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The king made him a field marshal, his commission to date from the day of Cornwallis's surrender, and he was invited by Richelieu to a dinner where all the field marshals of France were present, and where the health of Washington was drunk with words so full of reverent admiration that they did Lafayette's heart good.
Meredith," he said in a low voice, his face eager, yet worn with anxiety, "I find that since I left camp this morning the rest of the New Jersey and all of the Maryland flying camps have refused to stay, and have left us, though Cornwallis's advance is at Piscataway, and as he is pushing forward by forced marches he will reach the Raritan within two hours."
A big box of candles, which once belonged to Cornwallis's supplies, was found in good order in the cellar. They were lighted and arranged in the middle of the camp, where the ladies and the soldiers danced. The next day, Lafayette received his callers in the large Washington tent, which had been brought from Mount Vernon for this purpose.
Should they have arrived time enough to support me in the reception of Lord Cornwallis's first stroke, I should still have thought it well enough; but from an answer of General Wayne, received this day, and dated the 19th, I am afraid that at this moment they have hardly left Yorktown. Public stores and private property being removed from Richmond, this place is a less important object.
"Tell these gentlemen what you have told me," said Shelby, briefly; and the factor, cool and collected now, rehearsed the undeniable facts: how in Charlotte I had figured as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military family; how I had carried my malignancy to the patriot cause to the length of throwing a stanch friend to the commonwealth, to wit, one Owen Pengarvin, into the common jail; how, as Lord Cornwallis's trusted aide-de-camp, I had been sent with an express to Major Ferguson.
"At last," said Cornwallis, "we have run down the old fox, and we will bag him in the morning." In the morning again! But Washington was too sly a fox for Cornwallis to bag. During the night he led his army around Cornwallis's camp and, pushing on to Princeton, defeated the rear-guard, which had not yet joined the main body.
Beating them and thus having done with them, and not simply shutting them up in harbour, was what was desired by our admirals. This necessitated a close watch on the hostile ports; and how consistently that was maintained let the history of Cornwallis's command off Brest and of Nelson's off Toulon suffice to tell us.
It led also to the great blunder of Cornwallis's settlement of the land question in Bengal, which was an attempt to assimilate the Indian land-system to that of England, and resulted in an unhappy weakening of the village communities, the most healthy features of Indian rural life.
The report, when read, was received with a roar of laughter. Nothing was done. Hist. xvii. 58, 186. Lord Cornwallis's army surrendered at York Town, five days before Sir Henry Clinton's fleet and army arrived off the Chesapeak. Ann. Reg. xxiv. 136.
He covered the retreat, and, after some time, finding an advantageous position, he renewed the battle, and arrested the progress of the pursuing enemy. General Knyphausen, as soon as he heard the firing of Cornwallis's division, forced the passage of Chad's ford, attacked the troops opposed to him, and compelled them to make a precipitate and disorderly retreat.
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