Note 193 — Chapter XII · ToC

You will have learned my promotion to commodore and rear-admiral. Now, I tell you in the sincerity of my heart and for your own ear alone, that what I have done since then is worth infinitely more than what I had done before. You know the capture and battle of Trincomalee; but the end of the campaign, and that which took place between the month of March and the end of June, is far above anything that has been done in the navy since I entered it. The result has been very advantageous to the State, for the squadron was endangered and the army lost.—Private Letter of Suffren, Sept. 13, 1783; quoted in the "Journal de Bord du Bailli de Suffren."