16. Setting the Stage for Britain’s Ultimate Defeat
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.