The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [344]
“Sir, I am Brigadier General Charles O’Hara. I regret that General Cornwallis has taken ill this morning. In his place, I hereby surrender to you the general’s sword.”
Rochambeau looked at O’Hara with a hard silent glare, then gave a quick look to his aide, a brief low command, and the aide said, “Our commanding general is there . . . across the road.”
O’Hara looked at Washington, and his face was a mask of despair. He moved across the sandy roadway, held the sword up, said, “General Washington, allow me to surrender . . .”
“General O’Hara, since your commanding officer has not consented to deliver his sword in person, it is not proper for me to accept it. You will offer your surrender to one of my senior officers.” He looked behind him, said, “General Lincoln, please advance.”
Lincoln rode forward, and O’Hara lowered his head.
“Certainly. I understand, sir.”
He held the sword up to Lincoln, who took it, held it in both hands for a brief moment, then leaned down, returned it to O’Hara’s hand. Washington looked at Lincoln, the man who had endured the shame of the defeat at Charleston, who had been denied the honor of marching out of Charleston with his flags flying. Now the same condition had been exacted from the British, the perfect justice for their arrogance, their scorn for this ragged army. Washington saw tears on Lincoln’s face, said, “General Lincoln, you may give the order. Commence the surrender.”
Lincoln nodded, wiped his face with a hard hand, said, “General O’Hara, you will order your men to lay down their arms.”
NEARLY EIGHT THOUSAND MEN FILED SLOWLY INTO THE OPEN FIELD, surrounded by French guards. The muskets and cartridge boxes were tossed in a great heap, some men reacting with outbursts of violence, throwing their weapons down in a fury, others sobbing openly.
He sent Lincoln to the open field to supervise the surrender, an exercise in control, preventing some possible outbreak of violence on either side. Washington stayed out on the road with Rochambeau, the two men saying very little. As the column passed slowly through the field, a British band was playing, the music plain now, some tune he had not heard in a very long time. The notes were unsteady, the emotion of the men who played them, but the tune was clear to him now, the title coming into his mind. It was an old British song, called “The World Turned Upside Down.”
He felt a powerful disappointment toward Cornwallis, wondered now if it was a weakness in the man’s courage. He could not accept that, thought, Perhaps it is something very different, some part of being British, the importance of pride, the horrible disgrace the man would take home to his king. The sting of defeat must be unbearable to a monarch who so believes in his perfect superiority, that he can suppress every part of his empire by the tip of a sword. “The World Turned Upside Down” . . . indeed.
OCTOBER 27, 1781
The people had returned to Yorktown, weeping civilians who sifted through the destruction, farmers from around the area who came to offer help. The French and American armies were still in place, Washington doing as much as he could to replenish his supplies, tending the wounded and sick. The militia had mostly gone, some escorting the vast sea of British prisoners to the Shenandoah Valley, to the prison camps that had been assembled around Frederick, Maryland, and Winchester, Virginia. The senior British officers had made their reports, many boarding the one frigate Washington allowed to sail for the safety of New York.
Out beyond the French fleet, toward the wide ocean where de Grasse still focused his spyglass, the sails of the single British frigate were suddenly met by many more. Clinton had been true to his word, had responded to Cornwallis’ pleas for help. The British had assembled thirty-five warships, a fleet powerful enough to cause considerable problems for de Grasse’s blockade. They carried seven thousand rested and fit British and Hessians troops, a force strong enough to have changed the entire balance of the