should he be retreating. Stuart, however, had met with reinforcements about fourteen miles from Eutaw, but continued his retreat to Monk's Corner, within twenty-five miles of Charleston.

Greene, when informed of the retreat, had followed with his main force almost to Monk's Corner; finding the number and position of the enemy too strong to be attacked with prudence, he fell back to Eutaw, where he remained a day or two to rest his troops, and then returned by easy marches to his old position near the heights of Santee.

Thence, as usual, he dispatched an account of affairs to Washington. "Since I wrote to you before, we have had a most bloody battle. It was by far the most obstinate fight I ever saw. Victory was ours; and had it not been for one of those little incidents which frequently happen in the progress of war, we should have taken the whole British army. I am trying to collect a body of militia to oppose Lord Cornwallis should he attempt to escape through North Carolina to Charleston. Charleston itself may be reduced, if you will bend your forces this way, and it will give me great pleasure to join your Excellency in the attempt; for I shall be equally happy, whether as a principal or subordinate, so that the public good is promoted."

Such was the purport of the intelligence received from Greene. Washington considered the affair at Eutaw Springs a victory, and sent Greene his congratulations. Fortune," writes he, "must have been coy indeed, had she not

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BATTLE OF EUTAW SPRINGS.

395

yielded at last to so persevering a pursuer as you

have been."

"I can say with sincerity, that I feel with the highest degree of pleasure the good effects which you mention as resulting from the perfect good understanding between you, the marquis, and myself. I hope it will never be interrupted, and I am sure it never can be while we are all influenced by the same pure motive, that of love to our country and interest in the cause in which we are embarked."

We will now resume our narrative of the siege of York own.

ENERAL LINCOLN had the honor

on the night of the 6th of October, 1781, of opening the first parallel before Yorktown. It was within six hundred yards of the enemy; nearly two miles in extent, and the foundations were laid for two redoubts. He had under him a large detachment of French and American troops, and the work was conducted with such silence and secrecy in a night of extreme darkness, that the enemy were not aware of it until daylight. A severe cannonade was then opened from the fortifications; but the men were under cover and continued working-the greatest emulation and good-will prevailing between the officers and soldiers of the allied armies thus engaged.

By the afternoon of the 9th the parallel was completed, and two or three batteries were ready to fire upon the town. "General Washington put the match to the first gun," says an observer who was present; a furious discharge of cannon and mortars immediately followed, and Earl Cornwallis received his first salutation." 1

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Governor Nelson, who had so nobly pledged his own property to raise funds for the public ser1 Thacher's Military Journal.

ALLIED ATTACK ON YORKTOWN. 397

vice, gave another proof of his self-sacrificing patriotism on this occasion. He was asked which part of the town could be most effectively cannonaded. He pointed to a large handsome house on a rising ground as the probable head-quarters of the enemy. It proved to be his own.1

The governor had an uncle in the town, very old, and afflicted with the gout. He had been for thirty years secretary under the royal colonial government, and was still called Mr. Secretary Nelson. He had taken no part in the Revolution, unfitted, perhaps, for the struggle, by his advanced age and his infirmities; and had remained in Yorktown when taken possession of by the English, not having any personal enmity to apprehend from them. He had two sons in Washington's army, who now were in the utmost alarm for his safety. At their request Washington sent in a flag, desiring that their father might be permitted to leave the place. “I was a witness," writes the Count de Chastellux in his memoirs, "of the cruel anxiety of one of those young men, as he kept his eyes fixed upon the gate of the town by which the flag would come out. It seemed as if he were awaiting his own sentence in the reply that was to be received. Lord Cornwallis had not the inhumanity to refuse so just a request."

The appearance of the venerable secretary, his stately person, noble countenance, and gray hairs, commanded respect and veneration. "I can never recall without emotion," writes the suscep tible count, "his arrival at the head-quarters of

1 Given on the authority of Lafayette Sparks, viii. 201.

General Washington. He was seated, his attack of the gout still continuing, and while we stood around him, he related with a serene visage what had been the effect of our batteries." 1

His house had received some of the first shots; one of his negroes had been killed, and the headquarters of Lord Cornwallis had been so battered, that he had been driven out of them.

The cannonade was kept up almost incessantly for three or four days from the batteries above mentioned, and from three others managed by the French. "Being in the trenches every other night and day," writes an observer already quoted, "I have a fine opportunity of witnessing the sublime and stupendous scene which is continually exhibiting. The bomb-shells from the besiegers and the besieged are incessantly crossing each other's path in the air. They are clearly visible in the form of a black ball in the day, but in the night they appear like a fiery meteor with a blazing tail, most beautifully brilliant, ascending majestically from the mortar to a certain altitude, and gradually descending to the spot where they are destined to execute their work of destruction. When a shell falls, it whirls round, burrows and excavates the earth to a considerable extent, and, bursting, makes dreadful havoc around." "Some of our shells, over-reaching the town, are seen to fall into the river, and bursting, throw up columns of water like the spouting monsters of the deep."

The half-finished works of the enemy suffered

1 Chastellux, vol. ii. pp. 19-83.

2 Thacher.