May the French general had already written to de Grasse, beseeching him to come with every means at his disposal, to bring his whole fleet, and not only his fleet, but a supply of money, to be borrowed in our colonies, and also all the French land forces from our garrisons which he could muster. The desire of Saint-Simon to come and help had, of course, not been forgotten by Rochambeau, and he counted on his good will.
After having described the extreme importance of the effort to be attempted, he concluded: “The crisis through which America is passing at this moment is of the severest. The coming of Count de Grasse may be salvation.”
Events had so shaped themselves that the fate of the United States and the destinies of more than one nation would be for a few weeks in the hands of one man, and one greatly hampered by imperative instructions obliging him, at a time when there was no steam to command the wind and waves, to be at a fixed date in the West Indies, owing to certain arrangements with Spain.
Would he take the risk, and what would be the answer of that temporary arbiter of future events, François Joseph Paul Comte de Grasse, a sailor from the age of twelve, now a lieutenant general and “chef d'escadre,” who had seen already much service on every sea, in the East and West Indies, with d'Orvilliers at Ushant, with Guichen against Rodney in the Caribbean Sea, a haughty man, it was said, with some friends and many enemies, the one quality of his acknowledged by friend and foe being valor? “Our admiral,” his sailors were wont to say, “is six foot tall on ordinary days and six foot six on battle days.”
Ready for a fight or a frolic
What would he do and say? People in those times had to take their chance and act in accordance with probabilities. This Washington and Rochambeau did. By the beginning of June all was astir in the northern camp. Soldiers did not know what was contemplated, but obviously it was something great. Young officers exulted. What joy to have at last the prospect of an “active campaign,” wrote Closen in his journal, “and to have an occasion to visit other provinces and see the differences in manners, customs, products, and trade of our good Americans!”
The camp is raised and the armies are on the move toward New York and the South; they are in the best dispositions, ready, according to circumstances, to fight or admire all that turns up. “The country between Providence and Bristol,” says Closen, “is charming. We thought we had been transported into Paradise, all the roads being lined with acacias in full bloom, filling the air with a delicious, almost too strong, fragrance.” Steeples are climbed, and “the sight is one of the finest possible.” Snakes are somewhat troublesome, but such things will happen, even in Paradise.
The heat becomes very great, and night marches are arranged, beginning at two o'clock in the morning; roads at times become muddy paths, where wagons, artillery, carts conveying boats for the crossing of rivers cause great trouble and delay. “French gayety remains ever present in these hard marches. The Americans, whom curiosity brings by the thousand to our camps, are received,” Abbé Robin writes, “with lively joy; we cause our military instruments to play for them, of which they are passionately fond. Officers and soldiers, then, American men and women mix and dance together; it is the feast of equality; the first-fruits of the alliance which must prevail between those nations. . . . These people are still in the happy period when distinctions of rank and birth are ignored; they treat alike the soldier and the officer, and often ask the latter what is his profession in his country, unable as they are to imagine that that of a warrior may be a fixed and permanent one.”
Washington warns of spies
Washington writes to recommend precautions against spies, who will be sent to the French camp, dressed as peasants, bringing fruit and other provisions, and who “will be attentive to every word which they may hear drop.”
Several officers, for the sake of example, discard their horses and walk, indifferent to mud and heat; some of them like the Viscount de Noailles, performing on foot the whole distance of 756 miles between Newport and Yorktown. Cases of sickness were rare.
On the 6th of July the junction of the two armies took place at Phillipsburg, “three leagues,” Rochambeau writes, “from Kingsbridge, the first post of the enemy in the island of New York,” the American army having followed the left bank of the Hudson in order to reach the place of meeting.
On the receipt of the news Lord Germain, the British colonial secretary, wrote to Clinton, who commanded in chief at New York: “The junction of the French troops with the Americans will, I am persuaded, soon produce disagreements and discontents and Mr. Washington will find it necessary to separate them very speedily, either by detaching the Americans to the southward or suffering the French to return to Rhode Island. . . . But I trust before that can happen Lord Cornwallis will have given the loyal inhabitants on both sides of the Chesapeake the opportunity they have so long ago earnestly desired, of avowing their principles and standing forth in support of the King'
