Colin Ross, "Unser Amerika", Chapter 27

 27.

The German Tragedy

In the North, Washington had now been standing idly on the Hudson for three years, ever since the Battle of Monmouth, watching over the main British force at New York, over which Clinton, brought back from the South, had again assumed supreme command. In the meantime, a French relief corps of six thousand men had been landed in Rhode Island. After this had waited a year without exchanging a shot with the enemy, the two armies united. Their commanders-in-chief intended a joint attack on New York. Then they received word that a French fleet under Count de Grasse was approaching from the West Indies to Chesapeake Bay, just off the coast where Cornwallis lay at Yorktown.

Immediately the plans were changed. It was decided to make a joint strike against the British force in Virginia. Four thousand men were left on the Hudson to guard against Clinton, and the rest of the American and French troops moved in single file to Virginia, united there with divisions of Green, Lafayette, and Steuben, and trapped Cornwallis with his entire army in the little fortress of Yorktown, while de Grasse cut him off from the sea.

The tragic thing for us Germans about this last great battle of the seven-year struggle for American independence is that it was fought by Germans against Germans. Yorktown gave Steuben the opportunity he had so long longed for to lead a large body of troops himself in a decisive act, probably only because he was the only one among the army leaders who had firsthand experience in siege warfare. The center of the assault force that Steuben commanded was composed to a considerable extent of Americans of German blood.

Two strong advanced works rose on the river bank below the town. The German-Americans under Steuben worked their way against one, and the French under Lafayette against the other. But the French troops in the trenches also consisted largely of Germans. When the German troops made the first and only attack, they were opposed on the French side by the Franco-German division of Lauzun, and on the American side by the troops of the German General von der Wieden, who went down in American war history under the name of Weedon. On the whole it was about three thousand to four thousand men, of whom more than half must have been Germans. half of them must have been Germans.

When the two works had been stormed, a French assault detachment entered under the command of the Prince de Deux Ponts. But he was none other than Prince William of Zweibrücken, and his men were true Palatines who belonged to the "Régiment Royal Allemand de Deux Ponts". German were the commands under which they charged, German the shouts under which they stormed.

But German commands and German shouts were also heard from the attacked plant. Here the Hessians stood beside the British, and while the British ran off, the Hessians held out to the last man. Germans against Germans, one under the French flag, the other under the English flag. And they shot and stabbed each other to death for the independence of America.

The following day Steuben had his troops move into the second parallel, the German Regiment Mühlenberg, the Marylanders Gists, and Pennsylvanian Waynes, while on the French side were deployed the remainder of the Regiment Zweibrücken and the Regiment Bourbonnais, composed largely of Alsace-Lorraine. Again they were opposed on the ramparts primarily by Germans, Hessian and Ansbach regiments.

But fortunately there was no new fratricidal fighting. Before the second assault was launched, the white flag went up over the ramparts of the fortress. Steuben's troops were the first to enter the captured fortress on October 19, 1781, hoisting the star-spangled banner. After him came the Palatines of the Zweibrücken regiment and raised the fleur-de-lis banner of France. Next to the Union Jack, however, stood the Hessians and Ansbachers.