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Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, KG, PC (31 December 1738 – 5 October 1805) was a British Army officer, Whig politician and colonial administrator. In the United States and the United Kingdom, he is best known as one of the leading British general officers in the American War of Independence .
When the North ministry rose to power in 1770, Cornwallis adopted a less active voice in politics, and avoided seeking political appointments. [6] In 1768 he married Jemima Tullekin Jones, the daughter of a regimental colonel. [7] They had two children, a boy and a girl, before Jemima died in 1779, and were by all accounts a happy, devoted ...
Cornwallis' movements in Virginia were shadowed by a Continental Army force led by Marquis de Lafayette. The French and American armies united north of New York City during the summer of 1781. When word of de Grasse's decision arrived, both armies began moving south toward Virginia , engaging in tactics of deception to lead the British to ...
Cornwallis again detached Tarleton on a raid into central Virginia. Tarleton's raid was based on intelligence that supplies might be intercepted that were en route to General Greene. The raid, in which Tarleton's force rode 120 miles (190 km) in four days, was a failure, since supplies had already been moved. [ 93 ] (
[40] Cornwallis's lack of provisions as a consequence played a role in his later difficulties. Portrait of General Nathanael Greene by John Trumbull. Greene first engaged Cornwallis in the Battle of Cowan's Ford, where Greene had sent General William Lee Davidson with 900 men. When Davidson was killed in the river, the Americans retreated.
This Cornwallis chose to do at Yorktown, where he was compelled to surrender after a brief siege in October 1781. [25] Portrait of Lord Cornwallis by Thomas Gainsborough, 1783. Lafayette, in his dispatches and reports throughout the later stages of the Virginia campaign, painted Cornwallis's movements to Williamsburg and Portsmouth as a retreat.
The battle was strategically decisive, [1] in that it prevented the Royal Navy from reinforcing or evacuating the besieged forces of Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. 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 ...
After the Siege of Charleston, British General Lord Cornwallis took charge of the British forces in the Southern United States. [37] Victory in the Battle of Camden in 1780 reiterated British control over the South. [38] Cornwallis advanced his forces into North Carolina, depending on Loyalists to join his forces as he went, but few joined him.