old Rome, in Rome's greatest days, is traditionally supposed to have been, that Cornwallis actually was. Throughout the whole of his long career he presented, first to his own, and then to a younger, generation, a living and most attractive example of antique and singleminded patriotism. In the House of Lords he had consistently opposed all schemes for the taxation and coercion of the colonists; but, when they flew to arms, and he was called upon to fight against them, Cornwallis held that, as a soldier, he was not at liberty to disobey the order. If he had been Governor-General of New England during the years that Sir Guy Carleton was Governor of Canada, it is, humanly speaking, almost certain that there would have been no American rebellion. If, after hostilities broke out, he had been Commander-in-Chief instead of Sir William Howe and Sir Henry Clinton, it is quite certain that British strategy would have been far less halting and desultory. The energy and enterprise, which subsequently marked his two campaigns in the Carolinas, revived the dying credit of our national generalship; and military students may still draw valuable lessons from the counter-operations which were planned with solid ability, and conducted with manly pertinacity, by Cornwallis on the one side, and by Nathanael Greene on the other.

England's crowning misfortune in the American war will always be connected with the memory of Lord Cornwallis. And yet, when Yorktown fell, the responsibility for its loss was attributed, and rightly attributed, not to the general who capitulated, but to the Com

he left to be distributed among the troops. There is a hearty letter from Cornwallis to his son on the subject of the Garter, which was bestowed on the Governor-General soon after his arrival at Calcutta. "I can assure you upon my honour," he wrote, "that I neither asked for it nor wished for it. The reasonable object of ambition to a man is to have his name transmitted to posterity for eminent services rendered to his country and mankind. Nobody asks or cares whether Hampden, Marlborough, Pelham, or Wolfe were Knights of the Garter." When, in obedience to the mandate of the King, Cornwallis opposed Fox's East India Bill, he insisted on resigning the Constableship of the Tower, so that no man might suspect him of having voted with the Court in order to keep an office.

mander-in-Chief at New York who had failed to support him, and to the First Lord of the Admiralty, whose scandalous mismanagement had resulted in the paralysis of our fleet at that moment of time when, and on the very spot where, the fortune of our empire was at stake. Sir Henry Clinton was recalled. In the House of Commons a very narrow majority indeed saved Lord Sandwich from a motion for inquiry into his administration of the Navy during the year 1781; and that motion, if successful, was to have been followed by an impeachment. But Parliament showed no inclination to bring Lord Cornwallis to account; all parties united in a strong desire as soon as possible to re-employ him;1 and, after no long while, the Governor-Generalship of our Eastern possessions was forced upon his reluctant acceptance. There he played a famous part; and, (although some features of his internal policy have been gravely questioned,) his probity and public spirit communicated to the Government of India that high and pure tone which, to the abiding honour of the British name, it has ever since retained. In 1798 he quelled the rebellion, and defeated a French invasion, in Ireland. With a courage all his own, and an authority which no man else could have exercised, he discountenanced, and greatly mitigated, the severities demanded and practised by the dominant party in that unhappy island. As plenipotentiary in Paris he negotiated the Peace of Amiens; and at the last, an old broken man, in his country's need and in quiet submission to her call, he sailed once more for India to die.

1 Very striking testimony to the esteem in which Cornwallis was held, subsequently to his misfortune at Yorktown, comes from two exactly opposite quarters. Soon after he landed in England, while he was still a prisoner on parole, the approbation and confidence of George the Third were conveyed to him in a most generous letter, written throughout by the royal hand. A year later Charles Fox referred to Lord Cornwallis in the House of Commons, at a time when the two old friends had become political opponents. The name of such a man, (said the orator,) might make Parliament consent to the voting of very extensive powers in a GovernorGeneral of India; but he was certain that nothing but the great character of that noble Lord could ever induce the Legislature to commit such power to one individual, at the distance of half the globe.

In November 1776 Lord Cornwallis was at the very top of his physical and mental powers. The Prince de Ligne, who knew war as intimately as he knew mankind, always maintained that a soldier was no longer at his best when the sap had ceased to mount. "I am aware," (said the uncompromising veteran,) "that the thirst for glory and the zeal for duty will, all through life, exalt men above themselves; but those admirable motives cannot replace that natural love of hazard, and fatigue, and adventures, which comes from the violent circulation of young and boiling blood. When I am told that an officer is a person of honour and loyalty, I reply that I am very glad to hear it, if only he has le diable au corps." 1 Cornwallis still preserved that indispensable, though oddly designated, qualification for active warfare at the time when he was commissioned by Howe to follow up the advantage which our army had obtained at Fort Washington. In after days. he was accompanied on his Mysore expedition by certain allied Rajahs, in command, but in the hour of battle not always at the head, of their respective contingents. These potentates, with a sense of injured dignity, sharpened by personal uneasiness at what they considered a very dangerous precedent for themselves, - complained that the Governor-General exposed himself under fire like a private grenadier. And during the invasion of the Jerseys, (when, instead of being a Viceroy, he was only a Major General on the Army List, and two good years on the right side of forty,) Cornwallis was never far in rear of his advance guard, and that advance guard was seldom much behind the enemy. With secrecy and celerity he passed six thousand British and German troops across the Hudson at points above King's Bridge. On the twentieth of

1 The section "Sur les jeunes gens; " Mélanges Historiques et Littéraires, par le Prince de Ligne.

2 All through 1776 Cornwallis was "Lieutenant General in America." He became a Lieutenant General on the Army List in August 1777.

The operations related in this chapter, and the two which follow, are clearly delineated in the map at the end of the volume.

November a party of sailors, whom Lord Howe had lent him, with infinite enjoyment dragged his heavy guns up half a mile of narrow stony road, and planted a battery on the top of a precipice which, within easy cannon-range, overlooked Fort Lee and the adjacent encampment. The surprise was all but complete. Cornwallis made a push to seize the passes over the Hackensac river, the occupation of which would have enabled him to shut up two thousand Provincials on a peninsula only fifteen miles long, and nowhere more than three miles wide; at the further end of which the sole retreat was across a league of sea-water patrolled by the British frigates. It was the most that Greene and his colonels could do to withdraw their regiments, their ammunition, and a couple of twelve-pounders. They left behind them thirty-two pieces of artillery mounted on the ramparts of the fort; a thousand barrels of flour, that before long were grievously missed; many tents, and much baggage; as well as a considerable amount of military reputation, and all that remained of the cheerfulness and confidence which had, up to a very recent period, inspired the Provincial forces.

These repeated blows descended upon a frame too ill-knit to resist their impact. The Revolutionary army was now in rapid course of disintegration and dissolution. Washington's nominal strength had fallen to less than six, and his real strength was not above four, thousand.1 Near five thousand of his people had been made prisoners in the course of twelve weeks; and the contagion of desertion, which had been epidemic in his cantonments, now raged after the manner of a plague. The ranks melted, it was said, like snow in summer; but that was too genial and Arcadian a metaphor to use in connection with the dreary and

1 These numbers were detailed in the text, and in the First Appendix, of The Battles of Trenton and Princeton, by William S. Stryker, Adjutant General of New Jersey, and President of the New Jersey Historical Society; Boston and New York, 1898. A better book on the subject could not be compiled.

PT. II.-VOL. II.

comfortless situation. For winter was setting in; the frost was sharp, and the wind cruel; the troops were wretchedly provided with tents and blankets; and Greene's soldiers, in the hurry of their escape from Fort Lee, had brought away with them nothing except their muskets. The militia, more homesick than ever, disappeared every night by scores and dozens. Those of them who scrupled to go off by stealth fondly reflected that they had only ten days more to serve, and proclaimed their intention of departing in mass so soon as their time was up. Even the regulars of the Continental line began to count, with ominous satisfaction, the dwindling residue of weeks during which they were bound by their contract to serve with the colours. A wreck of Washington's once numerous host lay in hopeless plight round and about the village of Hackensac; cut off from any base of supply; with no intrenching tools, and very few cannon. The Americans were certain to be beaten whenever the British came against them resolutely, and in full force; and, if beaten, they would be hustled down southwards between the Hackensac and the Passaic rivers, and destroyed or taken to a man. Their general was keenly alive to the peril in which he stood; and he already had learned enough of Cornwallis to know that it would not be the fault of that commander if so rare an opportunity was mishandled and wasted.1

Washington accordingly crossed the Passaic by the bridge at Acquackanonck, and retreated to Newark, where he abode a week until a report reached him that Howe was taking measures for landing a detachment at South Amboy in order to catch the American army in the rear. On Thursday the twenty-eighth of November that army filed out of Newark, with the English close upon their heels; 2 marched in two separate columns

1 Washington's three letters of November 21, 1776, to Major General Lee, to the President of Congress, and to Governor Livingston of New Jersey.

2 "Our force," wrote General Washington, "was by no means sufficient to make stand, with the least probability of success, against an enemy much superior in numbers, and whose advanced guards were entering the town by the time our rear got out." Letter of November 30, 1776.