Victory at Yorktown (30 page)

The defenders had surrounded the town with a line of earthworks that connected ten redoubts. Two covered the British right, guarding the river road to Williamsburg, three were on the land side of the town, three more—looking down the river—defended the left, and the remaining two, known as Number 9 and Number 10, were freestanding beyond the defensive line on the left. Finally, one protruding, arrow-shaped redoubt known as the Horn Work was at the southeast corner of town, commanding the road to Hampton. Along the defensive perimeter sixty-five cannon had been mounted—none of them larger than eighteen-pounders.

The terrain on Cornwallis's left favored an attacker, so the earl had built a strong perimeter position about half a mile beyond his interior defenses. He was also favored by a ravine that extended from the river almost halfway around the inner works, and this extended to Wormley Creek south of town, adding a natural barrier to his lines. Rising ground covered with tall, handsome pines lay between the road to Williamsburg and another leading to Hampton, and this was known as Penny's Hill, or the Pigeon Quarter, where the engineers had laid out three redoubts. Trees were felled, flèches thrown up, and batteries constructed at the points deemed most vulnerable. One of these strong points, known as the Fusiliers' Redoubt, garrisoned by some of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and marines under Captain Apthorpe, was a star-shaped affair on the riverfront close to the Williamsburg road, and it was backed up by guns of the frigate
Guadaloupe
, moored in the river.

By the time his defenses were completed, Cornwallis's letters to Clinton and Germain revealed a good deal of bravado. The allies no sooner arrived on the scene than the earl was writing, “I have ventured these last two days to look [at] General Washington's whole force in the position outside my works, & I have the pleasure to assure Your Excellency that there was but one wish throughout the whole Army, which was, that the Enemy would advance.” His attitude even extended to telling his own troops that the enemy had fewer men than the British, that they had no siege artillery, that the French would leave before long.

He could also take heart that the men inside his lines included the elite of George III's expeditionary force in America—nearly 7,500 officers and men, including two Anspach battalions and a Hessian regiment, all veterans—plus 800 or 900 marines from the fleet. The only general present besides Cornwallis was Brigadier General Charles O'Hara, in addition to two colonels, twelve lieutenant colonels, and twelve majors—a sure sign that this army had been decimated by harsh campaigning and combat.

Confronting the British and Germans were about 16,000 Americans and French soldiers, plus some 800 of de Grasse's marines. Among those Americans was a surprising number of Negroes, whose presence reflected the desperate manpower situation. In the early days of the war, blacks were deliberately excluded from service—“lest,” one Carolinian warned, “our slaves when armed might become our masters.” But by January of 1776, having seen the British raising Negro companies, George Washington recommended that free blacks be enlisted. As the war wore on and the shortage of troops became critical, more talk was heard about the need to use slaves as Continental soldiers, and Rhode Island, which was kept so busy defending itself that it couldn't possibly meet the quota set for it by Congress, came up with the idea of permitting slaves to enlist, with the promise that they would be freed and entitled to the same benefits as white soldiers for service until the war was over.

In the summer of 1778 Colonel Christopher Greene took charge of the black battalion, which eventually numbered 226 officers and enlisted men and served heroically in the Battle of Rhode Island. In May 1781 Colonel Greene was killed in action and replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Jeremiah Olney, who led his men until the end of the war, fighting with distinction at Red Bank, Yorktown, and Fort Oswego. (To Olney's profound regret, the Negroes never received the bounties given to whites or the compensation the latter got for depreciated currency.)

*   *   *

WASHINGTON, OF COURSE,
was the commander in chief of the entire allied force, but he also issued daily commands to the American wing; Benjamin Lincoln, who was next in rank, took his turn on duty with other division commanders. Henry Knox, Washington's artillery chief since 1775, was in charge of that arm, Stephen Moylan had the cavalry, and the division commanders were Lafayette, Lincoln, and Steuben, with General Thomas Nelson, the governor of Virginia, in charge of the three-thousand-man militia force—many of whom had little or no training or prior experience. The Comte de Rochambeau commanded the French, and under him were four so-called
maréchaux de camp
: Major Generals Saint-Simon, Baron Vioménil, Comte de Vioménil, and Chastellux.

The British had suffered more than thirty men wounded on September 29, the first day of serious fighting, and the next morning the Americans were surprised to discover that the enemy pickets had quietly abandoned their advanced posts during the night and sneaked back to the defensive lines around Yorktown. This set off a lively discussion among French and American officers. (Anthony Wayne pronounced the movement “not only unmilitary, but an indication of a confused precipitation” and couldn't understand why Cornwallis had done it.) General Clinton later criticized it severely, finding it extraordinary that the earl had quit “such works in such a position without a conflict.” Sir Henry, of course, had heard from several officers who had seen the Yorktown defenses that “his Lordship might defend that position twenty-one days, [in] open trenches, against 20,000 men and a proportionable artillery.” But then Clinton was not there, and he had assured Cornwallis that reinforcements would sail within a few days, prompting the latter to say he would “retire this night within the works, and have no doubts, if relief comes in time, York and Gloucester will be both in the possession of his Majesty's troops.” In fact, the British had withdrawn for fear that their outer works were too far from their supporting redoubts; but while it shortened their front, it also gave the allies an unexpected advantage and all but guaranteed that the unfortunate town and its inhabitants would be devastated by saturation bombing.

*   *   *

ON OCTOBER 1
H
ENRY
Dearborn was one of the men taking over works the British had abandoned. He and his colonel, Alexander Scammell, had been in this fight since 1775, and on this particular morning Scammell was officer of the day and led a reconnoitering party at dawn to inspect the deserted works. Advancing close to the British position, they were attacked by some of Tarleton's mounted dragoons and taken prisoner by three of them. As two of the troopers were taking Scammell within their lines, Dearborn wrote, “one of the horsmen came up in his rear, put his pistol near his back & shot him. The ball enter'd between his hip bone & his ribs & lodg'd in him. he was carried into Town, & the next day came out on Parole. His wound appeers dangrous.” In fact, the wound was mortal, and he died on October 6, universally mourned by his comrades. His death, Henry Lee said, “was the severest blow experienced by the army throughout the siege; not an officer in our army surpassed in personal worth and professional ability this experienced soldier.”

Scammell was one of the genuine heroes of the Continental Army. He had served from the very beginning of the war, having hurried to Boston immediately after Lexington and Concord, participated in the siege of Boston, in Canada, and in the two battles at Saratoga, where he was wounded. When Nathanael Greene gave up the job of quartermaster general, Scammell took over that important post and recently had marched from Dobbs Ferry to Yorktown at the head of the elite light infantry in order to take an active part in the operation against Cornwallis.

As Henry Dearborn wrote to a friend in New Hampshire, “our good friend Colo. Scammel is no more,” and after telling what had happened, added that “No officer of Colo. Scammell's rank that has been killed or died in the Army has been more, if so
much
, lamented by all ranks as he is.” Dearborn knew what the death meant to his state: “New Hampshire has met with one more cappital loss.… universally lamented by all who knew him, the loss of so great & good an officer must be very severely felt in the Army at large; but in the New Hampshire line, in perticular.”

Although in the long run the British evacuation of their forward posts made little difference other than shortening the time needed to subdue Cornwallis, Washington was understandably delighted. Writing to the president of Congress, he observed that the British withdrawal from their outer works meant that “we are in possession of very advantageous grounds.…” That morning a party of Saint-Simon's command drove in the pickets in front of the Fusilier redoubt and in a brief skirmish one man was killed and several wounded, but the result was a far better position for the French. In the afternoon French chasseurs and grenadiers occupied the two redoubts at Pigeon Quarter while the American light infantry began building a new redoubt not far from the existing one flanking the Hampton Road.

An observer may have wondered why so little activity was visible in the allied sectors, but the problem the allied work details faced was digging trenches to open a path from the infantry as well as manhandling artillery into position. The first parallel, for example, was ten feet wide, four feet deep, and two miles long—a major excavation project that afforded protection as well as access.

Few of the Americans could have known it, but they were following a ritual for sieges laid down by the French marshal Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban three-quarters of a century earlier, under Louis XIV. It was all scrupulously prescribed: investiture, circumvallation, countervallation, bombardment, and the digging of a series of parallel encircling trenches “with drums beating and flags flying.” In most circumstances the first parallel was dug six hundred yards from the besieged works, beyond the range of grape, canister, and small arms. Dirt from the excavation was thrown onto fascines in front of the parallels, forming parapets, while battery locations were dug out and connected to the parallels by other trenches. Saps, or smaller trenches, were dug in zigzag paths toward the fortress, while gabions were filled and covered on the side facing the enemy. As Joseph Plumb Martin described them, fascines were “bundles of brush bound snugly together, cut off straight at each end; they are of different lengths, from twelve to five feet.” Gabions were made by “setting sticks in the ground in a circle, about two feet or more in diameter; they are interwoven with small brush in the form of a basket; they are then laid by for use, which is in entrenching. Three or more rows of them are set down together.… the trench is then dug behind and the dirt thrown into them, which, when full, together with the trench, forms a complete breastwork.” (Martin, acquainting his readers with the French tongue, said the two words were pronounced
fasheens
and
gab-beens
.)

At three hundred yards a second parallel was dug, and, if necessary, a third was excavated close enough so that attackers could breach the fortress walls for an assault by infantry. The engineers laid out the first parallels—long trenches that began beyond the range of British guns and angled ever closer to their lines. Large openings were sited at intervals in each trench to accommodate cannon. All this digging, of course, had to be done at night, out of sight of the enemy, after which the guns had to be carried or dragged to their assigned positions. Beginning on October 1 the British artillery was firing steadily every day—one American counted a total of 351 rounds between sunrise and sunset—and they continued at night, not only from the Yorktown batteries but also from ships in the bay. Soon the pace picked up: fifteen to twenty minutes between shots at first, then at five-minute intervals, then one or two.

On the night of October 3 four men of the Pennsylvania line were killed by a single cannonball; the dead included one of the finest men in the army, according to James Duncan. He also observed a militiaman, possessed of more bravery than prudence, who stood constantly on the parapet and “damned his soul if he would dodge for the buggers.” When he took to brandishing his spade at every ball that was fired, Duncan despaired for the man's life, and sure enough “a ball came and put an end to his capers.” By then the wiser new recruits had learned from veterans to keep their heads down on these brilliant starlit nights.

Preparation of the parallels was no simple matter. Twelve hundred Pennsylvania and Maryland militia were detailed to collect wicker material in the woods for making six hundred gabions. Stakes were cut—six thousand of them—and two thousand round bundles of sticks were bound together for fascines, as were six hundred
saucissons
—long, sausage-shaped pipes filled with gunpowder.

Meanwhile a complex list of regulations was issued, covering the system that was to be observed when the trenches were opened. A general from Georgia named Elbert was placed in charge of all the materials to be used and instructed to keep an account of them. Fatigue parties were to be logged in and out and instructed to be absolutely silent, with no straggling. Officers were to seek all the “avenues, places of arms, and advantageous angles” for the disposition of troops in an attack. Sentries, posted at intervals throughout, protected by sandbags, were to sound the alarm if troops from the town attacked. In case of skirmishing, fatigue parties were to retire and give way to the troops under arms, and when the enemy was repulsed they were not to be pursued. All this and more was set down, as were instructions for the care of the troops—straw, good bread, and a gill of rum per man daily—plus discipline.
*
Because of the threat of smallpox, soldiers were forbidden to have any communication with houses or inhabitants in the neighborhood. And finally, since several men had been foolish enough to desert to the enemy, the troops were warned that anyone found within enemy lines would be instantly hanged.