The Second Surrender

The Second Surrender: Gloucester Point and Lauzun’s Legion
by Jessica Bryant

At noon on October 19, 1781, Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis and his garrison marched to the Field of Surrender, laid down their arms, and surrendered to the Allied forces of the United States and France. After nearly two weeks of siege this famous surrender marked the end of the last major battle in the American Revolution, despite continued fighting for at least another year. The second surrender--which occurred one hour later and one mile away at Gloucester Point--and the rowdy legion of foreign volunteers who made both surrenders possible are both often overlooked.

Gloucester Point, a small strip of land that jutted out into the York River, left the river less than a half a mile wide where it passed Yorktown.[1] Because of the unique geography of Gloucester Point, this area was recognized as an important strategic location very early in the colony's history. As far back as 1632, the people of Virginia began building on this piece of land, which was originally called Tindall’s Point, and as early as 1667 they constructed a fort at this location.[2]

 When the first British troops arrived at Yorktown in August 1781, Lord Cornwallis split his soldiers between Yorktown and Gloucester Point from day one.[3] In fact, the construction work needed to fortify both locations began at Gloucester Point before work started at Yorktown itself.[4] 

Generals Washington and Rochambeau also realized the strategic importance of Gloucester Point. Because of the close proximity between Yorktown and Gloucester Point, as well as the British military presence in both locations, Gloucester Point provided the perfect escape route for General Cornwallis and his soldiers.[5] Furthermore, the countryside surrounding the British fortifications at Gloucester Point provided the ideal place to forage for and collect supplies, a useful skill that could have kept the British from starving in case of a siege at Yorktown.[6]

 Amid the Americans and Frenchmen sent to guard this important location was a legion of brave but unruly Europeans led by Armand-Louis de Gontaut, Duc de Lauzun. This legion of foreign volunteers was known colloquially as Lauzun’s Legion. The Legion was created in March of 1780 from the Second Legion of foreign volunteers. This was nearly a year after the very eager Duc de Lauzun had volunteered to fight in America, almost as soon as France officially joined the war.[7]

 Among the French battalions that fought in the American Revolution, Lauzun’s Legion was rather unique. First and foremost, only a third of the soldiers from the Legion were French, the rest hailed from an assortment of 15 different European countries, including Ireland, Denmark, Hungry.[8]

Perhaps more salient than this mix of nationalities, however, was that Lauzun’s Legion also had the distinct honor of being the most undisciplined, unruly, and troublesome section of the French army located in North America.[9] On the day the Legion left France, Lauzun’s second in command, the hotheaded Irish Jacobite Robert Dillon, nearly missed the boat to America after he was injured in a duel that took place while he was meant to be mailing letters.[10] Once the Legion arrived in America, this pattern of misbehavior continued. On September 6, 1780 Robert Dillon, having recovered from his wounds, entered into another duel, this time with the Vicomte de Noailles. Lieutenant-Colonel Claude Etienne Hugau even made note in his account of the war that twenty percent of Lauzun’s officers were in duels while camped in Virginia during the winter of 1781.[11] Furthermore, despite orders from Rochambeau to pay for everything they used, complaints followed the Legion throughout their time in the United States.[12]

In the summer of 1780, the Legion stayed in New England with General Rochambeau, but they initiated a pattern of remaining detached from the main body of the French army almost immediately. First, the Legion was sent to Brenton Point, southeast of where the rest of the army was in New Port, Rhode Island.[13] Then, they were sent to Lebanon, Connecticut for the winter, eighty miles away from the rest of the army in New Port.[14] The Duc de Lauzun was very eager to begin fighting, even asking Rochambeau to be sent South when cavalry was desperately needed, even though that meant serving under the Marquis de Layfette, who, according to Lauzun, had not even left college when Lauzun “waged war as a colonel.”[15]

However, Rochambeau spent most of his first six months in America in a holding pattern as he waited for news from Europe, which forced Lauzun to wait as well. Aside from brief trips to New Port and New Windsor in response to a mutiny in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Lauzun and his troops were forced to stay in Lebanon until early summer of 1781. This did not please Lauzun who thought, “Siberia alone can be compared to Lebanon, which is composed of only a few huts scattered in an immense forest.”[16]

 Finally, after a year of waiting, the Legion left Lebanon and marched towards White Plains, New York and to prepare for Washington’s proposed attack on New York City. The plan was very quickly altered upon the realization that even the combined forces of the United States and France were not enough to defeat the British in New York City. This change of plans was made all the more reasonable by the departure of Admiral de Grasse’s fleet from the Carribean to Chesapeake Bay.[17]

On September 8, 1781, when the combined armies of General Washington and General Rochambeau reached the Head of Elk in Maryland, General Washington ordered Lauzun to split from the main army with his men.[18] This splintered group was to travel by water down the Chesapeake Bay to Gloucester Point, where they would serve to reinforce the American militia soldiers already there under the command of Brigadier General Weedon.[19] Upon arriving at Gloucester Point, Lauzun found that Weedon, a good commander who hated war and was afraid of gunshots, had a rather odd way of conducting a blockade of the British troops stationed there, noting that “he was at more than fifteen miles fom the enemy's posts, was dying of fear, and dared not send a patrol a half mile from his camp.”[20]

Furthermore, when Lauzun tried to encourage Weedon to inch towards the British position, Weedon refused to move any closer than six miles away, saying that he did not want to get killed. This prompted Lauzun to report that the Americans were not to be relied upon and to request reinforcements from General Rochambeau.[21] Brigadier General Claude de Choisy, “a good and brave” but “ridiculously violent” man, was sent to take control away from Weedon, which made him the commander of both Weedon and Lauzun.

On October 3, 1781, four days after arriving at Gloucester Point, Choisy made the decision to move the French and American soldiers closer to the British position. This decision led to the single largest outbreak of violence at Gloucester Point, as well as the much anticipated confrontation between Lauzun and the British Colonel Banastre Tarleton. A cavalry officer and one of the most hated British officers in America, Tarleton was a native of Liverpool who had attended the universities of Liverpool and Oxford. After this time as a law student, he blew through his inheritance in less than a year and convinced his mother to buy him a commission as a cavalry officer. Tarleton was the head of the cavalry during General Clinton’s Southern campaign, during which he gained a reputation for aggression and brutality.[22] Tarleton was also the main reason that the Marquis de Lafayette had requested the help of cavalry soldiers in the summer of 1780, the help that the Duc de Lauzun had wanted to provide.

The confrontation between these two young men occurred when Lauzun and his cavalry came across Tarleton foraging with members of the British Legion and the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers.[23] A band of Virginian dragoons came across the British first, at which time they immediately retreated and ran back to Lauzun. Upon moving forward to investigate this sighting, Lauzun met “a very pretty woman at the door of a small house, on the main road.”[24] This woman told him that Colonel Tarleton had just left her house saying that he was “very anxious to shake the hand of the French Duke.”[25]

After leaving the woman, Lauzun heard his soldiers exchanging fire with the British and galopped headlong into the fray.[26] In the ensuing battle, Tarleton was thrown off his horse by one of his own soldiers; Lauzun tried to take this opportunity to pursue him, but Tarleton was saved by a few of his dragoons.[27] Altogether there were three attempts by either side to break through the lines of the other, one of which were successful, and both sides were left with a small number of casualties. Ultimately, Choisy and Lauzun won the skirmish as they used the opportunity to push the American line forward, ending up approximately a mile and a half away from the British lines. In the following weeks, while Rochambeau and Washington were placing Yorktown under siege, Lauzun and Choisy kept the French and American soldiers at Gloucester Point patrolling the lines, preventing Tarleton and his men from foraging for food and thus making the siege of Yorktown all the more effective.

On October 14, 1781, Choisy was instructed to conduct a feigned attack on the British at Gloucester Point, which was to serve as a distraction from the attack on Rebouts 9 and 10 being conducted at the same time. Rather than faking it, Choisy decided to attempt an actual attack, which failed spectacularly, but still managed to distract the British.[28] Five days later, having missed the opportunity to escape and with no hope that General Clinton would be able to arrive with reinforcements, General Cornwallis surrendered. The men stationed at Gloucester Point likewise surrendered, although Tarleton requested, and was granted, permission to remain inside, because he feared for his life.[29]

The following day Lauzun sailed back to France in order to inform the King of the victory at Yorktown.[30] While Lauzun was in France, the Legion remained in Virginia, displeasing both the Americans and the French with their spending habits and general disorder.[31] Despite the reputation of his men, Lauzun was known to Rochambeau as one of "the two superior officers who have performed the two most distinguished feats,” his victory over Tarleton having secured Gloucester Point. [32]

In September of 1782, Lauzun rejoined his soldiers in Peekskill, New York, one of the series of postings of the Legion, which had caused enormous amounts of chaos without the control of Lauzun.[33] The Duc de Lauzun became the commanding officer of the French troops in mainland America following the departure of Rochambeau in December of 1782, and he remained in that position for three months, after which the Legion left North America and was transformed into a regular-army regiment that still exists in some form to the present-day.[34] In the years following the American Revolution, the Duc de Lauzun continued to serve in the French army, and eventually became involved in the French Revolution, falling as one of its victims on December 31, 1793, after he was found to be too lenient in his treatment of prisoners.[35] In a typically eccentric fashion, he was said to have shared his last meal with his executioner, telling the man, “You must need courage in your profession."[36]

Bibliography

de Gontaut, Armand-Louis. 1912. Memoirs of the Duc de Lauzun. Translated by E. Jules Meras. New York: Sturgis & Walton Company. https://archive.org/details/memoirsofducdela00birorich/page/n11/mode/2up.

Greene, Jerome A. 2009. The Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781. New York: Savas Beatie. 1-932714-05-7.

Hatch Jr., Charles E. 1940. “Gloucester Point in the Siege of Yorktown 1781.” The William and Mary Quarterly 20, no. 2 (April): 265-283. 10.2307/1922681.

Selig, Robert A. N/A. The Duc de Lauzun and his Legion: Rochambeau's most troublesome, colorful soldiers. American Revolution.org. https://www.americanrevolution.org/lauzun.php.

Footnotes

[1] Charles E. Hatch, “Gloucester Point in the Siege of Yorktown 1781”, The WIlliam and Mary Quarterly 20, No. 2 (April): 265,10.2307/1922681.
[2] Ibid.
[3]Jerome A.  Greene, THe Guns of Independence: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781, (New York: Savas Beatie, 2009), 14.
[4] Hatch, 268.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Robert Selig,  “The Duc de Lauzun and his Legion: Rochambeau’s most troublesome, colorful soldiers”, American Revolution.org, https://www.americanrevolution.org/lauzun.php.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Armand-Louis de Gontaut, The Memoirs of the Duc de Lauzun, trans. Meras, E. Jules, (New York: Sturgis & WaltonCompany, 1912), 304.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid, 305.
[17] Selig, “Duc de Lauzun”.
[18] Ibid.
[19]Selig, “Duc de Lauzun”.
[20] De Gontant, The Memoirs, 323-324.
[21] Ibid, 325.
[22] Greene, The Guns of Independence, 31.
[23] Selig, “Duc de Lauzun”.
[24] De Gontant, THe Memoirs, 326.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Selig, “Duc de Lauzun”.
[28] De Gontaut, 328.
[29] Selig, “Duc de Lauzun”.
[30] De Gontaut, 328-329.
[31] Selig, “Duc de Lauzun”.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.