Johannes de Graaff, artist unknown
First Marquess, Lord Cornwallis, Commander of the British forces in the last campaign, by Thomas Gainsborough, 1783
General George Washington at Trenton, by John Trumbull, 1792
The Siege of Yorktown, showing Williamsburg and Yorktown left of center, naval action of the Battle of the Bay, right of center, and the subsequent blockade of the Bay by the French fleet
Surrender of the British at Yorktown, October 19, 1781, by John Trumbull, 1786–87
Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney in his last years, by Joshua Reynolds, 1789
With his losses restored by the reinforcements, Cornwallis felt fit for battle again.
In pursuit Cornwallis was always at his most vigorous, though harassed by rebel partisans and Marion’s men and hampered by poor intelligence. He could get nothing from the local Loyalists. “Our friends hereabouts,” as he wrote to Tarleton, “are so timid and stupid” as to be useless. Supplies, supposed to reach him from New York via Charleston, often failed because of the partisans’ disruption of the roads. Absent rum after a day’s cold wet march was the worst privation, leaving many of the men, weakened by malaria, to be kept alive on opium. The underfed horses were sometimes too weak to pull the artillery, and men weakened by fever and shaking with ague often had to substitute for them. Their General while keeping his army moving had to organize protection of the supply line and push his way through to confront Greene. Rivers at flood stage in the winter rains had to be forded. Delayed for two or three days at a time at the banks of swollen rivers, Cornwallis fumed as he waited for the waters to subside. At the Catawba, broad, deep and rapid, and filled with “very large rocks,” Cornwallis, deceived by faulty or false intelligence, was led to the wagon ford of “swimming water” instead of to the shallower horse ford. The strongest men and horses were swept downstream in the swift current. Leading the van on a spirited mount, Cornwallis plunged in. His horse was shot in midstream by North Carolina militia posted behind timber at the fords. With a general’s spirit, the horse managed to clamber to the banks before it went down. General O’Hara’s horse fell on the rocks and was rolled with his rider forty yards in the torrent. The river was a mass of struggling redcoats, as reported by a Loyalist observer, “a-hollerin’, a-snortin’ and a-drownin’, a-snortin’, a-hollerin’ and a-drownin’.” With their knapsacks weighted with powder and ball, and their muskets across their shoulders, the redcoats could not fire, but in the heavy fog hanging over the river the North Carolinians could not get accurate range for general slaughter.
Greene, certain that Cornwallis would not stop until he had avenged his defeat at Cowpens and recovered the prisoners, pushed on as hard as his pursuer. His strategy was to keep Cornwallis moving, luring him northward in his pursuit away from his supply bases until, without supply train, he would be exhausted and isolated. He himself had received reinforcements from Steuben, giving him an army of about 4,000, of whom a third was militia, and he would have liked to turn and face his foe in a pitched battle, but against the enemy’s augmented force he was not going to allow himself to be caught at a time and place of the enemy’s choosing. Facing better trained troops, the best he could do was to deploy at his own time at a site to his own advantage. Traveling light, with his men carrying small portions of dried beef and corn and salt in wallets and guided by partisans who knew the bypaths through the swamps and forests, he kept well ahead of Cornwallis until, early in March, he came to Guilford in the center of North Carolina. A place he had previously reconnoitered, it was located on the main north-south road where it met at right angles an east-west road running along a wooded ridge. At the junction of the roads stood Guilford’s courthouse at the base of a gradual slope where the main road ran up to the top of the ridge. Halfway up the slope was a broad clearing flanked by thin woods, open enough to permit visibility for rifle fire. The site was similar to Cowpens, and here Greene decided to make his stand. He sorely missed Morgan, whom he had sent on his way home to Virginia in a litter, but he possessed Morgan’s shadow in a careful report that Morgan had written out for him after Cowpens. Knowing that Cornwallis would pursue for a finishing fight, Morgan had advised Greene to place his least reliable militia, the North Carolinians, in the center in a line interspersed with troops picked for firmness, and with a line behind of veteran Continentals to “shoot the first man who runs.” On either side of the front line would be placed Virginia riflemen and small cavalry units of sixty horsemen each, and with them on the slope two of Greene’s four guns to command the approach along the main road.
Informed by scouts, Cornwallis knew that his desired moment had come. The clash that followed was a textbook example of the seemingly senseless 18th century tactic in which brightly uniformed infantry march in compact phalanx against the muzzles of the enemy’s firearms. The expected effects of the tactic duly took place on both sides. The glistening steel of fixed bayonets advancing relentlessly upon them struck terror in the hearts of the defenders, who scattered into a stampede for escape while the point-blank target made by the British absorbed the lethal fire of the Virginia riflemen. In the platoons the well-drilled guards and grenadiers dropped down, hardly falling out of line. For two and a half hours of units moving forward and back under fire in recovery or counterattack, the exhausted armies fought, until both commanders, each seeing a line near collapse, called almost simultaneously for withdrawal. The Battle of Guilford Courthouse was ended. Cornwallis was left in possession of the field and a technical victory, but his admitted casualties of 532 (killed and wounded), about 25 percent of his army, were double Greene’s at 261. The victory, as Cornwallis recognized, was “rendered without utility” because without provisions he could not hold the ground. In unkind assessment afterward, Charles Fox, at a civilian’s comfortable distance from the blood and bullets, was to say “another such victory would destroy the British army.”
Pyrrhic or not, the fortunes of Guilford Courthouse could not subdue Cornwallis’ instinct for aggressive action nor arrest his drive to Virginia, which he still thought, as he wrote to Clinton, “the only possible plan, even if it meant abandoning New York, for until Virginia is in a manner subdued, our hold on the Carolinas must be difficult if not precarious.” Though he could hope for no support from Loyalists, he intended to go on to carry out the mission assigned to General Phillips, who was dying from a fever, to establish a naval base more central to the country than Charleston, which the British campaign required.
THE Americans in the winter of 1780–81, following the Hartford Conference, were in no better case, although the British did not fully realize to what low ebb the rebellion had sunk. The mutinies in the army and the catastrophic fall of the financial credit of Congress, with every prospect, as Rochambeau expected, of the currency falling shortly “to total non-value,” darkened the outlook even more. In Virginia, Benedict Arnold, acknowledged on both sides as a general of the highest capacity, was conducting “thundering excursions” of destruction at the head of 2,000 men (largely southern Loyalists) on behalf of the enemy. Defense was weakening. Under the pall of accumulating misfortune, Congress determined to send a special envoy, in the person of Colonel John Laurens, to inform the court of France in the “clearest light the state of distress of this country.” To save the sinking cause of the Revolution, fresh help from France was essential. Benjamin Franklin was already in France as congressional commissioner, but it was felt that a fresh voice was needed to supplement the old philosopher’s finesse. The younger Laurens, who knew the privations in the field from shared experience, had an added personal reason to fight the British in the cause of his father, who, captured at sea with the incriminating Dutch treaty, was still a prisoner in the Tower of London. His son could be counted upon to be a forceful advocate. John Laurens had fought with Washington at Brandywine and Monmouth and afterward, and had been employed by him in a number of secret missions. Commissioned a colonel by Congress, he had fought a duel for what he considered
insults to Washington with the troublesome Charles Lee, whose order for retreat at Monmouth in the New Jersey campaign of 1778 had so infuriated Washington, and who ever after had been trying to discredit the Commander-in-Chief in the hope of supplanting him. Since the duel, Laurens had been serving as Washington’s secretary, being credited by him with a character for “intrepidity bordering on rashness,” which would be useful for cutting through the diplomatic niceties established by Franklin in his relations with Vergennes. Engrossed in the female charms and admiration of Paris, Franklin as envoy had acquired more celebrity than tangible aid.
Before Laurens departed, Washington drew for him a dark and frank appraisal of conditions. He thought a point of crisis had been reached. The people in general had lost confidence and regarded the impressment of supplies as “burdensome and oppressive.” The system had excited “serious discontents” and “alarming symptoms of opposition.” The army had suffered “calamitous distress” and their patience was “nearly exhausted.” With money, the Allies could make a “decided effort” to secure America’s liberty and independence; without such aid, “we may make a feeble expiring effort” which could well be our last. In a letter of April 9 to Laurens in Paris, Washington put the case as starkly as he could: “We are at the end of our tether, and now or never our deliverance must come.”
Franklin, humiliated by the dispatch of a special envoy to his post while he was present, was galvanized by Laurens’ coming to make a more emphatic approach of his own. In letter and interview with Vergennes, echoing Washington’s “now or never,” he told the Foreign Minister he must face the dire fact that unless America received the “most vigorous aid of our allies, particularly in the article of money,” she might have to yield and sue for peace, leaving Britain to “recover the American continent and become the terror of Europe.” He asked Vergennes point-blank what Congress might be told it could expect in French aid. Vergennes answered that the King was prepared to make an outright gift of 6 million livres, to make up for the promised Second Division.
Laurens, on arriving, opened a campaign as direct as bullets. He promptly asked Vergennes for a loan of 25 million livres in cash (about $6 million), plus supplies of arms, ammunition, clothing, equipment and tents. Vergennes replied that the King could not make a loan for the kingdom, but as proof of friendship he would make an outright donation of 6 million livres. Knowing that this had already been promised to Franklin, Laurens said bluntly that without the supplies this was not enough; that France was in danger of losing all her past efforts in favor of America, unless all his requests were complied with. The interview, recorded by Laurens’ French-speaking secretary William Jackson, horrified Franklin, who was present and who reported home that Laurens “brusqued” them too much. Laurens followed brusquerie with shock. He said to Vergennes that the “sword which I wear in defense of France as well as my own country,” unless the help were forthcoming, “I may be compelled to draw against France as a British subject.” Not content with this thunderclap, he betook himself to the royal levee next day and, making his way up to the King, handed him a scroll explaining his requests. At this intrusion of business at a court formality, the King said nothing, merely handing the scroll to the Comte de Ségur, Minister of War, who was standing nearby. Next morning Laurens, expecting to be shunned, found himself invited to an interview with M. Necker, Minister of Finance, who promised a good portion of the supplies and immediate delivery of a good part of the cash. On the basis of the Minister’s word, Laurens was able to collect 2 million livres’ worth of supplies and 2 million livres in cash and arrange for four transports to carry them to America, and eventually to negotiate a loan underwritten by France of 10 million from the Dutch.
At the same time as the Laurens mission, Rochambeau by careful maneuvering was able to get a frigate through the English lines to carry his son Colonel Rochambeau to France with a report of the Hartford discussions and a complete account of the troops, vessels and money that were needed, which the son committed to memory in full, lest he be captured. In correspondence with Admiral de Grasse, Rochambeau could offer him no encouraging prospect, but this seemed not to deter the French Admiral or his countrymen.
Laurens’ and Franklin’s prospect of the Colonies falling away from the fight against England frightened the French. Until now they had believed that England’s defeat might be accomplished on her periphery by seizing her sugar islands and breaking into her trade. Now they were persuaded that more effective harm could be done by assisting American independence and the loss to Britain of the American continent. During Laurens’ visit, the decision was taken to go forward, and to commit French sea power in a major effort to resolve the American war. After the failure to invade England, France was ready to take offensive action in both America and the Antilles, where her intention was to deliver 2,000 French prisoners being held on Barbados, and to take Ste. Lucie from the English.
Louis XVI, putting his finger on one of the individuals that history chooses for agent, issued orders to Admiral François de Grasse to take a strong fleet of supply to the Leeward Islands and from there, after giving what aid was required by the Spanish under the terms of the Bourbon Family Compact, to proceed to America to cooperate with the generals of the Revolution in whatever military action they planned. It was the most positive act of his reign.
Emphasizing the importance of the operation, de Grasse was promoted to Rear Admiral, carrying with it the title of Lieutenant General in the army. At the same time, the young Claude-Anne, Marquis de Saint-Simon, cousin of the future founder of French Socialism, and a relative of the illustrious Due de Saint-Simon, chronicler of the court of Louis XIV, notified Rochambeau that he was ready to join him in America with his three regiments from Santo Domingo. De Grasse sent word to Rochambeau that he had received orders from the King to undertake the American mission and that he would arrive on the coast at the earliest by July 15 of the coming summer, 1781, with money and men-at-arms. He added that, owing to the promise of help to Spain, he was under orders to stay for only six weeks.
With matchless energy de Grasse appeared every morning at five o’clock in his quarters in the arsenal at Brest to oversee repairs and provisioning of his ships, and kept everyone jumping thereafter for a full day’s work. Born in 1722—ten years older than Washington, three years younger than Rodney—he came of a family ennobled in the 16th century. At the age of eleven he had received an appointment in the Garde de la Marine, which gave candidates an education at the Naval Seminary of Toulon, where young noblemen were trained to be naval officers and where at the edge of the seawall they became familiar with all the activity of the waterfront. From the windows of the school they looked out on the forest of masts, with its myriad rigging and flapping flags making patterns against the sky, and rows of black spokes thrusting the noses of cannon through holes in the ships’ sides. After a year at the seminary, twelve-year-old de Grasse, as young as Rodney had been when he first went to sea, won a similar first appointment as a page to the Grand Master of Malta. The Knights of Malta, who included many naval officers in their ranks, administered a fleet that was active in convoying merchantmen through the Mediterranean to guard them from corsairs sailing out of Tunis and Algiers and the doorways of Morocco. On convoy duty, young de Grasse met action and combat from the start of his career, culminating in the heroic resistance on board the Gloire in the Battle of Finisterre. In 1781, the year fateful for so much in this history, he was named Commander-in-Chief of French naval forces in the West Indies. This was the two years after Rodney was named chief of the British command in the Leeward Islands. In physical contrast to the slight Rodney, de Grasse was a tall, heavily built man six feet two in height and six feet six on deck in time of combat, in the words of an admiring junior officer. He was considered “one of the handsomest men of the age,” although his appearance when angry was “grim” and his manner “brutal,” according to a Swedish lieutenant, Karl Gustaf Tornquist, who served on his ship in these critical y
ears and wrote a memoir of the experience.
WHILE Franco-American plans were in the making at Hartford and in the correspondence crossing the Atlantic, Rodney in September, 1780, was in New York, thwarted in offensive action by Clinton’s refusal to spare any forces from the defense of New York and also by his wordy dispute with Admiral Arbuthnot over which of them was the superior in command. Rodney concluded that he could accomplish little against these obstacles and that it was more important to return with his fleet to the Leewards to defend the islands in case the French should take advantage of his absence. He prepared for departure. Losing a strong-minded associate, Clinton saw him go with regret, writing to say goodbye and to express the hope of seeing him again, concluding wistfully, “should you be appointed Commander-in-Chief here as well as in the West Indies for which God grant.” God had not chosen to stand at the British elbow at this hour. To leave the decrepit and petty Arbuthnot in command of American waters at a time when the great Western continent was slipping from British hands, when Britain could have replaced him by a man of Rodney’s energy and enterprise, was another in the train of ill-thought if not plainly foolish decisions that infected British management of the American war. Clinton and Arbuthnot, incapable of concerted action while they despised each other, were left in position, while Rodney’s superior boldness and skill were retained in the West Indies, still considered a more important possession than America. With his fleet of fifteen ships of the line Rodney left New York in November, 1780. A violent gale, blowing for 48 hours while he made his way south, scattered his ships but carried no warning of the fearful wreckage that would greet him in the islands, nor of the tremendous fuss the home government was then making over their quarrel with the Dutch and the perfidy of Amsterdam in negotiating a treaty of commerce and amity with the rebels. He reached Barbados on December 6 to find a scene of devastation from one end of the Leewards to the other, as if some avenging army had passed through, bent on ruin. For once the wrecker had been no human enemy but an October hurricane, the most terrible in memory. A tidal wave raised by a titanic wind starting on October 9 had flooded Jamaica; then, blowing with ferocious force through the next day and night, the winds tore off the roofs of Ste. Lucie, beached and destroyed ships at anchor. With relentless sheets of rain and thunder and lightning, the storm roared through the night until 8 a.m., blasting house walls and windows, lifting cattle off the ground and the bodies of men to rooftops, crushing houses to rubble while the cries of the helpless people trapped in the ruins could not be heard through the crash of the elements and tumble of walls. Trees were torn up by the roots and the bark stripped from their trunks by the violence of the wind. The part of Rodney’s fleet that had been storm-scattered outside New York had come in, “dreadfully crippled,” while eight out of the twelve of his warships at Barbados were a total loss and only ten members of their crews saved; 400 inhabitants of Barbados were killed. Water sources and food, never plentiful on the islands, were reduced to dangerous scarcity; care and shelter for the homeless, repair of roads, wells, homes and every facility mounted to an overpowering burden, on ships of the fleet no less than on the towns. Supposing the ruin to have made no exception of forts and shore batteries, the British chose this moment, two months after the hurricane, to declare their war on the Dutch, with accompanying orders to Rodney to seize St. Eustatius and such other islands as they believed would be unable to offer resistance.