st honour, he ordered all the
stores, ammunition, etc., to be destroy'd, that he might have more
horses to assist his flight towards the settlements, and less lumber
to remove. He was there met with requests from the governors of
Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, that he would post his troops on
the frontier, so as to afford some protection to the inhabitants; but
he continued his hasty march thro' all the country, not thinking
himself safe till he arrived at Philadelphia, where the inhabitants
could protect him. This whole transaction gave us Americans the first
suspicion that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regulars
had not been well founded.[99]

[99] Other accounts of this expedition and defeat may be
found in Fiske's _Washington and his Country_, or
Lodge's _George Washington_, Vol. 1.

In their first march, too, from their landing till they got beyond the
settlements, they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, totally
ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, and confining
the people if they remonstrated. This was enough to put us out of
conceit of such defenders, if we had really wanted any. How different
was the conduct of our French friends in 1781, who, during a march
thro' the most inhabited part of our country from Rhode Island to
Virginia, near seven hundred miles, occasioned not the smallest
complaint for the loss of a pig, a chicken, or even an apple.

Captain Orme, who was one of the general's aids-de-camp, and, being
grievously wounded, was brought off with him, and continu'd with him
to his death, which happen'd in a few days, told me that he was
totally silent all the first day, and at night only said, "_Who would
have thought it?_" That he was silent again the following day, saying
only at last, "_We shall better know how to deal with them another
time_"; and dy'd in a few minutes after.

The secretary's papers, with all the general's orders, instructions,
and correspondence, falling into the enemy's hands, they selected and
translated into French a number of the articles, which they printed,
to prove the hostile intentions of the British court before the
declaration of war. Among these I saw some letters of the general to
the ministry, speaking highly of the great service I had rendered the
army, and recommending me to their notice. David Hume,[100] too, who was
some years after secretary to Lord Hertford, when minister in France,
and afterward to