meantime, the rank and peculiar circumstances of young Asgill had aroused a strong party to intercede in his behalf; but it was not until November that this young man was set at liberty and allowed to return home. Whether in reality he would have suffered innocently under Washington’s threat of retaliation, we cannot say; but his liberation appears rather to have been the result of interference than a voluntary concession on the part of the American commander. Lady Asgill wrote, in July, a very affecting letter to the French minister Vergennes, beseeching his interference as a friend of Washington’s, with that commander; and this letter being read by Vergennes to the king and queen of France, they commissioned the minister to add their desires to his own, “that the inquietudes of an unfortunate mother might be calmed, and her tenderness reassured.” Washington, on this, forwarded the copy of Lady Asgill’s letter, which had been sent to him, together with that of the French minister, to congress, and the result was an order from that body, dated 7th of November, to set Captain Asgill at liberty. CHAPTER XIII. STATE OF THE COUNTRY AFTER THE WAR. Another great cause of anxiety at this moment, though by no means a fresh one, was the poverty of the American government, which rendered the situation of the Republic, even after it had achieved its object, extremely critical. In the prospect of peace, and the consequent disbanding of the army, where was the money to be found to pay its long arrears, to say nothing of the gratuities which had been promised to both officers and men on the termination of the war? In May, 1782, Washington wrote of his army on the Hudson, as destitute of provisions and in a state of disorder and almost mutiny; and that if the British knew his real situation, and were to make a sudden attempt, he must be driven from his post. Of the army in the South, also, General Greene wrote in August an account still more melancholy. He said that of his men, one-third were “entirely naked, with nothing but a pair of breeches about them, and never came out of their tents,” and that the remainder were “as ragged as wolves.” Their food was as bad as it could be, “their beef perfect carrion, and even of that they had often none at all;” and that the spirit of the army was so mutinous that executions were not unfrequent to check it. Washington feared that even this terrible remedy would lose its effect, and that peace with Britain, if it came, might be succeeded by a social war, so difficult would it be to disband an army with weapons in their hands, who had no prospect before them but poverty and starvation. Well might a deep gloom rest at this time upon his mind.