Author: Charles Hervey Townshend

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9781331372974

Excerpt from The British Invasion of New Haven, Connecticut As historian have told us, the Colony of Connecticut made itself very obnoxious to the British, Hessian and Tory troops stationed in and around the neighborhood of New York, by having manufactured largely for the Continentals munitions of war, army and navy supplies, besides fitting out frequent expeditions by land and water, causing great annoyance to the invaders and their Tory sympathizers, and the commanding general of the army, Sir Henry Clinton, Kt., who, in the spring of 1779, had his headquarters at the city of New York. Sir Henry, therefore, considering the great assistance this Colony had rendered to the rebellion, it having furnished more troops than any other except Massachusetts, and as more than three-fourths of its inhabitants were disloyal, conceived a plan to inflict on it a severe punishment as soon as his successful expedition up the Hudson should return, after it had captured Stony Point and other strong works held by the Americans on both sides of the river below West Point. He accordingly organized a plan for a summer's campaign into Connecticut, the approach to be made from New York via East River and Long Island Sound. The land forces for this expedition, 3,000 well disciplined and perfectly equipped troops, were placed under the command of Major General William Tryon, who was then Colonial Governor of New York. They were embarked on board a fleet just returned from an expedition to the Chesapeake which had been commanded by Commodore Sir George Collier, Kt., who was then the senior officer on the North American station and acting commander-in-chief of all the British naval forces in American waters. The fleet was manned by a crew of sailors and marines estimated at 2,000 men, and was the largest that had ever entered Long Island Sound. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.