with twenty-five ships of the line, while at the same time M. Orvilliers, with a Franco-Spanish fleet of sixty-five ships of the line, was to cover a descent to be effected with three hundred transports and forty thousand men, assembled at Havre and St. Malo.
This new armada moved back and forth for several months, but accomplished nothing: the winds finally drove it back to port.
D'Estaing was more fortunate, as he succeeded in getting the superiority in the Antilles and in landing in the United States six thousand Frenchmen under Rochambeau, who were followed, at a later date, by another division, and assisted in investing the English army under Cornwallis at Yorktown, (1781:) the independence of America was thus secured. France would perhaps have gained a triumph over her implacable rival more lasting in its effects, had she, in addition to the display made in the English Channel, sent ten ships and seven or eight thousand men more to India with Admiral Suffren.