by Ted Bell
Nick slept fitfully and awoke at dawn to much warmer temperatures and overcast skies. He could see that the sappers and the miners had been at work throughout the night, ferrying ammunition and powder through the trenches. They continued their dangerous work as the rising sun sent hazy orange rays stretching across the smoky battlefield, even though they were harried by musket fire from the British garrison.
At 9 A.M., Lafayette’s Light Infantry struck their tents and repositioned to the right and forward, near the southernmost American battery, a formidable sight now that it was complete. It contained three 24-pounders, three 18-pounders, two 8-inch howitzers, and six 10-inch mortars mounted on carriages capable of throwing shot directly into the enemy’s earth-works, where they would burst, destroying the works.
Spirits among the entire army were high to the point of soaring. To Nick, this was something entirely new, and Lafayette confirmed his feelings, saying that the morale of the troops this morning was higher than he’d witnessed at any time during this long and bloody war. Or in any war.
“It’s time,” he said with a smile. “Mount up!”
“Mount up?” Nick asked. “Look behind you.”
There was Lafayette’s horse, curried and combed and splendidly turned out for battle. His own beloved Chief looked nearly as magnificent. Nick smiled and took the reins from the groom. Then, sticking his left foot into the stirrup, he swung himself up into the saddle. He seemed to have gotten much more comfortable riding horses since his arrival at Yorktown. At least he’d grown to like it, thanks to Chief’s forgiving nature.
“Where to, sir?” Nick asked.
“Commander in Chief ‘s headquarters. A small ceremony General Washington has arranged. I don’t think we’ll want to miss it!”
He laughed, put his spurs to his horse, and galloped away at full speed. Nick followed, his heart thudding with excitement. They arrived and dismounted, running toward the vociferous crowd of officers, both French and American, who were gathering outside the General’s tent.
There was a massive group gathered round the ten-gun artillery battery that guarded Washington’s marquee. All the men seemed to be on tiptoe, peering back at Washington’s tent, waiting for him to emerge, anticipation and impatience written on every face. As Nick scanned the huge battlefield, he could see that every allied soldier and cavalryman had his eyes on the General’s grand battery.
Where was the heroic figure most of them regarded as father and savior? Wherever was Washington?
Nick shivered with excitement. Another historic moment was about to occur, and once again he was right in the thick of it. A breeze had come up and blown the grey scrim of clouds away. It was now twelve noon on a glorious and sunny autumn day.
When he heard the thunderous roar of thousands upon thousands of troops, Nick knew the great man had at last stepped outside into the sunlight.
Lafayette, overcome with pride and emotion, laughed at the tears that welled up in his eyes and swiped them away with the back of his hand. He looked at Nick, placing a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it. “The hour is upon us,” he said, his voice choked with feeling.
“What is happening?” Nick asked. “Everyone is waiting for the signal that will permit the whole line of our batteries to commence firing.”
“Will I recognize the signal?”
“Oh, yes. I don’t imagine you need worry about missing it, Nicholas McIver.”
Every eye was on a resplendent Washington as he approached the Grand American Battery, flanked by adjutants and aides. Nick had never known another human being who radiated supreme confidence and strength the way Washington did. His men, in fact all Americans, clearly revered him as godlike. Now, in the set of his jaw and the fierce look in his eye, Nick saw why.
Washington’s courage and stamina and fortitude had been tested these last five years, tested in cauldrons of fire and freezing winter storms, tested far beyond the endurance of mere mortals; and he had been found not wanting in any aspect. Because of him, the Americans were about to defeat the mightiest empire on earth.
This is a hero.
That was Nick’s sole thought as he watched Washington turn to his second-in-command and give him an order.
His words were lost in the tumultuous shouts of thousands, but Nick soon saw what orders the General had given.
It was a single American flag, rising slowly but surely up the flagpole in the center of the grand battery. The colorful flag had red and white stripes and thirteen white stars on a field of blue, representing the thirteen courageous American colonies. As it rose, so, too, did the white banner over the French batteries to Nick’s left and the Continental flag over the American batteries on the right. Nick felt a secret pride swell inside his heart as the American flag reached the top, standing out full in the breeze.
Someone nearby shouted, “Happy day! Forty-one mouths of fire are now about to be unmasked!”
Drummers everywhere commenced great rolling tattoos of battle as the artillerymen parted to let General Washington step forward. He paused at the massive cannon at the very center of the battery.
Why, he’s going to fire the first shot, Nick thought, and that is just what happened.
Washington strode forward and ignited the fuse of the 24-pounder. These guns could bite hard, sending a ball through two feet of solid oak at seven hundred yards. He stood clear, as the piece boomed forth the first American artillery salute to Cornwallis’s gunners. The gun spat fire, bucking and bellowing with a thunderous roar. A great cry of “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!” rose from the battlefield at the sound of it.
This is a hero.
A Continental soldier near the front told Nick a few days afterward that he could actually hear the first ball Washington fired strike from house to house inside the enemy garrison. And, he said, he’d been informed that it ultimately went through a house where British officers were having their midday meal, down the length of the table, destroying the dishes and killing the British General at the very end, who had just raised a leg of mutton to his mouth.
The battle was joined.
All the officers attending the ceremony now hurried off to join their men. Lafayette and Nick rejoined their division, now successfully attacking British Redoubt No. 10. The American infantrymen had bayonets affixed to their muzzles, while other soldiers simply had the bayonets attached to the ends of long wooden pikes. The screams of the wounded and dying mingled with war cries from the bluecoats and the redcoats alike.
It was all vicious hand-to-hand fighting, with the clang of metal on metal, pistols fired at point-blank range doing horrific damage to human faces and, above all, the wailing cries of the mortally wounded. Nick had no idea who was getting the best of it until he saw a lone soldier plant a standard atop the British earthworks and unfurl the Continental flag. As it stood, proudly whipping and snapping in the freshening wind, the bluecoats surged forward to the next line of defense.
And now Nick saw and heard every American artillery battery, left and right, open fire in a fierce cannonade. All guns were lobbing their deadly missiles into the confines of Yorktown with steady precision. Seeing the effects of their efforts, the gunners then sought to adjust and correct their pieces so as to cause the utmost damage to Cornwallis’s defensive works.
This heavy allied artillery bombardment afforded the troops a desperately needed release from six years of pent-up emotions, past humiliations, and defeats. Now they went on the attack with the utmost fury. No quarter of the British garrison was spared, from the outer perimeter, to the main works, to the interior of the town itself. At every discharge combatants fell before the guns like grass before a mowing machine.
The intense American and French cannon and mortar fire soon took its deadly toll. The guns’ first job was to take the enemy artillery out of action. For that, the 24-pounders with a range of nearly 1,400 yards proved especially useful. Second to ruining British guns was destroying their embrasures, those slanted openings in their parapets fro
m which they fired at the oncoming Americans. This and the destruction of the main defensive earthworks caused havoc behind the lines, driving enemy soldiers back from the ramparts.
The brutal pounding of the British Army continued long into that first night, and Nick slept not a wink, the incessant concussion and noise of the nearby cannon was so great.
51
CORNWALLIS HAS SEEN ENOUGH
With dawn’s early light, the grand French battery opened fire, bombarding the enemy position with their big 18-and 24-pounders. The French artillerymen had vast experience in siege warfare, and their accuracy was unfailing. It was becoming increasingly clear to the enemy that they could expect to find no refuge either inside or outside of Yorktown.
Finally admitting the inevitable, the remaining civilian residents of the town, mostly British loyalists, fled their homes for the waterfront. There they built what shelters they could on the sandy cliffs. Still, some eighty of the townsfolk were killed, many with arms or legs severed. The survivors could only watch in horror as their houses were destroyed by incessant allied fire.
It was the most extraordinary display of firepower of the entire war. Over the course of that single day, more than thirty-six hundred heavy rounds were fired by Washington’s artillery. By that afternoon, the allied cannonade was so intense, British defenders could scarcely fire a gun of their own. The British earthworks, fascines, and stockade platforms with guns and gun carriages were all pounded together into one great unrecognizable mass. Decapitated and dismembered corpses littered the interior of the garrison, the wounded dying, the dead unburied. Cornwallis’s troops had a hollow-eyed look that told the British General more than he wanted to know.
It was at this point that Lord Cornwallis decided to personally run for cover. He ordered an underground grotto built in the garden of a house far from the front lines. A good deal dispirited, he still made a great show of having no apprehension of the garrison’s falling. Few believed him.
If Cornwallis was apprehensive at the obvious superiority the allies had attained in sheer firepower, he surely wrung his hands in despair upon seeing that the remaining American and French batteries were now complete. A total of fifty-two big guns were now aligned against him, roaring continuously, he said in a desperate dispatch to Sir Henry Clinton, firing in what he called “an awful music.”
The allies had launched a thunderous assault that dwarfed anything the British had experienced previously. This new bombardment sent British soldiers careening away from their own battlements in fear and trepidation. But there was nowhere to run.
So incessant was the allied firepower that after a single hour the British guns temporarily failed to respond at all. Their weapons were either too damaged to fire or their gunners’ positions along the works had become too hazardous to maintain. The allies had suffered only a handful of casualties. And their guns kept firing.
By October 11, two days after the allies had unleashed their guns, the American parallel directed at Cornwallis’s works was within 360 yards of the most advanced enemy post. At dusk that day, the miners and sappers entered the zigzag trench and began digging a second parallel, even closer to the enemy fortifications.
The entire night, Nick observed, there was an immense roar of bursting shell and the diggers were glad of the chance to burrow into the soft earth. Everyone knew this opening of a new parallel was the most hazardous moment of the entire siege, since it was almost certain to draw enemy soldiers out to prevent its completion.
American guards stood watch over the digging for the entire night, muskets at the ready, with strict orders not to sit or lie down. These men were at grave peril, not only from the enemy but from their own gunners in the first parallel. Sometimes American artillerymen accidentally cut their fuses too short. But when morning dawned, miraculously, not a man had been killed.
Bombshells from both besieger and besieged crossed one another’s paths in the air. During daylight hours, the bombs were clearly visible in the form of black balls. But at night they appeared to be fiery meteors with long, brilliantly blazing tails, ascending almost majestically from the mortars to a desired altitude and then descending to the precise spot where they would cause the most destruction. The falling shells burrowed into the earth before exploding. Bursting, they hurled fragments of mangled bodies some twenty feet into the air.
And still the battle raged on for four long days.
On the eve of October 15, Lord Cornwallis sat down at his subterranean camp desk and penned the following dispatch, using a cipher, to be delivered to his chief, Clinton, in New York.
My situation now becomes very critical. We dare not show a gun to their old batteries, and I expect that new ones will open fire tomorrow morning. Our fresh earthworks do not resist their powerful artillery, so that we shall soon be exposed to an assault in ruined works, in a bad position, with weakened numbers. The safety of this place is so precarious that I cannot recommend the fleet or army run great risk in endeavoring to save us.
Cornwallis had seen enough.
Under all these circumstances, I thought it would have been wanton and inhuman to the last degree to sacrifice the lives of this small body of gallant soldiers, who have ever behaved with such fidelity and courage, by exposing them to an assault, which from the numbers and precautions of the enemy could not fail to succeed. I therefore propose to capitulate.
Nick was exhausted after another long and sleepless night, but he was up with the dawn, sensing the end was near. Over the rolling battlefield lay a heavy blanket of grey smoke, tinged with red by the rising sun. From the British, only sporadic musket fire. From the Americans, the deafening thunder he had come to think of as nearly a natural part of life. Death, too, had become an almost natural part of life. It was everywhere, and he was sure far, far worse inside the enemy garrison.
He had just taken a tin mug of warm cocoa in his hands from the mess sergeant when one of Lafayette’s officers approached him with a message. It would require him to go very close to the enemy fortifications, such as they were now, and the officer warned him to take great care. He was gratified that the men of the Light Infantry seemed to have taken him under their wing. He felt a true spirit of comradeship with them.
Edging his way carefully around Redoubt No. 10, he stopped dead in his tracks, scarcely daring to believe what he saw. A red-coated young British drummer boy, no older than himself, mounted the enemy pararpet and began to beat a parley on his regimental battle drum. This was the sound the allies had been waiting for. It meant the British command wanted to talk.
Almost immediately, a British officer made his appearance outside what remained of the Yorktown works. He was waving a white handkerchief. It was the age-old symbol of truce. The English, Nick knew, wanted to talk. The batteries ceased fire immediately, and an officer from the American lines quickly ran out to meet the British officer. He took the handkerchief and blindfolded the enemy soldier with it. It was only then that Nick saw the enemy officer was also carrying the British flag.
The drummer boy was sent back inside the garrison, and the British officer was quickly conducted across the battle-field to a house at the rear of the American lines.
One of Lafayette’s infantrymen sidled up to Nick and said, “Never heard a drum equal to that one—the most delightful music to us all.”
“He was very brave to climb up there,” Nick said, full of admiration for the boy.
“That drummer was fortunate he was so visible,” the man said. “Had we not seen him in his red coat when he first mounted, he might have beat away till doomsday. What with the noise of our cannon, the sound of a single drum didn’t stand a chance.”
The British officer carrying the flag from Cornwallis bore a message for General Washington. The Commander in Chief, however, was in the midst of serious logistical discussions with his second in command, at his headquarters behind the lines. He was curtly told to await permission to disturb Washington.
Shortly, a mounted Contine
ntal officer pulled up outside the marquee, bringing the letter the blindfolded British officer had handed him. Upon receipt of the letter, General Washington broke the seal and opened the single sheet of paper upon which was written the following:
Sir, I propose a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours, and that two officers may be appointed by each side, to meet at Mr. Moore’s house to settle terms for the surrender of the posts at York and Gloucester. I have the honour to be, etc.
Cornwallis
52
“THIS WAS THEIR FINEST HOUR!”
October 19, 1781. It was a glorious autumn day, the leaves of the trees just beginning to turn shades of red and gold. It was small comfort to the remnants of a great expeditionary army known as the Pride of Britain. This day would find them humbled to a greater degree than they had ever suffered before.
Around noon, to the sound of endless rolling drums, the victorious allied armies marched out and lined up, two ranks deep, on both sides of the Hampton Road from the village of Yorktown. The Americans were on the right, the French on the left. These triple ranks of uniformed men stretched for more than a mile from the British garrison.
Waiting at the farthest end from Yorktown were gathered the American and French commanders of the allied forces and their ranking officers, all mounted on horseback.
At the head of the American line was General George Washingon, his horse, Blueskin, snorting and pawing the ground. He was flanked by his second in command, General Benjamin Lincoln to one side, and General Lafayette on the other. On the French side of the line, Generals de Rochambeau and Barras, splendidly turned out, sat their horses facing the Americans.
