to pay at the end of two years, when the French law would make him master of his estates.  He bought material with the money, made the Baltimore belles, who were not then Secessionists, make the shirts, and started on his forced march again, with his troops clothed and partly shod, on the 20th.  He passed the hills where Washington stands, unconscious of the city that was to be there, and of the Long Bridge which shakes under McClellan’s columns.  He halted to buy shoes in Alexandria, which he reached in two days.  He pressed on to Fredericksburg, and was at Richmond on the 29th.  So that a light column can march in nine days from Baltimore to Richmond, though there be no railroad in working order.

This was the first march “Forward to Richmond” in history.  For the moment, it saved the city and its magazines from General Phillips, who had reached Manchester, on the opposite side of James River.  Phillips retired down the river, hoping to decoy Lafayette after him, on that neck of land, now, as then, a point so critical, between the James and York Rivers,—­and then to return by his vessels on the first change of wind, get in Lafayette’s rear, and shut him up there.  But it was another general who was to be shut up on that neck.  Phillips was called south to Petersburg, where, as we have seen, he died.  “Will they not let me die in peace?”

Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg with his Southern troops, including Tarleton’s horse, on the 20th of May.  He then had nearly six thousand men under his orders.  Lafayette had about thirty-two hundred, of whom only a few were cavalry, a volunteer body of Baltimore young gentlemen being the most of them.  The Virginia gentry had hesitated about giving up their fine blood-horses to mount cavalry on.  But Tarleton had no hesitation in stealing them for his troopers, nor Simcoe, his fellow-partisan, for his,—­so that Cornwallis had the invaluable aid of two bodies of cavalry thus admirably mounted, against an enemy almost destitute.  Both armies marched without tents, with the very lightest baggage.  It purely a light-infantry campaign, excepting the dashing raids of Tarleton and Simcoe.

Lafayette felt his inferiority of force,—­and as soon as Cornwallis joined, crossed back over James River at Osborn’s (say the bottom of the little-finger nail on our extempore map).  Cornwallis crossed at Westover, also marked now on the maps as Ruffin’s, some twenty miles lower down the river.  Lafayette felt the necessity of meeting Wayne, who was supposed to be coming from Pennsylvania; he therefore retraced his march of a few weeks before, followed by Cornwallis with his infantry;—­the cavalry had been on more distant service.  Cornwallis would have crushed Lafayette, if he had overtaken him; but Lafayette knew this as well as we do,—­marched nearly up to Fredericksburg again,—­protected it till its stores were removed,—­and then, after five days’ march more, westward, met Wayne with his eight hundred Pennsylvanians at Raccoon Ford