The British were beginning to be hard pressed in the South. The struggle had been long and disappointing, and burning and looting and the horrors of civil war had spread over a large area. Two Continental armies had been lost in rapid succession, and there had been months when one disaster seemed to follow upon another; but gradually the British were being driven away from their ships and bases of supply on the coast. The heat of summer had brought much sickness to their camps, and General Greene, next to Washington the most skilful of the Revolutionary generals, had perfected his "science of losing battles" to the point where his opponents might claim almost every engagement as a victory and yet the advantage remained with the Americans. Recently the British had lost a large part of their light troops. In March, 1781, Cornwallis decided to leave General Rawdon, with whom Lafayette had danced in London, to face Greene, while he himself went to Virginia, joined Benedict Arnold and General Phillips there, and returned with them to finish the conquest of the South. Washington learned of the plan and knew that if it succeeded General Greene might be crushed between two British forces. Arnold and Phillips must be kept busy in Virginia. Steuben was already on the ground; Anthony Wayne was ordered to hurry his Pennsylvanians to the rescue; and Lafayette, being near the point of danger, was turned back. He found new orders when he reached Head of Elk.

The scene was being set in Virginia, not in New York, for the last act of the Revolutionary War; but neither he nor his men realized this, and if Lafayette was disappointed, the men were almost in a state of panic. They began deserting in large numbers. "They like better a hundred lashes than a journey to the southward," their commander wrote. "As long as they had an expedition in view they were very well satisfied; but the idea of remaining in the Southern states appears to them intolerable, and they are amazingly averse to the people and climate." Most of them were New England born. He hastened to put many rivers between them and the land of their desire; and also tried an appeal to their pride. In an order of the day he stated that his force had been chosen to fight an enemy superior in numbers and to encounter many dangers. No man need desert, for their commander would not compel one of them to accompany him against his will. Whoever chose to do so might apply for a pass and be sent back to rejoin his former regiment. They were part of his beloved light infantry of the previous year, with all this implied of friendship and interest on both sides, and this appeal worked like a charm. Desertion went suddenly and completely out of fashion; nobody asked for a pass, and one poor fellow who was in danger of being sent back because he was lame hired a cart to be saved from this disgrace.

Lafayette's men had once been better dressed than the average; but their present ragged clothing was entirely unsuited to the work ahead of them, being fit only for winter wear in the North. As usual, money and new garments were equally lacking, and as usual this general of twenty-three came to the rescue. When he reached Baltimore he let the merchants know that according to French law he was to come into full control of all his property on reaching the age of twenty-five, and he promised to pay two years hence for everything he ordered, if the government did not pay them earlier. On the strength of this he borrowed two thousand guineas with which to buy overalls, hats, and shoes; and he smiled upon the ladies of Baltimore, who gave a ball in his honor, told them confidentially of his plight, and so stirred their patriotism and sympathy that they set to work with their own fair hands and made up the linen he bought for shirts.

Phillips and Arnold had joined forces near Norfolk, and, since the British were in control of Chesapeake Bay, could go where they chose. Lafayette believed they would soon move up the James River toward Norfolk to destroy supplies the Americans had collected. He resolved to get to Richmond before them, though he had twice the distance to travel. With this in view he set out from Baltimore on the 19th of April, moving with such haste that his artillery and even the tents for his men were left to follow at a slower pace. On the day before he left Baltimore the British, under General Phillips, who outranked Arnold, began the very march he had foreseen. Steuben's Virginia militia put up the best defense it could, but, being inferior in numbers and training, could only retire inch by inch, moving supplies to places of greater safety as it went. But it retired hopefully, knowing Lafayette to be on the way.

Continuing to advance, partly by land and partly by water, the British reached Petersburg, only twenty-three miles from Richmond. They passed Petersburg and pressed on. On April 30th they reached Manchester on the south bank of the James, directly opposite Richmond. There, to General Phillips's amazement, he beheld more than the town he had come to take; drawn up on the hills above the river was Lafayette's force, which had arrived the night before. He had only about nine hundred Continentals in addition to his militia, and the British numbered twenty-three hundred, but Phillips did not choose to attack. He contented himself with swearing eloquently and giving orders to retire. Lafayette had the satisfaction of learning, through an officer who visited the British camp under flag of truce, that his enemy had been completely surprised. But the young Frenchman felt it necessary to explain to Washington just how he had been able to do it. "The leaving of my artillery appears a strange whim, but had I waited for it Richmond was lost.... It was not without trouble I have made this rapid march."

Lafayette was to be under General Greene and expected to find orders from him waiting at Richmond. Not finding them, he decided he could best serve the cause by keeping General Phillips uneasy, and followed him down the James; but, being too weak to attack except with great advantage of position, he prudently kept the river between them. The military journal kept by Colonel Simcoe, one of the British officers charged with the unpleasant duty of watching Arnold, admits that this was "good policy," though he longed to take advantage of what he called his French adversary's "gasconading disposition and military ignorance" and make some counter-move which his own superior officers failed to approve.

This retreat of the British down the James, followed by Lafayette, was the beginning of that strange contra-dance which the two armies maintained for nine weeks. Sketched upon a map of Virginia, the route they took resembles nothing except the aimless markings of a little child. The zigzag lines extend as far west as the mountains at Charlottesville, as far south as Portsmouth, as far north as Fredericksburg and Culpeper, and end at Yorktown.

Cornwallis had not approved of General Clinton's conduct of the war, believing the British commander-in-chief frittered away his opportunity. Cornwallis said he was "quite tired of marching about the country in search of adventure." The experiences he was to have in Virginia must have greatly added to that weariness.

He sent word to Phillips to join him at Petersburg. General Phillips turned his forces in that direction, but it proved to be his last order. He was already ill and soon lapsed into unconsciousness and died. His death placed Arnold again in command until Cornwallis should arrive. It was during this interval that Arnold took occasion to write Lafayette about prisoners of war. Mindful of his instructions to have nothing to do with Arnold except to punish him, Lafayette refused to receive the letter, saying to the messenger who brought it that he would gladly read a communication from any other British officer. Arnold had a keen interest in the treatment of prisoners—for very personal reasons. A story was current to the effect that one of Lafayette's command who was taken prisoner was questioned by Arnold himself and asked what the Americans would do to him in case he was captured. "Cut off the leg which was wounded in your country's service, and hang the rest of you!" was the prompt reply. The renegade general was not popular in either army. Soon after Cornwallis's arrival he was ordered elsewhere, and his name fades out of history.

Lafayette counted the hours until Wayne should join him, but Cornwallis reached Virginia first, with troops enough to make Lafayette's situation decidedly grave. All the Americans could do was to follow the plan Steuben had adopted before Lafayette's arrival; retreat slowly, removing stores to places of safety whenever possible. General Greene gave Lafayette permission to act independently, but, while this enabled him to make quick decisions, it increased his load of responsibility and did not in the least augment his strength.

In the North he had longed for more to do; here it was different. He wrote Alexander Hamilton, "For the present, my dear friend, my complaint is quite of the opposite nature," and he went on with a half-humorous account of his duties, his situation, and the relative strength of the two armies. The British, he thought, had between four thousand and five thousand men. "We have nine hundred Continentals. Their infantry is near five to one, their cavalry ten to one. Our militia is not numerous, some without arms, and are not used to war." Wayne's men were necessary even to allow the Americans to be beaten "with some decency." "But," he added, "if the Pennsylvanians come, Lord Cornwallis shall pay something for his victory!" The Virginia militia showed symptoms of deserting as harvest-time approached and the call of home duties grew strong. Then there was the danger of contagious disease. "By the utmost care to avoid infected ground, we have hitherto got rid of the smallpox," Lafayette wrote in another letter. "I wish the harvest-time might be as easily got over."

Cornwallis was fully aware of his superior numbers and had a simple plan. "I shall now proceed to dislodge Lafayette from Richmond, and with my light troops to destroy magazines or stores in the neighborhood.... From thence I propose to move to the neck at Williamsburg, which is represented as healthy ... and keep myself unengaged from operations which might interfere with your plan for the campaign until I have the satisfaction of hearing from you," he wrote Clinton. He was very sure that the "aspiring boy," as he contemptuously called Lafayette, could not escape him. But the "boy" had no intention of being beaten—"indecently"—if he could hold out until Wayne arrived. He knew that one false move would be his ruin and there was no wild planning. "Independence has rendered me more cautious, as I know my warmth," he told Hamilton. He knew how to travel swiftly, and sometimes it was necessary to move as swiftly as possible. Even so the British advance might come up just as the last of his little force disappeared. If Cornwallis tried a short cut to head him off, he changed his direction; and more of those apparently aimless lines were traced upon the map.

On the 10th of June Wayne joined him about thirty-five miles west of Fredericksburg. His force was smaller than Lafayette had hoped for, "less than a thousand men in all"; but from that time the Continental troops no longer fled. Indeed, Cornwallis no longer pursued them, but veered off, sending General Tarleton's famous cavalry on a raid toward Charlottesville, where it made prisoners of several members of the Virginia legislature and almost succeeded in capturing Gov. Thomas Jefferson. Another portion of his force turned its attention upon Steuben where he was guarding supplies. But gradually pursuit became retreat and the general direction of the zigzag was back toward the sea. The chances were still uncertain enough to make the game exciting. There was one moment when Lafayette's flank was in imminent danger; his men, however, marched by night along a forgotten wood road and reached safety. Six hundred mounted men who came to join him from neighboring counties were warmly welcomed, for he sorely needed horses. At one time, to get his men forward more speedily for an attack—attacks were increasingly frequent—each horse was made to carry double. After he and General Steuben joined forces on the 19th of June the English and Americans each had about four thousand men, though in the American camp there were only fifteen hundred regulars and fifty dragoons.

Weapons for cavalry were even scarcer than horses. Swords could not be bought in the state; but Lafayette was so intent upon mounted troops that he planned to provide some of them with spears, "which," he argued, "in the hands of a gentleman must be a formidable weapon." Thus reverting to type, as biologists say, this descendant of the Crusaders drove his enemy before him with Crusaders' weapons down the peninsula between the York and the James rivers.