away into New Jersey when he liked. He seems deliberately to have
left Washington to face complete disaster and thus prove his
incompetence; then, as the undefeated general, he could take the
chief command. There is no evidence that he had intrigued with
Howe, but he thought that he could be the peacemaker between
Great Britain and America, with untold possibilities of ambition
in that role. He wrote of Washington at this time, to his friend
Gates, as weak and "most damnably deficient." Nemesis, however,
overtook him. In the end he had to retreat across the Hudson to
northern New Jersey. Here many of the people were Tories. Lee
fell into a trap, was captured in bed at a tavern by a
hard-riding party of British cavalry, and carried off a prisoner,
obliged to bestride a horse in night gown and slippers. Not
always does fate appear so just in her strokes.

In December, though the position of Washington was very bad, all
was not lost. The chief aim of Howe was to secure the line of the
Hudson and this he had not achieved. At Stony Point, which lies
up the Hudson about fifty miles from New York, the river narrows
and passes through what is almost a mountain gorge, easily
defended. Here Washington had erected fortifications which made
it at least difficult for a British force to pass up the river.
Moreover in the highlands of northern New Jersey, with
headquarters at Morristown, General Sullivan, recently exchanged,
and General Gates now had Lee's army and also the remnants of the
force driven from Canada. But in retreating across New Jersey
Washington had been forsaken by thousands of men, beguiled in
part by the Tory population, discouraged by defeat, and in many
cases with the right to go home, since their term of service had
expired. All that remained of Washington's army after the forces