28 September to 10 October 1781
Yorktown: the first parallel
On 28 September Washington leads about 7,800 French, 8,000 Continentals and 3,100 militia out of Williamsburg and surrounds Yorktown, the French on the left and the Americans on the right. Cornwallis holds a chain of seven redoubts and batteries round the town and a post at Gloucester Point across the river. Expecting Clinton to send 5,000 men within a week, he gives up his outer works except the Fusiliers’ Redoubt on the west and Redoubts 9 and 10 on the east.
American soldiers at the siege of Yorktown, among them a soldier of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, watercolour by Jean-Baptiste-Antoine de Verger, 1781Wikimedia Commons, Jean Baptiste Antoine de Verger, Public domain (Soldiers at the siege of Yorktown (1781), by Jean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger.png)
The allies take over the abandoned works. On 3 October Tarleton’s foragers at Gloucester run into Lauzun’s Legion and lose 50 men. On the stormy night of 6 October the allies dig the first parallel, 2,000 yards (1.8 km) long, from the head of Yorktown Creek to the York River, half under French and half under American command.
On 9 October the French guns open fire at 3 pm and the American guns at 5 pm, Washington firing the first. The frigate Guadeloupe is driven across the river and scuttled, and on 10 October Charon catches fire. Cornwallis sinks more than a dozen of his own ships in the river.
Sources
- Jerome A. Greene, The Guns of Independence (2005).
- Brendan Morrissey, Yorktown 1781: The World Turned Upside Down (1997).
Prev: Yorktown: the battle off the CapesNext: Yorktown: Redoubts 9 and 10