Lafayette (32 page)

“The light infantry, the guards, the 80th regiment, and the Queen’s rangers, are, it is said, destined for New York.”
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“There are in Hampton-road thirty transport ships full of troops, most of them red coats. There are eight or ten brigs which have cavalry on board.”
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“York is surrounded by the river and a morass, the entrance is but narrow. There is . . . a commanding hill, which, if occupied by the enemy, would much extend their works.”
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“The greater part of the enemy are at York. . . . They have a forty-four gun ship; frigates and vessels are scattered lower down. . . . Lord Cornwallis must be attacked with pretty great apparatus.

“I hope you will come yourself to Virginia, and that . . . I will have, at least, the satisfaction of beholding you myself at the head of the combined armies. . . . Adieu, my dear general; I heartily thank you for having ordered me to remain in Virginia and to your goodness to me I am owing the most beautifull prospect that I may ever behold.”
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For several weeks, Cornwallis feigned strategic breakouts, first toward the Carolinas, then toward northern Virginia, then actually embarking part of his army and sailing up Chesapeake Bay toward Baltimore, before returning to Yorktown. Lafayette dutifully reported each movement and countered accordingly, moving troops south, then north, then back to his original position on the cape just above Yorktown. His constant reports to Washington left him little time to write Adrienne. “If the naval superiority which we are expecting should arrive,” he scribbled quickly, “I shall rejoice at the campaign closing. . . .
Maybe it will end in a very favorable way.”
He asked her to “kiss Anastasie and George a thousand times. . . . Adieu, my Sweetheart, I cannot find words to tell you how much I love you, but I will be happy when I have the chance to try in person.”
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Early in August, de Grasse set sail from the West Indies. Washington dispatched a courier to Lafayette with orders “to prevent, if possible, the retreat of Cornwallis towards Carolina.” Lafayette tightened his ring of artillery around Yorktown and sent Washington a confident reply: “Should a French fleet now come in Hampton Roads, the British army would, I think, be ours.”
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As he waited for de Grasse’s fleet, Lafayette shored up his military encirclement of Yorktown and laid in supplies for the Washington and Rochambeau armies. An expert on quartermastering since Albany, he badgered every governor for more manpower and materials, obtaining pledges of 500 militiamen from Maryland, 400 from Virginia, 600 from Pennsylvania. Virginia rebuffed his requests for supplies. “This state,” he told Washington, “has a large quantity of beef—of corn—some flour—very little rum. . . . Had we anything like Monney matters would go on very well.”
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Day after day, Lafayette complained about the “want of clothing of every sort, arms, ammunition, hospital stores, and horse accoutrements.” He warned Washington that “heavy artillery and every thing relative to a siege
from the cannon to the tool, is not to be found. . . . I May add medicines and hospital stores.”
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Lafayette sent more spies into the Cornwallis camp, including some runaway slaves to whom he promised freedom for their services; some became personal aides to Cornwallis himself. He deployed Wayne’s Pennsylvanians on the opposite, south bank of the James River to assure Patriot control of navigation and sent his old friend and former aide de camp Colonel Gimat, by then commander of a Continental army battalion of light infantry, to Cape Henry at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, to await the arrival of de Grasse with dispatches, battle plans, and pilots.

On August 19, the combined American and French armies in the north—about 2,500 Americans and 4,000 Frenchmen—broke camp in New York. Leaving a few Patriot troops to continue the charade at the empty tents near Staten Island, Washington and Rochambeau hurried their forces southward through New Jersey, reaching Philadelphia on August 30—just as de Grasse’s huge fleet loomed on the horizon near the entrance of Chesapeake Bay. As soon as Clinton discovered Washington’s ruse, he ordered an expeditionary force to sail south to support Cornwallis—but it was too late.

With Wayne’s troops protecting the south bank of the James River, de Grasse sailed into Hampton Roads and up to James Island and landed arms, ammunition, and other stores to replenish Lafayette’s army—and 3,000 French troops to augment his firepower. For the first time in his career, Lafayette realized his cherished dream of commanding a combined force of French and American troops in war.

Wayne described the scene: “We lay about two hours on our ground expecting every moment to see a glorious sight; at last a number of large boats appeared with about three thousand French troops on board, and also three large armed vessels to cover the troops landing.

“The troops landed on our opposite side, on James Island, and . . . spread an universal joy amongst our officers and soldiers. Never did I behold a more beautiful and agreeable sight.”
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That evening, Wayne was crossing the James to Lafayette’s camp when an overanxious sentinel fired and wounded him slightly in the thigh with buckshot. He brushed it off nonchalantly, and, intent on showing the world why his troops called him “mad,” he casually “took a walk to take a view of the French troops, who make a very fine soldierly appearance, they being all very tall men, their uniform is white coats turned up with blue, their underclothes are white.”
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As Lafayette took command of the troops on land, other ships in the de Grasse fleet anchored at the mouth of the York River and bottled up the fleet of British frigates. Cornwallis’s ill-conceived strategy had made the allied mission all too simple. “The English army found itself enclosed on every side, and no possible means of escape was left to Lord Cornwallis,” Lafayette related. On September 4, Lafayette tightened the noose around Cornwallis, and de Grasse, eager to return to the West Indies as quickly as possible, urged him to strike the final blow. Lafayette refused. In the Arthurian legend he envisioned, only his warrior father, George Washington, would lead American forces to victory, with Lafayette at his side.

Lafayette told de Grasse that Washington’s specific orders were only “to prevent his [Cornwallis’s] escape by land.” He said the Washington and Rochambeau armies would soon arrive and double allied forces to 18,000 men. Cornwallis would have no choice but surrender “to spare the lives of the soldiers, which a good general ought always to do.”
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De Grasse tried coaxing Lafayette with flattery, offering 1,800 more marines and sailors to support an immediate strike. “There, Monsieur le Marquis,” de Grasse said. “I want to contribute everything I can to further your glory and assure your spending a winter of tranquillity. It would fulfill my greatest wish to be a witness and I send you my compliments in advance on your victories. With pleasure, I join your admirers.”

Lafayette argued that an immediate assault would constitute a “murderous attack [and] shed a great deal of blood only to satisfy a vain lust for glory. The temptation was great,” he admitted later, “but even if the attack had succeeded, it would necessarily have cost a great deal of blood. [I] would not sacrifice the soldiers entrusted to me to personal ambition . . . by waiting, the reduction of the army of Cornwallis was secured at little cost.”
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Washington was grateful: “I have received with infinite satisfaction, My Dear Marquis, the information of the Arrival of the Count de Grasse. And have an additional pleasure in finding that your ideas on every occasion have been so consonant with my own, and that by your military dispositions & prudent measures you have anticipated all my wishes.”
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In a subsequent note, the usually austere commander in chief chortled, “I hope you will keep Lord Cornwallis safe, without Provisions or Forage until we arrive. Adieu.”

Ironically, Lafayette’s stubborn chivalry proved fortuitous for de Grasse. The day after he moved into the mouth of the York River, a British fleet of nineteen ships sent to rescue Cornwallis sailed into Chesapeake Bay to challenge the French fleet from the rear. Had de Grasse landed his marines and sailors as he had wanted, he would have left his ships defenseless. As it was, he wheeled his big ships about and turned their heavy cannons on the British attackers. The two fleets jockeyed about before moving out of the bay into open waters for more room to maneuver. Although the heavy French cannons and fierce winds crippled a few British frigates the first day, the duel continued for three more days, with each fleet parrying, thrusting, and shifting course, but gaining little advantage. Then, eleven more French ships from Newport sailed in unexpectedly. Vastly outnumbered, the British put about and fled to New York for reinforcements, leaving de Grasse in control of Chesapeake Bay and sealing the fate of Cornwallis and his army.

With an expanded fleet of forty ships, de Grasse left his biggest ships of the line guarding the entrance of Chesapeake Bay, while his frigates and transports sailed up the bay to Head of Elk to ferry the Washington and Rochambeau armies to Jamestown.

On September 14, Washington and Rochambeau rode into Williamsburg for an emotional reunion with Lafayette, as the combined allied force of more than 15,000 men marched before them. Washington went to see de Grasse on his flagship,
Ville de Paris
, and returned incensed. The French admiral was preparing to abandon the Yorktown campaign: a powerful British fleet was on its way from New York, and rather than risk his ships in American waters, de Grasse preferred returning to defend the French West Indies. With d’Estaing’s earlier withdrawals in mind, Washington sent de Grasse a blunt warning: “Your Excellency’s departure from the Chesapeake, by affording an opening for the succor of York, which the enemy would
instantly avail themselves of, would be, not only the disgrace and loss of renouncing an enterprise, upon which the fairest expectations of the allies have been founded, after the most expensive preparations and uncommon exertions and fatigues, but perhaps the disbanding of the whole army for want of provisions.”
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At Washington’s behest, Lafayette finally coaxed the French admiral to reconsider. De Grasse agreed to leave two ships of the line and three frigates to blockade Cornwallis at the mouth of the York River, while he led his thirty-five other ships to the entrance of Chesapeake Bay to engage the British.

On September 28, the allied army, about 9,000 American and 7,800 French troops, marched out of Williamsburg to lay siege to Yorktown. It was a surprisingly short campaign. They encamped two miles from town, the Americans on the right, the French on the left. Without firing a shot, the British troops evacuated their outer works, allowing the Allies to move heavy siege guns through the wooden palisades to shell the English second wall, three hundred yards away. On October 6, with Yorktown surrounded by land, the shelling began; by the end of the day, shells breached the center and left sections of the second wall, but the British held firm to two sections on the Allied right flank, where Lafayette’s heralded Light Division poised for their last attack as a unit under their revered commander. No stranger to Arthurian legend or poetic justice, Washington ordered two brigades forward to reinforce Lafayette’s unit: one led by Colonel Alexander Hamilton, the other by Colonel John Laurens, the son of the still-imprisoned former president of Congress. From his vantage atop his huge horse, Washington watched his three cherished young protégés march into history together, with what Lafayette described as “the tread of veterans, colors flying, drums beating.”
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Washington assigned Colonel Gimat, Lafayette’s loyal former aide, to Laurens’s division, and he ordered Dr. James Thacher to Lafayette’s side in case any of the young men he had nurtured suffered injury.

As darkness fell on October 14, Lafayette led the charge; bayonets fixed, they stormed the breaches in the British fortifications, flinging themselves at the British defenders with “an ardor” that sent the Redcoats who survived fleeing in terror—and ensured Lafayette’s place on the walls of Chavaniac among the portraits of the other great Lafayette warriors—Pons Motier and the rest.

“Colonel Gimat’s battalion led the van, and was followed by that of Colonel Hamilton, who commanded the whole advanced corps,” Lafayette reported to Washington, giving credit to everyone but himself. “At the same time a party of eighty men, under Colonel Laurens turned the redoubt. . . . Colonel Hamilton[’s] well known talents and gallantry were on this occasion most conspicuous and serviceable. Our obligations to him, to Colonel Gimat, to Colonel Laurens, and to each and all the officers, are above expression. . . . It adds greatly to the character of the troops, that, under the fire of the enemy, they displayed and took their ranks with perfect silence and order. Not one gun was fired . . . and, owing to the conduct of the Commanders and bravery of the men, the redoubt was stormed with an uncommon rapidity.”
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