The troops were ill clothed, their pay was in arrear, and that of the officers, owing to the great depreciation of the paper currency, was wholly unequal to their decent maintenance. These multiplied privations and sufferings soured the temper of the men, and it required all the influence of Washington to prevent many of the officers from resigning their commissions. The long continuance of want and hardship produced relaxation of discipline which at length manifested itself in open mutiny. On the 25th of May (1780) two regiments belonging to Connecticut paraded under arms, with the avowed intention of returning home, or of obtaining subsistence at the point of the bayonet. The rest of the soldiers, though they did not join in the mutiny, showed little disposition to suppress it. At length the two regiments were brought back to their duty, but much murmuring and many complaints were heard. While the army was in such want the inhabitants of New Jersey, where most of the troops were stationed, were unavoidably harassed by frequent requisitions, which excited considerable discontent. Reports of the mutinous state of the American army and of the dissatisfaction of the people of New Jersey, probably much exaggerated, were carried to General Knyphausen, who, believing the American soldiers ready to desert their standards and the inhabitants of New Jersey willing to abandon the Union, on the 6th of June (1780), passed from Staten Island to Elizabethtown, in Jersey, with 5,000 men. That movement was intended to encourage the mutinous disposition of the American troops, and to fan the flame of discontent among the inhabitants of the province. Early next morning he marched into the country toward Springfield by the way of Connecticut Farms, a flourishing plantation, so named because the cultivators had come from Connecticut. But even before reaching that place which was only five or six miles from Elizabethtown, the British perceived that the reports which they had received concerning the discontent of the Americans were incorrect, for on the first alarm the militia assembled with great alacrity and aided by some small parties of regular troops, annoyed the British by an irregular but galling fire of musketry, wherever the nature of the ground presented a favorable opportunity, and although those parties were nowhere strong enough to make a stand, yet they gave plain indications of the temper and resolution which were to be encountered in advancing into the country. At Connecticut Farms the British detachment halted. The settlers were known to be zealous in the American cause and therefore with a little spirit of revenge, the British, among whom was General Tryon, laid the flourishing village, with its church and the minister's house, in ashes. Here occurred one of those affecting incidents which being somewhat out of the ordinary course of the miseries of war make a deep impression on the public mind. Mr. Caldwell, minister of the place, had withdrawn