PIN : 083564–000
Introduction

On the morning of 19 April 1775, a column of British soldiers marching toward the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, found their advance 

barred by a small band of seventy-seven colonial militiamen. Hopelessly 

outnumbered, the Americans began to disperse, when suddenly a single 

shot rang out. The American War of Independence had begun. Six and 

one-half years later, on 17 October 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his 

army at Yorktown, Virginia, to a combined force of Americans and French 

headed by Gen. George Washington and General Rochambeau. Shortly 

afterwards, the British House of Commons passed a resolution against “the 

further prosecution of offensive war on the Continent of North America for 

the purpose of reducing the revolted colonies to obedience by force.” 

This pamphlet provides an in-depth account of the most decisive operation of the American Revolution, examining how the Americans and French 

moved land and naval forces from Rhode Island to Virginia, where they 

gained the tactical advantage over their opponents at Yorktown. Although 

the allied forces quickly surrounded the British army on their arrival at 

Yorktown, the ensuing siege would not have been as successful if the march 

from Rhode Island to Virginia had not gone as planned. The movement to 

Yorktown was complex because it had a combined (French and American) 

as well as joint (land and naval) aspect. French and American military 

commanders had to overcome formidable barriers of culture, language, 

tactical doctrine (American and French forces operated under different sets 

of war-fighting rules), and national political agendas. No one forgot that a 

mere fifteen years before Yorktown, the American colonists had seen the 

French and their American Indian allies as implacable enemies. 

In writing this work, Dr. Robert Selig has done an excellent job not 

only of conveying how allied commanders overcame these formidable 

obstacles, but also in showing how the march itself had a solidifying 

impact on American communities along the route. These communities 

willingly laid aside local and regional prejudices in order to provide 

logistical support to the troops, minimize the potential for civil-military 

friction, and pave the way for a decisive victory at Yorktown as well as 

the creation of an independent American republic.

 

 Jeffrey J. Clarke

 SES, Director

 U.S. Army Center of Military History


March to Victory: Washington, Rochambeau,

and the Yorktown Campaign of 1781

In June 1781, two markedly dissimilar military organizations prepared to converge on British-occupied New York City. One was the Continental Main Army, consisting of twenty-three under-strength infantry 

regiments, along with their supporting artillery, cavalry, and logistical 

units—a total of just over 6,650 men—under the command of 49-year-old 

Gen. George Washington. The troops left their winter quarters in New 

Jersey and New York State and concentrated at Newburgh, New York, 

awaiting orders for the year’s campaign. 

The other contingent was the French expeditionary army quartered 

in Newport, Rhode Island, which consisted of four regiments of infantry 

(Bourbonnois, Soissonnois, Saintonge, and Royal Deux-Ponts) and one 

battalion of artillery (the Auxonne)—nearly 5,300 men in all. A fifth 

detachment, the Volontaires étrangers de Lauzun, had spent the winter in 

Lebanon, Connecticut. Better known as “Lauzun’s Legion,” this unit was 

a combined-arms force of 300 light cavalry hussars and 100 men each of 

grenadiers, light infantry chasseurs, and light artillery. The French expeditionary force, under the command of 55-year-old Gen. Jean Baptiste 

Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, had arrived in Newport in 

July 1780. After spending the winter in camp, it was ready to fight. Its 

presence would prove vital in the upcoming campaign.

Neither the officers nor the men nor even the commanders in chief 

of the French and American coalition forces could imagine that over the 

next four months the campaign would take them on a march through nine 

states and over more than 600 miles on the largest and longest operational 

movement of the Revolutionary War. None among the frequently unpaid 

and poorly fed, clothed, and equipped Continentals could have foreseen 

that they were about to embark on a journey that would end in a decisive 

victory over the British at a small Virginia port named Yorktown. 

The Arrival of Allies

Because Congress was finding it increasingly difficult to raise money 

without the power of taxation, the army, like the Revolution, seemed to be 

running on faith, hope, and promises that spring. Patience was wearing thin 

with the lack of civilian support, even for dedicated officers like Lt. Col. 

Ebenezer Huntington of Norwich, Connecticut, whose brother Samuel had 

signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. “The Rascally Stupidity 
which now prevails in the Country 

at large, is beyond all descriptions,” 

he wrote in frustration from Passaic 

Falls, New Jersey, on 7 July 1780. 

“[T]hey Patiently see our Illustrious 

Commander at the head of 2,500 or 

3,000 Ragged tho Virtous & good 

Men . . . without Meat without 

Cloathing, & paid in filthy Rags. I 

despise My Countrymen.” The lack 

of money for the war effort led him 

to add that Congress had “left it in 

the power of the States to starve 

the Army at pleasure.” That an 

American army was still in the field 

at all in 1781 was due in large part 

to Washington’s personal charisma 

and leadership.

Despite the entry of France 

into the war in 1778, the military 

situation remained in doubt. In the 

past year, British troops under Gen. 

Sir Henry Clinton and Gen. Charles 

Cornwallis had marched almost at will across the Southern states. They 

captured Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1780 and routed Gen. Horatio Gates at Camden on 16 August. Only six weeks later, on 25 September, 

the American army learned of the treason of Gen. Benedict Arnold. As 

the struggle for independence wore on in July, Huntington warned, “[I]t 

must Go no farther they can endure it no longer.” In late December, Arnold, now a brigadier general in the British army, invaded Virginia with 

more than 1,000 troops and went on a rampage of destruction to support 

Cornwallis’s campaign against Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene. In January 

1781, although not willing to desert the cause, soldiers in the New Jersey 

and Pennsylvania lines reached the breaking point and mutinied over 

the lack of pay and scarcity of rations. As winter turned into spring, the 

Continental Army soldiered on, although nearly exhausted. 

Washington realized that for the Revolution to succeed, the army 

had to avoid destruction. Therefore, American forces remained on the 

defensive, waiting for opportunities to hurt the British at the least possible 

cost to the Continentals. Containing the British army in New York City 

required the Continental Army to remain in its positions in the Hudson 

George Washington, by James 

Peale, after Charles Willson 

Peale (Independence National 

Historical Park) 
Highlands and the hills of New 

Jersey. The contest there degenerated into a draining war of attrition 

the Americans might not lose, but 

had little hope of winning. Almost 

in despair, Washington wrote on 9 

April 1781: “We are at the end of 

our tether, and . . . now or never our 

deliverance must come.” 

Although Washington was unable to take the offensive against 

the British stronghold in New 

York, the situation in the South 

had become more favorable to the 

Patriot cause. In late 1780, American forces inflicted severe defeats 

on the British at King’s Mountain 

and Cowpens. Gen. Greene’s 

maneuvering then further enabled 

the Americans to sustain a tactical 

defeat at Guilford Courthouse in 

March 1781 that left the Continentals intact but severely damaged 

Cornwallis’s army. The costly 

victory prompted the British general to leave sufficient forces to defend 

his bases against Greene’s Continentals and a resurgent Patriot militia, 

which together had wrested the initiative from him. Convinced that the 

British cause had no chance of success in the Carolinas as long as Virginia 

remained in rebel control, Cornwallis planned to unite the remnants of 

his depleted and exhausted command with those British forces operating 

in Virginia and thus salvage his Southern strategy. He informed Lord 

George Germain, the Crown’s Secretary of State for the Colonies in 

London, but not his superior Clinton in New York, of his intentions, and 

left Wilmington, North Carolina, for Virginia on 25 April. 

If 1780 had been a year of agony and anguish, 1781 became a 

year of hope. The “deliverance” Washington was praying for was 

manifested in the power provided by the military coalition with the 

French allies. Rochambeau’s soldiers were encamped at Newport, and 

the fleet of Admiral de Grasse had sailed from Brest on 5 April bound 

for the West Indies. Five years after Louis XVI of France had begun 

sending equipment, funds, and military experts to aid the rebellious 

Jean Baptiste Donatien 

de Vimeur, comte de 

Rochambeau, by Charles 

Willson Peale (Independence 

National Historical Park)
American colonies in their struggle against the British Crown, he finally 

provided the crucial component for victory that had always been out 

of reach: a fleet. 

The decision to assist the American rebels had not been an easy one 

for the king. In 1763, the Peace of Paris at the conclusion of the Seven 

Years’ War elevated Great Britain to the pinnacle of global power and 

influence. In contrast, France had lost most of its colonial possessions 

in Africa, India, and the New World, where Canada became a British 

province and the Louisiana territory went to Spain. Seeking an opportunity to avenge its loss, France kept a close watch on the American 

colonies, where British policies created a negative political climate. 

When news of Lexington and Concord reached Versailles in the 

summer of 1775, the government of Louis XVI became the first foreign 

power to provide aid to the rebellious colonies. Following the American 

victory at Saratoga and near-victory at Germantown in 1777, France 

made the relationship with the new United States of America formal 

by signing the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the secret Treaty 

of Alliance at Versailles on 6 February 1778. As a means to avenge its 

humiliating loss in the Seven Years’ War, France promised both to fight 

and also to agree to no separate peace until Britain formally recognized 

American independence. 

The possibility of sending ground forces to fight on the American 

mainland, however, had been discussed and rejected at that point as impracticable. Both sides were too well aware of the historical and cultural 

obstacles that had developed during decades of colonial hostilities to assume that the arrival of French troops would be welcomed in the United 

States. France had hoped for a short war, but Clinton’s successful foray 

into Georgia and South Carolina in 1778 and the failure of early attempts 

at combined operations at Newport and Savannah in 1779 dashed all such 

hopes. The January 1780 decision to dispatch ground forces therefore 

heralded a new turn in both American and French policy.

Until the summer of 1779, even Washington had reservations about 

the deployment of French ground forces in America. On 16 September, 

the French minister Anne-César, chevalier de la Luzerne, met with the 

American commander in chief at West Point to discuss strategy and 

combined operations for the 1780 campaign. With an eye toward the 

deteriorating military situation in the South, Washington wondered 

“whether in case The Court of France should find it convenient to send 

directly from France a Squadron and a few Regiments attached to it, to 

act in conjunction with us in this quarter, it would be agreeable to The 

United States.” 
As recorded by his aide, Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s reply indicated: “The General thought it would be very advancive of the common Cause.” Washington shared this view with the 

marquis de Lafayette in a letter dated 30 September 1779, in hopes 

that the young marquis would soon return to America from leave in 

France, either in his capacity as a major general in the Continental 

Army, or as “an Officer at the head of a Corps of gallant French (if 

circumstances should require this).” Based on Luzerne’s own report 

of the 16 September meeting, and an excerpt of Washington’s letter, 

which Lafayette had sent him on 25 January 1780, the French foreign 

minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, decided that the time 

when French soldiers would be welcomed, or at least tolerated, by the 

Americans, had arrived.

Vergennes wasted no time. On 29 January 1780, he informed his 

ambassador in Madrid that France would be sending a few ships of 

the line and 3,000 to 4,000 troops to America. On 2 February the king 

approved Vergennes’s plan and deployment of forces under the code 

name Expédition Particulière. On 2 May, a fleet of thirty-two transports, 

Disembarking, July 11, 1778, by David Wagner (Courtesy of the artist)
seven ships of the line, two frigates, and two smaller warships, with 

crews totaling about 7,000 sailors, set sail from Brest for the New 

World. The naval forces were commanded by Charles Henry Louis 

d’Arsac, chevalier de Ternay, a 57-year-old chef d’escadre (equivalent 

to a British rear admiral) with forty years’ experience. The transports 

carried the 5,800 troops of the Expédition Particulière, commanded 

by the comte de Rochambeau, a professional soldier with thirty-seven 

years of service who was more comfortable in camp than in Versailles 

ballrooms. Rochambeau enjoyed a reputation of being level-headed, 

able to compromise for the sake of mission, and willing to work with 

fellow officers—all characteristics that were crucial for cooperation 

with the Americans. 

On 11 July, Ternay’s convoy sailed into Narragansett Bay. The 

men who debarked at Newport during the period 13–16 July after ten 

weeks on the high seas, however, suffered from scurvy and other ill 

effects of the voyage that delayed their ability to take to the field. But 

they were part of a long-service professional army that could hold its 

own against the British. Following its defeat in the Seven Years’ War, 

the French army underwent a modernization program that brought 

significant improvements in organization, recruitment, equipment, 

and training. When Louis XVI succeeded to the throne in 1774, he 

appointed the comte de Saint-Germain as his minister of war. The 

reforms abolished illustrious but expensive units, ended the sale of 

officer commissions, and introduced the model 1777 Charleville .69-

caliber musket into service.

Hopes ran high in the Continental Army, and in the states at 

large, that a campaign would begin soon after the French landed. On 

30 May 1780, six weeks before the first French infantryman set foot 

on American soil, William S. Pennington of the Second Regiment of 

Continental Artillery recorded in his diary: “Its reported that A Body 

of French Troops are to Land Near Rhode Island and March by land 

to Act against New York.” Moore Furman wrote from Trenton on 17 

July 1780 that “The French Fleet & Army arrived at New Port the 10th 

I apprehend there can be no other object now but New York worthy 

of the Attention of the Combined Forces, & that they will Act Offensively towards that, what I wish is that every Man will now aid some 

decisive blow to put an End to the War.” Washington’s aide-de-camp, 

Col. Benjamin Tallmadge, wrote from Cortland Manor on the Croton 

River to Col. Jeremiah Wadsworth in Hartford on 14 July 1780 to 

inform him: “We have just been rejoicing on acc[oun]t of the arrival 

of the French Fleet. How long before they will be ready to cooperate 
with us? When will be their first movement? For God’s Sake let us go 

about [this] business soon.” 

Developing an Allied Strategy

Washington hoped to initiate a military campaign and, as early as 

15 July, suggested a combined attack against New York for mid-August. 

Instead, Rochambeau asked to meet with Washington in Hartford, 

Connecticut. The conference began on Thursday, 21 September, at 

Wadsworth’s home. The host, together with his business partner, John 

Carter, served as general contractors of nonmilitary supplies for all French 

forces in America. Wadsworth’s involvement was deemed crucial for 

the logistical support of any combined military operation. Lafayette and 

Hamilton, who served as interpreters, brought an eight-page outline for 

an operation against New York City in the hope that the American commander in chief would be able to convince his French counterpart to agree 

to such an action before the onset of winter. But eventually Washington 

conceded that even with adequate numbers of foot soldiers, any attack 

was doomed without French naval support. With that support unavailable, 

both generals had no option but to postpone operations until the arrival 

of infantry reinforcements and a fleet from France. 

Immediately upon his return to Newport, Rochambeau sent his son, 

vicomte de Rochambeau, to Versailles to ask for more aid and a second division of infantry, without which he felt there was no chance of 

defeating the British forces defending New York City. To support the 

vicomte in his mission, Washington ordered Lt. Col. John Laurens to 

accompany the French officer. “Without a foreign loan,” he told Laurens, “our present force which is but the remnant of an army cannot be 

kept together for this campaign, much less will it be increased and in 

readiness for another.” The generals could only wait until the return of 

vicomte de Rochambeau.

On 7 May 1781, Rochambeau’s son returned with urgently needed 

money and the disappointing news that there would be no reinforcements. 

Rochambeau was advised to plan for the campaign with Washington 

and to cooperate with Admiral de Grasse, whose fleet had left Brest for 

the West Indies on 5 April. Rochambeau and Washington immediately 

arranged to meet to discuss their options at Wethersfield, Connecticut. 

During the 21–23 May meetings, the two commanders in chief agreed 

upon a united Franco-American strategy. Despite some misgivings, 

Rochambeau decided to use all the resources at his disposal to support 

Washington’s plan. 
10

With Lt. Col. Louis Le Bègue de Presle Duportail, one of the Continental Army’s French volunteers, acting as interpreter, Rochambeau 

wrote his questions in column form on the left-hand side of a sheet of 

paper. After they had been discussed among the Americans, Duportail 

translated their answers in a column on the right-hand side of the page. 

Washington recorded in his diary, “22d (Tuesday). Fixed with Count de 

Rochambeau upon plan of Campaign.” The diary entry explained, “That 

the French Land force (except 200 Men) should March as soon as the 

Squadron [in Newport] could Sail for Boston—to the North [Hudson] 

River—and there, in conjunction with the American, to commence an 

operation against New York (which in the present reduced State of the 

Garrison it was thought would fall, unless relieved; the doing which 

w[oul]d enfeeble their Southern operations, and in either case be productive of capital advantages).”

For Washington, an agreement on the “operation against New York” 

represented the desired outcome of the conference. He had been urging 

such an attack ever since the French landed, and Clinton’s dispatching 

forces to the Chesapeake in support of Cornwallis may have sufficiently 

weakened the New York defenses against a combined Franco-American 

attack. If that were true, there were numerous military and political 

reasons the city was the preferred object of the 1781 campaign, the 

most compelling of which was that it was the conspicuous symbol of 

the continuing British presence in America. The Continental Army and 

America at large expected, almost demanded, an attack on the city. It was 

also the scene of the nation’s, as well as Washington’s, most humiliating 

defeat. Its capture would serve as an act of redemption. Rochambeau, on 

the other hand, was apprehensive of such an undertaking. In his response 

to Lafayette’s urgings of the previous summer, he had told the young 

marquis, and through him Washington, that he did not wish to suffer 

another debacle such as the failed siege of Savannah. 

If Washington had a list of reasons such as “the waste of Men in long 

Marches . . . objections to the climate &ca [et cetera].” that made an attack on New York City preferable to any other project for the campaign 

of 1781, Rochambeau had equally valid ones for favoring an operation 

in the Chesapeake. First, even the combined Continental and French 

armies did not sufficiently outnumber the British forces defending the 

city. Second, a successful siege of a port city like New York required a 

strong naval component. Except for a few commerce raiders there was 

no Continental navy, and the state navies were equipped only for coastal 

defense. Rochambeau had no knowledge of what de Grasse would do, 

nor did he have the authority to issue him orders. Third, the French heavy 
11

siege artillery was in Newport. Only the vessels of Admiral Barras, who 

had replaced Ternay as commanding officer of the fleet in Newport after 

the latter’s death from a fever in December 1780, could transport it to 

New York. But since de Grasse had just been promoted over him, under 

eighteenth-century French military protocol Barras was not obligated 

to serve under his new superior. Thus it was uncertain whether the two 

French naval forces would cooperate.

Even if both admirals sailed to New York and imposed a blockade 

on the harbor, the sand banks at its entrance presented a natural obstacle. While Royal Navy 74-gun ships of the line drawing twenty-two 

feet of water cleared them routinely, a comparable French vessel with 

twenty-seven feet of draft might not. Rather than risk such an attack, 

Rochambeau preferred conducting an operation against British forces 

in the South. If the combined forces could lure Cornwallis’s army into a 

general engagement, they might yet inflict the decisive blow. Although 

Washington remained focused on New York, he was also well aware of 

the destruction—wrought first by British Maj. Gen. Alexander Leslie’s 

invasion in 1780 and later by Benedict Arnold’s command—in his home 

state of Virginia. Furthermore, six years of the war’s bitter lessons had 

taught him not to fixate on a single option. Washington therefore concluded his summary of the conference with the remark that they could 

always “extend our views to the Southward as circumstances and a naval 

superiority might render more necessary and eligible.” 

As Washington and Rochambeau huddled over maps at Wethersfield, Lafayette was in Virginia. Originally dispatched south to assist 

Greene against Cornwallis, his mission was changed en route to bolster 

the Virginia militia in countering Arnold’s invasion. In the meantime, 

Cornwallis had marched north from the Carolinas and joined with those 

British forces already in Virginia. As Lafayette waited for Brig. Gen. 

Anthony Wayne to arrive with reinforcements, the marquis endeavored 

to keep his force between Cornwallis and the way north. From Wilton, 

his men observed the redcoats on the opposite bank of the James River in 

Richmond. On 25 May, Cornwallis encamped at Westover. Despite the 

obstacle presented by Lafayette’s force, Cornwallis decided to continue 

the reduction of Virginia that Arnold had begun. 

Before the commanders in chief were aware of Cornwallis’s presence 

in Virginia, Rochambeau promised his full cooperation in an attack on 

New York City and returned to his headquarters in Rhode Island. On 28 

May 1781, he sent a message to de Grasse in Santo Domingo, carried 

aboard the frigate Concorde, urging the admiral to sail north with all 

the troops he could transport. In addition, he asked de Grasse to collect 
12

1.2 million livres in Havana on the Spanish island of Cuba. Maintaining a French army in America was expensive, and Rochambeau needed 

to replenish his funds. Two weeks later, French forces set out for New 

York from Newport. 

Preparations for the movement had been in progress for weeks. 

The generals agreed that regardless of the campaign objective, their 

two armies would unite between Peekskill and Philipsburg in Westchester County, New York. As early as 14 April, John Carter informed 

his business partner Wadsworth: “The Quarter Master General sets 

off tomorrow to mark the Line of March, as soon as that is fixed the 

Intendant will describe the different Posts where he will want Forage, 

Wood, Cattle &a [et cetera] provided.” Ten days later, on 25 April, 

French Quartermaster General Pierre François de Béville was back in 

Newport from his visit to Washington’s headquarters in New Windsor, 

and Carter reported: “Late last Night the Intendant gave me his Orders 

respecting the Camps as far as Hartford.”

Following Rochambeau’s return from Wethersfield, the pace of 

preparations accelerated. As equipment was repaired and maintained, 

Wadsworth collected the vast amounts of supplies, provisions, and 

forage needed to feed and sustain thousands of men and animals. The 

wagon train required the acquisition of 855 horses and 600 oxen, while 

the artillery required another 500 horses. By mid-May he had also hired 

men who were “employed in building Ovens and making the necessary 

preparations for the accommodation of said Army on their march.” 

Well-compensated in Rochambeau’s silver coins, Wadsworth met 

the challenge. Shortly after their arrival in 1780, the French estimated that 

their army in America needed 200 head of cattle at an average weight of 

400 pounds, with another 200 head in reserve, and 200 sheep every week 

for the soldiers’ meat ration. In accordance with eighteenth-century military practice, Wadsworth’s agents established supply magazines at each 

campsite planned along the route of march. When the French army arrived 

in Newtown, Connecticut, Wadsworth had 2,520 bushels of corn, 3161⁄2 

bushels of oats, 62 tons of hay, 19 tons of straw, 221⁄2 cords of wood, and 

20 head of beef cattle waiting for them. Once the army was encamped at 

Philippsburg, Wadsworth contracted Col. Henry Champion of Colchester 

to deliver 927 oxen and 356 sheep from 5 July to 11 August 1781.

The Allied Armies

A return of French forces compiled on 10 July 1781, following 

Rochambeau’s arrival in White Plains, showed that the army under his 
13

command started the campaign with 4,400 NCOs and privates and some 

350 officers.

These numbers included newly arrived infantry replacements and 

two companies of artillery. After leaving behind those who were sick, 

detached for special duty, guarding supplies, or garrisoning Newport, the 

French forces marching from Providence through Connecticut to New 

York numbered about 4,250 men. 

Like every eighteenth-century army, the French expeditionary force 

was encumbered by a number of family members, civilian volunteers, 

employees, and contractors, both male and female, known collectively as 

“camp followers.” To provide for his army’s supply convoy, for example, 

Rochambeau contracted for fifteen brigades of wagons, or 210 vehicles, 

each drawn by six oxen. This required the hiring of 239 men to act as 

drivers and conductors, plus fifteen cooks, most of them women. 

In contrast to the austere conditions in the Continental Army, where 

officers’ servants were often drawn from the ranks, many of Rochambeau’s officers personally employed theirs. Since these attendants had 

not been brought from Europe, American civilians were hired. Each 

French general officer had ten or more servants, and even a lowly souslieutenant often kept two servants and three horses. This practice possibly added as many as 1,000 domestiques, the equivalent of an infantry 

regiment, to the requirement for provisions. The additional horses may 

have raised the number of animals to 3,000 head, thereby increasing the 

requirements for forage. 

Sailing up the bay to Providence, French forces started departing 

from Newport on 11 June. A week later, on Monday, 18 June, the First 

Division was on the march from Providence to Waterman’s Tavern. On 

Strength of French Army at White Plains, July 1781

Present NCOs and In Hospitals

Unit Men of All Arms Detached Along the Route Total

Bourbonnois 811 156 63 1,030

Soissonnois 901 111 42 1,054 

Saintonge 853 115 44 1,012 

Royal Deux-Ponts 831 153 39 1,023

Artillerie 381 100 30 511

Mineurs — 23 — 23

Workers (ouvriers) 33 — 3 36

Lauzun’s Legion 581 25 6 613

Total 4,391 683 227 5,302
14

21 June Lauzun’s Legion departed its winter quarters in Connecticut on 

a route some 10 to 15 miles south of the infantry to protect its flank. 

Rochambeau established an order of march in which each regiment 

with all of its attachments (which constituted a division) set out on 

successive days. The order proceeded as follows: Bourbonnois, personally commanded by Rochambeau, 18 June; Royal Deux-Ponts, baron 

de Vioménil, 19 June; Soissonnois, comte de Vioménil, 20 June; and 

Saintonge, comte de Custine, 21 June. 

Each division’s march route was planned by an assistant quartermaster general and preceded by pioneers (soldiers detailed to repair 

roads and bridges and remove obstacles). Dressed in tight-fitting woolen 

underwear, breeches, gaiters (a covering over the shoes and lower legs), 

and a sleeved vest, each infantryman carried personal equipment weighing almost sixty pounds, plus a musket. 

In each division, the horse-drawn carriages and guns of the field 

artillery, ammunition wagons, and traveling forges followed the infantrymen. The baggage train of the artillerymen came next, followed by that 

of the staff, and then the ten regimental wagons (one per company) of 

the infantry regiment. The wagons carried the companies’ tents, officers’ 

Carlton’s Bridge, by David Wagner (Courtesy of the artist) 
15

luggage, and those items the soldiers did not carry on their persons. A 

wagon to gather stragglers, several more for the hospital, and those belonging to the butchers came next. Last in the march order was the train 

of wagons burdened with the army’s general supplies, which ranged from 

leather (to repair harnesses) and horseshoes to soap, writing paper, ink, 

and quills. The wheelwrights (artisans skilled in making and repairing 

broken wheels) and farriers (blacksmiths who shod the horses and oxen 

of the army) brought up the rear with their vehicles. 

In order to conserve the army’s strength and avoid marching in the 

heat of the day, reveille sounded around 0200, and the troops were on the 

road each morning by 0400. Capt. Samuel Richards of the Connecticut 

Line was home in Farmington on leave in June 1781 when he recorded: 

“They marched on the road in open order, until the music struck up, they 

then closed into close order. On the march—a quarter master preceded 

and at the forking of the road would be stuck a pole with a bunch of 

straw at top to shew the road they were to take.”

The bivouac sites were each located from twelve to fifteen miles 

apart, so that the columns usually arrived before noon following an easy 

day’s march. After they arrived, the soldiers unloaded their camp equipage and pitched tents. Each eight-man chambrées, or “mess,” was then 

issued its daily ration. Captain Richards was among the many spectators 

who “viewed their manner of encamping over night.” He was impressed 

by “the perfect mechanical manner of performing all they had to do: such 

as digging a circular hole & making nitches in which to set their camp 

kettles for cooking their food.” While general officers lodged in nearby 

taverns, the company officers were billeted two to a tent near their men. 

This routine was maintained, with some minor variations, for the entire 

march. The midday arrivals provided many opportunities for the local 

inhabitants to see, do business with, and meet, often for the first time, 

French soldiers as allies rather than enemies.

On 6 July, the French forces entered camp at White Plains, and two 

days later, 8 July, they paraded in review for Washington. “We hadn’t 

had more than a day to repair the disorder of the march, but our troops 

nevertheless appeared in the grandest parade uniform. M. de Rochambeau 

took his place in front of the white flag of his oldest regiment and saluted 

General Washington. . . . Our general received the greatest compliments 

for the beauty of his troops. It is true that without doubt those that we 

have with us were superb at our departure from France.” 

American officers agreed. On 13 July, 41-year-old Col. Jonathan 

Trumbull, Washington’s private secretary, wrote to Col. Richard Varick 

about “The Junction of the two armies [which] is formed at this Place, & 
16

has commenced with high seeming Cordiality & Affection, demonstrated 

by constant Acts of Conviviality & social Harmony. A very fine Body of 

Troops compose the French Army, which seems anxious to give some 

Marks of Heroism, to distinguish their Attachment & Military Pride.” 

Surgeon James Thacher of the Continental Army recorded that “the 

French army exhibit their martial array to the greatest advantage. In the 

officers we recognize the accomplished gentlemen, free and affable in 

their manners. Their military dress and side-arms are elegant; the troops 

are under the strictest discipline, and are amply provided with arms and 

accoutrements, which are kept in the neatest order.” 

The Continental Army was also preparing to march from the Hudson 

Highlands with Washington at its head in June 1781. It had come a long 

way toward developing into a professional military force since its inception in 1775. In addition to a number of veterans who had once served as 

British officers, the army had greatly benefited from about 100 foreign 

professional soldiers, mostly French, who had either volunteered or, 

after February 1778, been detailed on orders by the French Crown. They 

provided crucial expertise in artillery, cartography, engineering, and other 

technical skills that the American officer corps was still developing. 

The Continental Army had developed its fighting ability on bloody 

battlefields for five years. Although defeated in some engagements, it was 

never entirely vanquished. The army sharpened its edge in Baron von 

Steuben’s drill at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777–78 and proved 

its mettle at Monmouth the following June. During those formative years 

the Continental Army became a diverse organization—young and old, 

native born and immigrant, black, white, and American Indian—that 

reflected the multiethnic reality of the colonial population. In July 1779, 

the forty men of Capt. Matthias Ogden’s company of the First New Jersey 

Regiment, for example, ranged in age from sixteen to sixty-two years 

and hailed from New Jersey, Ireland, England, France, and Germany. 

The company even included a deserter from the regiment of Britain’s 

Waldeck auxiliaries as well as a 23-year-old soldier named John Newton, 

who was described as a barber from “Bengaul” in the East Indies with 

a “yellow complexion” who spoke good English. 

Although black soldiers had been in the ranks since Bunker Hill, and 

their numbers had steadily increased, their eligibility for service and status 

in the armed forces had undergone many changes. The most significant of 

these occurred in February 1778, when the government of Rhode Island, 

desperate for recruits to fill its assigned quota of troops, passed legislation 

that empowered the state to purchase slaves from their owners and then 

enlist them in the Second Rhode Island Regiment. Other states passed 
17

similar legislation allowing black 

men to serve. When French officers 

first encountered the Continental 

Army encamped at White Plains, 

a number of them remarked with 

surprise about the number of black 

troops in the American army.

As of 1 January 1781, the 

combat strength of the Continental 

Army was organized into fortynine regiments of infantry raised 

by the several states, plus the four 

battalions of Col. Moses Hazen’s 

Canadian Regiment, known as 

“Congress’ Own.” There were four 

legionary corps and two partisan 

corps, with their characteristic mix 

of light infantry and dragoons, or 

cavalry, which provided the army 

with a combined-arms capability 

that was well-suited to conducting 

reconnaissance and irregular, or 

partisan, operations in conjunction with militia. Four regiments 

of artillery supported the infantry 

forces.

There were also a number of special-purpose units, such as the Artificer Regiment. Much like a present-day Quartermaster and Ordnance 

Corps unit, its soldiers were also skilled as blacksmiths, wheelwrights, 

farriers, and harness makers and excelled in other crafts that made and 

repaired military equipment. There was a Corps of Engineers, most officers of which were French, as well as a Corps of Sappers and Miners. 

These eighteenth-century combat engineers built or repaired bridges 

and fortifications, maintained roads, and provided the line units with 

experts knowledgeable in conducting siege operations. The Provost 

Corps, or Marechausee, constituted the military police of the era. The 

Corps of Invalids was composed of men who had suffered wounds or 

illnesses that rendered them incapable of going on campaign, but who 

could perform less arduous service. They were assigned to garrison duty 

at forts or guard duty at supply magazines, thus freeing more physically 

fit men for deployment. 

The American Soldier, 1781,

 by H. Charles McBarron

(U.S. Army Art Collection)
18

To provide for the manpower needs of the army, each state agreed 

on a quota of soldiers based on its population and economic capability, 

while Congress itself assumed responsibility for Hazen’s regiment and 

the partisan corps. Each regiment of Continentals was organized with 

nine companies, eight of the line and one of light infantry. In addition 

to officers and noncommissioned officers on the regimental staff, each 

company was authorized to have three officers, one first sergeant, four 

sergeants, four corporals, a drummer and fifer, and sixty-four privates. 

The regiments, however, were rarely at full strength. The actual number 

of men serving in 1781 barely reached 14,000. Those units that received 

orders to march for White Plains on 21 June 1781 had about 10,300 men 

on the rolls, of which about 6,500 were fit for duty.

The appearance of the well-appointed French who paraded during the 

review of 8 July stood in sharp contrast to the ragged Continentals. The 

next day, when “the American army presented arms, General Washington 

invited our headquarters staff to come to see it,” baron Closen remarked. 

“I had a chance to see the American army, man for man. It was really 

painful to see these brave men, almost naked with only some trousers 

and little linen jackets, most of them without stockings, but, would you 

believe it? Very cheerful and healthy in appearance.” 

Lt. Jean François de Lesquevin, comte de Cleremont-Crèvecœur 

“went to the American camp, which contained approximately 4,000 

men. In beholding this army I was struck, not by its smart appearance, 

but by its destitution: the men were without uniforms and covered with 

rags; most of them were barefoot. They were of all sizes, down to children who could not have been over fourteen. There were many negroes, 

mulattoes, etc.” 

To Marie François, baron Cromot du Bourg, the Continental Army 

seemed “to be in as good order as possible for an army composed of 

men without uniforms and with narrow resources.” Rochambeau’s aidede-camp, Louis François Dupont d’Aubevoye, comte de Lauberdière, 

“found them lined up in the order of battle in front of their camp. It was 

not a very pleasant sight not only because of the attire and the uniform 

of the regiments, because at present, and ever since they have been 

in the war, they are pretty much naked.” Comparing their equipment, 

Lauberdière noticed how “the Americans, on the contrary, have nothing but a kind of shirt or jacket and a big pair of trousers. Right now 

their coat is worn only at three-quarter length; they have no shoes. Each 

man is also provided a small woolen blanket which he always carries 

with him. This method is good in a country where the cold of the night 

follows quickly the searing heat. Since the haversack of the American 
19

Continental Army Strength at White Plains, 6 July 1781 

Strength

(Officers

Regiment Commanding Officer and Men)

First New Jersey Regiment Col. Mathias Ogden 185

Second New Jersey Regiment Col. Elias Dayton 226 

First Connecticut Regiment Col. John Durkee 250 

Third Connecticut Regiment Col. Samuel B. Webb 256 

Fifth Connecticut Regiment Lt. Col. Isaac Sherman 220 

Second Connecticut Regiment Col. Herman Swift 239 

Fourth Connecticut Regiment Col. Zebulon Butler 233

Rhode Island Regiment Lt. Col. Jeremiah Olney 298 

First Massachusetts Regiment Col. Joseph Vose 200 

Fourth Massachusetts Regiment Col. William Shepard 193

Seventh Massachusetts Regiment Lt. Col. John Brooks 192 

Second Massachusetts Regiment Lt. Col. Ebenezer Sprout 215 

Fifth Massachusetts Regiment Col. Rufus Putnam 185 

Eighth Massachusetts Regiment Col. Michael Jackson 233

Third Massachusetts Regiment Col. John Greaton 193

Sixth Massachusetts Regiment Lt. Col. Calvin Smith 207 

Ninth Massachusetts Regiment Col. Henry Jackson 223

First New Hampshire Regiment Col. Alexander Scammel 214 

Second New Hampshire Regiment Lt. Col. George Reid 212 

Tenth Massachusetts Regiment Col. Benjamin Tupper 203

First New York Regiment Col. Goose Van Schaick 438 

Canadian Regiment (Congress’ Own) Brig. Gen. Moses Hazen 263

First Bn., Conn. State Brig. Maj. Edward Shipman 220

Second Bn., Conn. State Brig. Maj. Elijah Humphreys 186

Cavalry

Second Continental Col. Elisha Sheldon 234 

Artillery

Second Continental Col. John Lamb 163

Third Continental Col. John Crane 205 

Corps of Sappers and Miners Brig. Gen. Presle Duportail 46 
20

soldier is not burdened any further this provides light and quick cover, 

something that we can not give our troops for fear of augmenting a load 

that is already too heavy.” 

Despite the American soldiers’ condition, Lauberdière reflected 

what many of his countrymen must have felt when he continued, “But I 

remember their great accomplishments and I can not see without a certain 

admiration that it was with these same men that General Washington had 

so gloriously defended his country.” Despite tremendous hardship and in 

the face of past defeat, these brave Continentals established a tradition 

of rendering faithful service to their nation rather than seeking safety, 

personal comfort, or gain. 

Though it was still struggling with austere logistical support and 

ragged appearance in comparison to the French allies, the Continental 

Army was experienced and professional. The force had recently been 

reorganized. Some proud but under-strength units had been eliminated, 

with their soldiers consolidated into others and the resulting supernumerary officers retired from service. Although the process had been painful, it 

left the most competent officers in command of dedicated veteran soldiers 

in the ranks of the retained units. Unlike the regiments raised in the early 

stages of the war, those that remained were composed of men who had 

enlisted for the duration, not for short terms that always seemed near 

expiration. They also had a universally revered commander in chief in 

Washington, who inspired loyalty and confidence. What the Americans 

lacked in money, naval support, heavy siege artillery, and experience 

in conducting siege operations could fortunately be provided by France 

to turn 1781 into the annus mirabilis—the “miracle year”—that would 

ensure America’s freedom.

Decisive Opportunity

Once the two armies joined, their leaders saw the capture of 

New York City as the next step toward securing that liberty. At daybreak on 18 July, Washington, Duportail, Rochambeau, Béville, and 

Washington’s chief engineer, Jean Nicolas Desandroüins, escorted 

by 100 dragoons, crossed the Kill Van Kull channel from New Jersey 

to reconnoiter the west side of Staten Island. After they returned that 

night, Rochambeau pressed Washington for a definite plan. Following 

the pattern established at Hartford and Wethersfield, he presented the 

American general a series of written questions on 19 July. When he 

asked whether preparations for a march southward should not be made, 

Washington responded that unless certain conditions were met, “the 
21

enterprise against New York and its environs has to be our principal 

object.”

Before laying siege to New York, however, it was imperative that 

the allied armies collect as much intelligence about their enemy’s situation and intentions as possible. On the evening of 21 July, nearly 2,000 

American and 3,000 French infantry, cavalry, and artillery soldiers, arrayed in three columns, advanced. With Washington and Rochambeau 

accompanying the center column, the combined armies marched toward 

the enemy defenses on Manhattan Island. This “grand reconnaissance” 

sought to locate suitable avenues of approach and identify the weak 

points in the British defenses that could be exploited or taken by assault 

in the coming siege. 

Shortly after midnight on Sunday, 22 July, French troops of the center 

column reached Valentine Hill, where they met their guide, Andrew Corsa 

of Fordham. After reconnoitering British positions around Morrisania (a 

settlement formerly located within the current Bronx section of New York 

City), they bivouacked near the ruins of Fort Independence, the scene 

of an American defeat in 1776. Early the next morning, Rochambeau, 

Supply Depot at Danbury, CT, August 1781, by David Wagner 

(Courtesy of the artist) 
22

Washington, and their staffs set out for Frog’s (Throgg’s) Neck and a 

second day of reconnaissance. When the two armies returned to their 

camps near White Plains in the evening of 23 July, baron Closen wrote 

in his diary: “I admire the American troops tremendously! It is incredible 

that soldiers composed of men of every age, even of children of fifteen, 

of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid, and rather poorly fed, can 

march so well and withstand fire so steadfastly.” 

The reconnaissance, however, had been a disappointment for Washington. The general realized that without additional massive reinforcements and materiel, as well as the assistance of a powerful fleet, an assault 

on New York had little chance of success. At the Wethersfield conference 

he had left the possibility of a Southern strategy open, “as circumstances 

and a Naval superiority might render [it] more necessary and eligible.” 

Allied hopes now rested on de Grasse and a fleet. 

Washington grew more concerned as the days passed without receiving any word from the French admiral. On 26 July, Lt. Col. Jonathan 

Trumbull, Jr., wrote to his father Jonathan, the governor of Connecticut: 

“The Genl is exceedingly anxious & finds himself in a most perplexing 

& ridiculous situation, not being able to determine on any fixed plan of 

operation, from the incertainty of his expectations & prospects.” Realizing 

that the recapture of the city was out of reach, on 1 August Washington 

confided in his diary that he “could scarce see a ground upon w[hi]ch 

to continue my preparations against New York, and therefore I turned 

my views more seriously (than I had before done) to an operation to the 

southward.” Remarkably, although unknown to him at the time, events 

had turned in the allies’ favor.

Seeking a base in the Chesapeake Tidewater that could be easily 

supported by the Royal Navy, Cornwallis had selected the small port of 

Yorktown. On 2 August, Lafayette drafted a report to Washington that 

Cornwallis’s men had begun erecting fortifications on the banks of the 

York River. With the first condition for a successful Southern strategy 

met, Lafayette assumed the task of keeping Cornwallis from leaving 

Yorktown. But in order to trap Cornwallis’s army, a French naval force 

would have to be inserted between it and the Royal Navy to prevent a 

British evacuation. If the French fleet could not gain and maintain local 

naval superiority, any benefit accrued by massing the Continental and 

French armies against Cornwallis would be short-lived. The outcome 

now depended on de Grasse. 

On 28 May, Rochambeau had informed de Grasse: “There are two 

points at which an offensive can be made against the enemy: Chesapeake 

and New York. The south-westerly winds and the state of defense in 
23

Virginia will probably make you prefer the Chesapeake Bay, and it will 

be there that we think you may be able to render the greatest service. . . . 

[I]n any case it is essential that you send, well in advance, a frigate to 

inform Barras where you are to come and also General Washington.” 

On 28 July, de Grasse sent Rochambeau a message informing him 

that he chose the Chesapeake. The letter reached the French headquarters at Phillipsburg, New Jersey, on 14 August, and when Rochambeau 

notified Washington, the two commanders in chief immediately adjusted 

their plans. As de Grasse had declared that his fleet would stay on station 

at the Chesapeake only until 15 October, there was no time to lose. On 

17 August, the first American forces crossed the Hudson River at Dobbs 

Ferry to begin their 450-mile march to Yorktown. The next day, more 

American infantry and the French artillery were marching toward Peekskill, and were soon followed by the French infantry on 19 August. 

It was the largest troop movement of the war. Soldiers, vehicles, animals, and supplies moved hundreds of miles with only minimal warning. 

Drawing on the personal resources of Robert Morris, the superintendent 

of finance, the American supplies were gathered in Continental depots 

and acquired by army and civil authorities along the way, all in cooperation with the French allies. [Quartermaster General Timothy] Pickering 

and his staff met the challenges of bringing the Continental Army to 

Virginia and of sustaining it throughout the siege. No less an authority 

than Jeremiah Wadsworth informed Silas Deane afterward, in November 

1781, that “[t]he American Army was well supplied with provisions by 

the Several States the last Campaign without spending a shilling of the 

money bro[ught] over by Mr. Laurens.”

In order to sail north with as much combat power as possible, de 

Grasse sent a large convoy of merchant ships sailing for Europe escorted 

by a single 64-gun ship of the line, and temporarily entrusted the defense 

of the French Caribbean islands to their Spanish allies. Washington also 

took a number of risks. First, he assigned the defense of the New York 

Highlands, centered on the key fortress of West Point, to Gen. William 

Heath and a force of 2,500 men. Although the American positions were 

strong in natural and manmade defenses, and the Continentals could 

call on assistance from state and militia troops in the area, Clinton’s 

British army outnumbered the American force by nearly four to one. 

Second, Washington not only assumed that de Grasse was on his way, 

but also that the French fleet could overcome any challenge by the Royal 

Navy. Fortunately, as the French sailed north toward the Chesapeake, 

Britain’s Adm. Sir George Brydges, Baron Rodney, eager to secure his 

share of the prize money captured on the Dutch island of St. Eustatius 
24

the previous February, decided to sail to England not only with his own 

squadron, but also with four of Rear Adm. Samuel Hood’s ships of the 

line as well. Rodney’s decision reduced the strength of British sea power 

at the decisive hour. 

With the combined French and American army set in motion for 

Virginia, Lafayette’s mission changed from annoying and shadowing 

Cornwallis without risking a decisive engagement, to making sure the 

British commander kept his army at Yorktown until the arrival of WashStrength of the Continental Army for the March to Virginia, August 1781

 Strength

 (Officers

Regiment Commanding Officer and Men)

Commander in Chief’s Guard Capt. Caleb Gibbs 70 

Rhode Island Regiment Lt. Col. Jeremiah Olney 360 

First New York Regiment Col. Goose Van Schaick 390 

Second New York Regiment Col. Philip Van Cortlandt 420 

Combined New Jersey Regiment Col. Mathias Ogden 330 

Canadian Regiment (Congress’ Own) Brig. Gen. Moses Hazen 270 

Light Infantry Regiment Col. Alexander Scammel 380 

Second Continental Artillery Col. John Lamb 200 

Corps of Sappers and Miners Capt. James Gilliland 50 

Artificer Regiment Lt. Col. Ebenezer Stevens 100

Total 2,500

Strength of the French Army for the March to Virginia, August 1781

Present NCOs and In Hospitals

Unit Men of All Arms Detached Along the Route Total

Bourbonnois 787 178 64 1,029

Soissonnois 896 116 44 1,056

Saintonge 851 115 77 1,043

Royal Deux-Ponts 842 172 29 1,043

Artillerie 239 240 31 510

Mineurs — 23 — 23

Workers (ouvriers) 32 — 4 36

Lauzun’s Legion 593 13 4 610

Totals 4,240 857 253 5,350
Hudson R

James R

Chesapeake Bay

O C T

C L I N T O N ( - )

J U N – J U L

A P R – M

AY

C O R N WA L L I S

J U N – J U L R O C H A M B E A U

A P R

L A FA Y E T T E

A U G –

S E P

A U G

WA S H I N G T O N ( - ) A N D R O C H A M B E A U

D E

B A R R A S

A U G

D E G R A S S E

Wyoming Valley

Newtown

Newburgh Newport

Trenton

Philadelphia

Head of Elk

Baltimore

Annapolis

Richmond

Petersburg

Wilmington

YORKTOWN

New York

P E N N S Y L V A N I A

V I R G I N I A

N O R T H

C A R O L I N A

M A R Y L A N D

D E L A W A R E

C O N N E C T I C U T

M A S S A C H U S E T T S

N E W H A M P S H I R E

VERMONT

RHODE

ISLAND

N E W Y O R K

N E W J E R S E Y

CONCENTRATION OF FORCES

AT YORKTOWN

April–October 1781

0 100

Miles
26

ington and Rochambeau. As they prepared for the march, Rochambeau’s 

forces numbered 4,200 men. After the necessary detachments were made, 

Washington’s had about 2,500, but their numbers would double once 

they joined with the Continentals already in Virginia with Lafayette, 

Wayne, and von Steuben. Rochambeau also expected reinforcements in 

Virginia when the French fleet landed the 3,000 troops it was bringing 

from the Caribbean. Additionally, newly raised and trained regiments of 

Maryland Continentals, as well as Virginia state troops and militia, would 

add an equal number to the American army. Together, these combined 

forces would provide the three-to-one advantage considered necessary 

for a successful siege.

Once the decision to march south was made, the army staffs had 

three equally important tasks to accomplish concurrently:

1. Provide the logistics for the march.

2. Maintain secrecy and deceive British observers of their true 

intentions as long as possible.

3. Establish and maintain posts on the west bank of the Hudson to 

observe British forces in New York City.

The last task was the easiest to implement. On 17 August, Washington 

instructed Col. Elias Dayton to “detach from the [New Jersey] Brigade . . . 

a Capt. and 50 [men], with Orders to patrole the Country between Closter 

and the New Bridge, the Officer must not consider either of these places 

as his post, but continue to range the intermediate space until he receives 

further Orders.” During the night of 18–19 August, Hazen’s and the remainder of Dayton’s units were ferried across the Hudson at Dobbs Ferry 

and were posted “to the Heights between Chatham and Springfield.” On 

27 June, a battalion of the New Jersey state troops, authorized by the legislature and placed “in actual service” for three months by the governor at 

Washington’s request, joined the effort. Led by Col. Sylvanus Seely, the 

men were “to remain at Dobbs’s Ferry [and to] keep scouts and Patroles 

towards Bergen, and to take every precaution ag[ains]t a surprise” by 

British forces. To cover the area between Sneeden’s Landing in the north 

and Dayton’s to the south, elements of Col. Alexander Scammel’s light 

infantry took positions near Kakeat (today New Hempstead, New York). 

Together, these covering forces provided the active measures to prevent 

enemy reconnaissance and to keep allied commanders informed of British 

activities as the allied forces marched for Philadelphia.

Secrecy and deception provided passive security measures to deny 

the British intelligence about the allies’ plans and intentions. Only a 
27

few officers in either army were informed of the details. Misleading 

intelligence was included in personal letters and official dispatches and 

sent via the most dangerous routes so the British could intercept them. 

Washington ordered boats to be built, ostensibly for the purpose of ferrying the army to Staten Island, issued contracts to deliver foodstuffs to 

Continental magazines, and had bake ovens built in New Jersey. False 

rumors about troop movements and allied plans were intentionally leaked 

to the troops, knowing they would be overheard by Loyalist spies and 

informants in and near the American camps and passed on to British 

headquarters. Later, Colonel Trumbull reflected that “some were indeed 

laughable now,” but they achieved their purpose.

The deception had been aided by what would otherwise have been 

an intelligence coup for the British. Before the change of plans had been 

effected, Washington had sent encrypted correspondence to Luzerne in 

Philadelphia, Lafayette in Virginia, Greene in North Carolina, and others 

informing them of the decision to attack New York. The British intercepted a copy of the letter, a failure in security that caused considerable 

embarrassment to Washington when he learned of it at the time. The 

captured letters were sent to London for deciphering but were back in 

Clinton’s hands by 3 August. Their contents made the allied deceptions 

all the more believable, and Clinton remained convinced that New York 

City was the Franco-American army’s object until it was too late for him 

to influence the campaign’s outcome.

On 16 August, two days after Washington and Rochambeau had read 

de Grasse’s letter (and while all but a handful of other high-ranking officers were ignorant of the change in plans), Clinton’s spies reported that 

the French admiral was on his way north with twenty-eight ships of the 

line. It was not until 6 September that he realized that Cornwallis was in 

grave danger. By then the first units of the Continental Army had reached 

Head of Elk, Maryland, the northernmost port on Chesapeake Bay, and 

were ready to embark for Williamsburg on the Virginia peninsula.

The responsibility for procuring supplies, reconnoitering roads, and 

arranging for the transportation needs of the Continental Army and coordinating its efforts with those of the French army lay with the quartermaster general. Col. Timothy Pickering had assumed that duty from Gen. 

Greene on 5 August 1780, when the latter officer was given command of 

the Southern Department. Each of the Quartermaster Department’s eight 

deputy quartermasters was responsible for procuring and distributing supplies in a specific group of states. This reflected a change implemented in 

1781, prior to which each state had had its own deputy quartermaster. In 

May of that year, Congress directed that the army employ a procurement 
28

system based on awarding contracts to private suppliers. In theory, these 

contractors could replace officers previously appointed as commissaries 

and assistant deputy quartermasters and abolish the vulnerable system 

of fixed magazines and depots on which the army depended for the distribution of provisions and supplies.

Turning the job of military supply to private contractors was the 

idea of Robert Morris. In a letter to Oliver Phelps, Morris explained 

that “experience has sooner or later pointed out contracts with private 

men of substance and talents equal to the understanding as the cheapest, 

most certain, and consequently the best mode of obtaining those articles, 

which are necessary for the subsistence, covering, clothing, and moving 

of an army.” Under this arrangement, a contract for provisions stated 

the cost of each ration, which was to be delivered by the contractor to 

each individual soldier for a predetermined price. This method also was 

driven by unfounded congressional fears that Army quartermasters might 

unfairly enrich themselves at the expense of the United States. By 1780, 

however, Continental dollars had lost all value to inflation, leaving the 

officers and agents of the Quartermaster’s Department without resources 

to purchase supplies. An attempt in 1780 to assign “in-kind” supply 

quotas to the states also failed. Many of the supplies remained in the 

depots where they were delivered because the states did not assume the 

responsibility for transporting them to the troops, and the quartermaster 

agents had no money with which to hire wagon drivers. 

This situation shifted the burden of finding the funds to finance the 

logistical system to the superintendent of finance. In July 1781, Congress 

authorized Morris to contract for all supplies needed by the Continental 

Army, as well as for their transportation. As long as Congress lacked the 

authority, or refused to accept the responsibility, to raise and collect the 

taxes necessary to maintain the army, Morris lacked the funds to pay the 

contractors for their supplies. Initially he pledged his private resources to 

pay for supplies and to establish depots along the route, but more often 

than not the regimental supply officers relied on interest-bearing state or 

Continental loan certificates, promissory notes that were redeemable at 

some future date, and the goodwill of providers to accept them. 

The logistical challenges facing French and American forces on their 

march to Yorktown were immense. Rochambeau’s men were traversing a foreign country over unknown roads through sparsely populated 

countryside where very few people spoke their language and where the 

city of Philadelphia was possibly the only community large enough 

to feed either of the two armies for any amount of time out of its own 

resources. At least Wadsworth had 400,000 livres in “hard currency” 
29

from Rochambeau to purchase 

the necessary supplies. Colonel 

Pickering did not have access to 

comparable funds, and it stands 

as permanent testimony to the 

resourcefulness, dedication, and 

ingenuity of him and his staff, as 

well as Superintendent of Finance 

Morris, that they were able to meet 

the Continental Army’s enormous 

requirements in 1781. 

Chief Engineer Duportail 

submitted an “Estimate of the 

number of Horses & Oxen of the 

Main Army for the Campaign 

1781 & of the cost of the Forage 

requisite for their Support for 

182 days.” He allotted sixty-four 

horses and thirty-two oxen for the 

commander in chief’s use. Each 

infantry regiment was allowed 

twenty-two horses and thirty-two 

oxen. An artillery regiment needed twenty horses and forty oxen to 

draw its baggage and supplies and more draft animals to draw its artillery pieces, ammunition wagons, traveling forges, and other vehicles. 

The needs of the sappers and miners, artificers, commissary, and staff 

added hundreds to the requirement. Accordingly, Duportail planned on 

an initial allocation of 3,106 horses and 2,132 oxen for the main army 

alone for the 1781 campaign. 

On 1 July, Maj. Gen. Henry Knox requested 205 horses for the 

artillery carriages and another 40 to draw the spare ammunition. On 

11 July 1781, Maj. Thomas Cogswell informed Pickering that he also 

needed 500 horses. When Duportail issued the recall of Continental 

horses from their winter dispersal stations, fewer horses returned than 

expected. With General Washington’s consent, Pickering informed 

his deputy, Col. Henry Dearborn, on 20 July that in order to meet 

Knox’s request, they would have to impress 100 large draft horses 

from “the disaffected”—those inhabitants with known or suspected 

Loyalist sympathies—in Bergen County. But even that drastic measure proved less successful than Wadsworth’s silver when Pickering 

reported his men had only been able to impress fifty-two additional 

Louis Le Bègue de Presle 

Duportail, by Charles Willson 

Peale (Independence National 

Historical Park) 
30

horses. Eventually, the transfer of the necessary animals from General 

Heath’s forces, which remained in defensive positions on the Hudson, 

solved the problem.

With Morris in charge of finding supplies, Pickering and his staff 

focused on selecting roads and campsites. On 21 August, Colonel 

Pickering instructed Phillip Pye to conduct a route reconnaissance from 

King’s Ferry “to examine immediately the state of the roads & bridges 

from hence to the hither end of Pompton from whence you will proceed 

by Ogden’s iron works (without crossing the Ramapaugh River) to the 

two bridges at the forks. From thence go back to the Yellow House & 

return to this place by the common road. Be pleased to note particularly 

all the places where the road & bridges need great repairs & where new 

bridges must be built for passing of many carriages, mention the size of 

the bridges necessary to be built. When you have proceeded on the first 

route as far as Ogden’s iron works (without crossing the Ramapaugh) 

be pleased to send back the express with your report in writing whether 

that road is practicable for carriages or not, & if practicable, what kind 

of repairs are requisite to render it a pretty good road.”

On 31 August, Pickering wrote to Dearborn about another reconnaissance, saying, “Colonel Neilson will show you a ford at Trenton which he 

was to try with a waggon if found practicable, you will cross the carriages 

there on this side of Bristol, instead of coming to Neshaminy Ferry, you 

take the right road at the fork & go to a fording place—if the tide be up 

you pass up the river to the second fording place, which may be crossed 

at all time except in a fresh. The bottoms are good. I was particular in 

these enquiries yesterday as I passed. The 1st fording place is about a 

mile above Shamminy ferry, the 2d half a mile above that. I suppose all 

Cortlandt’s regt. & their baggage may go down in the batteaux & their 

necessary teams go empty by land.”

Cooperation between allies in coalition warfare is important, and 

is especially vital in combined operations. On 2 September, Jacob 

Hiltzheimer, the Continental Army’s assistant deputy quartermaster in 

Philadelphia, went on a scout “Accompanied [by] Colonel Dearborn, 

deputy quartermaster, over [the] Schuylkill, to select a site for an 

encampment for the leading body of French troops.” The next day, 3

September, Rochambeau’s First Division marched into Philadelphia. 

This is significant in that Pickering and his staff, after being informed 

of Washington’s decision to march to Virginia, had only four days 

to accomplish myriad supporting tasks. The American line units had 

little time for preparation as well. Once the movement commenced, 

the daily routine began with special instructions issued verbally just 
31

before the march order. Since the Continental Army had already spent 

years marching across New Jersey and was familiar with the roads, it 

could easily execute its instructions with a minimum of detail. Maj. 

Gen. Benjamin Lincoln’s orderly book entry for 28 August, on the 

eve of departure from Chatham, simply read, “The different Routes 

and Orders of March will be given by the DQM Genl. On Parade at 4 

o’Clock [a.m.].”

As the French had on the march to White Plains, Continental units 

avoided travel during the hottest part of the day. The orderly book for 

Col. John Lamb’s regiment of artillery provides a glimpse of the daily 

routine for the American units. On 19 August, for example, the drums 

sounded reveille “at 1/2 past 2 O’clock, the Assemble at three, and the 

march will commence at 1/3 past three,” with the baggage of the artillery 

preceding the guns and ammunition of the park.

The Continental Army settled into a routine in which the day’s movement typically began at 0400. The men marched until reaching the next 

bivouac site, usually by early afternoon. The soldiers then drew their 

daily ration, including beef. A company of Continentals was typically 

divided into messes, usually consisting of six men who ate and were billeted together both in the field and in garrison. The members shared the 

duties and responsibility for drawing rations, maintaining their common 

nine-quart cooking kettle, preparing the meals, and erecting and striking 

the tent or other shelter before the next day’s movement. 

On 6 August, Colonel Lamb ordered that “[o]ne day’s Provision will 

be drawn, and cook’d the Afternoon.” On 4 November 1775, Congress 

had resolved “That a ration consist of the following kind and quantity 

of provisions, viz: 1 lb. of beef, or 3/4 lb. pork, or 1 lb. salt fish, per day. 

1 lb. of bread or flour per day. 3 pints of pease or beans per week, or 

vegetables equivalent, at one dollar per bushel for pease or beans. 1 pint 

of milk per man per day, or at the rate of 1/72 of a dollar. 1 half pint of 

Rice, or one pint of indian meal per man per week. 1 quart of spruce beer 

or cyder per man per day, or nine gallons of Molasses per company of 

100 men per week. 3 lbs. candles to 100 Men per week for guards. 24 

lbs. of soft or 8 lbs. of hard soap, for 100 men per week.” Eventually, a 

small amount of rum or other alcoholic drink was also included, but the 

basic ration remained unchanged for the duration of the war. 

On occasion, the messes would be issued provisions to last over 

several days. On 24 August at Stony Point, for example, General Lincoln ordered that the Continentals be issued a two-day ration of beef, 

a two-week supply of soap and candles, and three days of flour, along 

with instruction to bake their bread “this afternoon.” The French, with 
32

plenty of cash available, paid civilians living near their camps to bake 

their bread for them, whereas the Continental Army “requested” that the 

local inhabitants make their bake ovens available to bake bread for the 

soldiers. At Head of Elk, Maryland, Lincoln’s orderly book entry for 8 

September recorded that as the troops of the First Division were about to 

embark aboard transports for the move down the Chesapeake, they were 

to receive six days of flour, four days of pork, and two days of beef. The 

flour was to be baked into bread that afternoon, and “for this purpose the 

inhabitants must be requested to lend their Ovens.” The comte de Lauberdière, an aide-de-camp to Rochambeau, remarked of the Americans: 

“They trouble themselves little with provisions: actually they are given 

just a bit of corn meal of which each soldier makes his own bread.” 

Although smoked or salted meat was included in the army’s supply 

of provisions, fresh beef was always preferable. An army supply train 

included a drove of cattle on the hoof to slaughter as needed. When it 

began its march on 25 August, Lincoln ordered: “The Commissary [with 

the Cattle] will daily precede the Troops, to the place of Incampment 

& have the Beef ready to be issued on their arrival, in order to prevent 

delays, the provision returns will be made out every Evening.” The cattle 

herds with the troops could be quite large. John Hudson remembered 

that in Baltimore, where the army “encamped on Howard’s hill . . . six 

hundred heads of cattle were slaughtered and salted for our use” on the 

final leg of the journey to Williamsburg.

Many supplies had to be purchased as the armies moved. Dr. Thacher 

commented regarding the French: “To their honor, that during their march 

from Newport to join our army, their course has been marked with the 

most exemplary order and regularity, committing no depredations, but 

conducting towards the inhabitants on their route with great civility and 

propriety. . . . They punctually paid their expenses in hard money, which 

made them acceptable guests wherever they passed.” Hard money, or 

specie, meant gold or silver coins, considered especially valuable in a 

time when paper money could easily lose its value.

Those selling to the Americans, on the other hand, had to settle for 

payment in either nearly worthless Continental paper currency or Continental loan certificates. Colonel Tallmadge had foreseen the resulting 

financial crisis as early as 14 July 1780, when he wrote to Wadsworth, “as 

you are Agent for the French I shall not be disappointed to find thro[ugh] 

the Campaign that they are well fed & our Troops starving.” Once the 

campaign had commenced, his fears came true. On 21 August, James 

Hendricks wrote from Alexandria, “Lord knows what will be done for 

provisions! Colo. Wadsworth & Carter, the French Agents have their 
33

Riders all round the Country, buying flour & beef with specie, this will 

effectively prevent the Commissioners from procuring any, as there is 

not a probability of the People letting the State Agents have an Ounce 

on Credit while they can get the French Crowns & Louis, I wish the 

Executive wou’d fall on some method to get the Cash from the French, 

and furnish the Supplies, without some method or other is fell on, the 

American Army will be starved.” 

Like good allies, Rochambeau and Wadsworth did their best to share 

their resources. On 18 August, Washington informed Rochambeau: “Before Mr. Morris left Camp he made a proposal which he desired might be 

communicated to your Excellency. He informed me that he understood Mr. 

Tarlé had between two and three thousand Barrels of Flour upon the upper 

parts of the North [Hudson] River, and as he imagined it could not now 

be wanted in that quarter he made an offer of supplying you with an equal 

quantity to the southward, if that above should be delivered to our Commissary General. I shall be obliged by your making Mr. Tarlé acquainted 

with the above, and if it can be transacted upon the terms proposed by Mr. 

Morris, I shall be glad to know the exact quantity and where Mr. Tarlé 

would chuse to have the Flour which is to be given in exchange deposited.” 

Rochambeau agreed to give the Americans the flour. 

In extreme circumstances, to meet the requirements of keeping the 

Army in the field, American officers frequently had to resort to impressing, or confiscating, supplies in exchange for loan certificates. Colonel 

Lamb’s orderly book entry on 25 August recorded instructions that “[t]he 

Officers Commanding Corps will appoint some Person to procure forage 

and Grain for their Horses, and receipt to Mr. Coldcloug, Forage Master 

to the Park, who will give the necessary Certificates.” 

Occasionally, when the civilians were unwilling to part with the 

confiscated property, such incidents had tragic results. On the march to 

Trenton, Lieutenant Greene of the Rhode Island Regiment had “destroyed 

the property of an inhabitant,” as he reported to General Lincoln on 1 

September. When he went to inform the owner of the “accident” and 

how he had done “all in my power to avoid injuring the hog,” the man 

rushed at him, and Greene “was induced to drop the point of my Espontoon against which he rushed with such force that he buried the blade in 

his neck—the woman to whom I addressed myself accosted me in very 

indecent language which I did not think proper to return.” The officer 

closed by saying, since “the troops were marching & being conscious 

of my own innocence I rejoined my blattoon [sic].”

As the troops moved farther south, states had more time to prepare 

for their arrival. In Delaware, for example, state authorities had supplies 
34

waiting for the Continentals. As early as 16 August, John Yeates, Deputy 

Quartermaster for Delaware, informed the state’s president, Caesar 

Rodney, that though he had “reason to expect the passage of troops soon 

thro’ the State this happening in our present situation, it would not be 

in my power to give regular assistance,” and asked for cooperation. On 

1 September, Rodney ordered Delaware’s Treasurer General Samuel 

Patterson, Col. Henry Darby, and Capt. William McClay to procure the 

supplies and allocate funds to cover expenses. With this assistance, state 

and Continental authorities collected and delivered a large amount of 

much-needed supplies. 

On 24 September, William Black and Evan Rice submitted an “Acct 

of Suplays purchd . . . for the use of the Troops under his Excelency 

Genrl Washinton on their March to the Southwd Septr 1781,” which 

listed quantities of beef, Indian corn, oats, shorts, bran, “Ship Stuff,” 

buckwheat meal, rye meal, and hay, for which the state of Delaware 

paid in specie.

In the last days of August 1781, the Continental forces had crossed 

the Hudson from King’s Ferry to Stony Point and entered New Jersey 

on three separate routes. Maj. Sebastian Baumann led the artificers via 

Ringwood to Pompton. The main body of the Continental Army moved 

via Suffern. Hazen’s regiment and the two New Jersey regiments crossed 

at Dobbs Ferry and Sneeden’s Landing. 

About a mile into New Jersey the main body of the Continental Army 

divided into two columns. The one on the right, commanded by Col. 

John Lamb, was composed of the Rhode Island Regiment, the sappers 

and miners, baggage trains, the Second Continental Artillery, and thirty 

flatboats on carriages, and proceeded on what today is the Ramapo Valley 

Road to Pompton. They were joined at that location by the army’s headquarters train, commanded by Major Baumann, and reached Chatham in 

the evening of 27 August. 

The second column, commanded by General Lincoln, marched 

to its assembly point between Chatham and Springfield via Hohokus, 

Acquackanonk (modern Passaic), and Second River (modern Belleville), before the two columns united to camp between Chatham and 

Springfield, within seven miles of New York City. Two days later, 29 

August, the Continentals broke camp and continued marching south in 

two columns. 

Washington personally led the column that marched via Bound Brook 

to Princeton and Trenton; the other swung far to the east into Elizabeth 

before turning west toward New Brunswick, via Quibbletown, and then 

on to Princeton. 
35

French forces, unfamiliar with 

the territory and therefore dependent on maps, took the most direct 

route via Peekskill and Stony Point 

to Pompton, Morristown, Princeton, 

Trenton, and Philadelphia. By dispersing the French and American 

armies on multiple routes, the allies 

maintained the ruse that they were 

massing for an assault on New 

York. The dispersal was also a matter of practicality, in that an army on 

the move consumes vast amounts of 

food and forage. Had the combined 

forces taken a single route, the affected area’s resources would have 

been depleted quickly. When the 

armies reached Princeton, they were 

not only irreversibly committed to 

the Southern campaign, but they 

also had successfully disengaged 

from one theater and were free to 

redeploy to another.

By the time the armies marched 

through Philadelphia in the first days of September and encamped, everyone realized they were heading to Virginia to engage Cornwallis’s army at 

Yorktown. From Philadelphia, the columns crossed the Schuylkill River 

and continued tramping southward. Meanwhile, the artillery was loaded 

aboard watercraft and moved down the Delaware River to Christiana in 

Delaware. The day after the French forces paraded before the Congress 

on 4 September, Francis Bailey observed in the Freeman’s Journal that 

“the appearance of these troops far exceeds any thing of the kind seen on 

this continent, and presages the happiest success to the cause of America.” 

Despite the optimism, Washington and Rochambeau had still received 

no word from de Grasse that his fleet, on which success depended, was 

on the way. It was not until the early afternoon of 5 September, when 

Washington was already in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania (11⁄2 miles from 

the Delaware state line), that he received word that de Grasse was in 

the Chesapeake. As the allied armies were marching to Virginia, Lord 

Cornwallis and his exhausted redcoats were digging in for what they 

hoped would be a well-deserved rest and quiet winter quarters.

Charles Cornwallis, engraving 

by J. Ward from a painting by 

W. Beechey, 1799

(National Archives) 
36

Decisive Actions

Virginia was the wealthiest and most populous of the colonies and had 

hardly been directly touched by the war before General Leslie arrived in 

1780 to disrupt American supplies being sent to Greene. When Leslie’s 

command was sent to reinforce Cornwallis, its mission was assumed by 

Benedict Arnold, the American traitor, who arrived in Portsmouth on 

New Year’s Day 1781 with 1,500 British troops. Although von Steuben 

was training Virginia state line recruits and militiamen in that area, his 

troops were no match for Arnold’s regulars. The state suffered greatly 

from enemy depredations. A French attempt to relieve the pressure on 

Virginia in early March was turned back by the Royal Navy, and Maj. 

Gen. William Phillips landed later that same month with an additional 

2,000 men to take over the command from Arnold. 

When Lafayette arrived in Richmond with about 1,200 Continentals 

at the end of April to cooperate with von Steuben and the Virginia militia, Phillips was finally forced to withdraw to Petersburg. Cornwallis 

sent word to Phillips that they would join their forces together at the 

city. Cornwallis arrived in Petersburg on 20 May to bring the number of 

Crown forces to more than 7,000 men, of which 5,000 were fit for duty. 

Under Cornwallis’s command the British continued to ravage Virginia. 

Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton led his British Legion toward Charlottesville, 

dispersed the state assembly, and nearly captured Gov. Thomas Jefferson 

at his Monticello home on 4 June. At about the same time, the Queen’s 

Rangers, under the command of Lt. Col. John Graves Simcoe, routed 

von Steuben’s militia at Point of Fork and captured the supplies, lately 

collected there with much difficulty to be forwarded to Greene. Despite 

the presence of Lafayette’s division, the military situation again looked 

promising for the Crown. Although Anthony Wayne’s brigade of three 

Pennsylvania regiments and a detachment from the Fourth Continental 

Artillery arrived to reinforce Lafayette, his 2,500 Continentals and 3,200 

militiamen could not risk becoming decisively engaged with Cornwallis’s 

far superior force. Instead, the Americans could only shadow and observe 

their adversary from a safe distance.

On 25 June 1781 Cornwallis rode into Williamsburg. The next day 

he opened two letters from a very upset superior. Gen. Clinton upbraided 

his subordinate for conducting what he viewed as an unauthorized foray 

into Virginia. Since the British commander in chief anticipated an attack 

by the allied forces on New York, he instructed Cornwallis to detach 

six infantry regiments, with whatever supporting forces he could spare, 

to New York and to establish a naval base in the Chesapeake. Though 
37

annoyed with Clinton’s orders, 

Cornwallis reconnoitered the peninsula and concentrated most of his 

army at Portsmouth by mid-July. 

Just as the troops Clinton had requested were about to embark on 

vessels sent by Clinton, Cornwallis 

received countermanding orders to 

establish a naval base and winter 

quarters at Old Point Comfort instead. Not finding the location to 

his liking, he marched his forces 

up the peninsula to Yorktown. On 

2 August his men began turning 

the small port on the York River 

into the fortified naval base Clinton wanted in Virginia. Though 

Cornwallis was not entirely pleased 

with the location, he was secure in 

the knowledge that the Royal Navy 

was close at hand.

Cornwallis might not have 

been so self-assured had he known 

that de Grasse’s French fleet, with twenty-eight ships of the line plus 

supporting frigates and smaller warships, was en route to North America. 

After weighing anchor at Cap Français in Santo Domingo on 5 August, 

they headed north. The decks were crowded with additional personnel. 

Besides the regular crew of 750 sailors and marines, each 74-gun ship 

of the line was also transporting some of the 3,000 men of the infantry 

regiments Gâtinois, Agenois, and Touraine, plus 100 men of the Metz 

artillery regiment and their guns, all under the command of Claude Anne 

de Rouvroy, marquis de Saint-Simon Montbleru. Additionally, there 

were also 100 hussars of the First Legion of the Volontaires étrangers de 

la Marine, albeit without their horses, bringing a total of 3,289 officers 

and men to add to the allied land forces in Virginia. Along the way, 

the admiral dispatched the frigate Aigrette to Havana to pick up the 1.2 

million livres Rochambeau had requested in July for his army. It took 

nearly five hours to collect these funds from public and private sources, 

and the next day Aigrette was sailing north again. 

Predicting that de Grasse would head for the American mainland, 

Admiral Hood left the British West Indies on 10 August. His fourteen 

Francois Joseph Paul, comte 

de Grasse, engraving by 

Lemercier from a painting by 

A. Maurin, 1837

(National Archives)
38

copper-sheathed ships were faster than de Grasse’s, and so he passed the 

French without sighting them. Hood arrived off the Virginia Capes on 

25 August, the same day Barras and his squadron sailed from Newport 

with the French siege artillery. Sighting no French vessels, however, 

Hood sailed on to New York. After Hood dropped anchor on 28 August, 

Clinton ordered him to join the naval squadron under Vice Adm. Thomas 

Graves that was being outfitted to go to Cornwallis’s aid at Yorktown. By 

the time Graves, reinforced by Hood, sailed from New York harbor on 

31 August to join Rear Adm. Sir Francis Drake’s squadron, de Grasse’s 

fleet was already unloading men and materiel for the siege from their 

anchorage in the mouth of the York River. Five days later, around 0930 

on 5 September, off Cape Charles, the lookouts aboard Aigrette reported 

sighting Graves’s fleet of nineteen ships approaching the bay from eastnortheast. Aigrette hurried back to alert de Grasse. 

About noon, the French admiral ordered his captains to cut their 

ships’ anchor cables to catch the advantage of the ebb tide. With some 

of the sailors ashore, and no time to recall them, many of the ships were 

underway without full crews. Beating against a wind from the northnortheast, the French had difficulty forming a battle line as their twentythree ships straggled out of the bay. 

Graves, in accordance with the Admiralty’s fighting instructions, 

signaled his fleet to form “line ahead” in order to bring them parallel 

with de Grasse’s ships. The 11⁄2 hours it took to perform this maneuver 

gave de Grasse time to clear the bay and may have cost Graves the victory. When battle commenced at 1546, de Grasse not only had 1,794 

guns versus 1,410 British guns, but thanks to Graves’s maneuver, the 

best French ships were lined up with Graves’s slowest and weakest. The 

ensuing exchange of broadsides went on inconclusively until nightfall, 

when Graves finally signaled for the British ships to cease firing.

During the next three days, both fleets drifted to the southward without resuming the fight. At nightfall on 9 September, de Grasse headed 

back north. As he approached the mouth of York River, he saw Barras’s 

recently arrived fleet riding at anchor in Lynnhaven Bay. De Grasse, 

who knew that Washington and Rochambeau were on the way, had accomplished his objective. With Barras in the bay, he now had thirty-six 

French ships of the line against Graves’s eighteen. Cornwallis was now 

effectively cut off from his naval support.

Meanwhile, after three weeks of marching, the leading elements of 

the Continental Army reached Head of Elk, Maryland, on Thursday, 6 

September, followed by French forces over the next two days. Once the 

American rear guard arrived from Christiana on 9 September, the two 
39

armies were ready for the last leg of their march to Yorktown. Washington 

knew that speed was still of the essence. Gen. Clinton could still launch 

an operation to go to Cornwallis’s relief. Cornwallis might attempt to 

break out of encircled Yorktown. And, in the same message Washington 

received from de Grasse on 5 September informing him the French fleet 

was in the Chesapeake, there was also the warning that the ships would 

remain only until 15 October. 

Previously, on 17 August, Washington had written Robert Morris from Dobbs Ferry that he would have to pay the army at least one 

month’s salary in specie before ordering it to march into Virginia. Morris was aware of Washington’s needs and had recorded in his diary that 

“great S[y]mptoms of discontent had Appeared on their passing through 

this City” of Philadelphia. In the six days between the army’s departure 

from Trenton and arrival at Head of Elk on 6 September, eleven men 

deserted from Lamb’s artillery regiment alone. On 6 September, the 

situation had become more critical, and Washington repeated the request to Morris from Head of Elk, “intreating you in the warmest Terms 

to send on a Month’s Pay at least, with all the Expedition possible.” 

But Morris did not have the funds to pay the army. On 7 September 

he asked Rochambeau for a loan of 26,600 Spanish dollars in specie 

to pay the American troops, with the promise that he would repay the 

money. The 26,600 pieces of eight, or 143,640 livres, almost half the 

amount left in his treasury, was all Rochambeau could lend Morris to 

pay the American troops. 

The effect of the French silver resonated for decades in the minds 

of the recipients. “This day [8 September 1781],” wrote Maj. William 

Popham, “will be famous in the annals of History for being the first 

in which the Troops of the United States received one month’s Pay in 

Specie—all the civil and military staff are excluded. . . .I cannot even 

obtain my pay as Captain in the Line.”

For many a Continental soldier this was the first and only time he 

received hard money during his years of service. Sgt. Joseph Plum Martin of the Corps of Sappers and Miners remembered that “we each of 

us received a MONTH’S PAY, in specie, borrowed, as I was informed, 

by our French officers from the officers in the French army. This was 

the first that could be called money, which we had received as wages 

since the year ‘76, or that we ever did receive till the close of the war, or 

indeed, ever after, as wages.” Pvt. John Hudson of the First New York 

Regiment, who had celebrated only his thirteenth birthday on 12 June 

1781, recalled that it was at Elkton that “I received the only pay that I 

ever drew for my services during the war, being six French crowns, which 
40

were a part of what Robert Morris borrowed on his own credit from the 

French commander to supply the most urgent necessities of the soldiers. 

My comrades received the same amount.” 

As the allied troops were marching from Phillipsburg, Continental 

agents attempted to obtain enough vessels to transport both armies to 

Yorktown. Eighty vessels of various sizes, including twelve sloops, 

eighteen schooners, and a few dozen smaller private vessels, either 

hired or impressed for service, waited at Head of Elk. On 8 September, 

headquarters ordered: “The Commander in Cheafe guards, Light Troops, 

Genl Heasons Regt artillery Sappers & Miners & the artificiers Will 

imbark as the first divison of American troops, care will be taken to 

keep as much as poseble Corps together.” This first division numbered 

around 1,450 Continentals. 

When the first contingent was loaded, the second division began 

boarding. The combined New Jersey regiments, about 330 men, left only 

enough room in the remaining ships to embark four companies each of 

grenadiers and chasseurs and a detachment of Lauzun’s infantry and 

artillery, or around 1,200 French troops. 

On 9 September, even before those loading at Head of Elk were 

fully embarked, the remainder of the men, about 4,000 French troops, 

the artillery, and approximately 1,000 Americans continued marching 

by land. When the transports weighed anchor at 0400 on 11 September, 

loaded to capacity, the two New York regiments and the Rhode Island 

Regiment followed the French.

The convoy of transports arrived in Baltimore on 12 September, just 

after the news had arrived that de Grasse had sailed from Lynnhaven 

Bay on 5 September to engage the British fleet. The victorious outcome of that fight was not known until the evening of 14 September. 

Meanwhile, the convoy of assorted transports was on its way again 

on 13 September. Rochambeau had hoped to find enough shipping 

in Baltimore to embark at least two of his regiments. But the seaworthiness of the vessels that awaited him was questionable. The baron 

de Vioménil, Rochambeau’s second in command, refused to place 

his troops on board and decided to march overland to Virginia. The 

Americans, however, had no reservations about the condition of their 

transportation and embarked their remaining contingents at Fell’s Point 

on 16 and 17 September. 

Vioménil sent Lauzun’s 300 hussars ahead of the baggage and 

artillery to Gloucester, opposite Yorktown. At 0500 on 14 September, 

Col. René Marie, vicomte de Darrot, departed Baltimore and crossed 

the Patapsco River on the way south. The next evening, 15 September, 
41

the troops crossed the Potomac at Georgetown and into Virginia. After 

marching through Dumfries, Fredericksburg, and King and Queen Court 

House, the column reached Gloucester on 24 September.

On the evening of 17 September a courier got through to Vioménil 

with the welcome news. Transports, sent from de Grasse, had arrived at 

Annapolis to carry most of the French forces. By 0700 on 19 September, after changing their route, French troops reached Annapolis and 

encamped on the grounds of King William’s School (now St. John’s 

College). Over the next few days the infantry regiments and field artillery loaded men, guns, and baggage aboard fifteen French vessels: six 

warships and nine transports. The supply train, with an estimated 1,500 

horses, 800 oxen, and 220 wagons, set off for Virginia. Led by the ship of 

the line Romulus, with 74 guns, the frigates Gentile, Diligente, Aigrette, 

Isis, and Richmond (the latter two captured from the British) and the nine 

transports sailed on 21 September in the afternoon. They arrived in the 

York River only twenty-four hours later. After being overtaken by the 

French ships, the makeshift American transport fleet sailed to College 

Creek Landing, opposite Williamsburg in the James River.

Decisive Victory

In the early evening on 19 September, thirty-six days after Washington decided to try to capture Cornwallis’s army, the first elements of 

the Continental Army came ashore at Archer’s Hope (upstream from the 

mouth of College Creek), marched into Williamsburg, and encamped 

behind the College of William and Mary. The French grenadiers and 

chasseurs landed on 23 September at Burwell’s Ferry, a mile below College Creek, and bivouacked behind the former Virginia colonial capital. 

By 26 September, the French transports were unloaded as well, and the 

troops joined the camp at Williamsburg. Two days later, the combined 

armies of Washington (including Lafayette’s forces) and Rochambeau 

(reinforced by the infantry under the command of marquis de Saint-Simon 

Montbleru) set out for Yorktown.

After he left Head of Elk traveling by road on 8 September, Washington was eager to visit his Mount Vernon home for the first time in six 

years. Briefly stopping in Baltimore early on 9 September, he pushed 

on the last sixty miles and reached his estate that evening. Rochambeau 

and his staff arrived the following day and enjoyed the Washingtons’ 

hospitality until 13 September, when the two commanders continued 

their journey together. After reaching Williamsburg on 15 September, 

they anxiously awaited the arrival of the combined armies. Three days 
42

later, the two generals visited Admiral de Grasse aboard his flagship, 

the Ville de Paris, for a face-to-face meeting, at which de Grasse agreed 

to keep his fleet on station until the end of October. The generals were 

anxious for the battle to begin.

On 29 September, de Grasse sent a landing force of 800 men, line 

infantry serving as marines on his vessels, ashore from the fleet to operate with the army. Rochambeau ordered them to Gloucester, where 

they joined Brig. Gen. George Weeden’s Virginia militia, bringing the 

combined allied force there to 2,900 men, under the overall command of 

Claude Gabriel de Choisy. There they faced Lt. Col. Thomas Dundas’s 

AGENOIS

TOURAINE

GÂTINOIS

PA

VA

MD

NY SAPPERS

AND

MINERS

RI NJ VIRGINIA MILITIA

LIGHT INFANTRY

LAUZUN'S LEGION

INFANTRY/MARINES

VIRGINIA MILITIA

SOISSONNOIS

ROYAL DEUX-PONTS

BOURBONNOIS

SAINTONGE

ST. SIMON

COMTE DE

VIOMÉNIL

BARON DE

VIOMÉNIL

KNOX

STEUBEN LAFAYETTE

LINCOLN

SECOND PARALLEL

FIRST PARALLEL

CHOISY

ROCHAMBEAU

WASHINGTON

Star Redoubt

CORNWALLIS

British Redoubts

No. 9 and No. 10 Stormed

14 Oct

S U R R E N D E R

F I E L D

Abandoned British Out Works

TARLETON

Road to Hampton

Road to Williamsburg

Yorktown

Gloucester

Point

Moore's House

Wormley Creek

Warw ick River

Y O R K

R I

V E R

American

French

British

SIEGE OF YORKTOWN 6–19 October 1781

0 500 1000 1500

Yards
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1,100 British, entrenched behind four strong redoubts with three batteries 

of nineteen artillery pieces, mostly 18-pounders. Almost half the enemy 

force consisted of cavalry, including the famed British Legion (about 240 

men) of the hated and feared Banastre Tarleton. Lauzun was anxious to 

cross swords with him, and his opportunity came on 3 October 1781. 

Choisy and Lauzun wanted to move their troops closer to the British 

position at Gloucester Point. Lauzun’s Legion, about 250 cavalry and an 

equal number of infantry, and Lt. Col. John Mercer’s Select Battalion of 

the Virginia militia advanced. At the same time, Tarleton and 240 of his 

horse soldiers and 350 infantry of the Twenty-third Royal Welsh Fusiliers, 

150 of them also mounted, were out foraging. About three miles from 

Gloucester, Lauzun emerged from the forest onto open ground. Seeing the 

enemy force before him, he advanced directly toward Tarleton. The British force initially retreated, but rallied and then counterattacked. When 

the allies checked this charge, Tarleton’s troops broke for the protection 

of a company of the Twenty-third. The fire of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers 

stopped Lauzun’s infantry, but they were in turn driven back by Virginia 

Distribution of Forces at the Siege of Yorktown, October 1781

American Army

Continentals 5,850 (return of 9/26/1781)

Militia 3,300 

Total 9,150 

French Ground Forces

Rochambeau’s Army 4,900 (return of 11/11/1781)

Saint-Simon’s Forces 3,300

Marines (at Gloucester) 800 

Total 9,000 

French Naval Forces Afloat

Ships’ crews 24,000 (18,000 de Grasse, 6,000 Barras)

Marines 4,500 

Total 28,500 French forces on sea 

British Army

British Regulars 4,300 

German Auxiliaries 2,000 

Loyalists 700 

Total 7,000
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militia. British casualties numbered thirteen. The French suffered 3 killed 

and 16 wounded, while the Americans had 2 killed and 11 wounded. Both 

sides claimed victory, but the allies retained the field. Choisy followed 

Lauzun’s success and pushed his advance posts to within one mile of 

Gloucester, where they stayed for the remainder of the siege, effectively 

confining Dundas’s garrison to its fortifications.

Across the river, on 28 September, the allied armies advanced on 

Yorktown. Surprisingly, Cornwallis abandoned his outer defenses without a fight on 30 September. Rochambeau’s engineers and von Steuben 

recommended to their respective commanders in chief to conduct a classic 

European-style siege as pioneered by French Field-Marshall Sebastien 

LePrestre de Vauban. That meant digging trenches opposite the defensive 

lines of the besieged enemy. These zigzagging lines, called parallels, 

were dug consecutively closer to the enemy’s works, thus advancing 

the forward posts without exposing the infantry to the foe’s firepower. 

In the meantime, artillery subjected the entrenched enemy to continuous bombardment to weaken them and cover the digging. Artillery then 

moved forward to covered positions and fired a concentrated bombardYorktown, 14 October 1781, by H. Charles McBarron

(U.S. Army Art Collection) 
45

ment to batter the defender’s walls. In the final stage, infantry stormed 

the resulting breech, assaulting from the protection of the closest parallel. 

Ideally, before the final assault took place, the besieged enemy would 

realize the futility of continued resistance and surrender. 

On 6 October, allied troops began digging the first parallel about 500 

to 600 yards from the outer British defenses. Three days later French 

siege guns opened fire. Two detached earthen forts, however, called 

Redoubts 9 and 10, blocked the advance. Located 400 yards in advance 

of the British inner defenses on the extreme right flank, they had to be 

reduced before completion of the second parallel. On 14 October, allied 

artillery bombarded Redoubts 9 and 10 for most of the day, preparing 

them for the coordinated American and French assaults. That evening, 

an assault by American light infantry commanded by Hamilton took 

Redoubt 10, while an attack by French grenadiers of the Gâtinois and 

Royal Deux-Ponts regiments carried Redoubt 9. The capture of these 

forts enabled the besieging allied forces to finish the second parallel and 

construct the grand American battery within point-blank range of the 

British inner defense line. 

About 0400 on 16 October, Cornwallis launched a counterattack 

on unfinished allied batteries just to the left of his center. Although the 

British managed temporarily to seize two French artillery positions, the 

effort ultimately proved unsuccessful. An attempt to break the encirclement by assaulting the allied positions at Gloucester Point also failed. As 

British troops from Yorktown were being ferried across the York River 

to conduct the attack, a storm disrupted the operation. Cornwallis soon 

realized that the Americans and French now held a decisive advantage, 

both tactically and operationally.

The following day, 17 October, a British officer waving a white 

handkerchief stood on the rampart with a drummer beating for a parley. 

On 18 October, two British officers met with an American and a French 

counterpart at the home of Augustine Moore to negotiate surrender terms. 

Washington granted them the same terms the British had given Benjamin 

Lincoln’s American army that had surrendered Charleston the previous 

year. (By tradition, a defeated army that had fought well was granted 

the “honors of war” and allowed to parade with its colors flying while 

its band played a tune in honor of its opponent. The British had denied 

Lincoln and his men that mark of respect and now the Americans returned 

the favor.) About 1400 on 19 October 1781, 7,247 rank-and-file British, 

American Loyalist, and German soldiers and 840 Royal Navy sailors 

marched out of Yorktown with their colors cased and bands playing a 

British march (tradition holds it was “World Turned Upside Down”) to 
46

lay down their arms. When Cornwallis, claiming to be ill, sent an officer to present his sword to Rochambeau, the French general motioned 

that the gesture was to be addressed to the overall allied commander in 

chief, General Washington. When the British officer offered the sword 

to Washington, the general directed the previously humiliated Lincoln 

to accept the symbol of British capitulation.

With the campaign won, Saint-Simon’s troops began to re-embark 

on 27 October. On 4 November, without ever setting foot on American soil, de Grasse ordered his fleet to weigh anchor and sail out of 

Lynnhaven Bay for Fort Royal on Martinique. The Continental Army 

marched north to winter quarters in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Rochambeau’s forces established winter quarters, remaining 

And the Guns Fell Silent, October 1781, by David Wagner

(Courtesy of the artist) 
47

in and around Williamsburg until July, when they marched north to an 

encampment north of New York City, where they arrived in late September. Here Rochambeau received orders to march to Boston and broke 

camp in late October. On Christmas Day 1782, his infantry set sail for 

the Caribbean.

Yorktown signaled the much-prayed-for deliverance. Immediately 

following the events of October 1781, Washington confided that Cornwallis’s surrender was “an interesting event that may be productive of 

much good if properly improved.” Other generals agreed with his assessment. In a 26 October 1781 letter written from Virginia, General Wayne 

called “the surrender of Lord Cornwallis’s Fleet & Army . . . an event 

of the utmost consequence.” But he also cautioned that only “if properly 

improved” would the victory bring the “glorious & happy peace” for 

which the nation longed. All were optimistic but, like Wayne, doubted 

that the Americans would again “have it in our power to Command 37 

Sail of the line & 8000 Auxiliary veterans.” 

News of Yorktown did not bring an immediate end to the American 

War for Independence. The British still held New York City with 10,000 

troops and had substantial forces in Canada. In the South, Greene still had 

to reduce the garrisons at Charleston, Savannah, and numerous British 

posts in the backcountry. Crown forces and their American Indian allies 

continued to wage war on the western frontier. Cornwallis’s surrender 

at Yorktown, however, had removed an army from the battlefield, substantially weakened political will in London, and crippled the British war 

effort beyond repair. In short, it had a resounding impact that eventually 

proved to be decisive. The British government recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended 

the Revolutionary War in 1783. 

The victory at Yorktown strengthened the self-confidence of the 

Continental Army and proved to the world that it had become a force of 

professionals, able to plan and execute a complex operation. As victory 

was made possible only with French assistance, the campaign continues 

to provide America’s army with lessons about joint and combined operations with sister services and coalition allies. 

Yorktown was the campaign that had to produce results, the campaign 

from which, in Washington’s own words, “our deliverance must come.” 

More than ever the fate of the nation rested on the skills, motivation, 

and values that formed the foundations of the Continental Army and that 

would serve as a legacy shaping the core values of today’s United States 

Army. The Continental Army and its soldiers rose to meet the challenge. 

A sense of duty and loyalty to the nation had replaced the desperation 
48

and disrespect of the winter of discontent that had led to the mutinies at 

Morristown. A sense of selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal 

courage caused the men to continue their march past Elkton, though many 

of them feared the climate and diseases in the Southern states. 

Yorktown and Cornwallis were waiting at the end of this largest and 

farthest strategic redeployment of allied forces in the Revolutionary War. 

On the march to Yorktown and during the siege itself, Washington and 

his fellow officers depended on the commitment, competence, candor, 

and courage of each individual soldier in the ranks of the army. That the 

men had passed the test is evident in the testimony of General Wayne, 

who proudly informed Robert Morris from the battlefield of Yorktown 

that “our prowess was such, as to establish our Character as Soldiers.”

This change was perfectly visible when the French encountered their 

ally near Peekskill in September 1782. Clermont-Crèvecœur was “struck 

with the transformation of this army into one that was in no way inferior to 

ours.” Dr. Thacher reported, “Our troops were now in complete uniform, 

and exhibited every mark of soldierly discipline. Count Rochambeau was 

most highly gratified to perceive the very great improvement, which our 

army had made in appearance since he last reviewed them, and expressed 

his astonishment at their rapid progress in military skill and discipline. 

He said to General Washington, ‘You have formed an alliance with the 

King of Prussia. These troops are Prussians.’ Several of the principal 

officers of the French army, who have seen troops of different European 

nations, have bestowed the highest encomiums and applause on our army, 

and declared that they had seen none superior to the Americans.” The 

American army, born just seven years before, had come of age.
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Suggestions for Further Reading

Beginning with Henry P. Johnston’s The Yorktown Campaign and 

the Surrender of Cornwallis (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1881; 

reprinted, Philadelphia: Eastern Acorn Press, 1975), there are a number 

of excellent surveys of the Yorktown campaign, including Thomas J. 

Fleming, Beat the Last Drum: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781 (New York: 

St. Martin’s Press, 1963); Burke Davis, The Campaign That Won America, The Story of Yorktown (Philadelphia: Eastern Acorn Press, 1970); 

William H. Hallahan, The Day the Revolution Ended: 19 October 1781

(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2003); and most recently Richard M. 

Ketchum, Victory at Yorktown. The Campaign That Won the Revolution

(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004). 

A good brief overview of the campaign is Brendan Morrissey, 

Yorktown 1781 (Oxford, U.K.: Osprey, 1999). A veritable guidebook to 

the battlefield at Yorktown is the detailed study by Jerome A. Greene, 

The Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781 (New York: 

Savas Beatie, 2005). Indispensable background reading is Charles 

Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and 

American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of 

North Carolina Press, 1979). 

The most readable reminiscences of the war from the American 

side are still Joseph Plumb Martin, Private Yankee Doodle, George E. 

Scheer, ed. (Philadelphia: Eastern Acorn Press, 1962). For AfricanAmerican soldiers, see Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, eds., 

The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (Amherst, 

Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989) and Benjamin Quarles, 

The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of 

North Carolina Press, 1961).

The best general overviews for the French role in the victory at Yorktown are by far Lee Kennett, The French Forces in America, 1780–1783

(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977) and Samuel F. Scott, From 

Yorktown to Valmy: The Transformation of the French Army in an Age 

of Revolution (Niwot, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, 1998). For 

a British point of view, see Daniel Syrett, The Royal Navy in American 

Waters (Aldershot, Vt.: Vermont Scholar’s Press, 1989); Piers Mackesy, 

The War for America, 1775–1783 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University 

Press, 1964; reprinted, Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 

1992); Robert Harvey, A Few Bloody Noses: The Realities and Mythologies of the American Revolution (New York: Overlook Press, 2002); and 
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Michael Pearson, Those Damned Rebels: The American Revolution as 

Seen Through British Eyes (New York: Da Capo Books, 1972).
Cover:

French Army Encampment at East Hartford,

October–November 1782, by David Wagner.

The French army camped in East Hartford

 from 30 October through 4 November 1782.

(Courtesy of the artist)

CMH Pub 70–104–1