D'ESTAING.
From Andrews' Hist. of the War, London, 1785, vol. i. It is also engraved in Extrait du Journal d'un officier de la marine [Paris?], 1782 (two editions, but with different engravings). Cf. the portrait in Hennequin's Biographie Maritime (ii. 221); an engraving by Porreau in Jones's Georgia,] vol. ii.; Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 78, etc.
Meanwhile, on August 15, Sullivan began a movement down the island, and the British retired behind their two lines of defences. When D'Estaing reëntered the bay on the 20th, Sullivan had begun his approaches against the British works, but not wisely in plan, as General Cullum says. Sullivan urged D'Estaing to join in the attack; but that officer thought that his first duty, under his instructions, was to make the safety of his fleet sure, and accordingly did not dare risk, in his shattered condition, an attack from Howe, should the English admiral chance to have fared better in the gale, and have made ready to fall upon him. So D'Estaing told Sullivan he must go to Boston to refit, and on the 22d he set sail, expressing regret that Sullivan had been so precipitate in passing over from the main. He declared that he could not help the American general, and this purpose he insisted upon, despite the protests of Sullivan and his officers. The predicament of the American commander was certainly an unfortunate one, but he was not steady enough of head to refrain from publicly casting reproach on the French general, in an order which he found he must in part recall after the mischief had been done (Lodge's Hamilton's Works, vii. 557. Cf. Lafayette's letter to Washington in Sparks's Corresp. of the Rev., ii., Aug. 25; and a letter of Greene, in Ibid., Aug. 28; also Greene's Greene, iii. 148). Sullivan thus gave the militia an excuse for deserting him. While in front of the British works and in this condition, Sullivan got intelligence from Washington that Clinton had sailed from New York with reinforcements for Pigot. Beginning a retrograde movement on the 26th, Sullivan stopped at the northern end of the island and strengthened his position, while Lafayette made a fruitless visit to Boston to induce D'Estaing to return. That officer was not yet ready; his ships not yet repaired.
SIEGE OF NEWPORT, 1778.
From the map in the atlas of Marshall's Washington. Cf. E. M. Stone's Our French Allies, p. 68; and the map given in Diman's address on the capture of Prescott. A MS. plan of the attack on Rhode Island, Aug., 1778, is among the Faden maps (no. 88) in the library of Congress.
