which the inhabitants were plundered made many of them imagine that no means of deception and vengeance were unjustifiable. Hitherto the French fleets and troops had not afforded much direct assistance to the Americans, but they had impeded and embarrassed the operations of the British Commander-in-Chief. He had intended to sail against Charleston so early as the month of September, 1779, but the unexpected appearance of Count D'Estaing on the southern coast had detained him at New York till the latter part of December. It was his intention, after the reduction of Charleston, vigorously to employ the whole of his force in the subjugation of the adjacent provinces, but information, received about the time of the surrender of the town, that Monsieur de Ternay, with a fleet and troops from France, was expected on the American coast, deranged his plan and induced him to return to New York with the greater part of his army, leaving Cornwallis at the head of 4,000 men to prosecute the southern conquests. Clinton sailed from Charleston on the 5th of June. After the reduction of Charleston and the entire defeat of all the American detachments in those parts, an unusual calm ensued for six weeks. Imagining that South Carolina and Georgia were reannexed to the British empire in sentiment as well as in appearance, Cornwallis now meditated an attack on North Carolina. Impatient, however, as he was of repose, he could not carry his purpose into immediate execution. The great heat, the want of magazines, and the impossibility of subsisting his army in the field before harvest, compelled him to pause. But the interval was not lost. He distributed his troops in such a manner in South Carolina and the upper parts of Georgia as seemed most favorable to the enlistment of young men who could be prevailed on to join the royal standard; he ordered companies of royal militia to be formed; and he maintained a correspondence with such of the inhabitants of North Carolina as were friendly to the British cause. He informed them of the necessity he was under of postponing the expedition into their country, and advised them to attend to their harvest and to remain quiet till the royal army advanced to support them. Eager, however, to manifest their zeal and entertaining sanguine hopes of success, certain Tories disregarded his salutary advice and broke out into premature insurrections, which were vigorously resisted and generally suppressed by the patriots, who were the more numerous and determined party. But one band of Tories, amounting to 800 men, under a Colonel Bryan, marched down the Yadkin to a British post at the Cheraws and afterward reached Camden.