thirty men were left alive. Captain Peronny, and all his officers down
to a corporal, were killed. Captain Poulson had almost as hard a fate,
for only one of his escaped. In short, the dastardly behaviour of the
regular troops (so called,) exposed those who were inclined to do
their duty, to almost certain death; and, at length, in spite of every
effort to the contrary, they broke, and ran as sheep before hounds;
leaving the artillery, ammunition, provisions, baggage, and in short
every thing, a prey to the enemy; and when we endeavoured to rally
them, in hopes of regaining the ground, and what we had left upon it,
it was with as little success as if we had attempted to have stopped
the wild bears of the mountains, or the rivulets with our feet: for
they would break by, in spite of every effort to prevent it."[6]

[Footnote 6: In another letter, he says, "We have been
beaten, shamefully beaten--shamefully beaten by a handful of
men, who only intended to molest and disturb our march!
Victory was their smallest expectation! But see the wondrous
works of Providence, the uncertainty of human things! We,
but a few moments before, believed our numbers almost equal
to the force of Canada; they only expected to annoy us. Yet,
contrary to all expectation and human probability, and even
to the common course of things, we were totally defeated,
and have sustained the loss of every thing."]

[Illustration: Wakefield--the Birthplace of George Washington

_This is from an etching made in idealization of the original house,
situated on the banks of the Potomac, 38 miles from Fredericksburg, in
Westmoreland County, Virginia, where our First President was born,
February 22, 1732. The original house, which was built by Washington's