On the appearance of the enemy, the militia assembled with alacrity, and aided the small patrolling parties of continental troops in harassing him on his march from Elizabethtown to the Connecticut Farms, a distance of five or six miles, where a halt was made.  In a spirit of revenge, unworthy the general of an army, more in the character of Tryon who was present, than of Knyphausen who commanded, this settlement was reduced to ashes.[37]

[Footnote 37:  This circumstance would scarcely have deserved notice had it not been accompanied by one of those melancholy events, which even war does not authorize, and which made, at the time, a very deep impression.

Mrs. Caldwell, the wife of the clergyman of the village, had been induced to remain in her house, under the persuasion that her presence might protect it from pillage, and that her person could not be endangered, as Colonel Dayton who commanded the militia determined not to stop in the settlement.  While sitting in the midst of her children, with a sucking infant in her arms, a soldier came up to the window and discharged his musket at her.  She received the ball in her bosom, and instantly expired.]

From the Farms, Knyphausen proceeded to Springfield.  The Jersey brigade, commanded by General Maxwell, and the militia of the adjacent country, took an advantageous position at that place, and seemed determined to defend it.  Knyphausen halted in its neighbourhood, and remained on his ground until night.

Having received intelligence of this movement, General Washington put his army in motion early in the same morning that Knyphausen marched from Elizabethtown Point, and advanced to the Short Hills, in the rear of Springfield, while the British were in the neighbourhood of that place.  Dispositions were made for an engagement the next morning, but Knyphausen retired in the night to the place of his disembarkation.

General Washington continued on the hills near Springfield, too weak to hazard an engagement, but on ground chosen by himself.  His continental troops did not exceed three thousand men.  A return of the whole army under his immediate command, made on the 3d of June, exhibited in the column, of present, fit for duty, only three thousand seven hundred and sixty, rank and file.  So reduced was that force on which America relied for independence.  “You but too well know,” said General Washington in a letter to a friend, giving an account of this incursion, “and will regret with me the cause which justifies this insulting manoeuvre on the part of the enemy.  It deeply affects the honour of the states, a vindication of which could not be attempted in our present circumstances, without most intimately hazarding their security; at least so far as it may depend on the preservation of the army.  Their character, their interest, their all that is dear, call upon them in the most pressing manner, to place the army immediately on a respectable footing.”