increase the army at this place with at least ten thousand men; especially when it is considered, that from this place only the army in Canada must draw its supplies of ammunition, provisions, and most probably of men.” Washington at that time was not aware of the extraordinary expedients England had recently resorted to, against the next campaign. The Duke of Brunswick, the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, and the Hereditary Prince of Cassel, Count of Hanau, had been subsidized to furnish troops to assist in the subjugation of her colonies. Four thousand three hundred Brunswick troops, and nearly thirteen thousand Hessians, had entered the British service. Beside the subsidy exacted by the German princes, they were to be paid seven pounds four shillings and four pence sterling for every soldier furnished by them, and as much more for every one slain. Of this notable arrangement, Washington, as we observed, was not yet aware. “The designs of the enemy,” writes he, “are too much behind the curtain for me to form any accurate opinion of their plan of operations for the summer’s campaign. We are left to wander, therefore, in the field of conjecture.”[64] Within a few days afterwards, he had vague accounts of “Hessians and Hanoverian troops coming over;” but it was not until the 17th of May, when he received letters from General Schuyler, inclosing others from the commanders in Canada, that he knew in what direction some of these bolts of war were launched; and this calls for some further particulars of the campaign on the banks of the St. Lawrence; which we shall give to the reader in the ensuing chapter. CHAPTER XX. ARNOLD BLOCKADES QUEBEC—HIS DIFFICULTIES—ARRIVAL OF GENERAL WOOSTER—OF GENERAL THOMAS—ABORTIVE ATTEMPT ON QUEBEC—PREPARATIONS FOR RETREAT—SORTIE OF CARLETON—RETREAT OF THE AMERICANS—HALT AT POINT DESCHAMBAULT—ALARM IN THE COLONIES AT THE RETREAT OF THE ARMY—POPULAR CLAMOR AGAINST SCHUYLER—SLANDERS REFUTED. In a former chapter, we left Arnold before the walls of Quebec, wounded, crippled, almost disabled, yet not disheartened; blockading that “proud town” with a force inferior, by half, in number to that of the garrison. For his gallant services, Congress promoted him in January to the rank of brigadier-general. Throughout the winter he kept up the blockade with his shattered army; though had Carleton ventured upon a sortie, he might have been forced to decamp. That cautious general, however, remained within his walls. He was sure of reinforcements from England in the spring, and, in the mean time, trusted to the elements of dissolution at work in the besieging army.