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Updated: May 20, 2025
These were twelve ships of the line, one 50, and some frigates, under Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt, who had left England on the 2d of the month, to cruise in wait for this expedition. The French numbers were amply sufficient to frustrate any attack, but de Guichen, ordinarily a careful officer, had allowed his ships of war to be to leeward and ahead of the convoy.
Yet even that had a checkered light, the second division of the intended help being blocked in Brest by the English fleet; while the final failure of De Guichen to appear, and Rodney coming in his stead, made the hopes of the campaign fruitless. A period of vehement and decisive action was, however, at hand.
But the ugliness of his fence was so apparent to De Guichen, that he exclaimed, when the English fleet kept away the first time, that six or seven of his ships were gone; and sent word to Rodney that if his signals had been obeyed he would have had him for his prisoner.
If you had made the two last wars, you would have heard nothing spoken of but these same blockades; I hope that M. de Guichen, on one side, and M. de Gaston, on the other, will revenge us for these momentary mortifications.
"To be general, because he is always wrong. To be particular, because I judge the audience of Guichen to be too sophisticated for 'The Heartless Father." "You would put it more happily," interposed Andre-Louis who was the cause of this discussion "if you said that 'The Heartless Father' is too unsophisticated for the audience of Guichen." "Why, what's the difference?" asked Leandre.
De Guichen asked to be superseded; "my health cannot endure such continual fatigue and anxiety." Twice the wary Frenchman was nearly caught, but the wind did not favor Rodney long enough to give him the weather position, the only sure one for offence.
The address of Kempenfeldt and the bad management of Guichen in the North Atlantic, seconded by a heavy gale of wind, seriously embarrassed De Grasse in the West Indies.
He was in blue satin, with ruffles, small sword, powdered hair, patches and spy-glass, and red-heeled shoes: the complete courtier, looking very handsome. The women of Guichen ogled him coquettishly. He took the ogling as a proper tribute to his personal endowments, and returned it with interest. Like Climene, he looked out of place amid the bandits who composed the remainder of the company.
On the 5th of July he sailed from Fort Royal taking with him the "trade" for France, and on the 26th anchored with it at Cap François in Haïti, where he found a division of four ships of the line which had been left the year before by de Guichen.
De Guichen, seeing the danger of the rear, wore his fleet all together and stood down to succor it. Rodney, finding himself foiled, hauled up again on the same tack as the enemy, both fleets now heading to the southward and eastward. This, which sounds like the old story of ship to ship, Rodney explains to have meant her opposite at the moment, not her opposite in numerical order.
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