The storm of war broke upon Princeton early in December of the same year, 1776. The British Army, landed from Howe’s fleet in New York Bay, had entirely worsted the American forces. Brooklyn, New York, Fort Washington with Fort Lee had been successively abandoned, and Washington in his memorable retreat across this State reached Princeton on the first of December. Stirling, with one thousand two hundred Continentals, was left as a rear-guard, while the Commander-in-Chief with the rest, one thousand eight hundred, and his stores, pushed on to Trenton, whence he crossed in safety to the right bank of the Delaware. On the seventh, Cornwallis entered Princeton at the head of six thousand Anglo-Hessian veterans, driving Stirling before him. The invaders were quartered in the College and in the church. Both Tusculum and Morven, the estates of the arch-rebels Witherspoon and Stockton, were pillaged, and the new house of Sergeant was burnt. All the neighboring farms were laid under contribution for forage. Popular disaffection followed in the course of Washington’s retreat. Large numbers of the people and many of the State officials accepted the English offers of amnesty. The patriots were compelled to abandon their homes and flee across the Delaware. Two regiments were left by Cornwallis in Princeton as a garrison. The rest of his troops were established in winter quarters at New Brunswick, Trenton and Bordentown. Washington’s thin and starving line stretched along the Delaware from Coryell’s Ferry to Bristol. Congress fled to Baltimore. Putnam, with no confidence in Washington’s ability even to hold his ground, was making ready for a desperate defence of Philadelphia. There was as yet no French alliance, no adequate supply of money raised either at home or abroad, no regular or even semi-regular army,—nothing, apparently, but a disorderly little rebellion; for the first promise of constancy in New England and of regular support for a considerable force of volunteers had had as yet no fulfilment. The English felt that the early ardor of radical and noisy rebels would fade like a mist before Howe’s success; Canada was lost; New York as far as the Highlands was in British hands; so also were New Jersey and Long Island, which latter virtually controlled Connecticut. Howe believed the rebellion was broken; Cornwallis had engaged passage to return home. [Illustration: HALL IN THE MORVEN HOUSE.]