When General Washington was fully apprized, that Count de Grasse was to visit this Continent, he made every provision for the attack of New York, where the enemy had about six thousand troops, and seven ships of the line, which were thought inadequate to its defence. He collected the troops, as well those of allies as our own, and made a movement towards New York. The delay of our recruits in coming in, a small reinforcement to the enemy from Europe, and some other circumstances, gave us reason to be apprehensive for the event of this attempt, though the magnitude of the object still urged the General to undertake it. It was the enemy's place of arms, the repository of their magazines, and the only harbor for large ships left them on this side of Halifax. Every preparation was accordingly made, when some circumstances deemed unfortunate at the time, but which like many others of our supposed evils have in the end been productive of good, occasioned an alteration in the destination of Count de Grasse. He sailed for the Chesapeake. The General still appearing to prosecute his first design moved his army, and made such preparations as induced the enemy to believe, that he meant to possess himself of Staten Island, as preparatory to his design upon New York. In the meantime the army filed off through Hackensack and Newark, to keep up the deception, and arrived by expeditious marches at the head of the Elk. Count de Grasse arrived at the critical moment, and Cornwallis, at the head of about seven thousand men, found himself completely invested at Yorktown by an army of near fourteen thousand regular troops. The British fleet, which arrived at New York about the time that Count de Grasse reached the Chesapeake, made an ineffectual attempt to relieve their army. They were defeated and compelled to return to New York, after losing the Terrible, a seventyfour, and two frigates; by which means, a junction of the fleet from Rhode Island was formed with that under the Count de Grasse. It arrived the day after the action, and narrowly escaped falling in with the English fleet. Our batteries were opened on the 7th. The enemy having evacuated their principal outworks and been repulsed in one or two sallies, our second parallel was begun on the 11th, within three hundred yards of their lines, and the least sanguine among the officers fix the end of the month as the era of Cornwallis's captivity. His whole force at York, and on the opposite side of the river, including seamen and regulars, amounts to about seven thousand men.