the defence of St. Augustine. Upon his arrival in Savannah he
took command of the whole force thus assembled.

These operations, which during 1779 extended as far as the
neighbourhood of Charleston, depended upon the control of the water,
and are a conspicuous example of misapplication of power to the point
of ultimate self-destruction. They were in 1778-79 essentially of a
minor character, especially the maritime part, and will therefore be
dismissed with the remark that the Navy, by small vessels, accompanied
every movement in a country cut up in all directions by watercourses,
big and little. "The defence of this province," wrote Parker, "must
greatly depend on the naval force upon the different inland creeks.
I am therefore forming some galleys covered from musketry, which
I believe will have a good effect." These were precursors of the
"tin-clads" of the American War of Secession, a century later. Not
even an armored ship is a new thing under the sun.

In the southern States, from Georgia to Virginia, the part of the Navy
from first to last was subsidiary, though important. It is therefore
unnecessary to go into details, but most necessary to note that here,
by misdirection of effort and abuse of means, was initiated the fatal
movement which henceforth divided the small British army in North
America into two sections, wholly out of mutual support. Here Sir
William Howe's error of 1777 was reproduced on a larger scale and
was therefore more fatal. This led directly, by the inevitable logic
of a false position, to Cornwallis's march through North Carolina
into Virginia, to Yorktown in 1781, and to the signal demonstration
of sea power off Chesapeake Bay, which at a blow accomplished the
independence of the United States. No hostile strategist could
have severed the British army more hopelessly than did the British
government; no fate could have been more inexorable than was its own
perverse will. The personal alienation and official quarrel between
Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis, their divided counsels and
divergent action, were but the natural result, and the reflection, of
a situation essentially self-contradictory and exasperating.

As the hurricane season of 1779 advanced, d'Estaing, who had orders
to bring back to France the ships of the line with which he had sailed
from Toulon in 1778, resolved to go first upon the American coast, off
South Carolina or Georgia. Arriving with his whole fleet at the mou