The conflict is perhaps the most tragic and
irreconcilable in the whole story of the Revolution.
CHAPTER X. FRANCE TO THE RESCUE
During 1778 and 1779 French effort had failed. Now France
resolved to do something decisive. She never sent across the sea
the eight thousand men promised to La Fayette but by the spring
of 1780 about this number were gathered at Brest to find that
transport was inadequate. The leader was a French noble, the
Comte de Rochambeau, an old campaigner, now in his fifty-fifth
year, who had fought against England before in the Seven Years'
War and had then been opposed by Clinton, Cornwallis, and Lord
George Germain. He was a sound and prudent soldier who shares
with La Fayette the chief glory of the French service in America.
Rochambeau had fought at the second battle of Minden, where the
father of La Fayette had fallen, and he had for the ardent young
Frenchman the amiable regard of a father and sometimes rebuked
his impulsiveness in that spirit. He studied the problem in
America with the insight of a trained leader. Before he left
France he made the pregnant comment on the outlook: "Nothing
without naval supremacy." About the same time Washington was
writing to La Fayette that a decisive naval supremacy was a
fundamental need.
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