The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [174]
General Rochambeau had told Washington earlier, before they met with de Grasse, that the only way to defeat Cornwallis was to lay siege to Yorktown, using short, fat mortars that could fire cannonballs in high arcs to fly over the defensive redoubts and come down in the town. He himself had been involved in fourteen sieges and his engineers were experts at designing and constructing trenches for a long siege. On the same day the army arrived in the plain in front of Yorktown, work began on the lengthy trenches, designed in a semi-circular arc around the community one half mile away, and out of artillery range, or so Rochambeau said.5
The men building the trenches certainly disagreed. They became instant targets as they worked with pickaxes and shovels. “The enemy have kept a constant fire on our working parties all day,” wrote Wild, who toiled on the trenches with his soldiers. “Several of our men were killed or wounded in the night by shot and shells which the enemy fired very briskly.” Another soldier complained, “The firing from the enemy’s works was continued during the whole night at the distance of fifteen or twenty minutes between every shot . . . [in] morning, the firing has been much more frequent, the intermissions seldom exceeding five minutes and often not more than one or two minutes.”6
The siege began on October 9 when Rochambeau asked Washington to do the honor of firing the first cannon. It was followed by dozens of others barking away, over and over. Pennsylvania lieutenant William Feltman wrote that “this whole day we cannonaded the enemy, and sent them a number of shells and drove their artillery from the embrasure and they had not the spirit to return one shot.”7 The hundreds of cannonballs, especially the mortars, found their mark and there was considerable damage to the British fortifications and a significant loss of life. Dr. Thacher, watching the bombardment, wrote that “I have more than once witnessed fragments of mangled bodies and limbs of British soldiers thrown into the air by the bursting of our shells.”8
By the end of the second day, the French found by sheer chance that cannonballs that overshot Yorktown were hitting the British ships below the bluffs, tearing huge holes in their sides and decks and setting the rigging of many on fire.9 Several ships sank so deeply into the river that only their masts could be seen. It was nonstop bombardment, too. Lt. Wild wrote that “a very brisk fire, both of shot and shells, are kept from them on the enemy, who returns theirs with equal spirit.”
One thing that worried the enlisted men was the continued persistence of George Washington to expose himself to enemy fire. He had done so in just about every major battle of the war. Wild remembered him riding back and forth directly in front of him across the plains of Monmouth to rally the men as the British fired away with muskets and cannon. Others remembered him, atop his magnificent horses, leading attacks in other places. Now, at Yorktown, he was again oblivious to danger, again vulnerable to a sniper’s musket ball.
On the first day that the commander was shown the plain in front of Yorktown, and told to stay off of it because it was within the range of British guns, he stood at the edge of the meadow to talk to a local minister. The British saw them and an artillery battery opened fire. An explosion tore up the earth a few yards from the two men, sending soil and rocks flying into the air. The minister, Rev. Evans, was startled when dirt flew up, hit him, and