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Updated: May 23, 2025
It is to be lamented that the latter general persuaded Count d'Estaing to await the cooperation of the Americans, whilst, had he encouraged him to force the passage between, Rhode Island and Cannanicut Island, he would have had time, at the first moment of his arrival, to have captured fifteen hundred Hessians who were upon the last-mentioned island.
The French military and naval officers, Lafayette, Rochambeau, D'Estaing, and others, gave letters of introduction to be presented to Washington by their friends whenever any of them came to America, and those letters were always duly honored by hospitable attentions to those who bore them. His own compatriots were still more numerous and more assiduous in attention to the retired commander.
"You would like a death-mass fee, Abbé?" The Canadian, brought up to other customs, wondered how a priest could be addressed with such contempt by good Catholics. "Is he a monk or a curé?" he inquired, when the reader had passed on. "He is nothing," answered d'Estaing, with clear eye and scornful lip. "Paris is devastated by fellows calling themselves abbés.
Word of these events was sent to D'Estaing in the West Indies, accompanied by urgent representations of the danger to the Carolinas, and the murmurings of the people against the French, who were accused of forsaking their allies, having rendered them no service, but on the contrary having profited by the cordial help of the Bostonians to refit their crippled fleet.
After having been taken prisoner at Madras in 1759, exchanged into the navy. Commanded in North America, 1778-80. Guillotined, 1794. This, so far as it deals with merchantmen and privateers, gives the following results. During the same two months that saw the contest between d'Estaing and Howe in America the only encounter between nearly equal fleets in 1778 took place in European waters.
Degraves, M. De Launay, M., governor of the Bastile, death of. Des Huttes, M. D'Esprémesnil, Duval. De Staël, Baroness. D'Estaing, Count. Destruction of the Spanish squadron by the British at Cape St. Vincent De Varicourt, M. D'Hervilly, Count. D'Huillier, M. Disorders in the Assembly. Dissolution of the Constitutional Guard.
"Brave as his sword, D'Estaing was always the idol of the soldier, the idol of the seaman; but moral authority over his officers failed him on several occasions, notwithstanding the marked protection extended to him by the king." Another cause than incapacity as a seaman has usually been assigned by French historians for the impotent action of D'Estaing on this occasion.
Thus also a direct consequence of the southern expedition was the hasty abandonment of Narragansett Bay, when D'Estaing appeared on the coast in 1779, because Clinton had not force enough to defend both it and New York.
The first time, Admiral D'Estaing with a strong fleet menaced New York and then Newport, the latter in conjunction with an American land force. But before each port he was foiled by the superior skill of Admiral Howe; and he finally withdrew without risking a battle, to the intense disgust of the Americans.
Let any one compare the action of D'Estaing at New York with that of Nelson at Copenhagen and the Nile, or that of Farragut at Mobile and Port Hudson, and the inferiority of the Frenchman as a military leader, guided only by military considerations, is painfully apparent. New York was the very centre of the British power; its fall could not but have shortened the war.
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