But Lafayette was so skillful at retreating and avoiding a decisive action that his lordship could get no chance to deal him a blow.
"I am not strong enough even to be beaten," wrote the French general to the commander in chief.
Away to the west rode our friend Colonel Tarleton, still smarting from the sound thrashing he had received from old Dan Morgan at Cowpens. He was trying to break up the State Assembly, and capture Thomas Jefferson, governor of Virginia.
It was a narrow escape for the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. The story is told that Jefferson had only five minutes in which to take flight into the woods, before Tarleton's hard riders surrounded his house at Monticello.
About this time, Mad Anthony Wayne, with a thousand Pennsylvania regulars, appeared upon the scene and joined Lafayette.
{ 125} Now Cornwallis, finding that he could not catch "the boy," and having a wholesome respect for Wayne, stopped his marching and countermarching, and retreated to Williamsburg by way of Richmond and the York peninsula.
During the first week in August, the British commander continued his retreat to the coast, and occupied Yorktown, with about seven thousand men. Lafayette was encamped on Malvern Hill, in the York peninsula, where he was waiting for the next act in the drama.
Far away in the North, at West Point, Washington was keeping a sharp lookout over the whole field. The main part of the patriot army was encamped along the Hudson.
At Newport, there was a French force under General Rochambeau. Late in May, Washington rode over to a little town in Connecticut, to consult with him. It was decided that the French army should march to the Hudson as speedily as possible, and unite with the patriot forces encamped there.
The plan at this time was to capture New York. This could not be done without the aid of a large fleet.
Early in the spring of this year, 1781, the French government had sent a powerful fleet to the West Indies, under the command of Count de Grasse. De Grasse now had orders to act in concert with Washington and Rochambeau, against the common enemy. This was joyful news.
{ 126} News traveled very slowly in those times. It took ten days for Washington to hear from Lafayette that Cornwallis had retreated to Yorktown, and thirty days to learn that Greene was marching southward against Lord Rawdon in South Carolina. And as for De Grasse, it was uncertain just when and where he would arrive on the coast.
