and on which the fate of the war depended, was a very
small one. It consisted of four thousand Frenchmen
and two thousand Americans. Passing through
Philadelphia, it arrived at Head of Elk on the 6th and 8th
of September, 1781. Already the Count de Grasse
had arrived in the Chesapeake with twenty-four ships
of the line, carrying seventeen hundred guns and
nineteen thousand seamen. Against him, on the 5th of
September, came Admiral Graves, with an inferior
force. The battle lasted two hours, and the English,
though not decidedly beaten, were not in a condition
to undertake anything more against the French.
They sailed off to New York four days later, leaving
de Grasse master of Chesapeake Bay.
The Frenchmen and Americans who had come from New York were now brought down the bay, and joined with Lafayette's corps and the French troops brought by de Grasse. The united army at Williamsburg on the 27th of September, 1781, consisted of about seven thousand Frenchmen, fifty-five hundred Continentals, and thirty-five hundred Virginian militia. In the ranks of the Continentals were companies from all the states north of the Carolinas. The English army at Yorktown numbered some seven thousand soldiers. Of these, not quite eleven hundred were subjects of the Margrave of Anspach-Bayreuth, rather more than eight hundred and fifty were subjects of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and the remainder, or about five thousand men, were subjects of the King of Great Britain, to whom all in this army had sworn obedience. About eight hundred marines fought on each side during the siege. The French fleet was
