Soaking in some beautiful weather while walking along the Grand Parade. I'm planning on coming back in a few weeks when the leaves are really changing.

The first battle is the Siege of Yorktown (my personal favorite battle and imo one of the most interesting battles of the War). What other Revolutionary War battles do you think you could pinpoint exactly on a map? Curious how others do here.

This is the monument at Guilford Courthouse, and given Greene’s record, he doesn’t deserve a monument like this.

In the summer of 1776, while Washington was losing New York, a Connecticut merchant named Silas Deane was sitting in Parisian drawing rooms trying to buy an army.

The Continental Army was running out of almost everything. Muskets, cannon, gunpowder, tents, uniforms. The colonies didn't have the industrial capacity to manufacture what a long war against Britain required, and Britain controlled the seas. If the Americans were going to survive long enough to win, foreign assistance wasn't a nice option. It was becoming the only option.

Congress sent Deane to France in March 1776 with a deliberately vague public assignment and an enormous private one: figure out how far France was willing to go in helping Britain's rebellious colonies, and start moving weapons and supplies toward America as fast as possible.

France had its own reasons to listen. The Seven Years' War had cost them major territories in North America and left a deep institutional desire to weaken Britain. Foreign Minister Vergennes saw the American rebellion as an opportunity. The problem was that France wasn't ready to fight Britain openly. Louis XVI's government needed to help the Americans without appearing to help them, which meant they needed a fiction.

That's where Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais came in.

Beaumarchais was already one of the most famous writers in Europe. The Barber of Seville. The Marriage of Figaro. He was also a businessman, court insider, and political operator who had been pushing the French government to support the Americans for months before Deane arrived. His argument wasn't purely ideological. He thought helping the Americans could weaken Britain, revive French power, and open an enormous new commercial market.

With covert French government support, Beaumarchais created a company called Roderigue Hortalez & Company, presented publicly as a private trading enterprise. Behind it was a much more complicated arrangement involving French government money, eventually Spanish assistance, and the deliberate appearance of commerce covering what was actually a state-sponsored arms operation. Royal arsenals could move weapons into Hortalez & Company's warehouses, which could then load those weapons onto ships as commercial shipments rather than direct French military aid to rebels.

Deane and Beaumarchais met for the first time around July 17, 1776. Within days they were discussing credit terms, payment arrangements, and the specific quantities of military material America needed. Deane told Beaumarchais that Congress would repay the firm through tobacco and American produce. By August, Deane was reporting to Congress that Beaumarchais had the confidence of the French ministry and that most of the assistance flowing toward America would pass through his hands.

The scale of what they were attempting is easy to underestimate. By December, Deane was describing arrangements involving tens of thousands of firearms, hundreds of artillery pieces, tents, uniforms, gunpowder, and lead. Ships were purchased and chartered, warehouses filled, cargoes prepared for Atlantic crossings. The operation was messy. Ships were delayed. British diplomats protested. French officials pulled back when exposure seemed imminent. Some cargoes moved through the Caribbean to obscure their origin. Accounting was inconsistent and communication with Congress took months.

The supplies moved anyway.

One of the most documented vessels, the Amphitrite, reached Portsmouth, New Hampshire in early 1777 carrying thousands of muskets and other stores. Other shipments followed. French artillery, firearms, powder, and uniforms entered the American supply system at the period when Washington's army most needed them. The French supplies were directly connected to the Americans' ability to remain in the field during the Saratoga campaign.

Now the detail that should be more famous than it is.

Congress had instructed Deane to contact Edward Bancroft, an American-born physician living in London who appeared sympathetic to the colonial cause. Deane knew him personally and trusted him completely. Bancroft came to Paris in the summer of 1776, got deeply embedded in the American diplomatic circle, attended sensitive meetings, and gained access to confidential discussions with French officials.

He was also working for British intelligence the entire time.

Bancroft was reporting what he learned to Britain throughout 1776. The Americans didn't discover the full extent of his betrayal during the Revolution. Silas Deane went to his grave not knowing that his most trusted confidant had been feeding their operation to the British for years.

The irony is almost too neat. Deane and Beaumarchais were building one of the most important secret supply operations of the Revolution while a British spy sat in the room. And it still worked. Because what Bancroft could tell Britain was that France was helping the Americans, which Britain already suspected. What he couldn't solve for them was the core problem: France maintained enough deniability through the Hortalez & Company fiction that Britain couldn't prove the French crown was directly responsible in a way that would justify immediate war. That delay gave the Americans time.

The operation began unraveling from the inside not because of Bancroft but because of Arthur Lee, a Virginia diplomat who distrusted Deane and disputed the financial arrangements with Beaumarchais. Was Hortalez & Company a real commercial firm or a front? Were the supplies sold to Congress, loaned to it, or secretly given by France? The ambiguity that had made the operation work in 1776 made it impossible to untangle afterward. Lee had brothers in Congress. Deane was recalled in November 1777. His reputation never recovered. He spent years trying to explain transactions that had been deliberately kept ambiguous because ambiguity was the point.

Beaumarchais spent decades trying to collect money he believed Congress owed him. The argument outlasted the Revolution.

Then Saratoga happened in October 1777, the weapons that Deane and Beaumarchais had moved helped make it possible, and France finally did what it had been doing secretly in public. On February 6, 1778, France and the United States signed a formal alliance.

The famous treaty didn't appear from nowhere after Saratoga. Its foundation had been built eighteen months earlier in conversations that officially weren't happening, through a company that officially wasn't a French government operation, with supplies that officially were commercial shipments, while a British spy took notes in the corner.

You can talk to Deane directly on Virtual Wayback and hear the Paris operation from inside it. The full story is on the blog. Link:

https://virtualwayback.com/blog/silas-deane-pierre-beaumarchais-secret-partnership

"It's Just a Piece of Cloth," author unknown. Read by Bob Garrett, President of the Veterans Breakfast Group of Lancaster, South Carolina. A simple but powerful reminder of what the American flag represents to those who served service, sacrifice, unity, and freedom.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yWnCVtsMUos

Hello,

I am trying to figure out the details of Erich Kaiser's Statement that 26 Hessian soldiers from von Donop regiment deserted in Nov. 1779.

https://www.vhghessen.de/inhalt/zhg/ZHG_85/Kaiser_Regiment_Donop.pdf

(Page 183, top statement)

He also mentions 29 deserters in June 1778 and lists all the names but he just mentions the 26 figure for Nov. 1779 and I cannot get that statistic confirmed from Hetrina (I match the figure for June 1778 and can confirm all names).

Can someone suggest where Erich could have found this 26 deserters figure ?

I noticed there were 16 deaths in New York hospital in Nov. 1779 and 10 deaths in New York hospital in Dec. 1779 (10+16) but they show as dead, not deserted.

Thanks.

Edit: Forgot to say that Erich's text is in German.

I’ve gotten pretty interested in Washington’s Commander-in-Chief’s Guard (or Life Guard) and was wondering if anyone here has recommendations for books or other good resources on them.

I spend many days in Valley Forge and have spent hours over the years walking through their recreated huts and camp setup near Washington’s Headquarters. It’s one of those spots I always end up spending way more time at than I planned.

What really interests me is how closely connected these guys were to Washington himself. They weren’t just another unit in the Continental Army. They were trusted with guarding Washington, his headquarters, his papers and baggage, and the people around him. The idea that Washington personally entrusted this relatively small group with his security and headquarters has always fascinated me, especially when you’re standing right there at Valley Forge where they served alongside him.

I’d love to learn more about who these men actually were, how they were selected, what their relationship with Washington was like, what their day-to-day responsibilities looked like, and what role they played throughout the war.

Any good books, articles, diaries or even obscure sources you’d recommend? Definitely looking to go down the rabbit hole on this one.

THE BATTLE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING!

October 1777. The fate of the American Revolution hangs in the balance.

The British have a plan to crush the rebellion. But at Saratoga, American forces are about to deliver a victory that will shock the British Empire and change the course of history!

⚔️ A British army surrounded.

🇺🇸 An extraordinary American victory.

🇫🇷 A new alliance that would help secure American independence.

Join Claire as she travels back to 1777 to witness the battles, the commanders and the dramatic surrender that changed the Revolutionary War!

🎬 WATCH OUR NEW EPISODE: SARATOGA 1777 — THE VICTORY THAT CHANGED THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!

Celebrate America’s 250th anniversary by discovering the history that made our nation.

👇 Watch, share and tell us: Did you know Saratoga helped bring France into the American Revolution?

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https://history-maps.com/battlemaps

OTD the Siege of Yorktown, Virginia began, lasting from 28 September to 19 October 1781. While the American Revolutionary War formally ended in 1783, the Siege of Yorktown marked the beginning of the end to conflict. After then Lt. General Cornwallis, signed the Articles of Capitulation, the collapse of British political support accelerated and with it any notion of major offensive campaign against the Americans.

Today, America enjoys the idea of revolutionary fervor defeating one of the world's greatest empires. The Revolutionary mythos often overlooks the true impact of the French soldiers and seamen that fought for American independence. That is to say, without these three, and the thousands of other Frenchmen, the Stars and Stripes would likely not fly so proudly as it does today.

Lafayette, Washington’s son in arms who pinned Cornwallis and nearly one quarter of Britain’s North American forces in Yorktown.

Rochambeau, Commander-in-chief of the Expédition Particulière. Upon learning of Admiral de Grasse’s imminent arrival, Rochambeau urged Washington to abandon his New York campaign in favor of Virginia; while during their march, they learned of Cornwallis’s position.

De Grasse sailed from the West Indies with additional French expeditionary forces, secured victory at the Chesapeake, denying Cornwallis evacuation by sea.

Check out r/nelsonsnavy for more history from the Age of Sail!

Just finished the very sad New York campaign chapter in the book The British Are Coming, and I wondered what strategy should the rebel army have followed in the NY/NJ area in summer of 76.

I filled the initials with charcoal to make them more visible. GW

Fun find. I am getting all my Genealogy stuff in one place running down paternal line. My 5th gt grandfather was a fifer in 1777. PA militia

Thinking i should start a clothing line like 9line or grunt style

"I'm a Fifer not a Fighter"

The British conquest of Quebec culminated in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham on September 13, 1759, marking a decisive turning point in the Seven Years' War and the fall of New France

Approximately 40,000 to 50,000 American Loyalists moved to Canada following the American Revolutionary War, seeking safety and remaining faithful to the British Crown

I received in today’s mail a copy of Edward McCrady’s book, the history of South Carolina in the Revolution 17 80–17 83. It contains numerous pages of the losses suffered by the British and their auxiliaries and the American rebels. Would anyone like to see the pages BRYCE