and on the 1st of June, the Marquis du Chilleau, with other troops, at Man of War's Bay. . . .
On arriving at the cape, the admiral found the frigate Concorde, from North America. The news spread that the dispatches of the naval and military commanders, and those of the envoy of France, at Philadelphia, joined in assuring him that, without a prompt relief of vessels, men, money and ammunition, Virginia would fall again under the English yoke ; and that the French army had pay only to the 20th of August. These fears and these wants were set forth without fixed projects to remedy them ; they left the admiral a choice only between an attack on New York by sea and by land, or to transfer the theatre of war to Virginia by a sudden occupation of Chesapeake Bay with sufficient naval forces. For either plan, nothing less was asked than a reinforcement of 6000 men, 1,200,000 livres in specie, munitions in proportion, and all in the course of August ; without all this relief, the most disastrous events were menaced. The admiral s reply was expected by the same frigate. . . .
On the 30th of August Cape Henry was discovered N. W. 14 W. Chesapeake Bay was reconnoitred, and the fleet anchored behind Cape Henry on the 31st. Thus, on the day named, Lord Cornwallis could no longer hope to return to New York, or derive any aid from there.
Journal of an Officer in the Naval Army in America, in 1781 and 1782 (Amsterdam, 1783) ; reprinted in The Operations of the French Fleet under the Count De Grasse in 1781-2 (Bradford Club Series, No. 3, New York, 1864), 137-153 passim.
214. The Capitulation of Yorktown (1781)
BY LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CHARLES, MARQUIS CORNWALLIS
Out of the many journals and letters by participants in the Virginia campaign, this letter, addressed to Sir Henry Clinton, has been chosen, as the official statement of the defeated general. — Bibliography of Cornwallis : Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 474. — Bibliography of the campaign : Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 547-551; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 140.
Yorktown, Virginia, Oct. 20, 1781. . . .
I HAVE the mortification to inform your Excellency that I have been forced to give up the posts of York and Gloucester, and to surrender die troops under my command, by capitulation, on the 19th instant, as prisoners of war to the combined forces of America and France.
