Because of the limited and primitive roads of the period, and to ease the pressure of foraging on the countryside and to add to Clinton’s uncertainty about the objective, the Allied army, in two groups, took separate routes along two parallel lines. Foot soldiers covered fifteen miles the first day, a distance that over the next two weeks remained about the daily average. Officers rode, including the French who had brought their own horses. Washington’s army marched in three columns, arriving at scheduled destinations at different times. On the way, Washington, further to implicate Staten Island, ordered the construction of hardtack ovens at Chatham, New Jersey, to suggest the establishment of a permanent camp and, in addition, the collection of thirty flat-bottomed boats on wheels, both for use on rivers going south as well as to imply a crossing to Staten Island.
Von Closen’s route passed through the well-cultivated lands of long-settled New Jersey, where imperturbable cows under old gnarled apple trees lazily lifted their heads to stare at the riders. He finds pasture fences arranged like fence rails in France, “five of them, one on top of the other.” Describing a “very beautiful small valley” along the river road between Chatham and Elizabethtown, he thought it “a land of milk and honey, with game, fish, vegetables, poultry,” where the inhabitants—of Dutch origin, he thinks—“have kept it neat” in contrast to New York state “where misery is written on the brows of the inhabitants”—one of von Closen’s odd remarks of now buried import. The riders continue on a “beautiful route” to Pompton, passing several large residences and fine cattle. At a “grandiose residence” in Whippany they are served a “sumptuous dinner,” not repeated next day when at Bullion’s Tavern at Basking Ridge they eat a “rather mediocre supper,” balanced for von Closen by happiness in learning he is to have a bed, although he has to share it with Colonel Smith, an aide to Washington. They come next to Princeton, described in Blanchard’s Journal as “a pretty village where the inns are handsome and very clean. A very handsome college is also to be seen there, [having] 50 scholars, [with] room for 200.” So much for Princeton. After a “very good American breakfast” they push on to Trenton, having covered 45 miles that day. They dine with Washington and hear his account of past battles. Half a mile from the Delaware, Trenton is a “charming site in spite of the ravages of the Hessians (who made themselves hated).” The district is still rich in large villages reminding von Closen of his native Palatinate, though it has no good Rhine wine. Instead the people drink a delicious “Pery,” or pear cider.
During the army’s march through Jersey, a courier brought news on August 29 causing profound anxiety. An observer at Sandy Hook—a general of the New Jersey militia known to be trustworthy—reported the appearance of a fleet of eighteen ships, identified by their flags as British. Later the count was modified to fourteen, but either way the combination of the newcomers, which were thought to be Rodney’s ships from the West Indies, with Graves’s fleet would, they feared, give the enemy the most dreaded weapon, naval superiority over any number that de Grasse was expected to bring. The ships were not of course Rodney’s but Hood’s, now part of Graves’s fleet, which was not animated by any great offensive energy in its Admiral.
Crossing the Delaware on September 1, the marchers arrived in Philadelphia the next day, having covered so far 133 miles. At Philadelphia the generals, who had entered the city three days in advance of the army, were met by the cheers of spectators and an ovation when they stopped at the City Tavern. Ecstatic applause greeted the dazzling spectacle of the French as they passed in review in their bright white uniforms and white plumes. Wearing colored lapels and collars of pink, green, violet or blue identifying their regiments, they were the most brilliantly appointed soldiers in Europe. The gold and silver thread in the facings and hats of their orderlies and the gold-headed canes the orderlies carried made them all look like generals. The artillery wore gray with red velvet lapels. Extravagant sartorial display had a purpose: it created an impression of wealth and power on the opponent and pride in the wearer, which has been lost sight of in our nervously egalitarian times. It seems a puzzle how the white uniforms could have been kept clean and pristine after one or two days’ march along dusty or muddy roads. No women were on hand for laundering, for Washington had expressly forbidden camp followers to accompany the march, giving orders that wagons must not give them space nor food rations be issued. Cleaning, as far as it went, would be accomplished by covering stains with talc or white powder of one kind or another used to whiten wigs. Major Gaspard Gallatin, a staff officer of the Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment who kept a journal of the New York campaign, tells us that on reaching Philadelphia, the French Army, “having halted to burnish its arms and dust its white uniforms,” and in the case of some units to change into dress uniform, “made a most impressive entrance in the City.” In contrast, the American troops, grim-faced because they had not been paid, were in no very agreeable mood and were thought by some to be on the edge of mutiny, leaving some doubt whether they would continue to march. Nevertheless, they duly saluted as they filed past the flag, and past Washington, Rochambeau, Luzerne and the members of Congress assembled on the balcony of the State House. As the soldiers marched by, the congressmen doffed their thirteen hats in response. The brass instruments that accompanied French regiments excited the utmost enthusiasm of the crowd, who were accustomed only to fife and drum. The perfect marching in step to the music and the colorful regimental flags augmented the delight of the spectators who, von Closen thought pridefully, “could never have imagined that the French troops could be so handsome.” The ladies watching the review from Minister Luzerne’s residence are “enchanted to see such handsome men and hear such good music.” Rochambeau and his staff are housed “like Princes” by Luzerne. With Washington and his generals they enjoy an “excellent repast” at the home of Robert Morris, with “all the foreign wines possible with which to drink endless toasts” to the United States, to the Kings of France and Spain, to the Allies and to the Count de Grasse. Afterward, the city was illuminated in Washington’s honor.
The Allies spent the next day sightseeing in the “huge” city, which, with its large harbor and convenient piers for loading and unloading ships that come up the river, is “as commercial as Boston,” having shops filled with fine merchandise. Merchants of the city, von Closen notes, “profited greatly” by the occasion because everyone “stocked up.” The city had 72 straight, wide and well-built streets and sidewalks. The Congress meeting hall has the “finest view imaginable,” and there is a “very famous College with the title of University” (the present University of Pennsylvania). At the home of Joseph Reed, “President of the State [sic] of Pennsylvania,” the visitors are entertained at a ceremonial dinner of which the main feature was an immense ninety-pound turtle with soup served in its shell.
Toasts and ovations and honors did not compensate for lack of transport ships expected at Philadelphia. Morris, more familiar with obtaining money than boats, had been able to supply only a few. These were enough to carry the heavy field guns, but hope of water transport for the troops had to be abandoned.
From Philadelphia, the army moved on toward Chester, in Pennsylvania, on the way to its destination at Head of the Elk, at the top of the northernmost inlet of Chesapeake Bay. The anxiety that now rode with Washington like a physical pain can be judged in a letter he wrote on September 2 to Lafayette. “I am distressed beyond expression to know what is become of the Count de Grasse, and for fear the English fleet, by occupying the Chesapeake … should frustrate all our flattering prospects in that quarter.” He added that he was anxious, too, about de Barras, who was supposed to be coming down to the Chesapeake with the guns and beef for the army. If Lafayette learned anything “new from any quarter,” he was to send it “on the spur of speed for I am almost all impatience and anxiety.” These words from General Washington, for so long a rock against an ordinary man’s anxieties, reveal his agony on the march to Virginia. Would all the planning and the alliance and
the hope come to nothing? Was he leading his army to futility at the end?
On September 5, as he rode into Chester, the agony was banished in a heart-stopping moment when a courier from de Grasse’s fleet came riding up to tell him that the Admiral had actually arrived in the Bay with no less than 28 ships and 3,000 troops, and that they were already being disembarked in contact with Lafayette. The Cornwallis trap was laid! After announcing the stunning news to his troops, Washington turned his horse northward to inform Rochambeau, who was coming down by barge. As Rochambeau’s boat neared the dock at Chester, he and his staff saw the astonishing sight of a tall man acting as if he had taken leave of his senses. He was jumping up and down and waving his arms in sweeping circles, with a hat in one hand and a white handkerchief in the other. On nearing the shore they could see that the eccentric figure was undoubtedly General Washington, ordinarily so grave and self-contained. Rochambeau jumped from the barge to be embraced as the wonderful news was conveyed. No one had ever seen the General so unrestrained and joyful and almost childlike in his happiness. A single worry remained. What about de Barras? Had he been intercepted in the Bay, and the food and guns he carried possibly lost to the Allies at the very brink of the ultimate encounter?
On the day that Washington heard the report about de Grasse, the same news was delivered in Philadelphia when a courier entered the hall where Minister Luzerne was entertaining Comissary Blanchard and eighty guests. All the guests fell silent as the messenger’s document was taken to Luzerne, who, after hasty scanning, and in excitement almost equal to Washington’s, read aloud the announcement that Admiral de Grasse with a reported 36 ships (an exaggerated count) was in the Bay, with 3,000 troops being disembarked to join Lafayette. The company was transported, and the courier overwhelmed as the guests crowded around him. In the city when the news was made public by Luzerne, the population raised cries of “Long live Louis Sixteenth!” and mounted scaffolds and platforms to deliver funeral orations for Cornwallis and lamentations for the Tories.
As if to allow the joy and relief at Chester no unalloyed hour, Washington and Rochambeau, as they rode southward, heard a distant rumble of gunfire from the Bay. It carried a somber message: that the fleets of de Grasse and the British had met and opened combat. Stricken in suspense, the generals looked at each other, not daring to speak aloud their question. Which fleet had prevailed?
The outcome was, in fact, to be the turning point of the war and, it might be said, of the 18th century, for it proved to be the enabling factor of the rebels’ Yorktown campaign.
In the Bay both fleets had made their entrance at the foot of the Capes. De Grasse, arriving on August 30, had anchored his main fleet in Lynnhaven Bay, off Cape Henry. Graves, entering on September 5, had come in at the foot of Cape Charles where the mouths of the York and the James rivers flowing down past Yorktown open onto the Bay.
Aghast upon entering the Chesapeake, Graves saw, instead of the twelve to fourteen ships he had expected de Grasse to bring, the great array of de Grasse’s fleet of 28 ships of the line plus some frigates and gunboats. Against this superior force, Graves had, however, the superior position in that he was sailing in regular procession with the wind behind him, while de Grasse, after the knotty business of landing his troops to join Lafayette, was trying to maneuver his ships out of the harbor into the open sea where he would have room to form a battle line. In seeking combat, his purpose was to deny the Bay to the British and prevent the entrance of a force to aid or rescue Cornwallis. Graves’s purpose was, of course, the reverse: to keep the sea-lanes open to Cornwallis. His opportunity to overwhelm the French was, according to naval critics, ideal. He was running down before the wind in good order, while the enemy in straggling succession was laboring to negotiate the uneasy passage around Cape Henry to the open sea. If he had attacked the disconnected French van one by one, he could have destroyed them. But that was not the tactical formula of Fighting Instructions, and Graves was a conformist to the code, and a product of the Royal Navy’s greatest self-inflicted wound, the lost initiative left by the execution of Admiral Byng and the court-martial of Admiral Mathews. He knew that his duty under Fighting Instructions was to form line ahead in a battle line parallel to that of the enemy. Because the enemy had no line, Graves was at a loss. From one o’clock to 3:30 p.m., with the wind in rapid changes of direction, first in favor of the French and then of the English, Graves struggled to fulfill the formula, and by the time he raised the signal to engage, he had lost his advantage. While hoisting the blue-and-white-checkered flag that signaled “bear down,” meaning that every captain should turn toward the enemy and attack the nearest individually, he kept the line ahead signal, which supersedes all others, still flying from his mizzenmast. “Bear down” would mean there would be no line, while the superior signal said to stay with it. The puzzled captains obeyed the superior signal. Keeping their line, they were brought up against the French at an angle instead of parallel, with the result that only their lead ships—part of Graves’s force, instead of the whole—could engage. Cannon boomed and French gunnery told. Four of Graves’s ships were so badly damaged as to be useless to him for renewing action next morning. For the next two days, September 6 and 7, while carpenters and riggers made what repairs they could at sea, the two fleets watched each other without engaging. They broke contact next day with no clear-cut victory or defeat discernible, yet with import that would place the Battle of the Bay among the decisive sea combats of history. Graves’s fleet was damaged and dispersed; de Grasse’s fleet held command of the Bay. The old culprit, “misunderstood” signals—the word was Graves’s in his subsequent explanation to Parliament—had mangled yet another naval battle, although in fact the signals had been understood only too well.
On September 9, de Grasse precipitated a resolution by sailing his fleet back into the Bay to make it his domain. At the same time, de Barras, the critical addition to the contest, slipped in from Newport with his siege guns and his beef and his eight fresh ships.
Again at a loss, Graves, as senior naval officer, asked for a Council of War, which gave its opinion that, under the circumstances of his damaged ships and the enemy’s increased numbers, he could not give “effectual succour” to the garrison at Yorktown. Admiral Hood, as Graves’s junior, rashly advised that Graves should re-enter the Bay himself to contest the French dominion, although his persuasion was not eloquent or forceful enough to take effect.
Faced with the question often met by commanders in a tight spot, whether discretion is not the better part of valor, Graves concluded that it was, and decided that his proper course was to take his fleet back to New York for repairs to fit it for return to Yorktown. This he did, leaving the French by sea and land holding closed the gateways for either aid or exit to Cornwallis.
Cornwallis’ reaction to the enemy landing at his doorstep was no less static than Clinton’s at the Hudson. The same absence of combative response, almost of laziness, marked both occasions. When de Grasse first arrived in the Bay, his initial act, before the naval battle with Graves, had been to ferry his 3,000 land troops up the river to be disembarked to join and reinforce Lafayette’s force facing the British stationed on Gloucester Point, across the river from Yorktown. Cornwallis had seen in the Bay the size of the fleet sent against him, which he overestimated at thirty to forty ships. As they detached one by one to come upriver to disembark their troops, and the French were caught in the scramble of landing when it would have been difficult for them to defend themselves, Cornwallis, whether in lassitude or absurd overconfidence, did not attack. “It was a pleasant surprise for our troops on landing,” recalled Karl Gustaf Tornquist, the Swedish lieutenant serving with de Grasse, in his memoir, “that Cornwallis did not move in the least to hinder them, since indeed a single cannon could have caused much damage in the narrow and in many places winding river. Instead he was content to draw nearer to York, destroying everything which lay in his way, not sparing defenceless women and children.” Even when th
e newcomers were combined with Lafayette’s force of 5,000, Cornwallis’ 7,800 men approximately equaled them. His inactivity at this point was due to his expectation of relief from New York, assured in Clinton’s letters, though his failure to attack the hampered foe seems strangely unenterprising.
Without an observer stationed on the Capes with a prearranged signal, the outcome of the Battle of the Capes (as the combat in the Bay is sometimes called) remained unknown to Washington and Rochambeau for four silent days until scouts reported that the French fleet was still afloat in the Bay and the English had vanished over the horizon. Even then the generals could not rid their minds of a possible British return, which might cancel the rising hope that if pressed on land, Cornwallis’ surrender was now a realistic possibility, bringing American victory with all its Allied objectives.
The army, still slowly trudging along its rough thoroughfare, would take another week before the vanguard could reach Williamsburg and complete the last ten miles to stand before Yorktown.
During these crucial days, Cornwallis, too, had caught the strange contagion of passivity so foreign to him that lately had afflicted his colleagues. After learning of the outcome of the Battle of the Bay he had the time, which he did not use, during the slow approach of the enemy to open a land retreat for his about-to-be beleaguered army. The least reconnaissance of Lafayette’s little army standing opposite to him at Gloucester would have shown that it was not overpowering.
A hard-hitting offensive could have broken through. He did not attempt it. As William Smith, Clinton’s intelligence officer in New York, perceived, a spark had gone out. What quenched it is hard to say, unless it was a developing sense that America was slipping from the British grip and would not be arrested. Cornwallis’ surprising inaction may be charged to Clinton’s repeated assurance of reinforcements coming to his aid, for it was military tradition that a commander did not enter combat before an awaited reinforcement should arrive to add to his strength. After learning of Washington’s passage through Philadelphia, Clinton corrected his first mistaken assumption that Washington was headed for Staten Island to attack New York. He wrote again to Cornwallis, on September 2, to say it was now clear that the army was marching southward with attack on Yorktown in mind. “You may be assured,” Clinton wrote, that if Yorktown were attacked, “I shall either endeavor to reinforce the army under your command by all the means within the compass of my power or make every possible diversion in your Lordship’s favor.” An even more specific promise, dated September 6, came by express boat. “I think the best way to relieve you is to join you as soon as possible with all the Force that can be spared from hence which is about 4,000 men.” These were the reinforcements he had put aboard Graves’s ships when in August he had received the boatload of 2,400 Hessian mercenaries, which relaxed his obsessions about the defense of New York and allowed him the startling generosity of offering to let go 4,000 of his own men. “They are already embarked,” he wrote, without mentioning that they were still in port. He added an assurance that anyone might have been justified in taking as definite from any commander other than the hesitant Clinton. They would sail “with large reinforcements on October 5” … the instant he was notified by Graves that “we may venture.”