From Diary of the American Revolution, Vol II. Compiled by Frank Moore and published in 1859.
We have undoubted intelligence that there are lately arrived in Martinico and Guadaloupe, 22,628 French troops; part of them sailed the sixth of October from Bordeaux, and part of them the ninth of October from St. Malo. They arrived at Martinico the 22d and 27th of November. Eleven thousand eight hundred and thirty-six of the above-mentioned troops sailed from Martinico the first of December for St. Domingo. They expected every day a third division of troops from Brest. We also learn that the coast of France, from Dunkirk to L’Orient, was lined with sixty thousand troops.
[Rare news indeed! What a pity such welcome tidings should want confirmation! But so it has been from the beginning. After a thousand solemn protestations, disclaiming the remotest intention of renouncing their allegiance, the Congress came forth with their Declaration of Independency, because it was a necessary step in order to procure foreign assistance; and, from the date of that declaration to this hour, the people have been deceived with repeated assurances that the promised assistance was at hand; and this tale of French troops arriving in great numbers in the West India islands has been so often repeated, that, if there was any truth in it, there could hardly by this time be left a single regiment in France! And yet this long looked for French assistance is only to be seen by the eyes of faith, and those eyes begin to grow very dim! The people begin to be ashamed of their past credulity; and their deceivers, if they had any shame, or any regard for the welfare of the people, would cease the repetition of those falsehoods in which they have been so often detected. Mr. Livingston himself has at last been modest enough to confess, to his New Jersey Assembly, that they must not count upon any foreign assistance, and that the United States must prepare to renounce their dependence upon such “uncertain contingencies, and rely solely upon themselves and their own resources.”] 1
1 Pennsylvania Ledger, March 21.