Washington wrote thus: “The most important operations of the campaign cannot be made to depend upon the piratical expeditions of two or three men-of-war privateers.” This significant rejoinder illustrated the proposition to burn Boston, and was characteristic of Washington’s policy respecting other local raids and endangered cities. It is in harmony with the purpose of this narrative to emphasize this incident. Napoleon in his victorious campaign against Austria refused to occupy Vienna with his army, and counted the acquisition of towns and cities as demoralizing to troops, besides enforcing detachments from his fighting force simply to hold dead property. Washington ignored the safety of Philadelphia, the Colonial capital, repeatedly, claiming that to hold his army compactly together, ready for the field, was the one chief essential to ultimate victory. Even the later invasions of Virginia and Connecticut, and the erratic excursions of Simcoe and other royalist leaders into Westchester County, New York, and the country about Philadelphia, did not bend his deliberate purpose to cast upon local communities a fair share of their own defence. In more than one instance he announced to the people that these local incursions only brought reproach upon the perpetrators, and embittered the Colonists more intensely against the invader. CHAPTER VII. HOWE SUCCEEDS GAGE.—CLOSING SCENES OF 1775. As the siege of Boston advanced without decisive result, orders from England suddenly relieved Gage from command, and assigned General Sir William Howe as his successor. That officer promulgated a characteristic order “assuming command over all the Atlantic Colonies from Nova Scotia to the West Indies.” He made his advent thus public, and equally notorious. Offensive proclamations, bad in policy, fruitless for good, and involving the immediate crushing out of all sympathy from those who were still loyal to the Crown, were the types of his character, both as governor and soldier. He threatened with military execution any who might leave the city without his consent, and enjoined upon all citizens, irrespective of personal opinion, to “arm for the defence of Boston.” This action imposed upon Washington the issue of a reciprocal order against “all who were suffered to stalk at large, doing all the mischief in their power.” Hence, between the two orders, it happened that the royalists in the city had no opportunity to visit their friends and see to their own property outside the British lines, and the royalists of the country who sought to smuggle themselves between the lines, to communicate with those in the city, were compelled to remain outside the American lines, or be shot as “spies.”