Thus another summer passed away of marches, countermarches and skirmishes, many of them bloody and woeful, but without any decisive results. The inhuman court of England, disheartened by the wholesale desertion of troops, both English and German, and disappointed in their inability to enlist Tories for the war, redoubled their efforts to summon the demoniac savages to their aid. Loud were the remonstrances against this atrocious conduct by many of the noblest men of England, both in the Commons and in the House of Lords. But the King and the Court declared, that in order to subdue America they had a right to use whatever instruments God and nature had placed in their hands. The British sent agents to the cruel savages of the Mohawk to rouse the fierce warriors of the Six Nations against the feeble villages of the frontier. It was a demoniac deed. Scenes of horror were witnessed too awful for recital. The annals of our globe contain scarcely any tragedies more awful than the massacres of Cherry Valley and Wyoming. The narrative of these deeds sent a thrill of horror not only throughout France and America, but into multitudes of humane hearts in England. Some Englishmen pleaded earnestly for us, like Lord Chatham, in the House of Lords. We shall never forget his words as he exclaimed, in view of these outrages: “Were I an American as I am an Englishman, I would never lay down my arms, never--_never_--NEVER.” Washington sent four thousand men to defend, as far as possible, the poor, helpless pioneers from the torch and the scalping-knife. Hundreds of lowly homes were laid in ashes. Hundreds of families, parents and children, were butchered, before the savages were driven from their murderous work. They fled at length to Niagara, where the British received their allies into their fortresses. The American army, feeble in numbers, and suffering from cold and hunger, were led by Washington into winter quarters, mainly on the Hudson, near West Point. The British remained within their lines in the city of New York. Their fleet gave them command of the ocean, and they reveled in abundance. It would seem that both officers and men were a godless set, dead to humanity, and still more dead to religion. None but the worst of men would engage in so foul an enterprise. They spent the winter in dancing, gambling, drinking, and every species of dissolute carousal. Alarmed by the tidings that France was coming to the aid of America, British pride and rage were roused to intensity. The spring campaign opened with renewed devastation and plunder. Lord George Germain had the effrontery to say in Parliament, in view of these scenes of massacre and brutal treatment of prisoners: “A war of this sort will probably induce the rebellious provinces to return to their allegiance.”