ced a relaxation in popular energy, and carried
with it new and difficult problems for the commander-in-chief. The
successful management of allies, and of allied forces, had been one
of the severest tests of the statesmanship of William III., and had
constituted one of the principal glories of Marlborough. A similar
problem now confronted the American general.

Washington was free from the diplomatic and political portion of the
business, but the military and popular part fell wholly into his
hands, and demanded the exercise of talents entirely different from
those of either a general or an administrator. It has been not
infrequently written more or less plainly, and it is constantly said,
that Washington was great in character, but that in brains he was
not far above the common-place. It is even hinted sometimes that the
father of his country was a dull man, a notion which we shall have
occasion to examine more fully further on. At this point let the
criticism be remembered merely in connection with the fact that
to cooeperate with allies in military matters demands tact, quick
perception, firmness, and patience. In a word, it is a task which
calls for the finest and most highly trained intellectual powers, and
of which the difficulty is enhanced a thousandfold when the allies are
on the one side, an old, aristocratic, punctilious people, and on the
other, colonists utterly devoid of tradition, etiquette, or fixed
habits, and very much accustomed to go their own way and speak their
own minds with careless freedom. With this problem Washington was
obliged suddenly to deal, both in ill success and good success, as
well as in many attempts which came to nothing. Let us see how he
solved it at the very outset, when everything went most perversely
wrong.

On July 14 he heard that D'Estaing's fleet was off the coast, and at
once, without a trace of elation or excitement, he began to consider
the possibility of intercepting the British fleet expected to arrive
shortly from Cork. As soon as D'Estaing was within reach he sent
two of his aides on board the flagship, and at once opened a
correspondence with his ally. These letters of welcome, and those of
suggestion which followed, are models, in their way, of what such
letters ought always to be. They were perfectly adapted to satisfy the
etiquette and the love of good manners of the French, and yet there
was not a trace of anything like servility, or of an effusive
gratitude