Invasion of South Carolina: Stony Point and Tryon

A little later, a marauding expedition appeared on the coast of Virginia. On the 9th of May, a squadron commanded by Sir George Collier, entered Hampton Roads, with land troops under General Matthews, who desolated the region on both sides of the Elizabeth River from the Roads to Norfolk and Portsmouth. After destroying a vast amount of property, they withdrew and returned to New York; and on the 30th of May this naval force accompanied Sir Henry Clinton up the Hudson River to dislodge the Americans at Stony Point and Verplanck's Point opposite. In this expedition, the troops were commanded by General Vaughan, the officer who led the marauders who burned Kingston in the autumn of 1777. The British landed on the morning of the 31st, when the little garrison at Stony Point fled to the Highlands. The next morning (June 1, 1779) the guns of the captured fortress were pointed toward Fort Fayette, opposite. The little garrison there, attacked by troops in the rear, surrendered as prisoners of war. The loss of these forts was lamented by Washington, and his first care was to recover them.

These achievements accomplished, Sir Henry sent Collier with his squadron to the shores of Connecticut, with a band of marauders under Governor Tryon, about twenty-five hundred strong, composed of British and Hessians. The latter were sent on these expeditions, because they were more cruel than the Britons, and delighted in plundering, burning buildings, and ill-treating the defenceless inhabitants; a mode of warfare ordered by Lord George Germain to awe the people into submission. The expedition left New York on the night of the 3d of July, and in the course of about a week, laid waste and carried away a vast amount of property. They plundered New Haven on the 5th, laid East Haven in ashes on the 6th, destroyed Fairfield on the 8th, and plundered and burned. Norwalk on the 12th. Not content with this wanton destruction of property, the invaders cruelly abused the defenceless inhabitants. The soldiery were given free license to oppress the people, Tryon encouraging instead of restraining them in their horrid work. The Hessians were his incendiaries. To them he entrusted the operation of the torch and the most brutal acts, which British soldiers would not perform. Whilst Norwalk was in flames, Tryon sat in a rocking-chair upon a hill in the neighborhood, a delighted spectator of the scene. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning; this puny imitator of the emperor made merry over the conflagration of a defenceless town inhabited by people of his own nation. In allusion to this and kindred expeditions, Trumbull, in his McFingal, makes Malcolm say:

When Tryon (whom the English people abhorred for his wrong doings in America) had completed the destruction of these pleasant New England villages, he boasted of his extreme clemency in leaving a single house standing on the coast of Connecticut.