The British troops had behaved, be it said, with the greatest gallantry. The 71st, the grenadiers of the old 80th, and especially the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, had done all that men could, and the colours of the last-named regiment were, like those of the 9th at Saratoga, taken home wrapped round the bodies of two officers. Lord Cornwallis himself bears testimony that the Allies behaved with dignity, and that “the treatment in general that we have received from the enemy since our surrender has been perfectly good and proper.” Of the above regiments, the 76th, 71st, and 80th were afterwards disbanded in 1783-84. Five days later, Clinton’s tardy reinforcements reached the Chesapeake from New York, but it was too late. French assistance, and still more French money, to the exhausted and almost bankrupt Americans had brought peace within measurable distance, and just eight years after the eventful conflict of Lexington, the news of the Peace of Paris was communicated to the army. Though of little military value, the embers of the struggle for independence still remained alight, and so far flickered into a flame in 1814, as to make it worth while recording the last instance in which British troops fought on American soil. The New Republic had been a bit _tête montée_ after its undoubted success against the mother country. There was unquestionably the feeling arising, first of all, of a natural continuance of sympathy for France, as well as that of having “licked the Britishers, who had licked the world.” The causes of irritation are immaterial, and to some extent childish, but they resulted in hostilities none the less. The war began with some minor affairs in Canada, chiefly between the local militias, as there were few British regular battalions in that country; but there was some severe skirmishing for some time, in which the 8th, 41st, 49th, 89th, the Royal Scots, some local bodies of volunteers, and the 100th and 104th battalions of the line, which were disbanded after the long war, took part. Success generally rested with the Americans, and there were some smart naval actions on the Great Lakes. But after the temporary conclusion of hostilities on the Continent in 1814, Great Britain was freer to turn her attention to this American squabble. It was scarcely worth while at any time to dignify it by the name of war. So some veteran Peninsular battalions, the 4th, 44th, 85th, 29th, and 62nd, as well as the 21st North British Fusiliers, were sent to reinforce the army in America. The fighting showed much exasperation on both sides, and there is little that is creditable to either of the combatants. An advance on Washington was first made, and after the brilliant affair of Bladensburg, where the Americans made their first serious stand, and were easily beaten, the capital was seized, and the Government stores and buildings burned. All that can be said to the credit of the British is, that “no private property was destroyed.”