had reduced every one of the inland posts. At
last on the 8th of September he fought an obstinate battle at Eutaw
Springs, in which both sides claimed the victory. The facts were that he
drove the British from their first position, but they rallied upon a
second position from which he failed to drive them. Here, however, as
always after one of Greene's battles, it was the enemy who retreated
and he who pursued. His strategy never failed. After Eutaw Springs the
British remained shut up in Charleston under cover of their ships, and
the American government was reestablished over South Carolina. Among all
the campaigns in history that have been conducted with small armies,
there have been few, if any, more brilliant than Greene's.

[Sidenote: Lafayette and Cornwallis in Virginia, May-Sept., 1718.]

There was something especially piquant in the way in which after
Guilford he left Cornwallis to himself. It reminds one of a chess-player
who first gets the queen off the board, where she can do no harm, and
then wins the game against the smaller pieces. As for Cornwallis, when
he reached Petersburg, May 20, he found himself at the head of 5000 men.
Arnold had just been recalled to New York, and Lafayette, who had been
sent down to oppose him, was at Richmond with 3000 men. A campaign of
nine weeks ensued, in the first part of which Cornwallis tried to catch
Lafayette and bring him to battle. The general movement was from
Richmond up to Fredericksburg, then over toward Charlottesville, then
back to the James river, then down the north bank of the river. But
during the last part the tables were turned, and it was Lafayette,
reinforced by Wayne and Steuben, that pursued Cornwallis on his retreat
to the coast. At the end of July the British general reached Yorktown,
where he was reinforced and waited with 7000 men.

[Sidenote: Washington's masterly movement.]

We may now change our simile, and liken Cornwallis to a ball between two
bats. The first bat, which had knocked him up into Virginia, was Greene;
the second, which sent him quite out of the game, was Washington. The
remarkable movement which the latter general now proceeded to execute
would have been impossible without French cooeperation. A French fleet of
overwhelming power, under the Count de Grasse, was approaching
Chesapeake bay. Washington, in readiness for it, had first moved
Rochambeau's army from Rhode Island across Connecticut to the Hudson
river. Then,