Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 11

At dawn they encountered two out of three English regiments, which had been at Princetown, on the march. These were the 17th and 55th, hastening to join Cornwallis at Trenton. They imagined the Americans, owing to a thick fog, to be a body of Hessians; but, on discovering the mistake, a sharp fight took place, and for some time the two British regiments withstood Washington's whole force. Colonel Mawhood, the English commander, posted his force advantageously on a rising ground betwixt the Americans and Princetown, sent back his baggage wagons, and dispatched messengers to bring up the 40th regiment, still in Princetown, with all speed. He then charged the American van with fixed bayonets, and drove them back upon a ravine in their rear. In endeavouring to reorganise his broken lines at this point, the American general, Mercer, was mortally wounded, and taken prisoner. At this crisis Washington galloped up to restore order, brought up fresh forces, and charged gallantly on the English at the ravine. The slaughter at this place was severe; nine of Washington's officers fell, and he himself ran the most imminent hazards. The 40th not arriving, Washington managed to force his way betwixt the two English regiments. The 17th continued its march for Trenton; the 55th fell back upon Princetown, where the 40th, which had defended itself in the college, after losing a considerable number of prisoners, joined the 55th, and retreated upon Brunswick.

In this engagement the English lost three hundred prisoners, chiefly through the slow work of defending the baggage train, besides a good many killed and wounded. The Americans admitted the loss of a hundred, besides the officers already mentioned; but there is every reason to believe that their loss was far heavier. Washington found no rest at Princetown. Cornwallis no sooner heard the cannonading near Princetown than he immediately comprehended Washington's ruse, and, alarmed for his magazines at Brunswick, he hastened in that direction. Washington, aware of his approach, found it necessary to relinquish the attempt on Brunswick. His troops were exhausted; all had been one whole night without sleep, some of them longer; many of them had no blankets, many were barefoot, all very thinly clad. He therefore hastened across Millstone river, broke down the bridge behind him to stop pursuit, and posted himself on the high ground at Morristown, where there were very strong positions. Here he received additional troops, and entrenched himself.

Cornwallis, not aware of the real weakness of Washington's army after all its additions, again sate down quietly for the winter at Brunswick. For six months the whole British army now lay still. Howe, in comfortable quarters at New York, once more, instead of pursuing the advantage over the Americans, and completing their entire dispersion, which he might easily have done, pleaded the severity of the weather, and allowed Washington and the congress to repair all their damages, to obtain fresh troops, fresh arms, and to revive the spirit of the American public at leisure. The weather, which was too severe for the luxurious, ease- loving English commander, was life-giving to the American commanders, whose soldiers had scarcely a coat to their backs, or a shoe to their feet.

Washington lost no time in scouring all quarters of the Jerseys. He made himself master of the coast opposite Staten Island, and seized on Newark, Elizabeth Town, and Woodbridge. The inhabitants had been plundered by the Hessians and English, and now they were plundered again by their own countrymen for having received the English well. Washington exerted himself to suppress this rancorous conduct of the New England and Virginian troops, and issued a proclamation absolving the people of their oaths to the English, and promising them protection on their taking a new oath to congress. The people of the Jerseys gladly accepted this offer. Some delegates in congress protested against this as an invasion of the civil power on the part of the commander; but congress at large supported Washington in it, and it worked well. Some of the loyalists, secretly availing themselves of the privilege, still professed to be good friends of England, and thus acted as spies at the English cantonments, and at Howe's head-quarters at New York.

And still Howe slept on at New York, and Cornwall at Brunswick! Howe had a good army and a powerful fleet at command, all lying within a short distance of Washington's camp. The royalist native troops were impatient to follow up the winter campaign, and disperse "the last traces of the enemy. There were several thousand of ardent royalists in arms in the New York state, under governor, now major-general, Tryon. They kept up communication with the royalists in other states, in Maryland and Delaware especially, who threatened to rise en masse, but no encouragement was given them. " In all these transactions," says Stedman, "there was something inexplicable to the rational part of mankind, who could not, by any well- founded arguments, defend the manner in which the troops were cantoned. They could not account for so slender an establishment being left at the two barriers, Trenton and Bordentown. The neglecting to fortify these posts nearest to the enemy, and most in danger, seemed to them unpardonable; the placing the British in the greatest number farthest from the enemy, in the rear of the Hessians; the not retaking instantly the posts on the banks of the Delaware, which posts covered the whole province of Jersey - all these circumstances were generally animadverted on with much severity."

But, during this long fatal lethargy of six months of the British commander, Washington and the congress were busily at work, and that under difficulties and discouragements of which, had the English had but a tenth share, would have sunk them for ever. Washington early took measures to protect his troops from the weather. He erected huts, store-forts, mills for grinding corn, and magazines for the twenty thousand stand of arms and one thousand barrels of gunpowder on the way from France. His right lay at Princetown, under Putnam; his left in the Highlands, under Heath; and he had parties out continually to cut off the supplies going to the British quarters at Brunswick and Amboy. Winter could not render him torpid. He had not been nurtured in the aristocratic effeminacies of England, but in hardships, as a backwoods land - surveyor, and an officer in the provincial army. He posted his forces to make the greatest possible show, though, in reality, he had only the shadow of an army. Recruits came in slowly, and he was frequently obliged to depend on raw levies of militia.

Washington employed himself actively also in reforming the hospital department. Inefficient surgeons were summarily dismissed, and more trustworthy ones appointed. The small pox had committed terrible ravages in the American army, and he had all the new recruits inoculated. These reforms were not carried through without much struggle and remonstrance. The dismissed officers appealed to congress, and demanded inquiries; but congress stood firm to their commander. Stirling, Mifflin, St. Clair, Stephen, and Lincoln, were made major-generals; and Lincoln, who had several times hastened to Washington's assistance, was promoted over the heads of all the brigadiers, having risen from the ranks of the Massachusetts militia. Eighteen more brigadiers were appointed; amongst them, Clinton, Cadwallader, Hunt, and Reed, who had resigned his post as adjutant-general, and was succeeded in it by- Timothy Pickering. Four regiments of horse were enlisted, and commanded by colonels Bland, Baylor, Sheldon, and Moylan. The quarter-master's and the commissary departments were reformed and strengthened.

There were many difficulties betwixt the Americans and English in respect to the exchange of prisoners. The British, during the war, had taken about five thousand, and the Americans three thousand, prisoners. At first, the English refused all exchange, on the ground that the Americans were rebels; and this determination was much strengthened by the refusal of congress to fulfil Arnold's agreement at The Cedars. A further obstacle arose from the capture of general Lee, who, having taken service in the American army before the resignation of his commission in the English service, was regarded as a deserter. The Americans offered six Hessian field-officers in exchange for him, but Howe did not feel at liberty to give up Lee, though he at length prevailed on his government to regard him as a prisoner of war. The Americans had declared, that, if Lee was shot as a deserter, they would treat the six Hessian officers the same. Whilst these matters were in discussion, not only the six Hessian officers, but colonel Campbell, an English officer, who had been taken at Boston, when he entered there unaware of the departure of Howe, were put into close prisons, and treated with singular severity. In fact, colonel Campbell, who had been left at Boston to the mercy of the fanatic New Englanders, had been treated in a manner contrary to all the laws of war, or the customs of civilised nations. Campbell, when taken, had three hundred men with him, and, consequently, several officers. The council of Boston had stripped both officers and men of their property - of the very necessaries of life. They had taken their side arms, and sold them, and confined them in most abominable prisons. Colonel Campbell's place of confinement was a loathsome dungeon in the common gaol at Concord. They drew on the walls of his apartment rude sketches of the gallows, as the object on which they meant him to terminate his life. On the 14th of February of this year (1777) he managed to get a letter to general Howe, in which he stated that he was lodged, in the depth of winter, with the frost and snow in the extreme, in a dirty, unglazed dungeon, of twelve or thirteen feet square, and shut out from the adjoining yard by two doors, with double locks and bolts; and mentioning other severities and privations to which he was subjected, too disgusting to be quoted. " The attendance," he wrote, " of a single servant is also denied me, and every visit from a friend positively refused; in short, sir, was a fire to happen in any chamber of the gaol, which is all wood, the chimney-stacks excepted, I might perish in the flames before the gaoler could go through the ceremony of unlocking the doors; although, to do him justice in his station, I really think him a man of humanity."

Howe dispatched this letter to Washington, who immediately interfered, as he had done before, on the representation of similar atrocities committed by his countrymen. Howe, on taking New York, had found a quantity of bullets in the military stores cut in half, and a nail driven through each, to make the most frightful wound possible. He sent some of them to Washington, protesting against the use of practices, in modern warfare, of so diabolical a character. Washington replied that, till then, such infernal inventions were unknown to him, and, denouncing them in the language of an honourable nature, he pledged himself to prevent further use of them. On the present occasion he at once wrote to the council at Boston, informing them that general Lee was merely confined by the English in a commodious house, with genteel accommodations, and requiring that colonel Campbell and the Hessian officers should have equally good treatment. The matter was one of sound policy as much as of humanity, for the British held at the time three hundred American officers, whilst they held only about fifty English ones. The Americans endeavoured to lessen the disgrace of this barbarity, by complaining of the miserable treatment of the American prisoners at New York; but the truth appears to have been, that the English and Hessian prisoners came into the hands of the Americans better clothed and fed to begin with, and the American prisoners came half naked and half starved; and Howe, in his carelessness, had too much trusted these unfortunate men to the tender mercies of their' countrymen - the tories of New York. Howe earnestly disclaimed all knowledge of this ill treatment (it is certain that neither the British nor American commanders would sanction any cruelty); but, such was the rancour betwixt the republican and royalist Americans, that no opportunity of injuring one another was ever omitted. Congress, on its part, was, moreover, obstinately averse to exchange of prisoners. The American historian, Hildreth, says: - " Every prisoner sent in to New York was a recruit to the British army, while those received in return were men whose term of service had expired. This consideration of policy had more weight than pity for the suffering prisoners, whose protracted detention was, however, none the less ascribed to the impracticability and obstinacy of the British commander." Even Washington added to the difficulty, for he refused to give up an equal quantity of healthy and well-dressed Hessians and British for the same number of his own squalid and ragged soldiers. It was at this time that the states invented their national flag of thirteen stars and the like number of stripes for the thirteen states.

Meantime, their emissaries were both busy and successful at the court of France. The French, still smarting under the loss of the Canadas, of Nova Scotia, and other territories, saw with delight the colonies in arms against the mother country. Though the government still professed most amicable relations towards Great Britain, it winked at the constant sale of the prizes taken by American privateers, or those who passed for such, in their ports. The government had, as we have seen, supplied the insurgents with money and arms. It was now arranged betwixt Silas Deane and the French minister, Vergennes, that the supplies of arms and ammunition should be sent by way of the West Indies, and that the congress should remit payment in tobacco and other produce.

Franklin and Deane were now in constant communication with the French ministers, though they had as yet no public recognition; but France was busily clearing her way for the war, and preparing to ship over troops to America. The French government supplied the American agents with money for their purchases of arms and necessary articles for the troops, also to be repaid in tobacco. Two of the ships sent off with such supplies were captured by the British men-of- war; but a third, loaded with arms, arrived safely. The emissaries sent to other countries of Europe were wholly unsuccessful; Lee was not even allowed to cross the Spanish frontiers, and his errand was equally fruitless at Berlin.