* These gentlemen were appointed commissioners by Congress to proceed to head-quarters, and consult the commander-inchief respecting the army for the ensuing campaign. The basis of a scheme which they proposed was a reduction of the army.—Sparks, viii., 142.
Cornwallis ordered to the Chesapeake.—Takes Post at Yorktown and Gloucester, and Fortifies them.—Sketch of Cornwallis.
As we have observed (page 213), the allies crossed the Hudson and marched southward to co-operate with La Fayette in Virginia.
On the arrival of nearly three thousand troops, many of them Hessians, to re-enforce him in New York,Aug 11, 1781 Sir Henry Clinton countermanded his orders in which he had directed Cornwallis to send a portion of his army northward. The letter reached the Earl at Portsmouth before the transports left Hampton Roads! It also contained exclamations of surprise that his lordship should have left the vicinity of Williamsburg without informing his commander-in-chief; and he was directed to take some strong position.
The marquis did not feel sufficiently strong to attack Cornwallis, and the tatter was unwilling to impede the progress in fortifying Yorktown, by engaging his troops in other enterprises.
While Washington was uncertain what course to pursue, he received dispatches from Count De Barras, *** the successor of Ternay at Newport, bearing the agreeable intelligence
* Charles Cornwallis, son of the first Earl of Cornwallis, was born at Culford Hall, in Suffolk, in 1738. He was educated at Westminster and St. John's College, Cambridge. He entered the army in 1759, and succeeded to the title and estates of his father in 1761. He was the most competent and energetic of all the British generals sent here during the war, but the cruelties exercised by his orders at times, during the southern campaigns, have left an indelible stain upon his character. Soon after the close of the war, he was appointed Governor General of the East Indies, which office he held six years. During that time he conquered the renowned Tippoo Sultan, for which service he was created a marquis, and made master of the ordnance. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1798 to 1801, and was instrumental in restoring peace to that country, then distracted by rebellion. He signed the treaty of Amiens in 1802, and in 1804 was again appointed Governor General of India. He died in October the succeeding year at Ghazepore, in the province of Benares, at the age of sixty-seven years.—See Georgian Era, London, 1833.
** The works, which surrounded the village, consisted of seven redoubts and six batteries on the land side, connected by intrenchments. On the river bank was also a line of batteries; one near the church was a grand battery, with eleven pieces of cannon, which commanded the passage of the river between York and Gloucester. The outworks consisted of three redoubts on the margin of the ravine, southwest of the town, one a little eastward of the road to Hampton, two on the extreme right, near the river, and the fusileers' redoubt on the extreme left, near the river. Cornwallis's head-quarters were at the house of Governor Nelson.
*** Barras, in his dispatches to Washington, said, that as the Count De Grasse did not require him to form a junction with his fleet in the Chesapeake, but left him at liberty to undertake any other enterprise, he proposed an expedition against Newfoundland, and expressed a desire to take with him the land forces which had been left at Newport under M. De Choisé. Both Washington and De Rochambeau disapproved of this proposition, and, as soon as he received their remonstrance against it, Barras resolved to proceed to the Chesapeake.
Southern Campaign.—De Grasse in the Chesapeake.—Sketch of De Grasse.—Cornwallis's Attempt to Escape into Carolina.