In mid-August, Washington received news that his most fervent dream was about to come true, but with one significant change. Admiral François-Joseph-Paul Comte de Grasses was on his way to America with more than thirty ships of the French fleet and with thirty-two hundred fresh troops. Instead of coming as far north as New York, however, de Grasse was sailing for Chesapeake Bay, where he could stay only until the middle of October. If Washington wanted to launch an offensive supported by the French Navy, he had two months to do it. And he and Rochambeau would have to march their armies four hundred and fifty miles south.
Later, Washington learned that General Rochambeau had been planning a Southern campaign all along. At fifty-six, Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, was seven years older than Washington and much his senior in warfare. Rochambeau had put himself nominally under American command, but when he thought Washington was mistaken, he felt no obligation to abet him. He had written secretly to Admiral de Grasse urging him to sail directly from the West Indies to Chesapeake Bay.
A Southern campaign had never appealed to Washington, and he wasn’t at all sure it would work. He knew that if Cornwallis stayed where he was, he could hold off Lafayette’s troops. But if he heard that Washington and Rochambeau planned to move south, Cornwallis could march his forces inland to North Carolina, away from the French Navy’s damaging guns. And if Henry Clinton in New York learned of such a plan, he could put his men on ships, sail them down the coast and reinforce Cornwallis long before the Americans could get to Virginia on foot. Those were the obstacles Washington foresaw. When he realized that Rochambeau had forced the change on him, Washington had gone into a rage. Oblivious to the others in his headquarters room, he strode back and forth, crying out that his hopes were blasted and his country lost. That went on for half an hour, until Washington regained himself and apologized to a group of civilian visitors who had witnessed the scene. But then Washington burst out again: If only the French would either fulfill his expectations or not raise them at all. Washington had wanted desperately to retake New York. Now that would have to wait still another year.
Once he was resigned to the new strategy, General Washington took it as his own and became sly. On the morning of August 19, 1781, he moved advance troops into New Jersey in what appeared to be preparations for an attack on New York. Men suspected of being spies were allowed to glimpse secret reports that Admiral de Grasse was coming north to join the assault on Staten Island. American engineers laid down the outlines of a major camp in New Jersey so authentic that the ovens could bake thousands of loaves of bread.
Washington ordered that his own troops be told nothing. “If we do not deceive our own men,” he instructed his staff, “we will never deceive the enemy.” He had determined that he could take twenty-five hundred of his own troops to Virginia, along with all five thousand of Rochambeau’s soldiers. As a line officer, Hamilton was now one of those kept mystified. He was heard complaining that the Great Man had set off on a wild goose chase.
—
Henry Clinton watched the preparations for an attack on Staten Island without surprise or suspicion, although he had heard rumors from his network of spies that the Americans might actually be moving south. Benedict Arnold recommended that the British assault the troops that were left behind in order to force Washington to fight in the North. But Clinton hesitated. He had heard contradictory stories and for ten weeks had been relying on Washington’s captured letter to justify a defense of Staten Island. Clinton might have ventured out to see for himself, but he had always preferred to command—and quarrel—by letter. “I’m a shy bitch,” he had once confessed unhappily, and he detested any sort of confrontation.
At the moment, everything seemed to be conspiring against Clinton. His housekeeper, a British captain’s wife, was pregnant with his child, and he was feuding with an ancient British general, James Robertson, whom Clinton accused of thievery and of roaming the countryside “smelling after every giddy girl.” As pressure mounted for Clinton to make a decision, he was supplied with an unassailable excuse for not leaving his headquarters. Twice, he went temporarily blind. When he recovered, he continued to draft elaborate, even persuasive, plans on paper. He kept a meticulous record of how his own officers and the Ministry in London were failing him. But Clinton did not act.
In Virginia, Lord Cornwallis was being just as sluggish. He had begun his fortification of Yorktown on August 1, but the weather was scorching hot, and many of the blacks he had persuaded or compelled to serve the British were dying every day working on the walls and the trenches. Cornwallis usually would not force his soldiers to make that same exertion under the broiling sun. Even allowing for the heat, though, Cornwallis had arrived at a puzzling decision: in order to control Chesapeake Bay against the French fleet, he would fortify one town on each bank of the York River. Of the two sites, Yorktown was more essential, but Cornwallis ordered his men to build defenses first across the river at Gloucester. Because he had refused Henry Clinton’s call to send troops north, Cornwallis retained five thousand British regulars and eighteen hundred Hessians to hold the two defensive positions. But as he turned to fortify Yorktown, Cornwallis was having increasing doubts about the position he had chosen. It was not, he feared, very strong.
—
On the last Saturday in August 1781, as General Clinton waited in New York, three columns of the American and French armies began their long march south. George Washington worked to the last moment to keep his ruse alive. His orders to the men covered only their route for a few days and gave no confirmation of their final destination. He was pleased to hear that soldiers in his own camp were betting over whether they would be fighting in New York or Virginia.
On August 29, Washington had dinner with Rochambeau at Princeton before riding on to Trenton and then to Philadelphia. After four days Washington had established the lead over Henry Clinton he had hoped for, but he was receiving only unreliable information about the size and location of the French and British fleets. Washington knew the British had squadrons in the West Indies under Admirals Sir George Rodney and Sir Samuel Hood, and he hoped that they hadn’t intercepted Admiral de Grasse’s French fleet. One promising rumor had de Grasse defeating Hood’s large navy. If the French ships at Newport could link with those coming up from the Caribbean, Washington’s forces might possibly command Chesapeake Bay.
On Monday, September 3, 1781, members of the Continental Congress stood outside the State House in Philadelphia to accept a tribute from their army. Years earlier, Samuel Adams had warned Boston’s Town Meetings against the papist French. Now Adams was back home, and his colleagues were taking their hats off to General Rochambeau’s men. The French soldiers marched past in gleaming white broadcloth uniforms with pink and white plumes in their hats. Their commander had ordered his officers to salute the Congress as though it were, collectively, a crowned head.
As their allies paraded by, the delegates were hopeful that America’s ordeal was moving toward a climax, but George Washington was plagued by doubts which he confided only to the few men closest to him. He wrote to Lafayette that he was distressed beyond words that he didn’t know the whereabouts of the French ships that were essential to his campaign. Whatever happened, Lafayette was to keep Cornwallis from retreating inland until Washington and Rochambeau arrived. “Adieu, my dear Marquis!” Washington concluded. “If you get anything new from any quarter, send it, I pray you, on the spur of speed, for I am almost all impatience and anxiety . . .”
Washington’s admirers like Thomas Paine had painted him as a modern Fabius, a conservative general fighting a canny defensive war. But, from the first, Washington had been suppressing a gambler’s instinct as strong as John Burgoyne’s. Defeat had provoked him at Trenton and Princeton into making gallant, foolish gestures, and he had won those rolls of the dice. More often he had been forced to rely on elements outside his control—disobedient or traitorous generals, independent French admirals, hostile weather, botched c
ommunications. His need was greater this time than ever before that all the pieces of the mechanism mesh and turn together, and this time even more of the pieces lay beyond his reach. Washington was no longer the inexperienced and overwhelmed commander William Howe had driven from New York. He had learned from his blunders and found confidence in his own decisions. Less than a month before, he had been determined to conquer New York. Now he was in the South, risking everything on speed and intuition. But this was another intricate strategy, perhaps as overly complicated as his worst failures, and again he had left himself at the mercy of events he could not control.
On the afternoon of September 5, Washington was riding south from Chester, Pennsylvania, when a horseman came galloping down the road toward him. Washington read through the dispatches the messenger brought and ordered his advance party to turn and go back to Chester. General Rochambeau was heading there by water from Philadelphia, inspecting river forts along the way, and Washington wanted to greet him with the news he had just received.
As Rochambeau’s boat approached the dock, General Washington was waiting for him. There was no mistaking Washington’s excitement. He was waving his hat to Rochambeau in great sweeps with one hand and waving his handkerchief with the other. When Rochambeau landed, Washington embraced him and explained his uncontrollable joy. On August 29 Admiral de Grasse had reached Chesapeake Bay from Santo Domingo in the West Indies and had brought three thousand French troops. Now there could be no more excuses. Washington laid out the alternatives starkly to Lafayette: “We must take Cornwallis or be all dishonored.” Providence, and His Most Christian Majesty the king of France, had given George Washington the chance to save his country and to enter history as one of its greatest generals.
The British surrender at Yorktown, October 18, 1781
YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
Victory
1781
LORD CORNWALLIS could not see the entrance to Chesapeake Bay from his fort at Yorktown. He had to be told by a British naval lieutenant that the French fleet, led by Admiral de Grasse’s huge flagship, the 104-gun Ville-de-Paris, had arrived. Cornwallis urgently sent a message in code to General Henry Clinton: “There are between thirty and forty sail within the capes, mostly ships of war and some of them very large.”
Before his message reached Clinton’s headquarters, the British fleet under Rear Admiral Thomas Graves had sailed from New York, heading for the Chesapeake. Graves knew only that de Grasse was somewhere on the seas and that Admiral Louis de Barras might have taken his ships away from Newport. But Graves, like Clinton, thought the Americans were preparing to strike at Staten Island, and he expected no opposition to his fleet at Chesapeake Bay.
Graves’s progress was leisurely, a mere three miles per hour. At dawn on September 5 he came in sight of the Chesapeake capes and planned to enter the channel by noon and contact Lord Cornwallis the next day. Then, at 9:30 A.M., a lookout on the admiral’s frigate sighted what looked like the masts of ships anchored in the bay ten miles away. A veteran navy captain assured the lookout that they couldn’t be ships but might be the trunks of charred pines. Virginians often burned them for their tar, he said, and left them standing.
—
Admiral de Grasse was dismayed to find the British advancing. His scouts had first thought that the approaching fleet was Barras’s ships from Rhode Island. As they drew nearer, however, de Grasse was about to be forced into a sea battle he had not expected. He had just sent nearly two thousand officers and men ashore inside the bay to gather water and firewood. That meant he had twenty-four ships moored within the bay that must be readied for the attack. The gunships of both navies were designed to carry only their cannon; they were simply broad platforms, with masts and canvas sails that rose a hundred, even two hundred, feet, and were hard to move and turn. In battle, their crews were shut up with the cannon in narrow cells, where they shot off a thousand pounds of metal ball in each broadside. Their position left them exposed to enemy shells hurtling toward them, and before an engagement sailors scattered sand over the decks to keep from slipping on the blood that would soon flood over them.
Admiral de Grasse stood six feet two inches, and until his waist thickened with the years he had been considered one of his navy’s most handsome officers. His men were proud of his arrogance and temper. They boasted that during battle he grew another four inches. Now he moved his fleet far enough out of the bay to give him sea room for the coming engagement. But the British had the advantage of coming with the wind in compact formation while de Grasse was still struggling to get his fleet out of the harbor.
With the delay Admiral Graves might have picked off the French ships one by one as they struggled out toward the open sea. But de Grasse had put his fastest ships in front, and before Graves grasped his advantage the French had pulled into a ragged fighting formation. When de Grasse saw a gap at the center of his own line, Admiral Graves surprised him—and infuriated his fellow British officers—by dropping his sails and waiting for de Grasse to shore up his ships. Graves had legitimate reasons for the delay. He was having problems with some of the ships Admiral Hood had brought up from the West Indies. The Terrible had been crippled long before it reached the Chesapeake; five pumps were barely keeping her afloat, and she lagged behind Graves’s fighting line.
It was past 4 P.M. before the two admirals decided that they were in a position to fight. And then Admiral Graves mixed up his signal flags and ran up the pennant that told his fleet to bear down and engage with the enemy before he had taken down the previous signal. The error puzzled Admiral Hood at the rear, and he was late in bringing up his ship. When the firing began, the lines were still not perfectly matched despite all the delay. But the aim from both sides was deadly, and each crew suffered more than two hundred casualties. The British ships were the worse damaged. After ninety minutes of cannon fire, three of them, in addition to the Terrible, were leaking from shots through their hulls. As night fell, the enemy fleets rolled on the waves across from each other while men patched up the day’s wounds.
At a council of war the next morning, Admiral Graves and Admiral Hood quarreled over the previous day’s perplexing signals. For the next forty-eight hours the fleets drifted seven or eight miles apart, until they were nearly a hundred miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake. Admiral Graves was unaware that Lord Cornwallis was bottled up at Yorktown. He knew only that de Grasse was avoiding another engagement at sea, and he would do the same. On September 9, though he had the wind with him, Graves didn’t strike.
Each side began to worry that the other might sail back to the mainland and take command of Chesapeake Bay, and on the night of September 9 de Grasse made that decisive move. Admiral Hood watched in alarm as French sails billowed up and the ships sailed off. Hood grew angrier when he learned that Admiral Graves had no idea where the French fleet was heading. Graves waited until September 11, trying to salvage the Terrible, before he ordered her evacuated and set on fire. Then he too set off for Chesapeake Bay. What met him there was the worst possible development: Admiral de Barras had sailed eight ships down the Atlantic coast from Newport to North Carolina, then doubled back, slipped past the British patrols and entered the bay. When de Grasse’s ships joined those of de Barras, Chesapeake Bay became impenetrable to the British.
Admiral Graves sought the advice of his second in command. Admiral Hood wrote back: “Sir Samuel would be very glad to send an opinion, but he really knows not what to say in the truly lamentable state we have brought ourselves.”
Graves had no course left except to sail back to New York. He would repair his ships, return to the Chesapeake and try again. And Lord Cornwallis would have to defend Yorktown alone for another month.
—
While Admiral Graves was hesitating outside the bay, George Washington had ridden sixty miles to prepare Mount Vernon for a visit by his French allies. He hadn’t returned to his estate in more than six years, and he found that the roads around the plantation had been
badly neglected. Even though it was dusk when Washington arrived, he dictated a letter directing the Fairfax militia to begin work on repairs. At the plantation, Washington was greeted by his stepson, Jack Custis. Washington agreed with Custis’ former schoolmaster who had said the young man was remarkably spoiled even by the standards of the Virginia gentry, so exceedingly indolent and surprisingly voluptuous that nature must have intended him to be an Asiatic prince. Custis, now twenty-eight and father of four children, wanted to go to Yorktown for a taste of the war, and Washington took him on as a civilian aide.
On September 10, General Washington received his staff for dinner. Seeing their commander at home for the first time, the Americans were impressed by his opulent hospitality. That evening General Rochambeau and his entourage arrived at Mount Vernon, and the next day Washington resumed his ride south, hoping to find that Admiral de Barras had succeeded in joining de Grasse. In the first report, Washington was told about the battle at sea but nothing about its outcome. The suspense persisted when he reached Williamsburg two days later. A fervent Lafayette threw open his arms and kissed Washington from ear to ear, but Lafayette also had been without news for the past eight days. Then, early on the morning of September 15, Washington got a letter from de Grasse announcing that he was again in possession of Chesapeake Bay and that Barras’s squadron had arrived from Newport without a loss. Two days later, de Grasse sent a cutter for Washington and Rochambeau, who sailed through the muggy September heat to see the thirty-two French ships massed in the bay. Afterward Washington’s aides told how de Grasse had pulled himself to his full height, kissed Washington on both cheeks and cried, “My dear little General!”
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