Victory at Yorktown by Richard M. Ketchum Read Free Book Online Page B

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.”
    The failure of the British to attack, and possibly fatally wound, the French at Newport was calamitous in the long run. Because of the feud between General Clinton and Admiral Arbuthnot the French troops, who were, after all, some of the finest units of a veteran, first-class army, remained unharmed and within easy sailing distance of New York. Their presence in Rhode Island was a constant threat to the British, and, as George Washington discovered, even the pretense of an attack was likely to alter whatever plans Sir Henry might have made.
    Nor was the French army the only beneficiary of the British headquarters infighting. Ternay’s capital ships—seven of them—remained in Newport, a menace Arbuthnot had to deal with by maintaining a blockade, tying up vessels that could be more profitably employed elsewhere. And the blockade, as the French were to discover, was no guarantee that those seven ships of the line could not escape.
    During that summer of 1780 Sir Henry Clinton lost the initiative and never regained it. For eight more months he and Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot would remain locked in a harness of mutual hatred that precluded any possibility of cooperation between the services they led.
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    WHILE THE BRITISH high command vacillated about attacking Newport, Washington was at his wit’s end, hoping for congressional guidance on what he was supposed to do when his army and the French finally did join hands, and, on another topic, what the legislators suggested he might do now that the latest appeals to the states for troops had fallen far short of expectations.
    Speaking of the French, he informed Congress of his need for “measures which have been judged essential to be adopted for cooperating with the armament expected from France.” The allies had arrived, yet he had “no basis to act upon” and no instructions regarding “what we can or cannot undertake.” Unless he was informed as to what support he could expect from the states, he foresaw an “awkward, embarrassing, and painful situation” and was “altogether at a loss what to do.” Lest the congressmen suppose that his need was for troops only, he told them of the army’s humiliating condition: “We have no shirts … to distribute to the troops,” who are “absolutely destitute.” The same was true of overalls—a situation that was bad enough at any time, but “peculiarly mortifying” for men and officers when they were about to act with their new allies.
    As for the militia, their numbers “will fall as far short of the demand as the Continental troops.” Provisions had not been received in anything like adequate amounts; forage and transportation were still worse—resulting in a practice he abhorred, of impressing horses and wagons, which was “violent … oppressive and … odious to the people.”
    The atmosphere at Washington’s headquarters brightened when news from Rochambeau reached the General on August 25, saying he had received a dispatch reporting the arrival of the French frigate Alliance , bearing much-needed arms and powder. But as usual, bad news accompanied the good: the long-awaited “second division” of fleet and soldiers was blockaded in the harbor at Brest. At best, the ships might break out in time to arrive in America in October, but to Washington that meant no campaigning until the following year and a lot of mouths to