little below the mouth of Byrd creek. For the next ten days his head-quarters were at Elk Hill, on a plantation belonging to Jefferson.

Two expeditions were undertaken. With one hundred and eighty dragoons and forty mounted infantry, Tarleton, destroying public stores on the way, rode seventy miles in twentyfour hours to Charlottesville, where the Virginia assembly was then in session; but the assembly, having received warning, had adjourned to the valley beyond the Blue Ridge, and Jefferson had gone to the mountains on horseback. The dragoons overtook seven of the legislature; otherwise, the expedition was fruitless.

Simcoe, with a party of mixed troops, was sent to destroy stores over which Steuben with a few more than five hundred men kept guard. Steuben had transported his magazine across the Fluvanna, and the water was too deep to be forded.

Tarleton suffered nothing of Jefferson's at Monticello to be injured. At Elk Hill, under the eye of Cornwallis, all his barns and fences were burnt; the growing crops destroyed; the fields laid absolutely waste; the throats cut of all horses that were too young for service, and the rest carried off. He took away about thirty slaves, not to receive freedom, but to suffer from a worse form of slavery in the West Indies. The rest of the neighborhood was treated in like manner, but with less of malice.

In the march of the British army from Elk Hill down the river to Williamsburg, where it arrived on the twenty-fifth of June, all dwelling-houses were plundered. The band of Lafayette hung upon its rear, but could not prevent its depredations. The Americans of that day computed that Cornwallis, in his midsummer marchings up and down Virginia, destroyed property to the value of three million pounds sterling. He nowhere gained a foothold, and his long marches thoroughly taught him that the people were bent on independence.

At Williamsburg, to his amazement and chagrin, he received orders from his chief to send back to New York about three thousand men. Clinton's letter of the eleventh expressed his fear of being attacked in New York by more than twenty thousand; there was, he said, no possibility of re-establishing

order in Virginia, so general was the disaffection to Great Britain; Cornwallis should therefore take a defensive situation in any healthy station he might choose, be it at Williamsburg or Yorktown. On the fifteenth he wrote further: "I do not think it advisable to leave more troops in that unhealthy climate at this season of the year than are absolutely wanted for a defensive and a desultory water expedition." "De Grasse," so he continued on the nineteenth, "will visit this coast in the hurricane season, and bring with him troops as well as ships. But, when he hears that your lordship has taken possession of York river before him, I think that their first efforts will be in this quarter. I am, however, under no great apprehensions, as Sir George Rodney seems to have the same suspicions of de Grasse's intention that we have, and will of course follow him hither."

From this time the hate which had long existed between the lieutenant-general and the commander-in-chief showed itself without much reserve. Cornwallis was eager to step into the chief command; Sir Henry Clinton, though he had threatened to throw up his place, clung to it tenaciously, and relates of himself that he would not be "duped" by his rival into resigning.

"To your opinions it is my duty implicitly to submit," was the answer of Cornwallis to the orders of Clinton; and on the fourth of July he began his march to Portsmouth. On that day the royal army arrived near James Island, and in the evening the advanced guard reached the opposite bank of the James river. Two or three more days were required to carry over all the stores and the troops. Lafayette with his small army followed at a distance. Beside fifteen hundred regular troops, equal to the best in the royal army, he drew to his side as volunteers gallant young men mounted on their own horses from Maryland and Virginia. Youth and generosity, courage and prudence, were his spells of persuasion. His perceptions were quick, his vigilance never failed, and in his methods of gaining information of the movements of the enemy he excelled every officer in the war except Washington and Morgan. All accounts bear testimony to his caution. Of his selfpossession in danger he was soon called upon to give proof.

On the sixth, Lafayette judged correctly that the great body of the British army was still on the north side of the James river; but Wayne, without his knowledge, detached a party under Colonel Galvan to carry off a field-piece of the enemy which was said to lie exposed. The information proved false. The party with Galvan retreated in column before the advancing British line till they met Wayne with the Pennsylvania brigade. It suited the character of that officer to hazard an encounter. The British moved on with loud shouts and incessant fire. Wayne, discovering that he had engaged a greatly superior force, saw his only safety in redoubling his courage; and he kept up the fight till Lafayette, braving the hottest fire in which his horse was killed under him, brought up the light infantry and rescued the Pennsylvanians from their danger. Two of Wayne's field-pieces were left behind. In killed and wounded, each side lost about one hundred and twenty. The action took its name from the Greene Springs farm, about eight miles above Jamestown, where Lafayette encamped for the night.

After passing the river, Cornwallis, on the eighth, wrote orders to Tarleton with mounted troops to ravage Prince Edward's and Bedford counties, and to destroy all stores, whether public or private. The benefit derived from the destruction. of property was not equal to the loss in skirmishes on the route and from the heats of midsummer.

From his camp on Malvern Hill, Lafayette urged Washington to march to Virginia in force; and he predicted in July that, if a French fleet should enter Hampton Roads, the English army must surrender. On the eighth of the same month Cornwallis, in reply to Clinton, reasoned earnestly against a defensive post in the Chesapeake: "It cannot have the smallest influence on the war in Carolina: it only gives us some acres of an unhealthy swamp, and is forever liable to become a prey to a foreign enemy with a temporary superiority at sea." Thoroughly disgusted with the aspect of affairs in Virginia, he asked leave to transfer the command to General Leslie, and go back to Charleston. Meantime, transport ships arrived in the Chesapeake; and, in a letter which he received on the twelfth, he was desired by his chief so to hasten the embarkation of

three thousand men that they might sail for New York within forty-eight hours; for, deceived by letters which were written to be intercepted, he believed that the enemy would certainly attack that post.

But the judgment of Clinton was further confused by another cause. The expectation of a brilliant campaign in Virginia had captivated the minds of Lord George Germain and the king; and, now that Cornwallis was thoroughly cured of his own presumptuous delusions, they came back to Clinton in the shape of orders from the British secretary, who dwelt on the vast importance of the occupation of Virginia, and on the wisdom of the present plan of pushing the war in that quarter. It was a great mortification to him that Clinton should think of leaving only a sufficient force to serve for garrisons in the posts that might be established there, and he continued: "Your ideas of the importance of recovering that province appearing to be so different from mine, I thought it proper to ask the advice of his majesty's other servants upon the subject, and, their opinion concurring entirely with mine, it has been submitted to the king; and I am commanded by his majesty to acquaint you that the recovery of the southern provinces and the prosecution of the war from south to north is to be considered as the chief and principal object for the employment of all the forces under your command which can be spared from the defence of the places in his majesty's possession." On Cornwallis he heaped praises, writing to him in June: "The rapidity of your movements is justly matter of astonishment to all Europe." To Clinton he repeated in the same month: "Lord Cornwallis's opinion entirely coincides with mine." So Clinton's peremptory order by which troops in Virginia had been already embarked to sail for New York was countermanded. "As to quitting the Chesapeake entirely," wrote Clinton in a letter received by Cornwallis on the twenty-first of July, "I cannot entertain a thought of such a measure. I flatter myself you will at least hold Old Point Comfort, if it is possible to do it without York." And four days later Clinton urged again: "It ever has been, is, and ever will be, my firm and unalterable opinion that it is of the first consequence to his majesty's affairs on the continent that

VOL. V.-33

we take possession of the Chesapeake, and that we do not afterward relinquish it." "Remain in Chesapeake, at least until the stations I have proposed are occupied and established. It never was my intention to continue a post on Elizabeth river." Now the post of Portsmouth on Elizabeth river had, as Lafayette and Washington well understood, the special value that it offered in the last resort the chance of a retreat into the Carolinas.

The infatuation of Germain was incurable; and on the seventh of July he continued: "The detachments sent to Virginia promise more toward bringing the southern colonists to obedience than any offensive operation of the war;" a week later: "You judiciously sent ample reinforcements to the Chesapeake;" and on the second of August: "As Sir George Rodney knows the destination of de Grasse, and the French acknowledge his ships sail better than theirs, he will get before him and be in readiness to receive him when he comes upon the coast. I see nothing to prevent the recovery of the whole country to the king's obedience."

The engineers of Cornwallis, after careful and extensive surveys, reported unanimously that a work on Point Comfort would not secure ships at anchor in Hampton Roads. To General Phillips, on his embarkation in April, Clinton's words had been: "With regard to a station for the protection of the king's ships, I know of no place so proper as Yorktown." Nothing therefore remained but, in obedience to the spirit of Clinton's orders, to seize and fortify York and Gloucester. Cornwallis accordingly, in the first week of August, embarked his troops successively, and, evacuating Portsmouth, transferred his force to Yorktown and Gloucester. Yorktown was then but a small village on a high bank, where the long peninsula dividing the York from the James river is less than eight miles wide. The water is broad, bold, and deep; so that ships of the line may ride there in safety. On the opposite side lies Gloucester, a point of land projecting into the river and narrowing till it becomes but one mile wide. These were occupied by Cornwallis, and fortified with the utmost diligence; though, in his deliberate judgment, the measure promised no honor to himself and no advantage to Great Britain.