After a somewhat longer break, we’re back with the American Revolution! We had concluded last time with the French entry into the war on the American side. Today, we’ll look at the cooperation between the allies, the British strategic shift to the south, and how these two impulses collided and gave way to peace – as always, with board games.
You can read all posts in this series here:
- Rebellion in the Colonies
- “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!”
- The War of Independence, 1775-1776
- The War of Independence, 1776-1777
- The War of Independence, 1777-1778
- The War of Independence, 1778-1783
American-French Cooperation
Before the Treaty of Alliance and the French declaration of war on Britain, France had supported the American Patriots materially. Now that France was a full belligerent, fighting forces would follow – first, the French fleet.
A naval force under Admiral Charles Henri Hector d’Estaing, carrying a few thousand French land forces, was dispatched to North America in summer 1778. They embarked on an ambitious combined-force scheme together with the Continental Army to take Newport from the British. American-French cooperation (as well as army-navy cooperation) proved difficult, and the operation had to be aborted. In one of the more dubious decisions of the war, the British abandoned Newport, one of the finest natural harbors in New England, voluntarily soon after.
As joint operations had not yielded success, the American and British forces would usually operate separately for the next two years. That meant that the Americans continued to bear the brunt of the struggle for North America. The French navy and army, however, were crucial in tying down British forces in the by now global struggle: British and French forces fought over the economically crucial “sugar islands” of the Caribbean. A French armada, strengthened by Spain which had recently entered the war, threatened to invade Britain itself in 1779. Even in far away India, British forces were challenged by the French and their local allies. Players of Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games) will recognize these as the four regions in which Britain and France fight for supremacy – with victory going to the player who can balance their interests in the four regions best, taking losses where they must while making bigger gains elsewhere.
The American Patriots had none of this strategic depth. If they were defeated North America, their cause would be lost. And even with French support, it did not seem like they could do more than brace themselves against the military and financial superiority of Britain… if so much. The harsh winter of 1779-80 decimated the Continental Army. Difficulties in paying the troops resulted in the mutiny of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Line regiments. The situation seemed so dire that Benedict Arnold, one of the most distinguished American commanders, betrayed the American cause (but failed to deliver the fort of West Point to Britain), serving in the British army for the remainder of the war.
The Southern Strategy
Part of the American woes was the new British focus. As New England was lost to Britain, and too full of rebels to be retaken, the British turned their attention to the southern colonies which the believed to be populated by many British loyalists.
First, they advanced from Florida (supported by sea) into Georgia and took Savannah on December 29, 1778. A combined American-French land-sea operation failed to retake the city in June 1779. After this second joint operations failure, the French fleet relocated to the Caribbean. British forces under Charles Cornwallis laid siege to Charleston, South Carolina, the following March.
Benjamin Lincoln, who had commanded the American troops in the unsuccessful counter-offensive at Savannah, was put under enormous political pressure not to let Charleston, one of the most important cities in the south, fall into British hands. Retreat was thus impossible. Yet the defense of the city against superior British forces was doomed. Lincoln surrendered in May 1780.
Cornwallis also beat the new American commander in the south, Horatio Gates, at Camden (and thus cut Gates, the hero of Saratoga, back to size again). As the British general was poised to invade North Carolina, Washington dispatched Nathanael Greene to take command in the south.
Greene’s approach aimed to elude a decisive engagement. Contrary to British assumptions, the south was not rife with British loyalists. The crown was only supported where Britain could enforce loyalty – on the coasts, and wherever Cornwallis’s army was at the moment. And Cornwallis could not be everywhere. Small American forces under guerilla leaders (like “The Gamecock” Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion, on whom the movie The Patriot is based) chipped away at British forces and support. While Cornwallis beat Greene at Guilford Court House and Eutaw Springs in early 1781, he could not reverse the south’s affiliation to the Patriot cause.
Yorktown
Cornwallis lost patience with the indecisive campaign against Greene’s Fabian strategy. In 1781, he boldly struck into Virginia. His supply was to come from sea via the port of Yorktown on Chesapeake Bay. If Virginia, the largest and most populous southern colony was taken and thus the south cut off from the north, Greene would have to surrender – or so Cornwallis thought. Cornwallis’s good strategy rating in Washington’s War makes it likely that the British player will let him pursue similarly active campaigns… and hopes not to get caught by superior force.
Cornwallis’s plan was risky. Virginia was much closer to the American and French main forces than the Carolinas. The French commander Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, urged George Washington to confront Cornwallis. And thus a third joint operation began: Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a French volunteer in the Continental army, marched American and French forces to Virginia.
Cornwallis responded in the typical British manner: He fortified Yorktown and confidently relied on British naval superiority to keep his options open. That confidence was shaken when the French instead of the British navy showed up in Chesapeake Bay. The British sent a fleet of their own, but the resulting naval battle of Chesapeake Bay failed to expel the French fleet (September 5, 1781).
Washington and Rochambeau took command of the combined army and invested Yorktown. As Cornwallis had failed to tenaciously defend the outer defenses, assuming he would be evacuated by the Royal Navy, the sieging forces advanced quickly. Cut off from supplies and under bombardment from the allied artillery, Cornwallis surrendered on October 17, 1781. His entire force of almost 8,000 was captured (with another 156 dead). French and American total casualties (dead and wounded) were barely over 200.
Peace
The war in the colonies had been unpopular in Britain for some years. Parliament was unwilling to expend more money on it, and thus the British forces deployed had never again reached their peak strength from 1776. With one of the two main British forces in the colonies lost, so was the parliamentary base for the government. When the Whig opposition’s motion to end the war in North America carried a majority, Prime Minister Frederick North resigned in March 1782. “North’s Government Falls” is the end of a game of Washington’s War, and can happen anytime between 1779 and 1783 (provided the event is face-up in the respective year).
North’s successors had to make peace with four separate enemies – the United States, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. The American negotiators Benjamin Franklin and John Jay proved most skillful in this complicated multi-sided diplomacy. They secured diplomatic recognition for the United States as well as the western domain all the way to the Mississippi and important fishing rights in the Atlantic. The Peace of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783.
The king of France had little time to enjoy his triumph. The war expenses incurred in the American Revolutionary War contributed to the financial crisis which resulted in the French Revolution (whose protagonists were in turn inspired by the American ideas of liberalism and republicanism) just six years after the Peace of Paris.
Britain, on the other hand, bounced back from the setback in North America. The country’s naval, commercial, and financial strength was still intact. Britain would orchestrate the coalitions against revolutionary and Napoleonic France until the final victory at Waterloo in 1815, ushering in a century of British global dominance.
And the United States? They remained within their own hemisphere for the time being. Only occasionally drawn into conflict with their erstwhile French allies or old British enemies, the United States dealt with their westward expansion and economic development. Despite its unresolved conflict internal conflict about slavery, the American republic remained an inspiration to European liberals and democrats who strove to follow the example begun 250 years ago.
Games Referenced
Liberty or Death (Harold Buchanan, GMT Games)
Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games)
Washington’s War (Mark Herman, GMT Games)
Further Reading
Allison, Robert J.: The American Revolution. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, New York City, NY 2015 is exactly what it says on the tin.
Higginbotham, Don: The War of American Independence. Military Policies, Attitudes, and Practice, 1763-1789, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 1977 covers not only the campaigns, but also the political, social, and economic dimensions behind them.
Author: Clios Board Games
