"Reg List for Clinton's Reinforcements to Yorktown" Topic

Anyone have any information on the regiments that made up the 5,000 reinforcements Clinton sent belatedly to Cornwallis at Yorktown?

Don't know if this will help. It is from the Nafziger Collection.

PDF link

PDF link

PDF link

PDF link

PDF link

Jim

From Greg Novak's "Guide to the armies of the American War of Independence, vol 1"; total force c.5,200 men:-

Lt Gen Leslie – Jaegers [400]

Maj Gen Patterson – 1st Grenadier [430], 2nd Grenadiers [410]

Maj Gen Kospoth – Gr Bn von Linsingen [310], Gr Bn von Lengerke [330], Gr Bn von Lowenstein [300], Gr Bn von Graff [330]

Lt Col Lincoln (listed as Brig Gen) – 22nd Foot [340], 37th Foot [380], 42nd Foot [510]

Maj Gen Wurmb – Inf Regt Leib [430], Inf Regt Prinz Carl [470]

Drafts for regiments already in Virginia [400]

Artillery (British and German) [200]

As you can see, pretty much the cream of the army that wasn't already down South with Cornwallis. Interesting to ponder what might have happened back in NYC if things had still gone wrong and these troops had been captured, too, as Clinton only had another 6,000 or so troops left to garrison the city.

Hope that helps.

That would indeed have been interesting, but the campaign against New York would have had to wait until the Spring.
Yorktown surrendered in late October. Assume two weeks to sort things out for the French and Americans, what would they have done?
Half the French under deGrasse would have left with the fleet.
And the American army (in our time line) more or less drifted away after Yorktown.

Another thing, SuperMax…

What was the 18thC protocol for dealing with enemy soldiers captured in convoy at sea?
Obviously, the ships would not be sunk with all aboard. They were PoWs.
As you like to remind us, the welfare and upkeep of PoWs is the responsibility of the owning power.
So, would they be shipped back to Britain and/or Germany under parole?

Interesting question.

It would depend where the capture took place. Too far from a friendly (to the capturers) port and I suspect a Saratoga-style convention would have to be discussed, and then the captured vessels and human cargo would be paroled. Otherwise, they would sail everyone to the nearest friendly soil, off-load all the troops into some sort of camp, tell the "owning" power where they were and wait for the next exchange of PoWs.

Since the only people likely to capture a convoy of Anglo-German troops at sea would be the French, I would guess they would either land them at Boston, or take them back to the Caribbean, depending on which was easiest. Rebel/French PoWs would be more problematic, as NYC was already overcrowded; Halifax might be a better bet – Florida would be too vulnerable to French recapture.

Incidentally, the French and British were the exceptions to the rule about nations retaining responsibility for their own PoWs. As they fought each other so often, they had (I think) at least one and possibly two treaties that provided for each nation's authorities to treat enemy PoWs as their own troops for the purposes of pay, food and hospital expenses (I'm not sure about uniforms) and then settle accounts at the war's end.

Thanks Supercilius! Just what I needed. I am finishing an introductory wargame for the Swedish Army Museum on Poltava for their Krigsspel exhibit and had a similar design in mind for a Yorktown battle with a variant of those forces possibly arriving in time. Perfect.

Embarrassed to say I actually have that book!

You're welcome.

I suspect the problem is that the "relief force" is listed in Vol 1 (the "northern" book) and Yorktown is in Vol 2 (the "southern" book); with not much going on in the north in 1781, few people look in the first volume, but instead focus on the other one.