The French army wintered in Newport, while the cavalry, a colorful detachment of hussars, wintered in Lebanon, Connecticut. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress The contest had degenerated into a stalemate, a war of attrition, with no end, much less victory, in sight. The army nonetheless could contain the British and fend off attacks as long as it remained in its positions in the Hudson Highlands and the hills of New Jersey. Short of men, weapons, food, clothing, and money, they were not strong enough to take the offensive against British strongholds such as Savannah, Charleston, or New York. In the fall of 1780, the Continental Army was running on faith, hope, and promises, and that there was still an army in the field at all was due in large part to Washington's charisma and leadership. Neither was the Continental Army ready for large-scale military action. Washington favored attacking New York City, occupied by Crown forces under General Sir Henry Clinton, but had to concede that French forces had arrived too late in the campaign season and with too many sick to embark on any military action. Late in September 1780, Rochambeau met with Washington in Hartford, Connecticut. A few weeks later in October, a group of Abenaki and Micmac Indians visited as well and also offered to join the war on the side of the French. Within weeks of their arrival a group of about 20 Oneida and Tuscarora Indians came to visit Rochambeau in Newport to assure him of their old and continuing friendship with the King of France and to offer their assistance in the struggle against the British crown. On May 2, a fleet of 32 transports, seven ships of the line, two frigates, and two smaller warships, with crews totaling about 7,000 sailors, commanded by Charles Henry Louis d'Arsac, chevalier de Ternay, a 57-year-old chef d'escadre with 40 years' experience, set sail from Brest in northwest France for Rhode Island where they arrived in mid-July. On February 2, 1780, King Louis XVI approved Vergennes' plan, code-named the expédition particulière. With an eye toward the deteriorating military situation in the South, he wondered "whether in case The Court of France should find it convenient to send directly from France a Squadron and a few Regiments attached to it, to act in conjunction with us in this quarter, it would be agreeable to The United States." Washington's reply, as recorded by Alexander Hamilton, indicated that "The General thought it would be very advancive of the common Cause." In a letter to the marquis de Lafayette of September 30, 1779, Washington expressed his hopes that Lafayette would soon return to America either in his capacity of Major General in the Continental Army or as "an Officer at the head of a Corps of gallant French." Based on Luzerne's report of the September 16 meeting, and an excerpt of Washington's letter, which Lafayette had sent him on January 25, 1780, Vergennes decided that the time had come when French ground forces would be welcome in the New World. But on September 16, the French minister, the chevalier de la Luzerne, met with Washington at West Point, New York to discuss strategy for the 1780 campaign. Up until the summer of 1779, even General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, had had reservations about the deployment of French ground forces in America. The decision in January 1780 to dispatch ground forces formed the core of a new strategy for the war in America in which the alliance was about to prove its greatest value. In 1778, France had hoped for a short war, but Sir Henry Clinton's successful foray into Georgia and South Carolina, and the failure of the combined operations at Newport and Savannah in 17, and an equally disastrous attempt at an invasion of England in the summer of the same year had dashed all hopes of a quick victory for the Franco-American alliance. Both sides were all too well aware of the historical and cultural obstacles that had grown up during decades of hostilities to assume French forces would be welcome in the United States. The possibility of sending ground forces to fight on the American mainland had been discussed and rejected as impracticable even before these treaties were signed. France had aided the colonies since the summer of 1775, well before their final break with Great Britain on July 4, 1776, and had formalized the relationship in two treaties of February 1778. The arrival of 55-year-old General Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, with an army of 450 officers and 5,300 men in Narragansett Bay off Newport, Rhode Island, on July 11, 1780, marked the beginning of a most successful military cooperation that culminated 15 months later in the victory at Yorktown.
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