Barry Hastings: Our French friends were indispensable

(Author’s note: I know I said I’d write more on our recent National calamity at the end of my Danielle story, but I lied, and it’s the only lie you’ll catch me in. I’ve decided to let Trump simmer in Chris Crisco’s excess oils, while I tell you a story about what could have been a real national calamity, but wasn’t, due to help from people we often make rude jokes about, but shouldn’t. French soldiers, sailors and armaments played a huge role in gaining our victory over George the Third, a much more robust English economy, the King’s Redcoats and his huge navy. Many thousands of courageous French seamen and soldiers died to make it so. They didn’t give us the Statue of Liberty because we’d won our battle for freedom; rather because we’d shared the victory.)

By Barry Hastings

It will be so, for a long time, for liberals, progressives, Democrats and everyone else willing to share the old American dreams of Liberte, Eqalite, Fraternite we long ago borrowed from the French people we often disparage, but without whose help (naval, military, moral) our revolutionary battle for freedom would not, could not, have succeeded. (Put that in your pipes, and smoke it, you right wing-nuts, and politically suicidal isolationists.)

The important point here is, I’ll bet not one in one hundred of you can tell me how, and why this is true, without turning to “goggle” (a pun, not an error), or some long unopened book on the American Revolutionary War (more correctly, “the War to preserve our Political Revolution”), which was completed long before the “embattled farmers” fired, “the shot(s) heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

The big trouble with American memory is that it, more often than not, forgets the part played by friends and allies, and glorifies (read “over-glorifies”) the part played by “us.” For example, take militias, which, according to General Washington, and other Yankee commanders, were often described as, “First to run, unreliable and troublesome.” After many embarrassments resulting in battles lost, that could have been won, they found an answer. General Washington wrestled, throughout the war, with two big problems: 1) how to make militias stand and fight in face of very efficient, very effective, and very frightening to see advancing (orderly, disciplined, with fixed bayonets gleaming) British Infantry; and 2) how to put together a naval force strong enough to control the seas (at least locally or regionally) long enough to prevent the Brits reinforcing (or evacuating) by sea, their troops caught in “uncomfortable” circumstances.

On Sept. 15, 1780, Washington wrote an official letter to the President of Congress, telling him, very bluntly, how useless militia forces had been, and still were. “No militia,” the general commented, “will ever acquire the habits necessary to resist a ‘regular’ force. The firmness requisite for the real business of fighting is only to be attained by a constant course of discipline and service. I have never yet been witness to a single instance that can justify a different opinion. “

The first steps in solving the militia problem came at Valley Forge, when the German officer volunteer ‘Baron’ von Steuben was put to work there training the “Continental Line” in field maneuvers, field discipline, “fire” discipline, and use of the bayonet (psychologically and in actual combat). The second step was taken by Washington and his field commanders when they came up with the idea of removing “militia” from the line, and placing them 150-175 yards to the fore of the “Continentals,” in concealed holes or trenches, and ordering them to fire two, or more, volleys at advancing Brits, before retiring, under penalty for failure to do so, of having Continental Line soldiers “fire on them,” if they ran, or otherwise failed to do their duty. A couple of occasions where it actually happened, quieted the “itchy” feet of militia men.

The Sea Power problem was much more difficult to solve, as Americans possessed, in reality, no real naval forces capable of facing the Royal Navy in a stand-up fight. We did, however, “steal the king blind” by snatching up his Majesty’s unescorted merchant ships at sea with our “Privateers” (licensed pirates) — but Americans proved (financially and physically) incapable of gathering a naval force capable of meeting the Royal Navy in combat. Becoming capable of doing so, would mean receiving a lot of assistance from the French Navy (whose record against the Brits at sea over most of the preceding two hundred years, left much to be desired). None of this, however, should be allowed to reflect badly on the courage and naval efficiency of officers like John Paul Jones and others, who did the best they could with what they had available for use.

The catch, however, was that for some (many) years, the Royal Navy, through theft, jobbery, peculation, and mismanagement, had slipped into disrepair and disarray; its officer corps (with a few very good exceptions) had fallen into what Winston Churchill described (in 1914), as a tradition of, “Rum, sodomy and the lash.” It was closer to truth in the 1780s, than in 1914, and at the Chesapeake Capes in 1781, the English paid a huge penalty for carelessness and mismanagement of their huge, but decaying Navy. They forfeited their claim to the North American Continent. Let me tell you how.

In 1780, General Washington had written two interesting letters, one to the Congress, and one to Ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin. The first, to Congress, made clear his belief American success required adequate sea power. “Under all circumstances,” the general insisted, “a decisive naval superiority is to be considered a fundamental principle, and the basis upon which all hope of success must ultimately depend.”

In the second (and ultimately most important) letter, to Ambassador Franklin, he bluntly said, “Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive; and with it, everything honorable and glorious.” Less than a year later, (fall 1781) the Commander-in-Chief received word a large (huge) French fleet was en route to the Virginia Capes, by way of the Caribbean, and due to arrive off Virginia soon. His heart greatly cheered, General Washington began to move.

Also in the fall of 1781, as Lord Cornwallis’ army, already run ragged, and suffering many, many irreplaceable casualties in the North and South Carolina, and Virginia woods and swamps at the hands of American Regulars (and reinvigorated militia), was withdrawing toward Yorktown, Va., on the Southern Shores of of the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. He was hoping to be taken aboard vessels of an English fleet (hopefully) due to arrive from New York.

Meanwhile, Baron von Steuben (who’d been busily training new regular troops near Richmond), and other American commanders, were moving to trap him him between a rock (the shore), and a hard place (the sea). Washington was also moving south toward Yorktown with American troops, and a (fairly large) contingent of French Infantry, who’d marched from Rhode Island, while a small contingent of French naval vessels stationed there, sailed south to meet the huge fleet under Admiral the Compte de Grasse, off the Chesapeake Capes. The combined fleet then blocked the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, landing another force of French infantry, to join Washington’s French and American soldiers already on the scene. Unless help came soon from the Royal Navy, Cornwallis and his army, were doomed.

British Admiral Thomas Graves (an old fuddy-duddy of the worst sort), arrived a day or so later, and hovered around off the Capes for a bit, loaded with replacements for Cornwallis, ammunition for his cannons, and food for his men, but Graves lacked the moral fiber to force his way in to relieve them. He headed out to sea, shortly followed by the entire French fleet, and they both began a long-range, desultory cannonade, which proved altogether ineffective. Some time in the night, de Grasse recognized his opportunity, then turned his fleet shoreward, and on reaching the Bay, anchored his ships, across the mouth, completely blocking the entrance between Cape Charles to the north, and Cape Henry to the south.

Meanwhile, Washington and the French General, the Count de Rochambeau, were blasting hell out of General Cornwallis in Yorktown, and that proud (but stupid) general’s force was shrinking by the hour. Finally, Cornwallis saw, “the writing on the wall,” and nearly halfway through October, he surrendered, and his soldiers marched out of Yorktown, arms reversed and colors cased. Though the guerrilla war continued for some time in the back country, and with some violence, for all practical purposes, it was all over.

(Author’s end note: We were very lucky, as the Brits had some very good senior Naval officers, but they were, for the most part, disliked by both king and admiralty. They also had some excellent young post captains near America, on the Caribbean Station. Among them was 21-year-old Horatio (later Horatio Lord) Nelson, a very enterprising young man, commanding a large 36-gun Frigate, who’d have much enjoyed burning our coastal cities, from Charleston, S.C., to Philadelphia, New York, Providence and Boston.

Don’t think he couldn’t have made it happen. Not too many years later, as a young admiral, he absolutely destroyed Napoleon’s whole invasion fleet at the Battle of the Nile, forcing that adventurer to abandon his troops in Egypt, and secretly return to France. A bit later, after losing an arm and an eye, at the battle of Copenhagen, his fleet commander raised a signal ordering him to “retire.” He raised a telescope to his blind eye, and told a young officer nearby, “I really do not see the signal,” and went on to capture nearly the whole Danish squadron. Later, he died at the Battle of Trafalgar, where he defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain, sinking or capturing 26 Line of Battle Ships, and utterly destroying Napoleon’s hopes of, and plans for, invading England.

He was one hell of an amazing man. Another fine English officer, of the same type and era, you might enjoy learning something of, was Thomas, Lord Cochrane, the 10 (Scots) Earl of Dundonald. He was a real terror in a fight at sea! Neither man was one to be “messed around with.”