Washington, meanwhile, had persuaded the French Admiral, at Newport, to send his whole fleet to act against Portsmouth; and by land he sent Lafayette, with twelve hundred light infantry, to take command in Virginia.  Lafayette left Peekskill, feigned an attack upon Staten Island in passing, marched rapidly by Philadelphia to the head of the Chesapeake,—­they all call it the “head of Elk,”—­crowded his men on such boats as he found there, and, like General Butler after him, went down to Annapolis.  At Annapolis, with some of his officers, he took a little vessel, in which he ran down to Williamsburg to confer with Steuben.  He then crossed the James River, and reached the camp of Muhlenberg near Suffolk on the 19th of March.  The reader has only to imagine General Burnside shutting up Norfolk on the south and west just now, to conceive of Lafayette’s position, as he supposed it to be, when, on the 20th, he was told that the French fleet had arrived within the Capes.  But, alas! on the 23d, it proved that this was not the French fleet, but the English, which had so far injured the French fleet in an action that they had returned to Newport; so that it was Arbuthnot, and not Destouches, whose fleet had arrived at Hampton Roads.  Under their protection the English General Phillips relieved Arnold with two thousand more men; and it is at this moment that the active campaign of 1781 may be said to begin.

General Phillips immediately took command of the English army, for which he had sufficient force of light transports, and proceeded up James River.  He landed first at Burrel’s Ferry, opposite Williamsburg, into which city, till lately the capital of the State, he marched unmolested.  His different marauding parties had entire success in their operations; and it is to be observed that his command of the navigation was an essential element of that success.  “There is no fighting here,” wrote Lafayette, “unless you have a naval superiority, or an army mounted on race-horses.”  Under almost all circumstances a corps embarked on boats could be pushed along these rivers faster than an enemy marching on the land.  This remark, constantly verified then, will be much more important in the campaign now pending, in which these streams will, of course, be navigated by steam.  It must be remembered, also, that the State of Virginia was at this time the storehouse from which General Greene’s army in Carolina was supplied.  To destroy the stores collected here, and thus directly to break down the American army in the South, was Sir Henry Clinton’s object in sending out General Phillips.  To protect these stores and the lines of communication with the Southern army was the object of the American generals.  Had these designs been left unchanged, however, I should not now be writing this history.  Indeed, the whole history of the United States would have had another beginning, and the valley of the James River would have had as little critical interest, in the close of the American Revolution,