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The siege of Yorktown is also known in some German historiographies as "die deutsche Schlacht" ("the German battle"), because Germans played significant roles in all three armies, accounting for roughly one third of all forces involved. According to one estimate more than 2,500 German soldiers served at Yorktown with each of the British and ...
French (left) and British ships (right) at the Battle of the Chesapeake off Yorktown in 1781; the outnumbered British fleet departed, leaving Cornwallis no choice but to capitulate. French involvement in the American Revolutionary War of 1775–1783 began in 1776 [ 1 ] when the Kingdom of France secretly shipped supplies to the Continental Army ...
As the French fleet was preparing to depart Brest in March, several important decisions were made. The West Indies fleet, led by the Comte de Grasse , after operations in the Windward Islands , was directed to go to Cap-Français (present-day Cap-Haïtien ) to determine what resources would be required to assist Spanish operations.
French troops at Yorktown came from two separate sources. The larger force (known as the Expédition Particulière ), which was under the command of Lieutenant-General Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau , landed at Newport, Rhode Island in 1780 and marched overland to join Washington's army outside New York in the summer of 1781.
The French under de Grasse defeated a British fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781, thus ensuring that the Franco-American ground forces would win the ongoing Siege of Yorktown, the last major land battle of the Revolutionary War. The British surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown in 1781.
French involvement in the war would prove to be exceedingly important during the Siege of Yorktown, when 10,800 French regulars and 29 French warships, under the command of the Comte de Rochambeau and Comte de Grasse respectively, joined forces with General George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette to obtain the surrender of Lord ...
The French secretly supplied the Americans with money, gunpowder, and munitions to weaken Great Britain; the subsidies continued when France entered the war in 1778, and the French government and Paris bankers lent large sums [quantify] to the American war effort. The Americans struggled to pay off the loans; they ceased making interest ...
The French were able to achieve control of the sea lanes against the British and provided the Franco-American army with siege artillery and French reinforcements. These proved decisive in the Siege of Yorktown , effectively securing independence for the Thirteen Colonies .