attempt to recover the southern provinces showed a vigour and capacity
which might, perhaps, have brought matters to a different issue if he
had held the chief command. But his means were inadequate to meet the
wastage caused by battle and sickness; he found the loyalists a broken
reed, and his troops not well suited to the kind of warfare in which
they were engaged. "Had Lord Cornwallis staid in Carolina, as I had
ordered him," wrote Clinton, "and I had even assembled my forces at New
York, and remained there with my arms across without affront, negative
victory would have insured American Dependence."[159] "Arms across"
seems indeed to have been Clinton's favourite attitude.[160]
Cornwallis's advance into Virginia was certainly a risky movement, but
it was a choice of evils and did not in itself entail disaster. Clinton
reckoned, not without reason, that the Americans were too exhausted to
prolong the struggle; he was in favour of desultory operations on the
Chesapeake, against Baltimore and Philadelphia, with the view of gaining
loyalist support, and of waiting until he had received reinforcements
large enough to enable him to undertake a "solid" campaign in Virginia,
without leaving New York insufficiently defended. Cornwallis believed
that the best chance of success lay in securing a firm hold on Virginia.
Germain, who still persisted in directing operations in America from
London, considered Cornwallis's plan more promising than that of
Clinton. He treated Cornwallis as though he had an entirely independent
command, with the result that serious misunderstandings arose between
Cornwallis and Clinton, the commander-in-chief, which hindered their
co-operation; and while he approved of the plan adopted by Cornwallis he
did not discountenance Clinton's proposals, with the result that neither
course of action was vigorously pursued. It was by Clinton's order that
Cornwallis retired to the York peninsula, where his safety depended on
the continued command of the sea; the choice of Yorktown as his post was
his own. It was not a good choice; but he had little reason to expect
that he would have to hold it against an overwhelming force of French
and Americans, with a French fleet in command of the sea. Clinton should
not have been misled by Washington's simple trick into allowing the
combined force to advance beyond his reach on its way to crush
Cornwallis's army.

The true cause of the catastrophe, however, lay in naval m