Victory at Yorktown Read Free Page B

Henry Clinton, would never have dared sail from New York with an expeditionary force consisting of most of the British fleet under Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot, plus as many as 8,000 troops, to besiege Charleston, South Carolina. Clinton had left behind some 11,000 soldiers, two-thirds of them Hessians and the others Tories, and while it was tempting to think they were vulnerable to attack, Washington knew he could accomplish nothing without a French fleet and many more soldiers to bolster his own feeble ranks in New Jersey and the Hudson Valley—2,800 of whose three-year enlistments would be up at the end of May.
    *   *   *
    ONCE FRANCE HAD decided to ally itself actively with the United States, the entire complexion of America’s war began to change, and for no one was this more significant than George Washington. Until now, everyone fighting on the rebel side had been directly or indirectly under his command, and his only involvement with sea power was to wish that a European enemy of Britain would bring it to his aid.
    The French alliance called for a fresh approach to strategy and tactics. The Continental Army would be fighting alongside troops who neither spoke their language nor were directly subject to Washington’s orders. And who could say how the introduction of France’s warships would affect the existing equation? While England’s sea power was superior to that of France, the former country also had to reckon with Spain, whose navy when combined with that of the French could tip the scales.
    Since protection of the homeland was of paramount importance to the English, they decided to keep their main fleet in European waters unless an enemy squadron was detached to the West Indies or America, but only after assuring themselves that the ships were definitely bound for North America could they dispatch a detachment in pursuit. That meant, of course, that the French, sailing first, were more likely to have the advantage and beat the English across the Atlantic. But there were inherent uncertainties, one being control of the waters of the West Indies, where French and British each had valuable properties. This was the real center of the Atlantic trade, where the naval forces of England, France, and other European powers were on the prowl and where the best-laid plans could be undone in the blink of an eye.
    European diplomacy in the eighteenth century was a mirror image of Niccolò Machiavelli’s theory of practical statecraft. The end justified the means, and the end, as often as not, was the aggrandizement of the various monarchs and nobles. Not surprisingly, Europe’s capitals swarmed with spies, who were a continuing problem for the more naive American envoys. Beginning in 1763, the goal of France’s foreign policy was revenge—revenge for the humiliation it had suffered at the hands of England during the Seven Years’ War. Crushed militarily and stripped of its colonies by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France lost its position as the first nation of Europe and was reduced to the unprecedented position of a second-rate power.
    Since the French king Louis XV and his foreign policy had been largely in the hands of his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, from 1745 until her death in 1764, she deserved much of the blame for bringing on the Seven Years’ War, so disastrous for France. One of her favorites was Duc Étienne François de Choiseul, who managed the foreign affairs portfolio through the Seven Years’ War and obtained the best terms possible (meager as they were) at the peace table. It was Choiseul who perceived in Britain’s disgruntled colonies a likely tool for humbling France’s enemy across the Channel. In 1768 the monarch’s amours again played a hand in the nation’s diplomacy. That year the king took another mistress—one Marie Jeanne Bécu, who had until then performed the same services for Chevalier Jean du Barry