his army. Acting under orders from Clinton, Cornwallis accordingly
retired to the coast and fortified the neck of land at Yorktown.
Washington had scarcely been apprised of this circumstance before he
received a letter from the Count de Grasse, commander of the French
naval forces in the West Indies, proposing joint operations in Virginia
during the summer, and promising to bring his fleet to the Chesapeake
sometime in August. The opportunity was a rare one. Abandoning the
projected attack on New York, Washington and Rochambeau joined their
forces and marched rapidly through New Jersey, entering Philadelphia the
very day that De Grasse appeared at the mouth of the bay. They had
already joined Lafayette before Admiral Graves arrived from New York
with a British fleet to rescue the British general. Had Graves been a
Rodney or a Nelson he might have given a different issue to the American
Revolution; but he was not the man to win against great odds, and after
an indecisive engagement he sailed away, leaving Cornwallis to his fate.
Hemmed in by 16,000 American and French troops, the unhappy general, who
never met Washington but to be defeated, surrendered his army of 7000,
men on the 19th of October, 1781.

"It is all over!" cried Lord North when Germaine told him of the
surrender of Cornwallis. The loss of 7000 men was not in itself an
irremediable disaster; but the effort of the king and the "King's
Friends" to establish the personal rule of the monarch had alienated the
nation, while their attempt to subjugate the colonies had embroiled
England with all Europe. In armed conflict with France, Spain, and
Holland, opposed by the "armed neutrality" of Russia, Sweden, Denmark,
the Empire, Portugal, the Two Sicilies, and the Ottoman Empire, never
had the isolation of the little island kingdom been more splendid, or
British prestige so diminished. The demand of the nation for peace could
no longer be resisted, and the Whig party came into power over the
king's will, and entered into negotiation with the enemies he had made.
The American ambassadors were instructed by Congress and bound in honor
not to make a treaty without the knowledge and consent of France. But
in spite of Franklin's protest, Jay and Adams, who suspected, not
without some show of reason but contrary to the fact, that Vergennes
would oppose the extension of the United States beyond the Alleghanies,
broke their instructions as readily as Jay broke his pipe, an