Victory at Yorktown

by Richard M. Ketchum

  Even the French were amazed at the “sang froid and gaiety” of O’Hara and his fellow officers, and the Comte de Clermont-Crèvecoeur put his finger on the root of the problem:

  The English and French got on famously with one another. When the Americans expressed their displeasure on this subject, we replied that good upbringing and courtesy bind men together and that, since we had reason to believe that the Americans did not like us, they should not be surprised at our preference [for the English]. Actually you never saw a French officer with an American. Although we were on good enough terms, we did not live together. This was, I believe, most fortunate for us. Their character being so different from ours, we should inevitably have quarreled.

  Men like these foreign officers made it seem a gentlemanly war. It turned out that Cornwallis had no money with which to pay his troops, so the French advanced him 100,000 écus for that purpose. As Rochambeau wrote to Sir Henry Clinton, “When Lord Cornwallis and his army left York, he informed me of his need for money, and I shared with the greatest pleasure the few funds that we then had in our military chest. I placed but a single condition on the reimbursement, which was that it be made to us by the [English] chest in New York.…” The earl not only repaid the loan after arriving in Manhattan but sent with the funds one hundred bottles of porter as an expression of his appreciation.

  * * *

  ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1781, General Cornwallis wrote a long letter to his superior officer, Sir Henry Clinton, whom he despised. “I have the mortification,” he began, “to inform Your Excellency that I have been forced to give up the posts of York and Gloucester and to surrender the troops under my command by capitulation, on the 19th instant, as prisoners of war to the combined forces of America and France.” His reason for doing so, as the letter made abundantly clear, was largely the lack of support from Clinton and the navy, and their failure to come to his relief, as promised.

  He had never seen Yorktown in a favorable light, he added, and “nothing but the hopes of relief would have induced me to attempt its defense.” In his letters, Clinton had assured him repeatedly that “every possible means would be tried by the navy and army to relieve us,” and when he was told that relief would sail about October 5 he resolved to resist the enemy until help arrived. But the promised help had not arrived.

  For their courage, firmness, and patience, his men deserved the highest praise, but the situation in which they found themselves had made a successful defense impossible. Then he paid tribute to the victors, especially the French—whose sensitivity to the British situation and generosity “has really gone beyond what I can possibly describe”—and should be a model for British officers if ever they found themselves in the same position.

  The letter was the beginning of a bitter feud between Cornwallis and Clinton that would continue for years, and when Sir Henry received it he wrote at once to Lord George Germain, covering his own flanks by informing him that not only was the navy to blame, but Germain as well, for encouraging him to expect that the fleet in American waters would be augmented in time and numbers sufficient to neutralize the French.

  * * *

  DURING THE SIEGE, Joseph Martin and others saw in the woods “herds of Negroes” whom Lord Cornwallis had lured from their owners by promising them freedom and then turned loose “with no other recompense for their confidence in his humanity than the smallpox for their bounty and starvation and death for their wages. They might be seen scattered about in every direction, dead and dying, with pieces of ears of burnt Indian corn in the hands and mouths, even of those that were dead.” When the siege ended, many owners of these unfortunate people came to the American camp and searched for them, offering a guinea a head for each one. A Colonel Banister, who had lost eighty-two of his slaves, said he did not blame them for leaving him, that the blame was Cornwallis’s, and when he found them he said they were free to go with him or stay where they were. “Had the poor souls received a reprieve at the gallows they could not have been more overjoyed,” Martin wrote. (For locating several slaves for their owners, Martin was rewarded with twelve hundred paper dollars. It cost him the entire sum for a single pint of rum.)

  On one occasion, at least, the British had made use of the slaves they found as instruments of germ warfare, as suggested in a letter from General Alexander Leslie to Cornwallis: “About 700 Negroes are come down the River [with] the Small Pox. I shall distribute them about the Rebell Plantations.”

  One man who had seized many of those slaves was Banastre Tarleton, and he was pointedly not invited to any of the festivities held in American quarters. When he surrendered at Gloucester, Tarleton feared he would be harshly used, but that had not happened, and now his aggressive nature was evident when he asked Lafayette if the neglect was deliberate or accidental. The Frenchman suggested he talk with Colonel John Laurens, one of Washington’s aides and a South Carolinian. Laurens had been wounded twice, captured at Charleston and exchanged, and had led a bayonet charge on the British redoubts at Yorktown, and he was in no mood to indulge “Butcher” Tarleton.

  When Tarleton inquired if the slights had occurred by chance, Laurens replied, “No, Colonel Tarleton, no accident at all; intentional, I can assure you, and meant as a reproof for certain cruelties practiced by the troops under your command in the campaigns in the Carolinas.”

  This ostracism was disgracing him in front of the British junior officers and in the eyes of all three armies, Tarleton protested, and Laurens should recognize that severities were part of war. Laurens looked at him and said quietly that a soldier’s duty can be discharged in different ways, and where mercy is shown it makes the duty more acceptable to friends and foes alike.

  Tarleton was in for more ignominy. Like other British officers, he had been permitted to keep his sword and his horse, but the animal he had was taken from a plantation in Virginia and the owner was determined to get it back. Out of nowhere the plantation’s overseer suddenly appeared one day when Tarleton and a servant were riding down the road. The Virginian stepped in front of the British officer and said, “Good morning, Colonel Tarleton. This is my horse. Dismount.” When the cavalryman hesitated, the overseer raised a lethal-looking stick, and a witness told what happened next: the Englishman “jumped off quicker than I ever saw a man in my life.” Another American who saw the overseer ride off on the horse said, “Oh! How we did laugh to think how the mighty man who had caused so much terror and alarm in Virginia had been made to jump off the wrong side of his horse so quickly, with nothing but a sweet gum stick and a chunky little man beside him, while he … had a fine sword by his side.”

  * * *

  IN THE WAKE of their triumph, both Washington and Rochambeau were desperately eager to get official word of the victory to their governments at the earliest possible moment. Rumor and hearsay would travel faster than their messengers, so it was extremely important that the official account arrive promptly.

  Rochambeau wrote a dispatch to Philippe-Henri, Marquis de Ségur, the minister of war, who would present the news to the court at Versailles, and entrusted the letter to the Duc de Lauzun, who sailed on the frigate Surveillante on October 24. Two days later the frigate Andromaque slipped out of the harbor with the Comte de Deux-Ponts aboard, carrying duplicate dispatches in case the original was lost, along with a mémoire pour les grâces—a memorandum suggesting rewards and promotions and a note regarding Lauzun and Deux-Ponts. “They are the two officers of rank who have most distinguished themselves,” it read. On the way to France, both messengers narrowly escaped capture by British warships and arrived in near-record time. Reporting on his audience with the monarch, Lauzun said, “My news caused the King great joy. I found the Queen with him; upon his questioning me, I told him I intended to return to America, and he asked me to assure the Army that it would be treated handsomely—better than any other army ever had been.”

  Louis XVI and Vergennes sent messages of congratulation to Rochambeau, as did the minister of war, who said that t
he count’s performance of his duty had “completely fulfilled every expectation of His Majesty.” The king ordered a Te Deum to be sung in the Metropolitan Church in Paris on November 27, and an ordinance directed “all the bourgeois and inhabitants” of the city to illuminate the front of their houses to celebrate the great victory. And on December 15, in Williamsburg, the Te Deum was also sung, the garrison moved out to parade and gave three salutes, followed by “Vive le Roi” and a volley from the artillery, and that evening Rochambeau invited the most prominent citizens to a ball. The ladies, one guest wrote, “show a partiality for the Minuet and dance it fairly well.… without exception [they] are charmed with our French quadrilles and also find our French manners to their taste.”

  By the first week in November the area around Yorktown had begun to empty out of soldiers. The American militia had already departed by then and the Continentals split up, with most of them destined to join Washington on the Hudson, while Anthony Wayne with the Pennsylvania line and Arthur St. Clair with Maryland and Delaware recruits headed south to reinforce Greene. The British left in stages: the troops, including the Hessians and Anspach regiments, were bound for Winchester and Fort Frederick, where they were to spend their time in captivity; those officers who were not with the captives and had been granted parole headed for New York or England. The French, after razing the works around Yorktown and Portsmouth, went into winter quarters in Virginia—mainly Williamsburg, their headquarters, where the Deux-Ponts, Bourbonnais, and several artillery companies were stationed, with the Soissonnais at Yorktown and others at Gloucester and West Point, which Clermont-Crèvecoeur described as “a little hamlet of 7 or 8 houses at the confluence of the Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers.”

  During the winter of 1781–1782 the French had little to do beyond resting and making acquaintances in the neighborhood, and with time on their hands officers enjoyed sitting around a fire in the evening ruminating on the qualities and effectiveness of the American troops. What seems to have impressed them most was their expertise with the carbine, or long rifle, which they used to great effect on the English. They rarely missed their mark, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine de Verger observed, and the tactic they employed was to face the enemy individually, not as a unit, slipping from bush to bush until they brought their quarry within range, then picking off a sentry and vanishing. An Anspach officer told him that riflemen killed eight sentries in this manner on the day they arrived. The English were so fearful of their abilities that they gave them no quarter if caught.

  The Continental soldiers, the Frenchmen agreed, were “very war-wise and quite well disciplined.” They were thoroughly inured to hardship of all kinds, which they tolerated with little complaint as long as their officers set them an example, but it was imperative that those leaders equal their troops in firmness and resolution.

  That was certainly true of the militia outfits, which were worse in the South than elsewhere, the French agreed. When these men had superior numbers or an advantageous position, from which they could ambush the enemy, they gave occasional examples of bravery. But they had to have room in their rear to enable them to retreat; if not, their high opinion of the British or their fear of capture might make them useless in defending a fort. And yet, “We have seen parties of militia in this country perform feats that veteran units would have gloried in accomplishing. They only do so, however, when the persuasive eloquence of their commander has aroused in them an enthusiastic ardor of which immediate advantage must be taken.”

  It was agreed by the French officers that of all the American corps the light infantry was the best. But whether they were light infantry, cavalry, Continentals, or militia made no difference in one respect: every one of them had “supreme confidence in General Washington.”

  Once he had settled into his Williamsburg quarters, Clermont-Crèvecoeur observed how hospitable everyone was, receiving the French in a most cordial manner, but went on to say that the residents were exceptionally lazy. “The gentlemen, as well as those who claim to be but are not, live like lords. Like all Americans they are generally cold, but the women are warmer. They have the advantage of being much gayer by nature than the northern women, though not so pretty. They love pleasure and are passionately fond of dancing, in which they indulge both summer and winter.” As he had in Rhode Island, he kept a close eye on the women in Virginia, finding that they, like the men, had very poor teeth—the result, he declared, of eating too much salt meat. (Because of the heat, fresh-killed meat had to be eaten within twenty-four hours or it would spoil—hence, much salted poultry, beef, and lamb.) Even more than in the north, a Virginia girl lost her freshness after the age of twenty; she would pass for thirty-five in France, he said. The men, who were not very active, drank and chewed tobacco a lot and left the responsibility of the household to their wives.

  Rochambeau and his aides made occasional forays into the countryside, one of which was the source of much regret—a night’s lodging at the home of a former Virginia militia major named Johnston. Baron Closen, who was with his chief, claimed that he “had never seen a dirtier, more shocking, and more stinking barracks than that of this major, who, himself, was the greatest pig that the earth has produced.…” During the night the baron and his companions couldn’t sleep; they bedded down on straw, he said, and had their ears “tickled by rats!” General Rochambeau, who at least had a bed, was “eaten by vermin” and declared the place “the worst lodging he had found in all America.”

  As the summer heat increased, Rochambeau and his friends suffered intensely, for the nights seemed even hotter than the days and they were tortured by invasions of gnats. The Americans told him it was dangerous to bathe—they maintained that it loosened the bowel and caused fevers, and the only times to do it were before dawn or after sundown. But he went bathing at all hours and never felt the slightest ill effects. What did bother him was the American habit of leaving their wells and springs uncovered, so that the water was warm or brackish and unpleasant to drink. He solved this problem by following the American custom of drinking grog (rum and water) “which fortifies and invigorates you without stopping perspiration.”

  * * *

  GENERAL WASHINGTON HAD hoped to persuade de Grasse to ferry his army to Charleston and join him in besieging the British force there. But the French admiral replied that orders from Versailles, his commitments to the Spaniards, and other projects would not permit him to do so, and off he sailed to the West Indies. As the General wrote to Congress, his hopes of finishing the war in the South and destroying any British foothold there had come to naught, so he was reinforcing Greene with some troops and marching with the remainder of the army to the Hudson River, “where they would be ready, at the ensuing Campaign, to commence such Operations against N. York as may be hereafter concerted.” Meanwhile, he had a most important report to make—a mission to be entrusted to a man who richly deserved the honor of delivering it.

  The morning of October 20, 1781, dawned behind a scrim of haze and smoke rising from hundreds of smoldering campfires in and around Yorktown when Tench Tilghman awoke, fighting fatigue and illness. For two nights he had had almost no sleep and he was suffering from a recurrent fever (probably malaria), but as weak as he was, he was determined to carry out the task given him by General Washington, which was to deliver the official news of Cornwallis’s surrender to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in the shortest possible time. This particular assignment was a glowing reward for the man who had been the General’s loyal and most devoted aide for seven years of selfless service.

  Tilghman was not quite thirty-seven years old, slender, five feet ten inches tall, and weighed about 150 pounds, with a ruddy complexion, gray eyes, and auburn hair tied in a queue. By all accounts he was charming, witty, and graceful, an excellent horseman. (On his black horse he was a conspicuous figure on the march or on a battlefield.) One of six brothers—two of them loyalists like their father—he was reserved, soft-spoken, and very tough. He grew up in a prominent family on
the eastern shore of Maryland and at the age of fourteen began attending the College and Academy of Philadelphia, which was founded by Benjamin Franklin. Along with his many other assets, he brought to his present assignment a thorough knowledge of the terrain and water routes from Yorktown to Philadelphia.

  As he rode off to the waterfront, Lafayette, the Duc de Lauzun, and several other men came along to wish him Godspeed. It was a dreary scene he was leaving behind: long piles of freshly dug dirt that covered the dead, the ruins of Yorktown, tents and the detritus of camps sprawled out across the fields, and at the water’s edge the bloated bodies of slaughtered horses and, beyond, the charred hulks of sunken ships. Tilghman and Lauzun dismounted, handed their reins to an orderly, and stepped into the boats that were waiting for them. The American was heading north to Annapolis, where he would board the packet for Rock Hall. From there he expected to travel the 130 miles to Philadelphia with a relay of horses. The Frenchman was going downstream for a final conference with de Grasse before he boarded the Surveillante, bound for France.

  Tilghman’s boat set sail, picked up a six-knot breeze, and after clearing the mouth of the York River and old Point Comfort was soon out in the open waters of Chesapeake Bay. Day turned to night, and sometime in the darkness Tilghman was awakened with a huge jolt. Although he could see nothing, he recognized the problem immediately: the skipper had tacked too far in order to avoid the shoals off Tangier Island and had run aground on a sandbar. The only option was to wait for high tide, which cost Tilghman hours of frustrated waiting. By the morning of October 21, they were out in deep water again with a fresh wind, and it looked as though they would reach Annapolis in good time. But off Little Choptank River, about thirty miles from their destination, the wind died, and it was the morning of the 22nd before they arrived at Annapolis.