the Commander in Chief was not displeased at the dismissal of a man so haughty and impracticable; nor did the army, in whose estimation he had been visibly lessened since the disaster which had befallen him, appear much to regret his loss. For though the capture of General Lee was merely fortuitous, misfortune is in the minds of men nearly allied to disgrace, disgrace produces contempt, and contempt verges towards alienation and hatred.

No fooner had Sir Henry Clinton and the army evacuated Philadelphia, than Lord Howe prepared to fail with the fleet to New York. Repeated calms retarded his passage down the Delawar, so that he could not clear the Cape till the evening of the 28th of June: and on the 29th his Lordship reached Sandy Hook, whence he convoyed the army to New York. In a few days after the departure of Lord Howe, Count d'Estaing arrived off the coaft, and anchored in the night of the 8th of July at the mouth of the Delawar; so that Lord Howe narrowly escaped a surprise, which would probably have been attended with very fatal consequences.

On the 11th the French fleet, confifting of fifteen fail of the line, appeared off Sandy Hook, to which Lord Howe could oppose only eleven ships of very inferior magnitude and weight of metal. These were ranged with great skill and judgment in the harbor, in full expectation of an attack from

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the French flect, which seemed resolutely bent upon the attempt. But the American pilots on board declared it impossible for the large ships of D'Estaing's squadron to pafs the bar;-so that after eleven days tarriance he failed to Rhode Island, in order to co-operate with General Sullivan in an enterprise againft Newport.

The approach of the French fleet created the unpleasant neceffity of burning the Orpheus, Lark, Juno, and Cerberus frigates; and of finking the Flora and Falcon. The commander of the garrifon, Sir Robert Pigot, made every preparation for a vigorous defence; and Lord Howe, being at length reinforced by feveral ships from Englandpart of a squadron commanded by Admiral Byron, tardily dispatched after the Toulon fleet-immediately stood out to sea, though still inferior in force, in order to give battle to the French admiral, who feemed not unwilling to accept the challenge. After much manœuvring for the weather-gage, the fleets were feparated by a violent tempest, by which the great ships of the French squadron were fo much damaged that it was deemed by Count d'Estaing absolutely neceffary to steer for the port of Boston to refit. General Sullivan was in confequence compelled with chagrin and reluctance to withdraw his troops from Rhode Island.

After the storm, or rather during the storm, when the fury of it had in some degree fubfided,

the

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the Renown of fifty guns, Captain Dawson, fell in with the Languedoc of ninety guns, D'Estaing's own ship, which had loft both her rudder and her mafts, whom he engaged with such advantage as to flatter him with the profpect of an immediate capture, when the appearance of several other ships of the squadron compelled him to defist. Captain Raynor in the Isis, and Captain Hotham in the Prefton, both of fifty guns, fought with great gallantry the Zelé of seventy-four, and the Tonnant of eighty-but no ship on either side struck her colors. Lord Howe, with all poffible expedition, followed his antagonist to Boston, in the hope of a favorable opportunity of attack; but found the French fleet lying in Nantasket Road, so well defended by the forts and batteries erected on the points of land and the islands adjacent, that it was adjudged absolutely impracticable. Soon after this (October 1778) Lord Howe quitted the command to Admiral Gambier, having acquired in the course of the campaign much reputation by his skilful and vigorous exertions in a fituation peculiarly critical and hazardous.

The projects of Count d'Estaing being effectually disconcerted in America, he failed in the beginning of November to the West Indies, in order to second the operations of the Marquis de Bouillé, Governor of Martinico, who had already captured the important island of Dominique, to which he granted terms so favorable that the inhabitants had little reason to regret the change of masters. On the very fame day that the French fleet left Boston, a detachment of five thousand troops under convoy of a small squadron commanded by Commodore Hotham, failed from Sandy Hook, and arrived, fortunately without encountering the enemy in their course, at Barbadoes, December 10 (1778). Without fuffering the troops to disembark, an expedition was immediately resolved upon against the island of St. Lucia, where on the 13th a landing was effected. By the active exertions of General Meadows and Admiral Barrington, upon whom the command had now devolved, several of the advanced posts were carried, when Count d'Estaing appeared in view with a far fuperior force, having on board a large body of troops, with which he hoped to effect the entire reduction of the English islands. The squadron of Admiral Barrington confifted only of three ships of the line, two of fifty guns, and three frigates, which he stationed across the entrance of the Careenage, supported by several batteries erected on shore. On the morning of the 15th of December the French Admiral bore down with ten fail of the line, but met with so gallant a reception that he thought proper in a short time to draw off. In the afternoon he renewed the attack with his whole squadron, and a furious cannonade, directed chiefly against

I

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againft Admiral Barrington's division, was kept up for several hours, without making any impreffion upon the English line; and the French Admiral was again obliged to desist from his attack. He now landed a body of five thousand troops, and putting himself at their head marched with great resolution to the affault of the British lines: but they were received by General Meadows with the same determined valor as they had before experienced from Admiral Barrington; and being repulsed with great loss, the Count re-embarked his troops, and left the island to its fate. It foon after furrendered to the British arms on honorable terms of capitulation, and this conquest was confidered as much more than an equivalent for the loss of Dominique.

On the continent of America the war still raged with dreadful and unremitted malignity. In confequence of the horrid mode of warfare adopted by the Court of Great Britain, which in the midst of pleasure and festivity issued its orders to defolate and destroy, an expedition was undertaken by a Colonel Butler, in conjunction with one Brandt, an half Indian by birth, and a man beyond example cruel and ferocious, against the beautiful and flourishing settlement of Wyoming. This was an infant rifing colony, situated on the eastern branch of the Susquehanna, confifting of eight townships, in a country and climate luxuriantly fertile.