HAPTER XIII.

EVENTS IN THE WEST INDIES AFTER THE SURRENDER OF
YORKTOWN--ENCOUNTERS OF DE GRASSE WITH HOOD.--THE SEA BATTLE OF
THE SAINTS.--1781, 1782.

The surrender of Cornwallis marked the end of the active war upon the
American continent. The issue of the struggle was indeed assured upon
the day when France devoted her sea power to the support of the
colonists; but, as not uncommonly happens, the determining
characteristics of a period were summed up in one striking event. From
the beginning, the military question, owing to the physical
characteristics of the country, a long seaboard with estuaries
penetrating deep into the interior, and the consequent greater ease of
movement by water than by land, had hinged upon the control of the sea
and the use made of that control. Its misdirection by Sir William Howe
in 1777, when he moved his army to the Chesapeake instead of
supporting Burgoyne's advance, opened the way to the startling success
at Saratoga, when amazed Europe saw six thousand regular troops
surrendering to a body of provincials. During the four years that
followed, until the surrender of Yorktown, the scales rose and fell
according as the one navy or the other appeared on the scene, or as
English commanders kept touch with the sea or pushed their operations
far from its support. Finally, at the great crisis, all is found
depending upon the question whether the French or the English fleet
should first appear, and upon their relative force.

The maritime struggle was at once transferred to the West Indies. The
events which followed there were antecedent in time both to Suffren's
battles and to the final relief of Gibraltar; but they stand so much
by themselves as to call for separate treatment, and have such close
relation to the conclusion of the war and the conditions of peace, as
to form the dramatic finale of the one and the stepping-stone of
transition to the other. It is fitting indeed that a brilliant though
indecisive naval victory should close the story of an essentially
naval war.

The capitulation of Yorktown was completed on the 19th of October,
1781, and on the 5th of November, De Grasse, resisting the suggestions
of Lafayette and Washington that the fleet should aid in carrying the
war farther south, sailed from the Chesapeake. He reached Martinique
on the 26th, the day after the Marquis de Bouille, commanding the
French troops in the West Indies, had regained by a bold surpri