On December 2nd, Greene joined the American army at Charlotte and assumed command. He found the troops without pay, and their clothing in tatters. There was scarcely a dollar in the military chest, and subsistence was obtained by impressment; nevertheless he entered at once on active operations; determining, however, rather to harass the British army than, in the present weak condition of his troops, to risk a general action. But it was not the army alone which was on the alert. All the scattered settlements of Whigs and Tories were in hostile array, and pursued each other with almost savage fury. The excitable temperament of the South gave to the struggle a more terrible character than it had in the North. Everywhere were small parties under arms, some on one side some on the other, desperately bent on plunder and blood. At the close of this year England was satisfied with the progress which her arms had made in America; no ground of any consequence was lost in the North, while in the South, Georgia was entirely subdued and the royal government re-established. The possession of Charleston, Augusta, Ninety-Six and Camden, supported by an army in the field, secured entire control over the populous and wealthy parts of South Carolina. North Carolina was full of Tories, impatient to acknowledge the British crown on the arrival of Cornwallis. The three southern states were incapable of helping themselves, and the North, exhausted and penniless, was in no condition to help them. The colonies seemed almost sinking under the accumulated pressure of this long-protracted struggle. England, in the meantime, assailed by three European nations, and sustaining a war against two hemispheres, America and the East Indies, was putting forth energies and voting supplies on the most immense scale, as if the very demand increased her powers of exertion. The siege of Gibraltar, under its commander Elliot, was going on; great battles were fought on the West Indian and European seas; fleets and armies went to the East and to the West, and the new year commenced with preparations in all these various and remote scenes of action for new enterprise, for new effort. As regarded America herself, France, in addition to the troops under Rochambeau, sent out a large fleet at the commencement of this year, under the Count de Grasse, which, after having performed certain service in the West Indies, was to co-operate with Rochambeau and Washington on the coast of America.