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Count Rochambeau
One of the unsung heroes of the American Revolution, de Grasse was in charge of a large French fleet in the Caribbean. In the final years of the war, de Grasse traveled north to assist Washington at Yorktown. De Grasse’s strong strategic thinking—and his patient communication with the Americans—allowed him to triumph in the Battle of the Chesapeake, a skirmish between the French and British navies that many consider to be the most definitive battle of the war. The fact that a Frenchman could be so essential to the war effort further suggests just how much the scraggly new nation needed France to achieve independence.
Count de Grasse Quotes in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
The Lafayette in the Somewhat United States quotes below are all either spoken by Count de Grasse or refer to Count de Grasse . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Pages 190-268
Quotes
De Grasse cajoled Lafayette by promising “to further your glory. Lafayette later confessed, “The temptation was great, but even if the attack had succeeded, it would necessarily have cost a great deal of blood.” Therefore he decided not to sacrifice the soldiers “entrusted to me to personal ambition.” Lafayette was growing up. Two days later he turned twenty-four.
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For that reason, some scholars consider this somewhat forgotten maritime dust up—referred to as the Battle of the Chesapeake […]—to be the most important altercation of the American Revolution, a take that’s all the more astonishing considering not a single American took part in it. Nor did a single American even witness it.
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Over at the battlefield, we drove from the site of the French encampment to the French artillery park to the French Cemetery, where someone had left a single yellow daisy on the plaque commemorating the burial of fifty unknown French soldiers. Then we went for lunch on the York River waterfront at the Water Street Grille, a few yards away from a statue of Admiral de Grasse. There were freedom fries on the menu.
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The lesson of Yorktown is the value of cooperation—the lack of it among Britain’s top commanders, and the overwhelming strength of the Franco-American alliance. […] A more interesting aspect of the Franco-American collaboration was the way the French and American officers kept talking each other out of bad ideas.
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Count de Grasse Character Timeline in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
The timeline below shows where the character Count de Grasse appears in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 190-268
...begging for money. Vergennes promised to send some, and he also told Lafayette that the Count de Grasse —currently commanding the French navy in the Caribbean—would soon head up the Atlantic to offer...
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Meanwhile, though Washington still wanted to attack New York, Rochambeau and de Grasse were planning to plant the French navy at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The...
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Anxious to get back to protecting the French sugar plantations in the Caribbean, de Grasse sent word that his ships would arrive in Virginia by September 3, 1781. Washington needed...
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Sure enough, on September 3, de Grasse ’s ships arrived in the Chesapeake Bay and the British were surrounded. Washington wanted to...
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...British navy had also arrived in the Chesapeake. Fearing a shoot-out in the small bay, de Grasse brought his fleet out to sea to fight the British in what is known as...
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...making its way to Yorktown. The British were doomed, and it was largely thanks to de Grasse . With the help of her historian friend Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, Vowell makes the case...
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...almost perfectly with the Americans. Of particular interest to Vowell is the fact that both de Grasse and Washington were able to talk “each other out of bad ideas.” For example, de...
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