Yorktown Battlefield VA USA

(Left and top right) Standing in the British lines, looking out across the scene of the siege.  (Bottom right) American (L) and French (R) flags of the era flying over their respective positions on the First Parallel

We arrived at the Yorktown Visitors’ Centre after a short cycle ride from ‘ye olde worlde’ town, just as a Ranger was taking a group of visitors out to some of the British fortifications. We joined the party and heard an excellent explanation of the events that ended the siege of Yorktown, as well as having some of the critical sites pointed out (most marked by national flags of the era).  The visitors’ centre at the battlefield is excellent and once we had had the scene set for us by the Ranger’s talk and the displays and the film in the museum we had a fabulous afternoon cycling around the battlefield, joining up all the important points, and enjoying the crisp autumnal air and the changing colours of the trees.

One of the many excellent timelines at the visitors’ centre

In essence the background to the siege is thus:  British General Lord Cornwallis had had an unsuccessful campaign in the Carolinas and so brought his army north to Virginia.  Having taken command of British Forces in the state, and after a few successful raids, in late June he was ordered to take ‘a defensive station’ in a suitable town, with good access for ships, from which campaigns could be executed the following summer.  Cornwallis settled on Yorktown, a thriving tobacco exporting town, right on the banks of the James River and with excellent wharves for loading the tobacco onto cargo ships.  He arrived in August and began fortifying the town at once.

Canon of the era of the Siege of Yorktown

Meanwhile, George Washington and his French general, Rochambeau, had decided that their objective for the 1781 ‘fighting season’ was New York.  But in mid-August they learned that the French admiral, Comte de Grasse, had set sail from the West Indies for the Chesapeake Bay, rather than further north, leaving them with much reduced naval power for Washington’s planned attack on New York.  So, they changed their objective to Cornwallis in Yorktown and hastily began a troop redeployment southwards.  At the end of the month, a second French admiral, de Barras, commanding a fleet carrying siege artillery, set sail from Newport, Rhode Island, bound for the Chesapeake Bay.

Shortly after de Barras set sail, the British battlefleet, commanded by Admiral Graves, departed New York, with the objective of hunting down and destroying the French fleets.  Graves found Comte de Grasse’s fleet off the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay and on 5 September 1781, the Battle of the Capes took place.  Technically, the battle ended in a draw but the French maintained control of the Chesapeake Bay and Graves returned to New York.  Three days later, de Barras and his siege weapons arrived in the Bay.  As well as providing a means to bring in sufficient canon etc, French control of the Chesapeake Bay was essential for Washington and Rochambeau’s troop build-up near Yorktown.  They had marched most of their troops south from New York to the upper reaches of the Bay and from there many of them were moved by ship to the York River area – a much faster and less debilitating way of moving troops over a long distance.

Yorktown on the southern bank of the York River, with the narrows and Gloucester Point just to the north of the town

So, the scene was set. Cornwallis’ troops were busy erecting redoubts and other defensive positions around Yorktown, whilst the American and French armies (the Allies) regrouped in Williamsburg, about 12 miles as the crow flies from Yorktown. With the French holding command of the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, Cornwallis’ position in Yorktown was surrounded, albeit it a distance.  His superior, Henry Clinton, who was in New York, sent word that reinforcements would be sent ‘soon’.

In late September, Washington and Rochambeau moved their armies to Yorktown.  The Americans took the right of the Allied lines, southeast to south of Yorktown, with the French covering the area from the south to the west.  The Brits’ backs were to the York River, though by this stage they had a good chain of defences around the town, as well as batteries covering the narrows of the York River at Gloucester Point on the other side from Yorktown, which at least ameliorated the threat from the French Navy.

View out from what remains of the British positions close in to Yorktown.  Redoubts 9 & 10 are out to the left of the picture behind the earthwork beyond the British flag

The Allied armies spent a couple of days recce-ing the ground and moving closer to their objective.  During this time, Cornwallis received word from Clinton that a relief force of 5000 men would arrive within a week and so, wishing to ‘tighten his lines’, on 29 September Cornwallis pulled back his troops from all the outer defences except for Fusilier’s Redoubt to the west of the town and Redoubts 9 and 10 to the east.  Unsurprisingly, the Allies took immediate advantage of this, occupying the abandoned positions and establishing their own batteries there.

The First Parallel.  French and American positions

A week later, on the night of 6 October, the Allies conducted a mammoth engineering effort, digging a 2000 yard trench from just south of Yorktown to the York River almost entirely overnight. By morning the British could clearly see the new ‘parallel’, just outside musket-range, and over the next 2 days they watched as the Allies completed it, bringing huge numbers of artillery pieces into line.  By 9 October this first parallel was complete.  To add to Cornwallis’ concerns, the next day a message arrived from Clinton saying that the British fleet, with Cornwallis’ reinforcements, would now leave New York on 12 October.  Cornwallis replied that he would not be able to hold out that long.

Views out from Redoubts 9 & 10. Good vantage points from which to see the enemy – it is clear why Cornwallis wanted to keep these in British hands and, equally clear, why Washington and Rochambeau wanted to take them

On the night of 11 October, Washington ordered a second parallel be dug, 400 yards closer to the British lines. Once again, the parallel was completed overnight but this one stopped short of the York River because Redoubts 9 and 10 were in the way.  The Allies dug as close to them as possible and then, on 14 October, began an artillery assault to weaken them prior to launching an infantry assault that evening under cover of the moonless night.  Both redoubts were heavily fortified but, to ensure that the assault took place with as great an element of surprise as possible, Washington ordered muskets to remain unloaded until the soldiers reached the redoubts.  Redoubt 9 was assaulted by French troops and Redoubt 10 by American troops under the command of Alexander Hamilton, the black American general now the subject of a Broadway/West End musical.

Looking towards today’s visitors’ centre (the British Lines) from either Redoubt 9 or 10

Given that he is immortalised in current stage culture, it will come as no surprise to hear that Hamilton’s attack on Redoubt 10 was a resounding success, with almost all the redoubt’s garrison of 70 being captured.  The French too were successful in their mission and, with that, Yorktown was now closely surrounded by Allied forces on 3 sides and, more importantly, was being shelled by Allied artillery from 3 directions.  Life was bleak for the British.  But Cornwallis did not give up, launching raiding parties to try to spike Allied cannon, though the efforts were insufficient for the number of artillery pieces ranged against them.

Moore House, where the surrender was signed, relatively recently restored to its 1871 state

On 16 October, Cornwallis tried to evacuate his troops across the York River to Gloucester Point (close to where, 237 years later, BV would be anchored in the Sarah River).  One wave of boats made it across successfully but a storm built and prevented any further evacuation attempts.  So, the next day Cornwallis sued for surrender terms, with negotiations taking place over 2 days in the Moore House (the house of a local farmer).  The paperwork was signed and sealed on 19 October 1871 and the surrender formally took place on a large open field that afternoon.  Cornwallis had asked for the traditional honours of war – to march out with colours flying and bayonets fixed – but Washington refused this as the British had refused such honours to the defeated American army at the Siege of Charleston the previous year.  In the end, Cornwallis did not attend the surrender, citing illness, and his second in command, O’Hara led the army out.

Plus ça change….

The Siege of Yorktown was the last major engagement of the British Army in the American Revolutionary War, though battles between loyalist and patriot militias continued for quite some time, with the final peace treaties not being signed until September 1873.  But the surrender at Yorktown forced the British government to consider the bigger picture and it was clear that the cost of trying to subdue and maintain the colony was too much when weighed against the costs of the war against the French and the Spanish as well as those of maintaining Britain’s presence in the West Indies, India and elsewhere.  The Yorktown campaign was “one of those relatively minor events which have disproportionate effects” and from it American independence was won.

Yorktown Battlefield, Virginia, USA