HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 257

which their experience in the regular methods of European warfare had totally unfitted them—were allowed to rest from the 24th to the 25th; but were again alarmed at 2 o’clock on the morning of the 26th, and returned to their position in the front; against which, on the afternoon of the same day, the Americans made such an imposing demonstration, that Cornwallis, in pursuance of previous imperative orders from Howe, directed Donop, much to the latter's disgust, to fall back upon the main body at Flatlands.

General Von Heister,1 the veteran commander-in-chief of the British auxiliaries, with General Knyphausen, and two full brigades of Hessians, landed at New Utrecht, and advanced on the middle road towards Flatbush,—Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple being left in charge of the reserves on Staten Island. The invading army on Long Island, which now numbered “upwards of twenty thousand” rank and file,2 was unequalled for experience, discipline, and materiel of war, and was supported by a fleet in the Bay of New York, numbering over four hundred ships and transports, and by ten ships of the line, twenty frigates, together with bomb-ketches and other small vessels. Opposed to this splendid army, the Americans had only some eight thousand men,3 mostly volunteers or militia, without cavalry, with but slender stores of light-artillery, and unsupported by a single vessel.

Meanwhile, on the 23d of August, Gen. Howe issued the following proclamation to the people of the island:

A PROCLAMATION

By his EXCELLENCY, the HON. WM. HOWE, General and Commander-in-Chief of all His Majesty's forces within the Colonies lying on the Atlantic Ocean, from Nova Scotia to West—Florida, inclusive, &c., &c.

1 Lossing (Field-Book of Rev., ii. 804) says : “Lieutenant-General De Heister was an old man, and warmly attached to his master, the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel. The long voyage of fourteen weeks dispirited him, ‘and,’ says Sir George Collier, ‘his patience and tobacco became exhausted.’ A sniff of land-breeze revived him. ‘He called for Hock, and swallowed large potations to the health of his friends.’”

2 Lord Howe’s Observations, in Narrative, p. 45.

3 Bancroft, ix. 90, note; Almond’s Debates, xiii. 9, 54, 814. 17