First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [165]
On their way the travelers find good inns and clean beds but no such generosity as Mr. Walker’s. At one place a bill was presented for $21.
On September 16 they hear with “unparalleled joy” the good news that after a successful outcome of the naval battle in Chesapeake Bay, de Grasse had remained in possession of the Bay. On the 18th they reached Williamsburg to meet joyfully with Lafayette, and on the 22nd they welcomed the return of Washington and Rochambeau from their initial visit to de Grasse on the Ville de Paris.
Informed of the coming of this enlarged enemy force, Cornwallis too began to weigh valor in the balance against discretion. Commanding the last effective army in America, and the last Britain was likely to be able to raise, he had to think of its preservation. To leave Yorktown before envelopment was the problem. If he could break through the blockade maintained by de Grasse with one ship of the line and two frigates at the mouth of the York, the British, using transports they had tied up at York, might on a dark night, if unseen by the Allies, sail past the enemy and across the Bay to the Virginia coast on the far side. To break up the blockade, their means would be fire ships, a nasty weapon. Empty boats filled with tarred faggots and sticks and set alight by red-hot cannonballs heated almost molten would be released in the river to be carried downstream by wind and tide. As living torches, they would set fire to and destroy the blockaders, creating such panic and confusion on the French ships as would cause their captains to cut their cables and sail away. If that was Cornwallis’ hope, it seems farfetched; nevertheless, the attempt was made on the night of September 22. Four schooners were converted to fire ships and given to the command of four volunteers, one the captain of a Loyalist privateer. With the wind aiding, they were advancing down the river “with every probability of success,” according to one captain’s journal, when the privateer captain set his ship alight too soon. The French, at this vision of moving fire, “fired 20 or 30 shots at us” before retreating “in a precipitate and confused manner.” Adding to the fire storm, the other fire ships had set themselves alight; the “whole river was now aglow” and muscular tongues of flame licked the sky. With sails and flag blazing, one boat blew up and the heat that was felt as it passed by a companion ship was so great that the pilot ran his ship aground. In the end, the only result was the loss to the British of four vessels, leaving Cornwallis no nearer to a way out.
On September 28, the clink of bridles and the rhythmic clomp of horses’ hooves and tramp of marching men were heard in the British camp in Yorktown, announcing the approach of the enemy army from Williamsburg. The next night, Cornwallis astonished his army by ordering withdrawal from the outer defense line, the better to consolidate his forces for a compact defense. He believed that the expenditure in lives in a fight for the outer lines was not worth making when he was in expectation of early relief. Reasonable and compassionate, his decision was the most unfortunate he could have made. The abandoned redoubts—these were earthworks shaped like sections of a wall, built to absorb the impact of shells and to act as barriers to the assault of troops—were promptly occupied by the Allies when they found them empty in the morning, and made duck blinds for their artillery, soon to be rulers of the siege. When good fortune for once had descended in the form of de Barras’ arrival from Newport with the siege guns, 1,500 barrels of salt beef and a contingent of French troops, the former British redoubts were ready-made foundations for the American batteries. Landed