Charles Asgill
Charles Asgill was chosen by lot to be hanged for something another man had done, and was saved by the queen of France. He was a nineteen-year-old guards officer, taken prisoner at Yorktown in 1781 and held under the terms of the surrender, which guaranteed the safety of the men who had given up their arms. In April 1782 a New Jersey loyalist unit hanged Joshua Huddy, a captured militia captain, from a tree with a note pinned to his chest. The British command in New York declined to give up the officer responsible. Washington's response was retaliation by lot. Thirteen captured British captains drew, and the lot fell on Asgill - who had been taken under a capitulation that should have exempted him entirely, a point his own side made loudly and Washington privately conceded. He was held for six months under sentence of death while the case became an international embarrassment. His mother wrote to the French foreign minister, Vergennes, who put the letter before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; France was America's ally and its intercession was not easily refused. Vergennes wrote to Washington asking for the young man's life as a favour to the king and queen. Washington forwarded the request to Congress, which voted his release in November 1782. The affair is remembered because of what it exposed rather than what happened: a commander who believed retaliation was legitimate, a capitulation that should have made this particular retaliation impossible, and a resolution that came from a monarchy the revolution existed to be free of. Asgill went home, became a general, and lived another forty years.
- Lived: 1762 CE – 1823 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: military
