Note 43 — I ROCHAMBEAU AND THE FRENCH IN AMERICA FROM UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS

Washington's joy was in proportion to the acuteness of his anxieties; only three days before he was writing to Lafayette: "But, my dear marquis, I am distressed beyond expression to know what has become of Count de Grasse, and for fear that the English fleet, by occupying the Chesapeake, toward which, my last accounts say, they were steering, may frustrate all our prospects in that quarter.... Adieu, my dear marquis; if you get anything new from any quarter, send it, I pray you, on the spur of speed, for I am almost all impatience and anxiety." Philadelphia, September 2, 1781.