Of all the decisive operational decisions made by field commanders, none were more important for the independence of the United States than those made by French Vice Admiral François -Joseph-Paul, comte de Grasse, at Cap François, Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) in July 1781.1 Audacious, unexpected, and crucial are the adjectives that must be applied to de Grasse’s resoluteness in support of the American war effort.
While the admiral was only modestly involved at the strategic level of decision making, and no one would describe him as a great tactician, his actions in the Caribbean that summer illustrate the operational level of war that is at the center of studies at senior military colleges in the United States. As we observe the 225th anniversary of the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, it is appropriate to recall both the context and content of de Grasse’s decisions that set the stage for that momentous event.
Strategic Situation in North America and the Caribbean
By the winter of 1780-81 the worldwide war that had grown out of the American Revolution had reached a critical stage. For the Americans, the situation was desperate: Public finances had collapsed; the British occupied New York City and much of South Carolina and Georgia; British raiding parties operated in Virginia’s James River Valley and the newly settled lands of the Ohio Valley; Major General Benedict Arnold had gone over to the enemy; mutiny had erupted among some of the unpaid, ill-fed, badly clothed, and seemingly forgotten regiments of the Continental Army; and the Franco-American alliance had thus far brought military disappointment. The possible collapse of the American effort caused trepidation among French and Spanish authorities, which had hoped to use the North American rebellion as an opportunity to redeem losses from the Seven Years’ War and humiliate the haughty British.
Spain, however, had made no pact with the American rebels, and in its 1779 treaty of alliance with the French it exacted a high price for cooperation: assistance in seizing British territory in both Europe and the Caribbean. In Europe, its most critical design involved retaking Gibraltar, with a secondary objective of regaining Minorca. In the Caribbean, Spain desired the elimination of most British colonies, especially West Florida (along the northern Gulf coast), East Florida (mainly the Florida peninsula), and, most important, Jamaica. The French desired a few territorial acquisitions in the Lesser Antilles, but for them the separation of the coastal North American colonies from Britain was compensation enough, for it would reduce Britain’s prestige in the European state system and raise that of France. Hopes for achieving these goals would fade if the Americans could not continue to keep large British military and naval assets employed from Georgia to Quebec.2
The British also had difficulties. On one hand, the American revolt seemed about to implode in a burst of exhaustion, financial distress, and military failures. On the other, the British faced problems of strategic overreach, thinly dispersed forces, and dysfunctional leadership. They concentrated their North American military assets in New York City, with separate expeditionary forces in Quebec, Virginia, the Floridas, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean. Naval units protected the home islands, Gibraltar, the Indian Ocean, North America, and the Caribbean.
Each spring the three naval powers—Spain, France, and Britain—sent large naval detachments to the West Indies, where the lucrative sugar islands needed protection and presented inviting targets of opportunity. On three occasions, attempts to develop a French and American campaign along the Atlantic coast failed—in 1778 off Rhode Island, in 1779 at Savannah, and in early 1781 at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay—when the French Navy failed to secure and maintain local dominance. Nonetheless, it became obvious that should the Royal Navy lose its superiority at any location, His Britannic Majesty’s ground forces might find themselves entrapped by a superior Franco-Spanish or Franco-American combined operation.
Moreover, Franco-Spanish naval threats significantly reduced British naval initiatives. The Royal Navy had to escort convoys, pursue privateers and frigates engaged in a guerre de course, and concentrate their fleets at various locations rather than blockade the American coast. Although some offensive successes had been achieved at Savannah, Charleston, and St. Lucia, the British were on the defensive over much of the globe.
In 1780 the Bourbon powers dispatched significant additions to their military and naval forces in the New World. Spanish Vice Admiral José Solano y Bote sailed from Cadiz in April with 12 ships of the line, 5 frigates, and a convoy of transports with more than 11,000 soldiers commanded by Lieutenant General Victorio de Navia. Stationed at Havana, this force was the first Spanish installment for the invasion of Jamaica, with British-held Pensacola, the capital of West Florida, as a preliminary objective.
The French sent two expeditionary forces. The first, commanded by Admiral Luc Urbain de Bouexic, comte de Guichen, went to Cap François with Major General Claude-Anne, marquis de Saint-Simon Montbleru, and included more than 5,000 troops. These French soldiers were assigned to the Spanish for the Jamaica expedition.
The second force consisted of more than 5,000 troops under Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste, comte de Rochambeau, that had been escorted across the Atlantic by a squadron commanded by Commodore Charles-Louis d’Arzac, chevalier de Ternay. Rochambeau’s troops were stationed at Newport, Rhode Island. None of the ground forces participated in offensive military operations in 1780, and those in Cuba and Saint-Domingue suffered from tropical diseases.
Two dynamic leaders emerged in the Caribbean theater: Major General Claude- François Amour, marquis de Bouillé, the governor-general of the French Windward Islands, and Brigadier General Bernardo de Galvez, governor-general of Spanish Louisiana. Bouillé was a key figure in the 1778-81 capture of the British islands of Dominica, Saint Vincent, Grenada, and Tobago. Young Galvez seized British forts in the lower Mississippi Valley and at Mobile in 1779-80. He then cast his eyes toward Pensacola. Both generals understood that the grand prize was Jamaica.
If France and Spain were to achieve their objectives, it was necessary to keep the Americans in the war, and the news traveling across the Atlantic was not encouraging. Comte de Rochambeau sent his son to Paris with a report that General George Washington’s army was in poor condition, he needed another 5,000 troops, and money must be sent to keep the Americans in the war. Washington sent his aide Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens to France with the same information and a plea for arms, clothing, and munitions for the Continental Army, and American Major General Marie-Joseph, marquis de Lafayette, wrote his friends at Versailles that King Louis XVI must send money immediately. American envoy Benjamin Franklin went over the head of French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, and appealed directly to King Louis for assistance.
In Madrid, Minister of the Indies Jose de Galvez learned that Admiral Solano and General Navia were overly concerned about the defense of Havana and not inclined to support his nephew Bernardo Galvez in the Pensacola operation. Spurring them to action was necessary before the British were able to dispose of their rebellious colonists and concentrate on the Bourbon allies.
Spanish and French Strategic Decisions
José de Gálvez’s solution was to send one of his aides, former Spanish army captain Francisco de Saavedra de Sangronis, to the West Indies as a royal commissioner to push for a more activist policy. “The King has decided,” Gálvez wrote the governor-general in Havana, “that this individual should inform Your Excellency and the rest of the generals by word of mouth of his intentions.” The local junta was to listen to Saavedra and “give him the same trust and agreement as if it were I speaking to you.”3
In Havana, Saavedra found that more than two-thirds of the soldiers and sailors sent the previous year had succumbed to disease. None of the generals wanted to support Bernardo de Galvez in the Pensacola expedition because it would diminish their forces and enhance the young Louisiana governor’s reputation. While the royal commissioner found it difficult to compel the officials to overcome their personal and service rivalries and support the Pensacola campaign, he finally secured compliance with Madrid’s wishes. Joining the expedition’s fleet was a French Caribbean squadron, commanded by Commodore François-Aymar, chevalier de Monteil—an indication of inter-allied cooperation that contributed to Pensacola’s surrender in May 1781. That victory earned Bernardo de Galvez promotion to field marshal and command of all Spanish ground troops in the West Indies. Pensacola’s capture should have alerted British authorities of the vulnerability of their isolated garrisons and that a new, vigorous leadership was in place. Instead they ignored the warning.
In Paris, new leadership had revamped strategic policy in a dramatic manner. Louis dismissed Jacques Necker as finance minister and thereby lost a restraining influence on his financial commitment to the war effort. Washington subsequently received a gift of six million francs for the Contintental Army. However, the death of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in November 1780 had so stressed European diplomacy that no more army reinforcements could be sent to America until the situation on the Continent could be reassessed. Naval forces were another matter since they could be used in the important West Indian theater.
Charles de la Croix, marquis de Castries, became naval minister and immediately undertook a revision of operational policies and combat leadership. Commodore de Grasse returned from a tour in the West Indies and criticized Admiral Guichen’s somewhat timid conduct in the New World. Castries heeded his counsel and promoted de Grasse to the temporary rank of vice admiral and gave him command of an enlarged fleet to be sent to American waters. While Jamaica remained de Grasse’s highest priority, he received “full latitude” to use “his forces according to the needs, and circumstances of our allies, and knowledge he would have of the enemy.” Few men have received wider operational leeway for future conduct than de Grasse accepted from the naval minister.
Sailing partway with this armada was Commodore Jacques Melchoir Saint-Laurent, comte de Barras, the new commander of the squadron at Newport in place of the recently deceased Temay. He took with him two important letters. The first, from Castries to Rochambeau, said that de Grasse was “master of his movements, with authority to unite or separate his forces. I trust he may control the American coasts for some time to come, and that he may cooperate with you if you are preparing any enterprise in the North.” The second was a confidential message from de Grasse to Rochambeau stating that he would come north in July or August. De Grasse needed a location where his force might be most effectively used.
By mid-summer Saavedra and Field Marshal Galvez concluded that because of the approaching hurricane season it was too late for the Jamaica invasion in 1781. This meant that Saint-Simon’s troops and Solano’s fleet were free for other uses during the remainder of the year. Galvez dispatched Saavedra to meet with de Grasse at Cap François to discuss the options. On 17 July, Commodore Monteil introduced the two on board de Grasse’s flagship, the 104-gun Ville de Paris. At about the same time, the admiral opened letters from Newport and Philadelphia that informed him of the situation in North America.
A letter from Rochambeau dated 28 May noted that while Washington preferred the French Navy assist the Franco- American armies in an attack on the British garrison at New York, the “southwesterly winds and the state of distress in Virginia will probably make you prefer the Chesapeake Bay.” Rochambeau obviously preferred the southern target, where a British army commanded by General Lord Charles Cornwallis was ravaging the Virginia countryside. In a second letter, of 6 June, Rochambeau reported that the funds necessary to pay and supply the French army would dry up by mid-October unless de Grasse brought with him 1.2 million livres in specie.
Enclosed with these messages was a letter from Anne Cesar, chevalier de La Luzerne, then serving as French ambassador to the United States, stating that it was “imperative to take into the Chesapeake all the naval forces of the king along with whatever land forces the generals judge suitable.” These letters made clear the target and the necessary ingredients for victory: ships, troops, and money.
De Grasse’s Operational Decisions
Over two days the French admiral and the Spanish royal commissioner hammered out what has become known as the de Grasse-Saavedra Convention.4 They settled on three objectives: the French would first assist the United States with a massive reinforcement of ships and troops to the north; during the winter the French and Spanish would seize English possessions in the Windward Islands from which British ships and privateers menaced their warships and commercial vessels; and the combined-forces invasion of Jamaica would take place in 1782.
Of immediate concern, de Grasse had decided to sail to the Chesapeake and wanted Spanish vessels to join him. Saavedra indicated that direct Spanish support of the Americans was not possible, but he volunteered to have some of Solano’s warships come to Cap François to guard the French merchantmen that de Grasse would not be escorting home. This expected Spanish security allowed the French admiral to take all 28 of his ships of the line with him. Nothing demonstrates more fully de Grasse’s boldness and operational creativeness than the decision to sail all his vessels to the Chesapeake.
Saavedra also agreed to release Saint-Simon’s soldiers from their assignment to the Jamaica invasion force so that they might go northward. The troops proved an important addition to the allied forces at Yorktown and returned to the Caribbean in time for the 1781-82 winter campaign.
De Grasse promised to return to the West Indies in October and authorized Galvez to command French ground forces against British islands should he so desire. As it turned out, the 1781-82 Windward Islands campaign would be a wholly French one.
The final element on the agenda concerned the money Rochambeau requested. Much to de Grasse’s disgust, the French merchants and planters on Saint-Domingue refused to loan money to the French Army, and the admiral went pleading to Saavedra for assistance. The Spaniard agreed to seek specie in Havana and left for Cuba, where he easily raised the desired funds. To pick up the money, the French fleet sailed through the hazardous Bahama Channel to Matanzas, Cuba, where it loaded the 1.2 million livres. Saavedra secured Spanish pilots to assist the French. By sailing this route instead of the normal one east of the Bahamas, de Grasse evaded any British sighting of his fleet and therefore the enemy did not know the size of his force. Meanwhile the speedy frigate Concorde sailed northward with news of de Grasse’s intentions for the anxious Washington, Rochambeau, and Barras. They immediately began moving their armies and squadron toward the Chesapeake.
Rodney’s Miscalculations
On the other side, Admiral Lord George Rodney, commander of the Royal Navy Fleet in North America, made three conventional assumptions about French naval behavior that proved totally wrong: De Grasse would employ some of his men-of-war to convey the French merchantmen home; part of de Grasse’s fleet would stay in the West Indies; and about ten French ships of the line would make the trip to North America. Guichen and his pre decessors had done this; why would de Grasse behave differently?
Based on these suppositions, the ailing Rodney took three ships of the line with him to convoy British merchantmen home and sent three more in a convoy to Jamaica. He then dispatched Rear Admiral Sir Samuel Hood with 14 West Indian fleet ships to join Rear Admiral Thomas Graves’ liners at New York. Consequently the Royal Navy found itself at a disadvantage and lost naval superiority at a critical place and time.5 When Graves’ 19 liners met de Grasse’s 24 (he left four behind to guard the Chesapeake entrance) in the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes, 5 September 1781, the Frenchman won a slight tactical victory and a major strategic one.
This pivotal campaign required all the ships, soldiers, and money that the Franco-Spanish coalition could provide. The operational decisions made on board Ville de Paris resulted in the most successful combined campaign in the age of fighting sail. De Grasse’s choices did not guarantee victory; the vagaries of weather, tactical conduct, and enemy countermoves affect any operation. Nonetheless, seldom has an operational commander more effectively grasped the true nature of his assignment, taken more appropriately the authority given him as “master of his own movements,” and thrown more aggressively all the resources at his command into a campaign than did Admiral de Grasse in the summer of 1781.
There is, however, a terrible irony. The French had authorized de Grasse to undertake this enterprise in the desire to keep the Americans in the fight, but Yorktown took the British out of the American war. They then concentrated on their Bourbon opponents and successfully defended Gibraltar and at the 9-12 April 1782 Battle of the Saintes Rodney defeated the French fleet and captured both Ville de Paris and de Grasse. The Jamaica invasion therefore never took place.
1. At the time of the American Revolution Saint- Domingue was the largest and most prosperous colony in the French West Indies. The French Cape, as the English called it, or Cap François (often called Cap François) was one of the richest and bawdiest ports in the New World. It is known today as Cap Haitien.
2. For the strategic situation see Piers Mackesy, The War for America, 1775' 1783 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965); John A. Tilley, The British Navy and the American Revolution (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1987); David Syrett, The Royal Navy in American Waters, 1775-1783 (Aldershot, Hants., UK: Scholar Press, 1989); Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); James Pritchard, “French Strategy and the American Revolution: a Reappraisal,” Naval War College Review 47 (Autumn 1994): 83-108; Charles Lee Lewis, Admiral de Grasse and American Independence (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1945).
3. On the Spanish in the American Revolution see John W. Caughey, Bernardo de Galvez in Louisiana, 1776-1783 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1934); Francisco Morales Padrón, editor, Journal of Don Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1989); Thomas E. Chávez, Spain and the Independence of the United States (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2002).
4. On the de Grasse-Saavedra agreement see James A. Lewis, “Las Damas de la Havana, El Precursor, and Francisco de Saavedra: A Note on Spanish Participation in the Battle of Yorktown,” The Americas 37 (July 1981): 83-99; David Curtis Skaggs, “Decision at Cap François: Franco-Spanish Coalition Planning and the Prelude to Yorktown,” in William M. McBride, editor, New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Thirteenth Naval History Symposium (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998): 23-46.
5. Kenneth Breen, “A Reinforcement Reduced? Rodney’s Flawed Appraisal of French Plans, West Indies, 1781,” in William R. Roberts and Jack Sweetman, editors, New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Ninth Naval History Symposium (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991): 161-172.