Wilhelm Graf von Schwerin did not attempt to write a history of the Revolutionary War in America, nor did he try to portray the people living there. Unlike his more famous counterparts such as Swedish Baron Ludwig von Closen, he had no literary ambitions or even skills. He was simply a young German sous-lieutenant in a grenadier company, keeping his family abreast of his whereabouts and his military experiences.

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Wilhelm (Guillaume in French) Graf von Schwerin left us with only 10 letters. Yet among them is a particularly important letter of October 21, 1781–one of but three known eyewitness descriptions of the French storming the British-held Redoubt No. 9, a decisive event of the siege of Yorktown, Va. While serving as a member of the Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment of Germans in French pay under Marshal Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, he wrote all 10 between August 1, 1780, and December 20, 1781. His letters are also fascinating social history, as he compares prices and wages demanded in Williamsburg and elsewhere. Meanwhile, noblesse oblige forced him to live beyond his means in a country where even his former family servants had immigrated and become rich. Taken as a whole, Schwerin’s correspondence offers numerous rare insights of Revolutionary-era America.

Wilhelm Heinrich Florus Graf von Schwerin was born on July 31, 1754, in Dierdorf, Germany. His father, Leopold Ferdinand, had served as a lieutenant in the Prussian army. In November 1757 Leopold died at age 41, and the task of providing for young Wilhelm fell to his widow’s brother, Reingard Graf zu Wied (the uncle to whom the letters were written). Twenty years later, in August 1777, Wilhelm entered the Royal Deux-Ponts as a sub-lieutenant in the grenadiers, followed by his subsequent service at Yorktown. After Yorktown he served variously in France until 1792, when he retired to his mother’s ancestral home in Dierdorf, where he died childless on November 18, 1828.

For the remainder of the 19th century, Schwerin’s letters from America remained in the archives at Neuwied, part of a larger correspondence covering his service in the French army between June 1779 and April 1782. First catalogued by Marion Dexter Learned in 1912, the 166-page correspondence was copied for the Library of Congress in 1930. The originals remained in Neuwied until the early 1960s, when they were sold to an unidentified American collector. Their subsequent whereabouts are unknown.

Schwerin’s correspondence from America began on August 1, 1780, when he informed his uncle of the French fleet’s safe arrival in Newport, R.I. As military duties consisted primarily of weekly guard duty in Rochambeau’s headquarters, Schwerin spent the winter months learning English. A few months later the campaign was underway. After an arduous march, the French reached Virginia in September. His long letter of October 21 proudly described his part in the confrontation with Lt. Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis’ British army in Yorktown:

‘York in Virginia, 21 October 1781
My very dear uncle,
I am delighted to be able to give you my news, and to inform myself at the same time about the state of your dear health. I hope that you have received my last letter that I had the honor to write to you while passing through Philadelphia. Since then we have traveled through a lot of country with the American army and been subjected to a lot of fatigues, but God be thanked that we were rewarded with the capture of the English General Cornwallis, who had been in Virginia for some time already to subjugate it.

‘My very dear uncle, I have to tell you the outcome of this campaign without forgetting the least or being led astray by the little things, for example that we embarked at the Bay of Chesapeake to betake ourselves to Virginia, which took 12 days.

‘We arrived on the 29th of September less than 1 and 1 1/4 miles from York, where the enemy had fortified himself. Our camp was in such a forest that we could not be discovered. The grenadiers and chasseurs of our army formed the advance guard and were posted within sight of the enemy. During the night the enemy sentinels fired but a few musket shots. We spent a few days in this camp to rest up. The enemy did not appear to be afraid. During the night from 6 to 7 October we began to open our first trench or line to lay siege to Monsieur de Cornwallis.

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