Chap. XI.} 1779. Aug. 18. |
This text is part of:
[250]
them.
On the sixteenth of August they appeared
off Plymouth, but did not attack the town.
After two idle days, a strong wind drove them to the west.
Montmorin had written to Vergennes: ‘I hope the Spanish marine will fight well; but I should like it better if the English, frightened at their number, would retreat to their own harbors without fighting.’1 When the gale had abated, the allies rallied, returned up the channel, and the British retreated before them.
No harmony existed between the French and Spanish officers.
A deadly malady ravaged the French ships and infected the Spaniards.2 The combined fleet never had one chief.
The French returned to port, where they remained; the Spaniards, under their independent commander, sailed for Cadiz, execrating their allies.
The wrath of their admiral was so great, that he was ready to give his parole of honor never to serve against England, while he would with pleasure serve against France.
It was the sentiment of them all.3
The immense preparations of the two powers had not even harmed British merchant vessels on their homeward voyages.
The troops that were to have embarked for England were wasted by dysentery in their camps in Normandy and Brittany.4 There was a general desolation.
The French public complained relentlessly of d'orvilliers.
‘The doing of nothing at all will have cost us a great deal of money,’ wrote
1 Montmorin to Vergennes, 30 March, 1779.
2 Marie Antoinette in von Arneth, 304.
3 Rodney to Lady Rodney, Gibraltar, 7 Feb., 1780.
4 Marie Antoinette in von Arneth, 304.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1874.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.