Grand French Battery

The Grand French Battery was where the largest concentration of French artillery was located. The French manned the left flank of the siege line and the Americans the right side. The trench was dug from here all the way to the York River in the east in one night, October 6, 1781. Digging under the cover of darkness, the British never knew what was going on. That’s a lot of men (1,500) doing a lot of digging. The reason the trenches spanned such a wide area is so the British could not sneak around one side if they decided to break out and go on the offensive—that never happened. The line was not dug too much farther west because the forest and a water boundary prevented the British from advancing men and equipment on that side, and of course the east side of the line was anchored by the river