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The Siege of Yorktown or Battle of Yorktown in 1781 was a decisive victory by a combined assault of American forces led by General George Washington and French forces led by General Comte de Rochambeau 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 (the second of the war) prompted the British government to eventually negotiate an end to the conflict.
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Prelude
Admiral François Joseph Paul 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 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 the two hundred years of the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the late summer of 1781, when George Washington and Rochambeau heard of Cornwallis’s encampment in Yorktown, they marched southward from New York to link up with the French fleet under de Grasse in Chesapeake Bay. By the time General Clinton noticed Washington and Rochambeau left, the allies were marching south. 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.
British Defenses
Cornwallis had Yorktown surrounded with a line of earthworks. The line consisted of 10 redoubts, three of which defended the rear of the town. [3] In the fourteen batteries constructed along the line, there were 65 guns mounted, some of which had been taken from the British Frigate Charon. [4]
Behind the first, line the geography favored the defender. There was a creek and a ravine which protected the two flanks.[5] Between these two natural barriers, three redoubts were constructed. The British had also dug entrenchmets along some nearby hills. [6]
The Battle
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, nearly 20,000 men converged 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.
When Cornwallis pulled his troops back, the allies began to dig their trenches. The trenches were built parrell to the British fortifications so that artillery could be moved in to fire at the defenders. [7] By October 6th, the trenchs were finished. Over the next couple of days redoubts and secondary trenches were built for extra protection. During this time, the British fired artillery shells onto the allies, but no major losses were suffered.[8] On October 9th, George Washington took the honor of firing the first gun. The allies continued to bombard the British, at first working on artillery. The fire proved so heavy, the British were only able to shoot back during the night. [9]
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. Although the British had 240 pieces of artillery - consisting mainly of light guns and mortars - they had no horses to drag their guns into position, so they were of very little use.
Cornwallis, realizing the scope of his predicament, managed to send a message to Major-General Henry Clinton in New York. Clinton promised that a relief expedition carrying 5,000 men would leave by October 5. Meanwhile, the British and Franco-American forces continued to dig in and improve their respective earthworks.
During the bombardment, the allies also attacked the town. The main attacks were on the better houses, believing that British officers were staying there. Twice, Cornwallis was forced to move his headquarters due to the shelling.[10] The remaining civilians began to flee to the riverbank.
On October 11, the allies started a second siege line only 400 yards (365.8 m) away from the British forces. Three days later, the French and Americans captured two major British redoubts: the French, under the command of Wilhelm de Forbach, took redoubt 9, while the Americans, under the command of Alexander Hamilton, took redoubt 10. This completed the second siege line and the close investment of the British garrison.
While the allies surrounded his position, Cornwallis learned that Clinton's relief force from New York was going to be late. On October 16, a British attack, intended 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 north across the York River, to Banastre Tarleton's position on Gloucester Point. The maneuver was thwarted by a thunderstorm.
Faced with a dwindling supply of food and ammunition, and still awaiting relief from Clinton, Cornwallis offered to surrender unconditionally on October 17. Cornwallis declined to appear at the surrender ceremony or to surrender his sword (a custom at the time) to General Washington, claiming illness and sending his second in command Brigadier Charles O'Hara instead. Washington refused to accept the surrender from O'Hara, and so the deputy surrendered to Washington's subordinate, General Benjamin Lincoln. When the British forces came out, their drummers played the march, "The Day the World Turned Upside Down."
Aftermath
On 19 October, the papers were signed by Cornwallis and Thomas Symonds (the most senior naval officer present), and the pair officially surrendered. Over 7,000 British troops became prisoners of the American forces. Five days after the surrender, Clinton's relief arrived.
References
- Artillery at Yorktown [1]
- Adams, Randolph G. “A View of Cornwallis’s Surrender at Yorktown.” American Historical Review 1931 37(1): 25-49. Issn: 0002-8762 Fulltext: online at Jstor
- Bicheno, H. Rebels and Redcoats, The American Revolutionary War, London 2003
- Clement, R: “The World Turned Upside Down at the Surrender of Yorktown”, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 92, No. 363 (Jan. - Mar., 1979), pp. 66-67 (available on Jstor)
- Hibbert, C: Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolution Through British Eyes, London, 2001
- Jerome Greene. Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781 (2005)
- Higginbotham, Don. The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763-1789. (1983). ISBN 0-930350-44-8. Online in ACLS History E-book Project
- Richard M. Ketchum. Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution (2004)
- Brendan Morrissey and Adam Hook. Yorktown 1781: The World Turned Upside Down (1994) British perspective
- Tuchman, Barbara W. The First Salute 1988, chapter on battle
- Ward, Christopher. The War of the Revolution. 1952, vol 2
- Willcox, W: “The British Road to Yorktown: A Study in Divided Command”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 52, No. 1. (Oct., 1946), pp. 1-35 in JSTOR
- Wood, W. J. Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775–1781. ISBN 0-306-81329-7 (2003)
- Wright, J: “Notes on the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 with Special Reference to the Conduct of a Siege in the Eighteenth Century,” William and Mary Quarterly, 2nd Ser., Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct., 1932), pp. 229-249,
- Jean-Baptiste Antoine de Verger’s Account of 14 October 1781 attack on Redoubt 9 at Yorktown.
- Could the British Have Won at Yorktown Page 18
Notes
- ^ French: 52 killed, 134 wounded. Americans: 20 killed, 56 wounded.
- ^ Tarleton’s Campaigns gives casualties as: 159 killed, 328 wounded, 70 missing and 7,247 captured. A note on a General Return by Adjutant estimated that 309 were killed during siege and 44 deserters killed as well but does not break these estimates down by units.
- ^ Phelps (1881) pg.106
- ^ Phelps (1881) pg.106
- ^ Phelps (1881) pg.107
- ^ Phelps (1881) pg.107
- ^ Anderson (2004) pg.32
- ^ Anderson (2004) pg.33
- ^ Anderson (2004) pg.33
- ^ Anderson (2004) pg.34
See also
- Yorktown order of battle
- Battle of Yorktown (1862), the American Civil War battle
- USS Yorktown, for a list of U.S. Navy ships named after the battle
External links
- Order of battle at Yorktown
- The Role of the Spanish and Latin Americans in the Battle of Yorktown
- 1931 Army War College history of the siege
- Siege of Yorktown website
- Articles of Capitulation at Yorktown.
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