"The ruins of Jamestown 1781" Topic

I'm surprised that Mel Gibson missed this one.

'Among the ruins the French soldiers found traces of atrocities as accounted by Aved de Magnac:

"Upon arrival in [Jamestown],[10] I was the witness of the horrors that [the British] had committed there. I saw quantities of dead bodies on the ground and in some houses heads of men and children locked in closets, women hanged on trees and the husband next to the children nailed on doors, and another fact more barbarous; they found a woman about to give birth that they [the British] opened and took the child that they crucified near the mother in whose mouth they put a paper on which was written: you won't give birth to any more rebel."[11]

This crude testimony was confirmed by others: "The British had spent some time in Jamestown before our arrival. We found traces of ferocious barbarity, several cadavers on the riverbanks and in the houses, including that of a pregnant woman who had been stabbed. Her breasts were slit and some one had left an inscription besides the body saying: ‘You will not give birth to a rebel.' Five skulls were lined in a row in a cupboard. This was the sorry sight that greeted the first man who landed in the little town, where tombstones had been smashed, houses gutted, and not a single inhabitant remained."[12]
link

Strangely, I was looking for this reference. Thanks.

It's interesting that most of these horror stories late in the war as reported by French troops. Always gave it the feel of propaganda. French reporting terrible actions by the British to roil the Americans.

Kinda of unheard of, interesting that in is only from French reports.

I wonder if knowing that it was looking like the war was over did the American government down play or coverup this event to NOT inflame public outcry and ease the path towards a peace treaty.

Also, if this event did take place, why nowhere else are events like this recorded being preformed by British troops.

I'm sure that events like this took place on both sides on the frontier, but I've never read about whole scale atrocities by British/Hessian troops against civilian populations.

I would expect something like that to be well documented. Was the author simply making himself part of what was rumored to have happened?

So Jamestown (the original settlement) was long abandoned. I can't open the link (I'll try again later).

When did this supposedly happen, as the battle previously fought close to there (Greenspring) occurred long before French troops were in the area.

Since the American "government" at that time did little to publicize the treatment that the British government did to American POWs, military and civilians, over the course of the war, one would not expect any reaction from that source.

@DanCyr- Are you sure that was the case?

Yes. Representatives of the British government refused to accept letters sent by Franklin and others on the subject of treatment of American POWs as they were from "rebels".

American POWs died by the thousands due to mistreatment and negligent (starvation, lack of clothing, lack of medical services, housing in unheated or unventalated locations, etc.).

American POWs were shipped to the far east as slaves to be used as labor on plantations.

There are American sources of information if you search for it, most written in the early 1800s.

Contact me if you'd like some links or book sources.

@DanCyr

I meant your remark that- "the American "government" at that time did little to publicize the treatment that the British government did to American POWs…"

It seems to me there was little opportunity lost to denounce atrocity, whether justifid or not.

I hate to say anything nice about Tarleton, but he was at Jamestown on 9 July, and the French landed on 1 September. Seems a little odd there would have been bodies left unburied for nearly two months.

Also, if Tarleton had done it, there'd have been a piece in his memoirs explaining how the troops got out of hand, or he put a stop to it when he showed up. He had a gift for reflexive blame-shifting worthy of a much higher military rank, or even a position as a head of state.

Arnold doesn't seem to have gotten close enough--and again, he leaves in July. Ewald says "terrible things" happened in Arnold's looting of Virginia, but he specifies the looting and destruction of churches. I'd have thought he'd have mentioned wholesale murder first, but that may be my 20th Century sensibilities.

@Robert Pieperenbrink, I've read a couple a counts of bodies laying unburied for years after the war.

Arnold doesn't seem to have gotten close enough

This is not technically correct. Arnold was almost certainly in the immediate vicinity of Jamestown Island at least three times. The first was on his way up the James to attack Richmond. He put some troops ashore at or near the island. They soon re-embarked, probably because Nelson had mobilized militia at Williamsburg. The second time was at the beginning of Phillip's raid in April which Arnold accompanied. Then at the end of that raid Phillips feigned a landing at Jamestown Island right before he received instructions to return to Petersburg to meet Cornwallis.

I have not been able to find any mention of mass murder by the British during any of the 1781 raids. There was almost certainly evidence of mass die offs of people for the French to see, although maybe not on Jamestown Island. As many as 5,000 slaves may have escaped to Cornwallis's camps at Portsmouth and Yorktown where as many as half may have died, primarily from smallpox. When O'Hara was ordered to leave Portsmouth and rejoin Cornwallis at Yorktown he was forced to leave hundreds of infected escapes slaves behind in the Norfolk/Portsmouth area. Yorktown experienced a smallpox outbreak which affected loyalists as well as escaped slaves. During the siege Cornwallis turned a number out of his lines.