HISTORY – French Naval Warfare Strategists in the American Revolutionary War (1778-1783)
By François Souty
François Souty, PhD in Economic History, former International Affairs Officer at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (2021-2024), was a member of the OECD Committee of Experts on Competition Policy from 1996 to 2024. He teaches European institutions and geopolitics at the Excelia Business School group (La Rochelle-Paris Cachan) as well as European competition law and policy at the Faculty of Law of the University of Nantes. He is in charge of the economics section at Le Diplomate Media.
Castries, d’Estaing, de Grasse, Suffren and the renaissance of French naval strategic thinking, lessons for 2026?
« Ma maxime est de ne compter pour rien, de ne jamais penser qu’au bien de la chose, et de ne jamais le mettre dans la balance de déplaire ou d’être disgracié. »
Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez, on June 4, 1783 in the harbor of Négapatam[1]
Executive Summary
The American War of Independence (1778-1783) is a decisive period in U.S. History of course. It is also one of the most remarkable moments in French naval history. It is generally associated with the great sea battles of Dominica, Grenada, the Chesapeake, Trincomalee or Gondelour, as well as with the figures of admirals d’Estaing, de Grasse and Suffren. But to reduce it to a succession of struggles and exceptional personalities would lead to missing the essential. The success of the French Royal Navy during that War is first and foremost that of an instrument patiently rebuilt, methodically organized and served by men whose training and skills have been profoundly improved since the Seven Years’ War. The defeat of 1763 had taught the French monarchy a major strategic lesson: a continental power could not claim to have lasting influence in European and world affairs without having a maritime capacity equal to its ambitions. The reconstruction undertaken after the Seven Years’ War was therefore not a simple policy of replacing lost ships. It constituted a real industrial, financial, administrative, scientific and human policy, intended to reconstitute a coherent naval system confronted to British excellence on the Seven Seas.
This renaissance is based first and foremost on the material tool. Arsenals were modernized, shipbuilding rationalized, types of ships gradually standardized and supplies better organized. The French ships of 1778-1783 now formed a much more homogeneous whole, efficient and capable of operating over very long distances. The quality of the fleet engaged during the War of Independence was thus the direct product of a policy carried out during nearly fifteen years of peace.
But the material tool is not enough. The real originality of this renaissance lies in the quality of the human resources that serve it. Officers were better trained in navigation, hydrography, tactics and squadron management. A new generation —Kersaint, d’Estaing, de Grasse, Suffren, but also Bougainville, La Pérouse, La Motte-Picquet and many others — acquired experience combining ocean navigation, squadron combat, amphibious operations, intelligence and cooperation with land forces.
The French Navy thus gradually became a learning organization: the experiences of the Seven Years’ War were analyzed, shortcomings corrected, and navigation, manoeuvering, and command practices perfected. In addition to this technical dimension, there is an intellectual dimension. Kersaint and the reformers thought of the transformation of the instrument; with true political genius, Castries understood the importance of his insertion into a global strategy; The officers then experienced, in the various theatres, with the concrete modalities of its use. Victory is thus conceived before being a fight.
The three great naval commanders studied in this article illustrate this collective maturation. D’Estaing shows how to preserve a still precious instrument while engaging it with discernment. De Grasse demonstrated the strategic power of concentration: at the Chesapeake, the French fleet did not need to destroy the British Royal Navy, but to prevent it from accomplishing its decisive mission. Suffren pushed the logic of initiative further: in the Indian Ocean, he transformed mobility, the repetition of commitments and the local concentration of forces into means of compensating for the overall numerical inferiority of French naval forces.
These differences in style do not hide a profound unity. The three admirals d’Estaing, de Grasse and Suffren had the same tool, the same professional culture and the same general conception of maritime freedom of action. The diversity of their methods is made possible precisely by the quality of the instrument at their disposal.
The American War of Independence thus reveals an essential strategic truth: a naval victory is not only born on the battlefield. It is prepared in arsenals, administrations, schools, staffs and chains of command that allow forces dispersed over several thousand miles to act in a coordinated manner. It was this combination — material tool, human resources, training, organization, doctrine and command — that enabled France, in 1778-1783, to transform a rebuilt fleet into a true strategic power.
France certainly did not become the world’s leading maritime power in the long term, which the Revolution would scuttle anyway. But it demonstrates that a naval power can, through the quality of its organization and its command, compensate for an overall inferiority with a local, temporary and methodically sought superiority. The essential lesson of the period is therefore clear: the victories of 1778-1783 were not only those of a few great sailors; they were those of a naval policy which, since 1763, had understood that operational effectiveness had to be prepared by the patient construction of a complete system of maritime power served by well trained staff. The Marine Royale won at sea because it had first learned, over fifteen years, to build, train, organize, coordinate and command.
Introduction
This maxim of Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez, placed in the foreground, could almost serve as a guiding thread for the action of the main actors of the French naval renaissance during the second half of the eighteenth century. It sheds light on the behaviour of men who, from Kersaint to Castries, from d’Estaing to de Grasse and Suffren, placed to varying degrees but always of the highest degrees the service of the State, freedom of action and the efficiency of the naval instrument above institutional routines and career interests.
Moreover, the American War of Independence was a singular moment in the history of French naval power. After the defeat of the Seven Years’ War, the monarchy had undertaken to rebuild a Navy capable of regaining its rank against the British Royal Navy. When France entered the war on the side of the American Insurgents in 1778, this reconstruction had already produced a large fleet and a corps of officers, several of whose representatives were to distinguish themselves in the main maritime theatres of the conflict. But French success cannot be reduced to the accumulation of material resources or a few prestigious victories. It was also the result of a transformation in the way naval warfare was thought and conducted, the most remarkable culmination of which was around the campaign of 1781.[2]
This evolution cannot be understood without looking back at the reflections and experiences of a generation of officers of which the Comte de Kersaint is one of the most original figures. As we will see later, a multi-faceted officer and the author of numerous memoirs and pamphlets, Kersaint had developed at the outset of the war a conception of maritime power that combined the control of communications, the protection of the colonies, the mobility of naval forces and a more rational use of resources. His reflections on the role of the Navy in the defence of the colonial space, as opposed to a costly multiplication of fortifications, appear particularly premonitory.[3] They take on particular significance when compared with the policy implemented a few years later by Charles-Eugène-Gabriel de La Croix, Marquis de Castries, who became Minister of the Navy in 1780.[4]
The comparison between the two men must be handled with caution, however. Kersaint was above all an individual innovator, whose ideas circulated widely in writing in publications or pamphlets and whose several proposals met with resistance from the monarchical institution and its offices at Versailles; Castries, on the other hand, had the governmental authority to transform a conception of maritime power into operational choices. The surviving documentation shows the extent of his activity: correspondence with the principal chiefs of the Navy, notes on the manner of fighting French and British squadrons, reflections on the Channel expedition, naval finances, and the operations of the American War.[5] He did not publish, in the manner of Kersaint, a system of thought intended for public opinion: his strategy – mostly reserved to the King – can be read mainly in his decisions, his instructions and his correspondence.
It is in this articulation between thought, government and command that this article is situated. It extends two studies devoted respectively to Kersaint and to Bougainville and La Pérouse, as well as a more general reflection on the four centuries of French naval strategy, which have made it possible to examine the intellectual, technical and human conditions of this maritime renaissance.[6] It is therefore not a question of repeating the biographies of these officers, but of determining how a generation of leaders could be mobilized in an overall strategy and which of them were those who truly deserve the qualification of strategists.
Besides Castries, two figures dominate this analysis. The Comte de Grasse embodies the ability to concentrate a considerable naval force in the theatre where a political and military decision becomes possible; Suffren, operating in the Indian Ocean, on the contrary illustrates a conception based on initiative, mobility and the permanent search for confrontation.[7] Around them, d’Estaing, Guichen, La Motte-Picquet, Barras, Vaudreuil, Monteil and several other officers testified to the exceptional quality of the pool of command constituted by the French Navy. D’Estaing deserves also some more attention due to his pioneering role in the first phase of Naval operations of the Independence War.
The question is therefore less to know who were the most brilliant admirals than to understand how France managed, during a few decisive years, to transform the reconstruction of its Navy into a real global strategic capability. Was the success of 1781 the result of the isolated genius of a few commanders, or did it reveal the existence of a system combining coherent political leadership, judicious choices of command, and a generation of officers capable of exploiting the opportunities offered by war with great freedom? To answer this question, it is first necessary to study the conception of maritime power and the direction of the war around Castries, then to analyse the two major forms of strategic conduct embodied by de Grasse and Suffren, before finally examining the depth and limits of the French naval command system through the cases of some of their best known fellow officers.
I. From Naval Thinking to the Strategic Direction of War
The French victory at the Chesapeake and Yorktown cannot be reduced to the skill of a few exceptional commanders. It is the culmination of a deeper movement that began after the French Navy disasters of the Seven Years’ War, when the monarchy undertook to gradually rebuild its maritime power. This effort was not limited to arsenals, squadrons, or finances. It was also accompanied by a renewed reflection on the very conditions for the effectiveness of naval warfare: the organization of forces, the quality of ships, the training of crews, the defence of the colonies, the articulation between military operations and diplomatic objectives.
However, this evolution was neither linear nor exclusively institutional. It was also developed thanks to the work, observations and initiatives of officers who, with their experience at sea, sought to go beyond the mere conduct of operations to propose a real reflection on maritime power. Among them, the Comte de Kersaint occupies a singular place. A sailor, technician, administrator, reformer and prolific author, he appears to be one of the first French officers to consider the Navy in all its dimensions, from the design of the ship to the organization of the colonies and the management of human resources.
A few years later, Marshal de Castries was to give a governmental translation to several of these concerns. Although it is not possible, at this stage, to establish a direct relationship between the two men, apart from the series of reports and notes sent by the Captain to his Minister, their reflections present remarkable convergences: the same attention paid to the mobility of forces, the same desire to preserve the resources of the monarchy, the same conviction that the mastery of maritime communications is more important than the multiplication of costly isolated defensive systems.
This intellectual maturation finally led to an even broader transformation: France gradually ceased to think on the scale of a particular theatre of operations in order to conduct a world maritime war, where the Atlantic, the West Indies, North America, Africa and the Indian Ocean were part of the same strategy and the same very vast entity. It is this evolution, from the first individual reflections to the political direction of the war, that must be examined before studying the action of the great commanders who gave it its full effectiveness.
Box 1 — Marshal de Castries: a political visionary of naval power
Armand-Charles-Augustin de La Croix, Marshal de Castries (1756-1842), Minister of the Navy from 1780 to 1787, remains one of the great figures of the French naval renaissance at the end of the Ancien Régime that is too little remembered in 2026. Its importance lies less in a particular reform than in an overall conception of power, which is remarkably topical two hundred and fifty years after the American War of Independence: the Navy can only be effective if it is part of a coherent state policy, has sufficient material and financial resources and can be used according to clearly defined strategic objectives.
When he took over the Ministry of the Navy in 1780, the reconstruction undertaken since the Seven Years’ War had already profoundly transformed French naval tools (see appendix 1 on the chronology of reforms). This is therefore a decisive moment: the question is no longer just how to rebuild the fleet, but how to transform this newfound capability into political and military power. Its action is part of a global vision of France’s place in the international system and the role that maritime power must play in it.
Castries understood that the Navy could not be thought of as an isolated administration. It is directly linked to foreign policy, the finances of the monarchy, the industrial capacities of the arsenals, supplies, recruitment and training of men. Naval power is, for him, an overall construction of which the warship is only the most visible element. This conception explains the attention paid under his ministry to the organization, the preparation of the Squadrons and Fleets and their ability to intervene in distant theatres. His vision is also profoundly strategic. France cannot hope to have a permanent superiority over Great Britain everywhere. It must therefore be able to choose its objectives, concentrate its resources, coordinate its various forces and take advantage of international circumstances. The Navy thus became one of the essential instruments of French power policy during the whole War.
This conception also explains the political dimension of Castries. He did not consider naval matters independently of the general situation of the Kingdom. He understood that France’s external power rested in the final analysis on the internal solidity of the state. A world fleet presupposes public finances capable of building and maintaining it; efficient arsenals presuppose a competent administration; an ambitious foreign policy presupposes a monarchy capable of mobilizing its resources in the long term. This lucidity appears with particular clarity on the eve of the final crisis of the Ancien Régime. In 1787, Castries measured the seriousness of the Kingdom’s financial situation and proposed to Louis XVI to replace the Controller-General of Finances Calonne in order to contribute to the recovery of the finances. The King did not accept this proposal. The Navy, like the entire monarchy, was then confronted with a fundamental contradiction: global strategic ambitions based on increasingly fragile public finances. It is this fragility that explains the modest means granted to La Pérouse for his Circumnavigation in 1785, from which he would never return.
Castries’ career thus gives the French naval renaissance a dimension that goes far beyond maritime history alone. He belongs to that generation of leaders who have understood that military power can only be sustainable when it is based on a coherent economic, financial, industrial and administrative policy. From this point of view, his action at the Ministry of the Navy between 1780 and 1787 was one of the last moments when the monarchical state still managed to effectively articulate diplomatic ambition, naval power and defence policy.
This dimension explains the particular interest of his character in this article. Castries was not only the minister under whom the French Navy achieved its major successes of the American War of Independence; he was one of those who understood that these successes would not have been possible without the prior construction of a naval instrument and without a political vision to employ it. He thus towers above the generation of great commanders studied here by the very nature of his function: they command the forces at sea; he helps to define the political, administrative and strategic conditions that make their action possible.
Source: René de la Croix, duc de Castries, de l’Académie française, Maréchal de Castries, serviteur de trois rois, op.cit.
A. Kersaint, precursor of a new conception of maritime power
Among the many officers who contributed to the recovery of the French Navy in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, few have such a complete personality as Armand Guy Simon de Coëtnempren Comte de Kersaint. Warsailor, engineer, experimenter, administrator, urban planner, plantation owner in the West Indies, reformer and writer, he belonged to that exceptional category of men who sought not only to perfect a particular element of the naval instrument, but to rethink it as a whole. He announced the future admirals of the XIXth Century who would develop cities and circulations networks in the new French colonies, notably in Asia. His work does not constitute a systematic treatise on maritime strategy; it nevertheless draws, by successive touches, a remarkably coherent conception and synthesis of ideas of his time of naval power.[8]
The originality of Kersaint lies precisely in this global approach. In his eyes, the superiority of a fleet depends neither exclusively on the number of ships, nor solely on the courage of their crews. It is the result of a set of interdependent elements: the quality of shipbuilding, the nautical performance of ships, the competence of officers and sailors, the administrative organization, the availability of human resources, the efficiency of maritime communications, the rational defence of the colonies and the judicious use of public finances. Each of his proposals thus sheds light on a particular aspect of a reflection whose unity appears more clearly when examined as a whole.
This vision also explains the very particular character of his intellectual activity. Unlike most general officers of his time, Kersaint did not limit his observations to administrative memoranda intended for the minister. He published, polemicized, disseminated his ideas and sought to convince a wider public of the reforms he considered necessary. This constant desire to share his experience is undoubtedly one of the most original traits of his personality. It also explains why his work can now be rediscovered as one of the earliest expressions of modern French naval thought.
This experience explains Kersaint’s constant interest in technical innovations with a real talent as a marine engineer. The episode of copper doubling is a particularly revealing illustration of this. After the first experiments conducted on L’Iphigenie, Kersaint was less concerned with celebrating an innovation than with understanding its imperfections in order to improve its processes, in a typically scientific approach. In 1785, after the war, Kersaint went to England with the permission of Marshal de Castries, whose confidence he had gained during the operations of 1780-1782. In England, he studied the methods used by the British Royal Navy, in particular the fastening of copper plates and more generally British naval construction and equipment techniques, in a comparative study approach intended to shed light on the modernization of the French Navy. Upon his return, this experience contributed to his appointment by Castries to work on the reform of the fleet’s equipment and his subsequent experiments aboard the ship of the line he commanded, Le Leopard. He thus became a truly Franco-British technology transfer agent.[10]
The same spirit presides over his reflections on rigging, the nautical qualities of the ships and the living conditions on board. The « Kersaint’s kitchens », which kept his name in the Navy’s documentation for a long time, bear witness to this desire to concretely improve the daily operation of ships. Far from being an anecdotal concern for comfort, these innovations are part of the same logic: a better served crew, a better maintained and faster ship are all factors of military efficiency. Finally, he modernised the maritime inscription (Navy Register of all fishermen to avoid the “press gang” system), which dated back to Colbert, by ensuring that the activity of fishermen was preserved in times of war to feed the civilian population.[11]
His colonial experience further reinforced this overall vision. The operations carried out in Demerary, Essequibo and Berbice showed him that the conquest of a territory was never an end in itself. A colony must be administered, developed, supplied and connected with the maritime communication routes that ensure its prosperity as well as its security. The projects drawn up on this occasion, particularly around the development of Longchamps, future Georgetown in Guiana illustrate this desire to think simultaneously about military action, administration and economic development.[13]
This approach also informs his reflections on colonial fortifications. Kersaint in no way denies their usefulness; On the other hand, he wonders about the relationship between their cost and their strategic effectiveness. A colony cannot be sustainably preserved by its defensive works alone if it remains without a naval force capable of protecting maritime communications and intervening quickly in the event of a threat. This intuition, which is very modern, foreshadows several of the principles that Castries would soon apply to the scale of French naval policy as a whole.[14]
This activity partly explains the long-unknown nature of his work. Failing to hold the highest ministerial responsibilities for a long time under the Ancien Régime, Kersaint was unable to give an institutional translation to all of his proposals. The French Revolution briefly offered him this possibility as a Parliamentarian, before his independence of mind, his attachment to a certain idea of honour and his rejection of political excesses led him to a tragic end by refusing to vote for the death of Louis XVI.[16]
Kersaint’s influence should not, however, be sought solely in the reforms actually carried out. It lies first and foremost in the breadth of his thinking and in his constant desire to apprehend maritime power as a coherent whole where technology, men, institutions, colonies and strategy come together. In this respect, he appears less as the founder of a completed doctrine than as one of the main precursors of French naval thought at the end of the eighteenth century. His intellectual posterity, extended in other forms by his daughter Claire, the future Duchess of Duras after the Empire in 1816, testifies to the permanence of a legacy that goes far beyond the military field alone.[17]
This work, however, remained that of a reforming officer. It could only acquire its full scope if it was relayed by a politician capable of transforming individual proposals into a real maritime policy. This is precisely the role that Marshal de Castries was to play from 1780 onwards.
B. Castries, the Minister-Strategist: Transforming the Navy into an Instrument of Power
If Kersaint can be considered as one of the first French officers to have formulated, on the basis of his experience of the sea and the limits of the naval apparatus of the Ancien Régime, a coherent reflection on the material and operational conditions of maritime power, Marshal de Castries went a step further. With him, naval thinking ceased to be that of a naval officer or a theoretician to become that of a political leader with the means of the State at the highest level, with the personal confidence of the King of France. Appointed Secretary of State (Miniter) for the Navy on 13 October 1780, Charles-Eugène-Gabriel de La Croix de Castries did not receive a Marine Royale to be built but a Navy that had already been profoundly transformed since 1763, reconstituted under Minister de Choiseul and then Minister de Sartine, and engaged since 1778 in a war whose scale now went far beyond European areas. Its originality lies precisely in his understanding that the question is no longer just to have a large fleet, but to know where, when and for what political purpose this fleet should be used.[18]
This inflection is fundamental. Louis XVI’s Marine Royale then possessed a naval tool considerably superior to that available to the Monarchy in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War. Construction, modernization of arsenals, improved officer training, and efforts to rebuild crews made it possible to bring large squadrons into line. But the existence of a powerful fleet cannot in itself constitute a strategy. In 1778, the difficulty consisted in arbitrating between distant theatres of operations, in articulating French colonial interests with those of allied Spain or United Provinces, in supporting the American Insurgents without necessarily transforming the war into an ideological crusade for their independence, and above all in determining the conditions under which British superiority over the seas could be temporarily challenged.[19]
Castries thus appears to be one of the very first French officials to reason explicitly in terms of the global distribution of naval forces. His strategy was not based on the abstract search for a general battle that would allow France to destroy the British Navy. It is based on a much more realistic and pragmatic assessment of the balance of power. British power remains superior overall in numbers and strongpoints; The French fleet could therefore not hope to obtain control of the seas everywhere and in the long term. On the other hand, it could seek temporary superiority locally, concentrate its forces in certain theatres, threaten British communications, support land operations and, above all, force London to disperse its own squadrons.[20]
This conception explains the gradual shift of the centre of gravity of war to the peripheral theatres. The abandonment of the plans to invade Great Britain in no way meant a renunciation of the offensive. On the contrary, it meant that the French offensive was to be sought where the structure of the British Empire offered the most vulnerable prizes: the West Indies, North America, India, lines of communication, and colonial possessions. Naval warfare thus ceased to be thought of primarily as a Franco-British confrontation in European waters; it became a global struggle for the mastery of imperial spaces.[21]
It is in this perspective that Castries’ personal role in the campaign of 1781 should be understood. The minister was not content with administering the Navy arsenals from Versailles. He followed the preparations, intervened in the choice of commanders of ships and squadrons; it endeavoured to coordinate the information coming from the different theatres. His correspondence reveals a minister who reasoned simultaneously in terms of available forces, adversary movements, cooperation with allies and operational opportunities. The collections held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France bear witness to his exchanges with La Pérouse, de Grasse, Guichen, Vaudreuil, Bouillé, Bussy-Castelnau and several other military and colonial leaders. His own annotations relate to the methods of combat of French and English ships, the Channel expedition of 1779, the state of naval finances and the operations of the squadrons and fleets.[22]
This documentation is particularly valuable because it allows us to go beyond the traditional image of the minister as the administrator of a simple ministerial department. Castries doesn’t just think in terms of available ships-of-the-line or expenses. He sought to establish a relationship between the nature of naval combat, the composition of the forces and the political objective pursued. His reflection focused in particular on the way in which the French fought in relation to the British. It reveals a constant attention to the concrete conditions of engagement, to the concentration of forces and to the need to adapt operational choices to the theatre in question.[23]
The choice of men is therefore one of the essential instruments of this policy. The appointment 1781 of the Comte de Grasse at the head of the large squadron, indeed a whole fleet, destined for the West Indies, and then the sending of Suffren to the Indian Ocean, were not simple career decisions. They are part of a command policy. Castries was looking for officers capable of exercising their initiative in spaces where communications with France were slow, uncertain and sometimes impossible. The central strategy should therefore define objectives that were sufficiently precise to guide the action while leaving commanders considerable room for appreciation. [24]
The letter addressed to Vergennes on 16 March 1781 concerning the mission entrusted to de Grasse is, in this respect, a particularly revealing document. Castries explained that de Grasse should be given real freedom as to the degree of force to be used, the choice of the area of operations and the cooperation with the Spanish forces. He even explicitly envisages the possibility of reserving for the squadron destined for North America a superiority that circumstances might make necessary.[25] This conception is crucial: the Minister did not seek to conduct each operation remotely; he organized in close cooperation with the King a strategic framework within which the commander at sea must be able to exploit the opportunities offered by the situation.
Here we find an essential characteristic of modern strategic thinking: the distinction between political goal, operational mission and tactical means. Castries obviously could not have known at Versailles the exact situation in which de Grasse would find himself several months later. He had therefore to design instructions that were general enough to survive the uncertainties of time, space and information. The freedom left to the commander in such circumstances is not a weakness of the political leadership but is based on a fine and pragmatic analysis; it is the very condition for its effectiveness in a very long-distance maritime war.[26]
The campaign of 1781 was the most spectacular demonstration of this method. De Grasse’s large squadron set sail from Brest on 22 March and reached the West Indies two months later. It carried reinforcements and was to contribute to the defence of the French possessions while looking for opportunities to weaken the British system. When the American situation changed during the summer, de Grasse agreed to bring his squadron to the Chesapeake. It was not a question of mechanically reproducing a plan drawn up at Versailles: the decision to concentrate forces around the Chesapeake Bay was the result of a dialogue between the French and American commands and the assessment of the situation by the Commander at sea.[27]
It is precisely this articulation between a central strategic direction and a decentralized operational initiative that gives Castries’ action its full scope. Yorktown is not the result of a single order from Versailles; it was the culmination of a chain of decisions in which the Minister of the Navy made it possible to concentrate forces, appointed the commander, defined a general framework and organized the means that would then allow de Grasse to act. On August 30, 1781, French forces entered the Chesapeake; on 5 September, they faced the British squadron under Admiral Graves. The naval victory, even if it did not take the form of a complete destruction of the opposing fleet, was enough to prevent it from regaining control of the bay. The Franco-American system was then able to lock Cornwallis in Yorktown, whose surrender on 19 October transformed de Grasse’s naval success into an essential strategic victory.[28]
The teaching of the Chesapeake is considerable: a fleet does not necessarily need to destroy the opposing fleet to achieve a decisive victory. Sometimes it is enough to prevent it from accomplishing the mission that conditions the success of the adversary. De Grasse protected the Chesapeake, prevented the arrival of British relief and allowed the Franco-American army to complete the siege of Yorktown. The naval battle must therefore be assessed in its systemic geopolitical perspective, not only from the losses inflicted on enemy ships, but from its consequences on the entire system of forces.[29]
This conception also gives Castries a special place in the history of French naval thought. He does not theorize, like Kersaint, from a relatively personal reflection on the conditions of maritime power. He did not command a squadron himself, like d’Estaing, de Grasse or Suffren. It occupies a different level: that of politico-military strategy, where the resources of the state, the preparation of the naval instrument, the selection of leaders, the definition of theatres of operations and the diplomatic objective of war must be articulated.
This position also explains its interest in the Indian Ocean. Suffren’s campaign is not an isolated initiative unrelated to the ministry’s general strategy. Castries understood that British power was based on an imperial system whose different spaces were interdependent. To take the war to the Indian Ocean is therefore to threaten one of the economic and political centres of gravity of the British Empire. The instructions given to Suffren and the support that the minister subsequently sought to give to his squadron testify to this desire to use the Marine Royale as an instrument of pressure on a global scale.[30]
The paradox is that this strategy comes up against the very limits of French power. The Monarchy can reconstitute a fleet, arm it and project it very far; it cannot, however, multiply indefinitely the squadrons, the crews, the supplies and the transports. The global dispersion of forces is therefore both one of the conditions of the French offensive and one of its main vulnerabilities. Castries is aware of this. His action is aimed less at seeking permanent superiority than at provoking, at certain points, temporary concentrations of power capable of producing a disproportionate effect on the general course of the war.[31]
The logic was particularly visible in 1781: while the British Navy remained more numerous overall, France managed to create the conditions for a decisive naval superiority around the Chesapeake locally. Contemporary work on de Grasse has shown the exceptional scale of this projection of forces, as well as the complexity of cooperation between naval and land forces.[32] What is important here is therefore not only de Grasse’s tactical genius, but the prior existence of a strategic organization that would allow a French squadron to leave the West Indies, cross the Atlantic, transport troops and resources, and then concentrate with other Allied forces in a distant theatre, and ultimately fight.
Castries thus appears to be the intermediate strategic link between the reconstruction of the Navy undertaken since the Seven Years’ War and the operational successes of 1781-1783. He gradually transformed a renovated fleet into a real instrument of power. The Marine Royale was no longer just conceived as a collection of ships intended to fight battle; it became a system of forces intended to produce political effects several thousand kilometres from Versailles. From this point of view, the American War was a laboratory for French maritime strategy.
However, its action has another, even more sustainable dimension. Castries understood that operational efficiency presupposes an administration capable of sustaining the naval effort over the long term. Its work of reorganising ports and arsenals, rationalising procedures, supervising officers, and improving the management of personnel and supplies directly extended its strategic action. Administrative reform is therefore not external to the strategy: it constitutes its infrastructure. The work devoted to maritime administration under Louis XVI rightly emphasizes the importance of information gathering, the inspection of admiralties and the ability of the ministry to know the real state of maritime resources.[33]
This is why the figure of Castries deserves to be fully re-evaluated in a History of French naval thought. He was neither a theoretician in the classical sense, nor an admiral operating at sea. He was something much more uncommon in History, up to the current XXIst Century: a minister capable of thinking simultaneously about the tool, the theatre and the political objective, while leaving a free hand to his commanders in operation far away. Through him, French naval strategy crossed a threshold. It moves from the material reconstruction of the fleet to the conception of a global use of maritime power.
The year 1781 represents the most spectacular culmination of this evolution. The Chesapeake and Yorktown showed that a French Navy rebuilt since 1763 could now contribute to a major political victory by combining mobility, concentration, force projection, inter-service cooperation and the initiative of commanders. But this success should not lead to a teleological reading of the war. In April 1782, Les Saintes brutally reminded us that local superiority did not mean lasting mastery of the sea. Castries’ strategy made it possible to create the conditions for a decisive victory; it would not have removed the structural constraints that continued to weigh on French power.[34]
It is precisely this tension between global ambition and limited resources that gives the Castries experiment its historical interest. It already foreshadowed the great questions of French Naval thought in the following centuries: how to compensate for quantitative inferiority by the quality of the instrument? How to choose the theatres on which to focus the effort? How can naval power be articulated with land operations and diplomatic objectives? And above all, how can a fleet be transformed into an instrument of power without having permanent control of the seas?
Kersaint had asked some of these questions based on the experience of the sea and the reflection on the naval instrument. Castries provided them with an initial government response. With him, naval thinking became power politics. It remains to be seen how this strategy will be translated, in the theatres of operations, into a renewed conception of maritime warfare itself: concentration of squadrons, choice of the decisive theatre, articulation between naval and land forces, and effective globalisation of the conflict. It is this transformation of the space of war that will now be examined.
C. Changing scale: thinking of naval warfare as a global conflict
The essential contribution of the American War of Independence to French naval thought was perhaps less due to the invention of a new doctrine than to a change of scale, with a geostrategic dimension. For the first time since the Seven Years’ War, the French Navy was engaged in a conflict in which the decisive question was no longer just that of the confrontation between two fleets in a given space, but that of the ability of a state to project its power simultaneously over several oceans and to transform world geography into a strategic instrument. From the English Channel to the West Indies, from the Chesapeake to Gibraltar, from the Cape of Good Hope to the coasts of India, the war forced French officials to think in terms of interdependent theatres.[35]
This transformation is crucial. Louis XVI’s Marine Royale was not only fighting the Royal Navy; it was confronting an imperial system whose coherence was based precisely on the British ability to link its possessions, bases, squadrons, troops and trade flows. The French response cannot therefore be simply symmetrical. It is not a question of reproducing everywhere the British arrangement, which would be impossible, but of seeking the points on which a French intervention can produce an effect greater than the apparent size of the forces engaged. Naval warfare thus quickly became a war of imperial communications, bases and temporary concentrations of forces.[36]
The change is all the more important because France was not entering the conflict alone. Spain joined the war in 1779, while the United Provinces were drawn into it in 1780. The American War of Independence then became, strictly speaking, an international and maritime war. All the major European naval and colonial powers, with the exception of Portugal, were involved.[37] Versailles and the Marine Royale has therefore to integrate into their calculations not only British power, but also the divergent capabilities and objectives of their allies.
This fact profoundly modifies the very notion of naval superiority. France could not hope to obtain general and permanent control of the seas. It could, on the other hand, seek to create a local superiority of concentration, by avoiding as much as possible the unnecessary dispersal of its squadrons, by choosing the time and place of their engagement, by exploiting the distance between the different British theatres and by forcing the adversary to make dispersal choices himself. This logic is not entirely new in French naval thinking at the time, which had already been confronted, during previous wars, with the British ability to preserve a naval force as a permanent threat. But the American War of Independence gave it a new scope: the worldwide dispersion of the British Royal Navy could now become a vulnerability that France systematically sought to exploit.[38]
This conception thus paradoxically brings French naval thinking closer to certain intuitions developed by the British around the notion of fleet in being. The expression is associated with the Earl of Torrington after the Battle of Bévéziers in 1690: a fleet that is not engaged in a decisive battle is not inactive, because its mere existence can prevent the adversary from freely disposing of his own forces. The concept is therefore not a « British strategy » that suddenly appeared in 1778; rather, it refers to an ancient practice of naval warfare, gradually theorized, in which the preservation of a fleet in a state of action itself becomes a means of influencing the decisions of the adversary.[39] Naval warfare has thus also become a war of threat, movement and constraint. A squadron can produce a considerable strategic effect without winning a spectacular battle, simply by forcing the adversary to watch it, pursue it, or keep part of its forces around it.
France knew this logic before 1778, but it did not transform it into a systematic doctrine. It was precisely the experience of the War of Independence that led its leaders to make it a more conscious element of operational reasoning: the conservation of a squadron, its mobility and the possibility of its intervention became instruments for fixing, diverting or dispersing British forces. The question is therefore no longer just which fleet is the most numerous or which wins the battle, but which fleet retains the greatest freedom of action and manages to reduce that of its opponent. France was thus able to turn against the British Navy part of the advantage that the latter had traditionally derived from its numerical superiority and its global network of bases.
The French thought of the period was certainly not yet formulated in the doctrinal language of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But the practice of war led French political and naval leaders to reason implicitly according to categories that would become central to modern maritime strategy: concentration of forces, mobility, geographical depth, protection of communications, prohibition of enemy movements, choice of decisive theatre and articulation between naval power and land action.[40] The real innovation of 1778-1783 therefore lies less in the invention of a new theory than in the operational combination of these different principles within a global strategy of contesting British power.
The campaign of 1778 provided a first illustration of this new situation. France now had a fleet large enough to carry the war to European waters and to force the British fleet to be more vigilant. For several days, the two naval armies manoeuvred west of Ushant in search of a favourable position, each seeking to maintain or regain the advantage of the wind before engaging in action. The battle of 27 July pitted two fleets of comparable numbers against each other for the first time since the Seven Years’ War in an all-out clash off the coast of Europe.[41]The confrontation at Ushant did not produce the decisive result that some had hoped for. No ships were lost, but the damage inflicted on the British fleet, the ensuing controversies across the Channel and the court-martial against Admiral Keppel testified to the considerable moral and political impact of this encounter.[42] Its importance therefore goes far beyond the tactical record. It shows that the French Navy, rebuilt since 1763, is now able to compete directly with the British Royal Navy in the European Atlantic. The period when the latter could claim an undeniable psychological superiority at sea now seems to be over. The psychological relationship between the two navies has changed.[43]
However, the main lesson of the battle of Ushant (Ouessant) is precisely the absence of a strategic decision. Both fleets remained in a position to continue the war. The battle did not destroy the adversary and did not allow him to take lasting control of the Atlantic. This experience helped shift French attention to theatres where naval power could be converted more directly into territorial or political gains. The imperial logic then reasserts itself.[44]
The West Indies are a privileged theatre in this respect. They concentrated territories of great economic value and constituted advanced positions allowing action on British communications. The capture of Dominica in 1778, followed by subsequent operations in the Lesser Antilles, showed that naval warfare could be immediately linked to territorial conquest. A squadron was no longer just an instrument for seeking a battle: it became the condition for the possibility of an amphibious operation, the occupation of an island and the temporary modification of the imperial balance of power.[45]
The experience of the Comte d’Estaing is here indicative of the difficulties encountered by this new strategy. His squadron had to fight British forces, protect French possessions, support land operations, and exploit opportunities for conquest. The West Indies campaign of 1778-1779 demonstrated that these objectives could contradict each other. A fleet that remains too long in front of a stronghold risks losing the advantage of its mobility; a fleet that too systematically seeks battle may jeopardize a land operation; A squadron that primarily protected the French possessions left the adversary the possibility of regaining the initiative elsewhere.[46]
The fundamental problem therefore becomes that of the prioritization of objectives. It is precisely at this level that the American war constitutes a strategic apprenticeship. It is not enough to have a powerful fleet; You have to determine what you want to achieve with it. However, there were many possible responses: to defend the French colonies, to conquer those of the enemy, to support the American Insurgents, to threaten British trade, to protect convoys, to favour land operations or to seek a general battle. The difficulty lies in the fact that these objectives cannot be pursued simultaneously with the same intensity.[47]
The French system gradually sought to resolve this difficulty by dividing the theatres and missions. In the West Indies, the French presence must be preserved and increased; in North America, the British Navy must be prevented from effectively supporting British forces on the continent; in the Indian Ocean, British interests in India and their communications must be threatened; in the Eastern Atlantic, finally, the British fleet must be prevented from concentrating its forces freely. The French Navy thus functioned as a network of squadrons specialized in each theatre, but whose movements could alter the general balance of the war.[48]
This conception explains the increasing importance of distances. In a European land war, the concentration of forces can be achieved in a matter of weeks, sometimes days. At sea, a French squadron destined for the West Indies or India had to cover thousands of miles, or weeks or even months of sailing, with crews exposed to disease, storms and the constraints of fresh supplies including water and food. Maritime strategy is therefore inseparable from logistics. A decision taken at Versailles may not produce its effects until several months later. In the meantime, the political and military situation may have changed dramatically.[49]
The sea thus imposes a particular form of uncertainty on strategic thinking. The minister never knows exactly the position of the enemy; the admiral did not necessarily know the situation of the other French squadrons; information circulates late; winds and currents can change calendars; diseases can reduce crews; damage can immobilize vessels. Under these conditions, strategy cannot be conceived as the mechanical execution of a plan. It must provide commanders with objectives and decision-making margins that are sufficiently broad to allow them to adapt action to the circumstances.[50]
It was here that French naval thinking began to join a truly operational conception of war. Between the political strategy defined at Versailles and the combat waged by the ships, there was now an intermediate level: that of the conduct of forces in a given theatre. The admiral must determine where to concentrate his ships, when to accept or refuse combat, which land operations to support, which bases to protect, and which communications to threaten. The campaign then becomes a unit of reasoning distinct from the battle.[51]
This evolution was particularly marked in the Indian campaign of 1782-1783. Suffren’s action against Edward Hughes is not reduced to a succession of tactical battles. The five major naval battles in the Indian Ocean reflect a real struggle for control of a theatre, in which each commander seeks to preserve his own communications and prevent those of his adversary. The distance from Europe gave Suffren exceptional freedom of action, but it also forced him to solve problems locally that Versailles could no longer deal with directly.[52]
The Indian Ocean thus constituted a kind of laboratory for French naval thought. In it, Suffren discovered, or rather put into practice, the limits of a strategy based on the systematic search for battle. His offensive temperament led him to increase his engagements against Hughes, but his real objective was broader: to maintain a French squadron capable of supporting French action in India, to preserve communications with French bases and to prevent the British from concentrating their forces against French possessions or their allies.[53]
The campaign also reveals another essential characteristic of maritime warfare: the strategic value of a fleet may lie in its ability to last. A squadron destroyed in a tactical victory may be strategically useless; a squadron that remains operational after several engagements may continue to impose constraint on the enemy. Keeping the fleet in fighting condition therefore becomes a strategic objective in itself. Naval warfare is not just about destroying enemy ships; it is also about the struggle to preserve one’s own combat potential.[54]
This logic allows us to better understand why the naval battles of the period so often gave tactically indecisive results. The sailing combat system, the difficulties of communication between ships, the constraints of the wind and the need to maintain formation make it extremely difficult and uncertain to completely destroy an enemy fleet. The battle can therefore produce a strategic outcome without producing an overwhelming tactical victory. Conversely, a tactical victory can remain short-lived if it does not allow the general situation of the theatre to be changed.[55]
The case of the Chesapeake is particularly enlightening here. De Grasse did not destroy Graves’ fleet. However, his action was enough to radically change the situation on land. By preventing the British Royal Navy from regaining control of the bay, he made possible the completion of the siege of Yorktown. Naval victory is therefore measured by its strategic effect on land. The Marine Royale was no longer an autonomous instrument: it became one of the elements of a system of warfare combining naval forces, land armies, transport, bases and diplomacy.[56]
This interdependence is probably one of the most modern lessons of the American Revolutionary War. Naval power is no longer defined solely by the number of ships or the quality of their artillery. It is measured by the ability to produce political and military effects on land from the sea. A squadron can save a colony, allow a landing, cut off a communication, protect an army, supply a garrison, or prevent enemy intervention. Battle is only one of the means by which these effects can be achieved.[57]
At the same time, the war reveals the limits of this conception. France does not have the resources necessary to maintain a permanent superiority everywhere. So it has to choose. However, each concentration creates a weakness elsewhere. When de Grasse left the West Indies for the Chesapeake, French forces had to accept an increased risk in the Caribbean. When Suffren concentrated his efforts in the Indian Ocean, French forces were less available in other theatres. The global strategy is thus a strategy of renunciation as much as of concentration: choosing a theatre necessarily means accepting that it is not everywhere.[58]
This constraint is at the heart of French naval thinking. It explains why the notion of an inland line is particularly difficult to apply to a French maritime power dispersed between several oceans. Great Britain benefited from the depth of its imperial network, its ports and its relays; France must project its squadrons from Europe to distant areas, maintaining much longer logistical lines. The search for local superiority must therefore be constantly weighed against the risk of strategic dispersion.[59]
Cooperation with Spain further complicates this equation. French and Spanish interests converge against Britain, but they are not identical. Spain pursues its own objectives as a priority, particularly around Gibraltar and in the colonial world. France must therefore coordinate operations without having a truly unified Allied naval command. This experience is another important lesson: the maritime strategy in coalition presupposes not only compatibility of objectives, but also mechanisms for coordinating forces that remain politically distinct.[60]
The Battle of Les Saintes on 12 April 1782, which was extensively mentioned in our previous article on the role of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville,[61] is a major warning in this regard. After the victory of the Chesapeake, the French success was not durably transformed into mastery of the seas. De Grasse’s defeat by Rodney shows that the occasional concentration of forces is not enough to permanently reverse the overall relationship of naval powers. The British Navy still retained a superior capacity for recovery and concentration. France could win a decisive battle in a theatre without managing to transform this success into general maritime superiority.[62]
But Les Saintes should not be interpreted as a refutation of the French strategy. Rather, they reveal its structural limitations. The local concentration strategy remains valid; What it lacks is a sufficient capacity to renew and sustain this concentration over time. The question therefore becomes that of the critical mass necessary to transform local successes into sustainable advantages. This is a question that will go far beyond the American War of Independence and that will reappear regularly in French naval thought.
Finally, it should be noted that this globalization of war also transformed the French perception of British power. This is no longer just that of a superior fleet; it appears as a global maritime system. Ports, colonies, trading companies, convoys, bases, and squadrons are interdependent. Attacking any of these elements can constrain the entire system. The French maritime war thus acquired an economic and imperial dimension that went far beyond the mere confrontation between warships.[63]
The French Navy thus discovered, through the American War of Independence, that it could exert a global strategic influence without having a maritime empire comparable to that of Great Britain. Its strength lies in mobility, temporary focus, and the ability to exploit the vulnerabilities of a geographically dispersed adversary. This conception is not yet a doctrine in the modern sense of the term. It did, however, constitute a coherent set of practices, reasoning and experiences that were to nourish French naval thinking in the long term.
From Kersaint to Castries, then from Castries to the great squadron commanders, an evolution is therefore taking shape. Kersaint thinks of the instrument; Castries thought about his job; the admirals learn to think about the countryside. The American War of Independence thus transformed the French Navy into a full-scale school of maritime strategy. It forces its leaders to think simultaneously in terms of fleet, theatre, distance, logistics, alliance, projection and geopolitical effect.
This evolution explains the special place of this war in the history of French naval thought. The Navy that emerged from 1763 is no longer just a rebuilt Marine Royale; the one that came out of 1783 was a Navy that had experienced the world war, its possibilities as well as its limitations. It now has a generation of officers — de Grasse, Suffren, d’Estaing, but also Guichen, La Motte-Picquet, Kersaint, Bougainville, La Pérouse, La Touche Treville etc. — whose experience combines naval combat, overseas projection, inter-service cooperation and concrete knowledge of ocean spaces.[64]
It is precisely at this level that the specificity of the French « strategists » of the American War of Independence appears. Not all of them are theoreticians. Some think through writing, many others through administration, and still others through action. But they all contributed to the same transformation: to make the French Royal Navy no longer just an instrument of battle, but an instrument of strategy. The true originality of this generation lies in the permanent circulation between thought and experience, between Versailles and the oceans, between political decision and the initiative of the commander.
The second part will then be able to change focus. After having studied the men who contributed to thinking about French naval power, it will be necessary to examine a main sample of those who had to implement it in the decisive theatres of the war. D’Estaing, de Grasse and Suffren were no longer considered only as fleet leaders: they appeared as representatives of three different ways of conceiving the use of French maritime power, three different relationships between strategy, operation and tactics, and three answers to the same fundamental question: what can a Navy really do when it is not able to have general control of the sea?
II. The great strategists put to the test of war: d’Estaing, de Grasse and Suffren and the generation of the French naval renaissance
The first part made it possible to identify the intellectual, institutional and political conditions of the French naval revival. Kersaint contributed to thinking about the reform of the instrument; Castries sought to transform this instrument into a means of power and to organize its use on a global scale. But a strategy only really makes sense when it is confronted with the uncertainty of war. Between the instructions of Versailles and the reality of the oceans is interposed the command: that of the squadrons, men and ships, subject to winds, distances, diseases, damage, delays in information and the initiatives of the adversary.
The American War of Independence offered an exceptional situation in this respect. For the first time since the Seven Years’ War, France had a naval instrument powerful enough to conduct large-scale operations in several theatres simultaneously. However, it cannot claim general control of the seas. It must therefore learn to combine mobility, concentration, surprise, cooperation with the land armies and coordination with its allies. The question is no longer just whether the French Navy is capable of fighting the British Navy : it is necessary to determine under what conditions, in what theatre and in the service of what political objective it must accept combat.[65]
It is this questioning that gives unity to the three great main figures, but also to the generation of officers of the French naval renaissance who accompany them, studied in this section. The Comte d’Estaing, the Comte de Grasse and the Bailli de Suffren did not constitute a homogeneous school, nor did the commanders of squadrons or captains of ships under their orders. Their temperaments, their backgrounds and their conceptions of command differ profoundly. D’Estaing was the man of a Navy still in its infancy, faced with the difficulty of transforming a newly reconstituted power into a decisive success. De Grasse represents more the ability to methodically concentrate a superior force on a decisive point and to articulate naval warfare with a land operation. Finally, Suffren pushed the offensive logic and the autonomy of command in a distant theatre much further, to the point of successfully making the Indian Ocean a real laboratory for squadron warfare.[66]
Their comparison thus makes it possible to go beyond a purely event-based history of battles. It is not just a question of telling the story of Ushant, Grenada, Savannah, the Chesapeake, Les Saintes or the five confrontations between Suffren and Hughes in the Indian Ocean. It is necessary to understand what these campaigns reveal about the different ways of thinking and conducting naval warfare. The battle is only a moment in the campaign; the campaign itself is only an instrument of strategy; and the strategy must finally be related to the political objective pursued by the monarchy.
This distinction is particularly important for assessing d’Estaing’s career. His first major mission of 1778-1779 showed that the French Navy could now project a considerable force across the Atlantic, directly threaten British possessions and cooperate with the American Insurgents. But it also reveals the limits of this power: coordination difficulties, geographical constraints, hesitation in the face of strongly defended objectives and the impossibility of transforming every naval advantage into a political decision.[67]
D’Estaing’s cruise was thus the first real full-scale test of the Navy rebuilt after 1763. With de Grasse, the Navy learned to transform the concentration of forces into a strategic decision; with Suffren, it will experiment with an even more autonomous and aggressive form of command in a global theatre. The progression of this part will therefore be one of learning: d’Estaing discovers the difficulties of squadron warfare; de Grasse masters the art of strategic concentration; Suffren pushed the commander’s freedom of offensive at sea to its limits.
A. D’Estaing: the difficult apprenticeship of the squadron war, 1778-1779
Charles-Henri, Comte d’Estaing, occupies a singular place in this history. He is neither the naval theoretician that Kersaint was, in some respects, nor the minister-strategist that Castries embodied, nor the great victor of the Chesapeake or the offensive commander of the Indies that de Grasse and Suffren would be respectively. His importance lies elsewhere: he is the first great French commander to have to implement, on the scale of a world war, the naval instrument considerably rebuilt since 1763. His career thus makes it possible to measure the distance that separates the possession of a powerful fleet from the ability to derive a decisive strategic advantage from it.[68]
His profile is also indicative of the transformations of the French Royal Navy. Coming from the army and the cavalry, a common point with his younger colleague Bougainville (a former colonel of Dragoons before becoming a Capitaine de Vaisseau), d’Estaing moved to the Navy in the middle of the eighteenth century and acquired a particularly original experience in the war against the British, particularly in colonial areas. This dual culture, land and sea, is both an asset and a singularity. It helps to explain his constant interest in combined operations, but also certain difficulties in the exercise of pure naval command. His promotion to the rank of Vice-Admiral of the Seas of Asia and America in 1778 paved the way for an exceptional responsibility: to lead one of the first major French squadrons intended to directly support the American insurrection.[69]
1. D’Estaing and the lessons of complex amphibious operations. When France officially entered the war against Great Britain in 1778, the objective of the expedition entrusted to d’Estaing was multiple. He had to support the Insurgents, threaten British possessions, protect French interests and look for opportunities to weaken the British Navy. This plurality of missions is important: it immediately places the Fleet commander in front of the problem that we identified in the first part, that of the prioritization of strategic objectives. Even a major squadron cannot simultaneously protect all possessions, seek battle everywhere and conduct all desirable offensive operations.[70]
The Squadron set sail from Toulon on 13 April 1778. It consisted of twelve ships-of-the-line, accompanied by auxiliary ships and transports. The crossing of the Atlantic was long and difficult. When d’Estaing reached the American coast, the strategic effect sought by Versailles was already affected by the passage of time. The admiral appeared before New York, but the nautical conditions, British defences, and the difficulty of a combined attack prevented him from forcing his way into the harbour. French naval power was very present; however, it cannot be converted immediately into victory.[71]
This first experience is rich in lessons. The possession of twelve ships-of-the-line was not enough to bring down the British New York position. Naval power must be combined with considerable land forces, accurate knowledge of passes and seabeds, perfect coordination with the U.S. military, and favourable weather conditions. The French squadron had a greater threat capacity than that of the Insurgents, but it could not produce the hoped-for political decision on its own.
The Sandy Hook episode at the New York confrontation thus illustrates a first limitation of the French naval strategy: the squadron can reach the objective without being able to attack it under the necessary conditions. The transition from naval superiority to decision-making requires a set of conditions that are not the sole responsibility of the fleet. Geography, coastal defences and cooperation with land forces became determining variables[72]
This difficulty does not mean that the expedition failed. The presence of the French squadron forced the British to concentrate large forces around New York and changed their freedom of action on the American coast. It also provided considerable political and military support to the Insurgents. Naval warfare therefore produces a strategic effect even when it does not lead to a decisive battle. This is precisely one of the lessons that the French Navy will gradually learn from the campaign.[73]
2. The implementation of the successful model of amphibious operations. The departure of d’Estaing for the West Indies in the autumn of 1778 marked a new stage. The decision corresponded to the global logic of the war: the British possessions in the Caribbean were of primary importance in view of their density of economic production at the time, and their vulnerability appeared to be greater than that of the major continental centres of North America. The French squadron therefore moved to a theatre where naval mobility could be more directly converted into territorial gains.[74]
The capture of Dominica in September 1778 was the first major success of this new phase. It demonstrates what the combination of naval power and land action can produce. The fleet allows the transport and protection of troops; the mastery of approaches prevents the adversary from immediately concentrating his forces; the conquest of the island finally transformed maritime superiority into a territorial advantage. The Navy thus became an instrument of imperial conquest.[75]
But d’Estaing’s experience also shows how difficult it is to prolong a local success. The British Navy retained significant capabilities in the Caribbean and was able to quickly replenish its forces. The capture of an island is therefore not enough to upset the general balance. To produce a decision, it would be necessary to be able to immediately exploit the superiority acquired and prevent the opponent from regaining the initiative. It is precisely this second step that is proving difficult.
The campaign of 1779 around Granada is in this respect even more revealing. The island was attacked by the French and quickly fell into the hands of d’Estaing. The victory was important because it came as the French sought to exploit their superiority in the West Indies. But the encounter with Admiral Byron’s British squadron led to a battle that remained tactically confused and strategically incomplete. D’Estaing was unable to destroy the British force or immediately transform his advantage into lasting mastery of the theatre.[76]
The problem is now clearly posed: how to move from concentration to decision-making? The French Navy knows how to concentrate a squadron; it knows how to cross the Atlantic; it knows how to support an amphibious operation; it even knows how to obtain a local numerical superiority. But it does not yet possess the doctrine or the experience necessary to systematically transform this superiority into the destruction of the enemy or into lasting conquest.
3. The difficult fine-tuning of a doctrine for successful amphibious operations. This difficulty appeared dramatically during the siege of Savannah, in September-October 1779. D’Estaing joined the American forces with the intention of retaking the place from the British. The situation seemed favourable at first: the French naval forces were able to control the coast and allow the landing of troops. But the ground operation got bogged down. The difficulties of the terrain, the British fortifications, the imperfect coordination between the different contingents and the pressure of time gradually reduced the chances of success. The assault of 9 October failed and resulted in heavy casualties.[77]
Savannah is one of the most instructive episodes of d’Estaing’s campaign because it shows that naval power, even if significant, is not enough to impose a decision when it is not perfectly articulated with the land operation. The fleet could control maritime communications, protect the landings and prevent the immediate intervention of certain British forces; however, it cannot take a fortified place without the coordinated action of the army ashore. Squadron warfare thus appears to be inseparable from amphibious warfare.
D’Estaing himself was wounded during the assault. His return to France marked the end of a first phase of French naval involvement in America. The results were mixed. The Navy demonstrated a projection capacity that had not been seen since the Seven Years’ War. It threatened New York, participated in the defence of the American cause, conquered British positions in the West Indies, and won the success of Grenada. But it did not achieve the great naval or territorial victory that could radically change the outcome of the conflict.[78]
It would be unfair, however, to reduce d’Estaing to a series of missed opportunities. His command revealed precisely the new problems that the French Navy had to learn to solve. The crossing of the Atlantic demonstrated that the fleet could now be projected over great distances; the West Indian operations showed that it could sustain a war of conquest; New York and Savannah reveal the difficulties of joint cooperation; Grenada demonstrated that direct confrontation with the British Navy was possible but that battle did not necessarily produce the decision.
D’Estaing is thus less the strategist of victory than that of strategic learning. He experiments with the possibilities and limits of the renovated instrument. His experience enabled his successors to understand that French naval power had to be used with greater concentration, precision in the choice of theatre and coordination with the land forces. In this sense, his campaigns indirectly prepared those of de Grasse and Suffren.[79]
This experimental dimension is all the more important as the French maritime war of 1778-1779 is still marked by a conception of battle inherited from the previous century. The challenge is not only to fight the enemy, but to determine the circumstances in which one must accept combat. D’Estaing sometimes appeared too cautious in the eyes of his contemporaries, sometimes on the contrary too audacious. But this apparent contradiction reflects above all the uncertainty of a Navy that must relearn to handle large forces in distant theatres.
The question of all-out combat becomes central here. Faced with a British Navy that has superior operational experience and a global system of bases and supplies, the French Navy must avoid wasting the instrument it has just reconstituted. The caution of some commanders can therefore be interpreted not as a personal weakness, but as the consequence of strategic reasoning: a destroyed or seriously damaged French squadron cannot be easily replaced thousands of miles from mainland France.[80]
But this caution also comes at a cost. A fleet that too often refuses battle risks leaving the initiative to the adversary. The difficulty therefore lies in finding the balance between preserving strength and seeking decision. It was precisely this problem that de Grasse solved more effectively on the Chesapeake, while Suffren adopted an almost opposite response by privileging the repeated offensive in the Indian Ocean.
D’Estaing’s experience thus allows us to understand the evolution of French naval thinking between 1778 and 1783. At the beginning of the conflict, the priority was still to demonstrate that France once again had a fleet capable of standing up to Great Britain. As the war progressed, the ambition became more precise: this fleet had to be used in such a way as to obtain, in a given theatre, an irreversible political result. The Marine Royale therefore gradually moved from the demonstration of power to the search for strategic effect.
D’Estaing played the role of a pioneer in this evolution. His campaigns do not furnish the definitive model of French naval warfare; rather, they are the first major test bed for this model. It shows that ocean projection is possible, that Franco-American cooperation can be organized, that the West Indies are a decisive theatre and that naval operations must be thought out jointly with land operations. But it also reveals that naval superiority only becomes strategic when it is concentrated around a sufficiently important and exploitable objective.
This last lesson is essential to understanding the rest of the conflict. In 1781, when de Grasse left the West Indies for the Chesapeake, the question was no longer simply where the French fleet could intervene. The question will be to determine where his intervention can have the greatest effect on the war as a whole. The transition from d’Estaing to de Grasse thus marked a real maturation of French operational thinking: from the global naval presence to the strategic concentration on the decisive point.
D’Estaing therefore remains a transitional figure. His historical merit is not to have won the battle that would have changed the course of the war, but to have helped to demonstrate that the French Navy, rebuilt since 1763, could now sustain an offensive oceanic war. His successes as well as his failures provided his successors with irreplaceable experience. The generation that took over in 1780-1781 would thus have not only a more powerful fleet, but a finer understanding of what it was possible — and what was dangerous — to expect from it.
The history of d’Estaing must therefore be placed in this continuity. Kersaint contributed to the design of the instrument; Castries organized his employment; d’Estaing experienced the real possibilities of this on the oceans. The next step was to find a commander who could turn this newfound power into a strategic decision. This was to be the role of de Grasse in 1781.
B. De Grasse: Strategic Concentration and the Search for the « Decisive Point », 1781-1783
With the Comte de Grasse, the French Navy took a decisive step in the learning of squadron warfare. Where d’Estaing had above all demonstrated the possibilities and limits of a French naval projection at great distances, de Grasse managed, in 1781, to transform the mobility of a large fleet with several squadrons into decisive local superiority, and then this naval superiority into a political and military victory. In this respect, the Chesapeake confrontation and Yorktown support constitute much more than a glorious episode in French naval history: they represent the culmination of an evolution that began in 1763 and was gradually theorized in a practical way by Kersaint in the field (which he did not really articulate and describe in his letters to Castries until around 1781 in a synthesis of thought of most advanced French Navy officers), organized by Castries and experimented with by the first squadron commanders.[81] Still experience shows that not all Captains abode to de Grasse’s or Suffren’s vision in the way they disobeyed or at least did not follow their admirals’ orders in battle.
1. Maturation of the doctrine of strategic concentration. De Grasse’s singularity lies first and foremost in his ability to reason in terms of strategic concentration. He doesn’t try to be everywhere. On the contrary, he agreed to leave a theatre for the time being to concentrate the bulk of his forces on the theatre which seemed to him likely to produce the greatest effect on the war. This decision presupposes an already relatively modern conception of maritime power: the value of a fleet lies not only in its tonnage, its number of ships or its ability to fight, but in its ability to appear at the decisive moment where the adversary cannot muster enough forces to resist it.[82]
This conception was obviously not born with de Grasse. It is included in ministerial instructions and in the general evolution of French strategy since the beginning of the conflict. But de Grasse gives it a particularly effective operational translation. The campaign of 1781 thus shows how a policy defined at Versailles could be transformed by a commander at sea into a coherent operation, adapted to the circumstances and likely to produce a result superior to the means committed.[83]
The context of his command, however, is extremely complex. By taking command of the Brest Fleet destined for the West Indies, de Grasse received a mission that remained primarily linked to the defence and consolidation of French interests in the region. The West Indies with their sugar islands represented one of the main economic and strategic stakes of the war, for both the French and the British. France had to protect its own possessions there, threaten those of Great Britain and prevent the British Navy from concentrating its forces against the French islands.[84]
De Grasse set sail from Brest on 22 March 1781 at the head of a considerable force. The Fleet consisted of twenty-six ships of the line and several frigates and auxiliary vessels; it also transports troops and resources. This concentration testifies to the progress made since 1778. France was now able to project across the Atlantic a combat force large enough to change the balance of power in the West Indies.[85]
The arrival of the Fleet in Martinique on 28 April immediately produced a strategic effect. On 29 April, de Grasse confronted the British squadron of Admiral Samuel Hood off Martinique. The engagement did not result in the destruction of the British fleet, but it demonstrated that the French could now maintain a large concentration of forces in the Caribbean. The essential objective is not so much to obtain an annihilating battle as to preserve the initiative and protect the French system.[86]
The West Indian campaign of the summer of 1781 was nevertheless decisive for the future. The capture of Tobago, cooperation with Spanish forces and contacts with the American authorities showed that de Grasse’s fleet was now a mobile strategic reserve. Its real advantage lies less in an isolated naval victory than in its ability to move quickly from one theatre to another. It is this rapid mobility that will allow France to play a decisive role in North America.[87]
2. The strategic use of concentration of sea and land force. The summer of 1781 was thus the moment when the French strategy changed its nature. Washington and Rochambeau sought to concentrate their forces against Cornwallis’ British army in Virginia. They quickly realized that their enterprise could only succeed if the British Navy was prevented from ensuring the supply and evacuation of the British army. They therefore turned to de Grasse, whose squadron was the only force capable of providing them with this guarantee. The correspondence between Washington, Rochambeau and de Grasse then transformed a West Indian squadron into an instrument of decision in the continental war.[88]
The essential point lies in the meeting of two conceptions of war: that of the American and French land forces, which are looking for a point where to concentrate their efforts, and that of the French Navy, which has the necessary mobility to prevent the adversary from responding. The choice of the Chesapeake is therefore a strategic choice before being a tactical choice. De Grasse was not simply looking for a place to fight the British Navy; he was looking for a space in which the presence of his Fleet could prevent the enemy from intervening effectively.[89]
Washington’s letter of August 17, 1781, plays an important role here. The American general explained to de Grasse the advantages of concentrating forces around the Chesapeake Bay and insisted on the consequences of the arrival of a French squadron in this region. De Grasse’s response was favourable, but he retained a margin of appreciation linked to his own obligations in the West Indies and the season. The final choice was therefore the result of a convergence between American information, French instructions and the personal assessment of the Fleet commander.[90]
This convergence is one of the most modern features of the campaign. The strategy is not mechanically imposed by a single authority. It is the result of a dialogue between the levels of command. Versailles defines a general framework; Washington and Rochambeau identify an earthly opportunity; de Grasse appreciated the naval possibilities and decided to move his squadron. The victory at Yorktown is thus the product of a combined strategy, in which no single component can produce the decision: it is indeed the result of intelligence and strategic synthesis.[91]
3. The Chesapeake combat: temporary control of both sea and land operations is a condition of success. On September 5, 1781, off the Chesapeake, de Grasse encountered the British Fleet commanded by Admiral Thomas Graves. The battle, known as the Battle of the Chesapeake or Cape Henry, was tactically complex and did not lead to the destruction of the British fleet. It was nevertheless a major French strategic victory. Graves did not manage to enter the bay; after several days of manoeuvres, the British squadron abandoned the area and withdrew to New York.[92]
It is here that de Grasse’s most important contribution to naval thinking is probably to be found: he understood that a fleet could win strategically without destroying the enemy fleet. The desired result is not necessarily the annihilation of the British Royal Navy, but the prevention of its intervention at the precise moment when this intervention conditions the fate of a British army. Naval battle must therefore be evaluated on the basis of the effect it produces on the general system of forces.[93]
This conception breaks with a purely tactical reading of naval warfare. If we measure Chesapeake solely by the number of ships sunk or captured, the French victory may seem limited. If we measure it by its effect on Cornwallis, it becomes decisive. The French squadron has obtained what really mattered : the temporary control of the maritime space necessary for the land operation. The British squadron was not destroyed; it was decisively prevented from accomplishing its mission.[94]
The consequence is immediate. Cornwallis, locked up in Yorktown, could not receive the help he expected from New York. The Franco-American ground forces completed their investment. On 19 October, the British surrender took place. The naval battle and the land siege thus form an inseparable strategic whole. De Grasse’s victory was not an isolated naval victory: it was the maritime condition of the victory at Yorktown.[95]
This articulation between sea and land deserves to be underlined because it heralds a fundamental conception of modern maritime strategy. A fleet can act directly on land without necessarily landing troops itself. By controlling a bay, protecting a convoy, interdicting a supply line, or preventing the arrival of an enemy squadron, it can radically alter the situation of a land army. Naval power thus becomes a multiplier of land power.[96]
De Grasse was not content with defending the bay. He understood that the duration of the French presence was decisive. A naval victory without keeping the fleet in the area would have been insufficient. It was necessary to stay, supply, repair and maintain the ability to fight until Cornwallis surrendered. This logistical dimension is essential: naval strategy is not just about moving a squadron quickly; it also consists of maintaining its operational readiness at the time when its effect is required.[97]
The Chesapeake campaign thus reveals a remarkable combination of mobility and permanence. The French fleet left the West Indies, crossed the Caribbean Sea, went up to the Chesapeake, fought a battle and then stayed there long enough to allow the Franco-American army to complete its operation. This ability to project is a considerable improvement compared to the experiments of 1778-1779. The French Navy is no longer simply able to cross the Atlantic: it is capable of using this mobility to intervene at the critical moment of a land campaign.[98]
The victory at Yorktown was also the product of a good appreciation of the British centre of gravity. Cornwallis was building up an advanced force in the summer of 1781 whose security depended entirely on the British Royal Navy’s ability to secure its communications. By severing this relationship between the British army and its base, de Grasse helped isolate Cornwallis. The French fleet therefore acted less against the British forces directly than against the system that allowed them to fight.[99]
This logic can be compared to the general conception developed by Castries: rather than looking for a naval victory everywhere, it is necessary to strike the enemy system where a local disturbance produces a general effect. De Grasse thus became the operational instrument of a concentration strategy. But his own merit is to have understood the need to quickly transform political and military information into naval decisions.[100]
The campaign also reveals the importance of intelligence. Washington, Rochambeau, de Grasse and the other officials must constantly assess the position of the British forces, their movements, their possible reinforcements and their intentions. Victory depended in part on the French ability to arrive before the British Navy could concentrate a superior force. In an ocean war where communications are slow, information becomes a component of naval power.[101]
This dimension is all the more remarkable given that de Grasse’s decision was taken in an environment of uncertainty. He did not have complete knowledge of the British situation. He knew that Graves could receive reinforcements; he does not know the exact date of their arrival and their importance. He must therefore accept a calculated risk. The naval strategist is not the one who eliminates uncertainty, but the one who knows how to decide in spite of it.[102]
The victory at Chesapeake should not, however, lead to an idealization of de Grasse. His command also presents tensions. His relations with the land officials and with certain naval officers were not always simple. The concentration of forces implies a complex coordination between strong personalities, different chains of command and sometimes divergent objectives. The campaign therefore shows that the combined strategy relies as much on the capacity of the leaders to cooperate as on the quality of the plans.[103]
The rest of de Grasse’s career confirms that the victory at the Chesapeake is not an automatically reproducible model. In 1782, he returned to the West Indies with a mission that remained largely offensive. The confrontation with Rodney culminated in the Battle of the Saintes on 12 April. This time, the French concentration did not produce the hoped-for decision, it had to retreat by losing several units, including the flagship. Of the thirty ships-of-the-line engaged, four were captured (La Ville de Paris, Le Glorieux, L’Hector, and Le César), the latter being destroyed by the accidental explosion of its hold after its capture, while no British ship was lost. The human toll was also very heavy to the detriment of the French Navy: the British Navy suffered about 243 killed and 816 wounded (i.e. a little more than 1,000 men out of fighting capacity), while French losses are generally estimated at nearly 3,000 killed or wounded, to which are added about 5,000 prisoners among whom the Comte de Grasse himself. However, estimates vary according to the authors because of the difficulties in counting the number of captured crews dispersed after the fight.[104] This battle was a major tactical victory for Admiral Rodney, but not the destruction of French naval power in the West Indies. Indeed, the bulk of the French Fleet — twenty-five ships — nevertheless managed to withdraw under the leadership of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville and then the Marquis de Vaudreuil, which allowed France to maintain a significant naval force until the conclusion of the peace of 1783. Les Saintes thus appeared as a decisive operational defeat, without constituting an annihilation of the Marine Royale comparable to that which will happen at Trafalgar in 1805.
Les Saintes is particularly interesting because it allows us to measure the limits of the success of 1781. Chesapeake had demonstrated that a local naval concentration could produce a considerable strategic effect. Les Saintes showed that such concentration did not guarantee victory. The balance of forces, the arrangement of the squadrons, the tactical conditions, the choices of command and the weather circumstances remain decisive. Strategy can create the conditions for victory; it can never abolish chance and the friction of combat.[105]
It would be wrong, however, to see in Les Saintes an absolute contradiction with the Chesapeake. The two battles respond to different problems. At the Chesapeake, the main objective was to prevent a British intervention in a specific maritime space. In Les Saintes, the issue was more related to maintaining the French position in the West Indies and the possibility of imposing a decision on the British fleet. In the first case, the prohibition is sufficient; in the second, the battle becomes much more directly decisive. De Grasse thus shows, by contrast, how much the nature of the political objective determines the way in which a fleet should fight.[106]
This distinction is essential for a history of naval thought. It allows us to get out of the simplistic opposition between « offensive » and « defensive ». A fleet may adopt an offensive posture while primarily seeking to prevent the adversary from acting. It can also accept a defensive battle to protect a theatre or an operation. De Grasse’s strategy was therefore characterized less by a particular taste for the offensive than by the search for a match between the use of the fleet and the desired strategic effect.
The comparison with d’Estaing is particularly enlightening here. D’Estaing had often had a local superiority without managing to exploit it to the point of decision. De Grasse certainly benefited from more favourable circumstances, but he also had a clearer conception of concentration and coordination. He agreed to leave the West Indies for the Chesapeake because he understood that the outcome of the American war might depend more on the coast of Virginia than on the immediate possession of this or that Caribbean island.[107]
It is this ability to hierarchize theatres that makes de Grasse a true strategist. He does not consider the fleet to be attached to a specific geographical area. He conceives of it as a mobile force whose value increases when it is concentrated to the point where it can alter the general equilibrium. Mobility therefore becomes a form of power in itself.[108]
The historical significance of this conception goes beyond 1781. The French Navy discovered that a fleet could produce a major strategic result without having long-term control of the ocean. It can intervene at a specific moment, gain local superiority, accomplish a decisive mission and then withdraw. This conception of temporary and localized superiority would become a constant in many subsequent reflections on French maritime strategy, faced with the structural difficulty of competing quantitatively with the British Navy and then, in the nineteenth century, with other naval powers, or even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
De Grasse thus appears to be the first of the great French commanders of the War of Independence to have fully achieved the synthesis between political strategy and operational conduct. His genius did not lie only in the way he manoeuvred his ships on 5 September 1781. It lies in the understanding that naval battle is only a means to a political decision. The Chesapeake was therefore not a victory because the French had inflicted more damage on the British; it is a victory because the British Navy was prevented from accomplishing the mission on which Cornwallis’ fate depended on land.
This lesson is probably the most important that the American War of Independence bequeaths to French naval thought. The fleet does not necessarily need to be master of the sea; it must be master of the strategic moment. Absolute naval superiority is replaced by a more flexible conception of superiority: concentration, mobility, information, cooperation and the ability to maintain force in the area until the desired effect is achieved.
De Grasse is therefore not only the man from Yorktown. He is the symbol of a French Navy which, after fifteen years of reconstruction and several learning campaigns, is finally discovering how to convert its material potential into strategic effect. Kersaint contributed to the design of the instrument; Castries has organized its screening; d’Estaing has tested his limits; de Grasse demonstrates that it can, in certain circumstances, become the instrument of a major decision.
But its success also reveals another question. If de Grasse obtained the decision by concentrating a large force on a decisive theatre, what could a commander placed even further from France, with greater autonomy and confronted with a British adversary firmly established in the Indian Ocean, accomplish? The answer was provided by the Pierre-André de Suffren. With him, French naval thinking would move from strategic concentration to a much more personal and aggressive conception of squadron warfare.
C. Suffren: the naval offensive and the autonomy of command
With Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez, the French Navy achieved, during the American War of Independence, a particularly successful form of offensive naval command. Where d’Estaing had experienced the possibilities and limits of French projection across the Atlantic, and where de Grasse had demonstrated the power of strategic concentration, Suffren pushed the logic of initiative even further: he sought to impose his rhythm on the adversary, to systematically seek combat and to transform each squadron encounter into an opportunity to disorganize the enemy force.
His theatre of operations is however the one where France could least hope for a quick decision. The Indian Ocean is far from Versailles, the great metropolitan arsenals and the main American theatre. Communications were slow, reinforcements scarce, weather and navigation conditions often difficult, the possibilities of repair limited and the British had a network of positions that gave them considerable strategic depth. Suffren had therefore to act with much greater autonomy than his counterparts engaged in the Atlantic.[109]
This autonomy is one of the essential features of his command. Suffren did not receive from Versailles a plan sufficiently detailed to determine each of his operations. He had to interpret general instructions, assess the local situation and decide quickly. His campaign thus revealed a significant transformation of the function of the commander of the squadron: the further away the theatre, the more the naval leader himself becomes a producer of strategy.
1. The autonomy of command in a distant theatre. Suffren is not a man who appeared suddenly in 1781. His previous career largely explains his behaviour. Born in 1729 into a family of the Provençal nobility, he entered the Navy in 1743 at the age of fourteen (in the corps of Cadets of the Marine Guards) and then took part in several campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War. Above all, he acquired a reputation as an energetic officer, attached to the offensive and unwilling to passively accept the constraints of a naval war conducted according to overly cautious rules.[110]
The American War of Independence provided him with the opportunity to give this conception its full scope. He first served under d’Estaing in the squadron sent to America. This experience was important: it allowed him to directly observe the difficulties encountered by the first major French squadron engaged overseas. But it was in the Indian Ocean that he really revealed his strategic talent.
In 1781, France sought to strengthen its position in the Indian Ocean in order to support the interests of its Indian possessions and to fight the British in a theatre where the British had essential positions, notably Madras. Suffren was given command of a Division (small squadron) destined to join the French Indian Ocean Squadron. He left Brest at the end of 1781 with five ships of the line and a few auxiliary ships.[111]
The mission seems, at first glance, less spectacular than that of de Grasse. It is not a question of leading an Allied army towards a land objective that could immediately decide the war. It was a question of disputing with the British the control of an immense maritime space, protecting French possessions and preventing the British Navy from freely disposing of its forces. But Suffren quickly understood that this defensive mission could only be fulfilled effectively by adopting an offensive attitude. It was not enough to protect Pondicherry or the Isle of France: the enemy had to be forced to defend himself. The best defence of French interests was therefore to take the fight to the British positions.[112]
This conception gives unity to the whole seascape. Suffren systematically sought out the British squadron commanded by Admiral Edward Hughes. The two men faced each other several times in 1782 and 1783. None of these battles produced a total naval victory comparable to the future Trafalgar; but their repetition reveals something much more interesting for the history of strategic thought: Suffren considered that the initiative itself constitutes a strategic advantage.
2. Offensive initiative as a principle for the conduct of war. The first major encounter occurred off the coast of Sadras, on February 17, 1782. Suffren tried to envelop the rear of the British squadron. The manoeuvre did not produce all the desired results, in particular because of difficulties in the execution of orders by several of his too conservative Captains. Nevertheless, Hughes had to retreat to Madras. Suffren demonstrated that it is possible to attack a British squadron in its own theatre and force a response from it.[113]
Sadras already reveals one of the fundamental characteristics of Suffren’s command: he accepts greater tactical complexity in exchange for the possibility of obtaining a more important decision. He sought to concentrate several of his ships against part of the enemy line rather than mechanically maintaining a perfectly regular battle line. This desire to adapt training to the objective is reminiscent of some previous reflections on the concentration of forces, but it is here taken much further in practice.
The difficulty arises from the fact that the initiative of an admiral is not enough. A fleet is not an abstract instrument: it is composed of captains, officers and crews who must understand and carry out the intentions of the commander. Suffren encounters precisely here one of the main limits of his system. As already observed, many of his subordinates did not share his taste for the offensive and did not always carry out his orders with the desired speed.[114]
This conflict between the centralization of intention and the autonomy of execution is at the heart of the problem of command posed by Suffren. He wants to give his captains enough initiative to exploit the circumstances, but at the same time he requires tactical discipline to concentrate attacks at the decisive moment. When these two requirements were not reconciled, the French squadron’s potential numerical or tactical advantage dissipated.
After Sadras, Suffren continued his offensive. He intervened in particular on the island of Ceylon and participated in the capture of Trincomalee in September 1782. The conquest of this base was strategically essential: it provided the French with a position to more effectively control communications and naval operations in the region. Suffren demonstrates here that his offensive is not a search for battle for battle’s sake. Naval combat was to serve the conquest or retention of positions that gave the fleet operational depth, a principle that was particularly well mastered and applied by the British Navy, before and after Suffren.[115]
The battle of Provédien, on 12 April 1782, and then that of Negapatam, on 6 July, confirmed the difficulties of his command. The fighting was fierce, the opportunities for destruction numerous, but the British Royal Navy kept its squadron. Suffren achieved operational results without managing to impose an annihilating victory.[116]
This is precisely what makes his campaign interesting. A traditional reading might consider these clashes as « missed victories ». A strategic reading leads to another conclusion: Suffren succeeded in preventing Hughes from freely disposing of the sea, in forcing him to remain constantly on the alert, and in maintaining a French force which, despite inferior resources, remained capable of challenging British communications.
The logic is therefore different from that of the Chesapeake. De Grasse achieved a major strategic effect through a temporary and targeted concentration. Suffren seeks to obtain a comparable effect by continuous pressure. He does not have a single decisive moment; it gradually builds a situation in which the adversary must constantly react.
This difference is fundamental to our analysis. It shows that French naval thinking during the War of Independence was not a single doctrinal system. It experimented with several modalities of maritime power. De Grasse favours concentration; Suffren favoured the continuity of the offensive. Both seek, however, to achieve the same fundamental result: to reduce the adversary’s freedom of action.
The Battle of Trincomalee on 3 September 1782 was the culmination of this strategy. Suffren attempted to exploit his advantage by manoeuvering against Hughes and seeking a break in the British line. The fight was extremely violent. The French inflicted serious damage on the British squadron and retained the initiative. Yet, again, they failed to destroy enough ships to gain undisputed control of the sea.[117]
This repetition of incompletely exploited opportunities led Suffren to further strengthen his demands on his captains. His instructions and correspondence show a growing desire to make it clear that naval combat should not be conducted solely according to formal rules of positioning, but according to a precise tactical objective: to concentrate fire on part of the enemy line and put it out of action.[118]
Suffren thus appears as a commander of the squadron who sought to go beyond traditional line warfare without yet having the doctrinal means to replace it. He did not renounce the line of battle. He rather tried to use it more aggressively. His goal was to transform the line into an instrument of local concentration rather than a simple symmetrical device.
This conception partly explains the tensions he had with several of his ships’ captains. The admiral reproached some of them for their caution, their distance from the fight or their inability to exploit the openings offered by the adversary. These criticisms are not only a matter of temperament. They correspond to a precise conception of command: a commander of a squadron must actively seek the destruction of the enemy’s force when circumstances make it possible.[119]
The comparison with de Grasse becomes particularly enlightening here. De Grasse had understood that a battle could be won strategically without destroying the enemy fleet. Suffren, for his part, believed that certain situations require on the contrary to push the advantage to the point of partial destruction of the opposing squadron. The first favours the strategic effect; the second sometimes wants to achieve this effect by a decisive tactical victory.
However, the two men should not be artificially opposed. Suffren also remains a strategist. The capture of Trincomalee shows that he understands the importance of bases and communications. His desire to maintain a French presence in the Indian Ocean was in response to a broader political objective: to prevent the British from having unhindered access to their maritime power in India and to preserve France’s ability to negotiate at the end of the war.[120]
The logistical issue is at the heart of his campaign. In the Indian Ocean, the French fleet was extremely far from its arsenals in mainland France even if it could count on the Isle de France and Isle Bourbon. Repairs, new supplies, crew replacements and maintenance of ships became strategic problems. The conquest of Trincomalee must also be understood as an attempt to solve this problem: an offensive fleet cannot be sustained without having strongpoints.[121]
Suffren thus reveals a dimension of French naval thinking that had been less highlighted by the American campaigns: maritime power is inseparable from a network of bases, ports and logistics relays, which Alfred T. Mahan would later analyse.[122] The battle is only one element of a much larger system. To keep a squadron in operation several thousand kilometres from mainland France, it was necessary to control spaces that allowed the force to be repaired, resupplied and reconstituted.
This dimension also explains why Indian theatre is so important for the history of French strategy. Suffren does not simply fight Hughes in it; he sought to build the material conditions for a lasting French presence. Its command is therefore tactical, operational and strategic at the same time.
The Battle of Gondelour, on 20 June 1783, was the last major confrontation of the campaign. Suffren met Hughes once again. The fight confirmed France’s ability to maintain pressure until the end of the conflict. When the news of peace arrived, the two squadrons remained in full fighting condition.[123]
This situation is revealing. Suffren did not obtain the destruction of the British squadron; but he succeeded in preventing the British from gaining undisputed superiority in the Indian Ocean. His record must therefore be assessed on the basis of the real objective of the campaign: to maintain the French presence, protect the French possessions, support the local allies and prevent the British Navy from freely disposing of its forces.
3. A naval thought heralding modern maritime warfare. Suffren’s experiment thus raises the fundamental question of strategic autonomy. The further away his squadron was from Versailles, the less ministerial instructions could concretely determine his behaviour. The naval chief necessarily became the interpreter of French interests. This autonomy is not only a geographical consequence; it becomes a strategic skill.
The paradox is remarkable. The monarchical centralization, which had made it possible to rebuild the Navy after 1763 and to concentrate considerable resources, finally led to the delegation of considerable freedom of action to its distant commanders. French naval power is therefore based on a combination of centralization of resources and decentralization of operational decisions.
Suffren pushes this logic much further than d’Estaing or Grasse. De Grasse, despite the distance, intervened in a theatre where relations with Washington and Rochambeau and the relative proximity of the American coast allowed for close coordination. Suffren, on the other hand, evolves in an environment where news takes several months to reach Europe. Its autonomy is therefore structural.
This is why his correspondence is a particularly valuable source for understanding French naval thought at the end of the Ancien Régime. His letters do not form a systematic treatise on strategy; they nevertheless reveal a coherent conception of the use of the fleet: to seek out the enemy, to concentrate forces, to exploit opportunities, to maintain pressure and to use the bases to prolong the action.[124]
Suffren is thus less a theoretician than a reflexive practitioner of strategy. He thinks from experience. His observations on manoeuvres, captains, crews, and combat conditions show a constant willingness to learn from previous engagements. War became a continuous learning process for him.
This characteristic brings Suffren closer to Kersaint, despite their profound differences, particularly in age and commands during the War of Independence. Indeed, both refused to consider the Navy as a purely technical instrument. They question the conditions under which it can produce a political advantage. But Kersaint reasoned mainly on the reform and organization of the instrument; Suffren reasoned on the basis of his actual use. The first contributes to the thinking of the tool; the second to the thought of its offensive use. Kersaint was much more political and his later election as a Parliamentarian to the National Assembly would demonstrate that.
With Suffren, the French Navy discovered another way to compensate for its structural inferiority in the face of the British Navy. It cannot always hope to have more ships at its disposal; on the other hand, it may seek to have a better local concentration, greater initiative and greater operational aggressiveness. This conception foreshadowed, at least partially, certain later French reflections on privateering warfare, squadron warfare and the search for local superiority.
However, any teleological reading must be avoided. Suffren did not simply announce the naval doctrines of the nineteenth century. His behaviour remained deeply inscribed in the constraints of eighteenth-century line warfare, in the culture of the Marine Royale and in the technical conditions of his time. His difficulties in getting his orders carried out by his ships’ captains also show the limits of this offensive conception in an organization where communications between ships remained slow and where the individual initiative of the captains could easily disarticulate the general manoeuvre.
His merit is precisely to have identified this contradiction. The modern fleet requires both collective discipline and individual initiative. The leader must give an intention that is clear enough for his subordinates to act, but flexible enough for them to exploit the circumstances. Suffren does not entirely solve this problem; he poses it with exceptional acuity.
This is also why his reputation quickly went beyond the borders of the French Navy. His opponents themselves recognized his leadership qualities. The repeated confrontation with Hughes produces a form of strategic duel in which each gradually learns to anticipate the other’s movements. The campaign thus became a confrontation between two conceptions of naval command: the methodical prudence of Hughes and the aggressiveness of Suffren.[125]
At the end of this experiment, Suffren appears to be the most personal of the three great commanders studied in this section. D’Estaing had above all experimented; de Grasse concentrated; Suffren attacked. This simplification should not be taken literally, but it allows us to grasp the intellectual progress of the French Navy during the war.
This progression could be summarized in three movements. With d’Estaing, France rediscovered that it could project a fleet. With de Grasse, it discovered that it could concentrate this fleet to obtain a strategic decision. With Suffren, the monarchy demonstrated that it could maintain an offensive naval war in a distant theatre by giving the commander a large autonomy of action.
These three experiences together constitute one of the most important moments in French naval thought of the eighteenth century. They show that the renewal of the Navy was not only material. it was also intellectual and operational. France learned to think of its fleet as a mobile, concentrating, projectable instrument capable of acting in several theatres simultaneously.
The American War of Independence thus appeared to be a veritable laboratory for French maritime strategy. Kersaint has formulated certain questions about this; Castries had helped to define the political use of the instrument; d’Estaing, de Grasse and Suffren experimented with the different modalities. None of them alone provides a complete doctrine. But their combined experience makes it possible to identify the main elements of a renewed French naval thinking: concentration of forces, mobility, search for the decisive point, inter-service cooperation, mastery of bases, autonomy of command and permanent adaptation to circumstances.
If their objective converge, their ways of conducting the war differ profoundly. D’Estaing remains marked by the legacy of a Navy that is still looking for its new bearings; de Grasse embodies the methodical command of a force concentrated in the service of a clearly identified political objective; Finally, Suffren represents the figure of the squadron leader who intends to impose his will on the adversary through initiative and offensive. French naval thinking about the War of Independence cannot therefore be reduced to a doctrine: it is also manifested in styles of command, the comparison of which constitutes the ultimate key to reading this naval renaissance.
D. A generation of officers in the service of the French naval renaissance
While the campaigns of the American War of Independence are naturally associated with the figures of d’Estaing, Grasse and Suffren, they cannot be understood without taking into consideration all the general officers who surrounded them and constituted a veritable network of resources and skills built on a fairly remarkably homogeneous matrix. Around these three great leaders served in particular the Lieutenant General of the Naval Armies Louis Guillouet, Comte d’Orvilliers, the Lieutenant General Luc Urbain de Bouëxic, Comte de Guichen, the Lieutenant General Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de La Motte, known as La Motte-Picquet, the squadron commanders (“chefs d’escadres”) Jacques-Melchior de Barras de Saint-Laurent, François-Joseph-Paul Comte de Grasse before his elevation to the higher rank, François-Aymar de Monteil, Louis-Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, as well as several captains of ships called to a brilliant future, including Louis-René de Latouche-Tréville, of the generation of Armand Guy de Kersaint or Jean-Francois de La Pérouse. This concentration of talents is by no means a coincidence; it is one of the most visible results of the policy of reconstruction undertaken after 1763 and of training young naval cadets and ensigns.[126]
The originality of this generation lies less in the brilliance of a few individuals than in the complementarity of the skills it puts at the service of the Monarchy. The Marine Royale now has officers capable of performing a wide variety of functions: command of large naval armies, leadership of independent squadrons, protection of ocean convoys, cooperation with land armies, amphibious operations, long-range reconnaissance, command of ships of all types, autonomous engagement capabilities, management of large Arsenals, commercial escorts and maintaining communications between the different theatres of operations. This functional specialization never altered the cohesion of the command, because all these officers shared the same professional culture resulting from the reforms carried out under Choiseul, Sartine and Castries.[127]
The Comte d’Orvilliers, moral victor of the Battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778, appears above all as a remarkable organiser of the great squadrons. His command highlights the progress made by the French Navy in the conduct of numerous naval armies and in the coordination of collective movements. Without systematically seeking the destruction of the British fleet, he helped to restore the confidence of a Navy still marked by the defeats of the Seven Years’ War.[128]
At his side, Guichen, Lieutenant General of the Naval Armies, led the famous West Indies campaign against Rodney in 1780. The three battles fought off the coast of Dominica, on 17 April, 15 and 19 May 1780, testified to his exceptional mastery of squadron manoeuvring by managing to preserve his squadron, to preserve the advantage of the wind and, above all, to prevent the British Navy from transforming its superiority into freedom of action in the West Indies. Without obtaining the decisive battle he was looking for, he nevertheless managed to preserve his naval army, to cover French interests in the West Indies and to contain one of the best British squadrons of the time. Rodney himself recognized the quality of his opponent.[129] By joining Brest as Commandant de la Marine (Commander of the Navy), Guichen did not cease to demonstrate that he had been a great commander of a squadron; he moved on to a major territorial and administrative function, at the heart of the main arsenal of the Atlantic coast.
Among the squadron leaders, La Motte-Picquet occupies a special place. A sailor of exceptional experience, trained in the naval battles of the Seven Years’ War, wounded several times in combat, he perfectly illustrates the combination of tactical audacity and operational prudence. His action at the battle of Fort Royal in Martinique (18 Dec. 1779), where he protected a large merchant convoy against superior British forces, remains one of the finest examples of the offensive use of an outnumbered squadron. In April 1781, he again intercepted the wealthy British convoy returning from Saint-Eustache and captured twenty-two escorted merchant ships, thus depriving Britain of important financial resources. Even his British opponents, notably Hyde Parker, praised the quality of his command.[130]
Barras de Saint-Laurent, who is not often mentioned, represents another form of excellence. A squadron chief more inclined to strategic coordination than to the search for decisive combat, he played an essential role in the campaign of 1781 by ensuring the delivery of the siege artillery essential to the Yorktown operations from Newport. His ability to evade British surveillance in order to reach the Chesapeake Bay was a decisive element in the Franco-American success.[131]
Monteil also illustrates the versatility of the French command. After fighting at Ushant and then under Guichen, he was given command of the squadron left in the West Indies when Guichen returned to France in 1780. This responsibility shows the confidence placed in him by Castries and his advisors. His career is a testament to the Marine Royale‘s ability to have leaders who can ensure continuity of command in distant theatres without a break in doctrine or effectiveness.[132]
The Marquis de Vaudreuil, son of the last Governor General of French Canada at the end of the Seven Years War, who succeeded the Comte de Grasse after the Battle at Les Saintes, displayed remarkable qualities of composure. In an extremely compromised situation, he managed to rally a significant part of the French ships and preserve most of the remaining forces, thus preventing the tactical defeat from turning into a strategic disaster. This ability to safeguard the naval instrument is one of the least studied, but not the least important, aspects of the French Navy’s maritime command during the American Revolutionary War.[133]
Finally, La Touche-Tréville, soon announced the qualities that would make him one of the greatest sailors of the French Revolution and Empire. At the controls of L’Hermione and then L’Aigle, he distinguished himself by the boldness of his cruises, his captures against British trade and his sense of initiative. After his return from America he was promoted as a Capitaine de Vaisseau (Captain) in June 1781 and in 1782 was given command of a Division of frigates L’Aigle and La Gloire to transport funds and supplies for the American forces and Vaudreuil’s squadron. During this new mission, he confronted and sank the British 74-gun former French ship HMS Hector, before being captured with L’Aigle in September 1782. Returning to France in 1783, he was appointed Director of the port of Rochefort, then, from 1784, Deputy Director of Ports and Arsenals at the Ministry of the Navy. This rapid transition from command at sea to the management of a large arsenal is particularly revealing of the versatility of this new generation of officers: the War of Independence was for them as much a school of combat as a school of naval command and administration. [134]
This quality of the officer corps was not only measured, however, by the careers and responsibilities exercised after 1778. It is also confirmed in the multiplicity of engagements in which French commanders participated, whether they were individual battles between ships, squadron battles or combined operations. From the capture of British ships by French frigates to major clashes involving several dozen ships-of-the-line, these operations reveal a Navy that is now capable of searching, supporting and exploiting combat in a wide variety of configurations. The comparison of the ships engaged, their armament, their commanders and the balance of power thus makes it possible to measure more concretely the quality of the naval instrument rebuilt since 1763. The main collective engagements during the period of the Marine royale‘s participation in the American War of Independence are summarized in the table in Appendix 5, while Appendix 6 presents the main individual battles between French and British ships, with their commanders, characteristics and outcome.[135]
The interest of this remarkable concentration of officers therefore does not lie only in their individual successes. It reveals the existence of a true professional elite, capable of conducting simultaneous operations on all the oceans. All of them have known the lessons of the Seven Years’ War. All of them mastered deep-sea navigation, line tactics, cooperation with land armies and the logistical constraints of distant campaigns. Their styles sometimes differ profoundly, but they share a common conception of service, discipline and command responsibility.
This diversity in no way reflects a doctrinal dispersion. On the contrary, it was a sign of an institutional maturity rarely reached by the Marine Royale. A world maritime power cannot rely solely on the genius of an exceptional leader; it must have a sufficiently numerous, experienced and homogeneous corps of officers to simultaneously carry out very different missions, from major battles of squadrons to convoy escorts, landings, blockades or the protection of ocean communications.[136]
The American War of Independence therefore did not reveal for the Marine Royale only the emergence of three great commanders of squadrons or fleets. It reveals an entire generation of sea leaders, versatile and experienced strategists. This is undoubtedly the most lasting result of the policy pursued since 1763: to have reconstituted not only a fleet, but a corps of officers capable of thinking, conducting and coordinating a maritime war on a global scale. It is a rare and particularly radiant moment in the history of France and its Navy.
Conclusion
The American War of Independence was thus much more than a succession of victorious campaigns or indecisive battles for the French Navy. It represents a full-scale strategic laboratory, at the end of which France rediscovers, after the trauma of the Seven Years’ War, the ability to think, build and employ a first-rate naval power. Between 1778 and 1783, the Marine Royale did not content itself with reconstituting a fleet: it experimented with the conditions under which this fleet could become a real instrument of power.
A major lesson of this period was institutional and material. Naval victory began long before the battle. It presupposes political, budgetary, industrial and administrative choices that make the very existence of the naval instrument possible. The reconstruction undertaken after 1763, the reorganization of the arsenals, the improvement of the ships, the training of officers and crews, as well as the financial effort made by the Monarchy that would prevail, constitute the foundation without which the campaigns of 1778-1783 would have been impossible.
But this material reconstruction is not enough. This is precisely what the second dimension of the French naval renaissance shows: the transformation of the instrument into strategic thinking. Kersaint, Castries, and the other reformers had realized that the Navy could no longer be seen as a mere auxiliary force to the army or as an instrument to protect the coast and some commerce. It was to participate directly in the power politics of the Kingdom. The American War of Independence gave this conception the test of reality.
First, it reveals the persistent constraints of French power. The British Royal Navy remains superior in experience, base network, logistical capabilities and breadth of resources. France cannot therefore hope to impose a general control of the seas everywhere and in the long term. But it is gradually discovering that such absolute superiority is not necessary to achieve a major strategic result. The real French response to British superiority was to seek local, temporary, and mobile superiority. This is probably the central strategic lesson of the war. D’Estaing provides a first formulation, still cautious. His priority remains the conservation of a naval instrument that the monarchy cannot afford to destroy. His experience, however, reveals the limits of a strategy based primarily on the preservation of the fleet: an intact force only becomes truly strategic if it can be engaged at the time and place when its action has a decisive effect.
De Grasse is taking a further step. With him, naval power became an instrument of strategic concentration. The question is no longer just to keep the fleet, but to know where it should be present to change the general balance of forces. Chesapeake demonstrated that the French fleet could create a local superiority strong enough to prevent the British Navy from fulfilling its essential mission. Naval battle then became a means of obtaining a land and political decision.
Suffren pushes this logic even further. In the Indian Ocean, he shows that a globally inferior power can preserve its freedom of action by refusing passivity. Initiative itself becomes a form of superiority. The multiplication of engagements, the search for local concentrations, the desire to disorganize the enemy and the autonomy of command are all responses to the asymmetry of forces.
The three men do not therefore represent three contradictory doctrines. Rather, they correspond to three degrees of the same strategic maturation: preserving strength, concentrating it, and then using it offensively. This progression therefore makes it possible to answer the central question of this article. During the War of Independence, France did not develop a single and formalized naval doctrine comparable to a general theory of maritime warfare. It has done something different: it has built up a naval strategic culture. This culture was based on a few principles that emerged from the experience of 1778-1783: the need for a sufficiently powerful naval instrument; the concentration of forces; strategic mobility; the search for local superiority; the articulation between naval and land operations; the mastery of maritime communications; and finally, the importance of initiative and the autonomy of command. The notion of freedom of action perhaps makes it possible to summarize all these teachings.
A fleet is not only intended to destroy enemy ships. It must allow its own government and its armies to retain choices while reducing those of the adversary. It protects communications, opens theatres of operations, prohibits certain enemy movements, allows the concentration of forces and, when circumstances permit, seeks battle under favourable conditions. This is exactly what the campaigns of 1778-1783 demonstrate.
The Marine Royale failed to replace the British Royal Navy as the dominant maritime power. It nevertheless succeeded in challenging its freedom of action enough to change the outcome of a world war. This nuance is crucial. The French victory did not lie in the establishment of a lasting French maritime supremacy; it lies in the ability to temporarily make it impossible to exercise British supremacy effectively in certain decisive theatres. Yorktown is an emblematic example. The French fleet did not destroy the British Navy at the Chesapeake. It just made sure that the latter could not rescue Cornwallis at the moment when her intervention was decisive. It is therefore a strategic victory in terms of position, mobility and concentration, as much as a victory in combat.
Suffren’s experiment leads to a similar conclusion by another route. The French squadron of the Indian Ocean did not destroy Hughes’ squadron. It prevented the latter from transforming its general superiority into undisputed domination of the Indian Ocean. France thus retained a capacity for action until the end of the conflict. The war thus revealed an important transformation of the very notion of naval victory. Winning at sea does not necessarily mean destroying the enemy fleet; it can mean preventing it from accomplishing its mission. This conception has a scope that goes well beyond 1783.
It heralds a lasting feature of the French maritime strategy that is still manifested in 2026, the year of the French Navy’s 400th anniversary: the search for a naval power credible enough to compensate for the overall inferiority through concentration, mobility, deterrence and interventioncapacity. From this perspective, the American War of Independence was less the occasional apogee of the Marine Royale than an intellectual matrix whose effects would continue into the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
However, it would be excessive to turn this experience into a linear narrative of progress. The French Revolution would soon disrupt the institutional frameworks, the officer corps and the structures of the Navy. The revolutionary and imperial wars showed how difficult it was to maintain the skills accumulated under the Ancien Régime over the long term. The victory of 1783 did not lead to French maritime domination. But it leaves an essential legacy: the conviction that a French naval power can, provided it has an appropriate instrument and a capable command, force a superior maritime power to fight according to its own constraints. This is perhaps where the real contribution of the strategists of the American War of Independence lies.
Kersaint had contributed to thinking about the reform and transformation of the naval instrument. Castries understood the need to include the Navy in a general strategy of power and in a global foreign policy. D’Estaing had experienced the limits and possibilities of a fleet still considered a precious asset. De Grasse had demonstrated the power of concentration at the decisive point. Suffren had shown that the offensive initiative could allow an inferior fleet to retain its freedom of action. Their collective work is therefore greater than the sum of their individual victories and failures. It outlines a veritable strategic grammar of French naval power: to think about the instrument, to rebuild it, to concentrate it, to choose the decisive theatre, to preserve freedom of action, and then to impose its own uncertainty on the adversary.
The American War of Independence thus appears to be the moment when the French Navy stopped thinking only in terms of revenge for 1759 and began to think in terms of global maritime power. France no longer sought only to erase the memory of the defeats of the Seven Years’ War. It learned to use the sea as a strategic space of manoeuvre, capable of connecting theatres, shifting power, and producing political effects thousands of miles away from the Kingdom. The paradox of this renaissance was obvious: France won the naval world war without becoming the world’s leading maritime power. It demonstrates, however, that a naval power can be strategically decisive without being hegemonic.
It is probably this lesson that remains most relevant today. Sea power is not measured solely by tonnage, the number of vessels or the size of a fleet. It is also measured by the ability to choose where to commit one’s forces, at what time, against what objective and with what desired political effect. From this point of view, the French strategists of the American War of Independence left a lesson that goes beyond their century: naval power is not just an accumulation of means; it is an organized capacity for choice, movement, and decision. And this is perhaps why the American War of Independence constituted, for the French Navy, much more than a victorious parenthesis between two periods of Franco-British rivalry. It was the founding act of modern naval strategic thinking, born of the need to compensate for global inferiority by the quality of the instrument, the intelligence of the command and the concentration of power at the decisive moment.
Appendix 1
The Rebirth of the Royal Navy (1763-1778): Chronology of Reforms and Evolution of Naval Resources
The Treaty of Paris of 10 February 1763 marked a profound decline in French maritime power. The loss of part of the colonial empire and the heavy destruction suffered during the Seven Years’ War led the French monarchy to embark on a vast reconstruction programme aimed at restoring France’s ability to act on all oceans. From Choiseul to Castries, via Praslin, Boynes and Sartine, this policy combined administrative reforms, industrial investment, modernization of arsenals, renewal of buildings and professionalization of the officers. Fifteen years later, the Marine Royale has once again become an instrument capable of supporting a global naval war against the British Royal Navy.
I. The main stages of reconstruction
| Date | Key measures | Minister |
| 1763 | After the Treaty of Paris, the reconstruction of the Navy became a priority for the monarchy; Launch of a vast programme of shipbuilding and reorganisation of arsenals. | Étienne-François de Choiseul |
| 1763-1770 | Construction of numerous ships and frigates; modernisation of the arsenals of Brest, Rochefort and Toulon; improvement of officer training; development of hydrography and cartography. | Choiseul |
| 1770-1771 | Continuation of the programmes undertaken and consolidation of reforms. | Duke de Praslin |
| 1771-1774 | Slowing down of reforms, without calling into question the achievements of the previous decade. | Pierre-Étienne Bourgeois de Boynes |
| 1774 | Accession of Louis XVI; appointment of Antoine de Sartine as Secretary of State for the Navy; revival of investments and acceleration of construction. | Sartine |
| 1775-1777 | Reorganization of arsenals; improvement of maritime administration; development of the Indret and Ruelle foundries; reinforcement of artillery and supplies. | Sartine |
| 1776 | Major ordinances reorganizing ports, discipline, crew training and the administration of the Navy. | Sartine |
| 1778 | France enters the American War of Independence. The Navy is once again able to conduct simultaneous operations in the Atlantic, the West Indies, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. | Sartine |
| 1780 | Castries succeeded Sartine and continued the war effort, in particular by perfecting the organization of the command and logistics of the large squadrons. He selects the Admirals officers that will lead to several of the victories of the American War of Independence. | Marshal de Castries |
II. The evolution of naval resources
The number of ships in the fleet varies depending on whether ships are actually armed or ships registered in the Navy (including those in completion or immediately mobilized). They nevertheless reflect the extent of the effort made between the end of the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence.
| Year | Ships of the Line | Frigates |
| 1765 | 59 | 21 |
| 1770 | 68 | 35 |
| 1775 | 59 | 36 |
| 1780 | 70 | 57 |
The administrative statements of the Ministry of the Navy retain higher numbers, showing an increase of about 66 to 82 ships of the line and from 37 to 71 frigates between 1774 and 1780, depending on the accounting criteria used. This increase in power allows France to arm several oceanic squadrons simultaneously and to support a naval war in several theatres of operations.
This material effort was accompanied by a spectacular increase in the appropriations devoted to the Navy. The ordinary budget, which was around 20 to 25 million livres tournois in the mid-1770s, grew very rapidly with the outbreak of war: it reached about 74 million livres in 1778, exceeded 120 million in 1780 and was around 185 to 190 million livres in 1782, before decreasing after the peace of 1783. These figures must be interpreted with caution, as actual expenditure frequently exceeded the appropriations initially decided, particularly under Sartine and then Castries. They nevertheless bear witness to the unprecedented financial effort made by the monarchy to restore French naval power.
Appendix 2
Marshal de Castries (1727-1800): the minister-strategist and political architect of the naval renaissance
| Date | Career, function or event |
| 1727 | Birth of Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix de Castries in Montpellier on February 25, 1727. |
| 1739 | Entered the military career. |
| 1742-1748 | Took part in the campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession. |
| 1744 | He took part in the Italian operations and acquired his first important experience in command. |
| 1756-1763 | Participated in the Seven Years’ War. |
| 1758 | Distinguished himself in particular at the Battle of Krefeld. |
| 1762 | Participated in the Spanish campaign and operations against the British. |
| 1763 | The French defeat in the Seven Years’ War reinforced his conviction of the need for military and maritime reconstruction. |
| 1763-1774 | Continued his military and diplomatic career; notably exercised important responsibilities in the military apparatus of the monarchy. |
| 1774 | Louis XVI acceded to the throne; Castries gradually became one of the influential men in the royal entourage. |
| 1778 | Beginning of the American War of Independence. Castries participated in the definition of French military and naval orientations. |
| 1779 | Becomes Minister the Navy, succeeding Antoine de Sartine. |
| 1779-1780 | Reorganized the administration of the Navy, monitored operations, and worked to improve the efficiency of naval arsenals and forces. |
| 1780-1781 | Participates in the definition of the French strategy in the various theatres: Atlantic, West Indies, North America, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. |
| 1781 | Supported the concentration of resources for the decisive campaign that would lead to victory at the Chesapeake and Yorktown. |
| 1781-1782 | He followed the operations directly and maintained close correspondence with de Grasse, Suffren, Guichen, Vaudreuil, Bouillé, Bussy-Castelnau and the main military and naval leaders. |
| 1782 | After Les Saintes, he participated in the reorientation of the French effort and in maintaining pressure on the various theatres. |
| 1783 | End of the American War of Independence; France has demonstrated its ability to project and support naval forces in several global theatres. |
| 1783 | Castries left the Ministry of the Navy after four years in office. |
| 1783 | Raised to the dignity of Marshal of France. |
| 1787 | Participated in the national assemblies of notables; intervened in debates on the financial and political difficulties of the monarchy. |
| 1787-1788 | Is increasingly directly concerned with the financial and political crisis of the Kingdom; his positions brought him closer to a reforming conception of the monarchical state. |
| 1789 | At the beginning of the Revolution, he emigrated and joined counter-revolutionary circles. |
| 1790-1795 | Lives mainly in exile; remains linked to emigrant circles and monarchical restoration projects. |
| 1795 | Took part in Quiberon’s expedition as one of the military leaders of the emigration. |
| 1797-1800 | Continues his exile in Germany. |
| 1800 | Died in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, on January 11, 1800. |
Appendix 3
The Comte d’Estaing (1729-1794): from the Army to the command of the Squadrons in the Navy
| Date | Career, rank or event |
| 1729 | Birth of Charles-Henri d’Estaing, at the Château de Ravel on November 24, 1729 |
| 1746-1758 | Initial career in the army; participation in the campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War. |
| 1757 | Taken prisoner by the British during the Seven Years’ War. |
| 1759 | He really entered the naval career after his return to France. |
| 1763 | At the end of the Seven Years’ War, he continued his career in the Royal Navy. |
| 1772 | Appointed Lieutenant general of the naval armies, one of the highest ranks in the Navy. |
| 1778 | At the beginning of the American War of Independence, he was given command of a large squadron. |
| April 11, 1778 | Left Toulon with his squadron to join the American theatre. |
| July 1778 | Operations in front of New York; clash with Howe’s British fleet. |
| August 11, 1778 | Naval combat off the coast of Rhode Island; difficulties related in particular to weather conditions. |
| 1779 | West Indies campaign; capture of Grenada in July. |
| July 6, 1779 | French tactical victory in the naval battle of Grenada against Byron’s squadron. |
| Sept.-Oct. 1779 | Savannah expedition with American forces; failed assault on British positions. |
| 1780 | Return to France; continued his career and retained an important place in the Navy. |
| 1783 | End of the American War of Independence. |
| 1784 | Elected to the Académie française. |
| 1787 | Participates in the assemblies of notables. |
| 1789 | Initially rallied to the Revolution and sat in the Assembly of Notables and then in the National Guard. |
| 1792 | Became an admiral and retained military responsibilities in the Revolutionary Navy. |
| 1793 | Arrested during the Terror. |
| 1794 | Condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined in Paris on 28 April 1794. |
Appendix 4
The Comte de Grasse (1722-1788): from the naval officer to the architect of the Chesapeake decision
| Date | Career, rank or event |
| 1722 | Birth of François-Joseph-Paul de Grasse in Bar-sur-Loup (Provence) on September 13, 1722. |
| 1734 | Entered the Navy of the Order of Malta; first maritime formation. |
| 1740 | Joined the French Marine Royale. |
| 1740-1763 | Participated in numerous campaigns during the Wars of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War. |
| 1747 | Took part in the battle of Cape Lizard. |
| 1756-1763 | Participated in the naval operations of the Seven Years’ War. |
| 1762 | In particular, he commanded the Le Protée. |
| 1778 | Received the rank of Commander of a Squadron (Chef d’escadre); participated in naval operations during the American Revolutionary War. |
| 1779 | Took part in French operations in the West Indies. |
| 1779-1780 | Commanded in operations against the British in the West Indies. |
| 1781 | Received command of the naval army destined for the American theatre. |
| March 22, 1781 | Sailed from Brest with a large naval force. |
| April 1781 | Arrived in the West Indies; operations against the British and reinforcement of the French naval army. |
| July 5, 1781 | Leaves the West Indies to reach the Chesapeake. |
| August 30, 1781 | Arrived in the Chesapeake Bay with his naval army. |
| September 5, 1781 | Battle of the Chesapeake against Graves’ British Squadron. |
| October 19, 1781 | Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown; French mastery of the sea helped prevent British supplies and relief. |
| 1782 | Return to the West Indies; resumed operations against British forces. |
| April 12, 1782 | Battle of the Saintes; French defeat against Rodney. |
| 1782 | Returned to France after the campaign. |
| 1782-1783 | Defended his conduct in the affair of Les Saintes and was the subject of criticism. |
| 1784 | Publishes his memoirs and defends his action. |
| 1788 | Died at Le Tilly, near Paris, on 11 January 1788. |
Appendix 5
Pierre-André de Suffren (1729-1788): the permanent offensive and the search for local superiority
| Date | Career, rank or event |
| 1729 | Birth into a Provençal family of Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez, on July 17, 1729 at the castle of Saint-Cannat, near Aix-en-Provence |
| 1743 | Joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman. |
| 1744-1748 | Took part in the campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession. |
| 1747 | Took part in the battle of Cape Lizard. |
| 1756-1763 | Participated in the Seven Years’ War; gained significant experience in naval warfare. |
| 1759 | He took part in the battle of Lagos. |
| 1772 | Became a Captain. |
| 1778 | Participated in the operations of the American Revolutionary War. |
| 1779 | Commanded Le Fantasque in the squadron of the Comte d’Estaing; took part in operations in the West Indies. |
| 1780 | Commanded the Le Zélé in Guichen’s squadron; took part in the fighting against Rodney. |
| 1781 | Received command of the squadron intended to reinforce French forces in the Indian Ocean. |
| Nov.-Dec. 1781 | Left Brest and went to the Indian Ocean with the French squadron. |
| February 17, 1782 | Battle of Sadras against Edward Hughes’ British squadron. |
| April 12, 1782 | Battle of Provédien. |
| July 6, 1782 | Battle of Negapatam. |
| September 3, 1782 | Battle of Trincomalee; the French then seized the British base. |
| 1782-1783 | Maintains pressure on Hughes’ British squadron and consolidates the French presence in the Indian Ocean. |
| June 20, 1783 | Battle of Gondelour, the last major naval confrontation of the campaign. |
| 1783 | Return to France after the conclusion of hostilities. |
| 1784 | Received the title of Bailli (Bailiff) de Suffren and became one of the most prestigious figures in the French Navy. |
| 1787 | Was promoted to the rank of Vice-Admiral. |
| 1788 | Died in Paris on 8 December 1788 in a duel. |
Appendix 6
Major Naval Battles and Engagements of the French Royal Navy, 1778-1783
| Battle | Command. English | French forces engaged | British opponent | British forces engaged | Result / Scope |
| 27 July. 1778 – Ushant | Louis Guillouet d’Orvilliers | approx. 27 ships of the line, including Bretagne(110), Ville de Paris (90), several 80s and 74s | Keppel | 30 ships of the line | The fight was indecisive, but the Royal Navy was unable to obtain the decision; first major confrontation of the war. |
| 6 July 1919. 1779 – Granada | Charles-Henri d’Estaing | 25 ships of the line + 2 frigates | John Byron | 21 ships of the line + auxiliary ships | French victory; Byron was severely beaten and had to withdraw. |
| 17 Apr 1780 – Dominica / Martinique | Luc Urbain du Bouëxic, Comte de Guichen | approx. 23 ships of the line | George Rodney | approx. 20 ships of the line | An indecisive fight; Guichen retained the tactical initiative and prevented Rodney from breaking the French line. |
| 15 and 19 May 1780 – West Indies | de Guichen | approx. 23 ships | Rodney | approx. 20 ships | Two new indecisive battles; The French fleet retains its operational potential. The three clashes were a French operational success without a decisive tactical victory. |
| March 16, 1781 – Cape Henry | Charles René Dominique Sochet, chevalier des Touches | 8 ships of the line | Mariot Arbuthnot | 8 ships of the line | An indecisive fight; the French squadron was unable to force access to the Chesapeake. |
| 16 Apr 1781 – La Praya | Pierre André de Suffren | 5 ships of the line Hero (74), Hannibal (74), Artesian (64),Avenger (64), Sphinx (64) | George Johnstone | 5 ships of the line including Hero (74), Monmouth (64) | Tactically indecisive combat, but French strategic success: Suffren reached Cape Town before Johnstone. |
| 2 May 1781 – Western Approaches | Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte | French division of 6 ships | British convoy protected | Escort warships + merchant ships | La Motte-Picquet recaptured part of the British booty of Saint-Eustache: a remarkable cruise and interception operation. |
| Sept. 5, 1781 – Chesapeake | François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse | 24 ships of the line, including Ville de Paris (104), Auguste and Saint-Esprit (80) and numerous 74 | Thomas Graves | 19 ships of the line | Decisive French strategic victory: 24 ships against 19; ca. 1,542 French guns against 1,410 British. The Royal Navy was unable to rescue Yorktown. |
| 17 Feb 1782 – Sadras | Suffren | 11 ships of the line, including Hero (74), Hannibal (74), Orient(74), several 64 | Edward Hughes | 9 ships of the line | An indecisive fight; superior British damage; Suffren protected the French landings. |
| 12 Apr 1782 – Provédien | Suffren | 12 ships of the line | Hughes | 11 ships of the line | French tactical advantage, without destroying the British squadron. |
| 12 Apr 1782 – Les Saintes | de Grasse | 30-33 ships of the line | Admiral George Rodney | approx. 36 ships of the line | Decisive British victory; La Ville de Paris (110) Flagship captured with de Grasse; several French ships captured or lost. |
| 6 July 1919. 1782 – Negapatam | Suffren | 11 ships of the line | Hughes | 11 ships of the line | Extremely violent but indecisive fight; Suffren gradually imposed his attacking style. |
| 3 Sept. 1782 – Trincomalee | Suffren | 14 ships of the line | Hughes | 12 ships of the line | An indecisive fight; the French fleet retained the initiative and control of Trincomalee. |
| 20 Oct 1782 – Cape Spartel | Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de La Motte | Division including Brittany (110), Royal Louis (110), Majestuous (110), Active (74), etc. | Richard Howe | Large British Squadron | An indecisive fight; La Motte-Picquet took part in the confrontation of Howe’s squadron after the relief of Gibraltar. |
| 20 June 1783 – Gondelour | Suffren | 15 ships of the line | Hughes | 18 ships of the line | French victory: despite his numerical inferiority, Suffren forced Hughes to withdraw. The last major naval battle of the war. |
Note: the number of guns corresponds to the nominal armament of the ships and not necessarily to the number of guns actually used in combat. For major battles, totals are given when the sources allow for a homogeneous comparison; They may vary slightly depending on whether or not one counts non-engaged vessels or frigates.
Appendix 7
The main ship-to-ship battles
| Date | French commander | French ship | British opponent | Action |
| 1778 | Armand-Guy Simon de Coëtnempren, Count of Kersaint | Iphigenia | HMS Lively (20) | Capture of the British ship; one of Kersaint’s first great successes. |
| 1778 | Kersaint | Iphigenia | HMS Ceres | Capture of the British frigate; remarkable example of frigate combat. |
| 1781 | La Touche-Tréville | The Hermione | British ships and privateers | Several captures during his American cruise; affirmation of his qualities as commander of a frigate. |
| 1782 | La Touche-Tréville | The Eagle | HMS Hector (74) | The Aigle contributed to the capture of the Hector; the action was part of the mission to transport and protect the French convoy. |
| 1782 | Kersaint | Division of six ships including Iphigénie and two other frigates | A dozen light British ships in the waters of Guyana | Operations against British positions in the occupied Dutch colonies of Demerary, Essequibo and Berbice |
| 1782-1783 | Suffren | Le Heros (74) | HMS Superb | Le Hero served as flagship in the five major engagements against Hughes. |
[1] Translation : « My maxim is to count for nothing, to never think of anything but the good of the thing, and never to put it in the balance of displeasing orbeing disgraced ».
[2] Jean Meyer and Martine Acerra, Histoire de la Marine française. Des origines à nos jours, Rennes, Ed. Ouest-France, 1994, 427 p., spec. the synthesis devoted to the French Navy of the eighteenth century; Michel Vergé-Franceschi, The French Navy in the Eighteenth Century. Les espaces maritimes, Paris, SEDES, 1996; for the American War of Independence, see also Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, L’opérationnel naval, Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2013, in particular Olivier Chaline, « Le comte de Grasse à la tête de son armée navale », p. 295-314, and John R. Dull, « Le déplacement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », p. 315-328.
[3] Armand Guy Simon de Coëtnempren, comte de Kersaint, Plan général de défense des colonies de Demerari, Essequibo et Berbice relatif aux fortifications,21 mars1782, Archives nationales, Collection coloniale, Série C, Antilles étrangères, 175. On Kersaint’s more general reflection on maritime organization, colonies, and defence, see also A.-G.-S. de Coëtnempren, comte de Kersaint, Opinion de M. de Kersaint sur la marine, lue à la Société des amis de la Constitution, le 1er mars 1790, Archives nationales, Amérique du Sud, C7, f° 106-107. Kersaint evoked his ideas on the uselessness of fortifications and the need for a Navy adapted to local circumstances in his memoirs to the Minister of the Navy in the years 1780-1782.
[4] René de La Croix, duc de Castries, Le Maréchal de Castries (1727-1800), Paris, Fayard, 1956, 283 p.; id., Le Maréchal de Castries, serviteur des trois rois(1727-1800), Paris, Albatros, 1979, 248 p.; Jean Tarrade, « Le maréchal de Castries et la politique française dans l’océan Indien à la fin de l’Ancien Régime », in Claude Wanquet and Benoît Jullien (eds.), Révolution française et océan Indien. Prémices, paroxysmes, héritages et déviances, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1996, pp. 39-48; Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit., p. 315-328.
[5] François Souty, « The Count of Kersaint (1742-1793), Naval Officer, Naval Reformer and Strategic Thinker on the Eve of the French Revolution », Le Diplomate Média, 2026; Id., « Bougainville and La Pérouse in the American War of Independence (1778-1783): Two Naval Officers Between the Two Great French Circumnavigations of the Eighteenth Century », Le Diplomate Média, 2026; Id., « Four Hundred Years of French Naval Strategy », Le Diplomate Média, 2026. These three studies available online form the direct background of this article, which is no longer devoted to the thought of one reformer or the experience of two officers, but to the strategic direction and command of naval warfare.
[6] Op. cit. to note 4.
[7] Olivier Chaline, « Le comte de Grasse à la tête de son armée navale », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit., p. 295-314; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence. A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975, spec. on the conduct of French naval operations during the War of Independence. On Admiral Suffren and the Indian campaign, see in particular the remarkable work by Roger Glachant, Suffren et le temps de Vergennes, Paris, France-Empire, 1976, 432 p., for a long time a great archivist of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs who exploited in particular the correspondence exchanged between Suffren and Vergennes from 1780 to 1783; Jean Figarella, Suffren ou les caprices de la gloire. Épisodes de la rivalité franco-anglaise en mer au XVIIIe siècle, Avignon, Aubanel, 1984, 266 p.; see also the developments devoted to the operations of the Indian Ocean in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, supra. The opposition between decisive concentration in de Grasse and offensive initiative in Suffren constitutes here a guiding hypothesis of the article, which will be demonstrated in the second part.
[8] François Souty, op.cit.; Sylviane Llinares, « Les campagne du comte de Kersaint aux Antilles et en Guyane (1778-1782) », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2013, p. 91-108; Étienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français, Paris, Tallandier, 2002, v° « Kersaint (Armand-Guy Simon de Coëtnempren, comte de) ».
[9] S. Llinares, op. cit., pp. 92-107; E. Taillemite, op. cit., v° « Kersaint ». On the captures of HMS Lively and HMS Ceres, as well as on the campaigns of 1778 to 1782, we also refer to our previous study devoted to Kersaint, which mentions these operations.
[10] O. Chaline, Ph. Bonnichon and Ch.-Ph. de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit., p. 96; S. Llinares, op.cit., pp. 96-99. On the exact conditions of the introduction of copper doublage and its diffusion in the French Navy, S. Llinares, « Les mémoires et les correspondances des marins voyageurs en Angleterre (1750-1790) », in Patrice Bret, Irina Gouzévitch and Liliane Pérez (eds.), Les techniques et la technologie entre France et Grande-Bretagne (XVIe-XIXe siècle), Documents pour l’histoire des techniques, Special issue n° 1, May 2010, p. 145-153, spec. on Kersaint’s trip to England in 1785; see also S. Llinares, Marine, propulsion et technologie. L’évolution du système technologique du navire de guerre français au XVIIIe siècle, doctoral thesis under the direction of Jean Meyer, Paris, Librairie de l’Inde, 1994, 2 vol. V. also Larrie D. Ferreiro, « Développements et avantages tactiques du doublage en cuivre des coques dans les marines française, britannique et espagnole », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit., p. 17-44, spec. p. 40-41; see also Patrick Villiers, La Marine de Louis XVI, Nice, ANCRE, 2020, p. 293. The first French tests had preceded the war, notably on the La Belle Poule, but the capture by L’Iphigénie, commanded by Kersaint, of the British cutter HMS Lively, on 10 July 1778, provided Frenh Naval Engineers with a directly observable model of a copper-lined ship and led to the experimentation of the process on L’Iphigénie in the same month. However, the experiment proved to be imperfect: the lining on the French frigate deteriorated rapidly during its American campaign, which led Kersaint to send the minister a critical report on the processes used and the technical conditions of implementation. This experience is therefore a particularly enlightening example of technology transfer by capture, followed by a phase of adaptation and learning by the French Navy. On the first French experiments and the technical difficulties encountered, see finally the contemporary technical documents relating to doubling processes preserved in the collections of the Ministry of the Navy.
[11] Service Historique de la Défense, Rochefort, MR 1 S 35, Cuisines à la Kersaint, file including plans and descriptions of the kitchens installed on board Le Léopard and several frigates (1810-1811). The permanence of this appellation several decades after the first experiments testifies to the posterity of the technical innovations attributed to Kersaint.
[12] Annie Crépin, Defending France. Les Français, la guerre et le service militaire de la guerre de Sept Ans à Verdun, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2005, p. 71-89; Thibaut Poirot, « La Marine à la Tribune. Les députés et la guerre navale pendant la Législative », in Anne de Mathan, Pierrick Pourchasse and Philippe Jarnoux (eds.), La mer, la guerre et les affaires. Questions maritimes et réalités de la Révolution française, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2018, p. 85-98.
Concerning maritime registration, Kersaint works more specifically on the articulation between recruitment, maritime populations – especially fishermen – and the constant maintenance of the entire range of nautical skills in times of war as well as in times of peace.
[13] Algemeen Rijksarchief (The Hague), Archives of Demerary, Essequibo and Berbice, inv. 1.05.21; S. Llinares, art. prev., pp. 101-108; F. Souty, « Le Comte de Kersaint et la fondation de Longchamp en Guyane néerlandaise (1750-1810) », dans L. Vidal et É. d’Orgeix (éd.), Les villes françaises du Nouveau Monde: des premiers fondateurs aux ingénieurs du roi (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles), Paris, Somogy Éditions d’Art, 1999, p. 130-135. The Dutch archives highlight in particular the administrative reorganisation carried out during the French occupation as well as the Longchamp development project.
[14] National Archives, Colonial Collection, Series C, Demerary-Essequibo-Berbice, Memoir of the Comte de Kersaint entitled General Defence Plan for the Colonies of Demerary, Essequibo and Berbice Relative to the Fortifications, 21 March 1782.
[15] Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record « Armand-Guy Simon de Coëtnempren, comte de Kersaint », listing the main memoirs, pamphlets and works published by the author; Thibaut Poirot, op.cit. This abundant production distinguishes Kersaint from most of the senior officers, if not all, of his time and explains the special place he deserves to occupy in the history of French naval thought, which has been largely undervalued until now.
[16] On Kersaint’s political role during the Revolution, see in particular Discours de M. Kersaint sur l’organisation de l’artillerie et de l’infanterie de la Marine, Legislative Assembly, session of 6 April 1792; Avis de M. Kersaint sur l’artillerie de la Marine, session of May 12, 1792; P.-Y. Beaurepaire, op.cit. All of this parliamentary activity sheds light on the continuity of his thinking on the reform of the Navy and will be studied more broadly in future research.
[17] Regarding Claire de Kersaint, the future Duchess of Duras, novelist and Femme de Lettres of the Restoration, we will limit ourselves here to pointing out that she continued, in a different register, the intellectual influence of her father. Her relations with Chateaubriand, Mme de Staël and several great literary figures of her time will be examined in a specific study, this question going beyond the scope of this paper.
[18] Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. I, op.cit, in particular the introduction by Olivier Chaline, p. 7; Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit., p. 315-328. Contemporary research expressly identifies Castries as one of those responsible for the transformation of French naval strategy.
[19] Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. I, op. cit., especially the contributions devoted to the missions of the French Navy, naval constructions and general officers.
[20] Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », op.cit., p. 315-328; John B. Hattendorf, « Fleet in being. Le concept de fleet in being et la Royal Navy dans la guerre d’Indépendance américaine « , in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit., p. 329-344.
[21] On the transition from a mainly European strategy to a more peripheral and global strategy, see in particular Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit.; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des navires français et britanniques (1778-1783) », ibid., p. 375-412.
[22] Bibliothèque nationale de France, département des Manuscrits, ms. G 165, Lettres et mémoires originaux des ministres de la Marine… et de Charles-Eugène-Gabriel de La Croix de Castries, 1779-1783, including letters and memoirs addressed to La Pérouse, de Grasse, Guichen, Vaudreuil, Bouillé, Bussy-Castelnau, and other officials; see also Castries’ « Mémoire sur la navigation française » and Castries’ autograph notes on the manner in which English and French ships fought, the Channel expedition of 1779, and the American War. Sur la pensée navale et l’action ministérielle du maréchal de Castries, v. notamment aux Archives nationales, la série Marine, MAR/G/165 (lettres, mémoires et notes autographes du ministre sur la conduite de la guerre navale, les escadres de Guichen et de Grasse, la guerre d’Amérique et la navigation française) ; aussi la série MAR/G/166 (correspondance avec les principaux officiers généraux, notamment La Pérouse, de Grasse, Vaudreuil, Bouillé et Kersaint) ; ainsi que la série MAR/B/4, qui rassemble les instructions ministérielles, ordres, rapports de campagne et correspondances stratégiques du secrétariat d’État de la Marine pendant la guerre d’Indépendance américaine.
[23] Ibid. Castries’ personal annotations are a particularly interesting source for understanding his conception of naval combat and his direct follow-up of operations.
[24] Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », op.cit., p. 315-328; Étienne Taillemite, « Les officiers généraux de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. I, op. cit.
[25] Letter from Castries to Vergennes, Brest, 16 March 1781, reproduced in the appendix of Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit.; Castries gave de Grasse the opportunity to determine the force to be engaged and the theatre in which to focus his squadron, while drawing his attention to the possible need to provide superiority for the North American squadron.
[26] On the question of command and the concrete exercise of de Grasse’s authority, see Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I, op.cit. The book uses French and British field diaries to analyze the concrete modalities of naval command.
[27] On the projection of the French squadron towards the West Indies and then the Chesapeake, see Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I, op. cit. See also Olivier Chaline, « Le comte de Grasse à la tête de son armée navale », Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit., p. 295-314.
[28] On the Chesapeake campaign, see in particular Études marines, n° 24, dossier devoted to the Chesapeake, Service Historique de la Défense; de Grasse’s fleet, 28 ships-of-the-line and 4 frigates, reached the Chesapeake on 30 August 1781 and engaged the British squadron on 5 September.
[29] Michael J. Crawford, « Le soutien des forces navales au bénéfice des opérations terrestres pendant la guerre d’indépendance, » in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), vol. II, op. cit., pp. 345-362; see also the analysis of the Yorktown campaign published by the U.S. Naval Institute, who emphasizes that the decisive naval objective was not so much the destruction of the British fleet as the prevention of its intervention on behalf of Cornwallis.
[30] On Suffren’s campaign and its place in French strategy, see Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit.; Philippe Haudrère, « La Révolution de l’Inde n’aura pas lieu », in Les Français dans l’océan Indien, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014, p. p. 281-295. Castries’ role in supporting the Indian effort must be compared to his general conception of peripheral warfare.
[31] Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », supra, pp. 315-328; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op. cit., pp. 375-412.
[32] Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, vol. I, op. cit.; the work underlines the exceptional scale of the French projection and makes it possible to reconstruct the instructions, means, deployment methods and command conditions of the squadron.
[33] Olivier Chaline, « Comité, Commission et Conférence. La praxéologie de la réforme au sein du ministère de la Marine sous Louis XVI », in Jörg Ulbert and Sylviane Llinares (eds.), La liasse et la plume. Les bureaux du Secrétariat d’État de la Marine (1669-1792), Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2017, p. 93-109. Daniel Chardon’s survey of the admiralties, from 1781 onwards, is particularly indicative of this new desire to know and rationalise the maritime apparatus.
[34] On the limits of French power and the operational balance sheet of the conflict, see Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit., p. 375-412. The Battle of Les Saintes is a reminder in particular that the French ability to create local superiority is not to be confused with the lasting mastery of the seas.
[35] Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit., 457 p. The book is specifically devoted to the operational implementation of the navies engaged in the conflict and to the question of what a navy can really accomplish in operations.
[36] Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et castries, stratèges navals », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit., p. 315-328.
[37] On the entry of the United Provinces into the war, see Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence. Op.cit., spec. on the strategic consequences of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War; Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute. A View of the American Revolution, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1988, esp. pp. 177-219, which shows that the war against the United Provinces was less a distinct conflict than a further stage in the globalization of the American Revolutionary War; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), La France et l’indépendance américaine, Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008, spec. the contributions devoted to the global widening of the conflict. London officially justified its declaration of war on 20 December 1780 by several grievances: the refusal of the United Provinces to meet the obligations of the 1678 alliance, their tolerance of trade with the American insurgents, the welcome given to the privateer John Paul Jones and above all the discovery, among the papers of the American diplomat Henry Laurens captured at sea, a draft secret trade treaty negotiated between Amsterdam and the United States. However, these motives were more diplomatic pretexts than the real causes of the war. The British Government’s main objective was to prevent the United Provinces from joining the League of Armed Neutrality, which would have strengthened the legal protection of their trade, and to interrupt the strategic supplies of wood, masts, hemp, tar and other naval supplies that Dutch merchants were transporting to France despite the war. The declaration of war opened a new colonial theatre of operations. After the capture of Saint-Eustatius by Admiral Rodney (February 1781), small British detachments successively occupied Demerary, Essequibo and Berbice, almost without resistance, the Dutch authorities being deprived of any naval support. The colonies were placed under British administration until their reconquest by the French expedition of the Comte de Kersaint in January-February 1782 detailed in our previous paper. The Dutch archives kept at the Algemeen Rijksarchief in The Hague make it possible to follow this British occupation with precision, and then the French administrative reorganisation carried out under Kersaint’s authority: Algemeen Rijksarchief (The Hague), Archives of Demerary, Essequibo and Berbice, inv. 1.05.21; François Souty, « Le Comte de Kersaint et la fondation de Longchamps (1782-1784) : Une tentative française de réorganisation de la Guyane hollandaise », dans Emilie d’Orgeix et Laurent Vidal (dir.), Les villes françaises du Nouveau Monde. Des premiers fondateurs aux ingénieurs du roi (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle)« , Paris, Éditions du CTHS, 2021, p. 243-260.
[38] John B. Hattendorf, « Fleet in being. The concept of fleet in being and the Royal Navy in the American War of Independence », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit, p. 329-344; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence. A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975, in particular on the dispersion of British forces and the French search for local concentrations.
[39] John B. Hattendorf, ibid. On the origin of the expression and the thought of the Earl of Torrington following the battle of Bévéziers in 1690, see also Geoffrey Till, Seapower. A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, London, Routledge, 2013, in particular the developments devoted to fleet in being and the relationship between a potential fleet, control of the sea and freedom of action. However, it is necessary to distinguish the expression, which appeared at the end of the seventeenth century, from the much older strategic practice of keeping a naval force in a state of action in order to force the adversary to take account of its presence.
[40] Olivier Chaline, « La mise en œuvre opérationnelle d’une flotte », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit.; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », ibid., p. 375-412. These analyses make it possible to relate the concentration of forces, geographical constraints, the protection of communications and support to ground operations.
[41] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op.cit., esp. chap. 3; Patrick Villiers, La Marine de Louis XVI, Nice, Éditions Ancre, 2021, p. 151-176; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit., in particular the developments devoted to the opening of naval warfare in Europe.
[42] Patrick Villiers, La Marine de Louis XVI, supra, pp. 176-185; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, supra; Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1913, chap. V (« The Battle of Ushant »). For the British, the lack of a decisive result provoked a lively controversy between Admirals Augustus Keppel and Hugh Palliser, leading in particular to Keppel’s trial before a court-martial, which ultimately ended in his acquittal.
[43] On the campaign of 1778 and the battle of Ushant (Ouessant), see also Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », supra, pp. 375-412.
[44] Ibid.
[45] On French operations in the West Indies and their articulation with naval operations, see in particular the various contributions devoted to West Indian theatres in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit.
[46] On the action of the Comte d’Estaing in the West Indies and North America, see Étienne Taillemite, « Les officiers généraux de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. I, op.cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), La France et l’indépendance américaine, op.cit.
[47] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: op.cit.
[48] Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », op.cit., p. 315-328.
[49] Christopher Wilkinson, « L’océan, le climat et les opérations navales pendant la guerre d’indépendance américaine », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit., p. 17-36. In particular, the contribution shows how oceanic, climatic and health conditions must be integrated into the analysis of operations.
[50] Olivier Chaline, « La mise en œuvre opérationnelle d’une flotte », op.cit.
[51] Ibid. This approach is directly in line with the scientific orientation of the second volume, whose objective is to get out of an overly rigid opposition between strategy and tactics.
[52] On Suffren’s campaign in the Indian Ocean, see Philippe Villiers, the contributions devoted to operations in the Indian Ocean, in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit.; see also Ministère des Forces Armées, 400 ans de la Marine, épisode 6, « Guerre d’indépendance américaine : Pentagone de Suffren », devoted to the five great naval battles fought by Suffren and Hughes in 1782-1783.
[53] On Suffren’s offensive conception and the problems of command in the Indian Ocean, see the contributions relating to the Indian Ocean in Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit. See also the excellent work of the Curator of the Archives Roger Glachant, op.cit.
[54] On the question of the conservation of naval potential and the notion of fleet in being, see John B. Hattendorf, op.cit., pp. 329-344 at note 37.
[55] Olivier Chaline, « La mise en œuvre opérationnelle d’une flotte », op.cit.; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit., p. 375-412.
[56] Michael J. Crawford, « Le soutien des forces navales au bénéfice des opérations terrestres pendant la guerre d’indépendance », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), vol. II, op. cit., p. 345-362.
[57] Ibid.
[58] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit.. 375-412.
[59] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.
[60] Agustín Guimerá Ravina, contributions relative to the Spanish Navy and Franco-Spanish Cooperation, in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit.
[61] François Souty, « Bougainville and La Pérouse in the American War of Independence (1778-1783): Two Naval Officers Between the Two Great French Circumnavigations of the Eighteenth Century », op. cit. at note 4.
[62] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit., p. 375-412.
[63] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit.
[64] Étienne Taillemite, « Les officiers généraux de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. I, op. cit.
[65] Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II,op. cit., in particular the introduction and contributions devoted to the operational implementation of fleets. The book intends to analyse precisely the operations, missions and concrete modalities of the exercise of command.
[66] Étienne Taillemite, « Les officiers généraux de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. I, , op.cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), La France et l’indépendance américaine, op.cit.
[67] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op.cit. ; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), La France et l’indépendance américaine, op. cit., in particular the contributions relating to the objectives and strategies of the various belligerents.
[68] Étienne Taillemite, « Les officiers généraux de la guerre d’indépendance américaine », op.cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. I, op. cit. The first volume places the action of general officers in the transformation of the French naval tool between 1763 and 1778.
[69] Étienne Taillemite, Ibid.; on d’Estaing’s career and his appointment as Vice-admiral of the Seas of Asia and America, see also the biographical notes devoted to the admiral in contemporary historical dictionaries. On February 6, 1778, Louis XVI created especially for the Comte d’Estaing the dignity of Vice-Admiral of the Seas of Asia and America, in order to entrust him with the command of the squadron sent to the aid of the American Insurgents. This exceptional appointment placed him at the top of the operational naval hierarchy and testified to the strategic importance that the monarchy now attached to the American theatre. This creation is also indicative of the confidence that Sartine and Vergennes placed in d’Estaing: it was not a simple promotion, but the adpersonam creation of a vice-admiralty intended for a new theatre of operations, distinct from the traditional vice-admiralties of the Ponant and the Levant, not without a certain resentment among the naval officers who often judged him too « land-based » because of his military culture.
[70] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), La France et l’indépendance américaine, op. cit.
[71] On the departure from Toulon, the crossing of the Atlantic and the operations in front of New York, see Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit.; Étienne Taillemite, op.cit.
[72] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit. ; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Ibid. The operational analysis highlights the role of nautical conditions, coastal defences and coordination with land forces. At Sandy Hook (July 1778), d’Estaing, despite his numerical superiority, gave up forcing his way into New York harbour, the pilots deeming it too dangerous for his most powerful vessels to cross the bar. This decision, often criticized, reflects the priority given to the preservation of the squadron, France’s main strategic instrument in America, rather than to the search for a battle with risks considered disproportionate. The episode of Sandy Hook (July 11-22, 1778) is probably the first major turning point in d’Estaing’s American campaign, and it is also one of the most controversial of his entire career (Alfred T. Mahan in particular strongly criticized it). Many historians consider this to be the lost opportunity of the War of Independence, even if the actual nautical conditions and the draughts of his largest ships of the line tend to validate Admiral d’Estaing’s prudence.
[73] Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Ibid.; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.
[74] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Ibid.
[75] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Ibid.
[76] On the campaign of Granada and the confrontation with Byron’s squadron, see Pierre Le Bot, op.cit.; Jonathan R. Dull, Ibid
[77] On the siege and assault of Savannah, see Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit.; Jonathan R. Dull, op. cit. The conditions of the operation particularly illustrate the difficulties of coordination between the French naval forces, the French land forces and the American troops.
[78] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op. cit.; Étienne Taillemite, ibid.
[79] Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Ibid.
[80] John B. Hattendorf, « Fleet in being. The concept of fleet in being and the Royal Navy in the American War of Independence », Fleet in being. Le concept de fleet in being et la Royal Navy dans la guerre d’Indépendance américaine in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit., p. 329-344
[81] Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I, op.cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op.cit.
[82] Jonathan R. Dull, op.cit.; Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I, op. cit.
[83] Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit., p. 315-328.
[84] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit., p. 375-412.
[85] Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I, , op. cit.; Jonathan R. Dull, op. cit.; on the composition of de Grasse’s naval army and its departure from Brest on 22 March 1781, see also the campaign journals published and studied in this work.
[86] Olivier Chaline, « Le comte de Grasse à la tête de son armée navale », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit., p. 295-314.
[87] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit.; Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), op. cit.
[88] On the correspondence between Washington, Rochambeau and de Grasse and the preparation of the Chesapeake campaign, see Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, op. cit.; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.
[89] Ibid. The question of the Chesapeake is particularly enlightening for understanding the difference between the battle sought for its own sake and the battle intended to prevent the adversary from accomplishing a strategic mission.
[90] George Washington, letter to the Comte de Grasse, 17 Aug. 1781, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 23, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press; see also Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, vol. I, op. cit.
[91] Michael J. Crawford, « Le soutien des forces navales au bénéfice des opérations terrestres pendant la guerre d’indépendance », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763-1783), vol. II, op. cit., p. 345-362.
[92] Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I, op. cit.; see also Service Historique de la Défense, Études marines, n° 24, dossier devoted to the Chesapeake.
[93] John B. Hattendorf, » Fleet in being. Le concept de fleet in being et la Royal Navy dans la guerre d’Indépendance américaine « , in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), The Marines of the American War of Independence (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit., p. 329-344.
[94] Michael J. Crawford, « Naval Support for Land Operations in the Revolutionary War, » op. cit., pp. 345-362.
[95] Ibid. ; Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, vol. I, op. cit.
[96] Ibid.
[97] Olivier Chaline, « Le comte de Grasse à la tête de son armée navale « , op.cit., p. 295-314
[98] Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I, op. cit.
[99] Michael J. Crawford, « Soutien naval aux opérations terrestres pendant la guerre d’indépendance, » op. cit., pp. 345-362.
[100] Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », op.cit., p. 315-328.
[101] Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, vol. I, op. cit.
[102] Ibid.
[103] On the relations of command during the campaign of 1781, see Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I, op. cit., which uses French and British field diaries in particular to reconstruct the concrete conditions of the naval decision.
[104] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit., p. 375-412. Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op.cit. ; Olivier Chaline, « Le comte de Grasse à la tête de son armée navale », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op.cit., pp. 295-314.
[105] Ibid. ; on the Battle of Les Saintes and its consequences, see also Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit
[106] John B. Hattendorf, « Fleet in being », op. cit., pp. 329-344.
[107] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.
[108] Olivier Chaline and Jean-Marie Kowalski (eds.), L’amiral de Grasse et l’indépendance américaine, t. I,, op. cit.
[109] Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op.cit. ; Étienne Taillemite, « The General Officers of the American War of Independence », op.cit.
[110] Étienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français, op.cit., v° « Suffren »; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit.
[111] On Suffren’s mission and his departure from Brest, see Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit.
[112] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op.cit., p. 375-412.
[113] On Sadras and the operations of Suffren in 1782, see Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op.cit. ; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.
[114] On the relations between Suffren and his captains and on the difficulties of carrying out his orders, see Pierre André de Suffren, Lettres et documents, ed. established from his correspondence; Roger Glachant, op.cit.; Étienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français, op. cit., v° « Suffren ».
[115] On Trincomalee and the strategic importance of this base, see Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit., pp. 375-412; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.
[116] On the battles of Provédien and Negapatam, see Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit. Also Jean Figarella, op.cit.
[117] Ibid. ; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.
[118] Pierre André de Suffren, Lettres et documents, op. cit.; R. Glachant, op.cit.; Étienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français, op. cit.
[119] On Suffren’s criticisms of his captains, see in particular his campaign correspondence published in the editions of his letters and memoirs; also Etienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français, op. cit.
[120] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit., p. 375-412.
[121] On the function of Trincomalee as a naval base, see Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op.cit.
[122] Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1890, 557 p. A foundational work of modern naval strategy, Mahan argues that command of the sea, sustained by a powerful battle fleet, maritime commerce and overseas bases, constitutes one of the principal determinants of national power and international influence.
[123] Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op.cit.., p. 375-412.
[124] Pierre André de Suffren, Lettres et documents, op. cit.; Roger Glachant, op.cit. ; Étienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français, op. cit. Jean Figarella, op.cit.
[125] On the British assessment of Suffren’s command and his confrontation with Hughes, see Jonathan R. Dull, op. cit.; Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op. cit.
[126] Étienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français, op. cit., v° « Guichen »; id., « Les officiers généraux de la guerre d’Indépendance », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op.cit. t. I, pp. 381-390.
[127] Étienne Taillemite, op. cit., v° « La Motte-Picquet »; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit. ; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », in Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), op.cit., t. II, pp. 375-412.
[128] Étienne Taillemite, op. cit., v° « Barras de Saint-Laurent »; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit., spec. developments devoted to the Chesapeake Campaign.
[129] Étienne Taillemite, op. cit., v° « Monteil »; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op. cit., pp. 375-412.
[130] Étienne Taillemite, op. cit., v° « Vaudreuil »; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit., on the West Indies campaign and the operations of 1782.
[131] Étienne Taillemite, op. cit., v° « La Touche-Tréville »; Michel Vergé-Franceschi, Les officiers généraux de la Marine royale (1715-1774). Origines, conditions, services, op. cit., passim; Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence, op. cit.
[132] Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), The Marines of the American War of Independence (1763-1783), t. II, op. cit. ; Pierre Le Bot, « Bilan opérationnel des marines française et britannique (1778-1783) », op. cit., pp. 375-412. The various contributions highlight the complementarity of the missions entrusted to French Chiefs of Squadron according to the theatre of operations.
[133] Étienne Taillemite, « Les officiers généraux de la guerre d’indépendance », op. cit., pp. 381-390. The author insists on the generational renewal of the high command and on the diversity of the experiences acquired before 1778.
[134] V. Étienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français, op. cit., v° « La Touche-Tréville »; Rémi Monaque, Les aventures de Louis-René de Latouche-Tréville: compagnon de La Fayette et commandant de « L’Hermione » dans la guerre d’Indépendance américaine, Paris, SPM, 2000, especially pp. 44-76; id., Latouche-Tréville, 1745-1804: l’amiral qui défiait Nelson, Paris, SPM, 2000, especially pp. 38-92; Patrick Villiers, with the participation of Jean-Claude Lemineur, L’Hermione: La Fayette, Latouche-Tréville, deux hommes, une frégate au service de l’indépendance américaine, Nice, Ancre, 2015, especially p. 69-88; Jean-Pierre Bois (ed.), Deux voyages à l’époque de Louis XVI, 1777-1780. La mission du baron de Tott en Égypte en 1777-1778 et le Journal de bord de l’Hermione en 1780, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, coll. « Enquêtes & documents », 2005, 252 p., in particular pp. 99-252, which reproduces and presents the logbook of the Hermione commanded by La Touche-Tréville.
[135] Jonathan R. Dull, « Le mouvement des pièces sur l’échiquier de la guerre. Sartine et Castries, stratèges navals », op. cit., pp. 315-328 ; Olivier Chaline, « La mise en œuvre opérationnelle d’une flotte », op. cit., pp. 281-294.
[136] This diversity of profiles confirms that the French naval renaissance is not based solely on a few exceptional leaders, but on the existence of a real command corps, gradually built up since the end of the Seven Years’ War thanks to administrative reforms, improved officer training and the experience acquired on all the seas of the world. V. Olivier Chaline, Philippe Bonnichon and Charles-Philippe de Vergennes (eds.), Les marines de la guerre d’Indépendance américaine (1763-1783), t. I, op. cit. ; Jean Tarrade, « La politique navale de Castries », in La France et l’indépendance américaine, op. cit., pp. 263-278.
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