"I shall always be ready to testify that it has not been through any fault of your excellency," Gates replied. Burgoyne's army was reduced from nine thousand men, to five thousand seven hundred and fifty-two. These prisoners were allowed a free passage to Europe, under the irrevocable condition not to serve again in the British ranks. Seven thousand stand of arms, a large number of tents, a long train of artillery, and a great quantity of clothing and stores fell into the hands of the victors. The celebrated Polish patriot Kosciusko was chief engineer in Gates' command when Burgoyne was captured. The British made Philadelphia their winter quarters, where the troops indulged themselves in almost unrestrained revelry. They forced many sympathizers with the American cause to vacate their dwellings for the accommodation of their own number; and many were quartered upon patriotic families, with the express understanding that failure to supply their wants would be resented. Washington went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, about twenty miles from Philadelphia. The tale of suffering connected with that place during that long, dreary winter, is known to the world. Arriving there, many of the troops without blankets or shoes, ragged, worn out, and desponding, they were exposed to the snows and blasts of December until they could cut down trees and build their own huts. Two days after encamping, General Huntington reported to Washington: "My brigade are out of provisions, nor can the commissary obtain any meat." General Varnum reported: "Three days successively we have been destitute of bread. Two days we have been entirely without meat." Against his own judgment, in order to prevent mutiny in his army, Washington was forced to forage the country and seize supplies wherever he could find them, paying for them in money, or certificates redeemable by Congress. Yet we find Washington writing thus: "For some days past there has been little less than a famine in the camp. A part of the army has been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest, three or four days. Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiers, that they have not been ere this excited by their suffering to a general mutiny and desertion." Sickness and mortality prevailed to an alarming extent among the troops, while scarcely any medicines were at hand. Even scores of horses perished by hunger and the severity of the weather. One day circumstances drew Washington's attention to a hungry soldier who was on guard. The general had just come from his own table and he said: "Go to my table and help yourself." "I can't; I am on guard," the soldier replied. Immediately taking the soldier's gun to play the part of sentinel, Washington said, "Go."