Lafayette (31 page)

Recognizing the impossibility of capturing Lafayette and his strengthened American force, Cornwallis changed tactics and ordered Tarleton to veer westward to Charlottesville, where the remnants of Burgoyne’s 5,700-man army of British and Hessian soldiers captured at Saratoga were interned. If, as he fully anticipated, they rushed to rejoin their British comrades, they would double the British force in Virginia. Cornwallis also ordered Tarleton to capture Governor Jefferson, who was presiding over the Virginia Assembly.
Like Lafayette, Jefferson was a symbolic figure, “the author” of the revolution, whose capture would undermine the spirit of the rebellion as much as the capture of Lafayette.

In less than two days, Tarleton’s cavalrymen flew across fifty miles of Virginia landscape and burst into Charlottesville, capturing seven members of the Assembly before they could rise from their desks. Governor Jefferson was at his aerie at Monticello with John Tyler and Benjamin Harrison and just managed to flee after Patrick Henry galloped to the door to warn of Tarleton’s approach. Although Tarleton’s troops drained Jefferson’s legendary wine cellar, to his credit, he ordered them out of the house before they could do any damage. Cornwallis, however, was so furious at losing Jefferson that he went to Monticello and, according to one English historian, “plundered and pilfered like a bandit,” taking Jefferson’s plate and silver for his home in England, burning his barns and fields, slaughtering his livestock, and carrying away thirty slaves, who later died in a smallpox epidemic that swept through the British camp.
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Cornwallis met even more frustration at the Hessian and British prisoner-of-war camp. In the two years after their long march from Boston, they had transformed the barren hilltop into an almost idyllic community of pleasant little homes, with hundreds of gardens and small droves of cows and sheep grazing along the nearby slopes. Most had formed close friendships in Charlottesville; some had married American women; the musically and intellectually gifted met regularly at Monticello, where, with Jefferson bowing his beloved violin, they made music together and discussed philosophy, history, and science. Baron de Geismer, a Hessian general and particularly talented violinist, formed an intimate friendship with the Sage of Monticello—as did Baron Jean Louis de Unger, a scientist with a vast knowledge of philosophy.
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Almost all the internees refused to return to battle against their American hosts, and Cornwallis marched away in disgust to resume his duel with Lafayette. Although Tarleton had captured one thousand muskets and four hundred barrels of gunpowder in Charlottesville, the new supplies did not last long. As he had done earlier with Greene in South Carolina, Cornwallis underestimated the dangers of fighting a smaller, inferior force on its home ground. Once again, he had moved too far inland into enemy territory and overextended his line of supplies from the succors of the British fleet. With his men exhausted from the stifling heat and humidity, he had little choice but to begin a retreat to the sea. Although Lafayette’s snipers peppered his rear guard, dwindling supplies left the British unable to retaliate.

“The enemy have been so kind as to retire before us,” Lafayette wrote to Washington. “Twice I gave them a chance of fighting (taking care not to engage further than I pleased), but they continued their retrograde motions. Our numbers are, I think, exaggerated to them and our seeming boldness
confirms the opinion. . . . Adieu, my dear General; I do not know but what we will in our turn become the pursuing enemy.”
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By June 22, Lafayette’s force had returned to the outskirts of Richmond, where Weeden arrived with nearly 1,000 militiamen and Steuben added another 650 troops. As volunteers from plantations pillaged by Tarleton swarmed into camp, Lafayette’s army swelled to more than 5,000 men— 2,000 of them crack Continentals and 3,000 militiamen, the so-called citizen soldiers. Although still too small for a head-to-head engagement with Cornwallis’s 7,000 regulars, Lafayette’s force was large enough to harass British flanks and seriously cripple the rear guard. Lafayette sent small squads darting through surrounding landscape, sniping first on one flank, then the other, pouncing on foraging parties and outposts, and always giving the impression that his force was larger than it was. The British hunter became the hunted.

With every step beyond Richmond, Lafayette grew bolder and more aggressive, forcing Cornwallis to retreat southeast, onto the Virginia cape, between the York and James Rivers. Lafayette sent patrols to roam the opposite banks conspicuously enough to dissuade the British from leaving the cape, while his vanguard struck incessantly at the British rear and forced them toward Chesapeake Bay. “Washington having finally adopted the project of uniting the land and sea forces against the army of Cornwallis,” Lafayette explained, “we manoeuvred to prevent [the] enemy from withdrawing when he became conscious of his dangers.”
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In the north, Rochambeau’s army had left Rhode Island and linked up with Washington’s for what Sir Henry Clinton believed would be a massive assault on New York—as did the French and American armies. As Washington knew they would, Clinton’s spies had intercepted Washington’s letter to Lafayette detailing his intention to attack New York. To reinforce Clinton’s belief in the veracity of the letter, Washington sent wagon trains and artillery rumbling up and down the Hudson shore opposite New York and raised an enormous encampment of tents—almost all of them empty, of course—in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, across the narrow waterway from Staten Island. “[Washington] had determined . . . to give out and cause it to be believed, that New York was the point of attack at which he aimed with all the force and means that could be collected,” explained Washington’s friend, the historian Jared Sparks.
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The attack began—or seemed to begin—on July 1, when General Benjamin Lincoln, who had been paroled by the British after his capture at Charleston, sailed into the Harlem River and seized the high ground at Kingsbridge (now the Bronx), opposite the northern end of New York Island. Washington and Rochambeau each moved enough troops southward for Lincoln to attack several enemy outposts and force their retreat across the Harlem to New York. Believing he faced attack by the combined American and French armies, Clinton sent urgent orders to Cornwallis to lead his army to Portsmouth, Virginia, and await transport to sail north to help defend New York.

As Washington feigned his attack on New York, Lafayette’s army celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence outside Williamsburg, with what he described as ostentatious maneuvers and parades “almost in the face of the enemy.”
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Flushed with pride, Lafayette wrote Washington, “These three battalions are the best troops that ever took the field. My confidence in them is unblended. They are far superior to any British troops, and none will ever venture to meet them at equal numbers . . . their presence here, I must confess, has saved this State.”
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Lafayette had good reason to be proud. In less than twelve weeks, he had led a small band of soldiers—at times, less than 1,000—on a grueling campaign from Baltimore and freed almost the entire state of Virginia from British control.
In but five weeks, he had chased the British army—7,000 strong—from the outskirts of Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, and Richmond without even confronting Cornwallis in traditional battle. His tiny band of marksmen had so harassed the British that they could not safely occupy the ground they conquered. He had so outmaneuvered the vaunted British general that Cornwallis had little choice but to retreat with his entire army to a humiliatingly defensive position at Williamsburg, facing Lafayette’s marksmen in front and on both flanks—and a watery grave in Chesapeake Bay to his rear. Lafayette was not yet twenty-four years old.

“I had the honour to command an army and oppose Lord Cornwallis,” Lafayette wrote to Washington. “When incomparably inferior to him, fortune was pleased to preserve us; when equal in numbers, though not in quality of troops, we have also been pretty lucky. Cornwallis had the disgrace of a retreat and this State being recovered, government properly re-established.”
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For American Patriots, the Virginia campaign, according to Rochambeau’s chaplain, made the word
marquis
“a beloved symbol which rouses their admiration and gratitude.”
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The following day, Cornwallis abandoned Williamsburg and marched his army to the causeway to James Island, where river boats were to take them to Portsmouth and the ocean transports to New York. Lafayette hoped to exact a steep price for their evacuation by attacking the British rear guard, but a spy warned Cornwallis, and he hid several thousand men in the forest while the rest of his army marched across the causeway with the baggage train. Lafayette sent the intrepid Wayne to attack the British rear with a force of 500 infantrymen, two cavalry squads, 150 riflemen, and three pieces of artillery. As what seemed to be the Redcoat rear guard decoyed Wayne’s men onto the causeway, Cornwallis sprang his trap, ordering his men in the forest to encircle the Patriots. Surrounded and outnumbered almost four to one, “Mad” Anthony Wayne, always true to his sobriquet, ordered his men to charge the enemy encirclement, but the British had too much firepower, and, Wayne reported later, “all on our side became a scene of confusion.” Recognizing what had happened, Lafayette called to his Continentals to break the British stranglehold from the rear and give Wayne an alley of retreat. Lafayette led the charge through the enemy line to Wayne. Artillery fire staggered his magnificent white horse, which fell mortally wounded beneath him. He managed to reach Wayne on foot, and together they regrouped the trapped men and guided most of them through the hail of British fire to the safety of the Continental army line. “Not a man in the whole detachment was more exposed,” Wayne said of Lafayette.
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Lafayette’s attack cost Cornwallis the lives of four sergeants and twenty-four infantrymen; seventeen officers and ninety-four soldiers were listed as wounded or missing.
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When news of the engagement and the accident to Lafayette reached Washington, he reacted like most worried fathers: “I have heard a thousand vague reports of your situation,” he wrote to Lafayette, “but none of them satisfactory . . . my anxiety to hear from you is increased by my sincere regard for you and by the interest I take in every thing which concerns you. Believe me to be most Affectionately Yours.”
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When Lafayette’s official report reached him, Washington’s tone changed to that of a proud father and commander in chief: “Be assured, my dear Marquis,” Washington wrote, “your conduct meets my warmest approbation, as it must that of everybody. Should it ever be said, that my attachment to you betrayed me into partiality, you have only to appeal to facts to betray any such charge.”
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In an official order, Lafayette credited the “gallantry and talent” of his men for the successful outcome of the engagement.
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The day after the battle, Cornwallis and his army abandoned Jamestown and James Island to Lafayette and went “under protection of their works at Portsmouth,”
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the last British stronghold in Virginia.

Three weeks after General Lincoln had encamped at Kingsbridge, neither Washington’s nor Rochambeau’s armies moved a step closer to New York. Aware of de Grasse’s presence in the West Indies, Clinton concluded that Lincoln’s assault had indeed been a feint; that New York remained secure enough to countermand his previous order to Cornwallis to come to New York. He sent Cornwallis new orders, to defend his position and build fortifications to protect the British fleet in Hampton Roads, the huge estuary where the James River estuary empties into Chesapeake Bay (see map on page 149). Deeming Hampton Roads too wide to protect, Cornwallis ordered the fleet into the narrow, more defensible York River estuary, where he began building fortifications on either side—at Yorktown on the south bank, and Gloucester, its twin town, across the river. His strategy would rank among the most brilliantly conceived designs for self-destruction in British military history and ensured the beginning of the decline of the British empire.

As Cornwallis built his fortifications, Lafayette established a ring of entrenched artillery positions about Yorktown to prevent a Cornwallis breakout by land, and he sent scouts to reconnoiter enemy positions along the coast. He sent one soldier from the Jersey line into the enemy camp to pretend he was a Patriot deserter and enroll in the British army. “His mission was to give advice of the movements of the enemy, and deceive them as the projects and resources of the Americans,” Lafayette explained.
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Lafayette relayed regular espionage reports to Washington, along with careful details of enemy movements, with descriptions of the surrounding geography. He was nothing if not thorough—obsessively so.