We have already said that Lord Cornwallis, informed of the unfortunate turn which the British affairs had taken in South Carolina, resolved, although his own force was reduced, to hardly more than 1,000 effective men, to march to Virginia and effect a junction with General Phillips. Again the British commander complained bitterly of the sufferings and destitute condition of his troops. Neither cavalry nor infantry, he said, were fit to move, yet they must commence on the morrow a march of several hundred miles, through a country chiefly hostile, frequently desert, which did not afford one active or useful friend, where no intelligence was to be obtained, and where no communication could be established.[43] The march, however, was made through all these difficulties and impediments; and on the 25th of April, about a month after he had set out, he reached Petersburg, where he found the troops of General Phillips, who himself had died only a few days previously, and shortly after was reinforced also by four regiments sent from New York. On the approach of Cornwallis, La Fayette, having removed the most valuable stores from Richmond, abandoned that town and retired towards the north-west, to form a junction with General Wayne, who was now on his march with 1,000 of the Pennsylvanian levies to join the southern army. The assembly of Virginia, on the abandonment of Richmond, adjourned to Charlottesville, and increased powers, suitable to the emergency, were conferred upon Governor Jefferson. The prisoners under Burgoyne’s capitulation, who had been living for the last two years in this neighbourhood in great comfort, in their huts amid their gardens, were now also suddenly removed across the mountains to Winchester. In this central province all the scattered operations of active hostility converged, as it were, to a point. Cornwallis pursued La Fayette for thirty miles, in hopes of preventing his union with General Wayne, but being disappointed in this object, overran the country for sixty miles on the borders of the James River, and destroyed a vast amount of both public and private property; among the former the Virginian laboratory and armoury, in which a large quantity of arms, ammunition, and other stores, greatly needed by the Virginian army, were consumed. Whilst this devastation was going on in one direction, Tarleton was sent to make a dash at the Virginian assembly at Charlottesville and to carry off Jefferson. On his way he met twelve wagons laden with clothing and stores for Greene’s army, all of which he destroyed; he succeeded also in capturing seven members of assembly, but Jefferson, who had been warned of his danger, escaped.[44]