First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [166]
In their new forward positions, donated by Cornwallis, the Allied generals were enabled to obtain a closer view of the terrain and the British defenses and to begin construction of their own siegeworks.
Impenitent fortune at this moment had a new blow in store for the Allies. During the generals’ absence on the visit to de Grasse, a report had circulated that a British naval reinforcement under Rear Admiral Digby of the home fleet was coming to support Admiral Graves. The news made de Grasse nervous no less than Washington. It “alarmed and disquieted these excitable gentlemen of the Navy,” wrote von Closen, who had carried the Digby report to de Grasse and found his reaction disquieting indeed. Trained in the French doctrine of avoiding a battle that threatened loss of ships, de Grasse had no desire to wait around to encounter the approaching Admiral Digby. Baron von Closen returned from his interview at first glance with appalling news. At the moment when the components of victory—the French fleet and the land army—had joined, fulfilling the plan for the “decisive stroke” and bringing it near enough to touch, de Grasse declared himself prepared to hoist sail and move away from his blockade of the York. In the Allies’ extreme hour of high hope, the blow seemed like a grenade tossed at a wedding; after the first horrified reaction, it was made clear that de Grasse did not intend total departure nor abandonment of the blockade. In a dispatch to Washington, he explained that “the enemy are beginning to be almost equal to us, and it would be imprudent of me to put myself in a position where I could not engage them” effectively. He would leave two ships (two!) at the mouth of the York, and sail with the rest to “hold out in the offing so that if the fleet come to force the entrance [to the Bay] I can engage them in a less disadvantageous position. I shall set sail as soon as the wind permits me.” Stunned by the words to “hoist sail,” Washington and Rochambeau hardly noticed, or else put little reliance on, de Grasse’s declared intention to “hold out in the offing” where he could still engage the enemy effectively if they attempted to enter the Bay. His proposed move still appeared as desertion. Washington wrote back a letter as frantic as his temperament ever allowed, speaking of the “painful anxiety” which he had suffered since being informed of de Grasse’s intention of renouncing, as he thought, an enterprise … “after the most expensive preparations and uncommon exertions and fatigues” and “entreating” the Admiral to consider that “if you shd withdraw your maritime force from the position agreed upon, that no future day can restore to us a similar occasion for striking a decisive blow.” He added that it could hardly be Digby’s intention to “engage in a general action with a fleet whose force will be superior.” Appalled by their ally’s seeming desertion, Washington and Rochambeau agreed that the only man who might persuade de Grasse to reconsider was Lafayette, just recovering from the agues and fevers of a bout with malaria. Bearing Washington’s letter, he was sent by frigate, still shaking from his illness, on the desperate errand to Lynnhaven Bay off Cape Henry. To his horror, he found the anchorage empty, not a mast nor a sail to be seen. The frigate-master assured him that the Admiral could not have sailed away or he would have been notified. After a twelve-hour search of the Bay, de Grasse was discovered anchored where he blocked the mouth of the York, though leaving the entrance of the Bay on the ocean side still open to British intrusion. De Grasse’s own flag captains, as it proved, unhappy at the proposal to leave, which they said in a conference with the Admiral “did not appear to fulfil the aims we had in view,” had refused, or showed an intention