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The siege of Yorktown in the fall of was the single most decisive engagement of the American Revolution. The campaign has all the drama any historian or student could want: Until now, however, no modern scholarly treatment of the entire campaign has been produced. By the summer of , America had been at war with England for six years.
No one believed in that the colonists would put up such a long and credible struggle. France sided with the colonies as early as , but it was the dispatch of 5, infantry under Comte de Rochambeau in the summer of that shifted the tide of war against the British. In early , after his victories in the Southern Colonies, Lord Cornwallis marched his army north into Virginia. Cornwallis believed the Americans could be decisively defeated in Virginia and the war brought to an end.
George Washington believed Cornwallis's move was a strategic blunder, and he moved vigorously to exploit it. With the assistance of Rochambeau's infantry and a key French naval victory at the Battle off the Capes in September, Washington trapped Cornwallis on the tip of a narrow Virginia peninsula at a place called Yorktown. And so it began.
Operating on the belief that Clinton was about to arrive with reinforcements, Cornwallis confidently remained within Yorktown's inadequate defenses. The two regiments of light dragoons serving in America, the 16 th and 17 th , wore red coats and leather helmets in England, but there is clear evidence that they took to wearing green in America.
The Hessian infantry wore blue coats and retained the Prussian style grenadier mitre cap with brass front plate. The Americans dressed as best they could. Increasingly as the war progressed infantry regiments of the Continental Army took to wearing mostly blue or brown uniform coats. The American militia continued in rough clothing.
The siege of Yorktown in the fall of was the most decisive engagement of the American Revolution. The campaign has all the drama any historian or. Editorial Reviews. About the Author. Jerome A. Greene is a retired historian with the National Park Service. He is the author or editor of many books, including.
Both sides were armed with muskets. The British and German infantry carried bayonets, which were in short supply among the American troops. Many American soldiers from backwoods areas carried rifles, weapons of considerably greater accuracy than the ordinary musket and which their owners used with proficiency. German Regiments in British pay at the Battle of Yorktown: French Regiments at the Battle of Yorktown: Americans Regiments at the Battle of Yorktown: Account of the Battle of Yorktown: The French and Spanish desired to keep the faltering American rebellion an active theater so their national objectives in the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean, and West Indies might be achieved.
Briton John Grainger's grossly over-priced book concentrates on what military professionals call the operational level of war—that part of military operations between the grand strategy of national policy making and the tactical field operations. At the operational level senior military and naval commanders employ the personnel, equipment, and resources placed under their control to secure desired national objectives.
In other words, they determine when and where battles will be fought and who will fight them. Grainger is fascinated by the complexity of these operational choices: Any one of these decisions could have been different, and so it is necessary to discuss the alternatives facing the decisionmaker, and to try to sort out his reasons at the time" p.
Grainger goes over these decisions in considerable detail, often with excessively long quotations. His often controversial conclusions make this book worth studying. He is an apologist for Admiral Sir George Rodney whose "dispositions of his ships and fleet. Although Admiral Thomas Graves was "gulled by Grasse who cunningly decoyed the whole British fleet away from the [Chesapeake] Bay entrance" thereby allowing Admiral the Comte de Barras to bring the critical French artillery to Yorktown , his decisions "though generally uninspired, even inept and lacking imagination, did not affect the outcome in any way" pp.
No one believed in that the colonists would put up such a long and credible struggle. Having been to the battlefield itself, the descriptions and maps made a lot of sense to me, but for those who haven't been, it might all come across as white noise. Mike Emett rated it it was amazing Aug 01, Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. The Guns of Independence:
Grainger continues in this vein with other admirals and generals.