Desmarais has invested an enormous amount of time and effort in mining archival sources for information and is to be commended for his efforts. However, he doesn't seem to have known what to do with the information he gathered. The majority of the book is a long recitation of facts taken from letters and other sources with very little context and regrettably little detail. Often, these facts do not appear to have been supplemented from other sources - for example, Desmarais informs the reader that the HMS Nonsuch engaged a 90-gun French flagship in the Bay of Biscay in mid-May 1781. This was, in fact, a fight on May 14th between the HMS Nonsuch and the 74-gun French ship-of-the-line Actif, but Desmarais hasn't attempted to go beyond his sources to fill in the rest of the picture (in this case, Google alone would suffice to indicate the incompleteness of the narrative).
In addition, there are numerous internal inconsistencies and errors within the narrative. For example, the HMS Ardent (captained by Boteler) is captured in 1779 on page 106 after a "running fight" only to suddenly reappear under the same Captain Boteler in 1780 to engage another French squadron on page 130 (this cannot have happened, Boteler was dismissed from the service after losing his ship). On page 119 we are told that Captain Cottin's French privateer engaged a three-masted ship on January 3, 1780, but upon finding himself outgunned Cottin "surrendered." A few sentences later, Cottin sails off, having apparently captured the enemy ship! The Belle Poule, a French frigate as commissioned, suddenly appears on page 141 as the HMS Belle Poule without any mention of its capture by HMS Nonsuch in 1780.
Errors like these undermine the reader's confidence in the veracity of the facts being reported, which is unfortunate since this book primarily consists of a recitation of facts, offering little to no analysis of the events it is presenting.
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From the Publisher
“A look at the role of foreign aid in the revolution’s success. Readers intrigued by the dimensions of the Revolutionary War will find this a worthy volume.”
– Publishers Weekly
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Norman Desmarais (Author) |
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Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais (1732-1799) |
“Author Norman Desmarais has collected an enormous amount of information about France’s involvement in the American Revolutionary War.”
– New York Journal of Books
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| America's First Ally | The Life of John André | Special Operations in the American Revolution | 7 Leadership Lessons of the American Revolution | The Quaker and the Gamecock | |
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| Price | $18.45 | $12.31 | $49.43 | $21.69 | $10.45 |
| Revolutionary War | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| French History | ✓ | ||||
| Military History | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Biography | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| British History | ✓ |
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