Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/276

262 At New York there had been much suffering in both the British army and the population. The fleet of admiral Arbuthnot had not long sailed with the troops of Sir Henry Clinton to Charlestown, when the winter set in with a severity which had not been experienced in the memory of man. The rivers and estuaries of the sea were soon frozen up, and by January the North River was covered with ice so thick, that the greatest army and the most ponderous artillery might have crossed to New York with perfect safety. This occasioned great alarm in the inhabitants, lest Washington should seize on this opportunity, during the absence of the main army and the commander-in-chief, and attack it with all his force.Knyphausen made all possible preparations for defence, landed the seamen from the ships of war, and enrolled the inhabitants in bodies to support the regulars and the militia.

But Washington was in no condition for such an enterprise; he was himself in the most deplorable plight. The congress, who had little money and less credit, left him and his army to the mercy of famine and the elements in his head-quarters at Morristown.



The British had well scoured and exhausted the surrounding country in the preceding year; and Washington found himself, after urgent but vain appeals to congress, compelled to make fresh levies of provisions wherever he could find them. In one of these marauding raids on their own countrymen, the so-called lord Stirling was driven from Staten Island, with the loss of a considerable number of his men. In the following month, February, the English made a more successful march across the ice to White Plains, where they surprised a fort, and took the commandant of the district and his garrison prisoners. The distresses of Washington's army increasing fearfully, neither men nor officers having either much food or decent clothing in such inclement weather, numbers walked away, so that his army, nominally thirty-five thousand men, did not, in reality, amount to twelve thousand. Whole brigades now began to declare that they would return home, unless speedy relief arrived. The officers presented a memorial to Washington, declaring that they had lost all confidence in the legislature! "Reason and experience," they said, "forbid that we should have any. Few of us have private fortunes; many have families, who are already suffering everything that can be received from an ungrateful country." They protested that their wives and children were starving, and that they would retire from the service. This roused the congress sufficiently to induce them to send commissioners to examine the state of Washington's camp. These fully confirmed the reports of Washington and the complaints of the army. They stated that the soldiers had received no pay for five months; that they were penniless, and destitute of all credit; but the congress, though it promised relief, did not or could not send any; and on the 25th of May, two Connecticut regiments paraded under arms, declaring that they would abandon the camp, and seek subsistence at the point of the bayonet. Washington found it difficult to suppress this state of mutiny; and, in fact, nothing but the high esteem in which he was held enabled him to keep any portion of the army together. He entertained the most