Washington [282]
De Barras told Washington that de Grasse would need to sail back to the Caribbean by mid-October, leaving only a brief interval for a joint operation against Cornwallis. This gave Washington and Rochambeau three weeks to transport two cumbersome armies 450 miles to Chesapeake Bay while de Barras and eight ships of the line and four frigates sailed south from Newport. After a desultory war that had shuffled along for years, Washington, Rochambeau, and de Barras now engaged in a headlong rush to reach Virginia. But orchestrating the movements of three armies and two navies over a vast portion of the eastern seaboard was to prove a fiendishly intricate maneuver.
Two days later Washington learned something from Lafayette that, in its way, was no less momentous than the startling news about de Grasse. Cornwallis had retreated to the eastern tip of the Virginia peninsula that jutted into Chesapeake Bay, dividing the York and James rivers. On high, open ground at a place called Yorktown, he and his men were furiously shoveling trenches and throwing up earthworks. As it turned out, Cornwallis had barged into a trap that Washington had spotted years earlier when Brigadier General Thomas Nelson wanted to station troops at Yorktown to track British ships. Washington had pointed out to Nelson that his troops “by being upon a narrow neck of land would be in danger of being cut off. The enemy might very easily throw up a few ships into York and James’s river . . . and land a body of men there, who by throwing up a few redoubts, would intercept their retreat and oblige them to surrender at [their] discretion.”6 The letter uncannily foreshadowed the events of 1781.
As his army hurried south, Washington launched diversionary measures to dupe the enemy into thinking that New York remained his objective. He pitched a small city of tents on the west bank of the Hudson with wagons bustling in and out of this imaginary camp. American boats worked the nearby waters, laying down pontoons, as if readying an amphibious assault. To deceive the enemy, Washington needed to deceive his own men, who thought they were embarked for Staten Island. Instead they found themselves marching inland toward Trenton and then crossed paths with the French at Princeton, where Washington enjoyed a gratifying encounter with French officers. As he strode past their tent, he saw maps unfurled of Boston, Trenton, and Princeton: the officers were re-creating his victorious battles. One observer caught his reaction: “Despite his modesty . . . [Washington] seemed pleased to find thus assembled all the successful and pleasant events of the war.”7 The group repaired to a tavern to share Madeira and punch. One wonders whether the French made a fuss over Washington’s early triumphs to soothe his wounded vanity and draw the sting from his disappointment over abandoning New York.
To march his men through New Jersey without betraying his intentions to the enemy, Washington contrived ingenious stratagems. He broke his army into three parallel columns and brought them forward at staggered intervals. The troops had no inkling of their true destination until they reached Trenton, where heavy guns were loaded on boats to carry them down the Delaware River to near Christiana, Delaware. From there it would be a twelve-mile march to Head of Elk, at the northern end of Chesapeake Bay. The original plan envisioned troops sailing with them, but Washington couldn’t rustle up the requisite vessels, so he and Rochambeau made a hugely daring decision to have the men traverse the immense distance to Maryland on foot.
The southern landscape was unknown territory for Washington’s men, who braced for sweltering heat and disease. Fearful of a mutiny, Washington implored Robert Morris to come up with a month’s pay to pacify the men: “The service [in Virginia] they are going upon is disagreeable