VA -- Yorktown Battlefield (Colonial NHP):
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- Wikipedia Description: Siege of Yorktown
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Siege of Yorktown or Battle of Yorktown in 1781 was a decisive victory by a combined assault of French forces led by General Comte de Rochambeau and American forces led by General George Washington, over a British Army commanded by General Lord Cornwallis. It proved to be the last major battle of the American Revolutionary War, as the surrender of Cornwallis’s army prompted the British government to eventually negotiate an end to the conflict.
Background:
When General Rochambeau met General Washington in Wethersfield, Connecticut on 22 May 1781 to determine their strategy against the British, they made plans to move against New York City, which was occupied by about 10,000 men under General Sir Henry Clinton, the commander-in-chief in North America.
Meanwhile, word had come through to Washington that Pensacola, a key British port in Florida, under command of John Campbell, had surrendered to Spanish and French forces on May 10, 1781 following a siege and bombardment. General La Fayette in Virginia also informed Washington that Cornwallis had taken up a defensive position at Yorktown, Virginia, next to the York River. Cornwallis had been campaigning in the southern states. He had cut a wide swath, but his army of 7,500 was forced to give up its dominion of the South and retreat to Yorktown for supplies and reinforcement after an intense two-year campaign led by General Nathanael Greene, who winnowed down their numbers through an application of the Fabian strategy. Under instructions from Clinton, Cornwallis moved the army to Yorktown in order to be extracted by the Royal Navy.
On 17 July 1781, while encamped at Dobbs Ferry, New York, Washington learned of the Virginia campaign of Cornwallis and wrote, “I am of Opinion, that under these Circumstances, we ought to throw a sufficient Garrison into West Point; leave some Continental Troops and Militia to cover the Country contiguous to New York, and transport the Remainder (both French and American) to Virginia, should the Enemy still keep a Force there."
See also: Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route
On August 18, George Washington received confirmation that French Admiral François de Grasse, stationed in the West Indies, was sailing with his fleet to the Chesapeake Bay.
British intelligence was good, and there is some evidence that the British realized the Americans and the French were marching south to attack Cornwallis at Yorktown. A letter, known as the “Wethersfield Intercept,” was captured by the British on its way to the Comte de Rochambeau from the French ambassador to Congress. However, this letter was in a French military cipher, and by the time the British were able to understand its meaning, Washington and Rochambeau had already started marching to Yorktown, so its value was limited. Despite this, Sir Henry Clinton was to claim after the war that he had deciphered the letter earlier than had previously been claimed, and had been acting on the basis of its content.
Battle of Yorktown:
Admiral de Grasse sailed his fleet of twenty-eight warships north toward Virginia. Simultaneously, on 21 August 1781, Washington began moving his army south. As they marched south, Admiral De Grasses’s fleet arrived at the Chesapeake Bay. De Grasse defeated Admiral Thomas Graves’s fleet in the Battle of the Chesapeake, also known as the “Battle of the Capes,” and won control of the bay, thereby sealing its entrance and stranding Cornwallis from supply by sea. The defeat in Chesapeake Bay was the only major naval defeat suffered by the Royal Navy of Great Britain in two hundred years of empire building in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the late summer of 1781 when George Washington and Rochambeau heard of Lord Cornwallis’s encampment in Yorktown, they raced southward from New York to link up with the French fleet under de Grasse in Chesapeake Bay. Washington arrived just in time to bottle-up the British, who were anticipating reinforcements that never came from either General Clinton or the British fleet.
On September 28, 1781, Washington and Rochambeau, along with La Fayette’s troops and 3,000 of de Grasse’s men, arrived at Yorktown. With them was the 2nd Canadian Regiment lead by Brigadier General Moses Hazen. In all, there were nearly 20,000 men converging on the camp established by Cornwallis. With the arrival of these troops, the stranded British forces in Yorktown were outnumbered by a two-to-one margin and were then subjected to heavy fire as work began on a siege line. Offshore, the French fleet effectively blocked aid for Cornwallis while Washington made life unbearable for the British troops with three weeks of shelling. The Allies placed up to 375 guns, mortars and siege weaponry along their lines to bombard Yorktown. The siege guns fired an average 1.2 shells or bombs every minute, or 1,728 per day. By the time the Siege ended, some 36,288 shots were fired into Yorktown. The British on the other hand had 240 pieces of artillery, mainly light guns and mortars. The British had hardly any equipment and no horses to drag their guns into position, so they were of little use.
Cornwallis, realizing the scope of his predicament, managed to send a message to Clinton in New York. Clinton promised that a relief expedition carrying 5,000 men would leave by the 5th of October. Meanwhile, the British and Franco-American forces were digging in and improving their respective earthworks. On October 11, the allies started a second siege line only 400 yards (400 m) away from the British forces. Three days later, the French and Americans captured two major British redoubts, the French taking redoubt 9 and the Americans taking redoubt 10, completing the second siege line and the close investment of the British garrison.
While the allies were enveloping his position, Cornwallis had found out that the relief force from New York was going to be late. On October 16, a British attack hoping to silence a French battery failed. The allied batteries, from their closer second siege line, were now firing directly into the British defensive works. That night, Cornwallis attempted to pass part of his force across the river to Tarleton's position, but was thwarted by a storm. Had the weather not been so bad, Cornwallis could have passed his entire force across the river, broken through the smaller Allied siege works and marched hard north. However, Cornwallis, whose army was running low on food and ammunition and still awaiting help from Clinton, offered to surrender on October 17. On 19 October, the papers were signed by Cornwallis and Thomas Symonds (the most senior naval officer present), and the pair officially surrendered. About 7,000 British troops became prisoners of the American forces. Five days after the surrender, Clinton's relief arrived.
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