It was not mere defeat, however, that put the cast almost of despair upon affairs as Washington saw them that dismal autumn. His forces seemed to melt away under his very eyes. Charles Lee, his chief subordinate in command, too much a soldier of fortune to be a man of honor, obeyed or disregarded his orders at his own discretion. When once it was known that General Washington had been obliged to abandon the Hudson, consternation and defection spread everywhere. On the 30th of November, when his defeat seemed complete, it might be final, the Howes joined in a fresh proclamation of pardon, inviting all, once again, to submit and be forgiven; and it looked for a little as if all who dared would take advantage of the offer and make their peace with the enemy,—for Washington now moved in a region where opinion had from the first been sharply divided. While defection spread he was in full retreat, with scarcely three thousand men all told in his demoralized force,—that handful ill-clad and stricken with disease, and dwindling fast by desertion,—an overwhelming body of the enemy, under Cornwallis, at his very heels as he went, so that he dared hardly so much as pause for rest until he had put the broad shelter of the Delaware behind him. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” cried Thomas Paine (December, 1776); “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot” were falling away. One after another, that very summer, the delegates of the several states had put their names to the Declaration of Independence; but already there seemed small prospect of making it good. To not a few it already began to seem a piece of mere bravado, to be repented of. [Illustration: CIRCULAR OF PHILADELPHIA COUNCIL OF SAFETY]