In that same year Captain Shapley was ordered to take command of Fort Trumbull, and Colonel William Ledyard of Fort Griswold on Groton Hill. Later, Ledyard was placed in command of the two positions. In 1777 he revised, strengthened and enlarged Fort Trumbull, and in 1778 performed this same work upon Fort Griswold. Under his direction, in 1779, strong works were thrown up on Town Hill, New London. Finally, in 1780, the assembly of New London ordered his accounts paid. The successful operations of the Continental forces in Virginia in 1781 caused Sir Henry Clinton to cast about for some means of distracting his opponents and of recalling Washington from the South, preferably by some deed of enterprise in the North. He fixed on New London as the scene of operations, as he had heard that there were many stores in the little town, and as the leader of the expedition he picked out Benedict Arnold, the traitor, who had just returned from scenes of pillage on the James River, Virginia. The choice of Arnold may have appealed to some saturnine sense of humor in Clinton, as Connecticut, it may be remembered, was Arnold’s native State and New London not far from the scenes of his boyhood. The little works at New London and Groton, despite the conscientious efforts of Colonel Ledyard, were not positions of much consequence. Fort Trumbull, we are told, was merely a strong breastwork of three sides, and open in the rear, mounting eighteen 12-pound guns and three 6-pound guns. Its garrison numbered twenty-three men. Fort Griswold was somewhat more formidable, being “an oblong square with bastions at opposite angles, its longest side fronting the river in a northwest and southeast direction, its walls of stone 10 or 12 feet high on the lower side and surrounded by a ditch; in the wall pickets projected over for 12 feet; above, a parapet with embrasures and within a platform for cannon, with a step to mount to shoot over the parapet with small arms.” In addition to these,--the main defences--there was the little work on the summit of Town Hill, New London, which mounted six small-bore guns and which had become known by the airy title of “Fort Nonsense.” It being manifestly impossible to hold Fort Trumbull with a force of twenty-three men, the Americans, on the approach of Arnold and the British, took all of their forces and placed them in Fort Griswold. At its best the garrison of this point was not as numerous as the attacking body and it was made up of untrained militia gathered at the moment’s call.