Alliances Are Yorktown’s Lasting Legacy
“The greatest harmony prevails between the two Armies. They seem actuated by one spirit,” glowed General George Washington.
Two hundred and forty-three years ago on October 19th, the Continental Army and their French allies under Washington’s command turned the world upside down. The three-week-long siege of Yorktown forced Lord General Charles Cornwallis to surrender his army. “Oh God. It is all over. It is all over,” cried British Prime Minister Lord North in London.
The Americans’ improbable victory at Yorktown has been rightfully remembered for ending the American Revolution and securing independence. But there’s another reason to remember Yorktown today: it shows that alliances were crucial to building America.
With war, conflicts, and hostilities gripping multiple continents, world events today have proven that alliances are more important than ever. This summer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown Jr. proclaimed, “Our alliances and partnerships are our greatest strengths.” This is just as true as it was for America in 1781. America was a nation built by an alliance, and Yorktown was the moment that defined it.
The Declaration of Independence, which was “submitted to a candid world,” was every bit an international call for help as it was a political proclamation. The ink on the Declaration was barely dry when the Continental Congress sent Benjamin Franklin to Paris to court Britain’s ancient adversary: France.
Thanks to the exploits of the ever-crafty Franklin (along with American diplomats Silas Deane and Arthur Lee), the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 and the French desire for revenge prompted the French to sign the Treaty of Alliance of 1778.
Though dominating America’s battlefields, the British were basically friendless in Europe (aside from hiring an army from the German principality of Hesse-Cassel). Before the war was over, the U.S. could count Spain and the Netherlands among their other European allies and partners, which expanded and complicated the war for the British.
The Americans and their allies did not always agree or even work well together at times. The patriots fought a revolution against royalty, while the French served an absolute monarch.
Their first military operations together in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1778 and Savannah, Georgia, in 1779 ended in failure. But Washington and the French commanding general, Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, worked toward a common purpose and cultivated a partnership, a “friendship” and a “deep personal attachment and respect.”
Washington played the role of Supreme Allied Commander, pioneering the position 162 years before General Dwight Eisenhower. He was considered the equivalent of a “Marshal of France.” By order of King Louis XVI, Washington was the only American the French officers recognized as outranking them.
Though eminently more experienced, Rochambeau accepted Washington’s command, although the Frenchman did keep certain intelligence private. Coordinating with French commanders, Washington gave up his long-desired attack on New York City (where he had suffered a catastrophic loss in 1776) for a daring land and sea attack on Cornwallis. Together, they planned a two-pronged attack: the French would march 700 miles from Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia, (complete with French fleets sailing from Newport and the Caribbean) while Americans would march over 400 miles from New York.
Without the French fleet under Admiral François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse, a successful attack on Yorktown would not have been possible. His victory at the Battle of the Capes on September 5, 1781 gave the allies naval superiority in the Chesapeake Bay, a feat the Continental Navy could have never achieved alone. Without naval support, Cornwallis was trapped.
As the two armies took position around Cornwallis’s fortifications on September 28th, Washington deferred to Rochambeau’s siege experience. The French were the known masters of this style of warfare, with Rochambeau personally involved in 14 sieges. Recognizing this was only his second siege, Washington did not seek to micromanage or pull rank; instead, he praised his allies.
“The experience of many of those Gentlemen in the business before us,” wrote Washington to Congress, “is of the utmost advantage in the present operation.” Through a “parallel command,” meaning a combination of American and French leadership and efforts on the battlefield, victory was won. But it was the French alliance and their naval force and siege experience that set the stage.
Brigadier General Charles O’Hara (Cornwallis’s second-in-command) recognized what the French had done. During the formal surrender, O’Hara tried to hand over his commander’s sword to Rochambeau instead of Washington. But like a good ally, the French general pointed him to the supreme allied commander, although Washington then directed him to his own second-in-command, General Benjamin Lincoln.
Though Americans throughout the nineteenth century rejected foreign alliances, alliances and partnerships dominated the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as the U.S. took its place on the world stage. Yorktown set a precedent for future American alliances and multinational military operations that continued through the D-Day landings at Normandy to NATO.
Americans should not forget that our country may not have existed without alliances. Yorktown won us the Revolution, and the Alliance of 1778 won us Yorktown.
Viva la liberté? Viva la alliance.