ington was
assisted during the siege by Lincoln, Steuben, La Fayette, Knox, and
others. The French were commanded by General the Count De Rochambeau. On
the twenty-ninth the British commenced a cannonade, and during the night
abandoned some redoubts, and retired within the town. Colonel Scammel,
while reconnoitring the ground just abandoned by the enemy, was
surprised by a party of horse, and, after he had surrendered, received a
wound from a Hessian, of which he died in a few days, greatly lamented.
On the third of October, in a skirmish before Gloucester Point, Tarleton
was unhorsed, and narrowly escaped being made prisoner. The British sent
out from Yorktown a large number of negroes infected with the small-pox.
On the night of the seventh the first parallel was extended two miles in
length, and within six hundred yards of the British lines. By the
evening of the ninth, several batteries being completed, Washington
himself put the match to the first gun, and a heavy fire was opened, and
the cannonade continued till the fifteenth. Cornwallis was driven from
Secretary Nelson's house.

Upon the breaking out of the Revolution, the Secretary had retired from
public affairs. He lived at Yorktown, where he had erected a handsome
house. Cornwallis made his headquarters in this house, which stood near
the defensive works. It soon attracted the attention of the French
artillery, and was almost entirely demolished. Secretary Nelson was in
it when the first shot killed one of his negroes at a little distance
from him. What increased his solicitude was that he had two sons in the
American army; so that every shot, whether fired from the town or from
the trenches, might prove equally fatal to him. When a flag was sent in
to request that he might be conveyed within the American lines, one of
his sons was observed gazing wistfully at the gate of the town by which
his father, then disabled by the gout, was to come out. Cornwallis
permitted his withdrawal, and he was taken to Washington's headquarters.
Upon alighting, with a serene countenance he related to the officers who
stood around him what had been the effect of their batteries, and how
much his mansion had suffered from the first shot. A red-hot ball from a
French battery set fire to the Charon, a British forty-four gun-ship,
and two or three smaller vessels, which were consumed in the night. They
were enrobed in fire, which ran like lightning over the rigging and to
the tops o