The revolutionists had not allowed this work to proceed without making all the trouble they could. As soon as the attack on Boston had developed itself, large detachments had been hurried from New York to the assistance of the small number which had been left watching the New England metropolis. But transportation was so slow and facilities so inadequate that they found the British in force occupying the most important positions around the city, and already strongly fortified, before they could gather strength sufficient to warrant an attack. They brought with them only field-pieces in the way of artillery, and were overmatched even by the old-fashioned guns from the harbor forts with which many of the earthworks had been mounted. From these guns the English gunners constantly dropped shells among them, reaching their camps at a distance from which they could make no reply. One or two desperate assaults were made on the intrenchments; but a near approach showed that these were not only mounted with numerous long-range pieces, but that their parapets fairly bristled with Gatling guns and mitrailleuses, which mowed the assailants down in actual swaths as they came within rifle-shot. Hopeless of success, the revolutionists sullenly retired to Worcester, Springfield, Providence, and other interior cities, and the Washington triumvirate prepared to wait till spring. Then they hoped to muster a force great enough to overwhelm, by sheer weight of numbers, all the British who might be sent across the sea. When the city was first captured, a number of prominent Irish leaders had been seized by the troops under Admiral Seymour. In one of the assaults made on the British earthworks in Medford, a few days later, about two hundred revolutionists, including two officers calling themselves generals, had been captured. They were conveyed to the jail on Charles Street, and incarcerated with the Irishmen previously arrested. The next day General Wood called the city council together at his headquarters, which had been fixed in the State House, and directed them to inform the General Government at Washington, “or the persons in whose custody the English minister and his colleagues of France and Germany are detained,” that these prisoners would be held as hostages for the safe keeping and delivery of the diplomats within British lines. Furthermore, the council was advised that all non-combatants would do well to remove from the city, as the general would not be responsible for the preservation of the city itself should news arrive of any harm to these foreign representatives. For themselves, they were relieved from their offices, as the city was to be put under martial law.