Had General Howe been able to land his troops on the first night, as he planned, there is little doubt that Washington would have been driven from the Heights as the Americans were driven from Bunker Hill, so that the intervention of the storm seemed peculiarly providential. When Washington issued his order, months before, for the strict observance of the Sabbath and daily religious service by the army, General Lee, who was a godless scoffer, remarked, derisively, "God is on the side of the heaviest battalions." But in this case the storm favored the _weakest_ battalions. General Howe conferred with the authorities of Boston, and promised to evacuate the city without inflicting harm upon it if the Americans would not attack him. Otherwise he would commit the city to the flames, and leave under cover of the mighty conflagration. Washington wrote to him: "If you will evacuate the city without plundering or doing any harm, I will not open fire upon you. But if you make any attempt to plunder, or if the torch is applied to a single building, I will open upon you the most deadly bombardment." Howe promised: yet such was the disposition of the British soldiers to acts of violence, that he was obliged to issue an order that soldiers found plundering should be hanged on the spot; and he had an officer, with a company of soldiers and a hangman, march through the streets, ready to execute his order. It was not, however, until the 17th of March that the embarkation of the British army commenced. About twelve thousand soldiers and refugees embarked in seventy-eight vessels. The refugees were Americans who favored the British cause (called Tories), and they did not dare to remain in this country. Washington wrote about these refugees: "By all accounts there never existed a more miserable set of beings than those wretched creatures now are. Taught to believe that the power of Great Britain was superior to all opposition, and that foreign aid was at hand, they were even higher and more insulting in their opposition than the regulars. When the order was issued, therefore, for embarking the troops in Boston, no electric shock, no sudden clap of thunder, in a word, the last trump, could not have struck them with greater consternation. They were at their wits' end; chose to commit themselves, in the manner I have above described, to the mercy of the waves at a tempestuous season, rather than meet their offended countrymen." With exceeding joy Washington beheld the "precipitate retreat" of the British army from Boston, but fired not a gun. One of General Howe's officers wrote afterwards: "It was lucky for the inhabitants now left in Boston that they did not, for I am informed that everything was prepared to set the town in a blaze had they fired one cannon." We have intentionally passed over several incidents, with the rehearsal of which we will bring this chapter to a close.