The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [177]
The capture of the two fortifications permitted Washington to array cannon in a large semicircle so that the artillery could commence enfilade firing (hitting targets from different angles). Lord Cornwallis was trapped. He tried to move his men out of Yorktown across the York River on the night of October 16, but he had few boats and a sudden rainstorm ended his plans. The next day, the seventeenth, the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, guns in position, Washington ordered yet another bombardment of the British lines at Yorktown, utilizing practically every available cannon.
Ebenezer Wild stood right in the middle of the bombardment that started with the sounds of multiple explosions at dawn. “At daylight,” he wrote, “we found the enemy had stopped up the embrasures of most of their batteries and the fire from their cannon became almost silenced; but they continued to throw small shells very brisk. By this time, the fire from our works became almost incessant as new batteries are opening from almost every part of the line.”
More than one hundred cannon were used in the bombardment and they were close enough to hit individual buildings within the town as well as the ships in the river and the defensive lines. It was a murderous cannon fire. Chaos reigned in Yorktown. A Hessian, Stephen Popp, wrote, “Their heavy fire forced us to throw our tents in the ditches. The enemy threw bombs, one hundred, one hundred fifty, two hundred; their guns were eighteen-, twenty-four-, and forty-eight-pounders. We could find no refuge in or out of the town. The people fled to the waterside and hid in hastily contrived shelters on the banks, but many of them were killed by bursting bombs. More than eighty were thus lost, besides many wounded, and their homes utterly destroyed.”15
Cornwallis had the combined American and French armies in front of him, the York River behind him, the French fleet down the river, and nowhere to turn. The only British fleet that could rescue him was far away in New York. Explosions ripped through the community; smoke was everywhere. Just before 10 a.m., on October 17, Cornwallis sent an officer with a white handkerchief to Washington to discuss his surrender.16
The British commander asked for twenty-four hours to work out a proposal for surrender; Washington gave him two. The next two days were spent in heated arguments over the exact terms of the surrender. The final document, signed by Washington and Cornwallis, was gracious: although the British soldiers would be taken prisoner, the officers and Cornwallis would be sent back to England and would keep their side arms.
The surrender discussions ended the constant bombardment that had shaken the Virginia town for eight long days. The night of October 17 was one to remember for the enlisted men at Yorktown. St. George Tucker wrote, “A solemn stillness prevailed. The night was remarkably clear and the sky was decorated with ten thousand stars. Numerous meteors gleaming through the atmosphere afforded a pleasing resemblance to the bombs which had exhibited a noble firework the night before, but happily divested of all their horror.”17
Finally, at 3 p.m. on October 19, a scene transpired that few in the world ever expected to take place back in 1775, when the first shots of the war were fired in the village of Lexington, Massachusetts. On that day and hour, the entire British and Hessian army of nearly six thousand men began to march out of Yorktown down Hampton Road to the surrender ground, parading in front of the soldiers in the victorious American and French armies. Reportedly, someone with sense of humor ordered the British military band to play “The World Turned Upside Down.” It seemed an ironic selection on a day that the greatest professional army in the world surrendered to an army of former farmers, blacksmiths, and shopkeepers.
In a bit of good fortune, Lieutenant Ebenezer Wild’s company found