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Lenny Kravitz’s Hero Uncle and Other Lesser Known American Heroes

Khalid Elhassan August 18, 2020 35 min

American Revolutionary War - United States — The British surrender at Yorktown. Library of Congress

16. Setting the Stage for Britain’s Ultimate Defeat

The arrival of French forces in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1780. Wikimedia

Robert Townsend also discovered that the British knew that the French, who had joined the war on America’s side, were sending a fleet to land troops in Rhode Island. The British and their more powerful Royal Navy planned to intercept and capture or sink the French at the sea before they disembarked their troops. Townsend’s timely warning enabled George Washington to bluff the British into staying put in New York, by feeding them false information about a nonexistent plan to attack the city.

The British prepared to defend New York against an attack that never came, while the French safely landed their troops in Rhode Island in 1780. That link up between the French and American armies would ultimately doom the British. The allied Franco-American forces would effectively decide the war in 1781 by trapping a British army in Yorktown, Virginia, and forcing its surrender.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.