A monument was erected in Westminster Abbey to the memory of Major André, "the victim of his devotion to his king and country." His remains repose there since the year 1821. The vengeance and anger of the Americans vainly pursued General Arnold, who was henceforth occupied in the war at the head of the English troops, with all the passion of a restless hatred. Spite and wounded vanity, linked with the shameful necessities of an irregular life, had drawn him into treason. He lived twenty years after, enriched and despised by the enemies of his country. "What would you have done to me if you had succeeded in taking me?" he asked one day of an American prisoner. "We would have separated from your body that one of your limbs which had been wounded in the service of the country," answered the militia-man calmly, "and we would have hanged the rest on a gibbet."
Fresh perplexities were assailing General Washington, scarcely recovered from the sad surprise which Arnold's treason had caused him. He had pursued for almost a year the reorganization of his army, when the successive mutinies among the Pennsylvania troops threatened to reach those of New Jersey, and to extend by degrees into all the corps secretly tampered with by Sir Henry Clinton. Mr. Laurens, formerly president of Congress, and charged with negotiating a treaty of alliance and of loan with Holland, had been captured by an English ship. He was imprisoned in the Tower, when his son, an aide-de-camp of Washington, set out for France. "The country's own strength is exhausted," wrote the general-in-chief. "Alone we cannot raise the public credit and furnish the funds necessary to continue the war. The patience of the army is at an end. Without money we can make but a feeble effort, probably the last one."
As well as money, Colonel Laurens was charged to ask for a reinforcement of troops. France furnished all that her allies asked. M. Necker, clever and bold, was equal, by means of successive loans, to all the charges of the war. In a few months King Louis XVI. had lent or guaranteed more than sixteen million pounds for the United States. A French fleet, under the orders of the Count de Grasse, set out on the 21st of March, 1781. Arrived at Martinique on the 28th of April, the Count de Grasse, despite the efforts of Admiral Hood to block his passage, took the island of Tobago from the English. On the 3rd of September he brought Washington a reinforcement of three thousand five hundred men and twelve hundred thousand pounds in specie. The soldiers as well as the subsidies were intrusted to Washington personally. No dissension had ever arisen between the general and his foreign auxiliaries. By that natural authority which God had bestowed on him, Washington was always and naturally the superior and chief of all those who came near him.