The Army at Valley Forge

THE joy that thrilled the bosoms of the American patriots when the news of Burgoyne's surrender went over the land, succeeded by the doubts and gloomy forebodings at the opening of the fourth year of the war, 1778., The effects of that surrender upon the public mind in the Europe were not then known in America; and the military events which had succeeded it here were calculated to produce a great depression of spirits. The little army of Washington, then building log-huts at Valley Forge, ahd just passed through a season of great trial, and their own patriotism and that of their leaders had been proven by severest tests. Their ranks Congress, remissness in the duty of the late quartermaster-general, faction in the high places, and the intrigues of ambitious men. Almost three thousand soldiers of that little, sufferings army were unfit for the duty, because they were barefooted and half-naked. Multitudes were compiled to doze around fires all night, because they did not possess a bed or a blanket to lie upon; and many who were favoured with these were made sick by exposure to dampness, because they had no means of raising their beds from the ground. Not clamors in the Congress and the Pennsylyanis legislature for the winter campaign against the British in Philadelphia. The commander-in-chief was followed to Volley Forge by the remonstrance form the Council and Assemble of Pennsylvania against his going inot winter-quarters reproof Washington made a firm but the modest reply, stating the condition of his troops and the causes, and saying: "Gentleman reprobate the going into the winter-quarters as if they thought the soldiers were stocks and stones. I can assure those gentleman that it is much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them; and from my soul I pity their miseries, which it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent."

Let us here pause in our narrative of military and civil movements in America, and briefly consider events bearing upon the great struggle then occurring in Europe.

The British Parliament assembled on the 18th of November. They had not heard of Howe's success on the borders of the Brandywine, nor of Burgoyne's disasters at Saratoga. They knew that Howe had been compelled to retire from New Jersey, and gloomy forebodings occupied their minds. They knew that American commissioners were kindly received at the French court, and they dreaded a possible alliance of that nation with the insurgent subjects of Great Britain in America. The stubborn king, in his opening speech from the throne, declared his intention to prosecute the war against the "rebels," without regard to the waste of blood and treasure. He alluded to the increased armaments of France and Spain, and, urging his people to make provision of larger means for carrying on the war in America, he expressed a hope that the "deluded and unhappy multitude in the colonies" might speedily cease their resistance and return to their allegiance.