Patriots (78 page)

Each day Washington’s guns got closer to the town. They had been six hundred yards away when Cornwallis wrote his letter. The next day the Americans opened a second parallel and cut the distance in half. The American troops expected that this development would compel Cornwallis to venture out from behind his defenses and fight. But Cornwallis had built a bunker in the grotto of his headquarters and was living underground.

On October 14, a Sunday, the Americans trained their fire on two advance British redoubts near the river. That night General Washington granted Alexander Hamilton’s request to lead the attack on one of them. Colonel Hamilton had chosen as his password “Rochambeau,” which, said quickly with an American accent, sounded like
“Rush on, boys.” Hamilton ordered his men to unload their muskets to avoid accidental shots that would alert the British. They were to charge with bayonets. French soldiers would storm the second redoubt, and before the two parties set out each commander addressed them. Washington spoke briefly and simply, urging the Americans to be brave. General Rochambeau pitched his appeal in a higher key.
“My children,” he began, “I have great need of you tonight.” When he finished, a French soldier called from the darkness, “We will fight like lions. Until the last man is killed.”

The assault began and it looked as though the volunteers had chosen suicide. As they stormed barricades of felled trees under intense British fire, the soldiers sometimes stumbled into holes blasted in the ground by their own artillery—holes deep enough, one American sergeant thought, for burying an ox. American sappers and miners ran ahead with axes to cut a way past the British defenses, but the troops jammed up and blocked their way. Alexander Hamilton was too short to climb over the wall, but he ordered one of his men to kneel, hopped up on his back and leaped over. As the British gave up their position they threw in crackling grenades, and taking the redoubt cost the Americans nine dead and
twenty-four wounded. Lafayette, directing the operation from the rear, was glad to see his American friends performing well in the eyes of the French. He entered the redoubt with Hamilton’s forces and sent a teasing message to the French officer charged with taking the other position: “
I am in my redoubt. Where are you?”

The French had been assigned the larger of the two positions, and their commander sent back a message: “Tell the marquis I am not in mine but will be in five minutes.”

After the British had been driven from both outposts, the nightly rains began, but the American troops waded willingly through the mud to secure the captured redoubts. Now no section of Yorktown was safe from enemy fire. George Washington praised Hamilton, Lafayette and the others for intrepidity and coolness and awarded one of the wounded, Sergeant William Brown of Connecticut, a new medal for valor called the Purple Heart.

Cornwallis inspected his losses on the morning of October 15 and wrote to General Clinton that his position had become so precarious that he couldn’t recommend either the British army or navy risking an attempt to save him. But Cornwallis was being driven to the desperate measures the Americans had been expecting. The night of his report to Clinton, he ordered a heavy barrage of artillery down from his walls and sent out three hundred and fifty men to penetrate the enemy lines and silence their guns. One British unit, pretending to be an American relief party, succeeded in getting inside the second parallel. As several British soldiers stabbed the French sentries, others broke off their bayonets in the touchholes of the cannon. Before they were discovered and driven back, they had killed or wounded seventeen French and American soldiers. But they had disabled only six guns, which were repaired before sunup.

The next afternoon Lord Cornwallis gathered all the small craft on the riverbank and had some of his wounded rowed to safety on Gloucester Point. That night, he ordered Banastre Tarleton to prepare to break out from Gloucester and lead a forced march to New York. Though many of their boats had been damaged by the constant shelling, Cornwallis thought he could get his able-bodied troops over the river in three crossings. He would
travel with the second and leave behind a letter for George Washington, asking mercy for the sick and wounded he would have to abandon at Yorktown. It was the maneuver Washington had predicted, the one Admiral de Grasse had shrugged away.

Cornwallis’ entire first division reached Gloucester before midnight. But then rain and squalls scattered the boats and blew two of them downstream, where they were captured by the Americans. The storm went on until 2
A.M.
, and Cornwallis gave up all hope of escaping. At noon the next day, the men who had made the first crossing returned to Yorktown, amid a severe barrage from the French. On October 17, French and American commanders celebrated the fourth anniversary of John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga with the heaviest thunder of shell they could muster. This was also the day Henry Clinton received Cornwallis’ dispatch warning him that Yorktown was probably past saving. All the same, Clinton went ahead with his preparations. He signed a new will and got ready to sail to Virginia to snatch victory away from George Washington.

—

The October 17 bombardment had begun at daybreak. Before 10
A.M.
, a young boy wearing a red coat and carrying a drum climbed up on a British parapet and beat the signal for a parley. Immediately, an officer appeared behind him holding a white flag on a standard. He moved outside the British fortification with the drummer at his side. The boy’s drum couldn’t be heard above the cannon roar, but American soldiers saw the two figures moving toward them and gradually stopped firing. An American officer sprang forward, ran to meet the British soldier, tied a handkerchief over his eyes and led him to a house at the rear of the American parallels. The drummer boy was sent back to Yorktown.

Cornwallis’ white flag of truce came a week earlier than George Washington had expected. He knew that British provisions at Yorktown were scarce, but he thought Cornwallis could feed his troops for seven more days and would hold out in hopes that the British Navy would save him. Instead, Cornwallis proposed that hostilities cease for twenty-four hours while representatives drew up the terms for a British surrender. General Washington ordered that the siege continue until an aide drafted a reply for his approval. The answer was ready at 2
P.M.

“
An ardent desire to spare the further effusion of blood will readily incline me to listen to such terms for the surrender of your post and garrisons of York and Gloucester as are admissible,” was Washington’s message. But before scheduling a conference, he demanded the British terms on paper and would permit only a two-hour cease-fire while Lord Cornwallis wrote them out.

Late that afternoon, the proposals arrived in the American camp, along with Cornwallis’ complaint that Washington had not given him time to go into proper detail. Cornwallis asked for the same generous terms Horatio Gates had given John Burgoyne at Saratoga. Before the siege had begun, Cornwallis had been adamant about never surrendering as cravenly as Burgoyne had done. Now, without a single British cannon to fire, he had to trust Washington for favorable concessions. He asked specifically that his surrendering troops be returned to Britain or Germany if they pledged not to rejoin the fighting. Gates had been severely criticized for that same provision; even if these same soldiers didn’t return to America, they eased Britain’s military burden by relieving her forces elsewhere. After Saratoga, the Congress had discovered a lapse in the agreement by Burgoyne and had declared the entire treaty void. Most of his troops were still prisoners in Virginia. George Washington had no intention of being as lenient in victory as General Gates, and he rejected the British terms. But he extended the cease-fire for the night.

The silence of that cold October night was solemn for the Americans. Meteors streaking through the sky reminded them of trailing bombs but without the same horror. The next morning, the British stood along their battlements and serenaded the peaceful dawn with bagpipes. The French responded with their regimental band. As the sun rose, officers and men from each side lined up along their parapets to study their foe across two hundred yards.

Washington had never been in the position to dictate peace terms, and, like Cornwallis, he relied on a recent precedent. When Henry Clinton had taken Charleston, General Benjamin Lincoln of Massachusetts was among the prisoners. He had been exchanged later and had joined Washington at Yorktown. General Washington now extended the British conditions at Charleston to Cornwallis. The harshest was a point of honor. Clinton had forbidden General
Lincoln to march out his vanquished men with drums beating and flags unfurled. Now Washington denied Cornwallis the same courtesies and gave the British commander two hours to agree. After that, the music would stop and the artillery would resume.

Even with all of Washington’s planning and nerve, he could not have succeeded without the French Navy. He invited Admiral de Grasse to come ashore and join him at a ceremony that was beginning to look certain, but the admiral was confined to his ship with asthma and sent Barras in his place. Despite the American deadline, negotiations continued throughout the night of October 18 while the British representative tried to ease the terms by pointing out that Lord Cornwallis hadn’t been responsible for Henry Clinton’s harshness at Charleston. Early the next morning, Washington approved an overnight compromise that gave way on the music. The British army could come out from behind their walls playing a marching tune, but it had to be one of their own melodies, not a mocking rendition of “Yankee Doodle.” Washington refused, however, to grant immunity to the Tory civilians at Yorktown or to his own deserters.

Lafayette’s brother-in-law, heir to one of France’s great fortunes, had served as the French delegate during the talks and protested that, since Cornwallis’ war chest held only eighteen hundred pounds sterling, it was undignified to worry about what became of it. America’s negotiator replied that to a new country with a devalued currency the money meant a good deal, and the chest must become the property of the United States. General Washington informed Cornwallis that he was to sign, the surrender by 11
A.M.
and be ready to turn over his troops three hours later.

Washington chose a field between the American camp and the trenches for the ceremony and sent Pennsylvania troops with spades to fill in earth that had been dug from the Yorktown road. Riding on a white horse, Washington led his army onto the plain. He was accompanied by General Rochambeau at the head of the French troops, who wore bright coats with black gaiters setting off white broadcloth trousers. The Americans lined up across from them in hunting shirts and faded Continental uniforms. After the cold nights, the sun warmed the soldiers’ backs as they waited past the agreed time for the British to appear.

Five hundred miles north, Henry Clinton’s ships had lifted
anchor and were sailing to the Chesapeake. Clinton estimated that in five days he could assist Cornwallis in repelling the enemy.

At the moment, Lord Cornwallis was claiming an indisposition and staying behind his lines. He sent General Charles O’Hara to surrender for him. Count Mathieu Dumas cantered up from the French line and offered to lead O’Hara to General Washington. O’Hara smiled broadly and asked instead for General Rochambeau. Count Dumas had ridden with Washington from New Jersey and had watched worshipful Americans turn out simply to touch their commander in chief’s boots. He was not going to let the British cheat Washington of this moment. Dumas pressed his horse forward, putting himself between O’Hara and Rochambeau. Even so, O’Hara held out his sword to the French commander.

Rochambeau shook his head and gestured to Washington. “We are subordinate to the Americans,” he said. “General Washington will give you your orders.”

O’Hara swung around and approached Washington. Once again he extended his sword, but Washington had given Benjamin Lincoln the honor of conducting the surrender. As he declined to take the sword himself, Washington spoke a consoling word:
“Never from such a good hand.”

After their insistence on marching out to music, the British had chosen a glum song. The drummer beat to it indifferently as the fifers piped the melancholy tune to its words:

If ponies rode men and if grass ate cows
,

And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse . . .

Benjamin Lincoln explained to General O’Hara that the British were to enter a large circle formed by mounted French hussars. About half of Cornwallis’ men had come out for the surrender; the rest, the wounded, had been left behind at Yorktown. Within the circle, soldiers from each British regiment were ordered to lay down their arms and march back between the French and American lines. The British soldiers seemed far more shaken than their Hessian allies. Among the thirty-five hundred men, many seemed drunk, and others bit their lips to keep from weeping. Still others gave up and cried out loud. When they were commanded to give up their arms, the men hurled down their
weapons to damage them or hugged them in a last embrace and crooned words of farewell. Through it all, the band played on:

If summer were spring and the other way round
,

Then all the world would be upside down.