Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/287

 Rh American woman, who was the mistress of a French officer of distinction, had been instructed to go to Trenton. General Clinton was not convinced until it was too late to oppose the movement.

Even after Washington's plan had become clear to him, Sir Henry Clinton was unwilling to employ his whole available force in any operation important enough to have served as a diversion in favor of Lord Cornwallis. It is probably now impossible to say whether an expedition in force against Philadelphia, or up the Hudson, might not have caused the return of the allied army from their southern expedition. Clinton, however, contented himself with preparing to embark a corps for Yorktown, and sending a party under Benedict Arnold, who had lately returned from Virginia, to the coast of Connecticut. Arnold, at the head of two English regiments and one hundred Hessian chasseurs, reached New London on the 6th of September and stormed the fort, whose small garrison made an obstinate resistance. Arnold burned part of the town, the magazines, and the ships on the stocks. Those in the harbor escaped up the river.

It was not until the 19th of October that the British fleet put to sea to go to the assistance of Lord Cornwallis. The Hessian grenadiers and the other troops were carried as passengers on the men-of-war. On the 28th of October the fleet was off the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and received from the shore the news of Cornwallis's surrender. “This second Burgoynade,”