François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse, Marquis of Grasse-Tilly, KM (13 September 1722 – 11 January 1788) was a French Navy officer.

The battle directly led to the Franco-American victory at the siege of Yorktown and helped secure the independence of the United States.

In 1782, a British fleet under Admiral George Rodney defeated and captured de Grasse at the Battle of the Saintes.

Silvie married M. Francis de Pau in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised a family with him in New York City.

[3] In addition, while in service in India during and after the Seven Years' War, de Grasse is believed to have fathered a mixed-race, French-Indian boy with an Indian woman in Calcutta.

[4] George de Grasse married well and educated his three children: his son John van Salee de Grasse was the first African American to graduate from medical school and became a respected physician in Boston; he served as a surgeon in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

In 1779, he joined the fleet of Charles Henri Hector d'Estaing in the West Indies as commander of a squadron;[7] they were operating to counter the Royal Navy of Britain.

De Grasse was promoted to lieutenant-general of the Navy (equivalent to vice-admiral) in March 1781, and was successful in defeating Admiral Samuel Hood and taking Tobago.

He drew away the British forces and blockaded the coast until Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, ensuring the independence of the new United States of America.

He initially sailed with the British fleet to Port Royal, Jamaica but after a period of only around one week was permitted to leave on the first convoy to England.

While there, he briefly took part in the negotiations that laid the foundations for the Peace of Paris (1783), which brought the American Revolutionary War to an end.

After the Royal Navy defeated the French fleet there in 1793, during the Haitian Revolution, Auguste de Grasse was among the officers who surrendered and were allowed to leave.

After returning to France in the early 1800s after Napoleon came to power, Auguste de Grasse resumed his military career, this time in the army.

In his later years, he wrote a memoir about his father and his own travels in the New World, published in 1840 as Notice biographique sur l'amiral comte de Grasse d'après les documents inédits.