While Washington was holding the British prisoners in Boston, Congress made one more vain attempt to be on good terms with the king. But the only answer he made to their petition was to call for more soldiers. Finding that the English, who in many cases thought the Americans were right, would not fight for him, he hired seventeen thousand Hessian and other German soldiers to put down the rebellion. The news that the king was hiring Germans and bribing the Indians on the frontier to make trouble, made the Americans very angry. On the same day, they heard that the British had burned down Fal´moŭth (Portland), in Maine, so they determined to take active measures. Knowing that the Ca-na´di-ans under Carle´ton would soon march southward, they sent two armies to the north. One, under Mont-gom´er-y, passed up Lake Champlain and soon took Montreal. The other army, although it was winter, heroically forced its way through the Maine woods to Quebec, led by Benedict Arnold. There Montgomery joined Arnold; but their combined forces proved too weak to take the city. Montgomery fell in the very beginning of the fight, and Arnold, who had behaved like a hero, was badly wounded. Before he could recover and make a new attempt to seize Quebec,--where much ammunition was stored,--new British troops came and drove the American forces out of Canada. Washington, as we have seen, was seemingly idle, only because his troops needed drilling and he had no powder. As he did not wish the enemy to know this, he kept the secret until many people began to murmur because he spent the winter in Cambridge with Mrs. Washington, without striking a blow. He had, however, been far from idle, for, besides drilling his army, he had made many arrangements, and provided that the American prisoners should be kindly treated or exchanged. To do this, he wrote to General Gates, who had fought by his side at Monongahela twenty years before, promising that the British prisoners should receive just the same care as was given to the Americans. As soon as the cannons came from Ticonderoga, Washington resolved to attack Boston, in spite of the objections of his officers. The principal house owners there had long urged him to do so, notwithstanding the fact that their property would suffer greatly. One night, therefore, he bade his men secretly climb and fortify Dor´ches-ter Heights. When the British awoke the next morning, they saw that the American guns covered them. Rather than stand such a deadly fire, General Howe decided to leave the town. His troops, and about nine hundred of his friends, went on board the British vessels in the harbor, and sailed off to Hal´i-fax. On St. Patrick's day, 1776, Washington triumphantly entered Boston, where his troops were received with every demonstration of great joy. Indeed, the Bostonians were so happy that they gave Washington a gold medal, on one side of which he is represented on horseback, pointing to the vanishing British fleet.