Practically no opposition had been offered to their landing along the Connecticut shore. The revolutionists had no information of the point which the fleet intended to strike, and naturally assumed that Boston, which was already in foreign hands, would be selected as the base of the contemplated invasion. When they discovered their error it was too late to make a hopeful defence. They contented themselves, therefore, with strengthening their fortifications around New York, and calling to that city as many of their men as could be spared from watching the British at Boston and the patriots in the interior parts of the country. The loyalists, it need not be said, viewed this invasion of foreign troops with almost as much alarm as they had felt at the uprising of the native revolutionists. There had been division in their councils before this. The news of the European alliance still more completely split them into factions. One party frankly owned that they regarded a foreign conquest as vastly preferable to a continuance of revolutionary rule. The other party, though hating the revolutionists with equal hatred, asked what was likely to be the result upon the fortunes of the Republic of a victory by the foreign allies. Long and anxious discussions were held during the latter portion of the winter and the early weeks of spring. Attempts were made to ascertain the intentions of the allies in case they should defeat the revolutionists; but no one among the invaders was found who could undertake to answer that question. Many left the little band of patriots and returned to their homes, refusing to share longer in a movement which could not be regarded as anything else than an alliance with a foreign invasion. The others determined to remain inactive for the time, and wait the events of the summer. As the spring opened and it became certain to the revolutionists that New York was the object at which the allied attack was to be first aimed, they summoned more of their forces from the interior, and left the patriots greater opportunity to move with freedom. The two little armies of northern New England and of western New York united near Lake George and slowly moved down the western bank of the Hudson to Newburg, where they could watch events and take such part as might seem best at the time. They numbered altogether about fifty thousand men.