In a few days, the army was rescued from the famine with which it had been threatened, and considerable supplies of provisions were laid up in camp. It was perceived that the difficulties which had produced such melancholy effects, were created more by the want of due exertion in the commissary department, and by the efforts of the people to save their stock for a better market, than by any real deficiency of food in the country. This severe demonstration seems to have convinced congress that their favourite system was radically vicious, and the subject was taken up with the serious intention of remodeling the commissary department on principles recommended by experience. But such were the delays inherent in the organization of that body, that the new system was not adopted until late in April. At no period of the war had the situation of the American army been more perilous than at Valley Forge. Even when the troops were not entirely destitute of food, their stock of provisions was so scanty that a quantity sufficient for one week was seldom in store. Consequently, had General Howe moved out in force, the American army could not have remained in camp; and their want of clothes disabled them from keeping the field in the winter. The returns of the first of February exhibit the astonishing number of three thousand nine hundred and eighty-nine men in camp, unfit for duty for want of clothes. Scarcely one man of these had a pair of shoes. Even among those returned capable of doing duty, many were so badly clad, that exposure to the cold of the season must have destroyed them. Although the total of the army exceeded seventeen thousand men, the present effective rank and file amounted to only five thousand and twelve. While the sufferings of the soldiers filled the hospitals, a dreadful mortality continued to prevail in those miserable receptacles of the sick. A violent putrid fever swept off much greater numbers than all the diseases of the camp. If then during the deep snow which covered the earth for a great part of the winter, the British general had taken the field, his own army would indeed have suffered greatly, but the American loss is not to be calculated. [Illustration: Washington's Headquarters at Valley Forge _Here on December 17, 1777, after the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown and the occupation of Philadelphia by the British, Washington established his headquarters for what may be paradoxically termed the darkest winter of the Revolutionary War. The American Commander-in-Chief chose this place partly for its defensibility and partly to protect Congress, then in session at York, Pennsylvania, from a sudden British attack. It was here that Washington and Baron Steuben planned the reorganization of the American army, and it was here, May 1, 1778, that news reached Washington of the consummation of the French alliance._] [Sidenote: Attempt to surprise Captain Lee's corps, and the gallant resistance made by him.] {March 28.}