driven back and showed themselves no more. The regiments of foot came up next; but they could not turn the left flank, where Stirling commanded, without exposing their own right to the American artillery. The attack upon the right, where Greene commanded, was defeated by his battery. Others encountered the grenadiers and guards till they turned and fled; and when they rallied and came back to the charge, Wayne with a body of infantry engaged them face to face till they were again repulsed, Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton falling at their head. During the day the heat reached ninety-six degrees in the shade; and many on both sides, struck by the sun, fell dead without a wound.

The British retired through the pass by which they had advanced, and occupied a position accessible in front only by the narrow road, and protected on both flanks by woods and morasses which could not be turned before night. Two American brigades hung on their right, a third on their left, while the rest of the army planted their standards on the field of battle, and lay on their arms to renew the contest at daybreak. But Clinton, abandoning his severely wounded and leaving his dead unburied, before midnight withdrew his forces, which at the early dawn found shelter in the highlands of Middleburg. Washington then marched toward the North river; the British for New York by way of Sandy Hook.

On receiving the English accounts, Frederic of Prussia replied: "Clinton gained no advantage except to reach New York with the wreck of his army; America is probably lost for England."

Of the Americans who were in the engagement, two hundred and twenty-nine were killed or wounded. Of the British, more than four hundred; and above eight hundred deserted their standard during the march through the Jerseys.

In the battle, which took its name from the adjacent village of Monmouth, the American generals except Lee did well; Wayne especially established his fame. The army and the whole country resounded with the praises of Washington, and congress unanimously thanked him "for his great good conduct and victory." Nor may history omit to record that, of the "revolutionary patriots" who on that day perilled life

for their country, more than seven hundred colored Americans fought side by side with the white.

After the battle, Lee was treated from head-quarters with forbearance; but in two letters to the commander-in-chief he avowed the expectation that the campaign would close the war—that is, that the terms offered by the British commissioners would be accepted-and demanded reparation for injustice and injury. A court-martial found him guilty of disobedience, misbehavior before the enemy, and disrespect to the commander-in-chief, and all too leniently did but suspend him from command for twelve months. After long delay, congress confirmed the sentence, though by a narrow vote. The next year it censured Lee for obtaining money through British officers in New York, and in January 1780, provoked by an impertinent letter, dismissed him from the service. From that time he no longer concealed his wish for the return of America to her old allegiance, and his chosen companions were the partisans of England. Under the false colors of military genius and experience in war, he had solicited a command; after his appointment he had given the reins to self-will so that misfortune overtook his treachery. In October 1782, sinking under a fever in a sordid inn at Philadelphia, he died as he had lived, loving neither God nor man.

CHAPTER XIX.

AFTER THE FRENCH ALLIANCE.

JUNE-DECEMBER 1778.

CONFINED between ridges three miles apart, the Susque hannah, for a little more than twenty miles, winds through the valley of Wyoming. Abrupt rocks, rent by tributary streams, rise on the east, while the western declivities are luxuriantly fertile. Connecticut, whose charter from Charles II. was older than that of Pennsylvania, using its prior claim to lands north of the Mamaroneck river, had colonized this beautiful region and governed it as its county of Westmoreland. The settlements, begun in 1754, increased in numbers and wealth till their annual tax amounted to two thousand pounds in Connecticut currency. In the winter of 1776 the people aided Washington with two companies of infantry, though their men were all needed to protect their own homes. Knowing the alliance of the British with the Six Nations, they built a line of ten forts as places of refuge.

The Seneca tribe kept fresh in memory their chiefs and braves who fell in the conflict with the New York husbandmen at Oriskany. Their king, Sucingerachton, was, both in war and in council, the foremost man in all the Six Nations. Compared with him, the Mohawk, Brant, who had been but very lately known upon the war-path, was lightly esteemed. His attachment to the English increased to a passion on the alliance of America with the French, for whom he cherished implacable hate. Through his interest, and by the blandish ments of gifts and pay and chances of revenge, Colonel John Butler lured the Seneca warriors to cross the border of Pennsylvania under the British flag.

The party of savages and rangers, numbering between five hundred and seven hundred men, fell down the Tioga river, and on the last day of June hid in the forests above Wyoming. The next day the two northernmost forts capitulated. The men of Wyoming, old and young, with one regular company, in all hardly more than three hundred, took counsel with one another, and found no hope of deliverance for their families but through a victorious encounter with a foe of twice their number, and more skilful in the woods than themselves. On the third of July the devoted band, led by Colonel Zebulon Butler, who had just returned from the continental service, began their march up the river. The horde of invaders, pretending to retreat, couched themselves on the ground in an open wood. The villagers of Wyoming began firing as they drew near, and at the third volley stood within one hundred yards of the ambush, when the Seneca braves rose to the attack and were immediately seconded by the rangers. The Senecas gave no quarter, and in less than a half-hour took two hundred and twenty-five scalps, among them those of two field officers and seven captains. The rangers saved the lives of but five of their captives. On the British side only two whites were killed and eight Indians wounded. The next day the remaining forts, filled chiefly with women and children, capitulated. The long and wailing procession of the survivors, flying from their fields of corn, their gardens, the flames of their cottages, the unburied bodies of their beloved defenders, escaped by a pass through the hills to the eastern settlements. Every fort and dwelling was burnt.

The Senecas roamed over the surrounding country, adepts in murder and devastation. The British leader boasted in his report that his party had burnt a thousand houses and every mill; Germain in reply extolled their prowess and even their humanity, and resolved on directing a succession of similar parties, and to waste the older settlements, but not to recover and hold them. The ancient affection for England was washed out in blood.

After the retreat of the British, the government of Pennsylvania, as well as that of New Jersey, used the right of bringing to trial those of their citizens who had been false to their

allegiance; but Livingston, the governor of New Jersey, pardoned every one of seventeen who were found guilty. At Philadelphia, against his intercession, two men, one of whom had conducted a British party to a midnight carnage, were convicted, and suffered on the gallows. Regret prevailed that these had not in like manner been forgiven.

Before the treaties of alliance had been signed Vergennes wrote "that it was almost physically impossible for the English to wrest independence from the Americans; that all efforts, however great, would be powerless to recall a people so thoroughly determined to refuse submission." On the side of the sea, from Nova Scotia to Florida, the British occupied no posts except the island of Rhode Island, and New York city with its environs. The British were as yet at Ogdensburg, Niagara, and Detroit; but the Americans held the country from the Highlands to the water-shed of Lake Ontario.

The love and the exercise of individual liberty, though they hindered the efficiency of government, made the Americans unconquerable. They looked beyond danger to the enjoyment of peace in a family and country of their own. Their service in the camp exalted their character; they knew that they were suffering, not for their own land only, but for the benefit of the human race. Moreover, the inmost mind of the American people had changed. The consciousness of a national life had dissolved the sentiment of loyalty to the crown of England.

In England a similar revolution had taken place. The insurgents, losing the name of rebels, began to be called Americans. Officers, returning from the war, said openly that "no person of judgment conceived the least hope that the colonies could be subjected by force." Some British statesmen thought to retain a political, or at least a commercial, connection; while many were willing to give them up unconditionally. Even before the surrender of Burgoyne, Gibbon, a member of the board of trade, confessed that, though England had sent to America the greatest force which any European power ever ventured to transport into that continent, it was not strong enough to attack its enemy, nor to prevent them from receiving assistance; the war "measures" of the administration