You totally kick ass, and always will.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Happy Birthday to...
...you know who you are. Put some makeup on and take your manly men, big and little, and celebrate.
You totally kick ass, and always will.
You totally kick ass, and always will.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Marcus loves Spendusa
How old is the human inclination to write or carve on the things around them? Did homo habilus scratch what passed for their initials on the rock they sat on waiting for something edible to wander by? Did the Sumerian loiterers scrawl "Ubi does it with sheep" on the mud walls of ancient Sumer?
Those of us hung out on Tiger Island in Honduras back in the summer of 1986 sure did. The graffiti in the wooden one-hole latrines got so expansive and so crude that the when the company first sergeant visited he required us to paint over the inside of the shitters. Mind you, the only paint we had was black, and the result made it difficult to locate the actual aperture of the one-holer, leading to some...accidents.
Certainly the archaeological record seems to show people have always had a penchant for scribbling on their walls...or other people's walls...or whatever is stationary and handy. The website "AD79" has a section entirely devoted to the graffiti uncovered in the ancient city of Pompeii.
It's fascinating.
The Roman sense of humor seems to have been pretty...basic. The fellow who wrote "Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!" seems to have been a good example of the 1st Century south Roman wit. Some of his lads contributed gems such as "Restitutus says: 'Restituta, take off your tunic, please, and show us your hairy privates" and "I screwed the barmaid".
Some of the stuff they scrawled seems pretty thoughtful: "No young buck is complete until he has fallen in love.", or "Learn this: while I am alive, you, hateful death, are coming.", or "Love dictates to me as I write and Cupid shows me the way, but may I die if god should wish me to go on without you."
And some of it is perfect as an example of what happens when you have nothing but time, boredom and something to write with: "It took 640 paces to walk back and forth between here and there ten times".
For a rather fascinating look into the daily trivia of life twenty centuries ago, stroll on over to "The Writing On The Wall" at 79AD.
"O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin."
(Oh! Wait! I almost forgot - while you're checking out the Roman words of wit, take a detour over to "SPQR Blues", a "soap opera with swords and sandals" for some of the best webcomic art, Roman adventure and Alphonse Mucha Pompeiian ladies on the Internets. Terrific! Great work, and you can tell the artist I said so.)
Those of us hung out on Tiger Island in Honduras back in the summer of 1986 sure did. The graffiti in the wooden one-hole latrines got so expansive and so crude that the when the company first sergeant visited he required us to paint over the inside of the shitters. Mind you, the only paint we had was black, and the result made it difficult to locate the actual aperture of the one-holer, leading to some...accidents. Certainly the archaeological record seems to show people have always had a penchant for scribbling on their walls...or other people's walls...or whatever is stationary and handy. The website "AD79" has a section entirely devoted to the graffiti uncovered in the ancient city of Pompeii.
It's fascinating.The Roman sense of humor seems to have been pretty...basic. The fellow who wrote "Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!" seems to have been a good example of the 1st Century south Roman wit. Some of his lads contributed gems such as "Restitutus says: 'Restituta, take off your tunic, please, and show us your hairy privates" and "I screwed the barmaid".
Some of the stuff they scrawled seems pretty thoughtful: "No young buck is complete until he has fallen in love.", or "Learn this: while I am alive, you, hateful death, are coming.", or "Love dictates to me as I write and Cupid shows me the way, but may I die if god should wish me to go on without you."
And some of it is perfect as an example of what happens when you have nothing but time, boredom and something to write with: "It took 640 paces to walk back and forth between here and there ten times".For a rather fascinating look into the daily trivia of life twenty centuries ago, stroll on over to "The Writing On The Wall" at 79AD.
"O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin."
(Oh! Wait! I almost forgot - while you're checking out the Roman words of wit, take a detour over to "SPQR Blues", a "soap opera with swords and sandals" for some of the best webcomic art, Roman adventure and Alphonse Mucha Pompeiian ladies on the Internets. Terrific! Great work, and you can tell the artist I said so.)
Monday, November 02, 2009
Eye Trouble
Big boy Peep had a skin tag.
Have you ever seen one of those? They are odd little growths, not like a mole or a wart, but rather little slender eruptions of skin cells. They are fairly benign and are generally not even enough bother to warrant excision. But this one was on little man's eyelid.
He started to get teased about it this spring, and finally by late summer he'd had enough. We went in to see his pediatrician, who recommended a plastic surgeon. The surgeon explained what would have to happen, and after a week of dithering the Peep said okay.
I think I was more nervous than he was the morning he scampered out into the predawn darkness with his mom to go to the hospital. And, sure enough, everything went fine.
See how tiny the little hematoma is on his left eyelid. Teeny stuff. And he was more excited about the little stuffed dog the doctors gave him than worried about his eye. He was already smiling in Recovery.
I worried about him a bit, about the injury getting infected or post-op swelling, and generally about how it would affect his usual Tiggerish bounciness. But tonight he climbed up on the couch, straddled my head and teabagged me, and, once he had me down, farted in my ear.
I suspect he's just fine.
Have you ever seen one of those? They are odd little growths, not like a mole or a wart, but rather little slender eruptions of skin cells. They are fairly benign and are generally not even enough bother to warrant excision. But this one was on little man's eyelid.
He started to get teased about it this spring, and finally by late summer he'd had enough. We went in to see his pediatrician, who recommended a plastic surgeon. The surgeon explained what would have to happen, and after a week of dithering the Peep said okay.
I think I was more nervous than he was the morning he scampered out into the predawn darkness with his mom to go to the hospital. And, sure enough, everything went fine.
See how tiny the little hematoma is on his left eyelid. Teeny stuff. And he was more excited about the little stuffed dog the doctors gave him than worried about his eye. He was already smiling in Recovery.
I worried about him a bit, about the injury getting infected or post-op swelling, and generally about how it would affect his usual Tiggerish bounciness. But tonight he climbed up on the couch, straddled my head and teabagged me, and, once he had me down, farted in my ear.I suspect he's just fine.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
10 Scary Things
Well, I waved goodbye to the Dark Lord of the Sith, his sister fairy-princess-ballerina, scary Dead Guy (Peeper's friend Vincy), Vin's parents and Mojo as they set out to rid North Portland of candy.
The trout saute'd up delightfully in butter with garlic and Hawaiian alaea salt, the basmati rice was rich and savory, and the snap peas crisp amid the abundance of mushrooms and onion. I'm still anticipating the pumpkin pie and whipped cream as I write this.
So far the trick-or-treaters have been thin on the ground, which gives me a little time to reflect on the week past and the weekend thus far.
1. Enjoyed the company of my friend Brent as Arsenal took advantage of some incomprehensibly awful Tottenham defending to take the first game of the North London "darby" as the British incomprehensibly pronounce what we'd call a "derby". Not sure what it said about the Arse, whose fragility and lack of focus has been remarked on severally, including over here at Pandagoal (hey - how about some new postings, Pandagoalians?) but it said something fairly personal and pretty uncomplimentary about the Spurs place in the English "top four".
Tottenham looked awful; tentative, mazy and generally lost. They never threatened, they never even looked in the match. Fortunately the Talisker and Brent's delicious fig-and-vanilla (and clove-and-cinnamon) infused bourbon made up for the sloppy Spurs play.
Of course, my Newcastle United lads aren't even in the Premiership this season...but we'll be back! Toon Army !
2. In other soccer news, I see that the USWNT managed to sneak past the German gals 1-0, predictably on an Abby Wambach header.
I'm not sure I like this; the idea that the women are again relying on Wambach up front to provide them with their goalscoring...and, since the match report said that "...Germany earlier wasted a half-dozen clear opportunities and dominated most of the match..." we can assume that the U.S. midfield was swanning about or simply absent.
There's no real challenge ahead, given the span until the next WWC. But I reflect grimly on the U.S. gals' returning to the dreary "Wambach-and-three-days-of-rain" style that typified the pre-Sundhage Era. Let's hope the result is just a blip.
3. Important safety tip: DO NOT carve your jack-o-lanterns ten days ahead of Halloween if you live in a Mediterranian climate. The foul resulting wilt, mold and collapse will not endear the holiday to you.
4. I'm excited for the Rose City Rollers, and yet, frustrated because they sold out the Hanger for their last bout! We tried to get in and failed, which sucked for us, but is terrific for the rollergirls. Get some, Rollers! Great to see a genuine sport played by gals who hustle for love of the solid hits - as opposed to the whatever-their-name-is outfit that plays for big money at the big barn next to I-5. Go, Rollers!
5. I think I've found the answer to a parenting dilemma: how do you deal with your kids' desperate need to go to Chuck E. Cheese without going utterly mad? Here's four simple things that help:
a. Feed them first - so you don't have to touch the awful food there.
b. Make the expedition part of a larger agenda, so you don't have to linger.
c. Go in the late morning or early afternoon - the mob scene is less.
d. Restrict their tokens, so they play their games and go.
We've been to the Chuckster thrice in a month now, and every time it was quick, easy and painless. I think we've got that sucker wired.
6. Important safety tip #2: do NOT let your son hand out Halloween candy. We had an immense 8-quart saucepan full of the stuff until a half dozen spirits and spooks showed up and the Peep took charge of the candy pot. The thing came back from the front door with two - two - tiny Snickers bars inside. We had to raid the little girl's swag when our neighbors' kids arrived and then quickly tun out the porch light.
7. Which reminds me of my favorite Halloween story. I was living in Wilmington, Delaware at the time, and our apartment was at the edge of a pretty sketchy neighborhood so we had few few little trick-or-treaters. Late in the evening I heard a knock and opened the door to find two little kids in their street clothes, one about seven with a black oval party mask on, the other about five without any trace of a costume at all.
"Trick or treat" the older kid mumbled slightly ashamedly.
I dropped a couple of candy bars on them.
"What is your costume, dude?" I asked the older boy. He looked up at me like I was slightly retarded, like I'd asked him whether it was dark out.
"I'm Batman" he rasped, in a pretty good imitation of Michael Keaton or whothehellever was playing Batman that year. I nodded to what I assumed was his little brother. "Who's he supposed to be?"
"He's the Joker." replied big brother. I laughed.
"No way, kid. I've seen the movie, the Joker has a white face and purple clothes, little guy doesn't look anything like the Joker."
Big kid gave me that slightly-retarded look again and replied;
"That's the joke."
He got an extra Snickers for that.
8. Mmmm. Pumpkin pie is what the Gods ate on Olympus.
9. I had something really witty for this one but I forgot it.
10. Oh, yeah, wait. Here it is.
Three guys are arguing about humanity's greatest invention. The first insists on fire, the second on atomic power. The third suggests the thermos bottle.
"WTF?" his buddies ask.
"Think about it!" says the first guy; "It keeps the hot stuff hot AND the cold stuff cold."
"No shit, Sherlock" reply his pals, "What do you think a thermos bottle does?"
"Yes..." replies the guy, "...but how does it know?"
The trout saute'd up delightfully in butter with garlic and Hawaiian alaea salt, the basmati rice was rich and savory, and the snap peas crisp amid the abundance of mushrooms and onion. I'm still anticipating the pumpkin pie and whipped cream as I write this.
So far the trick-or-treaters have been thin on the ground, which gives me a little time to reflect on the week past and the weekend thus far.
1. Enjoyed the company of my friend Brent as Arsenal took advantage of some incomprehensibly awful Tottenham defending to take the first game of the North London "darby" as the British incomprehensibly pronounce what we'd call a "derby". Not sure what it said about the Arse, whose fragility and lack of focus has been remarked on severally, including over here at Pandagoal (hey - how about some new postings, Pandagoalians?) but it said something fairly personal and pretty uncomplimentary about the Spurs place in the English "top four".
Tottenham looked awful; tentative, mazy and generally lost. They never threatened, they never even looked in the match. Fortunately the Talisker and Brent's delicious fig-and-vanilla (and clove-and-cinnamon) infused bourbon made up for the sloppy Spurs play.Of course, my Newcastle United lads aren't even in the Premiership this season...but we'll be back! Toon Army !
2. In other soccer news, I see that the USWNT managed to sneak past the German gals 1-0, predictably on an Abby Wambach header.
I'm not sure I like this; the idea that the women are again relying on Wambach up front to provide them with their goalscoring...and, since the match report said that "...Germany earlier wasted a half-dozen clear opportunities and dominated most of the match..." we can assume that the U.S. midfield was swanning about or simply absent.There's no real challenge ahead, given the span until the next WWC. But I reflect grimly on the U.S. gals' returning to the dreary "Wambach-and-three-days-of-rain" style that typified the pre-Sundhage Era. Let's hope the result is just a blip.
3. Important safety tip: DO NOT carve your jack-o-lanterns ten days ahead of Halloween if you live in a Mediterranian climate. The foul resulting wilt, mold and collapse will not endear the holiday to you.
4. I'm excited for the Rose City Rollers, and yet, frustrated because they sold out the Hanger for their last bout! We tried to get in and failed, which sucked for us, but is terrific for the rollergirls. Get some, Rollers! Great to see a genuine sport played by gals who hustle for love of the solid hits - as opposed to the whatever-their-name-is outfit that plays for big money at the big barn next to I-5. Go, Rollers!
5. I think I've found the answer to a parenting dilemma: how do you deal with your kids' desperate need to go to Chuck E. Cheese without going utterly mad? Here's four simple things that help:
a. Feed them first - so you don't have to touch the awful food there.
b. Make the expedition part of a larger agenda, so you don't have to linger.
c. Go in the late morning or early afternoon - the mob scene is less.
d. Restrict their tokens, so they play their games and go.
We've been to the Chuckster thrice in a month now, and every time it was quick, easy and painless. I think we've got that sucker wired.6. Important safety tip #2: do NOT let your son hand out Halloween candy. We had an immense 8-quart saucepan full of the stuff until a half dozen spirits and spooks showed up and the Peep took charge of the candy pot. The thing came back from the front door with two - two - tiny Snickers bars inside. We had to raid the little girl's swag when our neighbors' kids arrived and then quickly tun out the porch light.
7. Which reminds me of my favorite Halloween story. I was living in Wilmington, Delaware at the time, and our apartment was at the edge of a pretty sketchy neighborhood so we had few few little trick-or-treaters. Late in the evening I heard a knock and opened the door to find two little kids in their street clothes, one about seven with a black oval party mask on, the other about five without any trace of a costume at all.
"Trick or treat" the older kid mumbled slightly ashamedly.
I dropped a couple of candy bars on them.
"What is your costume, dude?" I asked the older boy. He looked up at me like I was slightly retarded, like I'd asked him whether it was dark out.
"I'm Batman" he rasped, in a pretty good imitation of Michael Keaton or whothehellever was playing Batman that year. I nodded to what I assumed was his little brother. "Who's he supposed to be?"
"He's the Joker." replied big brother. I laughed.
"No way, kid. I've seen the movie, the Joker has a white face and purple clothes, little guy doesn't look anything like the Joker."
Big kid gave me that slightly-retarded look again and replied;
"That's the joke."
He got an extra Snickers for that.
8. Mmmm. Pumpkin pie is what the Gods ate on Olympus.
9. I had something really witty for this one but I forgot it.
10. Oh, yeah, wait. Here it is.
Three guys are arguing about humanity's greatest invention. The first insists on fire, the second on atomic power. The third suggests the thermos bottle.
"WTF?" his buddies ask.
"Think about it!" says the first guy; "It keeps the hot stuff hot AND the cold stuff cold."
"No shit, Sherlock" reply his pals, "What do you think a thermos bottle does?"
"Yes..." replies the guy, "...but how does it know?"
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
One of the most common, and yet the most difficult, thing that any man or woman can do is to bring hardship or pain to someone they love.
Yet life tends to creep up and headbutt you with this sort of moment every so often, however.
My life, anyway. Mine and my beloved's.
Fortunately the mountains of agony are usually inselbergs, single peaks of loss and suffering so tall, so sharp and icy cold that you can feel your heart hang and tear on them, feel yourself swing out over the dizzying, horrible emptiness knowing that the weightless drop is only a caesura, a moment of suspended time before the final slip of the straining fingertips, the sickening swoop of the fall, the impact with the shattering wasteland below.
Much more common are the little daily speedbumps of conflict, the knolls, drumlins and kames of confrontation that make the day bumpy, that sends one to bed in tears and leaves the other shaking his or her head in rueful acceptance of that bump on the head, the small pellet of bitterness dissolving under the tongue, the residue of the collision between needs and wants, between greed and restriction.
The Peeper had a nasty spill on one of these little bumps the other night, refusing to leave his computer game when it was time for bed, nastily arguing and finally spitting hateful words at his mom when she insisted gently that he listen to her instructions.
I was already in bed, exhausted after a long, cold day working in the rain. But the raised voices, and my little boy's vicious tone, brought me upright with my loathed reading glasses slipping down my nose as if they, too, wished to avoid the coming defenestration.
"Mister Peep?" I said in my sternest drill sergeant voice, "I need to see you in here for a moment."
There was a moment's awful silence and then the sound of a little boy bursting into tears.
"No, mommy, no! I'm sorry! I'm shutting it down, see! I'm listening to you! I'm listening!" and his mother's caustic reply "You're not listening to me, you're just afraid of your Daddy.", the truth of which was attested to by another rain band of weeping. It was a crumpled-faced little fellow that shuffled into the doorway of the bedroom pushed by his mother.
"I'msorrydaddyI'msorryreallyI'msorry!" he whimpered, fearing the dreadful punishment I represented more than honestly regretting his harsh words and unpleasant attitude towards his gentle and loving mother, who really does try and understand, cajole and entice him towards responsibility.
Unfortunately for him I am more of a kinetic sort of parent.
"Go and brush your teeth and get in your jammies and come back here, son." My level look always produces more floods of tears at this point, and it worked to its usual effect here. A sobbing child staggered off to the bathroom to ablute and dress for bed.
By the time her returned the fear had subsided to jerky sniffles, but the boy still refused to come sit by me, retreating to the end of the bed until I promised not to scare him AND his mother sat beside me. Then he crawled into our arms and lay snuffling soddenly.
"What are we going to do, little man?" I asked one pink ear "It's not OK to use mean words and be unkind to your mommy. When she asks you to do something, the best thing to do is do what she asks, or, if you have to, talk to her and explain why you don't want to do that thing."
The Peeper sat up, wiped his nose and looked at us earnestly.
"I don't want to be mean, daddymommy... (when excited, little man tends to conjoin his parents as a single noun)...I really don't, but...it's my brain does bad things."
"Your brain does this stuff itself?"
"I try and be nice, but my brain doesn't always listen!" His sweet, rounded little boy face was a model of sincerity, his eyes wide, his lip almost trembling. "I'm not being bad, I don't want to be mean, but my brain just DOES it..." He really believed what he was saying; perhaps what he was saying was the truth. As he saw it.
We both hugged him and told him we loved him.
We told him that part of being a Big Boy was mastering his brain when it was bad. Perhaps when he felt that brain trying to make him snarl hasty and angry things that he might put his hand over his mouth, count to ten, think of something nice until he could talk to his mom in a less angry tone. And that he would have to work hard at this, and in return his mom and I would be a little more patient, give him a little more time when asked to do things he didn't like to do, like putting away his toys, washing his feet, or trimming his fingernails. He agreed to try that.
So he went to bed, still sniffling a little but with a hint of a smile. He gave his mom a big hug, and me a slightly smaller one.
As I tucked him under his beloved (and now slightly frayed and dingy from all the love) "kitty" quilt he roiled a little under the covers.
"Sometimes I don't always like my brain, da-da." he said in his small "sleepy" voice.
"Yeah, I know, kiddo." I said, thinking of my stern voice and the face of a little boy reduced to fearful tears. "Sometimes I don't always like mine, either."
And I turned out the light.
Yet life tends to creep up and headbutt you with this sort of moment every so often, however.
My life, anyway. Mine and my beloved's.
Fortunately the mountains of agony are usually inselbergs, single peaks of loss and suffering so tall, so sharp and icy cold that you can feel your heart hang and tear on them, feel yourself swing out over the dizzying, horrible emptiness knowing that the weightless drop is only a caesura, a moment of suspended time before the final slip of the straining fingertips, the sickening swoop of the fall, the impact with the shattering wasteland below.
Much more common are the little daily speedbumps of conflict, the knolls, drumlins and kames of confrontation that make the day bumpy, that sends one to bed in tears and leaves the other shaking his or her head in rueful acceptance of that bump on the head, the small pellet of bitterness dissolving under the tongue, the residue of the collision between needs and wants, between greed and restriction.
The Peeper had a nasty spill on one of these little bumps the other night, refusing to leave his computer game when it was time for bed, nastily arguing and finally spitting hateful words at his mom when she insisted gently that he listen to her instructions.I was already in bed, exhausted after a long, cold day working in the rain. But the raised voices, and my little boy's vicious tone, brought me upright with my loathed reading glasses slipping down my nose as if they, too, wished to avoid the coming defenestration.
"Mister Peep?" I said in my sternest drill sergeant voice, "I need to see you in here for a moment."
There was a moment's awful silence and then the sound of a little boy bursting into tears.
"No, mommy, no! I'm sorry! I'm shutting it down, see! I'm listening to you! I'm listening!" and his mother's caustic reply "You're not listening to me, you're just afraid of your Daddy.", the truth of which was attested to by another rain band of weeping. It was a crumpled-faced little fellow that shuffled into the doorway of the bedroom pushed by his mother.
"I'msorrydaddyI'msorryreallyI'msorry!" he whimpered, fearing the dreadful punishment I represented more than honestly regretting his harsh words and unpleasant attitude towards his gentle and loving mother, who really does try and understand, cajole and entice him towards responsibility.
Unfortunately for him I am more of a kinetic sort of parent.
"Go and brush your teeth and get in your jammies and come back here, son." My level look always produces more floods of tears at this point, and it worked to its usual effect here. A sobbing child staggered off to the bathroom to ablute and dress for bed.By the time her returned the fear had subsided to jerky sniffles, but the boy still refused to come sit by me, retreating to the end of the bed until I promised not to scare him AND his mother sat beside me. Then he crawled into our arms and lay snuffling soddenly.
"What are we going to do, little man?" I asked one pink ear "It's not OK to use mean words and be unkind to your mommy. When she asks you to do something, the best thing to do is do what she asks, or, if you have to, talk to her and explain why you don't want to do that thing."
The Peeper sat up, wiped his nose and looked at us earnestly.
"I don't want to be mean, daddymommy... (when excited, little man tends to conjoin his parents as a single noun)...I really don't, but...it's my brain does bad things."
"Your brain does this stuff itself?"
"I try and be nice, but my brain doesn't always listen!" His sweet, rounded little boy face was a model of sincerity, his eyes wide, his lip almost trembling. "I'm not being bad, I don't want to be mean, but my brain just DOES it..." He really believed what he was saying; perhaps what he was saying was the truth. As he saw it.
We both hugged him and told him we loved him.
We told him that part of being a Big Boy was mastering his brain when it was bad. Perhaps when he felt that brain trying to make him snarl hasty and angry things that he might put his hand over his mouth, count to ten, think of something nice until he could talk to his mom in a less angry tone. And that he would have to work hard at this, and in return his mom and I would be a little more patient, give him a little more time when asked to do things he didn't like to do, like putting away his toys, washing his feet, or trimming his fingernails. He agreed to try that.
So he went to bed, still sniffling a little but with a hint of a smile. He gave his mom a big hug, and me a slightly smaller one.
As I tucked him under his beloved (and now slightly frayed and dingy from all the love) "kitty" quilt he roiled a little under the covers.
"Sometimes I don't always like my brain, da-da." he said in his small "sleepy" voice."Yeah, I know, kiddo." I said, thinking of my stern voice and the face of a little boy reduced to fearful tears. "Sometimes I don't always like mine, either."
And I turned out the light.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Decisive Battles: Yorktown 1781
Yorktown Dates: September 28-October 19, 1781
Forces Engaged: American Colonial and French:
American - 15 battalions of the Continental Line, organized into three divisions each of two brigades (about 4,500 infantry); three brigades of Virginia state militia (roughly 3,000 infantry); 17 companies of artillery (400 artillerymen) as well as a small number of pioneers, cavalry and odds and sods - a total of about 8,000 troops under GEN George Washington.
French - (Land Forces) 15 battalions of regular infantry (including two of marines) and a "legion*" of 1 battalion-equivalent (about 8,000 infantry but including 2 squadrons of light cavalry and a small number of artillerymen); eleven companies of artillery (670 artillerymen) under LTG Comte de Rochambeau.
French - (Naval Forces) 1 x 110 gun battleship, 3 x 80 gun battleships, 17 x 74 gun battleships, 3 x 64 gun small battleships, 1 x 36 gun heavy frigate, 3 x 32 gun frigates, 2 x 26 gun light frigates, 1 x 16 gun brig under RADM Comte de Grasse.
British, American Loyalist and German:
British - (Land Forces) 14 regular infantry battalions including 2 of marines in three brigades, 230 artilleryman, 20 cavalry (roughly 5,250 troops - note, however, that many of these are down with disease and assorted "fevers"); 2.5 loyalist militia battalions (about 500 troops all arms)
German - Anspach-Bayreuth: 2 regiments regular infantry and an attached artillery company (about 1,000 infantrymen, 40 artillerymen and 3 light cannon) Hesse-Kassel: 2 regiments regular infantry, 1 light (jager) company and an attached artillery company (930 infantrymen, 50 artillerymen, 4 light cannon)
Total: 7,750 all arms under LTG Charles, Earl Cornwallis
British (Naval Forces) 1 x 98 gun battleship, 1 x 90 gun battleship, 12 x 74 gun battleships, 1 x 70 gun battleship, 4 x 64 gun light battleships, 1 x 50 gun cutdown battleship, 2 x 38 gun frigates, 2 x 32 gun frigates, 2 x 28 gun light frigates, 1 fireship under RADM (Red Squadron) Thomas Graves
(*Note: one of the military fads of the late Eighteenth Century was something called a "legion", a sort of combined-arms force that, in the case of Lauzun's Legion was nominally composed of 8 companies: four infantry (one Grenadier, one Chasseur, two Fusilier), one Artillery, two light cavalry (Hussar) and one Support (Artificier) company.
The French brought Lauzun, and the British had a loyalist outfit called the "British Legion" which is better known as "Tarleton's Legion" after its commander, LTC Banastre Tarleton (aka "Bloody Ban").
Strength returns for the British Legion at Yorktown list 25 officers, 216 troopers, of which probably more than half were dragoons (heavy cavalry/mounted infantry), leaving less than 80-100 light infantry.
The 18th Century legions were something of a military oddity, given that either the cavalry had to move at a walking pace or take the infantry up behind them to stay together, and the tactics of light infantry and light cavalry or dragoons were sufficiently opposed as to make the combination difficult to operate effectively. In practice the legion infantry was usually brigaded with other infantry and the cavalry acted in the scouting and shock roles with other cavalry. By Napoleonic times the legion system had effectively been abandoned, a victim of the increasing specialization of the military arms)
The Powers and Their Intentions: One thing that makes Yorktown so interesting is the intersection of the warring entities. Each had their intentions, several of which they had no intention of disclosing even to their own allies and which, in many cases, worked against their allies' interests.
The British: had perhaps the most straightforward mission; put down the rebellion and return the American colonies to their (in British eyes) proper position as a vassal to the Mother Country. But...the British position had been immensely complicated by the entry of France and Spain to the war as allies of the American rebels. For one thing, Britain's already long supply lines were made even more precarious by the threat of French warships, and British trade (as always, crucial to British prosperity) threatened by privateers of all nations.
And in the long view, Britain had colonies more vital to its world power, economic security and national pride than the American littoral. In particular India and her associated dominions, Gibraltar, and her Caribbean colonies were highly valuable, and much at risk were the American venture to soak up too many troops, too many ships and too much interest...
Another thing that became a major factor in deciding the fate of British America was the political game-playing between the Secretary of State for the American Department, Lord George Germain (officially the CINC for North America), GEN Henry Clinton, the commander of the British expeditionary force in the colonies in rebellion, and LTG Cornwallis. We will discuss this further when we talk about the Yorktown Campaign, but suffice to say that Germain was a man of many illusions, one of which was his military acumen; Clinton was a man of many resentments, one of which was his inability to play well with others, and Cornwallis was a man of many doubts, one of which was NOT in his own opinions. The collision of these three men would serve the Crown poorly in the American colonies.
The French: intended to "help" the upstart Americans to the extent - exactly and no further than humanly possible - that they served to discomfort and dismantle the British Empire. Remember, the French and their native American allies had fought a war with the American settlers and their British then-patron as recently as a generation. France was not just a monarchy but a Monarchy, whose Bourbon rulers had little affection for what, to them, was a congeries of backwoods lawyers and mobocrats addled on the writings of levelers and anarchists.
France's ambition in North America was to use the American rebels as cannon fodder for the British; to tie down as many British maneuver units and naval vessels as possible while scooping up British possessions elsewhere. The crucial part of this strategy was the official abandonment of any claim on the former French dominions in what is today Canada. No matter what Rochambeau and de Grasse might tell the Americans, France's sugar islands in the Antillies were infinitely more important to the French than American "liberty"; the freedom of a Philadelphia scrivener wasn't worth the bones of a single Alsatian grenadier.
The Americans: had a simple but maddeningly complex task - stay alive and stay unconquered. It was said of the British Admiral Jellicoe that he could lose the First World War for Britain in an afternoon. Well, the commander of the American field army could lose an entire continent in a day's fighting. Washington can never be considered a tactical genius; pretty much every British commander in the American theatre kicked his ass at some point or another. But he also knew that tactical defeat was, in the long view, immaterial. He had his gaze firmly fixed on the single thing he needed to accomplish; keep the Continental Army intact, in the field, and effective. He didn't have to win, much, (and he didn't) but he had to keep the British from cornering him and destroying the Continental Line.
His relationship with his "allies" was more complex. He needed the footsoldiers, artillerymen, sappers and engineers the French provided. Even more, he needed the money, the supplies and...absolutely most of all...he needed the warships. The United States wouldn't assemble an effective Navy for another twenty years, and by effective I mean a navy with capital ships, ships-of-the-battle-line, battleships. The stories of the exploits of the big American frigates are all very heroic and good for sparking naval tradition, but the reality was that the British 74-gun man-o-war - in her masses - had closed the American ports and stoppered the American coast. British seapower enabled British landpower to move strategically at will and forced American land forces to defend more area than they could reasonably cover. We will see...the famous name and famous date is Yorktown in October, but the real decisive battle was an inconclusive engagement fought in the shallow sea off the mouth of Chesapeake Bay in early September.
But while accepting all this assistance, he also couldn't afford to be seen as an auxiliary or vassal of the powerful foreigners, either. Even while the French troops outnumbered his own, when the French were acting as the navy the Americans didn't have, he needed to act - and be seen as acting - as the commander-in-chief of the allied forces. If America were to do anything but trade subservience to Britain for subservience to France, Washington had to do more than just fight - he had to LEAD, and be known and seen to lead, those forces to strategic victory.
The Campaign: Lord North, the Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1778 and Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the American colonies, cherished three illusions about the war they were waging.
1. That the war would be a conventional war in the European sense - that is, that by defeating armies, taking and holding major cities and similar high-value terrain that they would discourage the rebels.
2. That the American colonists included a sizeable and virulent breed of Loyalist that needed merely the discouragement of the main rebel armies to arm themselves and take the field against their rebel neighbors.
3. And that all this could be run out of London; done relatively quickly, easily and cheaply; and would not require any particular effort to involve the population of the British Isles.
It's said that we pay a price for everything we believe that is not true. I'm not sure if that's always the case - certainly there is a large part of the American public that seems to be trying to live in the 21st Century as if it were not - but in North's and Germain's cases it certainly was. Germain in particular was the real artificer of the war, to the extent that any control was asserted from London, and his beliefs made fools of him and his commanders from 1775 until the last trooper sailed from New York harbor eight years later.
In the case of the "Southern Campaigns", what got him in trouble was misconception #2; the notion that the Southern colonies were a Loyalist hotbed. To some extent this was as true as anywhere else in the colonies. Modern scholarship estimates that somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the total white population of the colonies was actively royalist. But in this case the decisive factor was the loyalist exiles in London, several of whom had access to Germain, and had convinced him that a solid body of King's troops in the Carolinas and Georgia would be sufficient to raise a genuine mass of loyalist forces.
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The reality was that from 1775 to 1778 the American rebels held most of the positions of power and influence south of the Potomac River, and they had used them ruthlessly, merely suppressing loyalists when merely unruly, bleeding and scattering them when in arms. By the time the British returned, in late 1778 and 1779 many of the loyalists who might have armed themselves were either in flight, dead, dispossessed or afraid enough of the possibility of the former to prevent them from turning out. The British and their Tory partisans also learned the lessons of guerilla war; being strong in one place means nothing in another. While the main British armies succeeded at Augusta, Georgia in 1779 and Charleston in 1780, the backcountry - and, remember, most of the colonies were backcountry at this point - was a deadly dangerous place to be a Tory.
But near the British main force was a dangerous place to be for a rebel in 1780. First MG Lincoln went into the bag with 5,000 patriot militia and Continentals in May of 1780. Then, after another defeat at Waxhaws in May, came the worst defeat in the open field of the Southern campaigns; Camden. MG Gates, the hero of Saratoga, lost the battle and most of his little army, probably as many as 2,000 out of 3,700 engaged. Gates himself fled with the first routing Virginia and Carolina militiamen. It was disastrous at the time, but, in the long run, possibly the best for the patriot cause. Lincoln and Gates were out of the way, replaced by men like Nathaniel Greene and Daniel Morgan, and the British confidence in aggressive stand-up engagements was raised beyond any rational bounds.
The British, meanwhile having already divided their forces upon France's entry - Germain dispatched 5,000 men to the West Indies - had divided them again, and the command of those forces as well. Clinton had returned to New York, where his 14,000 were pinned down overwatching Washington's army and the newly-arrived French forces under Rochambeau. Cornwallis had been left behind in the Carolinas with 8,000. which, after the rout of Camden must have seemed like more than enough to secure the entirety of the Carolinas and Georgia.
At this point the hopes of the rebellion must have seemed very slim, indeed. It was in this dismal autumn that the patriots surrounded MAJ Ferguson and his loyalist militias at King's Mountain in the hinterlands of the western Carolinas.
The destruction of Ferguson's forces was the first of a series of bloody hammerings inflicted on the British and Loyalists. MG Greene had, like Washington, realized that victory or defeat were not nearly as important as bleeding out the British troop units, 3,000 miles from their recruit depots. So first at Cowpens in January, then northward towards Virginia in February, and finally at Guilford Courthouse in March, Greene made Cornwallis divide his forces even further, abandon his supplies and lose men to ambush, desertion and disease. By the time the losses of Guilford had been absorbed, Cornwallis was finished with the Carolinas. It was his intention to march into Virgina, the colony he perceived to be the source of most of the rebel supplies and untroubled by war since 1776. Cornwallis believed that cutting the Virginia-Carolinas links would take both in a coup de main.
In this he was acting against GEN Clinton's - his nominal superior - direct orders to concentrate at a port city and await naval support. Here the weird British command structure was at fault again, as Germain and Cornwallis planned this in a series of letters, bypassing Clinton (as at Saratoga) without informing him that the strategy Clinton thought he was effecting had been changed. As Cornwallis marched north from Wilmington, North Carolina in April he set out on the road that led to Yorktown.
The Sources: Again, we're dealing with a major event that occurred amidst a literate culture and engaged two major European and an emerging North American government(s). Aside from official records we have letters, diaries, histories and personal accounts of the campaign, the various engagements and the siege itself. Among the better recent concise works is part of the Osprey campaign series by Brendan Morrissey.
The Engagement: It wouldn't have been right, given that so much of the war in the American colonies was precipitated and exacerbated by mistakes, illusion and error to have the final campaign begin on any other note. So it should be understood that the entire rationale behind Cornwallis' move from North Carolina to Virgina in April, 1781 was an utter fuckup.
As we're discussed, the only significant rebel force in the South at the time was Greene's army. Cornwallis, like the British commanders before him, thought along conventional lines. Greene had fled the field at Guilford; therefore Greene was beaten. It only remained to mop up his army and flay the rebel logistical base in Virgina. He was ready to do the latter...and reports from Carolina led him to believe that his subordinate Rawdon had done the former at Hobkirk's Hill. Confident that the elusive devil Greene had been sent back to Hell, Cornwallis marched on.
In fact, Greene HAD been defeated but, as always, defeated but not dismayed remained at large in the Carolinas, proceeded to mop up the British garrisons of North and South Carolina, and pen up Rawdon in Charleston. Cornwallis had abandoned the southern colonies in the mistaken belief that they were secure while his abandonment lost them to Britain permanently.
Cornwallis, who had burned his supply train to try and catch the elusive Greene, marched from Wilmington to Petersburg, Virginia in just under a month. Dry weather and a hostile countryside ran up his sick list and ran down the morale of his troops. By the time he closed in Petersburg more than 2,000 of his 7,000 troopers were down with heat exhaustion, typhoid and other "fevers" endemic to the insalubrious Virginia tidewater.
And his Continental opponent, Lafayette, was playing Greene's Fabian game, refusing direct engagement, harassing, and delaying.
And if this was not frustrating enough, GEN Clinton was back in action again, worried about Franco-American actions against the New York garrison and displeased at Cornwallis' march into Virginia. He demanded that Cornwallis obey his instructions to establish a naval base on the Chesapeake Bay at Portsmouth, as well as sending reinforcements to support New York. Cornwallis, frustrated at his inability to pin down the rebel field army and determined to obey Clinton's orders for a change, marched down to the Chesapeake tidelands. His chief of engineers having determined that Portsmouth (and the alternative, Old Point Comfort near Hampton, Virginia) were unsuitable, Cornwallis embarked his force for the small town of Yorktown, arriving in early August.
In New York, GEN Washington was meeting with his French counterpart, LTG Rochambeau.
The partnership was an especially amicable one, particularly since the Frenchman, though a very experienced soldier, was willing to defer to his host; he is said to have told Washington that he had come "to serve, not to lead".
What he could - or would - not do was enlighten Washington as to the movement of the French fleet. Every late summer and autumn since 1778 the French West Indies squadron had sailed north into American waters to escape the hurricane season. This year the venue of American operations would depend on the arrival of the French warships. In May and again in early July Washington and Rochambeau met and discussed their options. Washington wanted to attack Clinton in New York, whom he outnumbered 3:1; the British were stronger in the South than they had been since 1779, while being weaker in the north than ever since 1775.
Finally by mid-August Rochambeau had definite news; de Grasse would be in American waters only for several months, and no further north than the Chesapeake.
That was that. Leaving MG Heath with the New England militia and most of the New England battalions of the Continental Line, Washington and Rochambeau marched south across the middle colonies, feinting at Sandy Hook, and the first elements of allied cavalry reached Lafayette outside Yorktown on 12 September. This meant that the allies were equal in numbers - and especially in mounted troops - to Cornwallis' force.
But none of the parties knew what had been happening out at sea.
The French Royal Navy had an unenviable history. Never much more than a poor second to the British fleet it had been hammered flat in the Seven Years' War. Although materially rebuilt, the French warships also suffered from what might be termed an "excess of strategy". They are described by Morressey as seeing "the overall objective more important than risking all in the uncertainty of battle" and to the extent that it affected their tactics and gunnery to their detriment.
The record of the French Navy in the American War was undistinguished, their inaction partially stemming from their own predilictions and partially from the Bourbon's unwillingness to sacrifice their strategic gamepieces for their dubious American "ally". So the tactically indecisive "First Battle of the Capes" on March 16, 1781 was a pretty typical example of the French naval style; Commodore Destouches was outfought by British RADM Arbuthnot, turned back from his attempt to force entrance into the Chesapeake, and though even at Versailles he was considered to have done poorly some of his officers whined that no decorations were issued for the mess.
But another officer was joining the fight, and ADM de Grasse had orders to engage the enemy if needed in order to support Rochambeau. He arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake on August 30, set up a blockade of Yorktown, and prepared to await the arrival of his counterpart ADM Barras, en route from Newport, RI, with Rochambeau's siege train. In the late morning of Sept 5 a French frigate reported the sighting of RADM Graves fleet from New York.
The ensuing "Second Battle of the Capes" wasn't exactly Trafalgar. In two hours of gunfire the British sustained serious damage to six battleships, the French to four. Graves did an indifferent job of leading his squadron, was accused of contradictory and misleading signals, and allowed the action to be dictated by de Grasse even though the British held the "weather gage", that is, were upwind of the French and could choose to run down upon them or stay away. The two fleets maneuvered southeast over the next three days, looking for an advantage and unwilling to accept combat on less than opportune terms.
Finally de Grasse, worried that the faster British ships could turn and outrace him to the Chesapeake, turned at night and sailed back to the bay. Unbelievably, Graves had not set a single frigate to observe de Grasse's squadron. The French, now reinforced by Barras' squadron, gained the mouth of the Chesapeake, and after several more days Graves sailed away, defeated.
Once trapped inside Yorktown the actual siege was methodical and typical of the sieges of the 18th Century. The lines of circumvallation were closed between September 30 and October 2. A sally by Tarleton's British Legion was messily repelled by Lauzun's Legion on October 3, ensuring that the surrounded garrison would not be able to acquire food or fodder. The "first parallel" was begun on October 6 and was completed October 10, the "grand batteries" opened fire the previous day, and the "second parallel", less than 400 yards from the town itself, was begun on October 11.
The night of October 14 came the final formal engagement of the war.
A composite battalion of the Royal Deux Ponts and the regiment Gatenois stormed Redoubt #9 and another composite unit, Hamilton's and Lauren's Light Infantry, took the neighboring Redoubt #10.
Cornwallis sallied a trench raid in the early morning of October 16; light infantrymen and guardsmen stormed into a battery in the second parallel, spiked seven guns and killed or wounded some 21 men. The guns were in battery by sunup.
That evening the British commander attempted to break out to the the eastern shore of the James, but was defeated, this time by an autumn storm. Near 10am on October 17th a drummer beat the parley. After two days of meetings and commissions, the instruments of surrender made the British and German troops prisoners of war. They were allowed to march out "with the honors of war", the officers to be paroled and Cornwallis could use HMS Bonetta to ferry his belongings to New York without inspection. The British troops could not play a French or American tune on the march to surrender (to prevent a mockery in song) and had to keep their colors cased.
So in the 19th the garrison marched out, supposedly to a regimental band (probably no more than fife and drum) playing "The World Turn'd Upside Down", although there is no contemporary source for this. Cornwallis himself claimed to be to sick to lead the surrender, but deputised his 2IC, COL O'Hara, who surrendered his sword first to Rochambeau who declined and pointed to Washington, who in turn deferred to his own second-in-command, MG Lincoln.
The British troops refused to salute the American colors, and after the surrender many American officers, few owning real uniforms and broke what with Continental pay months in arrears, were treated to the aggravating sight of their nominal allies and enemies entertaining each other and fraternizing as professional soldiers. The memory would run deep.
In early November Washington proposed that de Grasse assist in attacking and taking Savannah and Charleston to clean the British out of the South. De Grasse, however, had a secret agreement with Spain to winter in the Caribbean and eventual defeat at the Battle of the Saintes in April, 1782. He sailed in the first week of November to leave Washington to slope off north to pen Clinton in New York while Rochambeau wintered in Virgina.
The Outcome: Tactical and strategic American rebel victory, and tactical French victory.
The Impact: The real impact of the defeat was to the people and the polity of Great Britain, where Lord North cried "Oh God! It is all over!" on hearing the news of Cornwallis' surrender. The French and Spanish were in arms, India and the Caribbean colonies in danger (remember how much of British foreign policy was made around India?) and the national debt increasingly ugly. Lord George Germain resigned in February, 1872. In March the North ministry lost a general election and was replaced by a less intransigent group of Whigs, who made peace and acceptance of American independence a condition of forming a government to the Crown.
Ironically, in the peace treaty negotiations that followed the French tried to undercut the American alliance by negotiating a separate peace with the British, while the Spanish were more actively hostile to the establishment of a separate American state than Great Britain. The British found themselves more than willing to negotiate with their former subjects as "13 United States" if it meant an end to the Franco-American alliance. Indeed, after the passage of the Jay Treaty in 1794 and France's own Revolution in 1798 France and the United States would fight an undeclared "Quasi-war" in the waters off North America and the Caribbean.
Of course, the new nation's troubles with her old mistress weren't over, either...
Touchline Tattles: There's not much funny, odd or cute about this battle. It was desperation and deception all around, and even the victors found much to be dissatisfied about.
Perhaps the saddest tale contained within the siege lines of Yorktown - as well as within the greater story of American independence - was the fate of the least considered of all the people on that battlefield; the black men, women and children who had chosen to follow Cornwallis' army to escape chattel slavery.
The British were no abolitionists. Slavery was legal in Great Britain, her dominions and territories until 1802. But, much as Lincoln did in 1862, the British could use the American colonists' fear of their own property as a weapon. After Governor Dunmore's acts to tempt rebel slaveowners' black wealth from them in 1775, many slaves saw the British forces as liberators. And, in fact, to give him credit, GEN Carleton, the commander of the New York garrison in 1782, refused American demands for the return of their "property", and embarked with any black man who wanted to leave. Most did.
But there was no such hope for the black men in the trenches of Yorktown. Their American masters showed up with a flag of liberty that brought them only chains, that would not fly for them for another eighty-four years.
Rather than to dwell on this grim picture, I prefer to contemplate Madame Le Comtesse Rochambeau; plainly the Hubba-Hubba Girl of 1781 or whatever the 18th Century catchphrase was for a very lovely woman. M'sieu le Comte was obviously not just a homme de la guerre; it appears he had some skill in the arts as a maitre de l'amour as well. So on that note, let us leave the soldiers, the lovers and the diplomats to history. Their day is done, and we have now to deal with the world they have bequeathed to us:
"The serving men do sit and whine, and think it long ere dinner time:
The Butler's still out of the way, or else my Lady keeps the key,
The poor old cook, in the larder doth look,
Where is no goodnesse to be found,
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down."
Forces Engaged: American Colonial and French:
American - 15 battalions of the Continental Line, organized into three divisions each of two brigades (about 4,500 infantry); three brigades of Virginia state militia (roughly 3,000 infantry); 17 companies of artillery (400 artillerymen) as well as a small number of pioneers, cavalry and odds and sods - a total of about 8,000 troops under GEN George Washington.
French - (Land Forces) 15 battalions of regular infantry (including two of marines) and a "legion*" of 1 battalion-equivalent (about 8,000 infantry but including 2 squadrons of light cavalry and a small number of artillerymen); eleven companies of artillery (670 artillerymen) under LTG Comte de Rochambeau.
French - (Naval Forces) 1 x 110 gun battleship, 3 x 80 gun battleships, 17 x 74 gun battleships, 3 x 64 gun small battleships, 1 x 36 gun heavy frigate, 3 x 32 gun frigates, 2 x 26 gun light frigates, 1 x 16 gun brig under RADM Comte de Grasse.
British, American Loyalist and German:
British - (Land Forces) 14 regular infantry battalions including 2 of marines in three brigades, 230 artilleryman, 20 cavalry (roughly 5,250 troops - note, however, that many of these are down with disease and assorted "fevers"); 2.5 loyalist militia battalions (about 500 troops all arms)
German - Anspach-Bayreuth: 2 regiments regular infantry and an attached artillery company (about 1,000 infantrymen, 40 artillerymen and 3 light cannon) Hesse-Kassel: 2 regiments regular infantry, 1 light (jager) company and an attached artillery company (930 infantrymen, 50 artillerymen, 4 light cannon)
Total: 7,750 all arms under LTG Charles, Earl Cornwallis
British (Naval Forces) 1 x 98 gun battleship, 1 x 90 gun battleship, 12 x 74 gun battleships, 1 x 70 gun battleship, 4 x 64 gun light battleships, 1 x 50 gun cutdown battleship, 2 x 38 gun frigates, 2 x 32 gun frigates, 2 x 28 gun light frigates, 1 fireship under RADM (Red Squadron) Thomas Graves
(*Note: one of the military fads of the late Eighteenth Century was something called a "legion", a sort of combined-arms force that, in the case of Lauzun's Legion was nominally composed of 8 companies: four infantry (one Grenadier, one Chasseur, two Fusilier), one Artillery, two light cavalry (Hussar) and one Support (Artificier) company.
The French brought Lauzun, and the British had a loyalist outfit called the "British Legion" which is better known as "Tarleton's Legion" after its commander, LTC Banastre Tarleton (aka "Bloody Ban"). Strength returns for the British Legion at Yorktown list 25 officers, 216 troopers, of which probably more than half were dragoons (heavy cavalry/mounted infantry), leaving less than 80-100 light infantry.
The 18th Century legions were something of a military oddity, given that either the cavalry had to move at a walking pace or take the infantry up behind them to stay together, and the tactics of light infantry and light cavalry or dragoons were sufficiently opposed as to make the combination difficult to operate effectively. In practice the legion infantry was usually brigaded with other infantry and the cavalry acted in the scouting and shock roles with other cavalry. By Napoleonic times the legion system had effectively been abandoned, a victim of the increasing specialization of the military arms)The Powers and Their Intentions: One thing that makes Yorktown so interesting is the intersection of the warring entities. Each had their intentions, several of which they had no intention of disclosing even to their own allies and which, in many cases, worked against their allies' interests.
The British: had perhaps the most straightforward mission; put down the rebellion and return the American colonies to their (in British eyes) proper position as a vassal to the Mother Country. But...the British position had been immensely complicated by the entry of France and Spain to the war as allies of the American rebels. For one thing, Britain's already long supply lines were made even more precarious by the threat of French warships, and British trade (as always, crucial to British prosperity) threatened by privateers of all nations.
And in the long view, Britain had colonies more vital to its world power, economic security and national pride than the American littoral. In particular India and her associated dominions, Gibraltar, and her Caribbean colonies were highly valuable, and much at risk were the American venture to soak up too many troops, too many ships and too much interest...
Another thing that became a major factor in deciding the fate of British America was the political game-playing between the Secretary of State for the American Department, Lord George Germain (officially the CINC for North America), GEN Henry Clinton, the commander of the British expeditionary force in the colonies in rebellion, and LTG Cornwallis. We will discuss this further when we talk about the Yorktown Campaign, but suffice to say that Germain was a man of many illusions, one of which was his military acumen; Clinton was a man of many resentments, one of which was his inability to play well with others, and Cornwallis was a man of many doubts, one of which was NOT in his own opinions. The collision of these three men would serve the Crown poorly in the American colonies.The French: intended to "help" the upstart Americans to the extent - exactly and no further than humanly possible - that they served to discomfort and dismantle the British Empire. Remember, the French and their native American allies had fought a war with the American settlers and their British then-patron as recently as a generation. France was not just a monarchy but a Monarchy, whose Bourbon rulers had little affection for what, to them, was a congeries of backwoods lawyers and mobocrats addled on the writings of levelers and anarchists.
France's ambition in North America was to use the American rebels as cannon fodder for the British; to tie down as many British maneuver units and naval vessels as possible while scooping up British possessions elsewhere. The crucial part of this strategy was the official abandonment of any claim on the former French dominions in what is today Canada. No matter what Rochambeau and de Grasse might tell the Americans, France's sugar islands in the Antillies were infinitely more important to the French than American "liberty"; the freedom of a Philadelphia scrivener wasn't worth the bones of a single Alsatian grenadier.The Americans: had a simple but maddeningly complex task - stay alive and stay unconquered. It was said of the British Admiral Jellicoe that he could lose the First World War for Britain in an afternoon. Well, the commander of the American field army could lose an entire continent in a day's fighting. Washington can never be considered a tactical genius; pretty much every British commander in the American theatre kicked his ass at some point or another. But he also knew that tactical defeat was, in the long view, immaterial. He had his gaze firmly fixed on the single thing he needed to accomplish; keep the Continental Army intact, in the field, and effective. He didn't have to win, much, (and he didn't) but he had to keep the British from cornering him and destroying the Continental Line.
His relationship with his "allies" was more complex. He needed the footsoldiers, artillerymen, sappers and engineers the French provided. Even more, he needed the money, the supplies and...absolutely most of all...he needed the warships. The United States wouldn't assemble an effective Navy for another twenty years, and by effective I mean a navy with capital ships, ships-of-the-battle-line, battleships. The stories of the exploits of the big American frigates are all very heroic and good for sparking naval tradition, but the reality was that the British 74-gun man-o-war - in her masses - had closed the American ports and stoppered the American coast. British seapower enabled British landpower to move strategically at will and forced American land forces to defend more area than they could reasonably cover. We will see...the famous name and famous date is Yorktown in October, but the real decisive battle was an inconclusive engagement fought in the shallow sea off the mouth of Chesapeake Bay in early September.But while accepting all this assistance, he also couldn't afford to be seen as an auxiliary or vassal of the powerful foreigners, either. Even while the French troops outnumbered his own, when the French were acting as the navy the Americans didn't have, he needed to act - and be seen as acting - as the commander-in-chief of the allied forces. If America were to do anything but trade subservience to Britain for subservience to France, Washington had to do more than just fight - he had to LEAD, and be known and seen to lead, those forces to strategic victory.
The Campaign: Lord North, the Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1778 and Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the American colonies, cherished three illusions about the war they were waging.
1. That the war would be a conventional war in the European sense - that is, that by defeating armies, taking and holding major cities and similar high-value terrain that they would discourage the rebels.
2. That the American colonists included a sizeable and virulent breed of Loyalist that needed merely the discouragement of the main rebel armies to arm themselves and take the field against their rebel neighbors.
3. And that all this could be run out of London; done relatively quickly, easily and cheaply; and would not require any particular effort to involve the population of the British Isles.
It's said that we pay a price for everything we believe that is not true. I'm not sure if that's always the case - certainly there is a large part of the American public that seems to be trying to live in the 21st Century as if it were not - but in North's and Germain's cases it certainly was. Germain in particular was the real artificer of the war, to the extent that any control was asserted from London, and his beliefs made fools of him and his commanders from 1775 until the last trooper sailed from New York harbor eight years later.
In the case of the "Southern Campaigns", what got him in trouble was misconception #2; the notion that the Southern colonies were a Loyalist hotbed. To some extent this was as true as anywhere else in the colonies. Modern scholarship estimates that somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the total white population of the colonies was actively royalist. But in this case the decisive factor was the loyalist exiles in London, several of whom had access to Germain, and had convinced him that a solid body of King's troops in the Carolinas and Georgia would be sufficient to raise a genuine mass of loyalist forces.
Today these people would be telling you about cash for gold and male enhancement products.
The reality was that from 1775 to 1778 the American rebels held most of the positions of power and influence south of the Potomac River, and they had used them ruthlessly, merely suppressing loyalists when merely unruly, bleeding and scattering them when in arms. By the time the British returned, in late 1778 and 1779 many of the loyalists who might have armed themselves were either in flight, dead, dispossessed or afraid enough of the possibility of the former to prevent them from turning out. The British and their Tory partisans also learned the lessons of guerilla war; being strong in one place means nothing in another. While the main British armies succeeded at Augusta, Georgia in 1779 and Charleston in 1780, the backcountry - and, remember, most of the colonies were backcountry at this point - was a deadly dangerous place to be a Tory.
But near the British main force was a dangerous place to be for a rebel in 1780. First MG Lincoln went into the bag with 5,000 patriot militia and Continentals in May of 1780. Then, after another defeat at Waxhaws in May, came the worst defeat in the open field of the Southern campaigns; Camden. MG Gates, the hero of Saratoga, lost the battle and most of his little army, probably as many as 2,000 out of 3,700 engaged. Gates himself fled with the first routing Virginia and Carolina militiamen. It was disastrous at the time, but, in the long run, possibly the best for the patriot cause. Lincoln and Gates were out of the way, replaced by men like Nathaniel Greene and Daniel Morgan, and the British confidence in aggressive stand-up engagements was raised beyond any rational bounds.
The British, meanwhile having already divided their forces upon France's entry - Germain dispatched 5,000 men to the West Indies - had divided them again, and the command of those forces as well. Clinton had returned to New York, where his 14,000 were pinned down overwatching Washington's army and the newly-arrived French forces under Rochambeau. Cornwallis had been left behind in the Carolinas with 8,000. which, after the rout of Camden must have seemed like more than enough to secure the entirety of the Carolinas and Georgia.
At this point the hopes of the rebellion must have seemed very slim, indeed. It was in this dismal autumn that the patriots surrounded MAJ Ferguson and his loyalist militias at King's Mountain in the hinterlands of the western Carolinas.
The destruction of Ferguson's forces was the first of a series of bloody hammerings inflicted on the British and Loyalists. MG Greene had, like Washington, realized that victory or defeat were not nearly as important as bleeding out the British troop units, 3,000 miles from their recruit depots. So first at Cowpens in January, then northward towards Virginia in February, and finally at Guilford Courthouse in March, Greene made Cornwallis divide his forces even further, abandon his supplies and lose men to ambush, desertion and disease. By the time the losses of Guilford had been absorbed, Cornwallis was finished with the Carolinas. It was his intention to march into Virgina, the colony he perceived to be the source of most of the rebel supplies and untroubled by war since 1776. Cornwallis believed that cutting the Virginia-Carolinas links would take both in a coup de main.
In this he was acting against GEN Clinton's - his nominal superior - direct orders to concentrate at a port city and await naval support. Here the weird British command structure was at fault again, as Germain and Cornwallis planned this in a series of letters, bypassing Clinton (as at Saratoga) without informing him that the strategy Clinton thought he was effecting had been changed. As Cornwallis marched north from Wilmington, North Carolina in April he set out on the road that led to Yorktown.
The Sources: Again, we're dealing with a major event that occurred amidst a literate culture and engaged two major European and an emerging North American government(s). Aside from official records we have letters, diaries, histories and personal accounts of the campaign, the various engagements and the siege itself. Among the better recent concise works is part of the Osprey campaign series by Brendan Morrissey.
The Engagement: It wouldn't have been right, given that so much of the war in the American colonies was precipitated and exacerbated by mistakes, illusion and error to have the final campaign begin on any other note. So it should be understood that the entire rationale behind Cornwallis' move from North Carolina to Virgina in April, 1781 was an utter fuckup.
As we're discussed, the only significant rebel force in the South at the time was Greene's army. Cornwallis, like the British commanders before him, thought along conventional lines. Greene had fled the field at Guilford; therefore Greene was beaten. It only remained to mop up his army and flay the rebel logistical base in Virgina. He was ready to do the latter...and reports from Carolina led him to believe that his subordinate Rawdon had done the former at Hobkirk's Hill. Confident that the elusive devil Greene had been sent back to Hell, Cornwallis marched on.
In fact, Greene HAD been defeated but, as always, defeated but not dismayed remained at large in the Carolinas, proceeded to mop up the British garrisons of North and South Carolina, and pen up Rawdon in Charleston. Cornwallis had abandoned the southern colonies in the mistaken belief that they were secure while his abandonment lost them to Britain permanently. Cornwallis, who had burned his supply train to try and catch the elusive Greene, marched from Wilmington to Petersburg, Virginia in just under a month. Dry weather and a hostile countryside ran up his sick list and ran down the morale of his troops. By the time he closed in Petersburg more than 2,000 of his 7,000 troopers were down with heat exhaustion, typhoid and other "fevers" endemic to the insalubrious Virginia tidewater.
And his Continental opponent, Lafayette, was playing Greene's Fabian game, refusing direct engagement, harassing, and delaying.
And if this was not frustrating enough, GEN Clinton was back in action again, worried about Franco-American actions against the New York garrison and displeased at Cornwallis' march into Virginia. He demanded that Cornwallis obey his instructions to establish a naval base on the Chesapeake Bay at Portsmouth, as well as sending reinforcements to support New York. Cornwallis, frustrated at his inability to pin down the rebel field army and determined to obey Clinton's orders for a change, marched down to the Chesapeake tidelands. His chief of engineers having determined that Portsmouth (and the alternative, Old Point Comfort near Hampton, Virginia) were unsuitable, Cornwallis embarked his force for the small town of Yorktown, arriving in early August.
In New York, GEN Washington was meeting with his French counterpart, LTG Rochambeau.
The partnership was an especially amicable one, particularly since the Frenchman, though a very experienced soldier, was willing to defer to his host; he is said to have told Washington that he had come "to serve, not to lead".
What he could - or would - not do was enlighten Washington as to the movement of the French fleet. Every late summer and autumn since 1778 the French West Indies squadron had sailed north into American waters to escape the hurricane season. This year the venue of American operations would depend on the arrival of the French warships. In May and again in early July Washington and Rochambeau met and discussed their options. Washington wanted to attack Clinton in New York, whom he outnumbered 3:1; the British were stronger in the South than they had been since 1779, while being weaker in the north than ever since 1775.
Finally by mid-August Rochambeau had definite news; de Grasse would be in American waters only for several months, and no further north than the Chesapeake.
That was that. Leaving MG Heath with the New England militia and most of the New England battalions of the Continental Line, Washington and Rochambeau marched south across the middle colonies, feinting at Sandy Hook, and the first elements of allied cavalry reached Lafayette outside Yorktown on 12 September. This meant that the allies were equal in numbers - and especially in mounted troops - to Cornwallis' force.
But none of the parties knew what had been happening out at sea.
The French Royal Navy had an unenviable history. Never much more than a poor second to the British fleet it had been hammered flat in the Seven Years' War. Although materially rebuilt, the French warships also suffered from what might be termed an "excess of strategy". They are described by Morressey as seeing "the overall objective more important than risking all in the uncertainty of battle" and to the extent that it affected their tactics and gunnery to their detriment.
The record of the French Navy in the American War was undistinguished, their inaction partially stemming from their own predilictions and partially from the Bourbon's unwillingness to sacrifice their strategic gamepieces for their dubious American "ally". So the tactically indecisive "First Battle of the Capes" on March 16, 1781 was a pretty typical example of the French naval style; Commodore Destouches was outfought by British RADM Arbuthnot, turned back from his attempt to force entrance into the Chesapeake, and though even at Versailles he was considered to have done poorly some of his officers whined that no decorations were issued for the mess.But another officer was joining the fight, and ADM de Grasse had orders to engage the enemy if needed in order to support Rochambeau. He arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake on August 30, set up a blockade of Yorktown, and prepared to await the arrival of his counterpart ADM Barras, en route from Newport, RI, with Rochambeau's siege train. In the late morning of Sept 5 a French frigate reported the sighting of RADM Graves fleet from New York.
The ensuing "Second Battle of the Capes" wasn't exactly Trafalgar. In two hours of gunfire the British sustained serious damage to six battleships, the French to four. Graves did an indifferent job of leading his squadron, was accused of contradictory and misleading signals, and allowed the action to be dictated by de Grasse even though the British held the "weather gage", that is, were upwind of the French and could choose to run down upon them or stay away. The two fleets maneuvered southeast over the next three days, looking for an advantage and unwilling to accept combat on less than opportune terms.
Finally de Grasse, worried that the faster British ships could turn and outrace him to the Chesapeake, turned at night and sailed back to the bay. Unbelievably, Graves had not set a single frigate to observe de Grasse's squadron. The French, now reinforced by Barras' squadron, gained the mouth of the Chesapeake, and after several more days Graves sailed away, defeated.
Once trapped inside Yorktown the actual siege was methodical and typical of the sieges of the 18th Century. The lines of circumvallation were closed between September 30 and October 2. A sally by Tarleton's British Legion was messily repelled by Lauzun's Legion on October 3, ensuring that the surrounded garrison would not be able to acquire food or fodder. The "first parallel" was begun on October 6 and was completed October 10, the "grand batteries" opened fire the previous day, and the "second parallel", less than 400 yards from the town itself, was begun on October 11.
The night of October 14 came the final formal engagement of the war.
A composite battalion of the Royal Deux Ponts and the regiment Gatenois stormed Redoubt #9 and another composite unit, Hamilton's and Lauren's Light Infantry, took the neighboring Redoubt #10.
Cornwallis sallied a trench raid in the early morning of October 16; light infantrymen and guardsmen stormed into a battery in the second parallel, spiked seven guns and killed or wounded some 21 men. The guns were in battery by sunup.
That evening the British commander attempted to break out to the the eastern shore of the James, but was defeated, this time by an autumn storm. Near 10am on October 17th a drummer beat the parley. After two days of meetings and commissions, the instruments of surrender made the British and German troops prisoners of war. They were allowed to march out "with the honors of war", the officers to be paroled and Cornwallis could use HMS Bonetta to ferry his belongings to New York without inspection. The British troops could not play a French or American tune on the march to surrender (to prevent a mockery in song) and had to keep their colors cased.
So in the 19th the garrison marched out, supposedly to a regimental band (probably no more than fife and drum) playing "The World Turn'd Upside Down", although there is no contemporary source for this. Cornwallis himself claimed to be to sick to lead the surrender, but deputised his 2IC, COL O'Hara, who surrendered his sword first to Rochambeau who declined and pointed to Washington, who in turn deferred to his own second-in-command, MG Lincoln.
The British troops refused to salute the American colors, and after the surrender many American officers, few owning real uniforms and broke what with Continental pay months in arrears, were treated to the aggravating sight of their nominal allies and enemies entertaining each other and fraternizing as professional soldiers. The memory would run deep.In early November Washington proposed that de Grasse assist in attacking and taking Savannah and Charleston to clean the British out of the South. De Grasse, however, had a secret agreement with Spain to winter in the Caribbean and eventual defeat at the Battle of the Saintes in April, 1782. He sailed in the first week of November to leave Washington to slope off north to pen Clinton in New York while Rochambeau wintered in Virgina.
The Outcome: Tactical and strategic American rebel victory, and tactical French victory.
The Impact: The real impact of the defeat was to the people and the polity of Great Britain, where Lord North cried "Oh God! It is all over!" on hearing the news of Cornwallis' surrender. The French and Spanish were in arms, India and the Caribbean colonies in danger (remember how much of British foreign policy was made around India?) and the national debt increasingly ugly. Lord George Germain resigned in February, 1872. In March the North ministry lost a general election and was replaced by a less intransigent group of Whigs, who made peace and acceptance of American independence a condition of forming a government to the Crown.
Ironically, in the peace treaty negotiations that followed the French tried to undercut the American alliance by negotiating a separate peace with the British, while the Spanish were more actively hostile to the establishment of a separate American state than Great Britain. The British found themselves more than willing to negotiate with their former subjects as "13 United States" if it meant an end to the Franco-American alliance. Indeed, after the passage of the Jay Treaty in 1794 and France's own Revolution in 1798 France and the United States would fight an undeclared "Quasi-war" in the waters off North America and the Caribbean.
Of course, the new nation's troubles with her old mistress weren't over, either...
Touchline Tattles: There's not much funny, odd or cute about this battle. It was desperation and deception all around, and even the victors found much to be dissatisfied about.
Perhaps the saddest tale contained within the siege lines of Yorktown - as well as within the greater story of American independence - was the fate of the least considered of all the people on that battlefield; the black men, women and children who had chosen to follow Cornwallis' army to escape chattel slavery.
The British were no abolitionists. Slavery was legal in Great Britain, her dominions and territories until 1802. But, much as Lincoln did in 1862, the British could use the American colonists' fear of their own property as a weapon. After Governor Dunmore's acts to tempt rebel slaveowners' black wealth from them in 1775, many slaves saw the British forces as liberators. And, in fact, to give him credit, GEN Carleton, the commander of the New York garrison in 1782, refused American demands for the return of their "property", and embarked with any black man who wanted to leave. Most did.
But there was no such hope for the black men in the trenches of Yorktown. Their American masters showed up with a flag of liberty that brought them only chains, that would not fly for them for another eighty-four years.
Rather than to dwell on this grim picture, I prefer to contemplate Madame Le Comtesse Rochambeau; plainly the Hubba-Hubba Girl of 1781 or whatever the 18th Century catchphrase was for a very lovely woman. M'sieu le Comte was obviously not just a homme de la guerre; it appears he had some skill in the arts as a maitre de l'amour as well. So on that note, let us leave the soldiers, the lovers and the diplomats to history. Their day is done, and we have now to deal with the world they have bequeathed to us:
"The serving men do sit and whine, and think it long ere dinner time:
The Butler's still out of the way, or else my Lady keeps the key,
The poor old cook, in the larder doth look,
Where is no goodnesse to be found,
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down."
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Red Shoes II
Maxine and Mojo had their first ballet class yesterday.
What is it about little girls and ballet? Its so hard to remember the frightened little orphan we met at the luxus hotel on Shamian Island just a little over two years ago when watching the gleeful preschooler in her new ballet dress prancing and twirling, or listening to her croon her favorite phrase "It's SO beautiful!" at everything from her new dress to the cats to a cheap plastic bracelet.
Oh, and about that new ballet dress.
Mojo took Friday night off, and I took the littelies to dinner and the Nickel Arcade and to the big Goodwill down on Grand, where we found the pink ballet dress. Missy fell in love instantly, we hooked it into the cart and carried it off, and I recall she went to bed wearing it that night.
She had to wear it to her first class, and so she and her mom were headed out to Bob the Subaru when little girl saw some wonderful rarity ("It's SO beautiful!!") on the ground. She bent down to look...
...and her groin started to sing.
OK, not sing, but play; play an instrumental piece of music, part of the pas de deux from Swan Lake, I think. Missy loved...I mean adored...this unexpected treat. She has been playing her little dress-music-box ever since, and demanding it when we remove it from the dress for things like sleeping and washing. Generally speaking we have been entranced by her enchantment. Although because I am who I am I wonder from time to time about the dress designer who found nothing bizarre in placing the music box so that it made it seem as though the wearer's little prepubescent genitalia were picking up and retransmitting the local classical station in the fashion of orthodontic braces in urban legend.
Anyway, please enjoy the little girl's first encounter with the classical art of dance.
What is it about little girls and ballet? Its so hard to remember the frightened little orphan we met at the luxus hotel on Shamian Island just a little over two years ago when watching the gleeful preschooler in her new ballet dress prancing and twirling, or listening to her croon her favorite phrase "It's SO beautiful!" at everything from her new dress to the cats to a cheap plastic bracelet.
Oh, and about that new ballet dress.
Mojo took Friday night off, and I took the littelies to dinner and the Nickel Arcade and to the big Goodwill down on Grand, where we found the pink ballet dress. Missy fell in love instantly, we hooked it into the cart and carried it off, and I recall she went to bed wearing it that night.
She had to wear it to her first class, and so she and her mom were headed out to Bob the Subaru when little girl saw some wonderful rarity ("It's SO beautiful!!") on the ground. She bent down to look...
...and her groin started to sing.
OK, not sing, but play; play an instrumental piece of music, part of the pas de deux from Swan Lake, I think. Missy loved...I mean adored...this unexpected treat. She has been playing her little dress-music-box ever since, and demanding it when we remove it from the dress for things like sleeping and washing. Generally speaking we have been entranced by her enchantment. Although because I am who I am I wonder from time to time about the dress designer who found nothing bizarre in placing the music box so that it made it seem as though the wearer's little prepubescent genitalia were picking up and retransmitting the local classical station in the fashion of orthodontic braces in urban legend.
Anyway, please enjoy the little girl's first encounter with the classical art of dance.
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