treated in a manner suitable to his rank, and this not only in conformity with the laws of nations, but also in reciprocity for the good treatment which the English officers that were prisoners received on the part of the Americans. General Howe persisted in his refusal ; the Congress then resorted to reprisals. They ordered that lieutenant-colonel Campbell and five Hessian officers should be imprisoned and treated as general Lee. This order was executed even with more rigor than it prescribed. The lieutenant-colonel, being then at Boston, was thrown into a dungeon destined for malefactors. Washington blamed this excess; he knew that Lee was detained but not ill treated. He also apprehended reprisals, since there were more Americans in the hands of the English, than English in the hands of the Americans. He wrote with great earnestness to Congress upon this subject, but without effect; lieutenant-colonel Campbell and the Hessians were not liberated until general Howe had consented to consider Lee as a prisoner of war.

During these altercations the exchange of prisoners was entirely suspended. Those in the hands of the English at New York had to experience every sort of ill treatment. They were shut up in churches and in other places, exposed to all the inclemency of the air. They were not allowed sufficient nourishment; their fare was scanted even of coarse bread, and certain aliments which excited disgust. The sick were confounded with the healthy, both equally a prey to the most shocking defect of cleanliness, and exposed to the outrages of the soldiers, and especially of the loyalists. Nothing alleviated their sufferings. A confined and impure air engendered mortal diseases; more than fifteen hundred of these unfortunate men perished in a few weeks. It was believed that so much cruelty was purposely exercised with a view of constraining the prisoners to enlist under the royal standard. It is certain, at least, that the officers of the king incessantly exhorted them to it. But they all refused; preferring a certain death to the desertion of their country. The fate of the officers was not much less deplorable. Despoiled of every thing by the rapacity of the English soldiers, they were abandoned to all wants. Some of them, though wounded and without clothing, were carted through the streets of New York for the sport of the populace. In the midst of hisses and imprecations, they were denominated rebels and traitors. Several were even caned for having attempted to procure some relief for their soldiers, who were perishing with hunger and disease in their infected dungeons. Washington had addressed frequent and bitter complaints to general Howe of this barbarous conduct towards prisoners of war. English general answered by denials, by excuses, and even by recriminations. But that he was culpable, is proved by his having refused the offer of the American general, who proposed to send an agent to New York to provide for the wants of the prisoners.

The

Hence the hatred between the two people acquired a new degree of violence. At length, those who had survived so many evils, were exchanged, and set at liberty. But such was their miserable condition that many died on the way before they could revisit their country and all the objects of their affection. There arose new difficulties upon this subject between the two generals; the Englishman insisting that his prisoners should be restored even in exchange for the dead, and the American refusing it. All this affair of prisoners proves but too clearly that in civil wars, friends become worse than natural enemies, and the most civilised nations no better than barbarians. But the greater part of these inhuman excesses are incontestably attributable to the English.

After general Lee had fallen into the hands of the enemy, general Sullivan, who succeeded him, manifested greater promptitude in obeying the orders of Washington. He crossed the Delaware at Phillipsburgh, and joined him about the last of December; this reenforcement carried the American army to not far from seven thousand men. But the greater part of these troops completed their engagement with the year, and they were upon the point of a total dissolution.

While the English pursued the relics of the American army through the plains of New Jersey, and the latter, happy in having been able to cross the Delaware, found itself almost without hope, fortune did not show herself more propitious to the cause of the revolution upon the coasts of Rhode Island. Admiral sir Peter Parker, and general Clinton with four brigades of English as well as Hessians, had undertaken an expedition against this province, on board a numerous squadron. The provincials not expecting this attack, were totally unprepared for defence; they consequently abandoned Rhode Island without resistance to the English, who occupied it the same day that Washington passed the Delaware. This loss was of great importance, as well from the situation of the province as because the American squadron, under commodore Hopkins, was compelled to withdraw as far up the Providence river as it was practicable, and to continue there blocked up and useless for a long time. The English also occupied the two neighboring islands of Conanicut and of Prudence. Two pieces of cannon fell into their power, but they made few prisoners. The conquest of Rhode Island was of great utility for their ulterior operations; from this province they could harass Massachusetts; and the reenforcements that general Lincoln had assembled with the intention of conducting them to the army of Washington, were detained in that province, to observe general Clinton, and prevent him from disturbing its tranquillity. Even Connecticut shared the alarm, and retained the reenforcements it was upon the point of sending to the camp of the Delaware.

The English, in like manner desirous to prevent the colonies of the south from transmitting succours to those of the middle, which they intended to attack, renewed, during the summer of the present year, their negotiations with the loyalists and with the savages of the upper parts, in order to induce them to act against Georgia, the two Carolinas and Virginia. Notwithstanding the little success which had, in the preceding year, attended the enterprises of the Regulators and the Scotch emigrants, the English agents, and particularly one Stuart, a man of extreme activity and audacity, flattered themselves with the hope of obtaining a more efficacious cooperation of the part of the Indian tribes. They were as lavish of exhortations and promises as of gold and presents. They gave out that a strong corps of English would disembark in West Florida; that traversing the territory of the Creeks, the Chickasaws, and the Cherokees, they would join with the warriors of these nations, and invade the two Carolinas and Virginia; while, at the same time, a numerous fleet and powerful army should attack the coasts. Stuart addressed circulars to the loyalists, inviting them to come and put themselves under the royal standard, erected in the country of the Cherokees ; he urged them to bring with them their horses, their cattle, and provisions of every sort, for which they should be paid a liberal price. The loyalists, who remembered too well their recent defeat, made no movement of importance. But the Indians, excited by the words and presents of the emissaries, no less than by the probabilities of success, and their thirst of pillage, assembled in considerable numbers, and manifested great animosity against the colonies. The Six Nations themselves, who till this epoch had observed a strict neutrality, began to waver, and had already committed hostilities upon their borders. The Creeks, still more audacious, took the field, and displayed their accustomed ferocity. But having found that deeds did not correspond with words, and that the promised succours did not appear, they desisted, and demanded a pardon, which was easily granted them. They manifested afterwards so much regard for their oaths, or so much distrust for the promises of the English, or finally, such profound terror, that when the Cherokees not long after urged them for succours, they answered that they had buried the hatchet so deep that it could not be found. But the Cherokees listened only to their fury; they fell furiously upon the colonies, exercising frightful ravages, scalping and mutilating their prisoners. They massacred with the same barbarity those who were able to carry arms, and those who were not; old men, women, and children, were butchered without discrimination. Their security was increased by the appearance of the fleet under sir Peter Parker, which had arrived in the waters of Charleston. But when this fleet after the unsuccessful attack of fort Moultrie, had abandoned the shores of Carolina, the Cherokees found themselves in a very critical situation.

Having no longer any thing to fear, upon their coasts, the inhabitants of the two Carolinas and of Virginia devoting all their cares to free themselves from this scourge, turned their forces against the savages, who devastated their country. These barbarians were not only defeated in several rencounters, but the Americans pursued them even into their own territory, putting all to fire and sword, burning their habitations, cutting their trees, destroying their corn, and slaying all those who had borne, or still bore arms. This expedition was almost the total ruin of the nation of Cherokees. Those who survived it, submitted to all the conditions of the conqueror, or wanting provisions, took refuge with this Stuart, the author of the war and of their disasters, in West Florida, where the British government was forced to support them. Thus terminated this year the campaign against the savages; it may be observed, that no chastisement was ever more severe, or more deserved, than that which was inflicted upon the nation of the Cherokees. The avaricious and cruel men who excited these barbarians to commit so many horrors, were the more inexcusable, inasmuch as they had received their birth and education under the more clement sky of Europe.

But the order of events recalls us to Canada, where military operations, far from being suspended, were pursued with extreme vigor. We have related in the preceding book, that the Americans had been constrained by the superiority of the British arms, to evacuate all Lower Canada, and even Montreal and fort St. John. They had retired to Crown Point, whither the English were unable to follow them for want of the necessary vessels not only to cross Lake Champlain, but also to combat those the Americans had armed for their defence. Such, however, was the importance to the designs of the English of obtaining an absolute control of the lakes, that general Carleton set himself with all diligence to the equipment of a fleet. His plan was, according to the instructions of the ministry, to penetrate by way of the lakes to the Hudson river, and thus to effect a junction with the army of New York, at Albany. By the execution of this plan, the provinces of New England would have found themselves separated from the others by a powerful and victorious army, and the cause of America would have been exposed to the most imminent perils. Long deliberated in the councils of the British ministers, it was their favorite scheme. And, in effect, the very nature of the places between Canada and New York, appeared to favor this enterprise. With the exception of the heights which are found between the upper extremity of Lake George and the left bank of the Hudson, and which only occupy a space of sixteen miles, the entire passage from one of these provinces to the other, can easily be made by water, first by ascending from the Saint Lawrence into the Sorel, and then traversing the Lakes Champlain and George, or Wood Creek, to the lands which separate it

from the Hudson. This river afterwards leads directly to the city of New York. The English having an immense superiority at sea, Canada being entirely in their power, and as the principal seat of resistance was found in the provinces of New England, while the coasts of New York were peculiarly accessible to maritime attacks, it cannot be denied that this plan of campaign presented great advantages. But the difficulty of the enterprise of general Carleton was equal to its importance. It was requisite to construct, or at least to equip a fleet of thirty vessels of different dimensions, and to arm them with artillery; the want of materials rendered either of these objects difficult to accomplish. The transportation afterwards in certain places by land, and drawing up the rapids of Saint Theresa and Saint John, of thirty large long boats, a gondola of thirty tons, a number of flat bottomed boats of considerable burthen, with above four hundred batteaux, was an operation which offered not only great obstacles, but even an appearance of impossibility. But the English seamen, from their skill and patience, were not intimidated by it. The soldiers seconded them, and the peasants taken from their rustic labors, were compelled to share the toil. The generals urged forward this laborious undertaking on account of the lateness of the season; as the winter already approached. It was necessary to pass two lakes of considerable extent; they had no certain intelligence respecting the force of the enemy in the fortresses of Crown Point and Ticonderoga; finally, after having worsted him upon Lake Champlain, by means of large vessels, it was to be feared that the squadron would not be able to pass the strait which joins this lake to Lake George, into which however it was absolutely necessary that it should enter. Meanwhile, if it should be possible to surmount so many obstacles, there still would remain to be effected the passage of the woods, the marshes, and the defiles which are found between the point of debarkation and the banks of the Hudson, in order to gain the city of Albany, where only they could meet with such accommodations as would enable them to winter commodiously. But far from appearing discouraged, the English seemed to be animated with new ardor, and the soldiers rivalled their officers in zeal. They felt all the importance of the enterprise, and persuaded themselves that if they could reach Albany before winter, their definitive success would be secured. The brilliant advantages obtained by the army of New Jersey, filled them with emulation; they were eager to share them, and fearful of arriving too late upon the theatre of glory. They labored therefore with incredible activity; but notwithstanding all their efforts, the preparations could not be completed, nor the armament fully equipped, till the middle of the month of October. It was numerous, and superior in strength to any that had ever been seen upon these lakes, and would have made no contemptible figure even upon the European seas. The admiral's ship, called the Inflexible, carried