When he moved, Washington moved also; outstripped him; caught him at a disadvantage at Monmouth Court House (June 28, 1778); and would inevitably have beaten him most seriously had not Charles Lee again disobeyed him and spoiled the decisive movement of the day,—Charles Lee, the soldier of fortune whom the Americans had honored and trusted. He had disobeyed before, when Washington was retreating hard pressed from New York. This time he seemed to play the coward. It was not known until afterwards that he had played the traitor, too. Clinton got off, but in a sort of rout, leaving his wounded behind him. “Clinton gained no advantage except to reach New York with the wreck of his army,” was the watchful Frederick’s comment over sea. “America is probably lost for England.” [Illustration: CHARLES LEE] Even the seas were no longer free for the movements of the British fleets, now that France was America’s ally and French fleets were gathering under orders for the American coast. Every month the war had lasted the English had found their commerce and their movement of stores and transports more and more embarrassed by the American privateersmen. There were bold and experienced seamen at every port of the long coast. The little vessels which were so easily set up and finished by skilful carpenters and riggers in almost any quiet inlet were sure to be fast and deftly handled when they got to sea; kept clear of his Majesty’s fleets and of too closely guarded harbors; cruised whithersoever the wits of their sagacious masters took them; and had generally to be heavily overmatched to be beaten. They had taken more than five hundred British soldiers from the transports before the Congress at Philadelphia had uttered its Declaration of Independence. Their prizes numbered more than four hundred and fifty the year of Saratoga and Brandywine and the fight in the morning’s mist at Germantown, though there were seventy ships of war upon the coast. The very coasts of England herself were not safe against them. Mr. Franklin went to France in the autumn of 1776 with his pocket full of blank letters of marque, and American privateersmen from out the French ports caught prizes enough in English waters to keep the commissioners in Paris well found in money for their plans. In January, 1778, Captain Rathburne, in the _Providence_, actually seized the fort in the harbor of Nassau in New Providence of the Bahamas, and took possession of town and shipping; and in the spring of that same year John Paul Jones performed the same daring feat at Whitehaven by Solway Firth in England itself.