26. Saving America’s Allies
Robert Townsend also discovered that the British had learned that the French, who had joined the war on America’s side, were sending a fleet to land French troops in Rhode Island. The powerful British 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.
As a result, the British prepared to defend New York against an attack that never came, while the French safely landed their troops in Rhode Island. That link up between French and American armies ultimately doomed the British. The allied Franco-American forces ended up deciding and winning the war in 1781, when they trapped a British army in Yorktown, Virginia, and forced its surrender.
