Letters from Wilhelm Graf von Schwerin: Eyewitness to Siege of Yorktown

‘On the last day of our stay in Philadelphia I was surprised to see a one-horse-chaise stop before my tent. In it sat two women and a man, who drove it. They said they were from Dierdorf; I asked them to get out of the carriage and recognized the one to be the Henritz who was a servant at the [Reingards'] castle and the other to be her sister, who has already been married to a beer brewer in Philadelphia for 18 years and is very rich. I had dinner with them; they have a perfectly furnished house. In the evening they introduced me to a man named Dichon who had been with you in Dierdorf. He also introduced me to his brother who lives in Philadelphia. Both are very well off, but the one who had been at Dierdorf is the richer of them. I had breakfast with him before our departure from Philadelphia. He had a superb house and lots of ready money, because he showed me a little chest full of Louis d’Ors. He asked me to present his very humble respects to you and to assure you that he was delighted with the way you treated him in Dierdorf. He had had very bad luck. His ship was captured by a British frigate, his merchandise became a prize, and he himself a prisoner for a month. He assured me that he lost close to 40,000 florins, but that does not bother him too much: he is still rich enough….As we embarked to sail for Virginia, various soldiers from each company of our regiment were ordered to clean the transports and to fill the barrels with drinking water. Soldier [Jacob] Fenscher who was among them sailed in a small boat toward land. There were seven in it. The boat was loaded too heavily and turned over. Fenscher alone had the misfortune to drown. I immediately asked for his death certificate, but because of the siege everything is still in such turmoil. I will send it as soon as possible.

‘Another fatality. While working on a fortification during this siege, Soldier [Mathias] Eisenbarth from Saar Wellingen was cut in half right down the middle by an enemy cannon ball. I grieve from the bottom of my heart that my countrymen do not fare better….You have seen from my last, which you should have received, that we have waged not only a very glorious but also a very exhausting campaign; we are now masters of the very beautiful province of Virginia, where we are in winter quarters in Williamsburg, that is, the general quarters are there with two regiments, two regiments are quartered in York. Me, I am very content with our winter quarters. I am quartered with my company half a mile from the city of Williamsburg, I hunt a lot: that is my amusement. You may know already that Monsieur de Wisch departed at the end of the siege with a furlough from the court to go and stay with you for some time. Monsieur de Laroche from Coblenz did the same. [sous-lieutenant Friedrich Anton] de Berg, whom you have met at Dierdorf, quit the regiment after the campaign. I believe that he is still in Philadelphia. His conduct was not the best, and I believe he will stay in America for some time until the money from his concordat will be spent.’

The concordat was an agreement among the 69 regimental officers that when an officer left the unit, each officer below him in rank, who now had an opportunity to advance in seniority, if not in rank, was to pay that departing officer the equivalent of two months of his own wages if that officer retired without pension, or one month’s worth if he retired with a pension.

‘Since my last letter that I had the honor to write to you I advance by one rank,’ Schwerin announced. ‘You know that when we departed from France I was the doyen of the sous-lieutenants and placed in the company of grenadiers, with which I still had the honor to take part in the siege of York. After that, Monsieur de Bradel [Benoit Franois van Pradelles], lieutenant-en-second, quit the regiment to go to France and he gave me his place. That way I am now the last lieutenant-en-second in the company de Cabannes. I assure you, my dear uncle, that if we had stayed in France I would be a premier lieutenant by now, but in times of war very few officers quit their regiment. I will be the most fortunate man if twenty years from now I will have a company, especially if we stay in this country a few more years.

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