Ben Franklin's world is a production of the Omaha-Handro Institute, and it's sponsored

by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

April 29, 1777 Dined at Yorktown 24 miles from Hampton, Virginia.

This is a pleasant town situated upon York River, which is navigable for the largest ships

close to the town.

Here is several very good gentlemen's houses built of brick, and some of their gardens

laid out with the greatest taste of any I have seen in America, but now almost ruined

by the disorderly soldiery, and what is more extraordinary, their own soldiers, the guardians

of the people and defenders of their rights, houses burned down, others pulled to pieces

for fuel, most of the gardens thrown to the street, everything in disorder and confusion,

and no appearance of trade.

This melancholy scene fills the mind of the itinerant traveler with gloomy and horrid ideas.

Here is a battery consisting of 12 pieces of heavy cannon to command the river and a company

of artillery stationed here, but they make a sorry appearance for so respectable a core

as the artillery ought to be.

Nicholas Cresswell.

Most of the classic battles that we read about Saratoga, Brandywine, Monmouth, all of

those involved these large scale movements of troops across the countryside.

Yorktown was in fact a siege.

Cornwallis was in the town and already built defensive entrenchments around the town

as well as some across the river at Gloucester, and he was simply behind the lines waiting

when the French and Americans arrived.

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