Franco-American Countryside in the United States (October 1781)

Franco-American Countryside in the United States (October 1781) during the War of independence of the United States of America

At the beginning of October

October 1st 1781, both fear to which the Americans worked not being still finished, the enemies did not cease cannonading them. They killed only two men and could not stop the work, which was completed only the 5. The Americans tested nothing any more but unimportant losses, the fire of the enemies being itself very-idle during the last two days.

The French did not remain either inactive. Guillaume de Deux-Ponts made recognitions on all the face of the troops and made sure that the line of the fortifications of the enemy was the best part of their defenses.

Shining engagement of Choisy

Mr. De Choisy had had on his side, the 3, a brilliance engagement.

In this business, during which Mr. de Choisy remained behind with a body of the militia to support the legion of Lauzun, the commander of the English infantry was killed and Tarleton itself was seriously wounded. The loss of the French was very weak. Like immediate consequence of this success, Mr. de Choisy could carry his advanced stations to one thousand of Glocester. In this new position the patrols were shot continuously, and Mr. de Lauzun says that it could not sleep during the remainder of the time which the seat lasted.

From October 4th to 12th, Mr. de Vioménil orders work of the head office of Yorktown

The following night (of the 4 with the October 5th), the Baron de Vioménil, general officer of day, ordered with the patrols to advance until under the cuttings off of the enemies, which they carried out successfully. All on the occasion to draw their rifle shots, and the enemy, very-worried, did not cease firing the gun without producing however any evil.

Daily composition of the forces of investment

The October 6th, the artillery of seat had almost very arrived, the fascines, the gabions, the trays, prepared, the perfectly recognized site of distinct. The count de Rochambeau gave the order to even open it the evening

Mr. de Vioménil laid out as of five hours of the evening the regiments in the place which they were to cover. The officers of the genious (of Querenet for the French and Of the Gate for the Americans) installed at the night closed, approximately around eight hours, the workers, who are reflected following work in greatest silence. During this night and on this side only, one pomegranate was killed, six others wounded and an artillery captain, Mr. Of the Cabin, had a thigh carried by a ball. He died a few hours afterwards.

The left of the attack started with the river of York, with approximately two hundred measuring apparatuses of the place, and the parallel extended towards the line while moving away from fifty to sixty measuring apparatuses until close to the news fears built by the Americans. In this place it was connected to the opened trench, at the same time by the latter.

At the point of the day, work of the great attack was in a position to receive the troops. One dealt with establishing batteries as well as communications between these batteries and the trenches opened. There were three men of casualties.

The 8, the battery of the Régiment of Touraine was finished like another built by the Americans; but one had given the order not to still draw. The enemies, on the contrary, did not cease cannonading. They killed this night only one man and wounded another of them.

The 9, an enemy frigate, the Guadeloupe , twenty-six guns, having tried to go up the river, the battery of Touraine drew on it with teeth and nail. The frigate was safeguarded under the fire of the city; but the Charon , vessel enemy of fifty, was reached and burned. The evening, the American battery began also a constant fire. The deserters learned that Lord Cornwallis had been surprised of this attack of artillery. Its troops were décontenancées by it, because their general had ensured to them that besieging them were not to fear in spite of their number, since they did not have guns. He this day ago two wounded.

The 10, in the morning, eight boats flat of the enemies charged with troops went up the river with approximately one thousand and tried to unload as regards Mr. de Choisy. This one, informed of their project, accepted them with blows of gun and forced them to be turned over some. The same day, the French uncovered a strong battery on the medium of their face. Its shooting appeared to make much damage in the middle of the enemy batteries, which slowed down their fire.

The 11, Mr. de Chastellux being brigadier, eight hundred workers, under the protection of two battalions of Gâtinais and two battalions of Double-decker, began the construction of the second parallel with approximately a hundred and forty measuring apparatuses in front of the first and with small range of rifle of the place. One expected a vigorous exit and one had reinforced the four battalions of ordinary service of some pomegranate auxiliary companies of Saintonge and hunters of Bourbonnais. But one had only to exchange some rifle shots with weak English patrols which undoubtedly did not expect to find besieging so near them. The 12, one occupied six hundred workers to complete the second parallel and to build batteries. The enemy directed on this point an enough heavy fire, which killed six men and wounded eleven of them. Two officers of Soissonnais, Misters De Miollis and Durnes were wounded.

The 13 occurred in work carried out on the same points by six hundred men, protected by four battalions from Resident of Agen and of Saintonge, under the orders of Mr. the Viscount of Vioménil, brigadier One exchanged many bombs and balls of gun. Also there were a killed man and twenty-eight wounded.

So that this second parallel could like the first lengthen towards the line to the river of York, it was necessarily necessary to seize two fear enemy which was on its way.

Mr. de Vioménil wants to give the attack

The 12, the generals accompanied by some by steels of their staff, with the number of which was Dunks, had gone, with the attack of the French, in a battery extremely well placed on this side one ravine which separated it from fears furthest away from the river. The baron de Vioménil testified a great impatience.

Rochambeau dissuades some

“You are mistaken, tells him Mr. de Rochambeau; but by recognizing the work more closely one will be able to ensure oneself some.” It ordered to cease fire, defended with its aide-de-camps to follow it and authorized there only his/her son, the Viscount of Rochambeau. It left the trench, went down slowly in the ravine by making a turning, and, going up the opposed escarpment then, it approached fears until the abatis which surrounded it. After having observed it well, it returned to the battery without the enemy disturbing it by the least shot. This act of coolness and courage moderated the heat of the baron de Vioménil.

The attack is decided

The attack of fear was decided for the 14 at the evening.

As of the morning, Mr. de Vioménil separated pomegranates and the hunters of the two regiments of sliced and formed of it a battalion of which it gave the command to Guillaume de Deux-Ponts by saying to him that it believed by there giving him a proof of his confidence.

At this time Mr. de Rochambeau came in the trench and, addressing himself to the soldiers of the regiment of Gâtinais, he says to them: “My children, if I need you this night, I hope that you did not forget that we were used together in this honest regiment as Auvergne without spot, honourable nickname which it deserved since its creation.” They answered him that, if one promised to them to return their name to them, they were going to be made kill until the last. Mr. de Rochambeau theirs promised, and they held word as it will be seen. The king, on the report/ratio which submitted to him Mr. de Rochambeau of this business, wrote his hand: good for Royal-Auvergne.

Details on the forces taking share with the attack

Mr. the baron de Vioménil directed the attack; but the immediate command was given by it to Guillaume de Deux-Ponts. The hunters of Gâtinais, ordered by the Baron of Estrade, had the column heading. They were by groups. Mr. of Vauban, which had been given the responsability by Mr. de Rochambeau to return account to him what would have done without, was held near Mr. de Deux-Ponts. This one gave the order to draw only when one would have arrived on the parapet, and defended that nobody jumped in the cuttings off before to have received the order of it. After these last instructions, one awaited the signal agreed to start itself.

The French troops and the American militia compete of heat

The attack of the French troops on fears of left was combined with that of the American troops with the orders of Fayette and Steuben on fears of right-hand side. They were to be made both with the same signal. The Régiment of Touraine was simultaneously to support them by a false attack, and Mr. De Choisy, by a demonstration on the side of Glocester.

The six bombs which were to give the signal were drawn around eleven hours, and the four hundred men whom ordered Guillaume de Deux-Ponts reflect moving in deepest silence. With does a hundred and twenty step approximately of fear, they were seen by a sentinel Hessois E which, top of the parapet, shouted in German Wer da? ( Which lives? ). One answered nothing, but the step was doubled. Immediately the enemy made fire.

Charles de Lameth arrived the first on the parapet and it accepted with end carrying the first discharge of the infantry hessoise. A ball crashed to pieces the right knee to him, another crossed the left thigh to him. Mr. Of Estrade, in spite of his age, climbed the parapet after him. Although it was very ravaged, Mr. of Estrade was raised and gone back to the attack. Mr. de Deux-Ponts also fell down in the ditch after a first attempt. Mr. of Sillègue, young officer of the hunters of Gâtinais, which was a little ahead, saw his embarrassment and its arm offered to him to help it to go up. The enemy made a very-sharp fire and charged with blows with bayonet, but without making move back anybody. The carpenters had ended up making in the palisades a broad breach which made it possible large troop to arrive on the parapet. It was furnished quickly and the fire of the attackers became very-sharp in his turn, while the enemy had placed himself behind a kind of cutting off of barrels which hardly protected it.

The moment had come from the remainder to jump in fears and Mr. de Deux-Ponts prepared himself to advance with the bayonet, when the English reflect the weapons low. A general cry of Vive the king was pushed by the French who had just carried the place. This cry had an echo among the troops of the trench. But the English answered it of the other stations by an artillery salvo and of Mousqueterie.

The enemy was satisfied to send some balls on fears, but did not make a serious attempt to take it again.

In the seven minutes which were enough to carry this fears, the French lost forty six killed men and sixty two wounded, among whom six officers: Misters Charles de Lameth, Guillaume de Deux-Ponts, of Sireuil, captain of Gâtinais, Sillègue and Lutzon. Mr. of Berthelot, first mate of Gâtinais, was killed.

As soon as Dumas was informed of the wound of her friend Charles de Lameth, it ran near him to the ambulance. The surgeons declared initially that it could be saved only by the amputation of the two thighs, but the surgeon as a chief, Mr. Robillard, rather than to reduce to the state of legless cripple a young officer of this hope, did not want to make the amputations and relied on nature for the cure of so serious wounds. Success crowned its confidence. Charles de Lameth recovered promptly and returned to France two months afterwards.

Mr. de Sireuil died of his wound forty days afterwards.

The enemies lost also many people. One counted on their side eighteen dead remained in fears. One made also forty captive soldiers and three officers. A hundred and seventy remaining men escaped, carrying their casualties.

Lafayette and of Vioménil

As regards American fearfears was removed with a larger speed still, and one can say on this subject that the allied troops competed of heat. This competition on behalf of the chiefs caused even a beginning of jealousy. Mr. the baron de Vioménil did not obstruct the attack day before to express with Mr. of Fayette the little of confidence which it had in the American troops for the projected knack, and made too much appear his scorn for these militia little aguerries.

He gave the command of the American troops to the colonel Hamilton, took under his orders the colonels Laurens and De Gimat. The heat of the troops was such as they did not leave the sappers time to clear the way while cutting the abatis. The battalion of the colonel To bore, which was the first in the column intended to support the attack, having been detached with the help of the avant-garde, arrived at the moment when one started to seize the works. With the report/ratio of Fayette itself, not a rifle shot was not drawn by the Americans, who employed only the bayonet. Mr. de Gimat was wounded at his sides. The remainder of the column, under the generals Muhlenberg and Hazen, advanced with a discipline and a firmness admirable. The battalion of the colonel Vose was spread with the left. The remainder of division and the rear-guard gave successively their opinions, under the fire of the enemy, without him to answer, in an order and a silence perfect.

Colonel Barber

Fears was carried immediately. It was defended only by forty men, while there were a hundred and fifty with the other of them fears. As the fire of the French still lasted, Fayette, finding the moment favorable to give a lesson of modesty to the baron de Vioménil, sent near him colonel Barber, his aide-de-camp, to ask to him whether it needed an American help.

In the next day and night power, one dealt with continuing the second parallel through fears taken by the French until that of the Americans; then one installed in this parallel a battery of artillery which began its fire at once.

Fear are removed

While French and Americans competed of courage, two false attacks held in failure part of the forces of which could lay out Lord Cornwallis. It was initially, with the left of the French lines, on the river bank of York, the batteries drawn up by the regiment of Touraine which opened a very-sharp fire on the enemy works. The French did not lose any man on this point.

Side of Glocester, Mr. de Choisy accepted the order to also make a false attack. Carried by its bravery, it solved to make it as serious as possible and to carry, the sword with the hand, the enemy cuttings off. Furious of its failure, it was prepared two days later to renew its attempt, when it was prevented by it by the preliminaries of the capitulation.

However the success gained by the troops allied in the night of the 14 with the October 13rd had inspired too much confidence to the soldiers of Residents of Agen and Soissonnais which were of distinct the following night with Mr. of Chastellux for Brigadier. They did not exert a sufficient monitoring, placed sentinels little and fell asleep for the majority by not leaving anybody to the guard batteries. The English sent, at five o'clock in the morning, a body of six hundred men of elite against the advanced stations of the French and the Americans. The English withdrew themselves only in front of Mr. de Chastellux, who arrived well tardily with his reserve. This general put all his care to repair the evil caused by the enemy in his happy exit. He highly pushed the construction of new batteries, and, thanks to the zeal of the commander of artillery, Mr. D' Aboville, the parts, badly enclouées, could start again their fire six hours after this small failure.

As of the morning of the 16, other batteries were ready and started to take with rebound crowning defenses of the enemy. In several places the strawberries were destroyed and of the practiced breaches. The enemy did not leave to still answer this attack, and the French had two killed men and ten wounded. The marquis of Saint-Simon, who was of service as brigadier with Mr. de Custine as sergeant, was slightly wounded. But he wanted to leave the trench only after his twenty-four passed hours of service, when the count de Vioménil replaced it with two battalions of Bourbonnais and two others of Royal-Two-Bridges. An artillery officer, Mr. of Bellenger, was also killed in this day.

The position of Cornwallis becomes insupportable

However the position of Lord Cornwallis was not bearable any more. It had resisted until the last end and the quarter of its army was in the hospitals. It had in vain awaited helps of New York and it was private vivres and ammunition.

It sends the 17 a member of Parliament to Washington

Already, as of the 17, at ten o'clock in the morning, it had sent a member of Parliament to the camp of the allies to ask a suspension of fighting twenty-four hour old. But the Washington general not having found his request rather explicit had ordered to continue fire. One indeed continued to draw up to four hours: at this time a new member of Parliament came who subjected to the généralissime new conditions. The attack was suspended and the day of the 18 occurred very whole in negotiations.

The Viscount of Noailles in the name of the French Army, the colonel Laurens for the American army and Mr. De Grandchain for the fleet, had been named by their respective generals to draw up the articles of the capitulation, jointly with officers of the army of Lord Cornwallis. This one required to leave beating drums and deployed signs, following the adopted habit when one obtains the honors of the war . The French count de Rochambeau and officers, who did not have any particular objection against the English general, were of opinion to grant them to him. The American generals were not even contrary with this opinion. But Fayette, remembering that the same enemies had forced, at the time of the capitulation of Charleston, the general Lincoln to hold bent the American flags and not to play a national walk, insisted that one used of reprisals in their connection and obtained that the capitulation was done under these two same conditions, which was adopted.

Signed capitulation 19

The capitulation was signed 19, at midday. At one hour, the allies took possession of the English works, and, at two hours, the garrison ravelled between the two hedges formed by the Americans and the French, and deposited its weapons, on the orders of the Lincoln general, in a plain with the left of the French lines. The garrison of Glocester ravelled on its side in front of Mr. de Choisy; then the captive army returned in York and remained there until the 21. One divided it into several bodies which were led in various parts of the Virginia, of the Maryland or the Pennsylvania.

Lord Cornwallis pretexted an indisposition not to leave to the head his troops. They were ordered by the general Charles O' Hara. The general adjudant Dumas was charged to go ahead of of these troops and to direct the column.

Sorrow of the English officers

The English generals and officers seemed remainder very-affected of their defeat and made especially appear their dissatisfaction to have had to yield in front of revolted for which they had professed publicly up to that point greatest scorn and even a contempt which had often gone until the lapse of memory of the most ordinary laws of humanity.

Dumas, by announcing this spite of the English officers, whom it was quite capable to notice, since it directed the captive column, tells that the colonel Abercromby, from the English guards, at the time when its troop put the weapons low, moved away quickly, covering the face and corrosive its sword.

One treated oneself on both sides with the greatest courtesy, one went visits. But in the middle of these demonstrations of courtesy bored, on the side of overcome, a feeling of bitterness which was translated into satirical or scornful words for the Americans, to which the English did not want to recognize that they had been obliged to go. Thus the generals Washington, Rochambeau and Fayette, sent each one an aide-de-camp to compliment Lord Cornwallis, who retained that of Fayette, major Washington, relative of the general. He says to him that he put price so that the general against whom he had made this countryside was persuaded that he had gone only by impossibility of defending oneself longer

The same general O' Hara: who wanted to rather return his sword to Mr. de Rochambeau than to the Washington general, being one day with the table of the French generals, made pretense not want to be heard of Mr. of Fayette and said that it was estimated happy not to be taken by the Americans alone: “It is apparently, retorted Fayette at once to him, that the general O' Hara does not like the repetitions.” He recalled him thus that the Americans alone had already done it captive first once with Burgoyne. The French alone did it captive a few years after, for the third time, in Toulon.

Losses on the two sides

The captive garrison was assembled to 6.198 men, plus 1.800 sailors and 68 men taken during the seat. But there were of them 4.873 in the hospitals of York. These troops were made up of the 1st battalion of the guards of king d' Angleterre, of the 17th, 23e 33e and 48e regiments of infantry, of the 71e, 76e and 80e regiments of the mountain dwellers Scottish, of the regiments hessois of the hereditary prince and Boos, and of the German regiments of Anspach and Bayreuth, of the light infantry of British legion and the queen' S rangers .

One found moreover 214 pieces of ordnance of all gauges, 7.320 small weapons, 22 flags, 457 horses. The English lost also 64 buildings of which they ran a score. But the 40 which remained were in good state, 5 were armed, and the frigate the Guadeloupe of 24 guns which had been cast could be raised.

The French had had during the seat 253 killed or wounded men, among whom 18 officers. Only one of those had been killed the last day of the seat, it was Mr. de Bellanger, artillery lieutenant.

Though the French troops were treated under all the reports/ratios like auxiliaries and that, the French generals had always recognized the supremacy of the American generals, those hastened to grant to them the preference for food and all the care which depended on them. Thus when the troops of the marquis of Saint-Simon united those of Fayette, the young general took on him to order that one delivered flours with the American troops only when the French would have received provisions for three days. As the Americans almost never had as cornstarch. It made take the horses of the gentlemen country to assemble the French hussards, and the senior officers themselves yielded their own horses with a same aim. However it did not rise the least felt sorry for with not known and of these preferences that the American soldiers recognized duty being granted to foreigners who came by far to fight for their cause.