Storming of Redoubt 10

On October 14, 1781, allied forces launched a decisive strike against Redoubt 10, a fortified position held by British troops during the Siege of Yorktown. As darkness fell, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton directed 400 light infantrymen in a swift attack that overran the position in a mere ten minutes. At the same time, French troops moved against Redoubt 9 nearby and took it as well. With both strongholds now in allied hands, American and French forces were able to complete a second parallel trench line, positioning their artillery close enough to pound the main British fortifications directly.

Background

At the start of September, Comte de Grasse and his French squadron sealed off the mouth of the Chesapeake, cutting off the route by which the British navy hoped to resupply their army there. When British warships arrived on the scene, they clashed with the French fleet and came away defeated. This left the combined Franco-American army, led by Washington and Comte de Rochambeau, in position to close a trap around the British general Charles Cornwallis, who had pulled his forces back to refit and resupply. Washington had originally favored striking New York, but Rochambeau pushed instead for a move against Cornwallis at Yorktown, and that plan won out.

To mislead the British about their true target, Washington's troops built a decoy encampment in New Jersey, complete with bread ovens and rows of tents, all designed to suggest preparations for an assault on New York. Once the ruse was in place, Washington's army shifted course and marched south to join forces with Rochambeau at Yorktown. After the allies established their camp, Washington broke ground personally, and his men began digging the first siege line roughly six to eight hundred yards from the town. Alongside this parallel trench, they raised batteries, epaulements, communication trenches, redans, and a network of smaller earthworks.

By October 9, 1781, the artillery batteries positioned along that first trench line stood finished, and Washington himself touched off the opening shot, launching a punishing bombardment that would continue for several days. The relentless shelling tore into the British defenses and knocked out a substantial number of Cornwallis's guns. Sensing the enemy's weakened state, Washington pushed his men to press the siege further forward. Under cover of darkness on the night of October 11, allied troops quietly began carving out a second trench, this one only 360 yards from the British lines. The diggers managed to reach a depth exceeding three feet, but work came to a sudden stop on the far right side of the line. There, two isolated British strongholds, Redoubt No. 9 and Redoubt No. 10, sat squarely in the trench's intended path, preventing it from extending to the York River and thereby stopping the allies from sealing off the British completely.

Assault

Night had fallen without a moon on October 14, 1781, when six Allied artillery rounds fired in succession into the sky, giving the signal that the attack was beginning, at roughly eight o'clock. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton's 400 light infantrymen climbed out of their forward trenches under cover of the darkness and moved in a quiet, orderly fashion across No Man's Land toward the enemy works. Hamilton had insisted that every musket remain unloaded, a strict order meant to preserve surprise and keep the men from tipping off the defenders too soon, so the attackers would depend entirely on bayonets once they closed. Nothing broke the hush of the advance except the soft tread of boots crossing open ground.

When the front of the column neared the outer defenses of Redoubt 10, a small band of "forlorn hope" volunteers dashed forward carrying axes, sent ahead of the rest to do the dangerous work of clearing a path. Their task was to hack an opening through the fraises, those thick stakes angled outward from the earthworks, and through the abatis, walls of felled trees bristling with sharpened limbs turned toward any attacker. The noise of chopping wood carried to the British sentries above and gave the defense away at once. The garrison scrambled into position and answered with a heavy exchange of musket fire, hurling grenades down into the darkness in the direction of the disturbance.

Hamilton refused to let his men stall there waiting for the obstacles to be fully cleared, and instead chose to push straight through the chokepoint. He gave the order for his columns to climb directly over the stakes and abatis rather than wait any longer. His troops clambered over the sharpened barriers, dropped down into the dry ditch beyond, and started scaling the steep dirt slope of the parapet itself. Hamilton climbed by standing on one of his soldiers' shoulders, putting him among the very first to reach the inside of the fortification.