On the 30th (September, 1781) Yorktown was invested. The French troops formed the left wing of the combined army, extending from the river above the town to a morass in front of it; the Americans composed the right wing and occupied the ground between the morass and the river below the town. Till the 6th of October the besieging army was assiduously employed in disembarking its heavy artillery and military stores and in conveying them to camp from the landing place in James river, a distance of six miles. On the night of the 6th the first parallel was begun, under the direction of General du Portail, the chief engineer, 600 yards from the British works. The night was dark, rainy, and well adapted for such a service; and in the course of it the besiegers did not lose a man. Their operations seem not to have been suspected by the besieged till daylight disclosed them in the morning, when the trenches were so far advanced as in a good measure to cover the workmen from the fire of the garrison. By the afternoon of the 9th the batteries were completed, notwithstanding the most strenuous opposition from the besieged, and immediately opened on the town. From that time an incessant cannonade was kept up, and the continual discharge of shot and shells from twenty-four and eighteen pounders and ten-inch mortars, damaged the unfinished works on the left of the town, silenced the guns mounted on them and occasioned a considerable loss of men. Some of the shot and shells from the batteries passed over the town, reached the shipping in the harbor, and set on fire the Charon of forty-four guns and three large transports, which were entirely consumed. "From the bank of the river," says Dr. Thacher, "I had a fine view of this splendid conflagration. The ships were enwrapped in a torrent of fire, which, spreading with vivid brightness among the combustible rigging and running with amazing rapidity to the tops of the several masts, while all around was thunder and lightning from our numerous cannon and mortars, and in the darkness of night presented one of the most sublime and magnificent spectacles that can be imagined. Some of our shells, overreaching the town, are seen to fall into the river, and bursting, throw up columns of water, like the spouting of the monsters of the deep." On the night of the 11th (October, 1781), the besiegers, laboring with indefatigable perseverance, began their second parallel, 300 yards nearer the British works than the first; and the three succeeding days were assiduously employed in completing it.