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as many men as their opponents. With caution now much enlarged, Howe
sent for reinforcements, and waited two days. The third day it rained,
and on the fourth Howe found that Washington had withdrawn to a higher
and quite impregnable line of hills, where he held all the passes in
the rear and awaited a second attack. Howe contemplated the situation
for two or three days longer, and then broke camp and withdrew to
Dobbs Ferry to secure Fort Washington, which treachery offered him as
an easy and inviting prize. Such were the great results of the victory
of Long Island, two wasted months, and the American army still
untouched.

Howe was resolved that his campaign should not be utterly fruitless,
and therefore directed his attention to the defenses of the Hudson,
and here he met with better success. Congress, in its military wisdom,
had insisted that these forts must and could be held. So thought the
generals, and so most especially, and most unluckily, did Greene.
Washington, with his usual accurate and keen perception, saw, from the
time the men-of-war came up the Hudson, and, now that the British
army was free, more clearly than ever, that both forts ought to be
abandoned. Sure of his ground, he overruled Congress, but was so far
influenced by Greene that he gave to that officer discretionary orders
as to withdrawal. This was an act of weakness, as he afterwards
admitted, for which he bitterly reproached himself, never confusing or
glossing over his own errors, but loyal there, as elsewhere, to facts.
An attempt was made to hold both forts, and both were lost, as he
had foreseen. From Fort Lee the garrison withdrew in safety. Fort
Washington, with its plans all in Howe's hands through the treachery
of William Demont, the adjutant of Colonel Magaw, was carried by
storm, after a severe struggle. Twenty-six hundred men and all the
munitions of war fell into the hands of the enemy. It was a serious
and most depressing loss, and was felt throughout the continent.

Meantime Washington had crossed info the Jerseys, and, after the loss
of Fort Lee, began to retreat before the British, who, flushed with
victory, now advanced rapidly under Lord Cornwallis. The crisis of his
fate and of the Revolution was upon him. His army was melting away.
The militia had almost all disappeared, and regiments whose term of
enlistment had expired were departing daily. Lee, who had a division
under his command, was ordered to come up, but paid