For the British, meanwhile, Henry Clinton’s return to New York City proved timely. Less than a week later, on July 11, the French alliance bore fruit when Vice Admiral Charles-Hector, Comte d’Estaing, appeared off Sandy Hook with a formidable fleet of sixteen “ships of the line”; these powerful vessels, typically with two gun decks in North American waters, were so designated because of their ability to join the formal lines of battle in which rival fleets customarily fought each other. Outgunned and undermanned, Lord Howe’s ships stayed safe within New York Harbor, denying d’Estaing the chance to inflict a decisive defeat. While more than 2,000 privateering craft sailed under American colors during the Revolutionary War, creating havoc among British merchantmen, the official Continental Navy never amounted to above a score of single-deck frigates, often commanded by dashing officers capable of fighting morale-boosting ship-to-ship actions but insignificant in broader strategic terms. The appearance of d’Estaing’s formidable squadron therefore gave a hefty jolt to the balance of sea power: while William Howe’s land operations had been conducted confident in the knowledge that his brother’s warships dominated North American waters, Henry Clinton enjoyed no such guarantee.54
Acutely aware of d’Estaing’s significance, Washington took pains to welcome him and to give assurances that he would spare no effort to foster a “cordial and lasting amity” between the new allies.55 With the British still too strong at New York, d’Estaing and Washington instead resolved to strike at Newport, Rhode Island. Its garrison of 3,000 British, Germans, and Loyalist provincial troops offered a seemingly soft target. At the end of July the French fleet entered Narragansett Bay; soon after, Major General John Sullivan was menacing the British garrison with 10,000 men, mostly militia but with a stiffening of Continental regiments. All looked set for an overwhelming combined assault by land and sea when the indefatigable “Black Dick” Howe unexpectedly arrived off Newport on August 9 with a reinforced fleet. D’Estaing sailed out to meet him, but a gale kept the rivals apart. Meanwhile, the dogged Sullivan pushed on with his siegeworks. On August 14, an attack was repulsed, and the dejected militia began to disband. By now d’Estaing, too, was keen to depart and refit his damaged ships in Boston before Howe sought another battle. Sullivan’s appeals could not dissuade him. Bitterly disappointed at this “betrayal,” the New Englander couldn’t contain his disappointment. When he was forced to lift the siege, the garrison staged a sally to help him on his way; on September 1, 1778, Howe’s ships brought Clinton with a relief force of 4,000 men from New York. It was a shambolic start to the Franco-American alliance and a clear reminder that, even with the entrance of the French, sea power remained in the balance, dependent upon the resolution of local commanders, the commitment of resources, and the fickleness of the wind.
No less disappointed than Sullivan, but far more diplomatic in his reaction, Washington worked to minimize any long-term damage. Having fought the French as a young man, he knew as well as anyone that old enmities still lurked just beneath the surface: they must be smothered for the greater good of the cause. As he wrote to the crestfallen Nathanael Greene, who’d eagerly joined the expedition to reconquer his birthplace and who distinguished himself during the fighting withdrawal, while the campaign’s failure was regrettable, “a still worse consequence” would be the sowing of “seeds of dissention and distrust between us and our new allies.” Given the “universal clamor” against the French—which had triggered murderous brawls in Boston—the tactful Greene was to exert himself to pacify d’Estaing, “heal all private animosities,” and stifle “all illiberal expressions and reflections” from American officers that threatened to scupper the alliance.56
Clinton sought to exploit his enemy’s embarrassment and the local superiority of Howe’s fleet by taking the offensive. Under the command of Major General “No Flint” Grey, the Newport relief force was sent to raid the New England coast, burning New Bedford and rounding up cattle on Martha’s Vineyard. Some hard-line British officers, the “fire and sword men,” approved of such devastation and believed more of the same would bring the rebels to heel; others saw the raids as futile, even counterproductive.57 Eager to land a telling blow while he still commanded the men soon to be siphoned off to other battle fronts, Clinton now proposed attacking Boston and destroying the French fleet sheltering there. When Lord Howe vetoed the plan as too risky, Clinton sought to provoke a decisive engagement with Washington’s army encamped amid the hills north of Manhattan. But when a powerful British force entered New Jersey, Washington resurrected the Fabian strategy that he had used against Howe for much of the previous year, refusing to be enticed from his strong ground. During the winter of 1778–79, Washington’s army was quartered in an arc above Manhattan, with concentrations at Danbury in Connecticut, West Point in the Hudson Highlands, and Middlebrook, New Jersey.58
Meanwhile, direct French intervention had prompted Congress to revive its long-cherished plans to invade Canada. While he had backed such an offensive in 1775, Washington now opposed it, and on good grounds. In an official letter to Congress, sent on November 11, 1778, he emphasized the notorious logistical problem of pushing troops across the intervening wilderness. But in a private letter, sent three days later to his friend the president of Congress Henry Laurens, Washington revealed that his real misgivings concerned the motives of his French allies. Alarmed “for the true and permanent interests” of his country, Washington feared the consequences of sending a French army into what was until recently a Bourbon possession—“attached to them by all the ties of blood, habits, manners, religion.” Displaying his firm grasp of political realities, he told Laurens: “I fear this would be too great a temptation to be resisted by any power actuated by the common maxims of national policy.” For Americans, the ramifications of a rebuilt New France were frightening to contemplate: with her Spanish relatives in possession of New Orleans and controlling the Mississippi River and well-disposed tribes of Indians arching along the western frontier between the two Bourbon territories, France would “have it in her power to give law to these states.” Although “heartily disposed” to think the best of America’s new ally, he added that “it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest, and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.”59
When the French and Americans next acted together, the objective could not have been more distant from Canada; their presence in Georgia, the most southerly rebel state, resulted from a significant shift in British operations. In early November 1778, Clinton had reluctantly embarked the hefty detachments that Germain demanded, a development, as he dolefully informed the American Secretary, which would preclude future offensives by his own main army. The increasingly despondent Clinton had already tendered his resignation, without success. Tied to a command he no longer wanted, Sir Henry still sought to use his limited resources on other fronts. When Germain had first recommended the abandonment of Philadelphia, he had also suggested a southern expedition to exploit the reportedly strong Loyalist sentiments in Georgia and the Carolinas. Clinton acted on that recommendation, sending a capable officer, Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, with 3,000 men, including his own 71st Regiment of Highlanders, to reconquer Georgia. When Campbell’s force landed, shortly before Christmas 1778, resistance was insignificant. On December 29, Savannah fell to the British, and in January 1779, Augusta followed suit. Campbell’s successor, Brigadier General Augustine Prevost, aimed a stroke at Charleston, South Carolina, but was obliged to turn back after Congress’s new commander in the Southern Department, Major General Benjamin Lincoln, headed north from Georgia to relieve the port.
While the British were making headway in Georgia, d’Estaing had been preoccupied in the Caribbean. A soldier before turning sailor, on St. Lucia he returned to his old trade, encountering the veteran redcoats that Clinton had sent from New York under the ubiquitous Major General James Grant. These troops soon demonst
rated the combat skills they had acquired in more than two years of tough campaigning against the American rebels. On December 18, 1778, a single brigade of 1,300 men under Brigadier General William Medows successfully defended the brushwood-covered peninsula of The Vigie against a determined attack by 5,000 French regulars. In “this Bunker Hill of the Caribbean,” which gave a taste of things to come in Spain and Portugal thirty years later, the thin red line shredded the oncoming assault columns, with round shot and canister from four heavy eighteen-pounder cannon increasing the carnage: the British suffered 171 casualties, the French a staggering 1,600, including 400 killed.60 When they finally arrived, tidings of this brilliant success over the old enemy heartened Clinton’s troops now watching Washington’s army from Manhattan. In his diary Captain Peebles noted approvingly: “Well done little Meadows. He licked them handsomely.”61
That summer, Clinton still hoped to tempt Washington into a decisive engagement. He calculated that a drive against the American forts guarding the strategically vital Highlands on the Hudson River—the same objectives that he’d briefly, captured and then reluctantly relinquished in October 1777—would draw Washington’s army from its current position in New Jersey. When Stony Point and Verplanck’s Point were both seized on June 1, 1779, so threatening to rupture the Americans’ communications with New England, Washington shifted troops to bolster the newly erected fortifications farther north, overlooking the Hudson at West Point, but once again avoided battle. Meanwhile, Sir Henry tried another ploy, sending Major General Tryon to raid the coast of Connecticut. Tryon fulfilled his task with a zeal that exceeded Clinton’s orders: between July 5 and July 11, New Haven, Fairfield, and Norwalk were all torched. Although Washington ordered troops to Connecticut, he refused to fall into Clinton’s trap by marching his main army into New England.
Instead, Washington struck back by authorizing a surprise attack on Stony Point. The mission was entrusted to the aggressive and flamboyant Brigadier General Anthony Wayne. Like the redcoats of “No Flint” Grey who had inflicted such a stinging defeat on his Pennsylvanians at Paoli, by Washington’s specific order Wayne was to attack “with fixed bayonets and muskets unloaded.” His command consisted of “chosen men” drawn from the light infantry companies that each Continental regiment had been ordered to form in May 1778; following British Army practice, these elite units were temporarily brigaded together. On July 15, 1779, they justified their privileged status, swiftly overpowering Stony Point’s garrison: at a cost of fifteen killed and eighty-five wounded, including Wayne himself, the Americans slew sixty-three redcoats, wounded another seventy, and took 442 prisoners. An elated Wayne reported that his light infantry had “behaved like men who are determined to be free.”62
Shaken by this coup, Clinton immediately recalled Tryon’s command, while Washington ordered the destruction of the fortifications at Stony Point and fell back. Soon after, on August 19, the Americans deepened Clinton’s depression with another daring hit-and-run raid that further demonstrated the Continental Army’s growing élan. This time the blow fell against the post of Paulus Hook, on the New Jersey shore within cannon shot of New York City. In a well-planned and audacious operation conducted by the Virginian Major Henry Lee—father of the legendary Confederate commander Robert E. Lee—another 150 prisoners were taken. As Washington appreciated, while “small on the great scale” such exploits increased his army’s confidence, while disgracing the enemy.63 In their wake the disheartened Clinton once again tendered his resignation: as before, Germain refused to accept it.
During the summer of 1779, while Washington’s main army fenced warily with Clinton on the Lower Hudson, a substantial detachment was sent to the northwest to punish Britain’s allies among the Six Nations of the Iroquois, who had unleashed destructive raids on the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania during the previous year. While the Iroquois contribution to Burgoyne’s 1777 campaign had proved short lived and ultimately insignificant, their attacks in 1778 had a far greater impact on the revolutionary cause, not simply terrorizing settlers, but destroying rich farmlands crucial for feeding the Continental Army. They had also highlighted the stark difference between the European-style war being fought on the eastern seaboard and the less-restrained conflict characteristic of the western frontiers. That dichotomy was brought home to Captain Ewald of the Hessian jägers one evening in June 1779 after “a captain of the Indians,” who had served with the Loyalist rangers led by Colonel John Butler and the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, reached the British lines in the Hudson Highlands. This mixed-race warrior, whose father was an English-born gunsmith among the Iroquois, had participated in the notorious raid on the Wyoming Valley in July 1778. It had been a gory business: “I had worked so hard with my tomahawk and scalping knife that my arms were bloody above the elbows,” he told his listeners. Asked why Colonel Butler hadn’t prevented such cruelties, the warrior patiently explained another reality of frontier warfare that had been clear to French officers operating alongside the Shawnees and Delawares in the 1750s: had Butler dared to “meddle” with the Indians’ “customs and laws,” they would have taken umbrage and deserted him instantly. According to the Indians’ ways, he added, enemy officers never received quarter. If taken alive, such war leaders faced death by torture. Indeed, one rebel major was subjected to a three-day ordeal, “during which the Indians danced continually around this poor fellow among their prisoners of war. Since he was a brave and distinguished soldier, they shouted to him that he should now act like a man at the end of his life.” Appalled, yet clearly fascinated at this insight into a parallel world of war at its most savage, Ewald noted that the narrator’s “heart seemed to rejoice with this tale.”64
In fact, Ewald had already experienced something of the ferocity of frontier-style warfare at first hand. During the previous summer, he and his jägers had cooperated with Loyalist cavalry in mounting a devastating ambush near Philips’s Manor, New York. The victims were Massachusetts Continentals and a band of Mahican Indians from Stockbridge in the same state. As Ewald acknowledged, it had been a “hot fight” in heavily wooded terrain, with the cornered Americans—white and Indian alike—defending themselves “like brave men.” After about three hours, many of them were dead, either dropped by the jägers’ rifles, or cut down by the dragoons. It was an unusually ruthless engagement. Ewald noted: “No Indians, especially, received quarter . . . save for a few.” When he later walked over the ground, the curious Ewald examined the dead Mahicans and was impressed by “their sinewy and muscular bodies” and their expressions, which testified “that they had perished with resolution”; they put him in mind of his own Germanic ancestors under Arminius, who had massacred the legions of Varus in AD 9. A dedicated soldier, but clearly a humane man, Ewald wrote nothing of why the Stockbridge warriors should be virtually annihilated, while about fifty of their white comrades were spared and taken prisoner. The mere fact that they were Indians was apparently sufficient explanation: the bloody episode suggests that even when tribal fighters operated far from the frontiers and alongside “conventional” forces, they were deemed to fall outside the customary “Rules of War” and treated without mercy.65
Washington’s punitive expedition to exact retribution upon the Iroquois was commanded by the conscientious, if conspicuously unlucky, Major General Sullivan. As Washington knew from his own hard experience, Indian fighting was a chancy and unpredictable business, and he gave Sullivan detailed advice intended to minimize the risk of another Braddock-style fiasco. Above all, he was to maintain the aggressive initiative. Sullivan should “make rather than receive attacks, attended with as much impetuosity, shouting and noise as possible, and to make the troops act in as loose and dispersed a way as is consistent with a proper degree of government, concert and mutual support.” Mimicking the celebrated tactics of his old colleague Henri Bouquet, developed during the Forbes campaign of 1758 and tested at Bushy Run in 1763, Washington urged that “wherever they have an opportunity,” Sullivan’s men
should “rush on with the war whoop and fixed bayonet: nothing will disconcert and terrify the Indians more than this.” While Washington had shunned a plundering, destructive war in the east and deplored Tryon’s recent coastal raids on New England, the western frontier was a different matter. Against “savage” Indians, there was no need for civility or restraint. Sullivan’s object must be the utter devastation of the Indian settlements: indeed, Washington emphasized, these should “not be merely overrun but destroyed”; there could be no negotiation “until the total ruin of their settlements is effected.” If the Indians then showed some “disposition for peace,” they should be required to prove their sincerity by delivering up such “principal instigators of their past hostility” as Butler and Brant.66
Although marked down for vengeance, Joseph Brant, or Thayendanegea, had sought to minimize the sufferings of the frontier settlers; despite his “savage” background, he, too, exemplified the qualities of gentleman and warrior that Washington prized. Among the most remarkable of all Native American leaders, Brant was a protégé of Britain’s influential Indian superintendent, Sir William Johnson, and in 1758, while aged about fifteen, had accompanied him to fight the French at Ticonderoga. After schooling in New Hampshire, in late 1775, Brant had traveled to England as part of a delegation intended to secure British backing to guarantee the integrity of tribal lands against the incursions of the American revolutionaries. In London the dignified and articulate Mohawk became the toast of the town. He was interviewed by James Boswell for an article in the London Magazine, and his portrait was painted by the leading society artist George Romney; it would be painted again in 1786 by none other than Gilbert Stuart, later to achieve acclaim for his iconic likenesses of President Washington. By August 1776, Brant was with the British forces poised off New York and struck up an enduring friendship with a kindred spirit, the aristocratic and chivalrous General Hugh, Lord Percy.67
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