Victory at Yorktown by Richard M. Ketchum Page B

the dynamics of warfare at this stage of the eighteenth century. It began with the premise that Britain could no longer assume that it had command of the seas. Beginning in the 1770s, France had been investing heavily in its own navy. An annual naval budget that was around 30 million livres * during the Seven Years’ War was consistently being increased until it would reach the staggering total of 200 million livres a year by 1782. By 1780, France had sixty-six ships of the line, † and those numbers were supplemented by its allies Spain with fifty-eight and Holland with twenty. So although the Royal Navy had more warships than any single rival, its enemies, collectively, outnumbered them. What’s more, the British fleet had to be broken up into a number of squadrons in order to guard the homeland, watch over Gibraltar, patrol the Baltic Sea, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean, plus escort convoys in the Atlantic.
    Furthermore, even if it still had maritime supremacy, Great Britain would be obliged to cope with the realities of geography and distance if it was to suppress the rebellion of its former colonies. The land war with the Americans had to be supplied and fought three thousand miles from home, demanding that every musket ball, every shoe or shirt or cap required by a British soldier, every one of the hundreds of items needed by an army must be transported across the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. Another critical—and all but unsolvable—problem confronting the British was communications. Instructions from Whitehall to General Clinton’s headquarters in Manhattan might take two or three months to arrive, and the reply—even if Clinton responded at once, which was unlikely—could require another month or six weeks. So there was almost no way officials in London could effectively direct the war, much as the king and his ministers might wish to do so.
    Finally, to conquer the Americans, the British had to hold on to the territory they had won, but with a limited number of troops they couldn’t possibly turn them into occupation forces and conduct a war at the same time. Yet the moment they withdrew, the rebels moved back in—a pattern that was prevalent in the South, where guerrillas seemed to move about at will.
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    AT LAST THE General and his aides greeted the allies from France they had been longing to see. The feeling was mutual, for these French officers were intensely curious to meet the famous leader of the Revolution. They found him to be a man they admired immediately. “Enchanted,” Claude Blanchard summarized their reactions, noting his “easy and noble bearing, extensive and correct views and the art of making himself beloved.…” Comte Mathieu Dumas was impressed by the way “His dignified address, his simplicity of manners, and mild gravity surpassed our expectation and won every heart.” Baron Ludwig von Closen said, “I could not find strong enough words to describe” Washington’s remarks to the group. Another count, the Swede Axel Fersen, who was rumored by gossips at the French court to be a favorite of the queen and who had sailed to America in March as an aide to Rochambeau, saw Washington in a slightly different light: “His face is handsome and majestic but at the same time kind and gentle, corresponding completely with his moral qualities. He looks like a hero; he is very cold and says little but he is frank and polite. There is a sadness in his countenance, which does not misbecome him and indeed renders his face more interesting.” Louis-Alexandre Berthier, already marked by his superiors as a young man with a promising military future, said of the General, “The nobility of his bearing and his countenance, which bore the stamp of all his virtues, inspired everyone with the devotion and respect due his character, increasing, if possible, the high opinion we already held of his