A deadly apathy in regard
to the war seems to have fallen upon many parts of the country.
The Bay now in control of the French fleet was quite safe for
unarmed ships. Half the Americans and some of the French embarked
and the rest continued on foot. There was need of haste, and the
troops marched on to Baltimore and beyond at the rate of twenty
miles a day, over roads often bad and across rivers sometimes
unbridged. At Baltimore some further regiments were taken on
board transports and most of them made the final stages of the
journey by water. Some there were, however, and among them the
Vicomte de Noailles, brother-in-law of La Fayette, who tramped on
foot the whole seven hundred and fifty-six miles from Newport to
Yorktown. Washington himself left the army at Elkton and rode on
with Rochambeau, making about sixty miles a day. Mount Vernon lay
on the way and here Washington paused for two or three days. It
was the first time he had seen it since he set out on May 4,
1775, to attend the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, little
dreaming then of himself as chief leader in a long war. Now he
pressed on to join La Fayette. By the end of the month an army of
sixteen thousand men, of whom about one-half were French, was
besieging Cornwallis with seven thousand men in Yorktown.
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