led through weakness of
numbers. The superior fighting ability and tactical skill of
Cornwallis, Rawdon, Stuart, and Tarleton were as obvious as the courage
and steadiness of their troops; but their means were pitifully
inadequate to the task assigned them.

Further north, a still greater failure took place. Washington was not
deterred by the futile outcome of his previous attempts to use French
co-operation from making a patient and urgent effort to induce De
Grasse, the French admiral in the West Indies, to come north and join
with him and Rochambeau in an attack on Cornwallis in Virginia. He was
at last successful; and on August 28 the wished-for fleet, {111} a
powerful collection of twenty-eight sail-of-the-line, with frigates,
reached Chesapeake Bay. Already the French troops from Newport, and
part of the American army from outside New York, had begun their
southward march, carefully concealing their purposes from Clinton, and
were moving through Pennsylvania. As a third part of the combination,
the French squadron from Newport put to sea, bringing eight more
sail-of-the-line, which, added to De Grasse's, would overmatch any
British fleet on the western side of the Atlantic.

The one disturbing possibility was that the British West India fleet,
which very properly had sailed in pursuit, might defeat the two French
fleets singly. This chance was put to the test on September 5. On
that day Admiral Graves, with nineteen men-of-war, attacked De Grasse,
who brought twenty-four into line outside Chesapeake Bay; and the
decisive action of the Revolution took place. Seldom has a greater
stake been played for by a British fleet, and seldom has a naval battle
been less successfully managed. Graves may have intended to
concentrate upon part of the French line, but his subordinates
certainly failed to understand any such purpose; and the outcome was
that the head of the British column, approaching the French line at
{112} an angle, was severely handled, while the rear took no part in
the battle. The fleets separated without decisive result, and the
British, after cruising a few days irresolutely, gave up and returned
to New York. The other French squadron had meanwhile arrived, and the
allied troops had come down the Chesapeake. Cornwallis, shut up in
Yorktown by overwhelming forces, defended himself until October 17, and
then surrendered with 8,000 men to the man who had beaten him years
before at Trenton and Pr