FLEMING : Beat the last drum (fülszöveg)
YORKTOWN was surrendered by Cornwallis on October 19, 1781, after overwhelming bombardment. The American revolutionary cause was won.
Five months earlier American fortune had been at a low ebb. Only the heroic resolution of Washington sustained the main American force, weakened by desertion and desperate for supply, outside New York City where it held in check the vacillating but impregnable Clinton. At Newport, Rhode Island, the French allies under Rochambeau had sat for a year unwilling to join forces in an attack on New York unless their West Indian fleet could be brought into action.
To the South, Cornwallis within the previous year had marched, despite reverses, from Charleston through the Carolinas into Virginia where neither Lafayette nor Wayne could arrest his depredations.
In August, De Grasse, Admiral of the French West Indian fleet, and Clinton, British Commander in Chief, began to change the picture. Clinton would not reinforce Cornwallis but called on him for reserves. De Grasse would only consent to a limited descent on the Chesapeake.
At the end of that month Washington and Rochambeau, by an epic feint followed by an astonishing march through New Jersey, concentrated against Cornwallis in Virginia. De Grasse on September 5 won an inconclusive naval action off the Chesapeake which left the French in control of the York River.
At Yorktown, for once without the power of movement he had so brilliantly exploited for the last twelve months, Cornwallis was pinned against the shore. To seaward hemmed in by the French navy, to the landward side encircled by siege artillery, he had no choice but to await, under terrible artillery pounding, the arrival of a British fleet.
Thomas J. Fleming vividly describes the travail and gallantry of the investing forces as they pressed inexorably inward, the counter-attacks and expedients of Cornwallis' beleagued forces as they stood at bay – and the shifting hopes of each side as this final battle reached its climax. Could De Grasse hold against the sudden descent of a British fleet? And when would it come? Would only storm prevent Cornwallis from slipping off once more across the York River? Was it local decision at Yorktown or far off events at sea and in New York that would spell victory or defeat?
The diaries and correspondence of the participants, from generals to enlisted men, supply comments as clear as if spoken today. The author builds the contemporary evidence into an exciting and moving evocation of those fateful days of October 1781.
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
