The French
army at Newport was beginning to move towards New York and
Clinton had intercepted letters from Washington to La Fayette
revealing a serious design to make an attack with the aid of the
French fleet. Such was the game which fortune was playing with
the British generals. Each desired the other to abandon his own
plans and to come to his aid. They were agreed, however, that
some strong point must be held in Virginia as a naval base, and
on the 2d of August Cornwallis established this base at Yorktown,
at the mouth of the York River, a mile wide where it flows into
Chesapeake Bay. His cannon could command the whole width of the
river and keep in safety ships anchored above the town. Yorktown
lay about half way between New York and Charleston and from here
a fleet could readily carry a military force to any needed point
on the sea. La Fayette with a growing army closed in on Yorktown,
and Cornwallis, almost before he knew it, was besieged with no
hope of rescue except by a fleet.
Then it was that from the sea, the restless and mysterious sea,
came the final decision. Man seems so much the sport of
circumstance that apparent trifles, remote from his
consciousness, appear at times to determine his fate; it is a
commonplace of romance that a pretty face or a stray bullet has
altered the destiny not merely of families but of nations.
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