troops be considered as prisoners of war, and that the officers should keep their baggage and side arms. The number of prisoners, including officers, amounted to 2700, beside those taken by the forty-second regiment. Gen. Greene wished to have been entrusted with the defence of the fort on the day of attack, as did some other generals. He blames colonel Magaw for suffering the troops to crowd into the fort, upon their quitting the lines, instead of ordering them to the brow of the hill facing the north, where the Hessians attacked; and is of opinion, that if they had been placed there, the royal army might have keen kept off till night, when the troops might have been removed. But the capital mistake was their not being removed the preceding night. While the attack was carrying on, a captain Gooch boldly ventured to cross over from Fort Lee, with a letter from general Washington to colonel Magaw, acquainting him, that if he could hold out till night, the garrison should be taken off. He delivered the letter, pushed through the fire of the enemy, preferring that danger to being made a prisoner, and escaped unhurt. General Washington could view several parts of the attack; and when he saw his men bayonetted, and in that way killed, while begging quarter, he cried with the tenderness of a child, and exclaimed at the barbarity that was practised. His heart has not been yet steeled by plunging into acts of cruelty. When general Lee read the letter sent by express, giving an account of Fort Washington’s being taken, resentment and vexation led him, unfeeling as he was in common, to weep plentifully. He wrote on the 19th to the commander in chief, “O! general, why would you be over-persuaded by men or inferior judgment to your own? It was a cursed affair.” He had exclaimed before, upon hearing that the defence of it was to be risked, “Then we are undone.”