At this point let the criticism be remembered merely in connection with the fact that to cooeperate with allies in military matters demands tact, quick perception, firmness, and patience.

In a word, it is a task which calls for the finest and most highly trained intellectual powers, and of which the difficulty is enhanced a thousandfold when the allies are on the one side, an old, aristocratic, punctilious people, and on the other, colonists utterly devoid of tradition, etiquette, or fixed habits, and very much accustomed to go their own way and speak their own minds with careless freedom.

With this problem Washington was obliged suddenly to deal, both in ill success and good success, as well as in many attempts which came to nothing.

Let us see how he solved it at the very outset, when everything went most perversely wrong.
On July 14 he heard that D'Estaing's fleet was off the coast, and at once, without a trace of elation or excitement, he began to consider the possibility of intercepting the British fleet expected to arrive shortly from Cork.

As soon as D'Estaing was within reach he sent two of his aides on board the flagship, and at once opened a correspondence with his ally.