SELBY : The road to Yorktown (fülszöveg)
On the night of April 18, 1775, a contingent of British troops marched towards Lexington. On the Green, they found their way barred by seventy-seven Minutemen. The Colonists were hopelessly outnumbered, and began to disperse. Suddenly, a single shot rang out. The American Rebellion – or the American War of Independence – had begun. Six and a half years later, on October 17, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered his entire army to Washington outside Yorktown. The following March, the House of Commons passed a resolution against 'the further prosecution of offensive war on the Continent of North America for the purpose of reducing the revolted Colonies to obedience by force'.
In the opening campaigns of the struggle, no one could have supposed that the Americans had much chance of success against the British army and navy – no one, that is, except for Colonel George Washington. Time and time again, as British supremacy seemed on the point of being restored, Washington regained the initiative, lived to fight another day, merely survived. And, as John Selby shows so dramatically, it was a time for courage and bravado. The Road to Yorktown was scattered with a series of extraordinary incidents: Paul Revere's famous ride; the crossing of the Delaware; the battle of Bunker's Hill; Brandywine; the appalling winter conditions at Valley Forge; the treachery of Benedict Arnold, and the tragedy of Major André; the campaigns in the Carolinas; the idealism of Lafayette, and the scandal of Lee.
All these, together with many of the commanders and politicians on both sides, are brought vividly to life in a book which is scrupulously fair to both the Americans and the British. The Road to Yorktown is a splendid contribution to the Bicentenary of American Independence.
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
