Toward sunset on July sixth Lafayette crossed the causeways that led to the British position and opened an attack. General Wayne, whose popular nickname was “Mad Anthony,” led the advance with a thousand riflemen, dragoons, and two pieces of artillery. Lafayette, with twelve hundred infantry, was ready to support him. But at Wayne’s first advance he found that the whole British army was before him; he attacked with the greatest vigor; Lafayette, however, realizing that Cornwallis had prepared a surprise, ordered a retreat to General Muhlenberg’s station a half mile in the rear. Had Cornwallis pursued he must have defeated the American forces, which had to cross long log bridges over marshy land, but in his turn he feared an ambush, and was content to bring his men safely across the James and proceed to Portsmouth. The British were now at Portsmouth and the rest of Virginia in the Americans’ hands. Lafayette wrote a description of the situation to Washington, and added, “Should a French fleet now come into Hampton Roads, the British army would, I think, be ours.” Hardly had his letter reached Washington when a French ship arrived at Newport with word that the fleet of the French Count de Grasse had left the West Indies bound for Chesapeake Bay. Instantly Washington saw that he ought not now to direct his attack against Clinton in New York, but against Cornwallis in Virginia. Cornwallis, wanting to take up a strong position with easy access to the sea, began to move his army to Yorktown on August first. At the same time Lafayette arranged his forces so as to cut off any retreat of the enemy. And while this was going on, and the fleet of the Count de Grasse was nearing the coast, Washington and Rochambeau met in the old Livingston manor-house at Dobb’s Ferry on the Hudson on August fourteenth and planned their joint campaign against Yorktown. Then the two armies marched south. The Continental troops, many ragged and poorly armed, but with green sprigs in their caps, passed through Philadelphia on September second, and the French, more sprucely and gaily uniformed, followed them the next day. On September twelfth Washington reached Mount Vernon, which he had not seen for six years, and there entertained Rochambeau and other French officers. Two days later he took command of the allied forces at Williamsburg, and on the seventeenth visited De Grasse on his flag-ship, and completed plans for the siege. The army held the mainland, the French fleet blocked the path to the sea, and Cornwallis was trapped at Yorktown.