The First Salute by Barbara Tuchman


I finished reading The First Salute by Barbara Tuchman

This evening I finished reading The First Salute by Barbara Tuchman. This is the second time I've read it - the first was in 1989. To be honest, the only thing I remembered was how important the French naval blockade under Admiral DeGrasse was to the American victory. Tuchman has a very strong ability to shape history into a narrative, one of the things I like so much about her books. Her approach in this book is to look at the Revolutionary War as a part of great power conflict - particularly between England, France and the Netherlands. One of the truly astounding things is that at the time, the West Indies was considered more important than America - that is one of the reasons Admiral Rodney did not sail to the Chesapeake to engage deGrasse, or even really try to stop DeGrasse from leaving. Once DeGrasse got there, Washington was able to march down to Yorktown, while Lafayette marched up. With DeGrasse blockading the Chesapeake so that no reinforcements or supplies could reach him Washington was able to destroy Cornawallis's army and end the war.

Posted: Tue - March 2, 2004 at 11:24 PM          

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