Victory at Yorktown (25 page)

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WHILE THE FLEET
was at Cap François, a frigate sailed into the bay with a letter from New England for Comte de Grasse. This was the communiqué from Rochambeau, detailing the needs of the army and urging de Grasse to sail for the Chesapeake. The admiral immediately set about raising the money requested by Rochambeau. Although he and another French officer pledged their personal properties as collateral, he was unable to acquire sufficient funds locally and sent a frigate to Havana, where the commander of the port informed the principal inhabitants of the Americans' need and succeeded in collecting some 2.5 million livres, chiefly from the women, who produced cash as well as their jewelry as collateral. When de Grasse's fleet weighed anchor and sailed for Chesapeake Bay on August 5, it carried the money, plus 3,500 men commanded by the Marquis de Saint-Simon—a corps comprising the Agénois, Gâtinais, and Touraine regiments—as well as Lauzun's legion. Along the way the fleet captured three small British warships, including one from Rodney's squadron that had sprung a bad leak and was trying to reach Charleston. Late in the evening of August 22, in calm weather, de Grasse's ships dropped anchor on the banks of the Chesapeake, “5 leagues from land in 13 to 18 fathoms sand bottom.”

All in all, the French admiral had twenty-eight ships of the line and four frigates, manned by fifteen thousand sailors, with eight hundred marines and Saint-Simon's regiments. By September 5, a confident General George Weedon wrote Nathanael Greene, “New York will certainly be ours before Xmas, the Business with his Lordship in this State will very soon be at an End, for suppose you know e'er this, that we have got him handsomly in a pudding bag with 5000 Land Forces and about 60 Ships including Transports.” Weedon was also delighted with the new governor of Virginia, Thomas Nelson, who, unlike his predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, was a military man. Weedon promised Greene, “nothing will be wanting (that Government can sanctify) to facilitate our plans.”

A report from Washington to de Grasse indicated that the British had a fleet of twenty-four ships in the vicinity of Maryland and Virginia. With the stage now set for the allies' joint operation to go into effect, the gnawing question was whether or not that force would intervene.

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TO WASHINGTON'S HUGE
disappointment, the transports he had expected to be waiting for the armies at Head of Elk were so few in number that only two thousand troops could be ferried south to Williamsburg and Yorktown. He had more than one reason to get them moving as fast as possible: the place is so dry, one French officer said, that “one is drowned with dust there,” and “Fever is very prevalent.” Since the bulk of the allied army would be forced to march as far as Baltimore, at the least, the General set off at a gallop toward that town in search of boats.
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As Clinton's ubiquitous spies informed the British general, “all the boats which could be procured in the Chesapeake were pressed [into service], oyster boats and every kind of vessel capable of containing men.”

As it turned out, only the grenadiers and chasseurs with small cannon boarded the boats, but when those who went by land heard about the trip by water they were grateful to have traveled the way they did. The weather was terrible, with headwinds so strong that the journey downriver took eighteen days, and the boats, crowded with more than fifty passengers, were so full that no room was left for provisions. The chief commissary, Blanchard, who accompanied the Comte de Custine, described the Chesapeake as “a little Mediterranean,” noting in his journal that the vessel was too small to do any cooking so the men had only cheese and biscuits, the officers some cold meat.

When they reached their destination, passengers who had been aboard several badly damaged vessels were unloaded at the entrance to the York River and put aboard warships, where they confidently expected to get a couple nights of decent rest. Unluckily for them, that was the night Cornwallis chose to send fireships to attack them, and all night firebrands rained on the warships, spreading terror among the men. A French lieutenant named St. Exupéry, serving on the
Triton,
wrote in his journal:

Six ships in flames and proceeding abreast offered a horrible spectacle, when a seventh ship … bore down upon the
Triton
and burst into flames at a distance of a pistol shot. This sudden explosion made the sailors on the
Triton
lose their heads. Two hundred of them either jumped overboard or into the various boats alongside.… Fortunately for the rest of our crew our vessel at that moment swung about and made sail; the fire-ships, whose sails were already consumed, could not follow her.… The
Triton
, during this night, lost 17 men, her bowsprit, and her stem.

Although the soldiers traveling overland decided at the end of the journey that they had had an easy time of it, what they confided to their journals was a different story. As one man wrote, the roads were “frightful,” the country “abominable, cut by deep ravines and many small rivers, which the soldiers were obliged to ford after removing their shoes and stockings.” The next day the roads were “virtually impassable … diabolic” and “the [river] bottom so rocky that the horses risked breaking their legs. All the way across we were in water up to our waists, and the horses up to their knees.” On that leg of the trip alone they lost several horses, and not until they were on the outskirts of Baltimore were the roads any better. Unfortunately, although they enjoyed a sojourn in that city, no boats were available and they departed on foot on September 17 in excessive heat, reaching Annapolis two days later. There—finally—boats were accessible so they could make the rest of the trip by water with a splendid breeze that followed them for five days to the James River and the French fleet.

For those who came after them, it was not so simple: Baron de Vioménil, assuming the transports in Annapolis would accommodate the Bourbonnais brigade, had an estimate made of the number of men each boat would hold and was told, “it is impossible.” A trial was made in several craft, just to see how crowded they would be, and when he saw the result the baron gave the order to march overland. He decided it would be foolhardy to “expose the troops to the torture of such discomfort and restraint for several days and to the great risks we would run in these little boats, shamefully equipped in every respect.”

When Verger and others formed up to march to Williamsburg, he was ill from the heat, hunger, and bad water. They had found a well and quenched their thirst, only to discover that the wells in the neighborhood had been poisoned by the British, who had thrown corpses into them. The result was an outbreak of dysentery and several deaths. But further horrors were in store. In Jamestown Verger said he was “nearly an eyewitness to the atrocities committed by the British.” He had arrived shortly after the departure of Tarleton's dragoons, who had pillaged a house and

violated a young woman who was pregnant. After fastening her to a door, one of them split open her belly with a sabre, killing the infant, then wrote over the door the following inscription, which I saw:

 

     
You dam rebel's Whore,

     
You shall never bear enny more.

The Swede, Carl Tornquist, had witnessed similar atrocities near Hampton. On a beautiful estate he saw a pregnant woman murdered in her bed by several bayonet stabs, her breasts cut open, and a grim sentence scrawled above the bed canopy:
“Thou shalt never give birth to a rebel.”
In another room of the house Tornquist and his colleagues found a cupboard containing five decapitated human heads and, in the pastures and barns, horses, cows, and oxen that had been slaughtered. A storehouse that had contained ten thousand hogsheads of tobacco lay in ashes. “Such was our first sight on landing in this unfortunate territory,” he wrote.

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EARLY IN THE
morning of September 9 Washington and a single aide—David Humphreys—saddled up, leaving the rest of his staff to follow, and rode off on a trip he had been longing to make for almost six and a half seemingly endless years. Before daylight faded he was determined to cover the sixty miles that led to his beloved Mount Vernon, the great white house with the pillared porch that had been home to him since he was a little child. It was obviously a sentimental journey, but almost certainly he was eager to have the French officers see his Virginia estate and enjoy the warm hospitality it had to offer.

It was still light when he rode through the gates and up the tree-lined road to the doorway where Martha, her daughter-in-law, and four small children he had never seen before awaited him—step-grandchildren who had been born since he left home. The sky was light enough that he could stand at the far end of the center hall and look out at the Potomac, darkening now in the spreading dusk, far below, where the river ran half a mile wide before twisting and turning as it flowed south toward the Chesapeake.

On the way home the General had been distressed to see the condition of the roads—the route over which the allied armies and all their wagons and cannon must pass, along with the cavalry and the cattle for feeding the troops—and that night, as tired as he was, he dictated a letter to his aide Jonathan Trumbull for the officer in charge of the Fairfax County militia to put the men to work on the roads at once, telling him to use an inducement that they could go home as soon as the job was done. The next morning Washington sent off a flurry of letters, most of them dealing with the impending march from the Potomac to the York—instructions to militia brigadiers to repair roads, provision for fresh horses or a carriage for Rochambeau or Chastellux for part of the route and for improvement of fords across rivers. Most of all he wanted news of Barras, whose arrival in Virginia was imperative because it would give de Grasse complete superiority.

Martha, of course, was busily preparing for the arrival of the French generals and her husband's aides. Rochambeau arrived that night; Chastellux was to appear the following day. Trumbull, who was seeing a splendid southern plantation for the first time, described it when everyone arrived: “A numerous family now present. All accommodated. An elegant seat and situation; great appearance of opulence and real exhibitions of hospitality and princely entertainment.” Washington's military family reached Mount Vernon at mealtime; when Rochambeau and his aides came that evening, they were shown to the best quarters. The following morning the General had to double as commander and host. He learned that food for his troops was in short supply, as ever, and wrote to the governor of Maryland asking for provisions, since all his men had to eat was green corn, four ears daily per man. He told his servants to leave the next morning at five o'clock for Fredericksburg, to find forage for his party's horses and arrange for lodging at a local tavern. Their master would follow twenty-four hours later.

After spending three nights at Mount Vernon, Washington rode south and on the way saw a rider approaching who turned out to be carrying dispatches for Congress. The man had news for Washington—bad news. De Grasse's fleet had weighed anchor, headed for the open sea, and disappeared from view. Evidently, French lookouts had spotted the white sails of an English fleet heading for the Chesapeake, and de Grasse had gone out to meet them. There was no further word, and Trumbull noted Washington's reaction: “Much agitated.”

The General had suffered so many disappointments over the past six years it was natural that he should imagine how this might mean the unraveling of his and Rochambeau's plans. Now, instead of the heady anticipation of victory, there was a distinct possibility of disaster. What if de Grasse had been defeated? What if he had sailed back to the West Indies or was barred by the British from reentering Chesapeake Bay? Washington's immediate reaction was to ensure the safety of the allied troops, and he sent word that the boats from Head of Elk should get their passengers on shore at once and stay where they were, while the marching troops were ordered to halt.

As for the generals and their staffs, they kept riding south, hoping for good news but prepared to hear the worst. It was not an easy trip, and what had begun as a large cavalcade of officers dwindled every day—aides having been dispatched on a variety of errands, with some riders simply unwilling or unable to maintain the pace Washington and Rochambeau set. It was late in the afternoon on September 14—three hard days' ride after leaving Mount Vernon—when the two generals and ten others trotted into Williamsburg, down spacious Duke of Gloucester Street lined with shade trees toward the huge Governor's Palace with rosy brick walls beyond the green.

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ONE PUZZLING QUESTION
was why Cornwallis had been content to remain in what was obviously a cul-de-sac when he could so easily have had his troops pack up their gear and depart, since Lafayette had insufficient strength and no real hope of stopping him. He could have done that at any time before Washington and Rochambeau and the French fleet arrived, but he was clearly contemptuous of Lafayette (whom he called “the boy”) and his small force and serenely confident that he could remain where he was until reinforced or depart by sea in his own good time.

From the time he arrived in Virginia, Cornwallis had done nothing to conquer the place beyond fruitlessly chasing Lafayette and his little army around the state, promising that “The boy cannot escape me.” Lafayette recognized the danger he risked, but kept shying away from Cornwallis, teasing him on, and as he told Washington, “Were I to fight a battle, I should be cut to pieces, the militia dispersed, and the arms lost. Were I to decline fighting, the country would think itself given up. I am therefore determined to skirmish, but not to engage too far.” As he aptly described his situation, “I am not strong enough even to get beaten.” Lafayette's army was so small, in fact (a mere fifteen hundred regulars and precious few militiamen), that he was obliged “to push on as one who had heartily wished a general engagement,” while conning Cornwallis into thinking he had eight thousand men.