e the greater part of his
army before New York, and his meager force of some two thousand was soon
over the river in spite of torrential rains. By the 24th of August the
French, too, had crossed with some four thousand men and with their
heavy equipment. The British made no move. Clinton was, however,
watching these operations nervously. The united armies marched down
the right bank of the Hudson so rapidly that they had to leave useful
effects behind and some grumbled at the privation. Clinton thought his
enemy might still attack New York from the New Jersey shore. He knew
that near Staten Island the Americans were building great bakeries as if
to feed an army besieging New York. Suddenly on the 29th of August the
armies turned away from New York southwestward across New Jersey, and
still only the two leaders knew whither they were bound.

American patriotism has liked to dwell on this last great march of
Washington. To him this was familiar country; it was here that he had
harassed Clinton on the march from Philadelphia to New York three long
years before. The French marched on the right at the rate of about
fifteen miles a day. The country was beautiful and the roads were good.
Autumn had come and the air was bracing. The peaches hung ripe on the
trees. The Dutch farmers who, four years earlier, had been plaintive
about the pillage by the Hessians, now seemed prosperous enough and
brought abundance of provisions to the army. They had just gathered
their harvest. The armies passed through Princeton, with its fine
college, numbering as many as fifty students; then on to Trenton, and
across the Delaware to Philadelphia, which the vanguard reached on the
3d of September.

There were gala scenes in Philadelphia. Twenty thousand people witnessed
a review of the French army. To one of the French officers the city
seemed "immense" with its seventy-two streets all "in a straight line."
The shops appeared to be equal to those of Paris and there were pretty
women well dressed in the French fashion. The Quaker city forgot its old
suspicion of the French and their Catholic religion. Luzerne, the French
Minister, gave a great banquet on the evening of the 5th of September.
Eighty guests took their places at table and as they sat down good news
arrived. As yet few knew the destination of the army but now Luzerne
read momentous tidings and the secret was out: twenty-eight French ships
of the line had arrived in Chesapeake Bay; an a