Victory at Yorktown (28 page)

 

 

 

 

At the moment the French fleet appeared on August 31, Cornwallis's avenue of escape was wide open. De Grasse had not disembarked any troops, and the army under Washington and Rochambeau was several weeks' march away (though Cornwallis was unaware of this). However, the British commander did nothing. His best chance of keeping his army intact would have been to attack Lafayette's weak force (a move urged on him by Tarleton), but at this moment he received Clinton's promise of relief and opted for inaction, while his soldiers continued working day and night on the outworks, with “every preparation made for a gallant defense,” as one of them said.

By then most of the trees outside of town had been cut for use as chevaux-de-frise to block roads and other passages, and the stumps were left to hinder movement in the open land. Men were dying in the hospital; others were deserting, none of them in large numbers, but steadily, week by week. One would-be deserter, a man named Froelich, was caught and sentenced to run the gauntlet of three hundred men sixteen times, and again the next day, “only ten times,” which left him pitifully cut and beaten and unable to walk. What troubled the troops most was the lack of anything decent to eat. According to Johann Conrad Doehla, a soldier from Bayreuth, Germany, the provisions were terrible—“putrid ship's meat and wormy biscuits that have spoiled on the ships. Many of the men have taken sick here with dysentery or the bloody flux and with diarrhea. Also the foul fever is spreading, partly on account of the many hardships from which one has had little rest day or night, and partly on account of the awful food; but mostly, the nitre-bearing water is to blame for it.”

By September 17 the earl knew the worst and could evaluate his chances. By then Barras had joined de Grasse, giving the French almost twice as many ships as Graves had, and Cornwallis was aware that Washington's army would soon arrive in the Chesapeake. Given a situation in which the possibility of rescue was virtually nil, he had only one option, which was to escape at any cost before the arrival of Washington's troops shut the trap. Once again, Banastre Tarleton perceived that attack was the army's sole hope of survival, but Major Alexander Ross, Cornwallis's aide, persuaded the earl that Clinton's promise of relief left him no choice but to hold his post. This was absurd, and Cornwallis had to know it; his obligation was to make the ultimate decision (as he had been doing regularly in the southern campaign), which could have meant the salvation of his army. Clinton, moreover, had no way of knowing the details or the extent of Cornwallis's plight—a very important one being the weakness of his fortifications. (The story was told that Tarleton's brother had jumped over the earthworks to demonstrate how inadequate they were, but true or not, Cornwallis as an experienced officer should have recognized their limitations.) In any event, he failed to act, and the window of opportunity slammed shut.

In New York, the approaching calamity was the topic of continual speculation and concern, with no acceptable solution in sight. Old General James Robertson, who was regarded by several associates to be in his dotage, suggested that nothing could be worse than failing to make an effort to rescue Cornwallis's army. “All the ills that may be foreseen are at most probabilities; they may not happen. But the destruction of the whole is certain if the army in Virginia be destroyed.” We have only one chance, he insisted, and “we give up the game if we do not try to risk it.…”

While Clinton continued to jolly Cornwallis along, making hopeful noises, he was sending a contradictory message to Germain—“a very alarming report of our situation.” He began by complaining in his usual fashion that he had not received the reinforcements he had requested and that this dire situation was the direct result of the government's failure to heed his warnings. But this was not a time for “vain lamentations.” Things appeared to be “coming fast to a crisis.” Nor was it a time for comparing the size of the two armies; he would exert himself to the utmost to relieve Lord Cornwallis with what he had, “inadequate” as it was.

As late as September 8, Cornwallis had no reason to think he would not be relieved and rescued. French troops—3,800 of them—had landed, Lafayette was at Williamsburg, and reportedly the allied armies would arrive soon. Nevertheless, the British were ready for them and had taken a very strong position just outside town, where the troops were working on the redoubts. Happily, “The army is not very sickly. Provisions for six weeks—I will be very careful of it,” he wrote Clinton.

On September 9 Admiral Graves sent a real shocker to Sir Henry, who had written him the day before to remind him that the troops were loaded aboard transports “and ready for moving to the Chesapeake the instant I hear from you.” The admiral, who was on his way to New York after his encounter with de Grasse off the Virginia capes, was sorry to inform the general that “the enemy have so great a naval force in the Chesapeake that they are absolute masters of its navigation.” He had met them coming out of the bay, he said, and “had a pretty sharp brush with their van and part of their center.” The French appeared to have suffered, he continued, but his fleet had taken much heavier damage. In this “ticklish state of things” the only hope of getting into the York River was by night, and even then it would be infinitely risky to send supplies by water. He closed by saying bravely that the fleet shall not be wanting, “for we must either stand or fall together.” Five days later the admiral wrote to Lord Sandwich, first lord of the Admiralty, informing him candidly of Cornwallis's situation and adding, “We cannot succour him, nor venture to keep the sea any longer.”

On that same day Clinton held a council of war. Those present were Generals Wilhelm von Knyphausen, James Robertson, Alexander Leslie, and John Campbell; Major Generals Thomas Stirling and James Paterson; and Brigadier Generals Samuel Birch and Benedict Arnold. The only naval officer present—in the absence of Graves and Hood—was Commodore Edmund Affleck. The question before them was occasioned by the letter from Graves: given his report that the enemy were “absolute masters” of the Chesapeake and had a superiority at sea, plus information from officers recently arrived from Cornwallis's post, indicating that the earl had an estimated eight thousand troops on hand and provisions for ten thousand until the end of October, what should they do? Since the garrison could evidently defend the post for at least three weeks, was it advisable to commit a reinforcement of five or six thousand men “to the hazards of the sea during our present inferiority and endeavor to relieve Lord Cornwallis at all costs”? Or should they await further accounts from Admiral Graves and see how Admiral Digby's squadron might affect their chances of success?

After what was apparently a good deal of harrumphing and “yes, buts” and “what ifs,” it was unanimously resolved to “wait [for] more favorable accounts from Rear Admiral Graves or the arrival of Rear Admiral Digby.” How these senior military officers could possibly imagine that Graves would give them a more favorable account is difficult to imagine, but since Digby had not been sighted and no one knew how many vessels he had with him, surely it would be safe to delay decision until he arrived. And so Clinton procrastinated, but when Digby arrived on September 24 he proved to have only three ships of the line, manifesting the terrible reality of Cornwallis's predicament. Sir Henry's reaction was to complain that “the Lords of the Admiralty could have furnished Mr. Digby with a larger force than three ships and have sent him to North America earlier in the season.”

That was no help whatever to Lord Cornwallis; nor was the fact that mail was taking ten days and more to reach that gentleman, making it exceedingly difficult to make plans or determine what he was to do.

A week before Digby arrived in New York, Cornwallis had written to Clinton to say that de Grasse's fleet had returned to the Chesapeake after the engagement with Graves and that Washington and some of his troops were now at Williamsburg. “If I had no hopes of relief,” the earl wrote, underlining a number of passages for emphasis, “
I would rather risk an action than defend my half-finished works
. But, as you say Admiral Digby is hourly expected
and [you] promise every exertion to assist me
, I do not think myself justifiable in putting the fate of the war on so desperate an attempt. My provisions will last at least six weeks from this day.
I am of opinion that you can do me no effectual service but by coming directly to this place
.” That was on September 16. The next day he added a note to the letter, warning solemnly, “This place is in no state of defense. If you cannot relieve me very soon, you must be prepared to hear the worst.” Sometime earlier Clinton had cautioned Germain that affairs were approaching a crisis. Now it was here.

On September 17 Clinton held another council of war with his general officers and read them Lord Cornwallis's letter dated the 8th, in which he had told his chief that he had provisions for six weeks. Unfortunately for the earl and his troops, the generals seemed to be oblivious to the passage of time and the fact that the Americans and French might be intensifying the earl's predicament, and once again they stalled for time, deciding that any attempt to “throw in supplies and reinforcements ought to be deferred until it could be undertaken with less danger than at present.” Like chameleons seeking protective coloration, they turned to several loyalists who were familiar with the area and asked the Goodrich brothers and Hardin Burnley their opinion on “subsisting an army in Virginia without having the command of the waters of the Chesapeake.” The gentlemen didn't think much of it. Their unanimous view was that “the difficulties would be great even to Mr. Washington, but almost insurmountable to an army of any considerable numbers who did not possess the good will of the inhabitants.”

All of this led the generals to resolve that since an army could not act there alone without the cooperation of the fleet, it would be “highly improper to add considerably to the numbers already in Virginia” until such time as the presence of the fleet became practicable.

Lord Cornwallis was to be left dangling in the wind.

*   *   *

WASHINGTON AND ROCHAMBEAU
wanted in the worst way to talk with de Grasse, and it was agreed that they would meet the admiral at his anchorage in Lynnhaven Bay, at the mouth of the Chesapeake. For their transportation, de Grasse sent an elegant little sailing vessel called the
Queen Charlotte,
which he had captured from the British—“[it will] bear you across as comfortably as it is possible to do in this kind of boat”—and they set off with Chastellux, Knox, the engineer Duportail, and their staffs on what proved to be a sixty-mile sail, half of it down the James River, half across open water. At first light the next morning they came in sight of more than thirty ships of the line—more, certainly, than the Americans had seen before—and at noon they were piped aboard the enormous
Ville de Paris
and “received with great ceremony and military naval parade and most cordial welcome,” in Trumbull's words. “The Admiral is a remarkable man for size, appearance, and plainness of address.”