A History of the American People

French intervention, by land and sea, raised the stakes for Britain but brought no early end to
the war. Admiral Comte d'Estaigne appeared with a fleet off the American coast in the summer
of 1778 but failed to beat Admiral Howe. The next year he made an attempt, in conjunction with
an American force, to take Savannah in October, but failed again. After another indecisive
winter, Sir Henry Clinton, who had replaced Howe, took Charleston and 5,500 American
prisoners under Benjamin Lincoln, the biggest single loss the patriots suffered in the entire war.
This was in May 1780. Three months later, on August 16, Lord Cornwallis beat another
American force, under General Horatio Gates, at Camden. Clinton now returned to New York,
his main base, leaving Cornwallis to command in the south. Cornwallis invaded North Carolina,
but his loyalist force was destroyed at King's Mountain on October 7, 1780. The following
January 1781, Banastre Tarleton's Tory Legion was beaten at Cowpens, losing 900 men, by
General Daniel Morgan. Cornwallis also suffered heavy casualties at Guildford Courthouse two
months later, though he held the field. None of these battles was decisive or even particularly
important, but they had a cumulative effect in eroding Britain's will to continue the war.
Then Cornwallis made a strategic mistake. He decided to concentrate his forces at Yorktown
on the coast. Clinton strongly disagreed with this move, which made Cornwallis' army
vulnerable if ever the French were able to concentrate their naval forces and so deprive Britain,
for the first time, of command of the sea. That is exactly what happened. The French by now had
a substantial force of 5,500 under the Comte de Rochambeau, based on Rhode Island. More
important, the Comte de Barras had a naval force operating from Newport. In the summer of
1781 Admiral de Grasse hurried up from the West Indies with twenty ships of the line and a
further 3,000 soldiers. He arrived in time to transport Washington's army, plus a French force
under the Marquis de Lafayette, from the Chesapeake to the James River, thus concentrating an
enormous conjunction of land- and sea-power around Cornwallis' armed camp. To make matters
worse for the British, it was joined by De Barras' naval squadron from Newport. The waters
around Yorktown were now controlled by the French fleet, and an attempt by Admiral Thomas
Graves, sent from New York to break the blockade, failed. He was obliged to return to New
York. Britain no longer could reinforce its armies by sea, at any rate in the western North
Atlantic, and this was catastrophic for its whole method of fighting the war. Cornwallis, with
8,000 men, faced a Franco-American army of 17,000, well provided with artillery. He was short
of supplies, but it was his exposure to the guns which persuaded him to surrender on October 19,
1781.
So the British, who had begun the war with an enormous superiority in trained men and guns
and with complete control of the sea, ended it outnumbered, outgunned, and with the French
ruling the waves. They still controlled New York, Savannah, and Charleston, but the catastrophe
at Yorktown knocked the stuffing out of the British war-party. On March 19, 1782, North
resigned, making way for a peace coalition which contained Shelburne, Fox, and Burke. Happily
for all concerned, a series of brilliant British victories against France and Spain-the lifting of the
Spanish siege of Gibraltar, success in India, and, above all, Lord Howe's destruction of De
Grasse's fleet at the Battle of the Saints on April 12, thus saving the British West Indies and
restoring Britain's absolute command of the seas, made it easier for Britain to swallow its pride
and accept an independent America.
Franklin was sent back to Paris to open negotiations with Vergennes, on behalf of France, and
Thomas Grenville, the clever, erudite Foxite son of the Stamp Act' Grenville, on behalf of Britain. Franklin was both the architect and the hero of the Peace of Paris. Thefour points' he
set out in July 17 became the basis of the agreement: first, outright independence of the United