These devastating but minor engagements were soon changed with the arrival of a combined British fleet and army operation under General Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis whose grand strategy of subduing the Americans was first setback in the Southern states, when his armies were defeated at Kings Mountain, only a day's march from Cornwallis and his army, and then his own army decisively defeated at Cowpens. With the southern campaign checked, Cornwallis received dispatches in Wilmington, North Carolina informing him that another British army under Generals William Phillips and Benedict Arnold had been sent to Virginia. Believing that North Carolina could not be subdued unless its supply lines from Virginia were cut, he decided to join forces with Phillips and since his army was still strong enough to strike directly into Virginia's tidewater and the heart of the Patriot resistance.