From DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION,

Second Series.

Sir Henry Clinton. General Sir Henry Clinton was the most brilliant strategist in the British military; and, had Americans not been superior in virtue to the men of all other nations, his plan of placing Cornwallis’ army on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by deep water ideally suited to occupation by a large French fleet, and having on the fourth a narrow land passage easily blocked by a relatively small force of American and French soldiers, could not possibly have failed.

Comments

  1. To be fair, the mere idea that a FRENCH fleet would chase away a task force of the mighty British Royal Navy would have been, and would remain for a long time afterwards, so ridiculous as to be beyond the realm of contemplation by serious military-minded men.

  2. RepubAnon says:

    Where was Horatio Hornblower when he was needed?

  3. markm says:

    RepubAnon: Horatio Hornblower was born either in 1771 (according to Beat to Quarters) or 1776 (according to Mr. Midshipman Hornblower). He didn’t join the Royal Navy until he was 17, so by either birthdate he was much too late to influence the Revolutionary War. Clearly the Admiralty would have been much wiser to turn their fleet over to a 12 or 7 year old Hornblower in 1783 rather than an experienced admiral, but both the Hornblower documents and the Jack Aubrey documents make it quite clear that wisdom was rarely found in the Admiralty.

    Jack Aubrey’s birthdate is not documented, but he does appear to have been a few years younger than even the later birthdate attributed to Hornblower, so in 1783 he would have been unfit for sea duty due to being too young to leave his mother.

  1. […] who wish to discover more of the genius of Sir Henry Clinton may find his own narrative of the campaign of 1781 on Google […]

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