Victory at Yorktown (5 page)

Week after week the officer corps deteriorated. Brigadier General Enoch Poor, who had served with Washington at Trenton and Princeton and fought at Monmouth, died in September of “putrid fever,” as typhus was called. Another brigadier, John Nixon, left the army because of health problems. Alexander McDougall, “sick of the stone,” considered “laying by for the winter”; John Sullivan and Israel Putnam were soon to retire because of ill health. Still other officers threatened to resign, some jealous of another who was given an appointment they cherished, others simply worn out, physically and mentally, tired of being hungry, unpaid, and away from their families. A large body of militia—some 4,500 men from Pennsylvania who were marching to join in the planned attack on New York, and who would have been welcomed with open arms at any other time—were ordered by the General to return home. He could not feed them.

Meantime a nasty situation arose with the Comte de Rochambeau, whose orders were to put himself under Washington's command. All very well, but from the latter's point of view the language barrier made communication extremely difficult: the Frenchman spoke no English, the American's French was elementary at best, and Washington was dealing with a man whose nuanced language and charm were well suited to the king's court but difficult for a Virginia planter to match. To deal with the dilemma, Washington informed Rochambeau and Ternay that he would communicate with them through the young Marquis de Lafayette, “a friend from whom I conceal nothing.… I entreat you to receive whatever he shall tell you as coming from me.”

Nothing could have been more impolitic. Washington did not know this, but during his recent visit to France Lafayette had put himself forward at the French court for the very command now held by Rochambeau, and where the latter was a seasoned veteran, wounded several times and commended for his bravery and skill, who had been fighting for France long before Lafayette was born, the Marquis was now only twenty-three years old and, before volunteering for Washington's army and being given the rank of major general by Congress, had been merely a captain in the French reserve with next to no military experience. In fact, one reason none of the regular French officers in America wanted to serve with Lafayette's command was that everyone but Rochambeau was outranked by the young American major general. Understandably, the French commander had difficulty accepting this turn of events, and the friction was apparent to the men on his staff, who sensed the cooling of relations. As an old army hand, Rochambeau was not about to deal through Lafayette; nor was he willing to accept the latter's suggestions for strategy, which he rejected in honeyed words, saying, “it is always the old father Rochambeau who talks to his dear son whom he loves.…”

To his government, Rochambeau reported frankly that America was “in consternation.” The real strength of Washington's army, he said, was a mere three thousand men, and the country's currency was worthless. “Send us troops, ships, and money,” he went on, “but do not depend on these people nor upon their means: they have neither money nor credit; their means of resistance are only momentary and called forth when they are attacked in their own homes.” Washington's plan for an attack on New York was foolhardy, he observed—preposterous in fact; and very likely the last gasp of a desperate commander. He couldn't avoid wondering if the General's insistence on this plan was not a result of Lafayette's mischief making. If only Washington had not “sent Lafayette to me with full powers from him!” Finally, exasperated by Lafayette's overzealous behavior, the count wrote to Washington, “I beg of your Excellency to continue to give me your orders by the same direct means that you have done until now.”

That ended the awkward dispute, but it also pointed up the difference between the amateurs and professionals who took up arms on the side of America in this war. Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, was one of the former. Before he was two years old his father, a grenadier colonel, was killed at Minden. His mother died when he was thirteen, and when his grandfather followed her to the grave several weeks later the young man was a titled, wealthy orphan. That year he entered the royal army and at the age of sixteen married Adrienne, a daughter of the powerful Noailles family, whose brother, a viscount, came to America with Rochambeau.

In 1775 Lafayette was suddenly captivated by the idea of joining the American cause, motivated by a romantic notion of a revolution by people struggling for freedom and independence, plus a characteristically French desire for revenge against the British, and a hope for personal glory. Aware that the king would not approve his plan, he persuaded Prince de Broglie to introduce him to Johann Kalb, who obtained from Silas Deane written agreements that Lafayette and Kalb would be commissioned major generals upon arrival in America. Then, without even saying good-bye to his wife, Lafayette chartered a ship and sailed for America. (Their firstborn child died not long after his departure, and a second was born when he had been gone only a few months.) His reception by Congress was a frigid one, but when Lafayette volunteered to serve at his own expense Congress appointed him a major general without a command and sent him to Washington.

This was in 1777, at a time when the General had had a bellyful of foreigners who soon “become importunate for offices they have no right to look for,” and he figured the youthful Frenchman, who had no military experience whatsoever, was another of them. Yet this one was different. For one thing, of course, he had what Washington called “illustrious and important connections” with the court of Louis XVI. Slightly built, he was anything but handsome, with a long pointed nose, narrow, egg-shaped head, and receding line of reddish hair. The American commander was impressed by his efforts to learn English (which few of the foreign officers seriously attempted) and his willingness to admit his lack of military experience, so he invited him to join his military family as an honorary aide. The two got off to a slow start, but as time passed their mutual admiration grew into a relationship that is best described as that of father and son. The childless Washington found that he loved Lafayette as he would have loved a child of his own, and soon discovered that the Frenchman possessed a talent he admired and practiced himself, which was to learn from experience. Many a professional soldier sneered at Washington because his methods were often unorthodox, not realizing that he liked to be flexible, letting the situation dictate his actions. Lafayette was not only intelligent but also a fast learner, and he soon became his mentor's most successful military pupil.

Lafayette described their relationship to his wife, Adrienne: “surrounded by flatterers or secret enemies … [Washington] finds in me a sincere friend, in whose bosom he may always confide his most secret thoughts, and who will always speak the truth.”

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FOR THE GENERAL
, the matter at hand was New York, and the question of attacking the city was resolved to his keen regret when Ternay announced flatly that he would not put his ships at risk in New York's harbor, where a superior British fleet and ground troops could bottle them up and hammer them from land and sea. The alliance seemed to be going nowhere, with the lack of personal contact keeping plans in limbo. As yet, Washington had not met the French officers; Rochambeau begged him to visit them, saying, “In an hour of conversation, we shall be able to settle things far more definitely than in volumes of writing.” And although the American commander felt the same way, his army was in such dire straits he simply could not take the time for a face-to-face meeting. As he put it, “my presence here is essential to keep our preparations in activity, or even going on at all.”

The fact that the French troops, who had disembarked on July 11, 1780, were firmly established in Newport was a reminder of the incompetence of Admiral Arbuthnot and his stubborn unwillingness to cooperate with General Clinton. The latter's knowledge that Rochambeau's army was bound for Newport came from the American general Benedict Arnold, who had secretly been in touch with Clinton at intervals during the past year. Sir Henry, who had a large garrison in New York and wanted to occupy Newport before the French arrived, was frustrated in this by Arbuthnot, who would not believe the intelligence and wanted to wait for reinforcements that had been promised him.

Failing in his hope of reoccupying Newport, Clinton prepared to attack the French when they landed and were at their most vulnerable, but Arbuthnot, who rarely missed a chance to do nothing, advised against it and the rare opportunity vanished. Indeed, neither the British general nor the admiral knew when the French arrived; on July 5 Arbuthnot's frigates had sighted Ternay's fleet off Virginia, but Ternay then disappeared. (Why the frigates did not follow the French is a mystery. As Clinton said to himself, the admiral had learned about the French on July 5, “why then did he lose sight of them afterwards?”) Meantime, Clinton was doing his level best to ready a force of six thousand men to hit the French when they reached Newport, but for now all he could do was wait.

Admiral Thomas Graves's squadron was expected any day from England, and he showed up on July 13 with seven hundred of his seamen sick and far from ready for duty, but in theory, at least, he added to the British naval strength.

Again Clinton argued for an attack; Arbuthnot kept finding reasons for delay, finally warning that the combined American and French artillery in Newport, added to Ternay's firepower, would be too much for his ships. And by now Clinton's enthusiasm for the project was waning, as he focused more on the risks than on opportunities. When he convened a rare council of war, the members unanimously voted that the army should stand down and Sir Henry concurred. With that decision he effectively abandoned the initiative and lost what he had regarded as the greatest opportunity since the war began. Ternay, after all, was reported to have seven or eight ships of the line and was convoying some six thousand troops under Rochambeau, and what a coup it would have been to destroy or badly damage the Americans' French allies.

After Clinton made his decision a British naval officer remarked that the fleet “would never see Rhode Island because
the General hated the Admiral.
” That was true enough, and from Sir Henry's standpoint quite legitimate, for Arbuthnot had from the beginning opposed Clinton's plan, ignored a suggested alternative, collected no useful intelligence, produced no plan of his own, and then criticized Clinton for his failure to act. The final straw came in August, when Arbuthnot suggested that he and Sir Henry should confer at Gardiner's Bay at the end of Long Island. Clinton made the three-day trip by carriage in insufferable heat, during which his coachman perished—probably of heat prostration—and arrived only to find that Arbuthnot had departed, leaving behind a note saying that the French fleet was reported to be putting to sea (it was not) and that he planned to intercept it. To put it mildly, Clinton was apoplectic.

For sixteen days “the old woman” Arbuthnot cruised off Newport, learning nothing about the French disposition or defenses except to say, “The enemy were not to be come at.” At last he sailed to Gardiner's Bay to refit and grouse about Clinton.

The middle of September came and with it Admiral Sir George Rodney with ten sail of the line. Suddenly, the British navy held an overpowering advantage over the French, who “gave themselves up for lost on the arrival of Rodney,” according to a Newport loyalist. Rodney was by far the most famous officer in the Royal Navy, an aggressive fighter and first-rate tactician, who tended to be prickly and quarrelsome. Though the opposite might have been expected, he and Clinton were friends, and since Rodney outranked Arbuthnot and was the senior officer present, Sir Henry was delighted and Arbuthnot infuriated.

Admiral Rodney's initial inclination was to launch a combined attack on Newport, which General Clinton opposed vigorously. The general could spare only three thousand soldiers, he said (not the six thousand he had mustered before), and they would be badly outnumbered by the Americans and French, who were said to have ten thousand men. Furthermore, he told Rodney, he would greatly prefer “the plan I laid before you yesterday.”

This was a reference to a top-secret plan to seize West Point, the fort that was the key to the Hudson Valley and New York's Highlands—a project that had come to the general's attention through an offer purportedly from the American Benedict Arnold to betray the post he now commanded.

Why this should negate an attack on Newport is unclear, but the simplest answer is that Sir Henry now believed it impossible to dislodge the French, even with a vastly superior naval force. In any event, Rodney agreed to give him the assistance he needed for the West Point operation, and Clinton's agent, a young officer named John André, was instructed to continue negotiations with the mysterious figure who was assumed to be Arnold. When that drama had played out, it was time for Rodney to depart from New York. He was responsible for the West Indies and sailed away in mid-October after writing a warm note to Sir Henry, concluding, “God bless you and send me from this cold country and from such men as Arbuthnot!”

At the same time Rodney wrote to the Earl of Sandwich, first lord of the Admiralty, in sharply different terms, condemning the inactivity and lassitude of the New York command, the grievous error of evacuating Newport in the first place, and the procrastination in establishing a post in the Chesapeake. Writing to Lord George Germain, secretary of state for the colonies, he carped about Clinton's “four different houses” in New York, where “without any settled plan [the general] idles his time and … suffers himself to be cooped up by Washington with an inferior army, without making any attempt to dislodge him.” The army officers, instead of fighting, put on plays, he added scornfully. What Britain needs here is a general who “hates the Americans from principle.” Rodney was not the only officer to complain, as he did to Sandwich, about the divisive squabbles at headquarters: “When commanders in chief differ,” he wrote, “how much do nations suffer!” The tension around Clinton's office was palpable. As one officer wrote, “The Commanders in Chief … have both written home complaining of each other, and Sir George [Rodney] has taken Clinton's side and has wrote also against Arbuthnot. Commodore Drake, second in command, is hardly on speaking terms with any of the three; so you may guess how the service is carried on.”