The Pequods now prosecuted the war with all the cruelty of savages. They murdered several individuals, whom they found at work in the fields, or surprised on the rivers; and some of them they put to death with barbarous tortures. They attacked the fort at Saybrook, at the mouth of Connecticut river. They thus spread alarm through the colonies. Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut immediately agreed to invade the Indian territory, with their joint forces, and attempt the entire destruction of the Pequods. Massachusetts accordingly sent 120 men, under General Stoughton, with Mr. Wilson, of Boston, as their chaplain, an indispensable attendant of a military expedition in those days. They marched by the way of Providence, and were hospitably entertained, at that place, by Mr. Williams. His own account of the transaction may be properly quoted: “When the English forces marched up to the Narraganset country, against the Pequods, I gladly entertained at my house, in Providence, the General Stoughton and his officers, and used my utmost care, that all his officers and soldiers should be well accommodated with us.”[170] He accompanied the troops to Narraganset, where, by his influence, he established a mutual confidence between them and the Indians. He then returned to Providence, and acted through the war as a medium of intercourse between the government of Massachusetts, the army and the Indians. Major Mason, with seventy-seven men from Connecticut and Massachusetts, and several hundred Narraganset and other Indians,[171] attacked the Pequods, in May, 1637, at Mistick fort, near a river of that name, in the county of New-London, a few miles east of Fort Griswold. In this fort, five or six hundred Pequods, men, women and children, had taken refuge, and had fortified it, as well as their skill would permit, with palisadoes, which offered but a feeble defence, and presented no obstacle to musketry. They made a desperate resistance, but as they were armed only with bows, tomahawks and English hatchets, they killed and wounded but a few of the assailants, while the English troops poured in a destructive fire, and then rushed into the fort, sword in hand. The slaughter was dreadful, the warriors falling by the bullet and the sword, and the old men, women and children perishing in the flames. The action lasted an hour, and terminated in the burning of the fort, and the death of all its inmates, except a few prisoners.