#charlescornwallis

[whencyclopedia]

Siege of Yorktown

The Siege of Yorktown (28 September to 19 October 1781) was the final major military operation of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). It resulted in the surrender of British general Lord Charles Cornwallis, whose army had been trapped in Yorktown, Virginia, by George Washington's Franco-American army on land, and by Comte de Grasse's French fleet at sea.

Storming of Redoubt 10 During the Siege of Yorktown

Eugène Lami (Public Domain)

War Comes to Virginia

In the spring of 1781, as the American War of Independence approached its sixth year, the British came to Virginia. 1,500 British troops under the command of the American turncoat Benedict Arnold landed at Portsmouth in January, going on to capture and burn the city of Richmond. Arnold was joined two months later by 2,300 more men under Major General William Phillips; together, Phillips and Arnold defeated a Virginia militia force at Blandford in late April before going on to burn the tobacco warehouses at Petersburg. They remained in Petersburg as they awaited the arrival of Lord Charles Cornwallis, who was marching up from North Carolina with 1,500 men, the survivors of the costly British victory at the Battle of Guilford Court House. Cornwallis reached Petersburg on 20 May, several days after General Phillips had died of a fever. Arnold returned to New York in June, leaving Cornwallis in sole command of the combined British army, which numbered over 7,200 men.

Cornwallis was not supposed to be in Virginia. Indeed, Sir Henry Clinton, commander-in-chief of the British forces and Cornwallis' superior officer, had ordered him to merely suppress Patriot resistance in the Carolinas. A task that had, at first, appeared easy enough soon turned into a quagmire, as Patriot and Loyalist militias tore each other to bloody shreds in the South Carolinian backcountry. All the progress Cornwallis had made in pacifying the country quickly unraveled after two defeats at the Battle of Kings Mountain and the Battle of Cowpens. Even his eventual victory at Guilford Court House left a bitter taste in his mouth, as he had lost over 25% of his army and had allowed the elusive American general Nathanael Greene to slip through his fingers. It was clear that his strategy would have to change if he wanted to win the South, no matter General Clinton's orders. His solution had been to invade Virginia. Greene and the Carolinian militias counted on supplies and reinforcements from the Old Dominion; should Virginia fall, Cornwallis calculated the rest of the South would fall with it.

Now, with the strength of Arnold's and Phillips' armies added to his own, Cornwallis put his plan into motion. He first struck toward Richmond, sending a small American army under Gilbert du Motiers, Marquis de Lafayette, running, before dispatching raiding parties into Virginia's heartland to seize supply depots and disrupt lines of communications. Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton and his dreaded British Legion were sent to Charlottesville, where Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia General Assembly had relocated after the burning of Richmond; warned of Tarleton's coming, Jefferson and all but seven of the legislators managed to escape into the mountains mere minutes before 'Bloody Ban' arrived to apprehend them. Finally, on 25 June, Cornwallis' main army arrived triumphantly in Williamsburg. It might have been the start to a glorious conquest – had Cornwallis not received fresh orders from General Clinton the very next day.

American War of Independence, 1775 - 1783

Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND)

The orders were for Cornwallis to suspend military operations in Virginia. Clinton had learned that a sizable French fleet was sailing up from the West Indies, and he feared that New York City (where Clinton himself was located with 10,000 men) was its target. Cornwallis, therefore, was to go on the defensive, march to the nearest deep-water port – Clinton recommended Portsmouth or Yorktown – fortify it, and wait there for further orders. Cornwallis was deeply frustrated by these instructions, as he believed that it was in Virginia where the war would be won. Nevertheless, he did as he was told. He marched out of Williamsburg, pausing only to lay an ambush for Lafayette's pursuing army; the resulting Battle of Green Spring (6 July) bloodied Lafayette's force but did not destroy it. Cornwallis pressed on, ultimately choosing Yorktown as his destination. By 6 August, he had landed his troops there and had begun to fortify both Yorktown and Gloucester Point, just across the York River.

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[whencyclopedfr]

Siège de Yorktown

Le siège de Yorktown (du 28 septembre au 19 octobre 1781) fut la dernière grande opération militaire de la guerre d'Indépendance américaine (1775-1783). Elle aboutit à la reddition du général britannique Lord Charles Cornwallis, dont l'armée avait été prise au piège à Yorktown, en Virginie, par l'armée franco-américaine de George Washington sur terre, et par la flotte française du comte de Grasse sur mer.

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[benjamin-tallmadge-official]

I posted 2,539 times in 2022

That's 2,539 more posts than 2021!

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I tagged 41 of my posts in 2022

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#ooc: he knows that this is a different version of alexander. he's just fucking with him

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Benjamin? A word?

- S. Tallmadge

Sure...

41 notes - Posted June 8, 2022

#4

Hello?

Hello, who are you?

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#3

@john-laurens-official @alexander-hamilton-2022 @philip-hamilton-official @samuel-tallmadge @thetenchtilghman

@marquisdelafayette @tallmadge-kiddos @bloody-tarleton @the-real-george-washington @louisa-andre-official @charlescornwallis

Ooc: This is the wedding post! Tag anyone else

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#2

@the-real-george-washington Charles Lee is on here now

56 notes - Posted February 18, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Why him? Why did he have to leave?

98 notes - Posted February 13, 2022

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[goku20193]

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[real-king-george-iii]

can somebody please help me here

@william-howe-official @sir-henry-clinton @johnandreofficial @charlescornwallis

alright you little shit, @philip-hamilton-official

give me an actual point as to how British people do not exist apparently?

[fsotgenius-blog]

On September 3, 1783 statesmen Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris of 1783, formally ending the American Revolutionary War. The British Crown recognized American independence and ceded most of its Northwest Terriroty east of the Mississippi River to the United States, thereby doubling the size of the nation and making way for westward expansion. The territory included the present-day states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. In September 1783, Great Britain also signed separate peace treaties with France, Spain and the Netherlands, collectively known as the Peace of Paris. #france #paris #treatyofparis #treatyofparis1783 #peaceofparis #unitedstates #usa #us #ohio #minnesota #illinois #netherlands #holland #greatbritain #uk #unitedkingdom #england #spain #españa #indiana #wisconsin #michigan #ushistory #worldhistory #benfranklin #benjaminfranklin #johnadams #johnjay #georgewashington #charlescornwallis #comtederochambeau #siegeofyorktown #americanrevolution #americanrevolutionarywar #continentalcongress #thomasjefferson #henrylaurens #independence https://www.instagram.com/p/B19OxhvgLTA/?igshid=qyhd0lg6xkem

[whencyclopedia]

Battle of Trenton

The Battle of Trenton (26 December 1776) was an important battle of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). On Christmas Day 1776, General George Washington led his Continental Army across the Delaware River to launch a surprise attack against the Hessian garrison of Trenton, New Jersey, the next morning. The resulting American victory galvanized renewed support for the American Revolution (1765-1789).

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[whencyclopedia]

Charles Cornwallis

Charles Cornwallis (1738-1805), 1st Marquess and 2nd Earl Cornwallis, was a British military officer and statesman best known for surrendering to George Washington at the Siege of Yorktown, the final decisive engagement of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). After the war, Cornwallis went on to serve in administrative posts in India and Ireland.

Early Life

Charles Cornwallis was born on 31 December 1738, in Grosvenor Square in London, England, the scion of an old and distinguished family. His ancestor, Frederick Cornwallis, had fought for the Royalists in the English Civil Wars (1642-1651) and had even joined King Charles II of England in exile; for his loyal service to the Stuarts, Frederick was made Baron Cornwallis in 1661 following the restoration of Charles II to the English throne. Members of the Cornwallis family would go on to prosper in various positions across the British Empire. Charles' uncle, Edward Cornwallis, served as the colonial governor of Nova Scotia and founded the town of Halifax, while another uncle, Frederick, was Archbishop of Canterbury.

Charles was the eldest of six children born to Charles, 1st Earl Cornwallis, and his wife Elizabeth Townshend. As a youth, he was educated at Eton College, where he sustained a permanent eye injury during a game of field hockey, accidentally inflicted by Shute Barrington, future bishop of Durham. In December 1757, shortly before his 19th birthday, he was commissioned in the British Army as an ensign in the Grenadier Guards. Hoping to broaden his understanding of military matters, he traveled across Europe under the tutelage of a Prussian officer before enrolling in a military academy in Turin, Italy. The young Cornwallis was described as "an English aristocrat of the finest type…enlightened, tolerant, and humane; contemptuous of money and indifferent to the outward badges of honour…a living and most attractive example of antique and single-minded patriotism" (quoted in Boatner, 285).

Upon completing his studies at Turin, Cornwallis learned that his regiment was being deployed to fight in the ongoing Seven Years' War (1756-1763). Cornwallis served in Germany in the allied army commanded by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He first saw action at the Battle of Minden (1 August 1759) in which the British and their German allies thwarted an attempted French invasion of Hanover; it was during this action that the father of Marquis de Lafayette, one of Cornwallis' future battlefield opponents, was killed. After Minden, Cornwallis purchased a captaincy in the 85th Regiment of Foot and briefly returned to England where he won election to the House of Commons in January 1760.

Returning to the battlefront, Cornwallis was promoted to lieutenant colonel and assumed command of his regiment. He saw heavy fighting at the Battle of Villinghausen (15-16 July 1761), where he was noted for his gallantry, and participated in the Battle of Wilhelmsthal (24 June 1762). During these campaigns, Cornwallis met and befriended fellow British officers Henry Clinton and William Phillips, both of whom would also serve as generals during the American Revolution. Cornwallis fought in several more minor engagements in Germany before the end of the war the following year.

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[betsey-hamilton-official]

@charlescornwallis can join us! I’ll go ahead and make the cookies!!

DO YOU WANT TO JOIN THE PRANK WAR??!!!!!

-K. Tilghman

I would love to!

[whencyclopedia]

Battle of Guilford Court House

The Battle of Guilford Court House (15 March 1781) was one of the last major engagements of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Fought near Greensboro, North Carolina, it was a pyrrhic victory for the British army under Lord Charles Cornwallis, which narrowly defeated Major General Nathanael Greene and the Southern Continental Army at the cost of 25% casualties.

The American South, at the time, had been the target of British invasion for a little over two years. Beginning with their capture of Savannah, Georgia, in December 1778, the British focused their military strategy almost entirely on the South, the capture of which would deny the United States access to the region's wealth generated from the sale of cash crops such as indigo, rice, and tobacco. Additionally, the South was rumored to be replete with Loyalists who were expected to welcome the British army with open arms. After the capture of Georgia, the British implemented the next step of their 'southern strategy' and occupied Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1780. However, despite the best efforts of Lord Cornwallis, the state proved much more difficult to subdue than anticipated. Fewer Loyalists rallied to British banners than expected, while many Patriot militias sprung up in the South Carolina backcountry to resist British occupation. These militias proved to be a thorn in Cornwallis' side, disrupting enemy operations and skirmishing with British and Loyalist detachments. Patriot militias even won a major engagement against a party of Loyalists at the Battle of Kings Mountain (7 October 1780).

The success of these militias encouraged General Greene, who had been sent by George Washington to take command of the ragged Southern Department of the Continental Army at Charlotte, North Carolina. While Greene set about whipping this army into shape, he dispatched Brigadier General Daniel Morgan into South Carolina with 600 men to aid the Patriot militias in the region. Morgan exceeded expectations when he defeated a British detachment under Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens (17 January 1781), which caused South Carolina to slip further from Cornwallis' grip. Looking to avenge the defeat, Cornwallis marched into North Carolina to pursue Greene and Morgan, leading to the fight at Guilford Court House. Although Cornwallis won this engagement, he was unable to decisively defeat Greene's army; with his supply line stretched dangerously thin, Cornwallis decided to abandon the Carolinas altogether and march into Virginia, where he would ultimately meet defeat at the Siege of Yorktown. Therefore, although Guilford Court House was tactically an American defeat, it helped set the stage for the final American victory at Yorktown.

Cornwallis Vows Revenge

On 18 January 1781, Lord Charles Cornwallis planted his sword in the ground, pensively leaning on it as he listened to his subordinate, Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton, explain how he had lost his detachment at the Battle of Cowpens the day before. With his eyes downcast, the young colonel explained how he had chased Daniel Morgan's small army to the meadow of Hannah's Cowpens, where he had found them sitting out in the open, flanks exposed and backs to the Broad River. Sensing an easy victory, Tarleton had ordered his men to charge, little knowing that they were walking into a trap. Morgan's first two lines of defense, consisting of skirmishers and militia, offered some resistance before feigning retreat, luring the British troops inward. As the British exchanged volleys with Morgan's third line of experienced Continentals (regular soldiers), the militia rejoined the battle and struck Tarleton's left flank, just as the American cavalry attacked the British right flank and rear. Caught in a double envelopment, the British threw down their arms; 100 had been killed, with over 800 taken prisoner. Tarleton himself had barely managed to escape.

Cornwallis listened to this report in sullen silence, absent-mindedly putting more of his weight onto the sword as his anger grew. Finally, the sword snapped in half, sending the British general into a rage. Throwing the broken hilt to the ground, Cornwallis demanded vengeance and prepared to go after Morgan and Greene. He marched his army to Ramsour's Mill where he paused to destroy his baggage train. Tents, furniture, wagons, and even his officers' extra uniforms were thrown onto a bonfire and burned, to allow the army to travel faster. On 28 January, Cornwallis ordered each soldier to be given an extra gill of rum before setting out once again, marching for Morgan's last known location on the Catawba River. The British reached the river on 1 February, finding it on the verge of overflowing after the recent torrential rains.

Morgan had, meanwhile, crossed the Catawba and entered North Carolina, looking to rendezvous with General Greene and the main army at Salisbury. Morgan left behind 300 North Carolina militia under General William Davidson to guard the four passes over the Catawba. When the British began to cross at Cowan's Ford, they came under fire from Davidson's militia. This resulted in a brief skirmish that ended when Davidson was killed by a bullet to the heart, causing his men to disperse. As he waited for his army to complete the crossing, Cornwallis sent Tarleton ahead to chase down the militia. Eager to recover his reputation after Cowpens, Tarleton and his elite dragoons tracked the survivors of Davidson's militia to Torrence's Tavern, where he assaulted their camp and scattered them. Although they were ultimately defeated, the militia put up enough of a fight to allow Morgan's main army to escape from Cornwallis' clutches.

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[whencyclopedia]

Battle of Camden

The Battle of Camden (16 August 1780) was a major battle of the southern theater of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). It saw a British army under Lord Charles Cornwallis decisively defeat an American force under General Horatio Gates, thereby securing British control of South Carolina and allowing Cornwallis to invade North Carolina.

Background: Fall of Charleston

On 29 March 1780, over 12,000 British and German soldiers under the command of Sir Henry Clinton dug in outside the landward walls of Charleston, South Carolina, and began to lay siege. Over the course of the next six weeks, the British siegeworks crept closer to the city walls, as the ubiquitous roar of artillery echoed in the sky. Charleston was, at the time, the largest and most important city in the American South. Its capture would provide the British with a base from which to launch an invasion of the South, one of the most economically significant regions of the United States. The exports of southern cash crops such as indigo, rice, and tobacco were used to fund the American war effort; should the South fall back under British control, the US would lose access to this major source of revenue and would be less capable of military upkeep. The amputation of the South from the body of the United States would, it was believed, be the fatal blow to the young republic.

This was a fact that Major General Benjamin Lincoln, commander of the Southern Department of the Continental Army, knew all too well. As the British completed their entrapment of his army in Charleston, Lincoln knew that time was running out for both his army and the South, and he could only hope that help was on its way. General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the American forces, was unable to come to Lincoln's aid himself, as he was currently in New Jersey with the main army keeping an eye on the sizable British force in New York City. However, Washington was able to spare two regiments of Continentals (or regular soldiers), sending them south under the capable command of Major General Johann de Kalb. Simultaneously, the 380 troops of the 3rd Virginia Regiment under Colonel Abraham Buford crossed into South Carolina, intent on coming to Charleston's defense.

But before either of these detachments could arrive to reinforce the city, Lincoln's hand was forced. By early May, Clinton's siegeworks had approached the city walls, allowing the British to unleash an artillery barrage that engulfed the wooden buildings of Charleston in flames. Unwilling to subject his army and the city's residents to further carnage, Lincoln surrendered on 12 May; at least 2,500 Continentals were taken prisoner (the British reported over 5,000 prisoners), and Charleston was occupied by the British. Clinton then set about pacifying the state of South Carolina, offering pardons to any Patriot militiamen willing to change sides and fight for the British; as a result, the British were able to recruit nearly 4,000 men for their Loyalist militias over the summer.

Clinton also dispatched Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton, and his infamous unit of elite Loyalists known as the British Legion, in pursuit of Colonel Buford's Virginians. On 29 May, Tarleton attacked Buford at the Battle of Waxhaws on the border between North and South Carolina. The battle quickly devolved into a bloodbath, as Tarleton's troops allegedly massacred the Continental soldiers while they were trying to surrender; this led the Patriots to coin the phrase ‘Tarleton's Quarter' to refer to the brutality of British officers. With the elimination of Buford's regiment, the last remnants of the American southern army had been destroyed, leaving the South open to British subjugation.

Satisfied with this outcome, Clinton returned to New York City in early June, leaving his second-in-command, Lord Charles Cornwallis, in charge of finishing the pacification of South Carolina. This was easier said than done, as the brutality of Waxhaws inspired hundreds of men to join Patriot militias that were sprouting up across the South Carolina backcountry. Men like Thomas Sumter, Francis Marion, and Andrew Pickens led small bands of partisan fighters on attacks against British and Loyalist troops, frustrating Cornwallis' attempts to solidify his authority in the region. As the weeks wore on and Cornwallis' grip on South Carolina began to slip, the Patriots spotted a chance to regain control of the state. But to do so, they would have to rebuild their southern army fast.

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[whencyclopedfr]

Charles Cornwallis

Charles Cornwallis (1738-1805), 1er marquis et 2e comte de Cornwallis, était un officier militaire et un homme d'État britannique surtout connu pour s'être rendu à George Washington lors du siège de Yorktown, le dernier engagement décisif de la guerre d'Indépendance américaine (1775-1783). Après la guerre, Cornwallis occupa des postes administratifs en Inde et en Irlande.

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[whencyclopedfr]

Bataille de Guilford Court House

La bataille de Guilford Court House (15 mars 1781) fut l'un des derniers grands engagements de la guerre d'Indépendance américaine (1775-1783). Combattue près de Greensboro, en Caroline du Nord, elle fut une victoire à la Pyrrhus pour l'armée britannique de Lord Charles Cornwallis, qui vainquit de justesse le major général Nathanael Greene et l'armée continentale du Sud, au prix de 25 % de pertes.

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[goku20193]

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[goku20193]

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[goku20193]

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