Meeting of Three Commanders

KV-29

Admiral de Grasse, commander of a large French fleet, gained control of the Chesapeake Bay after defeating a British fleet off the Virginia Capes on 5 Sept. 1781. Gen. George Washington, commander in chief of the combined American and French armies, and the Comte de Rochambeau, commander of the French expeditionary army, met with de Grasse aboard his flagship near here on 18 Sept. The officers planned to entrap the British army at Yorktown. As Washington and Rochambeau left, sailors atop the masts of the French ships saluted them with running musket fire known as a feu de joie while the flagship fired its cannons. The siege of Yorktown began on 28 Sept. The British surrendered on 19 Oct.

Department of Historic Resources, 2018

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

“The Diaries of George Washington,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/series/Washington/01 The Operations of the French Fleet under the Count de Grasse in 1781-82 as Described in Two Contemporaneous Journals (New York, 1864; reprint 1972). “Minutes of Occurrences respecting the Seige and Capture of York in Virginia, extracted from the Journal of Colonel Jonathan Trumbull, Secretary to the General, 1781,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1876), 331-338. Ron Chernow, Washignton: A Life (New York: The Penguin Press, 2010). Thomas J. Fleming, Beat the Last Drum: The Siege of Yorktown, 1781 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963). Charles Lee Lewis, Admiral de Grasse and American Independence (United States Naval Institute, 1945). “Battle of the Capes,” Colonial National Historical Park, https://www.nps.gov/york/learn/historyculture/battle-of-the-capes.htm James Thomas Flexner, George Washington in the American Revolution (1775-1783) (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967). Robert Middlekauff, Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015). Richard M. Ketchum, Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign that Won the Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004).