LIV.

AN EMPIRE LOST IN THE WEST.-STANHOPE.

[Soon after the great success of Clive in the East, General Wolfe, whom Pitt had appointed commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, succeeded in wresting Canada from the French by the capture of Quebec. In the treaty of peace which closed the Seven Years' War France was forced to cede to England nearly all her colonial possessions in America. But this great gain to England led directly to a far greater loss. So long as the French power in America remained as a rival to that of Britain, the Anglo-American colonies were forced to rely upon the mother-country to maintain themselves against it; when that power was broken the colonists became practically independent. The narrow and selfish policy pursued by George III. and his ministers toward the colonies gradually weakened their feeling of loyalty, and at length drove them to rebellion. The struggle which led to a separation was virtually ended by the surrender of the British army, under Cornwallis, at Yorktown.

MEANWHILE it was determined to press the operations against Lord Cornwallis with the utmost vigor. The net, indeed, was rapidly closing around the English earl. During the month of August he had relinquished Portsmouth and taken post at Yorktown, in pursuance of some instructions from Sir Henry Clinton, which Sir Henry meant as permission, but which Cornwallis understood as peremptory. Yorktown, as Cornwallis afterward declared, was not, in his judgment, well adapted for defense. It is a small village, about twelve miles from Williamsburg, built upon a high bank, the southern one, of York River. There the long peninsula, extending between the rivers York and James, is little more than eight miles broad. There the river York itself is one

GEORGE III.

mile in width; and, on a point of land projecting from the northern bank, lies Gloucester, another small village, which Cornwallis also held. Both posts, but more especially Yorktown as the larger, he had fortified as best he might, with redoubts and intrenchments; and these unfinished works he was now to maintain with seven thousand men against a force which by degrees grew to eighteen thousand. His position was not really perilous, so long as the English retained the superiority at sea; but the great fleet of De Grasse was now interposing, and cut off his retreat.

Cornwallis is admitted to have shown most undaunted resolution. The officers under him, and the troops, German and English, all did their duty well. For some weeks they had labored hard and unremittingly in raising their defenses; and they were now prepared, with equal spirit, to maintain. their half-completed works. But, besides the enemy without, they had another foe within-an epidemic sickness that stretched many hundreds helpless on their pallet-beds. Nor could they hinder Washington from completing his first parallel, and opening his fire upon them on the evening of the 9th of October For two days the fire was incessant from heavy cannon, and from mortars and howitzers, throwing shells in showers on the town, until, says Cornwallis, all our guns on the left were silenced, our works much damaged, and our loss of men considerable. By these shells, also, the Charon, a ship of forty-four guns, together with three British transports in the river, were set in flames and consumed. On the night of the 11th the enemy began their second parallel at about three hundred yards; that is, at only half the distance of the former. Cornwallis did all in his power to delay, for prevent he could not, the progress of this work, by opening new embrasures for guns, and keeping up a constant fire with all the howitzers and small mortars that he could man. In their approaches the enemy were also, in some degree, impeded by two redoubts which the British had constructed

in advance to cover their left flank. These Washington resolved to storm; and, for the sake of exciting emulation, he intrusted the attack of the one to the Americans, and of the other to the French. Both attacks were made in the night of the 14th, and with full success; and, by the unwearied exertions of the enemy, both redoubts were included in their second parallel by day-break the next morning.

[On the 16th the English general made an ineffectual attempt to escape by way of Gloucester.]

Meanwhile, as Cornwallis had expected, the enemy's batteries before Yorktown had opened fire at day-break. Nothing now remained for him but to obtain the best terms he could. On that morning, then, the 17th of October, he sent a flag of truce to Washington, proposing a cessation of arms, and a treaty for the capitulation of his post. Washington, in reply, required him to state within two hours the terms which he demanded. In a second letter hereupon Cornwallis asked that the garrisons of Yorktown and Gloucester, though laying down their arms as prisoners of war, should be sent home-the Britons to Britain, and the Germans to Germany, under engagement not to serve against France, America, or their allies, until in due form exchanged. The American general declared these terms to be inadmissible, and the earl then agreed to waive them. It appears probable, indeed, that they were proposed only for the sake of form or show.

On this basis, then—as yielded by Cornwallis, on the morning of the 18th of October-a cessation of arms was continued, and a negotiation began. The commissioners, two field-officers being named on either side, conferred together, and discussed the terms that same day. All the artillery and public stores in the two forts, together with the shipping and boats in the two harbors, were to be surrendered by the English. On the other hand, private property of every kind was to be respected by the Americans and French. The

garrisons of Yorktown and Gloucester were to march out with the same honors of war as had been granted by Sir Henry Clinton at Charleston; the land forces to remain prisoners of the United States, and the naval forces prisoners of France. The soldiers were to be kept in Virginia, Maryland, or Pennsylvania, and as much by regiments as possible. The general, staff, and other officers not left with the troops, to be permitted to go to New York or to Europe on parole.

"It is remarkable," says an American historian, "that while Colonel Laurens, the officer employed by General Washington (in conjunction with the Vicomte de Noailles) was drawing up these articles, his father was closely confined in the Tower of London, of which Lord Cornwallis was constable. By this singular combination of circumstances, his lordship became a prisoner to the son of his own prisoner!"

The articles of capitulation, having been finally fixed by Washington and accepted by Cornwallis, were signed by the respective generals on the morning of the 19th of October. On the British side about five hundred men had been killed or wounded during the progress of the siege. At its close, the British and German troops, exclusive of the seamen, amounted to six thousand; but so great was the number of the sick and the disabled, that there remained less than four thousand fit for duty. At two o'clock that afternoon, as agreed in the capitulation, the Yorktown troops marched out with their drums beating, their arms shouldered, and their colors cased, to lay down their arms before the enemy, Americans and French, drawn out in line. The officer specially appointed to receive them was General Lincoln, the chief of their captives at Charleston, in the preceding year. Yet Washington, with his usual lofty spirit, had no desire to aggravate the anguish and humiliation of honorable foes. On the contrary, he bade all mere spectators keep aloof from the ceremony, and suppressed all public signs of exultation.

The scene which ensued is described by an eye-witness, a

French chaplain of the Comte de Rochambeau. The two lines of the allied army, says Abbé Robin, were drawn out for upward of a mile, the Americans having the right. The disproportion of heights and of ages in their men, and their soiled and ragged clothing, might be unfavorably contrasted with the neater and more soldierly appearance of the French. Yet, under such circumstances, the personal disadvantages of a raw militia should rather be looked upon as an enhancement of the triumph they had gained. The abbé was struck at seeing, from several indications, how much keener were at that time the animosity between the English and Americans than between the English and French. Thus, the English officers, when they laid down their arms, and were passing along the enemy's line, courteously saluted every French officer, even of the lowest rank-a compliment which they withheld from every American, even of the highest.

With the surrender of Lord Cornwallis the American war may be said to have concluded; so far, at least, as its active military operations were concerned. It was a war by no means, as we sometimes hear alleged of it, founded on any plain or palpable injustice in point of law, since, at the outset, when the taxes were first imposed, the English ministers might point to nearly all the highest authorities as affirming the abstract right of taxation we possessed. But beyond all doubt, it was a war proceeding on the grossest impolicy, from the moment it was seen how much resentment the exercise of that right provoked. For the mere barren assertion of that right for a mere peppercorn of rent-we alienated and, as it were, in wantonness, flung from us provinces which, at the peace of 1763, had been as contented and loyal as the shires along the Severn or the Thames. We grew wiser, but too late. Earnest and more earnest overtures, larger and then larger concessions, were tendered, from time to time, to the uprisen colonies, but always a few weeks or a few months beyond the period when they might yet have healed