”
A naval attempt to take New York would depend on d’Estaing’s ability to get over the sandbar at Sandy Hook. Lord Howe had positioned ships and shore batteries there to make such passage costly. Should d’Estaing’s ships clear the bar, they would only be able to do so one at a time, and would then run a gauntlet of six Howe warships, “echeloned” so that their fields of fire would overlap. As d’Estaing waited outside the Sandy Hook bar for a favorable tide, he tried to slake his most urgent needs—fresh water, meat, and vegetables—his stores overly depleted by the long voyage. Washington sent him a herd of cattle. Water was harder to obtain. When John Laurens arrived, he listened to d’Estaing’s problems and explained them in a letter to his father: The “disaffected inhabitants either refused their wagons, or granted them only at an exorbitant price.” D’Estaing was very pleased with Laurens as an emissary from Washington, noting to Vergennes that Laurens was the son of the president of Congress, and that his officers judged the young man “actif et aimable.” Only some water was obtained. Also, for want of fresh vegetables, nearly half of d’Estaing’s troops and sailors were ill. And this was July, cruelest of months because food could be seen growing in the fields but was not yet ripe enough to eat.
Laurens brought a letter from Lafayette, a distant d’Estaing cousin and neighbor. To assure d’Estaing that the letter was not a forgery Lafayette included references to what only a neighbor would know, such as “M. Montboisser’s good salmon fishery.” He and d’Estaing, he wrote, shared a hatred of and the desire to humiliate Great Britain: “I have the honor to be as much related to you by this sentiment as by the ties of blood.” The next visitor was Hamilton, accompanied by Fleury and some experienced New York pilots. By then d’Estaing had realized that his most formidable vessels could not broach the sandbar. In any sea battle d’Estaing’s flagship, a ninety-gun vessel, and his eighty-guns and seventy-fours would have the advantage over Howe, whose largest were a half dozen sixty-fours. But while sixty-fours could clear the Sandy Hook bar, d’Estaing was informed that his seventy-fours might not, and there was no likelihood of bringing in the flagship, the ninety-gun Languedoc. He reportedly offered as much as 150,000 pounds to the pilots to take his seventy-fours over the bar but they refused.
After eleven days of d’Estaing standing off Sandy Hook, the tidal conditions changed, supposedly assuring a clearance of thirty feet over the bar, enough for the seventy-fours. The British expected d’Estaing to pass the bar and assail them in the harbor, and were astonished when the French fleet did not and instead took off to the east.
To put the best face on the action, d’Estaing had been encouraged to caution by his agreement with Washington on an alternate target, Newport, Rhode Island, toward which he now sailed. It was a good target, for a Franco-American capture of Newport’s British garrison of several thousand men would be a severe blow. Clinton, recognizing this, had already dispatched additional troops to that port.
* * *
John Adams was having a very difficult stay in France. No sooner had he arrived than he learned that his task, negotiating a treaty, had already been accomplished. He considered returning immediately to Boston, but at dockside also learned of the American commission’s internal problems and thought that he might be able to ameliorate them—after all, he had worked closely with Franklin in Congress, and the Lees were the Adamses’ congressional partners.
Even though Deane had departed, the climate at Passy was worse than Adams had imagined. “It has given me, much Grief, since my Arrival here, to find So little Harmo
ny, among many respectable Characters. So many mutual Jealousies, and So much Distrust of one another,” Adams wrote in answer to R. H. Lee’s inquiry about his brother, Arthur. Chagrined at the sloppiness of the commission’s affairs—“There never was before I came, a minute Book, a Letter Book or an Account Book, and it is not possible to obtain a clear Idea of our Affairs,” as Adams wrote in his diary—he took on its paperwork tasks, organizing its files and handling its correspondence. Although Franklin tried to help him by attending to John Quincy’s educational needs and by introducing Adams to Turgot and others with whom he could converse on elevated subjects, Adams chafed at the voluptuous luxury of his surround and the nonessential character of the commissioners’ mission. “This is an ugly situation for me who does not abound in philosophy and who cannot and will not trim,” Adams wrote to his cousin Samuel. He tried to cut the Gordian knot by inviting Lee to move into the capacious Valentinois, touting it as a way to save the public’s money and “cultivate a harmony” among the commissioners. Lee refused, and with that refusal the last vestiges of amicability vanished.
Presented at court, Adams formed good opinions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the latter the focus of added attention for her very visible pregnancy. As Adams’s stay in France wore on he became increasingly convinced that a commission was superfluous and that he and Lee should be recalled, leaving Franklin as America’s sole representative. But equally, as he wrote to a close friend, “The more I consider our Affairs, the more important our Alliance with France appears to me. It is a Rock upon which we may safely build.”
* * *
On July 11, 1778, when d’Estaing’s fleet stood off Sandy Hook, still hoping to do battle with Howe’s, three thousand miles away the prelude to a naval engagement of great moment to the American Revolution began at the spot where the English Channel meets the Atlantic Ocean. That day Admiral Keppel’s Home Fleet left port, looking to fight d’Orvilliers’s French squadron, whose officers’ eyes also gleamed with the anticipation of battle.
Keppel, a lifelong naval officer, was a Whig MP who had opposed the North government’s strategies regarding the American colonies to the point of having refused to serve in American waters. He took the Home Fleet post despite his conviction that Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, whom Keppel had relentlessly criticized in Parliament, hoped that he might fail at it and cease being a viable critic. When the Admiralty dispatched Admiral John Byron to chase d’Estaing, Keppel protested: “Taking eleven of the finest ships from under my command … leaves me in a situation I must think alarming for the safety of the king’s home dominions.” He refused to sail until he had thirty capital ships. By July 11, 1778, he had them and set out, his flag in the one-hundred-gun Victory. But his captains had never drilled in unison and were unused to complex maneuvers, and his rear was under the command of a political enemy.
Twelve days later the British and French fleets espied each other, sixty-six miles west of the island known in Great Britain as Ushant and in France as Ouessant, and in midafternoon on a foggy day the action began.
Maneuvers lasted into the evening. D’Orvilliers could then have used the cover of night to sail out of reach, but instead did something difficult, sailing around the British and obtaining the weather gage, the position with the wind behind them, which was considered the best for mounting an attack. He was able to complete that maneuver because he had experienced captains, including La Motte-Picquet and François-Joseph-Paul de Grasse, both recently promoted to commodore. During the maneuver, however, two of d’Orvilliers’s capital ships strayed, so at dawn he had fewer ships and fewer cannons than Keppel.
As firing commenced, both sides employed the tactics characteristic of their respective royal navies, the British aiming low and firing as their ships dipped, sending their carronades into the opposing hulls, and the French aiming high and firing, as their ships rolled back, with langrage to shred the enemy’s masts and sails. The action produced more than one thousand casualties, but the British ships emerged more battered and unseaworthy than the French ones. During the next night d’Orvilliers doused his ships’ lights, except for three sets—one appearing to be on each edge of his squadron and the third in the center although they were only three vessels—and in darkness managed to slip away with the rest of his fleet. At dawn Keppel realized that the French lights had been a ruse and that it was too late to catch d’Orvilliers.
While neither combatant fleet had subdued the other, England, as Ségur would later write, “too long accustomed to naval triumphs, considered it a defeat, because we had not been beaten; while France seemed to claim the victory, because she had not received a check.” Keppel had wasted the opportunity to destroy the French fleet; he had not sunk or captured a single French vessel. Recriminations followed. He and the commander of the rear third of his fleet accused each other of cowardice and dereliction of duty. The French celebrated because d’Orvilliers had demonstrated that the Royal Navy was not invincible. As for the United States of America, its future as an independent country was made more certain by the outcome of this faraway battle.
* * *
In late July 1778, near Newport, Rhode Island, a first land and sea battle pitting the allied French and United States forces against their British enemies was shaping up—and the American commander was not ready for it.
Two years earlier the British had occupied Newport, on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay, an anchorage that British naval commanders considered the best on the eastern Atlantic Coast, able to accommodate even the largest-draft ships and ideally situated to control the rebellion, for in a day or two’s sail a flotilla could be at Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. Since then American forces had threatened but not recaptured the town. On March 10 Congress permitted Washington to relieve the Newport area commander and appoint Major General John Sullivan, thirty-eight.
A lawyer and New Hampshire member of the Continental Congress, Sullivan was one of a dozen brigadiers, each from a different colony, appointed to high command. He had seen action at Bunker Hill and was captured on Long Island, reportedly with pistols in both hands until surrounded. Sullivan was known as a fierce fighter, but in March 1777, after he had complained to Washington more than a few times, the commander had to set him straight: “Do not my dear General Sullivan, torment yourself any longer with imaginary slights, and involve others in the perplexities you feel on that score—No other officer of rank, in the whole army has so often conceived himself neglected—slighted, and ill-treated, as you have done—and none I am sure has had less cause than Yourself to entertain such ideas.” After Brandywine, when other officers accused Sullivan of not performing adequately, Washington came to his defense and during the long winter at Valley Forge put him in charge of building a bridge over the Schuylkill. Sullivan completed that task and then beseeched Washington for a post “where there was Even a probability of Acquiring Honor.” Washington awarded him Newport.
When Washington had first discussed Newport as a target with d’Estaing, he had an eager candidate to replace Sullivan, Horatio Gates. “A certain Northern heroe gave His Excellency several broad hints that if he was sent upon the Newport expedition great things would be done,” Nathanael Greene wrote to Sullivan. “But the General did not think proper to supercede an officer of distinguished merit to gratify unjustly a doubtful friend.” Leaving Sullivan in place, however, saddled Washington, as a recent Sullivan biographer puts it, with a commander “admitted to be temperamental, overly sensitive, and hot-tempered, even by his contemporary friends and subsequent admirers.” Perhaps Washington was relying on Sullivan’s good relationship with Lafayette, his subordinate at Brandywine, whom Washington was sending to Newport at the head of a phalanx of troops, or on Sullivan’s knowledge of the French language. Still, in expecting d’Estaing to share command with the roughneck Sullivan—and the wet-behind-the-ears Lafayette—Washington was presuming too much on his partner’s reserves of benevolence. On the other hand, the target, Newport, beca
me a motivating factor for d’Estaing when he learned that its garrison was commanded by the brother of the man who had jailed him in India.
Sullivan and his senior officers, who had had only a few days’ notice of the imminent arrival of the French, agreed that even their combined forces would not be ready to attack Newport—they must wait until they were joined by Lafayette’s men and the militias. These were coming, but slowly, the muster including a Rhode Island unit of blacks to whom the legislature promised freedom in return for service.
Laurens waited for the French at Point Judith, forty miles south of Providence at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, accompanied by pilots and escort whaleboats to assist d’Estaing’s fleet when it appeared. On the morning of the twenty-ninth, the fog lifted and the appearance of the French fleet “was as sudden as a change of decorations in an opera house,” Laurens wrote. He delivered to d’Estaing a Sullivan letter containing a plan for a joint attack, which had the French coming from one side of Aquidneck and the Americans from the other, first assaulting Butts Hill, the high point, and then turning against the garrison.
This was a reasonable plan but an affront to the French as it had not been made jointly and disregarded protocol and right of precedence. As a modern biographer of d’Estaing comments, matters involving Sullivan and d’Estaing, from the first moments “revealed difficulties, stemming as much from the character of d’Estaing as from the jealousy of Sullivan.” D’Estaing wanted to land his marines immediately and challenge the British garrison. A believer in the value of surprise, he was frustrated because the Americans would not join an immediate attack; he wrote later that the days lost in waiting for the militia and Lafayette’s troops “were the most favorable ones, the precious moments of the arrival, when all are astonished, and most frequently no one resists.” D’Estaing used the time to obtain water, food, and hospital beds for the ill French—nearly half of his forces.
How the French Saved America Page 15