André was brought to trial before fourteen general officers, among whom were the Marquis de Lafayette and Baron Stuben, and was by all the customs of war, and “according to the law and usage of nations,” sentenced to be hanged. “His appeal to die by shooting rather than by hanging was refused. As General Greene is reported to have said, to have mitigated the sentence would have been to doubt its justice. So he died the death of a spy, as from his own confession and action he deserved, but he died bravely and calmly, like a gallant gentleman of England.” No such death created more controversy, or raised more hysterical sympathy. The whole business was bad, and André soiled his hands in touching it at all, let alone the fact of his being in plain clothes within the enemy’s lines, which at once placed him without doubt in the position of a spy. His reasons for going there, assumed to be patriotic, were largely personal, for promotion was to reward success; and they have little to do with the matter. However good the reasons, the means were vile; too vile even to justify the end. Washington was censured severely for his severity at the time, but no one now would blame him. He had his duty to his country to do, and he did it. None the less, André’s bones were eventually moved to Westminster Abbey, and a fulsome tablet records the manner of his death. * * * * * Meanwhile, Cornwallis in the Carolinas scored a victory at Guildford Courthouse, where the Guards, the old 71st, and the 23rd and 33rd, defeated an inferior force of militia and what were fast becoming seasoned troops, but the task was too heavy for his strength. “My cavalry,” he sadly writes, “wanted everything, and the infantry everything but shoes.” So he marched, with sundry skirmishes of little value in various places, north-east towards York Town, and Lord Rawdon, who practically commanded the other wing, fell back south-east towards Charleston, with the 3rd, 63rd, and 64th. While Greene watched and “contained” the latter, Washington and Rochambeau, giving up the long-cherished idea of the defence of the Hudson and the capture of New York, moved into Virginia to assist York Town. When the first parallel of the siege was completed, Washington fired the first shot, and soon after, for the second time in this hapless war, a British general with an army surrendered to the Continental levies, just four years after the defeat of Burgoyne.