To turn this temporary superiority to advantage, Monsieur Destouches resolved to detach a ship of the line, with two frigates, to the Chesapeake; a force which the delegation from Virginia had assured him would be sufficient for the purpose.

On receiving certain accounts of the loss sustained in the storm, General Washington conceived the design of improving that circumstance by immediate and powerful operations against Arnold.  Confident that the critical moment must be seized, or the enterprise would fail, he ordered a detachment of twelve hundred men, under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette, to the head of the Chesapeake; there to embark for that part of Virginia which was to become the theatre of action, under convoy of a French frigate, for which he applied to the admiral.  He immediately communicated this measure to the Count de Rochambeau, and to Monsieur Destouches, to whom he also stated his conviction that no serious advantage could be expected from a few ships, unaided by land troops.  “There were,” he said, “a variety of positions to be taken by Arnold, one of which was Portsmouth, his present station, where his ships might be so protected by his batteries on the shore as to defy a mere naval attack; and where he would certainly be able to maintain himself until the losses sustained in the late storm should be repaired, and the superiority at sea recovered, when he would unquestionably be relieved.”

To insure the success of the expedition, he recommended that the whole fleet should be employed on it, and that a detachment of one thousand men should be embarked for the same service.

[Sidenote:  February 9.]

These representations did not prevail.  The original plan had already been put in execution.  On the 9th of February, a sixty-four gun ship with two frigates, under Monsieur de Tilley, had sailed for the Chesapeake; and, as some of the British ships had been repaired, the French admiral did not think it prudent to put to sea with the residue of his fleet.

As had been foreseen by General Washington, de Tilley found Arnold in a situation not to be assailed with any prospect of success.  After showing himself therefore in the bay, and making an ineffectual attempt to enter Elizabeth River, he returned to Newport.  At the capes, he fell in with the Romulus, a fifty gun ship, coming from Charleston to the Chesapeake, which he captured.

Both the Count de Rochambeau, and the Chevalier Destouches, being well disposed to execute the plans suggested by General Washington, they determined, on the return of Monsieur de Tilley, to make a second expedition to the Chesapeake with the whole fleet, and eleven hundred men.  General Washington, therefore, hastened to Newport, that in a personal conference with them, he might facilitate the execution of an enterprise from which he still entertained sanguine hopes.

[Sidenote:  March 6.]