with very unequal numbers, or he must have suddenly evacuated the
city with the loss of nearly all the stores of his army, or have
surrendered for want of provisions; the situation of the place
naturally producing one or the other of these events.

The preparations made to defend New York were, nevertheless, wise and
military; because your forces were then at sea, their numbers
uncertain; storms, sickness, or a variety of accidents might have
disabled their coming, or so diminished them on their passage, that
those which survived would have been incapable of opening the
campaign with any prospect of success; in which case the defence
would have been sufficient and the place preserved; for cities that
have been raised from nothing with an infinitude of labor and
expense, are not to be thrown away on the bare probability of their
being taken. On these grounds the preparations made to maintain New
York were as judicious as the retreat afterwards. While you, in the
interim, let slip the very opportunity which seemed to put conquest
in your power.

Through the whole of that campaign you had nearly double the forces
which General Washington immediately commanded. The principal plan at
that time, on our part, was to wear away the season with as little
loss as possible, and to raise the army for the next year. Long
Island, New York, Forts Washington and Lee were not defended after
your superior force was known under any expectation of their being
finally maintained, but as a range of outworks, in the attacking of
which your time might be wasted, your numbers reduced, and your
vanity amused by possessing them on our retreat. It was intended to
have withdrawn the garrison from Fort Washington after it had
answered the former of those purposes, but the fate of that day put a