Anglo-French War (1778–83)

The Anglo-French War was a military conflict fought between the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of France, and their respective allies between 1778 and 1783. It began when France formed an alliance with the United States during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and evolved into a global war spanning continents, with battles fought in many theatres. From 1778 to 1783, with or without their allies, France and Britain fought over dominance in the English Channel, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the West Indies. The eventual French victory was vital in the United States' independence from Britain.

Starting early in 1776, France, Spain and the Dutch Republic had been secretly providing money, ammunition and weapons to the revolutionaries. In 1777, the American victory at Saratoga persuaded Britain to offer full self governance to the colonies, but it was too late – the Patriots were committed to independence. Seeking help from another great power, the Americans sought the assistance of France, which declared war in 1778. Britain now faced a significantly larger army. Spain joined France as an ally in 1779, but was not formally allied with the United States.

Along with increasing Franco-Spanish threats, this situation turned opinion in the British Parliament against the war. France further supported the war effort against Great Britain by attacking British possessions in India. In 1782, Louis XVI sealed an alliance with the Peshwa Madhu Rao Narayan. Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez became the ally of Hyder Ali in the Second Anglo-Mysore War against British rule in India, in 1782–1783, fighting the British fleet on the coasts of India and Ceylon.

Between February 1782 and June 1783, Suffren fought the English admiral Sir Edward Hughes, and collaborated with the rulers of Mysore. Suffren fought in the Battle of Sadras on February 17, 1782, the Battle of Providien on April 12 near Trincomalee, the Battle of Negapatam (1782) on July 6 off Cuddalore, after which Suffren seized the anchorage of Trincomalee. An army of 3,000 French soldiers collaborated with Hyder Ali to capture Cuddalore. Finally, the Battle of Trincomalee took place near that port on September 3. These battles, which can be seen as the last battles of the Franco-British conflict that encompassed the American War of Independence, ceased in 1783 with the signature of the peace treaty.

The participation of France, Spain and the Netherlands was decisive as each contributed crucial land and sea power to the war, forcing the British to divert resources away from the North American theatre and eventually over-extending British forces. Britain was left fighting a war on four continents with no major allies.

Origins
Benjamin Franklin served as the American minister to France from 1776 to 1783. He met with many leading diplomats, aristocrats, intellectuals, scientists and financiers. Franklin's image and writings caught the French imagination – many likenesses of him were sold – and he became the image of the new American and even a hero for those aspiring to a new order inside France. The French goal was to weaken Britain, for two reasons: to keep it from getting too powerful and to exact revenge for the defeat of France in the Seven Years' War. Almost all the guns firing at the British in Saratoga were French. In 1778 France recognized the British colonies in North America as the sovereign United States of America and signed a military alliance with the new nation. France took this step further, by build coalitions with the Netherlands and Spain that kept Britain without a significant ally of its own. The French provided the Americans with grants, arms and loans, and sent a land force to serve under George Washington and a navy that prevented the second British army from escaping from Yorktown in 1781. Eventually the British army surrendered at Yorktown to forces that were equal parts French and American, all of them fed, clothed and paid by France, and protected by the French fleet. Without French funds the fledgling United States would have collapsed; American independence cost France more than 1.3 billion livres, about $13 billion in 20th century dollars.

By 1777, the american independence was entering its third year. John Burgoyne's surrender at the Battle of Saratoga had signalled that the struggle against the American colonies was likely to prove longer and more costly than expected. British defeat had raised the prospect of French intervention and of a European war. North's government, fearful of war with France, sought reconciliation with the American colonies and was willing to grant a fair measure of autonomy to this end, but what would be enough in 1775 would no longer suffice by 1778. North had no intention of offering independence, but in the wake of Saratoga and with the prospect of a French alliance, the Americans were unlikely to agree with lesser terms.

Early operations
France and Britain fought over the control of the Channel, as one of the episodes of the globalized warfare that followed the start of the hostilities in 1778. Early in the war, the first fleet action in European waters was fought on 27 July 1778, 100 miles west of Ushant, an island at the mouth of the Channel. The two French and British battle fleets, of equal strength at 30 ships each, came to battle each other violently for several hours with neither side scoring a clear victory. The battle had been described since then as indecisive in its results.

War in the West, 1778–1779
The strategic and operational situation in the West was complex. It consisted of battles for naval supremacy, raids on enemy convoys and colonies, and sorties in support of the sides fighting the War of American Independence. The French blockaded Britain's most important sugar producers, Barbados and Jamaica, cutting them off from food and supplies, with thousands dying from starvation and disease. Colonial militias played only limited supporting roles and more French and British troops died from the Caribbean climate and disease than from fighting. One key territory that was of particular interest was the West Indies island of Dominica, which lay between French-held Martinique and Guadeloupe, and had been captured by Britain in 1761. Recapture of the island would improve communication among the islands, and deny the use of Dominican ports to privateers who preyed on French shipping. In August 1778, when François Claude Amour, the marquis de Bouillé, the French governor-general of Martinique, received word that war had been declared.

The French frigate Concorde reached Martinique on August 17 with orders from Paris to take Dominica at the earliest opportunity, and de Bouillé made immediate plans for such an operation. He had maintained contacts in the Dominican population, which had remained largely French during the years of British administration. As a result he had an accurate picture of the condition of the Dominican defences, and knew that the island's garrison numbered fewer than "fifty soldiers fit for duty". He was also concerned with the whereabouts of the British Leeward Islands fleet of Admiral Samuel Barrington, which significantly exceeded his in military power. Unbeknownst to de Bouillé, Barrington, who had only recently assumed his post, was under orders to retain most of his fleet at Barbados until further instructions were received. The British regular forces on the island, which in total numbered about 100, were distributed amongst defences in the capital Roseau, the hills that overlooked it, and at Cachacrou.

De Bouillé carefully maintained a facade of peace in his dealings with Dominican authorities while he began preparing his forces on Martinique. On 2 September he and Lieutenant Governor Stuart signed an agreement that formally prohibited privateering crews to plunder. The next day de Bouillé sent one of his officers to Dominica to see whether a Royal Navy frigate was still anchored in Prince Rupert's Bay (near present-day Portsmouth). Stuart, suspicious of the man, had him questioned and then released. On 5 September de Bouillé was informed that the frigate had sailed for Barbados. He struck fast, defeating the British at Dominica in September 1778. French Admiral the comte D'Estaing arrived in the West Indies in early December 1778 in command of a fleet consisting of 12 ships of the line and a number of smaller vessels. At about the same time a British fleet under Admiral William Hotham also arrived, augmenting the West Indies fleet of Admiral Samuel Barrington. The British then captured French-held St. Lucia, despite d'Estaing's attempt at relief. The British used St. Lucia to monitor the major French base at Martinique, where d'Estaing was headquartered.

The British fleet was further reinforced in January 1779 by ten ships of the line under Admiral John Byron, who assumed command of the British Leeward Islands station. Throughout the first half of 1779 both fleets received further reinforcements, after which the French fleet was superior to that of the British. Furthermore, Byron departed St. Lucia on 6 June in order to provide escort services to British merchant ships gathering at St. Kitts for a convoy to Europe, leaving d'Estaing free to act. D'Estaing and de Bouillé, seized the opportunity to begin a series of operations against nearby British possessions. Their first target was the isle of Saint Vincent, south of St. Lucia. It fell on 18 June, and d'Estaing turned his attention to other islands. He had hoped to capture Barbados, a key British possession, but after making no progress against the prevailing easterly trade winds, he turned his attention instead to Grenada.

The first large expedition to the North was undertaken in 1779 by French Vice Admiral d'Estaing. In the attempt to invade the British-occupied Savannah, the French brought 20 ships-of-the-line and 3,000 troops in transports to Georgia. Although Washington failed to cooperate with his allies, being fixated on attacking the British in New York City, D'Estaing landed the troops in aid to the Americans before he returned to France, as he had been ordered to do. On 9 October 1779, in concert with a contingent of the Continental Army, the French admiral initiated an assault on the besieged city. The well-fortified British army repulsed the invaders; d'Estaing was seriously wounded and had to sail for Europe. Despite a correct strategic concept, allied cooperation eluded successful operational implementation.

Spain enters the war, 1779–1780
In April 1779, France and Spain signed the Convention of Aranjuez, which laid out a summary of the Bourbon war aims. France declared that her war aims were to expel the British from the Newfoundland fishery, to end restrictions on French sovereignty over Dunkirk, to regain freedom of commerce in India, to recover Senegal and Dominica, and to restore the treaty of Utrecht provisions relating to Anglo-French commerce.

Spain entered the war with one of the goals of recovering Gibraltar, which had been lost to England in 1704. Its garrison included troops from Britain and the Electorate of Hanover. The siege formally began in June 1779, with the Spanish establishing a land blockade around the Rock of Gibraltar. The Spanish planned to retake Gibraltar by blockading and starving out its garrison. The matching naval blockade was comparatively weak, and the British discovered that small fast ships could evade the blockaders, while slower and larger supply ships generally could not. By late 1779, however, supplies in Gibraltar had become seriously depleted, and its commander, General George Eliott, appealed to London for relief.

A supply convoy was organized, and in late December 1779 a large fleet sailed from Britain under the command of Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney. Although Rodney's ultimate orders were to command the West Indies fleet, he had secret instructions to first resupply Gibraltar and Minorca and on 4 January 1780 the fleet divided, with ships headed for the West Indies sailing westward. This left Rodney in command of 19 ships of the line which were to accompany the supply ships to Gibraltar.

The supply convoy sailed into Gibraltar on January 19, driving the smaller blockading fleet to retreat to the safety of Algeciras. Rodney arrived several days later, and the British garrison was heartened by the arrival of the supplies and the presence of Prince William Henry. Upon the return of the ships from Minorca, Rodney put to sea again on February 13, for the West Indies, the detachment from the Channel fleet accompanied him three days' sail on his way, and then parted for Britain with the prizes. On this return voyage it fell in with fifteen French supply vessels, convoyed by two sixty-fours, bound for the Ile de France, in the Indian Ocean, one of the ships of war, the Protée, and three of the storeships were taken.

East Indies
One clear result of the renewal of the Anglo-French contest in the East Indies between 1778-1783 was a greater appreciation by the British of the strategic needs of their newly acquired possessions in Asia. The superimposition of a global struggle between European powers upon several localized Indian wars did unnerve the Company and seriously embarrass its presidencies. Furthermore, the war exposed the rival geo-political ambitions of the French and these in turn provoked the more stolid, unreflecting British to formulate their own logic of empire. When word reached India in 1778 that France had entered the war, the British East India Company moved quickly to capture French colonial outposts there, notably capturing Pondicherry after two months of siege.

West Indies


In the West Indies, Admiral George Brydges Rodney, having received news of Britain's breach with the Netherlands early in the year, took the island of Sint Eustatius, which had been a great depot of contraband of war, on February 3, 1781. The British admiral was accused of applying himself so entirely to seizing and selling his booty that he would not allow his second in command, Sir Samuel Hood, who had recently joined him, to take proper measures to impede the arrival of French forces known to be on their way to Martinique. The French admiral count de Grasse reached the island with reinforcements in April. Until July, he was engaged in a series of skillful operations directed to menacing the British islands while he avoided being brought to battle by Rodney. In July, he sailed for the coast of North America, whither he was followed in August by Hood; Rodney had returned home in ill-health.

French admiral de Grasse, having rendered a vital service to the Americans in the Battle of the Chesapeake, now returned to the West Indies, followed by Hood, and resumed the French attacks on the British islands. In January and February 1782, de Grasse conquered St Christopher, in spite of the most determined opposition of Hood, who, with a much inferior force, first drove him from his anchorage at Basseterre, and then repulsed his repeated attacks. A unified French and Spanish assault an attack on Jamaica followed, but Sir George Rodney, now recovered and having returned to his command with reinforcements, baffled this plan with a series of operations which culminated in the Battle of the Saintes of April 12, 1782. The victory by Rodney's fleet over the French Admiral de Grasse frustrated the hopes of France and Spain to take Jamaica and other colonies from the British. No further operations of note occurred in the West Indies.

On the Gulf Coast, Count Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, quickly removed the British from their outposts on the lower Mississippi River in 1779 in actions at Manchac and Baton Rouge in British West Florida. Gálvez then captured Mobile in 1780 and stormed and captured the British citadel and capital of Pensacola in 1781. On May 8, 1782, Gálvez captured the British naval base at New Providence in the Bahamas; it was ceded by Spain after the Treaty of Paris and simultaneously recovered by British Loyalists in 1783. Gálvez' actions led to the Spanish acquisition of East and West Florida in the peace settlement, denied the British the opportunity of encircling the American forces from the south, and kept open a vital conduit for supplies to the American frontier.

Central America was also subject to conflict between Britain and Spain, as Britain sought to expand its informal trading influence beyond coastal logging and fishing communities in present-day Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Expeditions against San Fernando de Omoa in 1779 and San Juan in 1780 (the latter famously led by a young Horatio Nelson) met with only temporary success before being abandoned due to disease. The Spanish colonial leaders, in turn, could not completely eliminate British influences along the Mosquito Coast. Except for the French acquisition of Tobago, sovereignty in the West Indies was returned to the status quo ante bellum in the peace of 1783.

North American Operations


With d'Estaing back to France, Washington got stuck in New Jersey, while asking for a continuous French naval presence in North American waters. When in July 1780 the Lieutenant General Comte de Rochambeau, arrived in Newport with an army of 6,000 men, he described the situation: "in any operation, and under all circumstances, a decisive naval superiority is to be considered as a fundamental principle, and the basis upon which every hope of success must ultimately depend". The Dutch were helping the American rebels by selling them guns and gunpowder from their ports in the Caribbean. The British used this as a pretext to declare war on the Netherlands in December 1780. Admiral Rodney spent the years of 1780 and 1781 in the Caribbean to plundering and sacking the Dutch Caribbean islands.

By December 1780, the American Revolutionary War's North American theaters had reached a critical point. The Continental Army had suffered major defeats earlier in the year, with its southern armies either captured or dispersed in the loss of Charleston and the Battle of Camden in the south, while the armies of George Washington and the British commander-in-chief for North America, Sir Henry Clinton watched each other around New York City in the north. The national currency was virtually worthless, public support for the war, about to enter its sixth year, was waning, and army troops were becoming mutinous over pay and conditions.

French military planners had to balance competing demands for the 1781 campaign. After a series of unsuccessful Americans attempts at cooperation (leading to unsuccessful attempts on Newport, Rhode Island and Savannah, Georgia), they decided more involvement in North America was necessary. They also needed to coordinate their actions with Spain, as there was potential interest in making an assault on the British stronghold of Jamaica. It turned out that the Spanish were not interested in operations against Jamaica until after they had dealt with an expected British attempt to reinforce besieged Gibraltar, and merely wanted to be informed of the movements of the West Indies fleet.

As the French fleet was preparing to depart Brest in March 1781, several important decisions were made. The West Indies fleet, led by the Comte de Grasse, after operations in the Windward Islands, was directed to go to Cap-Français (present-day Cap-Haïtien) to determine what resources would be required to assist Spanish operations. Due to a lack of transports, France also provided six million livres to support the American war effort beyond of providing additional troops. The French fleet at Newport was given a new commander, the Comte de Barras. De Barras was ordered to take the Newport fleet to harass British shipping off Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and the French army at Newport was ordered to combine with Washington's army outside New York. In orders that were deliberately not fully shared with General Washington, De Grasse was instructed to assist in North American operations after his stop at Cap-Français. The French general, the Comte de Rochambeau was instructed to tell Washington that de Grasse might be able to assist, without making any commitment. (Washington learned from John Laurens, stationed in Paris, that de Grasse had discretion to come north.)

De Grasse received these letters in July at roughly the same time Cornwallis was preparing to occupy Yorktown, Virginia. De Grasse concurred with Rochambeau and subsequently sent a dispatch indicating that he would reach the Chesapeake at the end of August but that agreements with the Spanish meant he could only stay until mid-October. The arrival of his dispatches prompted the Franco-American army to begin a march for Virginia. De Grasse reached the Chesapeake as planned, and his troops were sent to assist Lafayette's army in the blockade of Cornwallis. A British fleet sent to confront de Grasse's control of the Chesapeake was defeated by the French on September 5 at the Battle of the Chesapeake, and the Newport fleet delivered the French siege train to complete the allied military arrival. The Siege of Yorktown and following surrender by Cornwallis on October 19 were decisive in ending major hostilities in North America.

Tacit armistice on North America


Following the surrender of Lord Cornwallis to a Franco-American force at the Yorktown, there was a tacit armistice on continental North America between Britain and the United States during the winter of 1781–1782. A large convoy and reinforcements for the Antilles were being prepared in France, with the aim of putting the Admiral de Grasse's fleet in a state of readiness to support the struggle against Admiral Rodney's Royal Navy force. In the second half of January the marquis of Bouillé recaptured the islands of Sint Eustatius and Saint Kitts, and in February General de Crillon took Minorca.

Battle of the Saintes
The large convoy that had left France escorted by admiral de Guichen was scattered by a storm. The British regrouped all their naval forces at the îles du Vent, and the comte de Grasse, despite his fleet's inferiority, set sail to convey the troops of M. de Bouillé which had had to regroup, at Saint-Domingue, with those commanded by the Spanish general Bernardo de Gálvez. Admiral Rodney, manœuvring to cut the French fleet off from its convoy, was only able to reach the vessel Zélé, the slowest ship in the rearguard. The comte de Grasse decided to save this ship and committed his vanguard under the command of M. de Vaudreuil.

The French won this first encounter on April 9, 1782. Admiral Rodney followed them and, having got the weather gauge, engaged the French fleet on April 12. The French admiral's flagship Ville de Paris and six others were immobilised and captured in the face of resistance. The comte de Grasse was captured; he only gained his freedom the following year when the war ended. His vessel's bridge had been completely razed by British bullets, and the admiral and two officers were the only two people standing not to have been wounded when the ship finally surrendered, and Admiral Rodney could not hold onto any of the four vessels he had captured since they were too badly damaged. The César also caught fire and sank with around 400 British sailors who had taken possession of her.

North America naval operations
On their part, the French government never stopped sending help to the Americans. Two frigates, the Gloire and Aigle, were sent from Brest on 19 May 1782 under the command of M. de la Touche Tréville. The marquis de Vaudreuil took over from the captured comte de Grasse as commander of the fleet and received the order to sail into Boston to repair and refit his squadron.

Indies campaign, 1782–1783
In the spring of 1781, French Admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez, also known as the Bailli de Suffren, was sent to the East with a small squadron. On his way, he fell upon the British fleet of Admiral George Johnstone which had been sent to take the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch, and which he found in the Portuguese anchorage of Porto Praya, on April 16. The attack, while inconclusive in its outcome, enabled Suffren to reach the Cape before Johnstone, preventing the British attack. Having provided for the security of the Cape, Suffren went on to Île de France, where he picked up additional ships and troops. Johnstone, on seeing the Cape strongly defended, contented himself with capturing some merchant ships in a nearby bay, and returned to Europe.

Suffren sailed from Île de France for India early in 1782, where he and British Admiral Sir Edward Hughes fought a series of five actions between February 17, 1782, and June 20, 1783. These battles were noted for the balance in the opposing forces and the largely inconclusive outcomes, and Suffren's ability to maintain his fleet without any reliably safe port facilities. Though he had no port in which to refit and no ally save Hyder Ali, Suffren kept to the sea and did not even return to Île de France during the north-easterly monsoon, instead going to the Dutch port of Aceh to refit. Suffren captured Trincomalee from the British in July 1782, in spite of Hughes, and in what was apparently the last military engagement of the entire war, battled Hughes off Cuddalore, where the British were besieging the French and Mysoreans. While Hughes had a superior fleet, Suffren was able to prevent him from landing reinforcements. News of a preliminary peace agreement ended the siege and the ongoing battles between Hughes and Suffren.

Peace proposal
Over the next few weeks, serious negotiations began between Britain, France and Spain (for which Britain's chief negotiator was Alleyne Fitzherbert, and Spain's Count of Aranda). Although a French naval expedition had destroyed British trading posts in Hudson Bay during the summer, no territory had actually been captured. From time to time, news would arrive from India of continuing stalemate, both in the land wars (which involved the French only as supporters to local rulers) and in naval battles; the British still appeared to hold all the French territory there that they had captured in 1778–79, while the French held no British territory. In the West Indies, on the other hand, the French still held all the territory they had captured, while the British held only one French island, St. Lucia.

In the preliminary treaties signed with France and Spain on 20 January 1783, France and Britain returned to each other nearly all the territories they had taken from each other since 1778, except for Tobago, which the French had captured in 1781 and were allowed to keep. France also gained some territory around the Senegal River in Africa which it had lost to Britain in 1763. The whole arrangement for fishing around the Newfoundland coast had to be renegotiated because of the rights awarded to the Americans.