 Good day. I'm Colonel Jerry Morlock, the Director of the Combat Studies Institute. You're about to use a video series which our instructors have prepared for the sole purpose of improving your presentation of M610, the Evolution of Modern Warfare. We've taken care to make the course that you teach as similar to the one taught at Fort Leavenworth as possible and choose to add these tapes to your libraries in order to give you every advantage as you prepare to teach this new course. These tapes are similar to the weekly train-up sessions which we utilize to prepare our instructors here at Fort Leavenworth. My intent for the tape sessions was to provide you insights and tips on ways to approach the lessons of M610 that were not available in the instructor notes. I've drawn various instructors, military and civilian into the sessions based upon their specific expertise and historical background. They were asked to just talk to the lesson structure and content, giving you some additional information on the historical context and differing views on how to approach the lessons. These tapes will provide you a wealth of knowledge and direction that will significantly improve your readiness to teach our new history course. One word of caution regarding how to use these training tapes, they are not designed to be substituted for your instruction during the individual lessons of the course. As instructor preparation tapes train the training material, if you will, they are inappropriate for direct instruction to students and are not intended for that purpose. Our intent with these tapes is to improve your ability to lead the student seminars by sharing tips and advice from some highly qualified experts. The Combat Studies Institute stands ready to provide whatever additional expertise or assistance that you may require and we've included the institute's phone, mail and email contact information on the tape if you should need it. Good luck with the Evolution of Modern Warfare course. Have a good time. Hello, my name is Mike Perlman. I teach CSI Combat Studies Institute. We're here at MS610, Correspondents' Course on Evolution of Modern Warfare. This is lesson two on the American Revolution. I'm joined in by a couple of my old esteemed friends. Please introduce yourselves because I can't remember your name. I'm George Goverk and I teach and think at the same place. He does and I do Middle Eastern history. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Shadburn and I also, of course, from the Combat Studies Institute and I teach whatever I get assigned to do. Okay. To put a name with a face if you're interested, you're reading here. You've got reading 2A called the American Revolutionary War for what it's worth. I'm the author of this piece. Anyway, we're going to talk in broad terms. This is a watercolor. It's not an etching. If you want to do a specific battle analysis of key victories, Saratoga, Yorktown, or of important defeats such as Camden, you'll end up doing that. We're going to talk in much broader terms about what the American Revolutionary War is all about. Well, first thing, does anybody want to take a crack at it? What do the American colonists have to do to win this war? First ask yourself, say, in 1775, if you are a Las Vegas bookie, tell me your odds on something called the American colonies meeting the one world power in the world, the British Empire, which thoroughly defeated France in the 1750s. And in 1761, now owns virtually all of North America, east of the Mississippi River. In Canada, they have the American colonies, which they've had since 1590. They've got the vast majority of the West Indies. They are the one world power, and they're being challenged in 1775 by the colony of Massachusetts. You tell me the odds on the colony of Massachusetts being the British Empire. Do you want to take a crack at this? I'd say the odds are stacked against the Americans. Well, they're not even the Americans. They're the colony of Massachusetts. What do you mean by odd stack? Give me numbers. Two to one? Well, if you use good strategy and luck is with you, you could change the odds a bit. But I'd say starting out, you've got problems of all the things that you mentioned, plus you've got a superior navy, a first class world navy. And whose side? On the British side, and also you have a first class professional army that fights much better than probably the colonists if you go on an open battlefield. So that adds, on the military side, problems that the colonists face in Massachusetts as they're showing discontent with the way things are being run by an enlightened ruler in England. The key component is, though, is you're just looking at Massachusetts. Yes, not to expand the scope of the British conflict with the colonies outside of Massachusetts that those odds can begin to change or begin to become something else. So what you want to do, because in 1775, it is Massachusetts versus the British Empire. Now, we all know this that we're taxes against, excuse me, protest against, taxes throughout the colonies. Most people did boycotting, refusing to buy, for instance, British tea. Massachusetts, which was the most militant colony, took it one step or a couple of steps further. They destroyed British tea, which is a monopoly of the British government. Thereupon, the British Empire puts Massachusetts under martial rule. They go out to collect guns from the Massachusetts militia. In the process, Massachusetts militia gets on the high ground, kills approximately 150 British soldiers. This is high treason. This isn't an act of war because these are rebels. They're going to be, if they lose, end up like Braveheart, going to be drawn in quarter. Their bodies are going to be severed. It's going to be sent to the edges of the British Empire as a warning post. That is to say to these serious business. Okay, you're Massachusetts, you try to now figure your way out of this mess. What's the first thing you got to do? The first thing I got to do is I got to get me some friends. Oh, and who's going to take over your problem? Do you want to wind up like your typical Scottish or Irish rebel to be cracked down the middle like I'm a wishbone? Yes, still. That's the only chance I have. Well, I've got to convince other people. Isn't their best interest to help me out and support me? Maybe at first, by covert means, so that they're not caught into a trap. And maybe once they start to get their cooperation covertly. Well, maybe I can start to get their help in other ways too. Initially, maybe politically, trying to bring a little bit of pressure to bear that doesn't cause them to risk anything. But I don't think that's the situation Massachusetts have because the other colonies are also having problems with the British Crown that are of their own. So to try and get that cooperation and help from other colonies is not that difficult. The difficulty is getting armed insurrection from those other colonies. That would become the difficult thing to create. Well, that's another thing to get some support but then get unity of effort is another question that you have to face. Of course you're going to have, this is going to be a continual problem, unity of effort. Because there is no United States government. What you have in Philadelphia is a very, very loose confederation which has representatives of each colony. Representing that colony opinion must be almost unanimous. And even if opinion is unanimous, who enforces it in the colonies? What a federal bureaucracy, a bunch of civil servants like you and me. They don't exist. So what you've got is a kind of a debating society which one that even has a resolution of issues makes requests. Back to the local state. They're like the Afghan rebels in Afghanistan resisting some outside foreign power and they don't have unity but somehow they have a desire to resist. And maybe in the long run, given historical hindsight, that works to their advantage. What works to their advantage? The desire to resist that foreigner, the British over time, they'll be able to gather more and more support for the resistance. Hoping, finding out that the British policy may sometimes be counterproductive and it works to your advantage. All of a sudden that silent majority starts to, for numerous reasons, join the cause to fight against the British. So that then the locals are in a minority supporting the British. And then you hope, or maybe you don't even hope at that time, but maybe I would think that initially you would like to get some outside support. Sure you would like to get all the support you can get. It makes a major effort that the British have to exert because you're getting support from countries like France, the Dutch. Because the British are not the most popular. To be number one on the block usually means you've got people who would like to take you down. So these things can work to your advantage over the long haul, but I don't think in 1775-76 anyone's that pathetic. Now from the get-go, the colonists know that France wants revenge for having lost Canada, much of India, certain islands in the Caribbean in 1763. That's what they want. However, the question is, are you going to get it just because you want it? There are things that are restraining France. France has got an enormous public debt to begin with from having fought Britain for the last 80 years. And Jeff is absolutely right. They're going to come in, quote, covertly with what we call a plausible deniability by running guns and running gold and running some gunpowder through Martinique into the colonies. But like all plausible deniability, the English know exactly what's happening. The thing is the English don't want to fight France. And in 1775-1776, I don't think France wants to fight England if it turns out to be a war of us, France versus England, and who gains by it. Exactly right. France doesn't want to get involved if they think they can lose something. They don't want to get involved if they think that the colonists are simply going to push France up forward and they're going to have a freebie. Correct. They just want to make trouble for the British. Just make it hard for the British is all the French want to do. It means that the colonists are going to have to prove to France first that they are an ally worth having to actually pay, at least in the American theater, the lion's share in blood and treasure. The only way to prove that is to have some victories under your belt before France says, these guys are worth betting on. But I'm back to this issue here of you've got the Massachusetts militia versus now the British Empire. I think the first thing the Massachusetts militia has to do before you can attract France is to spread this as you guys have pointed out through the rest of His Majesty's North American colonies. Now do you as a Massachusetts militia cap, nor does John Adams, representative of Massachusetts to the Continental Congress, can think of any way of saying, hey, I got it. What's the second most populous colony in North America? This is New York in 1776, it's Virginia. Now can you think of a way of attracting Virginia's, not just its moral support, but its blood, its soldiers and its treasure? Designating of a commander. What was this? That sounds pretty devious. Yeah. Designate the commander from Virginia to attract at least Virginia units to volunteer to fight in Massachusetts. Now you may nominate that George guy to be commander in chief of the Continental Army, which by the way last week was known as the Massachusetts militia. Give him a name change. Hire public relations for, come up with the term Continental Army and ask a member of one of the leading families of Virginia to be the commander because where he goes, Virginia will follow. Part of it, but in addition to that is that at least he has, appears to be a legitimate member of a rich family that would have in its best interest staying loyal to the British crown. That if you put him out in front of rebellion or in front of rebel troops, at least gives that appearance and again at least legitimate legitimacy with foreign powers, that this is a struggle at a colony is not a bunch of rabbley rebels. So in effect, he is a very good soldier for somebody being a having aspirations to have been a professional soldier himself. Being an American and that being very difficult to be an appointment for any an American to a British regular regiment. He's the type of guy who could be some sort of soldier statesman and attract French intervention? At least as a possibility, but I think initially with the Continental Congress, I don't think they're capable of proceeding that far ahead. I think initially they're looking for anybody with conventional military training in their minds. That means somebody that's led troops, not necessarily a theoretical background like we would think of it today, you know, with learning and going to schools, into military schools. They're just looking for somebody that at least has that presence, that has that appearance of being a military that knows something about what they're talking about and who has led troops in combat. Even though we know that George Washington hasn't necessarily been successful in that endeavor. But who's your alternative? But that's it. If there's no alternative, this is your best one unless you hire somebody from outside. And that's going to... A foreign personary to be commander of an army? Sure, why not? It's been done before. Hasses? That's the way warfare is conducted in the 18th century. You change sides. It's free agency at its best. I think that's interesting. I think those are foot soldiers. I'm not sure they have commanders changing or am I wrong? Generals change sides. In Europe, you have that quite a bit. Now I'm going to have names to escape me. Germany, famous generals who switch sides. Then the other thing that's interesting is when you do give command to George Washington, what kind of army is going to try to craft? He's not going to try to craft a guerrilla army that's going to do raiding, but he'd like to create an army that's like the British, translate the British, discipline like the British, and can beat the British on the battlefield. You mean in a European type conventional battle? Yes. I think there are two things that work here. I'm not sure how much George Washington understands them at the beginning, but if you can beat the British on the battlefield with their kind of army, you're going to gain politically from it. But also, too, I think your chances of getting support from countries like France are better if you are not a guerrilla like Shay Guevara, a loony out there that you can't trust. But someone who is of the same fiber, a cloth, as Europeans are, so that you have the idea of, here's a gentleman who's waging a convention award, not a revolutionary who's going to be packing away with a guillotine, people on the British side. That adds an attraction, too, which I think is important for the rebel cause. Well, okay, so you, what you've got here with George Washington is a, I guess he's in his mid to late 40s now, a man who had, in his youth, aspired to have been an officer in a regular British regiment. Frankly, his sponsor, Edward Braddock, was going to sponsor Washington. And then, as we know, Braddock had a blind date with a tomahawk at the site of present-day Pittsburgh in the French Indian wars. When he was killed, Washington went into retirement. But I have a question. Looking back in hindsight, which of course Washington doesn't have, and we have seen colonial rebellions in the 20th century basically fought as of unconventional wars. Maybe only a third stage of a, quote, a Maoist insurrection beginning with political organization, going into guerrilla war, and then finally, at the very cherry on top of the cake, a climactic final battle in which the war is really kind of won politically. Or the other side is degraded by 10, 15 years of guerrilla war. Would this have not been a better way for Washington to have fought the war? What's the downside about trying to meet or beat the British in a conventional war? What's the downside? Yeah. It's going to be tough to take Americans, mold them with the kind of discipline that the British have into an army. And you have to remember that a good part of the British army are mercenaries, people who are trained to fight in an organization, paid to fight an organization. Here you have problems of money to pay soldiers. You have a much more individualistic spirit among Americans. They like to fight with, or hunt with guns as individuals. And to bring that discipline in a pioneering society is going to be very difficult to do that. You mean the, I don't know, the 18th century hunter is not an 18th century soldier? I mean he uses a gun, doesn't he? What's the difference between them? You have to mold them into fighting as a unit with discipline, with rules of engagement, with uniforms, rising and dawn, disciplining them, marching on the battlefield. These things are things that are pioneer, the ability to overcome self-preservation instincts. Because they are trained, not forced. They don't have what normal people do, self-concerned, but they have been welded over three to ten year period in what? In linear formations, literally elbow to elbow. So that when an officer or a sergeant major says ready level fire, it's because it's not aimed, because there is no aiming, it can crack off in a volley fire. Then you, the line breaks, in comes the next line. They can do this every 15 to 30 seconds. Finally any hit up with what really counts, which is a bayonet charge. It's not individualism, it's a corporate unity. It's very, very difficult to train. And I've got a question, if it is so difficult to do this and overcome what I guess is the natural lifestyle of American individualists, why try to do it? Why don't you try to do what say is more natural to Americans? Which is to do what the Massachusetts Militia did at Lexington and Kincourt, which is to melt into the community bushwhack and run and have the British try to find you? I don't think one problem you've got is it's guerrilla type activity, which will not beat the British Army on open battle field. It can harass it, it can draw the struggle off, but you're not quite sure how long you could fight against the wealth of the British Empire. So guerrillas are hard to control. It makes for more social revolution or a tendency towards social revolution, which is something that people of well to do backgrounds like Washington don't want to see happen. Probably there's the other side of it too is the can do mentality. I mean you can't take individuals I'm sure Washington believes that and mold them into an army, all you have to do is have a cause, have some money, get a few trainers, and we probably can mold them. It's probably going to be through trial and error that you're going to realize it's not going to be easy to do that. Sure it can be easy to do it. And you're also going to find that the local governments aren't going to hand over people to join this Continental Army, pay their salaries, let you mold them into your people, you'd rather keep the militia at home. So it's going to be hard to recruit people, but you've got to try it for a while and I think Washington will continue to try to come back to that throughout the struggle to build that army, to shape it, and to go out on that battlefield and build it into a force that can defeat the British. You'll have to use French troops and French Navy at the end to accomplish that. But we'll have the Continental Army there to help and the militia will help with that kind of unique mix of our American Revolution. We'll all come together at Yorktown in two years to get there. I kind of agree with Mike though on hindsight it would look like it would be better to start off with wanting to fight an unconventional fight with unconventional means at war against the British until you can find that time instead of starting off with trying to train a conventional force for a stand-up fight, I think like you said in the case of Washington he doesn't think in those terms, first of all. He's not a 20th century guerrilla communist insurrectionist. You're not going to pass up. He's an 18th century gentleman. But there are people telling him let's do different kinds of tactics they're British tactics, right? Well, they're saying let's go more guerrillas. Let's play to the strength of the American. The difficulty you have is with control. And it's very important to be able to have control of the struggle. And as soon as you give up things to a primarily unconventional warfare you no longer have control of that struggle. And it's very important to control it. Washington says I don't control the militia. And he aggravates about it. He calls them out and they come out when they choose and most of the time that he calls them out they don't come out. They come out in essentially, well, in the two battles which are most important in American history in this war which is Saratoga and Yorktown. Washington goes with at least a semi-conventional force and in 1777 he gets himself a victory over a British army which is, Paul put itself to say the least in a highly exposed position marching all the way from Montreal down to New York through the Hudson River Valley which is hardly open to rain and they find themselves one sense attacked by a wing of Washington's army but these British soldiers have recruited Indians which often brings up an atrocity issue which gets overstated and the militia is called out and for once they really show up and it's that victory in 1777 that moves the French away from plausible deniability to an alliance with now the American I think we should call them nation because they have now declared their independence from colonists. So maybe Washington even if this thing is very difficult he's not going to get this open alliance with France by hitting and running and draining and irritating or just exasperating the British but what does the French alliance do for the American Revolution? It broadens into global struggle where this can become a third theater where the British cannot put their main effort against the colonists it gives a legitimacy and you know how important legitimacy is because eventually not just the French but the Spanish and the Dutch get involved so it's not a revolution it's a global war of which we are a third theater which gives us more chance to win which gives the French navy a chance to have local superiority against the far superior British navy overall there are a lot of benefits to getting that involvement not covert but overt which gives legitimacy which gives the brunt of the local French superiority to bear on the British in the long run it does it raises the stakes for the British now to prosecute the war in the colonies if they put in enough effort to win against the combined American or American colonists and French force they now also are risking their possessions in the Indies which is what? which is where their money is right now which is what the French involvement does what we think of this primarily there are really three wars that I've said in this article combined in something called the American Revolution the war that we commonly think of is Washington because it's the roots of the American army with the continental army versus the British we also have something of the militia against British sympathizers which we call Tories trying the British would like to set up not only recruit but like to set up British local governments or part of the empire but the other aspect is this now the French turn this into a world war and the British have decided what are their priorities in the world to protect I guess this is the downside of having won the great war for empire in 1750s you have picked up so much of the world guess what? you don't have much left to hold it with now you've got to protect it and instead of the British enhancing their commitment to North America after Saratoga they actually take soldiers out of North America the place and where? if you were George III tell me in your world empire where would you put America? put priorities I'd put it pretty low if not last maybe at this stage you'd probably put it right ahead of India and not by very much the first thing you've got to do is to protect the channel from a French invasion second thing you need is what does Spain want out of this war? do you want to see an American colonist overthrow European empire? guess who's... if that gets habit forming who's got the most to lose? Spain Spain so why are they by the way they never recognized America directly America has an alliance with France and France has an alliance with Spain what does Spain want out of this war? I'm not sure what they have to gain I don't know if they can gain parts of their world empire they've been losing or maybe just retain what they still have they've got something that has they've irritated with the British since 1713 there's a part of Spain which is part of the British Empire Gibraltar you know you still can't I don't think today go from Gibraltar into Spain it is still one of these demarcation zones now we don't have anything in Berlin Spain is I guess the last flash point of a war in Europe Spain wants Gibraltar back and the British want to keep Gibraltar because it is obviously the entrance and the exit of the whole Mediterranean now you've got to choose what's more important to you I don't know the Chesapeake Valley or Gibraltar George III make a decision I like Gibraltar you like Gibraltar so now we've got the channel number one Gibraltar number two anything else the West Indies West Indies number three America comes in four so France has turned this into a world war and meaning Washington can get local superiority in the North American colonies and maybe utilize this army that he is heroically trying to create out of raw material which is probably incompatible with 18th century linear volley fire bayonet charge warfare I mean it's a heroic effort that he'd even try to attempt it and it's often not very successful his other problem is he's got a government he wants to have a government that can support him but the government has really no powers of direct taxation and what we've got here from after Saratoga for maybe three four years is a kind of a mutual exhaustion the British can't beat Washington but Washington doesn't seem to be able to be the British and this if this goes on how's this war going to end? I mean in the case of the British they shift their strategy trying to isolate but they see as more moderate colonies like in the South because Massachusetts has always been the I guess we call them the radical protesters so if you can isolate them and then continue to isolate pieces and you know pacify areas and bring them back under your control you can eventually strangle Massachusetts or maybe ignore it or maybe ignore it let it implode the reformulated if that's the word British Empire would be New England goodbye good riddance you know what you've always cost us more than you're worth you're a pain in the butt to begin with you can take a hike and we will have Canada the West Indies and I don't know maybe maybe America south of the Hudson River Valley or maybe America south of the Chesapeake or something like that and we've got to cut our ambition to meet our capabilities or our responsibilities in the world but where it approaches that still may will be up in New England the southern colonies it has not still made in fact the British will increase operations well they'll increase but what is their problem in the southern colonies their problem in the southern colonies is largely numbers it's a large piece of ground it's not well cultivated at this time so as you move away from the sea coast it's very difficult to live off the land because of extended distances your lines of communications become extended and also become vulnerable to counter for any type of guerrilla type operation the major British base remains New York they have a commitment there of approximately 10 to 12,000 soldiers so nothing you just can't bring the numbers to bear in the southern colonies that you could when you're up in New England get 70,000 men to in effect classify an area from Savannah, Georgia up through Virginia I mean that's a drop in the bucket in that case what would you have to do if 7,000 men would be a drop in the bucket the first thing you need to do is supplement it with loyal population loyal population okay well that is I call out and I run the rebels or Washington's agent Nathaniel Green out of the county I set up a government and then what I do kind of like an ink plot is I will move on to the next colony or two colonies meanwhile what's happened to the colonies that I excuse me I should say the counties or the area of operation that I've left behind you've opened it up for those unconventional forces to move back in behind you in other words I have now left my loyalists exposed to go one-on-one with the militia guerrilla types and it's one-on-one loyalists versus Patriot guerrillas and in fact it's a little worse than that because the loyalists that you've armed you've taken with you whereas the colonists that are left behind that are rebels they can still feel they fighting force but you've taken the fighters with you their families that are left vulnerable so in effect it's kind of like I guess what the British govern the area or the land on which they occupy and everything else is deserted and in fact I'm going nowhere with progress yes but then I'm back to this issue here that Washington for all his extraordinary acts of creating an army is still at a point of position in which I guess it's some sort of stalemate in 1780 he can't throw the British out of the areas in which are their bastions which is in 1780 New York City Savannah Charleston and some base on the Chesapeake but the British can't extend their area of domain any further than that in this case with Washington now in arrears this government has been bankrupt the Continental Congress in 1778 they haven't been able to pay their debts soldiers in Washington's army haven't been paid for a year and they don't have any social support system soldiers who went to the Gulf would know that their families wouldn't starve so I'm wondering what's going to happen if Washington can't make a spectacular victory at some God-forsaken place like Yorktown in 1780 I think before you even approach they got to take a look what can the British generals do in the situation you're describing with the ink blot analogy well maybe they can't they feel well no I don't think so I think a very important thing to set up before Yorktown is that they're thinking they've got to get back to the rear and take care of the problems that are up in there but before they do that they have to beat the Continental Forces that are in front of them they have to get them if they can deal with them and defeat them and destroy that Continental Army given that they're not being paid given that they have other problems that they'll probably begin to dissolve first of all then once you get rid of that force in front of you yes once you can get rid of that conventional force in front of you now you can turn around and take care of the unconventional forces and you need to do that quickly because by the way you're stuck in the interior and I don't think you can understand how Cornwallis gets trapped in Yorktown unless you understand well he is looking for a a coming to grips a conventional battle with Nathaniel Green who though he is a Continental Army officer probably is as close to an unconventional operations as Washington in Washington's Army and he is a man who like Washington but probably even more so than Washington understands that his first rule which is to not lose is that as long as he survives so he is not going to be somebody who is going to do something rash and meet you in an open field where you have the advantage meaning he is going to jab he's going to fall back and he's going to jab and Cornwallis tries to chase him all the way from Georgia to the Yorktown Peninsula in Virginia never get him into grips with them because Green understands his limitations but back to this issue then what happens if Washington doesn't come to grips with Cornwallis well this when we are talking about Cornwallis the Yorktown at this stage you know continued stalemate continued stalemate but the British have to make the next move and you're giving them that room to make another move whether it's to pull Cornwallis back to New York so you have a united army again they can turn on Washington directly which is a possibility or if you bring in additional forces from Great Britain well I'm not sure we can bring in additional forces but without tripping other areas of the British Empire which we have judged that's one of the reasons why they've been hiring mercenaries so there are sources of troops and how many more do you need to really make a difference one of the differences you can make is if you can defeat the French fleet and make the French army on American soil put them in an untenable position they only have one division 5000 troops how many does Washington have what about 10,000 Continentals at this time and they're less every day less every week that's a significant part of his combat power if he says that if I don't do something spectacular I'm in a state of use them or lose them in effect these guys are literally facing starvation rebellion in the ranks when Cornwallis winds up at Yorktown and Washington says I have now trained this conventional force for a conventional battle if I don't come to grips with him now in effect this army will fall apart and I think what happens in situations like this is wars of mutual exhaustion become one in which the usual settlement is almost always the same and that is diplomats settle this on the basis of what is called in Latin what is it? on the basis of what you possess which is how the Vietnam War ended in a kind of a the North Vietnamese army was badly defeated in the 72 Eastern offensive but the American public had about had it up to here with the war so what happened was you simply had a peace treaty and they said well we didn't throw the North Vietnamese out of South Vietnam we're not going to negotiate them out of South Vietnam the areas in which they possess they'll keep and in 1781 it means that the British Empire keeps what the British Empire occupies which in 1781 is New York City Savannah, Charleston and a base in the Chesapeake Valley a river excuse me Chesapeake what's it called again? Chesapeake Bay? Chesapeake Bay I knew you'd contribute outstandingly and because you're not going to negotiate out of what they have and Washington would have liked to attack New York City but there are some things that don't come as way number one is the French have spent an enormous amount of money building a fleet for power projection and they're not about to run the narrows of New York Harbor Staten Island on one side occupied by British cannon Brooklyn on the other side this gauntlet the British excuse me the French admiral says I, by the way his name is de Gries and he's given authorization to take one-third of the French fleet it's West Indies fleet protecting what the French still have and the West Indies was Martinique St. Croix bring it he's given authorization to take one-third of the fleet up to North America he says in effect George I'll meet you not in New York but the Chesapeake Bay and I'm going to take everything I've got now why is this perhaps the key event Cornwallis is now exhausted sitting in Yorktown and by the way he sees now militia coming advanced elements of Washington's continental army coming and he's not doing a bloody thing what's he waiting for? the British fleet any time he can see the Americans a force march maybe getting numerical superiority on the ground through enormous effort he's got to get out of jail free card all he's got to do is be picked up and carry back to New York or Charleston this is like an American soldiers today they don't have nobody questions we always have air superiority we start every war with it and the British know that they have naval superiority they start and they end every war with it and then something happens that they don't count on the French fleet shows up the British fleet defeats the British fleet because they outnumber them 2 to 1 because they've set the whole kit and caboodle North to America and in effect have stripped the West Indies of this protection I hate to be this French admiral if my fleet gets sunk go home and try to collect my pension I'm going to be hung but he shows up Cornwallis has no way out and Washington has him in a siege at this point he forces Cornwallis' complete surrender George III wants to raise another army Parliament says we spent too much money on this hopeless exercise this war is over and the war is over so is the lesson unless my friends have something to add I'd like to they had one thing real quick to take a look at when you follow this lesson and you take a look at the next lesson one of the things that have been raised one of our peers in the concept of compound warfare it gives a little bit of different framework than we've used to analyze American Revolution here but basically what his concept Dr. Huber's concept of compound warfare says if you have three preconditions that exist it is very difficult if not impossible to beat a revolutionary force those three conditions are one is to have simultaneous pressure from both conventional and unconventional forces or regular and irregular forces against an adversary and you see that in the American Revolution with both the continental army and the militia at the same time the second precondition is that the conventional force has to be nearly indestructible by having a safe haven that they can withdraw in so they're able to maintain their existence continuously in this case it's the interior of the colonies they're able to pull back far enough that the British army isn't able to chase them bring them to be able to bring them to destruction because the British logistics base is all the way in London it's 3,000 miles across the channel exactly and the British are 10 miles away from saltwater they're in trouble they're really ineffective and once you get away from the river lines where you can bring your ships up the third thing is having a major power ally in the case of the American Revolution we see that in the French that is at least the equal if not the better of the adversary in the first place and if you have those three preconditions it's very difficult to beat that revolutionary army from our perspective it's not simply guerrilla war it's not simply guerrilla war it's this compound effect between conventional and unconventional forces being used together plus a foreign major foreign ally and a foreign major ally which the revolutionary cannot simply doesn't have the economic base just as the Afghans can't produce stinger missiles exactly we can't produce a major fleet that can get at a key point naval supremacy and really prevent because mobility is virtually all naval at this time Washington makes a heroic force march but his siege cannon is brought with him by the French Navy and without that siege cannon he's not able to bring it down Cornwallis would be there today selling hot dogs at whatever it is in Yorktown playing the British anthem at a baseball game yes whatever if you ask yourself what can the British do to win is you may not necessarily buy into the framework that Dr. Huber has and not everybody does but you can ask yourself if you can identify those components and they are arrayed against you and I was talking about us as the American Army going into a situation if you can break up one of those three components you drastically increase your ability to win or the odds against you and what are the odds and as long as those three things exist the odds are lower if you can break them up by defeating one of those for example find a way to get the French to back off give them some of the West Indies possessions back again maybe they'll say okay well we won't support the American colonists then if you give us these pieces of terrain and the Caribbean and you get rid of that major power ally that the colonists have to start with I just want to throw that out for you to be able to think about that as a question to your students in class and at least get them thinking about the same thing but again I'm thinking about it in a different way but I wouldn't pose it till the end Washington has been described as will be indispensable man gee what is all of a sudden this hit me what was Moltke's first name again Helmut Moltke Thank you very much Chief of the German General Staff of the 19th century during their spectacular wars of German unification I guess the handful of truly great soldiers in the world and a man who was frankly condescending to Americans he has a famous quote about the Civil War what can I learn from two mobs butting heads in the wilderness thought George Washington one of the greatest soldiers in the history of warfare this is from the founder of the German General Staff what is Washington's particular strengths The first one is able to keep an army in being that's the first one that kind of pops up but in reality what it is he has a vision of how do you achieve victory against the British and the way you do it is you defeat their conventional force that they have on the ground that is a different problem but I've got to create a force the first way is create a force to be able to do that which means another conventional force you cannot defeat the British army with an unconventional force you can exhaust them but you can't force them to leave the colonies you need a conventional force to do that what you might have been able to do with an unconventional force is keep Britain in these places where they don't have access to they would not rule the colonies they would rule aspects of the colonies essentially where storm water hits fresh water which is where the ocean hits a river the ports without the goods are meaningless and the American coastline has so many good harbors that the colonists can still export their goods wherever they want to that's what you would end up with what I've called is without Washington you would end up with the American coastline dotted with Hong Kong's British crown colonies administered by the British Empire what is real genius and true greatness is and it's very difficult for any person is that Washington can shift gears exactly after 17 he first tries to fight the British in a conventional battle at Long Island gets his clock clean in 1776 whereupon he says I don't do that no more and he can go into what widely calls well attrition Washington has a better word for this which is protraction is I'm going to protract this war which is my big for the next until I can raise a conventional army and get the British my job is not to be beaten it's not to win but then he can shift gears again and saying protraction is no longer the way to win this war now I have gone through this heroic act of creating a conventional army I need to decisive victory and switch gears again to go from a conventional soldier to a protraction war soldier back to conventional soldier as the situation demands it is really an extraordinary versatility he's able to recognize the exact right time and then make that judgment for example when green moves down to South Carolina he sends enough Continentals to keep green alive but not enough that he has to drop his siege of New York City he had an idea of vision too he's committed to the cause and his effort for that cause sort of like I hate to make the example to Khomeini the power of his resistance to the Shaw gives him a moral force to the people who are resisting the Shaw and think of the dedication that he puts into this cause here's a man of rich background who's out there in the boonies living with the soldiers I think there's a moral force that he has with his troops and you don't have to look at him as just a major commander of an army sometimes this army is only the size of what a brigade today and that's what he's working with and being able to hold it together I'd like to add a couple things to consider in terms of this lesson I think it's important to keep in mind that out of this comes our military traditions and we do have a dual system that comes out of the American Revolution the rebel leaders are suspicious of a large standing army they see it as a force that can undermine democracy and they don't have particularly the militia forces Washington and Green are far less and explicitly saying that look at here you guys too many of you guys in the militia the boonies are worrying about an American army guess what that's not your problem your problem is a British army but but this is part of something we do have to deal with in our culture so from this point on we will have what a small standing army under suspicion by some of the leadership of the country with the militia under the control of the governors eventually which creates a dual system and we'll have to work with it to this day the second thing I think that's very interesting is in this kind of revolutionary war that we see we see that armies and militia forces are not only there on the battle tactically that you can't have a lot of defeat but the most important thing is to still keep the force in being and if you look at the Continental Army while it loses a lot of battles it is probably the symbol of the revolution the one national institution and they walks in and Green explicitly identify this and say that as long as we exist this war goes on which is where they are in their protraction phase because in this case we win all ties but Washington in particular what I give him is points is being able to judge when that is no longer good enough when guess what a tie is now a mutual defeat and judging it right at this period in which now I literally have to throw the dice and this judgment is extraordinary and the army is from the political side a source of legitimacy for the cause a thing to attract foreigners to put money on it the fact that we can win with this army because it is there at a certain point in the struggle the second thing is the militia though they are often inept tactically they don't support the Continental Army like Washington would like to they play an important role in the locality that the local government when the British army is not present is on the side of the revolution they serve as a coercive force they serve as a force that mobilizes the silent majority if you will eventually on the side of the revolution and it is real thorn in the British attempts to defeat the Continental Army because if they focus on the Continental Army they cannot control the small little areas and if they focus on the small little areas then the Continental Army does a big raid and causes problems so the two together work well and that's why when the victory comes why not keep the two because there is no major land threat to the country so you can live with a small little army and depend on the militia to help you and that's going to be our next hundred years of history Jeff's point is that presenting presenting British not with one problem but two a conventional force an unconventional force wait the foreign ally the British the French Navy presents them with a third problem my god I don't think they understood this in 1775 ok we've I have a new setting because I've added on this last four or five minutes as a summary of at least our presentation on the American Revolution and should have given more credit than we originally did to washington's I'm going to use the word genius at general ship he certainly not the greatest tactician in the world he isn't the best tactician in the American Armed Forces in the American Revolutionary War Nathaniel Green's a better tactician but washington has real genius that few people professional soldiers even can approach in his ability to switch gears to switch strategies and a judgment when one one strategy or orientation is right and when it must be jettison for another let me give a comparison George Patton was absolutely brilliant when it came to pursuit Heisenhower said there was never anybody in the history of the American Army who was better at conducting a pursuit than Patton but when it came to set piece September October 1944 at the West Wall he was no great shakes his rival Bernard Montgomery was an excellent general when it came to set piece battles he frankly stunk when it came to pursuit Eisen excuse me not Eisenhower back to Washington Washington realizes after losing Long Island in 1776 that he doesn't have an army that can conduct a conventional operation or campaign against the British he will have to build one and he goes to protract the war not to win it but not to win it but rather his goal is not to lose it for the next two or three years after that he has a much better judgment than other people that he now has to win it because frankly the American the finances the reach the support that this American government which really isn't a government can give him is waning and as I at least said before in the first half of this the taping it's time to use his army or lose it and at that point he can make a shift into looking for a decisive battle force on force conventional warfare actually the most time conventional warfare which is siege warfare at this period and he conducts this masterful campaign for Yorktown let's say maybe this is the downside of professional training is expertise and specialization so that I'm good at airborne operations irregular war maneuver war heavy fire power or whatever and that's my specialty maybe Washington being a man for all seasons and a generalist has this particular gift a gift from being able to not from switching from one field to another as I at least said at the beginning there's some reason why this group of underpaid underfinanced undersupplied amateurs can take on and beat the British Empire at the height of its power in the 1770s and Washington's surely a large explanation for what was a shocking turn of events in world military history