The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (87 page)

Even this delay might not have proved detrimental to the attack had Wayne, leading Sullivan's left, not been fired upon by Stephen coming in on Greene's right. Greene had attacked about forty-five minutes after the designated hour because he had to move two miles farther than Sullivan in order to reach his position of assault. This delay has often been blamed for the confusion at the center and ultimately for the loss of the battle. Of itself Greene's delay was probably not important and may indeed, had fog not covered the ground, been desirable. For when Sullivan struck, the British sent their troops forward to meet him. Greene might have been able to cut behind them had he been able to see. In the fog, however, Sullivan's left remained uncovered for an hour, and Wayne moved to secure this flank. Stephen, uncertain as to where he was to link his flank with Wayne's drove behind him and then, his vision obscured by the fog, opened fire. Wayne returned fire, and before the two groups discovered their mistakes, casualties mounted and the left-center was thrown into disorder. Whether through good luck or shrewd timing, Howe then delivered a counterattack with three regiments. A major part of this attack hit Sullivan's left and poured through almost unopposed. This drive blunted the American effort, and within minutes the impetus in the battle had swung to Howe. The Americans retreated despite Washington's efforts to reform the retreating troops. Thomas Paine, who had accompanied Washington, later called this retreat "extraordinary, nobody hurried themselves." They were much too tired to hurry and resembled nothing so much as a slow herd in motion. Greene too pulled back, for Sullivan's collapse had left him terribly exposed. One of his regiments, the 9th Virginian, which had taken around a hundred prisoners was now trapped itself and surrendered, four hundred strong. On the American right, Armstrong survived intact -he had not sent his force into battle. And on the far left Smallwood arrived much too late to exert pressure on the rear of the British, and retired almost as soon as he arrived. By late evening Washington's bedraggled army had pulled back some twenty miles to the west to Pennybacker's Mill.
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The failures of the day undoubtedly arose in part from a plan which was much too complicated to fulfill. The plan called for coordinated attacks by four widely separated forces. Their failures of coordination are often cited as reason for the defeat. Washington blamed the fog for a lack of coordination, but the mounted messengers and the flankers

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each column was supposed to send out might have kept the brigades in touch with one another even through the fog. There is a possibility too that the fog enabled the attack to get off to a good beginning, as the British could not determine just who or what they faced. Moreover, American troops usually fought at their best from cover, and the fog afforded cover of sorts. What might have occurred in bright sunshine with clear visibility is anyone's guess. The British explained their recovery and victory on rather different grounds; discipline and the counterattack they made won the battle as far as they were concerned. Still, they and foreign observers conceded that the battle that had been won was almost lost. The Americans again had taken serious losses, but they had fought gallantly, as Washington remarked. And, as always, the British too had fought bravely. Perhaps Washington's army derived most from the battle: knowledge that they could carry the attack to a fine professional army and carry it well. They lost the battle, to be sure, and for reasons which we will never completely understand, given the possibilities in this engagement and given the confusions on both sides. But even in defeat they had absorbed another valuable lesson.
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Howe's triumph at Germantown and his seizure of Philadelphia gave satisfaction to the British government but these events did not lift the depression that had set in when information about Burgoyne's capture arrived. The term inevitably attached to that event was "disaster." Just how disastrous the loss of Burgoyne's army was could not be known immediately, and for several months there was hope in the cabinet that its worst consequence could be avoided. What the cabinet feared was the entrance of France into the war on the side of the American colonies. French action against Britain would transform a rebellion within the empire into a worldwide conflict whose spread would necessarily result in the dispersion of British forces -- and almost inevitably the establishment of American independence.

Since 1763 the French had husbanded their outrage and dreamed of revenge against the British for the defeat they suffered in the Seven Years War. Not surprisingly, the upheavals in the British colonies alerted the French government to the possibility of splintering the British empire. Choiseul, the foreign minister of Louis XV, recognizing that much of Britain's strength lay in her colonies and trade with them, watched the rising American disaffection with hope that war would occur. Choiseul, however, also had other problems to think about, for example, how he was going to rebuild French naval and military power. This problem existed because of another -- a treasury depleted by the Seven Years War. The agents he sent to America in the 1760s sent back opinions that rebellion would occur, but not immediately, an assessment Choiseul accepted without question.
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Of those who followed Choiseul in the French foreign office, none grasped the possibilities inherent in Anglo-American strife more clearly than Charles Gravier de Vergennes. Vergennes, who had assumed office under the young Louis XVI, shared Choiseul's hope of exploiting the problems of Britain overseas. There were limits to this hope. The yearning to reclaim the French possessions on the North American continent had died, for example. Still, Vergennes did believe that France might reclaim the fisheries off North America and that the French colonies in the West Indies might be retained. And Vergennes never lost sight of his major purpose: to reduce British power wherever possible and thereby re-establish the primacy of France in Europe. Vergennes did not mean to proceed alone against England. He intended to preserve the "family compact" with Spain as the basis of a strong position and to support the Austrian alliance as a means of forestalling England's use of Prussia against France. As for war, Vergennes believed that no war with England should be undertaken unless success seemed likely.
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When the strains of the 1770S in the colonies followed those of the 1760s, Vergennes reacted cautiously. The British government had shown its ability to ride out storms in colonial seas, and he did not wish to be sucked into a hurricane that would throw both Britain and America against France. There was an especially dire potential in such a situation -- that premature action by France would bring the inveterate enemy, Chatham, back into power at the head of a united force. The opportunity of capturing the French West Indies might well produce such a union. By late 1775, with the outbreak of war, this possibility seemed remote and Vergennes's resolve stiffened, and he dismissed as unworthy of consideration the idea of offering neutrality in the struggle in return for an English guarantee of the French islands. Instead he sent a secret agent, Julien Achard de Bonvouloir, to America in the late summer of 1775 with instructions to observe and to offer reassurance to rebels.

Another agent with varied talents offered himself about this time. He was Caron de Beaumarchais, a dramatist (who wrote
The Marriage of Figaro
), adventurer, and a man who possibly loved intrigue more than he hated England. Dramatists require imagination, and Beaumarchais allowed his to carry him into extravagant predictions of an English collapse in the summer of the year. He was in London then avidly gobbling up gossip and rumor and believing, for the time at least, the most absurd stories of radical strength and governmental weakness.
Ver-

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gennes may have disabused Beaumarchais of these delusions. In any case, since, dramatics aside, Beaumarchais could be useful, Vergennes proceeded to make use of him -- indeed, he put Beaumarchais on the payroll of the French secret service and, after an interview in Paris, sent him back to London with instructions to listen carefully and report accurately.

In London once more, Beaumarchais met an American agent, Arthur Lee, brother of Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, a man well suited in several respects to act his new part. Although Lee was often irascible and suspicious, he was also shrewd. He had remained in London as the agent of Massachusetts after fighting began in America, and now he had a new master, the Continental Congress.

Congress had begun to look abroad for support early in 1775, in part because one of its members, Benjamin Franklin, had seen the need. But because reconciliation with Britain remained the heart's desire of many of its members even after the battles of Lexington and Concord, even in fact after Bunker Hill, Congress hesitated to deal with foreign powers. Several members had proposed opening American trade to Europe, an act equivalent to declaring independence and therefore repugnant to many in 1775. The king's declaration in August that the colonies were in a state of rebellion had added supporters to this proposal. Still Congress moved slowly and prudently.
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On November 29, 1775, Congress appointed a secret committee of correspondence "for the sole purpose of corresponding with our friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts, of the world." Franklin was named to this group along with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, John Dickinson, John Jay, and, a few months later, Robert Morris. The committee wasted no time in instructing Arthsur Lee to find out how European powers regarded the American rebellion. What the committee had uppermost in mind, of course, was the attitude of France. All this was done with considerable reservations -- a Protestant Congress representing Protestant states retained ancient animosities toward Catholics and Catholic states. (And on the other side, European monarchs could not be expected to fancy rebellion against one of their own kind.)
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Throughout the winter of 1776 Beaumarchais sent strong arguments

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for intervention on behalf of the colonies against England. One of his carefully calculated warnings held that if France hesitated, the Americans would eventually have to reconcile with Britain. Vergennes sounded the same theme with more subtlety and with shrewd reminders of where French interests lay. By spring, Louis's resistance and that of most of his ministers had weakened, and secret aid to America was approved. Only Turgot, the great controller-general of finance opposed, insisting that American independence would occur in time whatever France did and that an independent America would contribute more to English commercial prosperity than the colonies had. By May 2, 1776, Louis had persuaded himself to disregard these predictions, and he authorized aid of one million livres for munitions for the colonies. Turgot resigned ten days later.
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