With the opening of the spring of 1778, General Howe also was moved to action. His winter supplies, as well as those procurable from the fleet and the city, had been expended. “The storehouses were empty.” Detachments, large and small, were sent to scour the country. To cut off and restrict these detachments, General Lafayette was intrusted with a special command of twenty-four hundred men, and advanced to Barren Hill, about half the distance to Philadelphia. It also formed a corps of observation, and was the first independent command of that officer under his commission as Major-General. He was especially instructed to note signs of the evacuation of Philadelphia, which Washington regarded as a military necessity on the part of General Howe. The American Commander-in-Chief, although reticent of his own opinions, rarely failed to read other men accurately, and rightly read Lafayette. With singular enthusiasm, great purity of character, unswerving fidelity to obligation, and a thorough contempt for everything mean or dishonorable, this young French gentleman combined a keen sagacity, sound judgment, prompt execution, and an intense love for liberty. Having taken position at Barren Hill, Lafayette at once introduced a system of communication with parties in the city of Philadelphia. He had with him fifty Indian scouts, and Captain McLean’s Light troops. A company of dragoons had also been ordered to join him. General Howe had been relieved from duty on the eleventh, by General Clinton; who signalized his accession to command by a series of brilliant _fêtes_ in honor of his predecessor, on the eve of his departure for England. A regatta on the Delaware; a tournament on land; triumphal arches; decorated pavilions; mounted ladies, with their escorts in Turkish costume; slaves in fancy habits; knights, esquires, heralds, and every brilliant device, made the day memorable from earliest dawn until dark. And after dark, balls, illuminations both upon water and land, fireworks, wax-lights, flowers and fantastic drapery, cheered the night hours, “exhibiting,” as described by André himself, master of ceremonies, “a _coup d’œil_, beyond description magnificent.” The procession of knights and maidens was led by Major André and Miss Shippen, the beautiful daughter of one of the wealthiest royalists in Philadelphia. She long retained the title of the “belle of the Michianza _fêtes_.” She subsequently became the wife of General Arnold; and the incidents thus grouped show how felicitous was Clinton’s subsequent choice of André to negotiate with Arnold the exchange of West Point, for “gold and a brigadier-general’s commission in the British army.”