Cornwallis said cheerily that "the boy" was certainly now his prey and began the task of catching him.
An exciting chase followed.La Fayette did some good work.It was impossible, with his inferior force, to fight Cornwallis, but he could tire him out by drawing him into long marches.When Cornwallis advanced to attack La Fayette at Richmond, La Fayette was not there but had slipped away and was able to use rivers and mountains for his defense.Cornwallis had more than one string to his bow.The legislature of Virginia was sitting at Charlottesville, lying in the interior nearly a hundred miles northwest from Richmond, and Cornwallis conceived the daring plan of raiding Charlottesville, capturing the Governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, and, at one stroke, shattering the civil administration.Tarleton was the man for such an enterprise of hard riding and bold fighting and he nearly succeeded.Jefferson indeed escaped by rapid flight but Tarleton took the town, burned the public records, and captured ammunition and arms.But he really effected little.La Fayette was still unconquered.His army was growing and the British were finding that Virginia, like New England, was definitely against them.
At New York, meanwhile, Clinton was in a dilemma.He was dismayed at the news of the march of Cornwallis to Virginia.Cornwallis had been so long practically independent in the South that he assumed not only the right to shape his own policy but adopted a certain tartness in his despatches to Clinton, his superior.When now, in this tone, he urged Clinton to abandon New York and join him Clinton's answer on the 26th of June was a definite order to occupy some port in Virginia easily reached from the sea, to make it secure, and to send to New York reinforcements.The French army at Newport was beginning to move towards New York and Clinton had intercepted letters from Washington to La Fayette revealing a serious design to make an attack with the aid of the French fleet.Such was the game which fortune was playing with the British generals.Each desired the other to abandon his own plans and to come to his aid.They were agreed, however, that some strong point must be held in Virginia as a naval base, and on the 2d of August Cornwallis established this base at Yorktown, at the mouth of the York River, a mile wide where it flows into Chesapeake Bay.His cannon could command the whole width of the river and keep in safety ships anchored above the town.Yorktown lay about half way between New York and Charleston and from here a fleet could readily carry a military force to any needed point on the sea.La Fayette with a growing army closed in on Yorktown, and Cornwallis, almost before he knew it, was besieged with no hope of rescue except by a fleet.
Then it was that from the sea, the restless and mysterious sea, came the final decision.Man seems so much the sport of circumstance that apparent trifles, remote from his consciousness, appear at times to determine his fate; it is a commonplace of romance that a pretty face or a stray bullet has altered the destiny not merely of families but of nations.And now, in the American Revolution, it was not forts on the Hudson, nor maneuvers in the South, that were to decide the issue, but the presence of a few more French warships than the British could muster at a given spot and time.Washington had urged in January that France should plan to have at least temporary naval superiority in American waters, in accordance with Rochambeau's principle, "Nothing without naval supremacy." Washington wished to concentrate against New York, but the French were of a different mind, believing that the great effort should be made in Chesapeake Bay.There the British could have no defenses like those at New York, and the French fleet, which was stationed in the West Indies, could reach more readily than New York a point in the South.
Early in May Rochambeau knew that a French fleet was coming to his aid but not yet did he know where the stroke should be made.
It was clear, however, that there was nothing for the French to do at Newport, and, by the beginning of June, Rochambeau prepared to set his army in motion.The first step was to join Washington on the Hudson and at any rate alarm Clinton as to an imminent attack on New York and hold him to that spot.After nearly a year of idleness the French soldiers were delighted that now at last there was to be an active movement.The long march from Newport to New York began.In glowing June, amid the beauties of nature, now overcome by intense heat and obliged to march at two o'clock in the morning, now drenched by heavy rains, the French plodded on, and joined their American comrades along the Hudson early in July.
By the 14th of August Washington knew two things--that a great French fleet under the Comte de Grasse had sailed for the Chesapeake and that the British army had reached Yorktown.Soon the two allied armies, both lying on the east side of the Hudson, moved southward.On the 20th of August the Americans began to cross the river at King's Ferry, eight miles below Peekskill.
Washington had to leave the greater part of his army before New York, and his meager force of some two thousand was soon over the river in spite of torrential rains.By the 24th of August the French, too, had crossed with some four thousand men and with their heavy equipment.The British made no move.Clinton was, however, watching these operations nervously.The united armies marched down the right bank of the Hudson so rapidly that they had to leave useful effects behind and some grumbled at the privation.Clinton thought his enemy might still attack New York from the New Jersey shore.He knew that near Staten Island the Americans were building great bakeries as if to feed an army besieging New York.Suddenly on the 29th of August the armies turned away from New York southwestward across New Jersey, and still only the two leaders knew whither they were bound.
