impossible for the people to struggle much longer under their present difficulties. There appears a foolish pride in the representation of things from this quarter; the strength and resources of the Country are far overrated, and those who are engaged in this business, to indulge their pride, will sacrifice their Country. The inhabitants are beginning to move off in great bodies, and unless a firmer barrier can be formed, this quarter will be all depopulated. We are living upon charity, and subsist by daily collections. Indian meal and beef is our common diet, and not a drop of spirits have we had with us since I came to the army. An army naked and subsisted in this manner, and not more than onethird equal to the enemy in numbers, will make but a poor fight, especially as one has been accustomed to victory and the other to flight. It is difficult to give spirits to troops that have nothing to animate them.

I have been obliged to take an entire new position with the army. General Morgan is upon Broad River with a little flying army, and Colonel Washington since his arrival there has defeated a party of Tories, the particulars of which I beg leave to refer you to the President of Congress for. This Camp I mean as a Camp of repose, for the purpose of repairing our wagons, recruiting our horses, and disciplining the troops. Colonel Lee has just arrived, and his corps is in good order, and I am told Colonel Greene from Virginia is at hand.

General Lesly with his detachment has arrived at Camden, and we have reports that another is coming.

William B. Reed, Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed (Philadelphia, 1847), II, 344-346.

213. Exploits of De Grasse in the West Indies (1781)

ANONYMOUS

(ANONYMOUS TRANSLATION)

This account, written by an officer who made the cruise described, relates to the one period in the war between France and England when the English lost control of the West Indian waters. The capture of Cornwallis (No. 214) was thus made possible. -Bibliography: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 499-502; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 140.

THE

HE thirteen United States of North America had declared themselves sovereign and independent in 1776. So far were they from being so in 1781, that those in the south were on the point of being

compelled to acknowledge their former master, which would have rendered the liberty of the others very uncertain. Nevertheless, England, at the close of 1782, declared them all free.

The relation of these successes forms part of the campaign of the Count de Grasse. In this view it is offered entire to the public, as the check which the arms of France sustained on the 12th of April, 1782, did not embolden England to continue her non-recognition of the sovereignty of the United States; the advantages obtained in 1781, must, therefore, have established it beyond peradventure.

The events of 1780, and of the first months of 1781, had not even prepared those of the rest of that year and of the early months of the next. In 1780, the fleet of the two powers had fought no less than three times, without obtaining any decisive advantage. The empire of the West India waters remained unsettled, and no enterprise was undertaken on either side before wintering. . . .

'Such was the situation of the belligerent parties in America, when the Count de Grasse was appointed to command the king's naval forces in that part of the world. . . . the Count de Grasse, who had reached Paris, February 1st, left the 18th, and arrived at Brest on the 26th.

There a considerable squadron was preparing, which was to escort a convoy of one hundred and fifty sail, with a reinforcement of troops . . and the fleet and convoy set sail, March 22d, with a favorable wind, in spite of the equinox.

We doubled the cape on the 27th; and then, to keep the convoy always together, and to prevent the sailing of the slow craft from retarding that of the rest, the admiral had them towed by his ships, taking one himself.

Thanks to this precaution, in thirty-six days the fleet and the whole convoy (an unheard of thing till then for so many vessels), came at day-break, on the 28th of April, in sight of the land of Martinique.

. . at 11, an English frigate was perceived making signals, and at 2 o'clock twenty-two hostile sails were signalled towards Diamond Rock. 17 vessels of the line and five frigates had, for the last fifty days, blockaded the roadstead of Fort Royal and the four French vessels anchored there; the latter had orders, during the course of the night, to hoist sail the next morning and attack the head or rear of the English squadron, as soon as they saw the French fleet.

On the 29th, in the morning, the fleet, covering the convoy, steered for Fort Royal; at 8 o'clock the English squadron was signalled, and

at noon the French fleet was on the beam of the English flagship. The English began a very distant fire, to which the French paid no attention till the English bullets went far beyond them. The convoy had lain to the windward of Diamond Rock, and when the action began it continued its route to its destination, without the loss of a single vessel from its leaving Brest.

The English fleet, while fighting, crowded sail; the admiral sent orders by the frigates for each French vessel to engage the English vessel opposite, and for the surplus with the four vessels from the roadstead of Fort Royal, as a light squadron to turn the English line and get it between two fires. This order was not executed. Of the English fleet only three vessels of the rear guard were ever engaged, because the French van which served as rear guard, instead of bearing down, according to all the signals, kept the wind constantly with light sails, while, on the contrary, the rear guard became van, bore down on the enemy and engaged them vigorously. Thus the English fleet could always bear away in order; and at six o'clock there were only thirteen out of the twenty-four French vessels in pursuit of the seventeen English ; these covered the retreat of the Russell, 74, which then ran before the wind to St. Eustatius, where it arrived with seven feet of water in the hold, and much cut up; the Centaur, the Torbay, the Intrépide, were not less so. . .

...

The naval and military commanders lost no time in their operations; it seems that they wished to undertake nothing the execution of which was not certain, before the 1st of July, since they decided to attack the isle of Tobago, the only one that interrupted the communication of the French Windward Isles with the Spanish mainland. This communication, established from isle to isle, secured fresh provisions, not abundant on the islands, and deprived the hostile cruisers of all refuge in those ports. . .

The enemy were still at St. Christopher's; but on the 22d news came that they had sailed and were manoeuvring to windward. The French fleet again set sail on the 25th, to go and cover the attack on Tobago. The French had landed there on the 24th, and the artillery of the vessels had soon silenced the batteries which defended the anchorage; the fleet came in sight of the island on the 30th; it perceived six hostile vessels with a convoy, destined, doubtless, to carry in supplies; but they renounced their project by a prompt flight. On the 31st the fleet landed the Marquis de Bouillé, with a corps of troops, at Courland Bay,

and on the 1st of June, the Marquis du Chilleau, with other troops, at Man of War's Bay.

On arriving at the cape, the admiral found the frigate Concorde, from North America. The news spread that the dispatches of the naval and military commanders, and those of the envoy of France, at Philadelphia, joined in assuring him that, without a prompt relief of vessels, men, money and ammunition, Virginia would fall again under the English yoke; and that the French army had pay only to the 20th of August. These fears and these wants were set forth without fixed projects to remedy them; they left the admiral a choice only between an attack on New York by sea and by land, or to transfer the theatre of war to Virginia by a sudden occupation of Chesapeake Bay with sufficient naval forces. For either plan, nothing less was asked than a reinforcement of 6000 men, 1,200,000 livres in specie, munitions in proportion, and all in the course of August; without all this relief, the most disastrous events were menaced. The admiral's reply was expected by the same frigate. . . .

On the 30th of August Cape Henry was discovered N. W. W. Chesapeake Bay was reconnoitred, and the fleet anchored behind Cape Henry on the 31st. Thus, on the day named, Lord Cornwallis could no longer hope to return to New York, or derive any aid from there. Journal of an Officer in the Naval Army in America, in 1781 and 1782 (Amsterdam, 1783); reprinted in The Operations of the French Fleet under the Count De Grasse in 1781-2 (Bradford Club Series, No. 3, New York, 1864), 137-153 passim.

214. The Capitulation of Yorktown (1781)

BY LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CHARLES, MARQUIS CORNWALLIS

Out of the many journals and letters by participants in the Virginia campaign, this letter, addressed to Sir Henry Clinton, has been chosen, as the official statement of the defeated general. — Bibliography of Cornwallis: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 474.- Bibliography of the campaign: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 547-551; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 140.

I

Yorktown, Virginia, Oct. 20, 1781. . . .

HAVE the mortification to inform your Excellency that I have been forced to give up the posts of York and Gloucester, and to surrender the troops under my command, by capitulation, on the 19th instant, as prisoners of war to the combined forces of America and France.

I never saw this post in a very favourable light, but when I found I was to be attacked in it in so unprepared a state, by so powerful an army and artillery, nothing but the hopes of relief would have induced me to attempt its defence, for I would either have endeavoured to escape to New York by rapid marches from the Gloucester side, immediately on the arrival of General Washington's troops at Williamsburg, or I would, notwithstanding the disparity of numbers, have attacked them in the open field, where it might have been just possible that fortune would have favoured the gallantry of the handful of troops under my command, but being assured by your Excellency's letters that every possible means would be tried by the navy and army to relieve us, I could not think myself at liberty to venture upon either of those desperate attempts; therefore, after remaining for two days in a strong position in front of this place in hopes of being attacked, upon observing that the enemy were taking measures which could not fail of turning my left flank in a short time, and receiving on the second evening your letter of the 24th of September, informing me that the relief would sail about the 5th of October, I withdrew within the works on the night of the 29th of September, hoping by the labour and firmness of the soldiers. to protract the defence until you could arrive. Everything was to be expected from the spirit of the troops, but every disadvantage attended their labour, as the works were to be continued under the enemy's fire, and our stock of intrenching tools, which did not much exceed 400 when we began to work in the latter end of August, was now much diminished.

The enemy broke ground on the night of the 30th, and constructed on that night, and the two following days and nights, two redoubts, which, with some works that had belonged to our outward position, occupied a gorge between two creeks or ravines, which come from the river on each side of the town. On the night of the 6th of October they made their first parallel, extending from its right on the river, to a deep ravine on the left, nearly opposite to the centre of this place, and embracing our whole left at a distance of 600 yards. Having perfected this parallel, their batteries opened on the evening of the 9th against our left, and other batteries fired at the same time against a redoubt advanced over the creek upon our right, and defended by about 120 men of the 23rd Regiment and marines, who maintained that post with uncɔmmon gallantry. The fire continued incessant from heavy cannon, and from mortars and howitzers throwing shells from 8 to 16 inches,