front.[99]

[Footnote 99: See Appendix to Drake's _Life of General Knox_.]

* * * * *

A far more perfect and formidable army was that which lay encamped on
Staten Island, seven miles down the bay. It was the best officered,
disciplined, and equipped that Great Britain could then have mustered
for any service. The fact that she found it difficult to raise new
troops to conquer America only made it necessary to send forward all
her available old soldiers. The greater part of Howe's army,
accordingly, consisted of experienced regulars. He had with him
twenty-seven regiments of the line, four battalions of light infantry
and four of grenadiers, two battalions of the king's guards, three
brigades of artillery, and a regiment of light dragoons, numbering in
the aggregate about twenty-three thousand officers and men. The six
thousand or more that came from Halifax were the Boston "veterans."
These had been joined by regiments from the West Indies; and among the
reinforcements from Britain were troops that had garrisoned Gibraltar
and posts in Ireland and England, with men from Scotland who had won a
name in the Seven Years' War.[100] Howe's generals were men who showed
their fitness to command by their subsequent conduct during the war.
Next to the commander-in-chief ranked Lieutenant-Generals Clinton,
Percy, and Cornwallis; Major-Generals Mathews, Robertson, Pigot,
Grant, Jones, Vaughan, and Agnew; and Brigadier-Generals Leslie,
Cleveland, Smith, and Erskine.

[Footnote 100: The "Highlander" regiments were the Forty-second and
Seventy-first. In _Stewart's Highlanders_, vol. i., p. 354, as quoted
in the _Memoir of General Graham_, the following passage appears: "On
the 10th April, 1776, the Forty-second Regiment being reviewed by Sir
Adolphus Oughton, was reported complete, and so unexceptionable that
none were rejected. Hostilities having commenced in America, every
exertion was made to teach the recruits the use of the firelock, for
which purpose they were drilled even by candle-light. New arms and
accoutrements were supplied to the men; and the colonel of the
regiment, at his own expense, supplied _broadswords and pistols_....
The pistols were of the old Highland fashion, with iron stocks. These
being considered unnecessary except in the field, were not intended,
like the swords, to be worn by the men in quarters. When the regiment
took the field on Staten and Long Island, it was said th