On the 8th of May, 1781, the _Concorde_ arrived at Boston, having on
board Count de Barras, "a commodore with the red ribbon," of the same
family as the future member of the "Directoire," and who was to replace
Ternay. With him was Viscount Rochambeau, bringing to his father the
unwelcome news that no second division was to be expected. "My son has
returned very solitary," was the only remonstrance the general sent to
the minister. But the young colonel was able to give, at the same time,
news of great importance. A new fleet under Count de Grasse had been got
together, and at the time of the _Concorde's_ departure had just sailed
for the West Indies, so that a temporary domination of the sea might
become a possibility. "Nothing without naval supremacy," Rochambeau had
written, as we know, in his note-book before starting.
In spite, moreover, of "hard times," wrote Vergennes to La Luzerne, and
of the already disquieting state of our finances, a new "gratuitous
subsidy of six million livres tournois" was granted to the Americans.
Some funds had already been sent to Rochambeau, one million and a half
in February, with a letter of Necker saying: "Be assured, sir, that all
that will be asked from the Finance Department for your army will be
made ready on the instant." Seven millions arrived a little later,
brought by the _Astrée_, which had crossed the ocean in sixty-seven
days, without mishap. As for troops, only 600 recruits arrived at
Boston, in June, with the _Sagittaire_.
Since nothing more was to be expected, the hour had come for definitive
decisions. A great effort must now be made, _the_ great effort in view
of which all the rest had been done, the one which might bring about
peace and American liberty or end in lasting failure. All felt the
importance and solemnity of the hour. The great question was what should
be attempted--the storming of New York or the relief of the South?
The terms of the problem had been amply discussed in letters and
conferences between the chiefs, and the discussion still continued. The
one who first made up his mind and ceased to hesitate between the
respective advantages or disadvantages of the two projects, and who
plainly declared that there was but one good plan, which was to
reconquer the South, that one, strange to say, was neither Washington
nor Rochambeau, and was not in the United States either as a sailor or a
soldier, but as a diplomat, and in drawing attention to the fact I am
only performing the most agreeable duty toward a justly admired
predecessor. This wise adviser was La Luzerne. In an unpublished memoir,
drawn up by him on the 20th of April and sent to Rochambeau on May 19
with an explanatory letter in which he asked that his statement (a copy
of which he also sent to Barras) be placed under the eyes of Washington,
he insisted on the necessity of immediate action, and action in the
Chesapeake: "It is in the Chesapeake Bay that it seems urgent to convey
all the naval forces of the King, with such land forces as the generals
will consider appropriate. This change cannot fail to have the most
advantageous consequences for the continuation of the campaign," which
consequences he points out with singular clear-sightedness, adding: "If
the English follow us and can reach the bay only after us, their
situation will prove very different from ours; all the coasts and the
inland parts of the country are full of their enemies. They have neither
the means nor the time to raise, as at New York, the necessary works to
protect themselves against the inroads of the American troops and to
save themselves from the danger to which the arrival of superior forces
would expose them." If the plan submitted by him offers difficulties,
others should be formed, but he maintains that "all those which have for
their object the relief of the Southern States must be preferred, and
that no time should be lost to put them in execution."
At the Weathersfield conference, near Hartford, Conn., between the
Americans and French, on the 23d of May (in the Webb house, still in
existence), Washington still evinced, and not without some weighty
reasons, his preference for an attack on New York. He spoke of the
advanced season, of "the great waste of men which we have found from
experience in long marches in the Southern States," of the "difficulty
of transports by land"; all those reasons and some others, "too well
known to Count de Rochambeau to need repeating, show that an operation
against New York should be preferred, in the present circumstances, to
the effort of a sending of troops to the South." On the same day he was
writing to La Luzerne: "I should be wanting in respect and confidence
were I not to add that our object is New York."
La Luzerne, however, kept on insisting. To Rochambeau he wrote on the
1st of June: "The situation of the Southern States becomes every moment
more critical; it has even become very dangerous, and every measure that
could be taken for their relief would be of infinite advantage.... The
situation of the Marquis de Lafayette and that of General Greene is most
embarrassing, since Lord Cornwallis has joined the English division of
the Chesapeake. If Virginia is not helped in time, the English will have
reached the goal which they have assigned to themselves in the bold
movements attempted by them in the South: they will soon have really
conquered the Southern States.... I am going to write to M. de Grasse as
you want me to do; on your side, seize every occasion to write to him,
and multiply the copies of the letters you send him," that is, in
duplicate and triplicate, for fear of loss or capture. "His coming to
the rescue of the oppressed States is not simply desirable; the thing
seems to be now of the most pressing necessity." He must not only come,
but bring with him all he can find of French troops in our isles: thus
would be compensated, to a certain extent, the absence of the second
division.
Rochambeau soon agreed, and, with his usual wisdom, Washington was not
long in doing the same. On the 28th of May the French general had
already written to de Grasse, beseeching him to come with every means at
his disposal, to bring his whole fleet, and not only his fleet, but a
supply of money, to be borrowed in our colonies, and also all the French
land forces from our garrisons which he could muster. The desire of
Saint-Simon to come and help had, of course, not been forgotten by
Rochambeau, and he counted on his good-will. After having described the
extreme importance of the effort to be attempted, he concluded: "The
crisis through which America is passing at this moment is of the
severest. The coming of Count de Grasse may be salvation."
Events had so shaped themselves that the fate of the United States and
the destinies of more than one nation would be, for a few weeks, in the
hands of one man, and one greatly hampered by imperative instructions
obliging him, at a time when there was no steam to command the wind and
waves, to be at a fixed date in the West Indies, owing to certain
arrangements with Spain. Would he take the risk, and what would be the
answer of that temporary arbiter of future events, François Joseph Paul
Comte de Grasse, a sailor from the age of twelve, now a
lieutenant-general and "chef d'escadre," who had seen already much
service on every sea, in the East and West Indies, with d'Orvilliers at
Ushant, with Guichen against Rodney in the Caribbean Sea, a haughty man,
it was said, with some friends and many enemies, the one quality of his
acknowledged by friend and foe being valor? "Our admiral," his sailors
were wont to say, "is six foot tall on ordinary days, and six foot six
on battle days."
What would he do and say? People in those times had to take their chance
and act in accordance with probabilities. This Washington and Rochambeau
did. By the beginning of June all was astir in the northern camp.
Soldiers did not know what was contemplated, but obviously it was
something great. Young officers exulted. What joy to have at last the
prospect of an "active campaign," wrote Closen in his journal, "and to
have an occasion to visit other provinces and see the differences in
manners, customs, products, and trade of our good Americans!"
The camp is raised and the armies are on the move toward New York and
the South; they are in the best dispositions, ready, according to
circumstances, to fight or admire all that turns up. "The country
between Providence and Bristol," says Closen, "is charming. We thought
we had been transported into Paradise, all the roads being lined with
acacias in full bloom, filling the air with a delicious, almost too
strong fragrance." Steeples are climbed, and "the sight is one of the
finest possible." Snakes are somewhat troublesome, but such things will
happen, even in Paradise. The heat becomes very great, and night marches
are arranged, beginning at two o'clock in the morning; roads at times
become muddy paths, where wagons, artillery, carts conveying boats for
the crossing of rivers cause great trouble and delay. Poor Abbé Robin,
ill-prepared for martyrdom, becomes pathetic, talking of his own fate,
fearful of being captured by the English and of becoming "the victim of
those anti-republicans." He sleeps on the ground, under a torrential
rain, "in front of a great fire, roasted on one side, drenched on the
other." He finds, however, that "French gayety remains ever present in
these hard marches. The Americans whom curiosity brings by the thousand
to our camps are received," he writes, "with lively joy; we cause our
military instruments to play for them, of which they are passionately
fond. Officers and soldiers, then, American men and women mix and dance
together; it is the Feast of Equality, the first-fruits of the alliance
which must prevail between those nations.... These people are still in
the happy period when distinctions of rank and birth are ignored; they
treat alike the soldier and the officer, and often ask the latter what
is his profession in his country, unable as they are to imagine that
that of a warrior may be a fixed and permanent one."
Washington writes to recommend precautions against spies, who will be
sent to the French camp, dressed as peasants, bringing fruit and other
provisions, and who "will be attentive to every word which they may hear
drop."[35]
Several officers, for the sake of example, discard their horses and
walk, indifferent to mud and heat; some of them, like the Viscount de
Noailles, performing on foot the whole distance of seven hundred and
fifty-six miles between Newport and Yorktown. Cases of sickness were
rare. "The attention of the superior officers," says Abbé Robin, "very
much contributed to this, by the care they took in obliging the soldiers
to drink no water without rum in it to remove its noisome qualities." It
is not reported that superior officers had to use violence to be obeyed.
This precaution, up to a recent date, was still considered a wise one;
in the long journeys on foot that we used to take in my youth across the
Alps, our tutor was convinced that no water microbe could resist the
addition of a little kirsch. Anyway, we resisted the microbes.
On the 6th of July the junction of the two armies took place at
Phillipsburg, "three leagues," Rochambeau writes, "from Kingsbridge, the
first post of the enemy in the island of New York,"[36] the American
army having followed the left bank of the Hudson in order to reach the
place of meeting. On the receipt of the news, Lord Germain, the British
colonial secretary, wrote to Clinton, who commanded in chief at New
York: "The junction of the French troops with the Americans will, I am
persuaded, soon produce disagreements and discontents, and Mr.
Washington will find it necessary to separate them very speedily, either
by detaching the Americans to the southward or suffering the French to
return to Rhode Island.... But I trust, before that can happen, Lord
Cornwallis will have given the loyal inhabitants on both sides of the
Chesapeake the opportunity they have so long ago earnestly desired of
avowing their principles and standing forth in support of the King's
measures." Similar proofs of my lord's acumen abound in his partly
unpublished correspondence. He goes on rejoicing and deducting all the
happy consequences which were sure to result from the meeting of the
French and American troops, so blandly elated at the prospect as to
remind any one familiar with La Fontaine's fables, of Perrette and her
milk-pot.
Washington, in the meantime, was reviewing the French troops (July 9),
and Rochambeau the American ones, and--a fact which would have greatly
surprised Lord Germain--the worse equipped the latter were, the greater
the sympathy and admiration among the French for their endurance. "Those
brave people," wrote Closen, "it really pained us to see, almost naked,
with mere linen vests and trousers, most of them without stockings; but,
would you believe it? looking very healthy and in the best of spirits."
And further on: "I am full of admiration for the American troops. It is
unbelievable that troops composed of men of all ages, even of children
of fifteen, of blacks and whites, all nearly naked, without money,
poorly fed, should walk so well and stand the enemy's fire with such
firmness. The calmness of mind and the clever combinations of General
Washington, in whom I discover every day new eminent qualities, are
already enough known, and the whole universe respects and admires him.
Certain it is that he is admirable at the head of his army, every member
of which considers him as his friend and father." These sentiments,
which were unanimous in the French army, assuredly did not betoken the
clash counted upon by the English colonial secretary, and more than one
of our officers who had, a few years later, to take part in another
Revolution must have been reminded of the Continental soldiers of '81 as
they led to battle, fighting for a similar cause, our volunteers of '92.
No real hatred, any more than before, appeared among the French troops
for those enemies whom they were now nearing, and with whom they had
already had some sanguinary skirmishes. During the intervals between
military operations relations were courteous, and at times amicable. The
English gave to the French news of Europe, even when the news was good
for the latter, and passed to them newspapers. "We learned that news"
(Necker's resignation), writes Blanchard, "through the English, who
often sent trumpeters and passed gazettes to us. We learned from the
same papers that Mr. de La Motte-Picquet had captured a rich convoy.[37]
These exchanges between the English and us did not please the Americans,
nor even General Washington, who were unaccustomed to this kind of
warfare." The fight was really for an idea, but, what might have
dispelled any misgivings, with no possibility of a change of idea.