XIV. DESTRUCTION OF NEW LONDON. 453 army which had gone to Virginia. Benedict Arnold was sent in the beginning of September to attack the town of New London, in Connecticut, which was a great centre of privateering and of military stores, and was defended by Fort Trumbull and Fort Griswold, the latter a place of considerable strength. It was captured after some hard fighting, and in Fort Griswold the exasperated soldiers are said for some time to have given no quarter, and to have killed or wounded more than 100 Americans after they had declared themselves ready to surrender. Arnold was at this time at the opposite side of the river, and the English officer commanding the assailing body either could not or would not restrain his soldiers till all but about seventy of the garrison had been killed or wounded. Ten or twelve of the enemies' ships and great quantities of naval stores were burnt; the fire, contrary to the intention of Arnold, communicated itself to the civil buildings, and the whole town was destroyed. This was the last achievement of Arnold in America, and very soon after he sailed for England.' The destruction of New London had, however, no effect upon the fortunes of the war. Washington steadily pursued his march, and the principal obstacles he encountered were financial ones. A great part of his troops, he complained, had been long unpaid. The march southwards was unpopular with the Northern soldiers; but 'a douceur of a little hard money would put them in a proper temper.' If the Americans had been left unaided, they might have been unable to maintain themselves, but French assistance supported them at every step. Count Rochambeau advanced on Stedman, Bancroft. See, too, the despatches of General Heath in Arnold's Life of Arnold. Washington, viii. 149, 150. his own authority 20,000 dollars, and on August 25 Laurens arrived from Europe bringing with him a great part of the King of France's gift to the States. A great number of transports were collected, and on September 14 the combined army of Washington and Rochambeau arrived at Williamsburg, in Virginia, and a few days later they joined Lafayette in the investiture of Yorktown. The position of Cornwallis was now absolutely hopeless. Shut in within a narrow promontory, his army of about 7,000 men was besieged by an army of more than 16,000, 7,000 of whom were regular French soldiers, while a fleet far more powerful than any other in American waters commanded every approach by sea. On September 25 Washington wrote to De Grasse that the success of the combined French and American attack was 'as certain as any military operations can be rendered by a decisive superiority of strength and means.' ' Before long the feeble fortifications of Yorktown became completely untenable, and on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis was obliged to surrender, with his whole army. The soldiers became the prisoners of the Americans, the seamen, of the French. New This calamity virtually terminated the American war. For the second time a whole British army was compelled to surrender. The power of England in Virginia was destroyed; her power in the more Southern States could not now be long maintained. York alone contained a considerable British force, and in the sixth year of the war, and with so great a confederation in opposition to England, it seemed impossible that the disaster could ever be retrieved. Whether, if Rodney had been less occupied with the Bale of the goods of St. Eustatius, he might not have 'Washington's Works, viii. 164. SURRENDER OF CORNWALLIS. 455 prevented the naval ascendency in America passing out of English hands; whether Cornwallis might not, before the arrival of Washington and his army, have extricated himself from his position, and cut his way into North Carolina; whether Clinton, at New York, did everything possible to relieve him, are points which have been fiercely contested by military critics. It was noticed, however, that while in nearly all the battles in the North in which Howe commanded, the English had a great advantage in numbers, in nearly all the battles in the South the English under Cornwallis and Rawdon were greatly outnumbered.' Cornwallis almost alone among the British commanders in America showed himself a really efficient and energetic general, and in the last scene his position was beyond recovery. On the day previous to the surrender the rank and file of the garrison in Yorktown and Gloucester were only 5,950 men, and so many were sick and wounded that not more than 4,017 were reported fit for duty." When the English fleet returned to New York, Clinton resolved to make a desperate attempt to relieve Cornwallis, and the arrival of a few additional ships from England and the West Indies made the attempt not absolutely hopeless. He embarked with 7,000 men, but some time elapsed before the fleet could be fitted out, and it was only on October 19 that it got clear of the bay. It arrived off Cape Virginia on the 24th, learnt there the news of the capitulation, and soon returned unmolested to New York. In the capitulation, Cornwallis had endeavoured without success to obtain from Washington an article exempting the loyalists in Yorktown from punishment, but he was allowed to send to New York a ship of war containing as many soldiers as he should think fit, on condition that they should be accounted for in any future exchange, and he was thus enabled to save his American followers from the vengeance of their countrymen. It was on November 25, 1781, only two days before the meeting of Parliament, that the fatal news of the surrender of Yorktown arrived in England. Lord North, who had long looked with utter despondency on the war, saw at once that his worst fears were realised; and when he heard the intelligence from Lord George Germaine, his accustomed calm forsook him, and he paced the room in an agony of distress, exclaimingOh God, it is all over!' The King, however, never for a moment flinched. He saw, indeed, that an attempt to carry on a continental war in America must be relinquished; but he was perfectly resolved that New York and Charleston, or at least the former, should be retained, and that American independence should even now be withheld. The getting a peace at the expense of a separation from America,' he wrote, 'is a step to which no difficulties shall ever get me to be, in the smallest degree, an instrument.' 1 The speech at the opening of Parliament, though announcing the catastrophe, contained no intimation of surrender; but the conviction of the utter hopelessness of continuing the war in America had sunk deeply into the minds of the more independent members, and the great majority which had so long ruled England crumbled speedily away. Burke and Fox, in several speeches of extraordinary eloquence and extraordinary virulence, assailed the whole conduct of the war, and they were powerfully supported by William Pitt, the son of the great Lord Chatham, who was already rapidly rising to a foremost place. The adjournment at this very critical time for the Christmas ■ Correspondence of George III. with Lord North, ii. 896. DISASTERS IN THE WEST INDIES. 457 holidays, on December 21, was much objected to; but before that date it had become evident that the Cabinet was profoundly divided, that the resolution of North was wholly shattered, and that about twenty of the country gentry had already passed from the Government to the Opposition. Nothing but a brilliant military triumph could have saved the Ministry, but not one gleam of success relieved the dreary monotony of disaster which clouded its closing days. Admiral Kempenfeldt, who had been sent to intercept the French fleet from Brest, found that the information of the Admiralty about the number of the enemy was wholly erroneous, and he was obliged to avoid a hopeless contest by retreat. St. Eustatius was taken at the close of 1781 by the Marquis de Bouillé with some troops taken from the Irish brigade. In January 1782 the Dutch settlements of Demerara and Essequibo, which the English had taken, were recaptured by the French. In February the long siege of Minorca terminated, and that important island passed once more under Spanish rule. In the same month, after several vicissitudes of fortune, and in spite of the great gallantry of its defenders, and of a small English fleet under Sir Samuel Hood, the rich island of St. Christopher was taken by the French. De Bouillé had in the previous month landed 8,000 men upon it, and he was supported by the great French fleet under De Grasse. The islands of Nevis and Montserrat at once shared the fate of St. Christopher; and of all the great English possessions in the West Indies, nothing now remained except Jamaica, Barbadoes, and Antigua. Eight islands, it was said, as well as thirteen colonies, had been lost by the Ministry of North. Great public meetings in London and Westminster now strengthened the Opposition, General Carleton was appointed Commander-in-Chief in America in the |