139.  Our victory at Princeton, New Jersey; the British take Philadelphia; winter at Valley Forge; Burgoyne beaten; the king of France agrees to help us.—­Washington took his thousand prisoners over into Pennsylvania.  A few days later he again crossed the Delaware into New Jersey.  While Cornwallis was fast asleep in his tent, he slipped round him, got to Princeton,[24] and there beat a part of the British army.  Cornwallis woke up and heard Washington’s cannon.  “That’s thunder,” he said.  He was right; it was the thunder of another American victory.

[Illustration:  WASHINGTON ON HORSEBACK.]

But before the next winter set in, the British had taken the city of Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States.  Washington’s army was freezing and starving on the hillsides of Valley Forge,[25] about twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia.

But good news was coming.  The Americans had won a great victory at Saratoga, New York,[26] over the British general, Burgoyne.[27] Dr. Franklin was then in Paris.  When he heard that Burgoyne was beaten, he hurried off to the palace of the French king to tell him about it.  The king of France hated the British, and he agreed to send money, ships, and soldiers to help us.  When our men heard that at Valley Forge, they leaped and hurrahed for joy.  Not long after that the British left Philadelphia, and we entered it in triumph.

[Footnote 24:  Princeton:  see map in paragraph 135.]

[Footnote 25:  Valley Forge:  see map in paragraph 135.]

[Footnote 26:  Saratoga:  see map in paragraph 135.]

[Footnote 27:  Burgoyne (Bur’goin).]

140.  The war at the South; Jasper; Cowpens; Greene and Cornwallis.—­While these things were happening at the north, the British sent a fleet of vessels to take Charleston, South Carolina.  They hammered away with their big guns at a little log fort under command of Colonel Moultrie.  In the battle a cannon-ball struck the flag-pole on the fort, and cut it in two.  The South Carolina flag fell to the ground outside the fort.  Sergeant[28] William Jasper leaped down, and, while the British shot were striking all around him, seized the flag, climbed back, fastened it to a short staff, and raised it to its place, to show that the Americans would never give up the fort.  The British, after fighting all day, saw that they could do nothing against palmetto logs[29] when defended by such men as Moultrie and Jasper; so they sailed away with such of their ships as had not been destroyed.

[Illustration:  SERGEANT JASPER AND THE FLAG.]

Several years later, Charleston was taken.  Lord Cornwallis then took command of the British army in South Carolina.  General Greene, of Rhode Island, had command of the Americans.  He sent Daniel Morgan with his sharpshooters to meet part of the British army at Cowpens;[30] they did meet them, and sent them flying.  Then Cornwallis determined to either whip General Greene or drive him out of the state.  But General Greene worried Cornwallis so that at last he was glad enough to get into Virginia.  He had found North and South Carolina like two hornets’ nests, and the further he got away from those hornets, the better he was pleased.