Moments from the Revolution: Part X of X - The Siege (688 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 1.77 on 12 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Axolotl (View user info) at 2005-11-21 12:43:10 EST
Part I: The First Shots - http://www.ubersite.com/m/78159
Part II: April 19th, 1775 - http://www.ubersite.com/m/78237
Part III: Bunker Hill - http://www.ubersite.com/m/78377
Part IV: The Commander of the Continental Army - http://www.ubersite.com/m/78499
Part V: The Battle of New York - http://www.ubersite.com/m/78699
Part VI: A New Hope - http://www.ubersite.com/m/79183
Part VII: Saratoga - http://www.ubersite.com/m/79269
Part VIII: Betrayal - http://www.ubersite.com/m/79315
Part IX: The Defeat of the Legion - http://www.ubersite.com/m/79388
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http://www.fictionpress.com/~chrisconway
That is the website that I also host my stories on, FictionPress. It's pretty good for aspiring authors, though in the beginning it can be a little confusing to work out the editing and chapters.
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"Good evening, General Washington," said the Compte du Rochambeau in a slight French accent. "I hope I find you well?"
"In excellent spirits, General," Washington replied, sitting down at the discussion table. It was the twenty-second of the month of May, 1781, and they were in a New England mansion in Wethersfield, Connecticut, determining the strategy of their next moves against the British.
"Things have been going well for our cause since the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina," Washington began. "Last March, as I'm sure you've heard, Cornwallis' expedition was halted in a large battle at Guilford Court House, North Carolina."
"Indeed I did," Rochambeau replied. "What concerns me more are General Clinton's redcoats in New York City."
Since Washington had lost the city in August of 1776, almost five years previously, British General Henry Clinton had maintained a constant garrison in Manhattan and the surrounding regions. They were being penned in by General Lafayette in Bergen County along the Hackensack River, and by the American fortress at West Point and their camps at Morristown.
"Yes...I have wanted to create a plan of attack to drive out or capture the English in Manhattan," Washington said. "I have been eager to make up for my ignoble loss of the city I had been charged to defend several years ago."
"Don't let revenge or emotions get in the way of the goal," Rochambeau warned. "And never let fear of the stronger enemy stop you from attacking with all haste and vigor. Why, King Louis himself would not have dared declare war on England if not for the tact of your Benjamin Franklin! He convinced King Louis that the British knew that France was supplying arms to the Continentals, and was about to declare war on France anyway—and better to make the first move and go on the offensive than wait for King George's declaration."
Franklin had convinced the King of France in 1778 to go to war after the Battle of Saratoga, and France began sending arms and supplies to the colonies. In July of 1780, a French expeditionary force of four thousand men under Lafayette and Rochambeau landed at Newport, Rhode Island. Henry Clinton would have destroyed it just as the soldiers were unloading, but Washington had held his force up with a feint attack on New York, and now many thousands of French regiments were stationed all around the middle colonies and New England.
It was decided then, between General Washington and General Rochambeau: they would attack New York City.
Several months earlier, near modern-day Greensboro, North Carolina.
"Keep moving, men," said Lieutenant Dawson. He had been leading the frontal ranks of Lord Cornwallis' expedition north ever since leaving South Carolina from Charlestown.
Cornwallis had decided to abandon his South Carolina campaign. Bloodied and beaten after the terrible defeat by the Americans at Cowpens, Cornwallis had left a strong garrison in Charlestown and began to move the bulk of his force, about eight thousand men, up toward New Jersey to help Henry Clinton.
They had marched for a long time now, and had entered North Carolina several days ago. Some of the villages and farmhouses were friendly to the British Army as they passed, but others shut their doors and refused to give aid.
The front columns of the line were in a clearing now, near Guilford Court House, North Carolina. Dawson marched his men easily over the grassy terrain; the fields turned to woods a little further up, with fences and farmland visible through the trees and beyond to the idyllic pastures.
Everything looked so beautiful out here in the half-wilderness, half-farmland of the Carolinas. Out in the plantations Dawson saw the field hands working, planting crops to be harvested in the summer. All the snow had melted, and the weather was turning warm. Up ahead were gentle country hills, picket fences—and what suspiciously looked like breastworks and fortifications less than twenty yards away in the forest.
A hundred rifles cocked, Daniel Morgan's army peered out from behind the trees and hastily-dug ditches in the ground, beyond the wooden barricades and toward the front British lines. Steadying themselves on the trunks of trees or resting their barrels on the ground in a prone position, they stared out at the advancing column, not firing a shot.
There was an awkward several minutes of silence, in which Lord Cornwallis was informed of the reason that his front lines had stopped in the clearing. He immediately gave the order to attack.
The militia fired out onto the British in the open field, with snipers working on dismantling the officer corps from the flanks. The British pushed through the colonial lines with heavy casualties taken, and rushed away from the field in withdrawal, running from the battle and away to safety. The battle had been a draw.
To make things worse, Cornwallis had received correspondence from Henry Clinton saying in a not-so-gentile tone that if he could not manage to march his army overland to New York, just to wait at a nearby port so that the Royal Navy could transport his army to Manhattan. Sulkily, Cornwallis complied with Clinton's request and settled in at Yorktown, a southern Virginia tobacco port, near Williamsburg and Jamestown, where the modern United States was founded.
General Lafayette in Virginia soon heard of Cornwallis' new position, and immediately sent a messenger up to Washington and Rochambeau up north to tell them to come down.
"Cornwallis' men are numbering only seven thousand, and they are hungry and tired and in need of supplies," read Rochambeau, translating the letter for Washington. "They are on the York River, in a small port called Yorktown, and under instructions from Clinton, Cornwallis is to stay at Yorktown until he can link up with the Royal Navy."
Several days later on the 14th of August, Washington and Rochambeau received word that Admiral de Grasse, the leader of a strong French fleet stationed in the West Indies, was moving up north to Chesapeake Bay. Washington immediately abandoned the New York City invasion plan, and started to shift his forces southwards.
Leaving twenty-five hundred in forts around New York City under General William Heath to keep Clinton penned in, Washington moved south with eight thousand eight hundred Continentals and Militia down southwards to New Jersey. As de Grasse sailed toward Virginia, Washington and Rochambeau moved out on the 21st of August, traveling down through Delaware and Maryland, speeding toward Yorktown.
Admiral Thomas Graves was the Royal Navy officer in charge of defending Chesapeake Bay, and he was not a very capable man to entrust such an important duty to. Sailing up the bay, Admiral de Grasse sent his twenty-eight battleships and frigates into the engagement, and in a quick and furious fight where Graves did everything wrong and de Grasse did quite a few things right, the French defeated the English and won control of the Chesapeake Bay.
Gone was Lord Cornwallis' chance at escaping Yorktown; now the only ships sailing up and down the bay were French cruisers bombarding his men within the walls of the fortress. The Americans were closing in on the Yorktown Peninsula.
Lafayette joining them with three thousand men and Daniel Morgan adding on his small force, Washington and Rochambeau arrived on the 28th of September, 1781, with seventeen thousand allied soldiers in total. Nine thousand Americans were under Washington's command, as well as Rochambeau's eight thousand French guarding every angle of the fortress at Yorktown.
It became clear that this would be the battle to end the war. A complex trench system was set up along Yorktown heights and on the British side, and heavy bombardment was constant from the Americans on the land and the French fleet in the water. With supplies pouring in every day, Washington ripped apart the ground in front of the walls of Yorktown with shot, tearing holes in the citadel and sending countless Englishmen in their trenches to death.
"Let me lead a unit in this war," begged Alexander Hamilton. "I desire to capture a British trench."
"I think you have proved yourself capable," Washington said with a smile.
Late night on the fourteenth of October, a joint force of French and Americans advanced from their trenches on two key British redoubts.
"Who goes there?" the sentry cried, firing his musket down to illuminate the ground. Hamilton's men were approaching with bayonets fixed up the slope of the redoubt.
As cannons roared, the Americans and French stormed the trenches, enfilading the lines and after a fierce hand-to-hand fight, were in control of the network of trenches by morning. As Cornwallis pulled his men back to within the inner walls, the Americans and French began using their abandoned defenses to fire cannon down on the British.
And it was all over. Looking out his window at his Yorktown headquarters, Cornwallis shook his head. The rebel cannon were firing down from the heights onto the British fortifications, and the Americans were charging into the British trenches, firing down and finding nothing there; the British had all retreated to the safety of the fortress. The French and Continentals needed no more bloodshed, they would be content to stay on the hill and continue to bomb Yorktown from the heights.
"Lord Cornwallis," said Banastre Tarleton, a much more timid and humble man after his defeat at Cowpens. "The artillery crews have bid me tell you that we are down to just one hundred shells."
"Hmm," Cornwallis mumbled.
"The wounded have no place to stay, the beds in the medical tents are all full, but the numbers of the injured are growing rapidly," Tarleton persisted. "I hate to admit this as much as you, Lord, but I believe it is time to surrender."
"How did it come to this?" Cornwallis said glumly. "An army of rabble...disorganized peasants! How they ran for their lives at Long Island..."
That day, the 17th, Cornwallis placed his sword in the hand of one of his younger aides, and bade him to travel out under the white flag of surrender to the American lines, to ask for surrender. Washington accepted the offer, and the battle was over.
"Settled between his Excellency General Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the combined Forces of America and France; his Excellency the Count de Rochambeau, Lieutenant-General of the Armies of the King of France, Great Cross of the royal and military Order of St. Louis, commanding the auxiliary Troops of his Most Christian Majesty in America; and his Excellency the Count de Grasse, Lieutenant-General of the Naval Armies of his Most Christian Majesty, Commander of the Order of St. Louis, Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Army of France in the Chesapeake, on the one Part; and the Right Honorable Earl Cornwallis, Lieutenant-General of his Britannic Majesty's Forces, commanding the Garrisons of York and Gloucester; and Thomas Symonds, Esquire, commanding his Britannic Majesty's Naval Forces in York River in Virginia, on the other Part."
"All right," Cornwallis said shakily. "It sounds fair enough."
Washington continued reading, going through all the articles of capitulation, from the surrender of every one of the seven thousand British soldiers to the assurance that no personal property or effects would be seized by the victors.
"The garrison of Yorktown will march out to a place to be appointed in front of the posts, at two o'clock precisely, with shouldered arms, colors cased, and drums beating a British or German march," Washington read. "They are then to ground their arms, and return to their encampments, where they will remain until they are dispatched to the places of their destination. Two works on the Gloucester side will be delivered at one o'clock to a detachment of French and American troops appointed to possess them. The garrison will march out at three o'clock in the afternoon; the cavalry with their swords drawn, trumpets sounding, and the infantry in the manner prescribed for the garrison of York. They are likewise to return to their encampments until they can be finally marched off."
The articles and amendments of the ceasefire treaty were read off, and finally Cornwallis signed the document, along with Washington, Rochambeau, and de Grasse. Banastre Tarleton had been captured, and he, as with the rest of the officers, were being treated with a high degree of leniency.
A hundred and fifty-six Englishmen were dead, with three hundred and twenty-six wounded inside the walls of Yorktown. Fifty-two French had fallen in the trenches, with a hundred and thirty-four injured. Washington had only lost twenty men dead, and fifty-six wounded. Most important of all was the seven thousand British captured—it was a quarter of all of His Majesty's soldiers stationed in America.
The war was not yet over; Britain still maintained strong garrisons in New York and Charlestown, but the only effective field army in the colonies had been wiped off the map with a few stroked from Washington and Cornwallis' pen. The news was scandalous when it reached Britain, that a group of American commoners, aided by the hated and cowardly French, had overcome the odds and destroyed the army of a British Lord, a gentleman.
Upon hearing of the news of the battle, British Prime Minister Lord North immediately handed in his resignation to Parliament, unable to bear the scorn of the people. It was clear now that Britain could not possibly hope to ever reconquer the American colonies, not without the cost of thousands of young men. The war was over.
In late 1782 an armistice was signed, but it was not until Paris, on November 3rd, 1783 that Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams gathered with British delegates and signed the final treaty. The dream of the New World had finally come true, and the colonies were altogether free from the rule of an absolute monarch, and liberated from the chains of taxation.
Spectacles pushed up onto the ridge of his nose, Benjamin Franklin read, "His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz. New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free, sovereign and independent States; that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the Government, proprietory and territorial rights of the same, and every part thereof."
The news was brought back to the states, where the British had already been pulled back from the colonies—but they were colonies no longer.
The odds had been tremendous; at any point in the war the British could have destroyed the budding uprising and crushed the morale of the colonies before a shot was fired. If Samuel Adams had rioted after the Boston Massacre, if John Stark hadn't noticed the beach at Bunker Hill, if Washington had invaded Boston or was trapped on Long Island, if the Battle of Trenton had failed, if Benedict Arnold had obeyed orders at Saratoga or had betrayed West Point, if Captain Ferguson had pulled the trigger, if the British Legion was victorious at Cowpens, if the British had escaped at Yorktown...
The United States wasn't free of its troubles, nor would it ever be, but at least it had burst from the effluvious natal material of its mother country, and established itself as a free and sovereign nation, separate from England and an authority unto itself.
The ideals of democracy had coalesced into a new state, free from tyranny and oppression and by the grace of God, had become the United States of America.
User Reviews
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2006-01-03 20:43:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Yet another exceptional series, Ax.
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2005-11-22 12:29:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-21 17:20:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-11-21 16:08:03 (#)
Ranking: 2
What about the Battle of New Orleans?
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That's the next war, 40 years later.
"In 1814 we took a little trip
Followed Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we beat the bloody British at the town of New Orleans"
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-11-21 16:08:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What about the Battle of New Orleans?
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2005-11-21 14:01:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
1337 no more.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-21 13:51:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
1.33 on 7 reviews
1337! W000t!
Submitted by jack11058 (user info) at 2005-11-21 13:35:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2005-11-21 13:28:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
ah. sorry, with the american attitude nowadays...
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-21 13:27:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
It wasn't meant as a slight against France, who helped the Americans defeat the British with men, guns and gold, but it was from Cornwallis, from the British point of view.
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2005-11-21 13:15:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
The french cowardice thing started mainly after WWII, initiated and maintained mostly by the uneducated American population. I don't know where you get your "facts".
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2005-11-21 13:08:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
What I had meant with that passage was that the French were hated and cowardly to the British. The English felt the Americans were peasantry and the French were cowards, but that wasn't supposed to be taken as a criticism against the French in themselves, just from the British point of view.
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2005-11-21 12:58:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I find it odd that you call the French cowardly after listing all the aid you got from them.
Then Americans call them ungrateful.
What a bizarre attitude.