The Student's Life of Washington; Condensed from the Larger Work of Washington Irving For Young Persons and for the Use of Schools

marquis had brought from France, and presented to them. He was proud of his troops, and had a young man’s ardor for active service. The inactivity which had prevailed for some time past was intolerable to him. The marquis saw with repining the campaign drawing to a close, and nothing done that would rouse the people in America, and be spoken of at the Court of Versailles. He was urgent with Washington that the campaign should be terminated by some brilliant stroke. Complaints, he hinted, had been made in France of the prevailing inactivity. The brilliant stroke, suggested with some detail by the marquis, was a general attack upon Fort Washington, and the other posts at the north end of the island of New York, and, under certain circumstances, which he specified, make a push for the city .
    Washington regarded the project of his young and ardent friend with a more sober and cautious eye. “It is impossible, my dear marquis,” replies he, “to desire more ardently than I do to terminate the campaign by some happy stroke; but we must consult our means rather than our wishes, and not endeavor to better our affairs by attempting things, which for want of success may make them worse…. It would, in my opinion, be imprudent to throw an army of ten thousand men upon an island, against nine thousand, exclusive of seamen and militia. This, from the accounts we have, appears to be the enemy’s force. All we can do at present, therefore, is to endeavor to gain a more certain knowledge of their situation, and act accordingly.”
    The British posts in question were accordingly reconnoitred from the opposite banks of the Hudson, by Colonel Gouvion, an able French engineer. Preparations were made to carry the scheme into effect, should it be determined upon, when news was received of the unexpected and accidental appearance of several British armed vessels in the Hudson; the effect was to disconcert the plan and finally to cause it to be abandoned.
    Some parts of the scheme were attended with success. The veteran Stark, with a detachment of twenty-five hundred men, made an extensive forage in Westchester County, and Major Tallmadge with eighty men, chiefly dismounted dragoons of Sheldon’s regiment, crossed in boats from the Connecticut shore to Long Island, where the Sound was twenty miles wide; traversed the island on the night of the 22d of November, surprised Fort George at Coram, captured the garrison of fifty-two men, demolished the fort, set fire to magazines of forage, and recrossed the Sound to Fairfield, without the loss of a man: an achievement which drew forth a high eulogium from Congress.
    At the end of November the army went into winter-quarters; the Pennsylvania line in the neighborhood of Morristown, the Jersey line about Pompton, the New England troops at West Point, and the other posts of the Highlands; and the New York line was stationed at Albany, to guard against any invasion from Canada. The French army remained stationed at Newport, excepting the Duke of Lauzun’s legion, which was cantoned at Lebanon in Connecticut. Washington’s head-quarters were established at New Windsor, on the Hudson.
    We will now turn to the South to note the course of affairs in that quarter during the last few months.

CHAPTER LIX.
    T HE W AR IN THE S OUTH .—B ATTLE OF K ING’S M OUNTAIN .

    Cornwallis having, as he supposed, entirely crushed the “rebel cause” in South Carolina, by the defeats of Gates and Sumter, remained for some time at Camden, detained by the excessive heat of the weather and the sickness of part of his troops, broken down by the hardships of campaigning under a southern sun. He awaited also supplies and reinforcements.
    Immediately after the victory at Camden, he had ordered the friends to royalty in North Carolina “to arm and intercept the beaten army of General Gates,” promising that he would march directly to the borders of that province in their support: he now detached Major Patrick Ferguson to its western confines, to keep the war alive in that quarter. This resolute partisan had with him his own corps of light infantry, and a body of royalist militia of his own training. His whole force was between eleven and twelve hundred men, noted for activity and alertness, and unincumbered with baggage or artillery. His orders were to skirr the mountain country between the Catawba and the Yadkin, harass the whigs, inspirit the tories, and embody the militia under the royal banner. This done, he