He knew that near Staten Island
the Americans were building great bakeries as if to feed an army
besieging New York. Suddenly on the 29th of August the armies
turned away from New York southwestward across New Jersey, and
still only the two leaders knew whither they were bound.
American patriotism has liked to dwell on this last great march
of Washington. To him this was familiar country; it was here that
he had harassed Clinton on the march from Philadelphia to New
York three long years before. The French marched on the right at
the rate of about fifteen miles a day. The country was beautiful
and the roads were good. Autumn had come and the air was bracing.
The peaches hung ripe on the trees. The Dutch farmers who, four
years earlier, had been plaintive about the pillage by the
Hessians, now seemed prosperous enough and brought abundance of
provisions to the army. They had just gathered their harvest. The
armies passed through Princeton, with its fine college, numbering
as many as fifty students; then on to Trenton, and across the
Delaware to Philadelphia, which the vanguard reached on the 3d of
September.
There were gala scenes in Philadelphia. Twenty thousand people
witnessed a review of the French army.
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