The long, slow year had been full of signs both good and bad. International forces were beginning to work in favor of the insurgent colonies. From the outset France and Spain had been willing to give them aid against England, their traditional rival and enemy. Since the summer of 1776 they had been promised French and Spanish assistance through Beaumarchais, acting ostensibly as the firm of “Roderigue Hortalez et Cie.,” but really as the secret agent of the two governments; and early in 1777 the fictitious firm had begun actually to despatch vessels laden with arms and ammunition to America. Private money also went into the venture, but governments were known to be behind it; and on January 5th, 1777, Mr. Franklin had arrived in Paris to assist in bringing France into still closer touch with the war for independence over sea. As the year drew towards its close the great Frederick of Prussia had forbidden troops hired in the other German states to cross Prussian territory to serve the English in America, and so had added his good-will to the French and Spanish money. French, and even German and Polish officers, too, volunteered for service in the American armies. It was the gallant Polish patriot Tadeusz Kosciuszko who had shown General Gates how to intrench himself upon Bemis’s Heights. [Illustration: WASHINGTON’S PROCLAMATION] The winter was deeply disheartening, nevertheless, for Washington. Having failed in the mist at Germantown, he withdrew his army to Valley Forge, whence he could watch Howe at Philadelphia, and move as he moved, and yet himself feel safe against attack; but utter demoralization had fallen upon the Congress, sitting in a sort of exile at York, and his army was brought to such straits of privation and suffering in its exposed camp as he had never been obliged to see it endure before. There was plenty of food in the country; plenty even at the disposal of Congress and in the stores of its commissariat. The British had overrun very little of the fertile country; the crops had been abundant and laborers had not been lacking to gather them in,—especially there in thriving Pennsylvania. But the Congress had lost all vigor alike in counsel and in action. Men of initiative had withdrawn from it to serve their states in the reorganization of their several governments and in the command of forces in the field. Sometimes scarcely a dozen members could be got together to take part in its deliberations. It yielded to intrigue,—even to intrigue against Washington; allowed its executive committees, and most of all the commissary department, upon which the army depended, to fall into disorganization; listened to censures and bickerings rather than to plans of action; lost the respect of the states, upon which its authority depended; and left the army almost to shift for itself for sustenance. Fortunately it was a mild winter. Fortunately Washington was masterful and indomitable, and proved equal to checkmating at a single move those