James L. Nelson’s novels include the five books of his Revolution at Sea saga and three in his Brethren of the Coast series. He has also written three histories of pivotal naval engagements in the American Revolution–Benedict Arnold’s Navy; George Washington’s Secret Navy; and General Washington’s Great Gamble–all of which are published by McGraw-Hill. See also www.jameslnelson.com.

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S GREAT GAMBLE

AND THE SEA BATTLE THAT WON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

By JAMES L. NELSON

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-162679-8

Contents

ProloguePART ONE AN OPPORTUNITY IN VIRGINIA1 Washington and Rochambeau2 Sea Power for the General3 “The parricide Arnold”4 Copper Bottoms5 Head of Elk6 The Battle of Cape Henry7 “An attempt to conquer Virginia”PART TWO GREENE AND CORNWALLIS: LOOKING NORTH8 The Beginning of the End9 The American Command10 The Battle of Guilford Courthouse11 A Pyrrhic Victory12 Reinforcing the Chesapeake13 “[T]he Enemy have turned so much of their attention to the Southern
States”14 The Battle of BlandfordPART THREE THE FIGHT ON LAND AND SEA15 The British War at Sea16 Juncture17 “I am inclined to think well of York”18 The Promise of a Fleet19 The Battle of Green Springs20 The March on New York21 An Operation to the Southward22 The Arrival of de Grasse23 The Battle of the Capes24 “The signal was not understood”25 The Siege of YorktownEpilogue: “A most glorious day”Time LineAcknowledgmentsEndnotesBibliographyIndex

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Washington and Rochambeau

“For want of a nail, a shoe was lost….” So begins the old nursery rhyme thatsets forth a chain of events progressing from the trivial to the loss of akingdom. Like many nursery rhymes, this one captures a grain of historicaltruth—that seemingly innocuous or at least minor affairs can look likemajor turning points when viewed in hindsight. Never has this been more the casethan during the American Revolution.

If the wind had not blown foul for British ships to sail into the East River inAugust 1776, General George Washington and his army almost certainly would havebeen crushed on Long Island, ending the war less than two months after Congresshad declared independence from England. If Brigadier General Benedict Arnold hadnot fought so tenaciously against Sir Guy Carleton on Lake Champlain through thesummer and fall of 1776, Carleton might have taken Fort Ticonderoga that summerand driven south to Albany, linking there with British forces moving up theHudson River from New York. This would have isolated New England from thecolonies to the south, again probably ending the war. The list of hairbreadthsurvivals for the American Revolution goes on and on. In hindsight, it seemsincredible that the rebels won their independence in the end.

From the beginning, however, they had one dependable thing going for them, andthat was America itself. The country (or group of colonies, from the Britishperspective) was huge, much too large to take in toto and hold by force.The British won battle after battle, but once the conquering army moved on,rebellion rose again in its wake. There was no center, no Paris or London, thecapture of which would defeat the insurrection. Lord William Howe easily tookthe rebel capital of Philadelphia in 1777, forcing Congress to flee into thehinterland, but it made not the slightest difference. Nor did occupying New Yorkfor most of the war disrupt the rebellion (though it did provide the Britishwith a comfortable base of operations). The vast American geography was tailor-made to support an indigenous army. It complicated every operation for a foreigninvader and was arguably the only thing that allowed the Americans to keepfighting through the six long years that led to Yorktown.

Colonial America was not an easy place to get around. The roads were few andpoor, the country cut up with rivers and mountains. British armies beatthemselves to death chasing fast-moving Continental troops. Of course, thatgeography made life hard on American soldiers as well, particularly since,through the first five years of war, the British had a lock on the only rapidmeans of moving men and matériel—the sea. Once they lost that advantage,they lost the war.

The Americans on their own, however, could not have wrested control of the seafrom the British. For that, they needed the French, and no one knew that betterby 1780 than George Washington.

France in the War

In July 1780, two years almost to the day after declaring war on England, Francedisembarked its first significant land force on American soil. French soldiershad fought in the failed attempt to retake Savannah the previous October, butthat had been an expeditionary force landed from ships. Now a French army wouldbecome a permanent part of an allied ground force, fighting shoulder to shoulderwith Americans.

The division that clambered ashore in Rhode Island numbered fifty one hundredsoldiers, far fewer than Washington had expected. Still, the arrival of theFrench was the first good news the Americans had received in quite some time,and it was greeted with appropriate enthusiasm. Washington, in a general order,congratulated his men “on the Arrival of a large Land and Naval Armament atRhode Island sent by his most Christian Majesty to Cooperate with the Troops ofthese States against the Common Enemy.” He suggested that his officers, who woreblack cockades on their hats, substitute cockades of intermixed black and whiteas a symbol of friendship with the French, who wore white. Even the general SirHenry Clinton, who in May 1778 had replaced William Howe as commander of theBritish army in North America, would later admit that the arrival of the French”gave additional animation to the spirit of rebellion, whose almost expiringembers began to blaze up.”

Such a lift was desperately needed. American morale was low and still ebbing.Since 1776, the British army had remained comfortably quartered in New York,with Washington powerless to do anything about it. No significant gains had beenmade since the Battle of Saratoga in the fall of 1777, when the surrender ofBritish General John Burgoyne’s fifty-seven-hundred-man army to Major GeneralHoratio Gates had at last convinced France to sign treaties of commerce andalliance with America. That diplomatic coup, which a year’s worth of BenjaminFranklin’s most artful arguments to Louis XVI’s ministry had failed to secure,had been a watershed event in the war.

Not since the summer of 1778 had Washington’s forces in the North come to gripswith the British army in any significant way. At that time, Clinton, the newlyappointed British commander-in-chief, had been ensconced in the occupied city ofPhiladelphia. With France threatening to enter the war, King George III haddecided to withdraw part of Clinton’s army to protect the West Indies, andClinton for the first time had faced the real possibility of an enemysuperiority at sea. He deemed it time to consolidate forces by abandoningPhiladelphia and marching his army back to New York. Washington sent a largeportion of the Continental Army to dog the British forces across New Jersey, andthe two armies fought to a draw at the Battle of Monmouth. As so often happened,the Americans came painfully close to victory, this time only to see it snatchedaway by the incompetence of Washington’s subordinate, the British-born MajorGeneral Charles Lee.

Clinton had been happy to call Monmouth a victory, even though he knew it wassomething far less than that. He continued on to New York and, from that pointforward, had mostly remained put, while Washington’s forces deployed themselvesin a loose cordon around the city. To Washington, this stasis must have beendepressingly reminiscent of the siege of Boston in 1775 – 1776, withsimilarly corrosive results. Through the intervening two years of idleness, theContinental Army had suffered from neglect and shrunk from desertion.Recruitment had become nearly impossible, and the men who remained had grownincreasingly bitter by 1780, with some regiments turning to mutiny when theirgrievances became intolerable.

Expédition Particulière

The deployment of French forces to America was code-named ExpéditionParticulière. A total of seventy-five hundred men had been assembled in Brest,but the available transports could embark only fifty-one hundred. A seconddivision was therefore to follow the first when more transports becameavailable, but Brest was blockaded by Britain’s channel fleet before theadditional twenty-four hundred soldiers could put to sea, and they were neverdeployed.

The thirty-six transports carrying the troops across the Atlantic sailed underthe protection of seven French ships of the line and three frigates. Commandingthe squadron was Admiral Charles-Henri-Louis d’Arsac, Chevalier de Ternay, whomthe Marquis de Lafayette described as “a very rough and obstinate man, but firm,and clear in all his views.” The expedition’s land forces were under the ableleadership of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.

Rochambeau was fifty-five years old when appointed to lead His Most ChristianMajesty’s troops to America. He would prove an ideal choice. A veteran ofthirty-seven years of military service, Rochambeau was skilled, experienced, andtactful, qualities that did not often combine in the aristocratic upper echelonsof the French military, and he maintained a genuine respect for Washington’sauthority. While some lesser French officers in service to the American causefelt that they deserved special privilege and consideration, Rochambeau, thehighest French authority in America, never forgot who was in charge.

At the same time, Rochambeau also understood that he was under no obligation towaste the lives of his men on ill-considered American adventures. Cooperationdid not mean blind submission to Washington’s strategic vision.

Rochambeau’s men disembarked on July 11, 1780, sick and exhausted from theirten-week voyage from France, which had included a brush with the British navy inthe Caribbean. They occupied the defensive works in Newport abandoned by theBritish the previous year. This ground, in fact, had been the object of thefirst combined Franco-American action two years before.

In July 1778, the French admiral Charles Henri Hector, Comte d’Estaing, hadarrived off Sandy Hook with a fleet superior to that of Lord Richard Howe, thencommanding the British fleet in North America. Washington, as ever, had hoped totake New York, but the large French ships were unable to get over the barbetween Sandy Hook and Long Island and into New York Harbor. Instead, Washingtonand d’Estaing had agreed to launch an attack against the three thousand Britishtroops who held Newport, Rhode Island. A successful action there would havecaptured a significant number of British soldiers and given the new alliespossession of a strategically important harbor. In the end, mistrust between theFrench and Americans, the arrival of Richard Howe with a reinforced fleet, and aship-killing gale doomed what might have been a successful joint effort. But theattempt gave Washington a glimpse of what French naval strength mightaccomplish.

Although the Americans were heartened by the French troops’ arrival, the Frenchwere less impressed with their hosts. In fact, they were somewhat horrified todiscover that their new allies, with whom they hoped to defeat their age-oldenemy, were ill trained, ill equipped, and few in number. Just five days afterarriving in America, Rochambeau wrote to his superiors in France saying, “Sendus troops, ships and money, but do not count on these people nor theirresources, they have neither money nor credit, their forces only existmomentarily.”

Rochambeau and the Expédition Particulière, new to America, dull from their longvoyage, and still expecting the second division that would never come, felt noneed to rush into action. Washington was more eager to get to it. He wanted toattack New York.

Even before Rochambeau arrived, Washington had set up lookouts along the coastwith letters for the French general suggesting that he sail directly to SandyHook, the anchorage in the outer reaches of New York Harbor, where he hoped theywould outnumber the British fleet already there. Rochambeau received themessage, but as the French squadron approached New York, de Ternay caught sightof a daunting number of ships that he took to be the enemy (they were not) andcontinued on to Newport.

Though disappointed, Washington was undeterred. He wrote to Lafayette that hewould not “relinquish the idea of enterprizing against New York till it appearsobviously impracticable from the want of force.”

Perhaps the most trusted of Washington’s aides—whom he called,collectively, his “family”—Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier,Marquis de Lafayette, was twenty-two years old in the summer of 1780 and hadbeen just nineteen upon his arrival in America in 1777. The young marquis wasone of many young European aristocrats who had flocked to the rebellion foradventure, honor, and, in some cases, such as Lafayette’s, a genuine passion forthe cause. Washington despised most of these men, and with good reason, as theytended to be vain, arrogant, and certain of their own worth, qualities thatwould move the people of France to subject them to the guillotine a decade and ahalf later. (D’Estaing was among the aristocrats executed during the Reign ofTerror. Just before being guillotined on April 28, 1794, he is said to havequipped, “After my head falls off, send it to the British; they will pay a gooddeal for it.”)

Lafayette was different. He had some military experience, having served brieflyin the French army (which he joined at age fourteen), but had been willing toaccept any rank the Americans would offer, a rare concession. He served withoutpay. He had been wounded in the Battle of Brandywine, where he refused to stayout of danger, and he had suffered with the rank and file through the brutalwinter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge. What’s more, Lafayette possessed asharp wit and a lively sense of humor, and there was something about theinsouciant young Frenchman that brought out the stoic commander-in-chief’s humanside. Soon, Lafayette became less a subordinate and more the son that Washingtonhad never had.

The marquis, for his part, loved and admired Washington. (It is perhaps relevantthat the marquis’s own father had died before the boy’s second birthday.)Lafayette proved to have a native genius for leadership and military affairs. Hewas one of those handful of men who rose to prominence during the Revolution,men such as Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, Benedict Arnold, and John Glover, whohad little or no prior military experience but an extraordinary aptitude for thework.

With the French army’s arrival in Newport, Washington tapped Lafayette to serveas liaison with Rochambeau. This made good sense, especially since Lafayette hadaggressively promoted and negotiated the French troop commitment during atemporary return to France from late 1778 through early 1780, but thearrangement did not work as well as Washington hoped. Many of the Frenchofficers were shocked to see how Americanized Lafayette had become, and theywere unimpressed by a twenty-two-year-old general with little militaryexperience. After Lafayette, perhaps with youthful intemperance, managed toirritate Rochambeau by pushing Washington’s suggestion for an attack on New Yorkwith more force and less tact than the situation called for, Rochambeau opted tocommunicate directly with his American counterpart.

Initially, however, it was Lafayette who appeared in Newport to confer withRochambeau. On July 15, while Rochambeau was still disembarking his men,Lafayette arrived with a letter from Washington outlining his ideas for anattack on the city. He proposed August 5 as the “day for the re-embarkation ofthe French efficient force …” in order that they might sail to New York.

Rochambeau agreed to act on Washington’s ideas, or at least he told Lafayette asmuch. He felt that his men might be sufficiently recovered by August 15 toconsider a landing on Long Island in preparation for a move against NewYork—thus reenacting, on a smaller scale, William Howe’s massive landingof British troops on Long Island four years earlier. But before the combinedFrench and American forces could make the first move, the British did.

War at Home and Abroad

While Washington’s army had been encamped in Morristown, New Jersey, outside NewYork City, suffering with inadequate shelter and provisions through the harshwinter of 1779–1780, Clinton had rather enjoyed himself in town. New Yorkwas the most hospitable place a British officer was likely to find in America,and Clinton had taken full advantage. He occupied four different houses whilehis officers busied themselves staging theatrical productions and hiscommissaries and quartermasters made fortunes profiteering off the army. No onethere was much inclined toward action against the rebels.

There were other reasons, of course. Clinton by nature was wont to consider andreconsider every move. In addition, the military priorities issuing from Londonwere changing. The entrance of the French into the fight had assured that.

Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the American Colonies and thusClinton’s civilian overseer and the chief architect of the war in America, hadmore on his mind than the fighting in the thirteen colonies, as did PrimeMinister Frederick North, King George III, and all his cabinet. France’sdeclaration of war, followed by Spain’s, had turned a local rebellion into a warthat engulfed the entire Atlantic world and beyond. The fighting in NorthAmerica was one of the least important parts of this new world war.

Of foremost concern was the very real possibility that England would be invadedby the allied forces of Bourbon France and Spain. That very thing had nearlycome to pass in August 1779, when a combined French and Spanish fleet of sixty-sixships of the line sailed up the English Channel with the intention oflanding an army on English soil. The plan was to raze Portsmouth, Bristol,Liverpool, and the Isle of Wight and throw the British economy into chaos.Thirty-one thousand troops had gathered at St. Malo and Le Havre, ready to betransported across the channel once the combined fleet had secured the seas. TheBritish Channel Fleet under Admiral Charles Hardy, half the strength of theenemy fleet, was far too weak to mount an offensive strike.

Meeting no resistance, the French admiral Comte d’Orvilliers headed for theEnglish shore, where word of the approaching fleet had caused a near panic. OnAugust 16, he wrote to his superiors in France that the “combined fleet is atthis moment becalmed and anchored in sight of the Tower of Plymouth.” Only anadverse wind, indecision in Paris, and sickness in the fleet prevented theFrench and Spanish from landing; after a fruitless search for Hardy’s ships, thefleet returned to the Continent. It was a close call, and, but for French andSpanish ineptitude, it might have been a disaster for England. (D’Orvilliers wascensured for the failure and resigned his command.) What had started as aninsurgency in the thirteen American colonies had become an internationalconflict and a very real threat to the English people.

(Continues…)
(Continues…)Excerpted from GEORGE WASHINGTON’S GREAT GAMBLE by JAMES L. NELSON. Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
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