er Colonel Innes and General Nelson.
Nelson, on this occasion, retorted a verbal defiance in answer to a
letter with which Arnold had ushered in his invasion.[710:A]

Leaving a frigate and some transports at Burwell's Ferry, Arnold
proceeded[710:B] up the river to Westover. Here landing a force of less
than eight hundred men, including a small party of badly mounted
cavalry, he marched for Richmond at two o'clock in the afternoon of the
same day. Nelson, in the mean while, with a handful of militia, badly
supplied with ammunition, had marched up the right bank of the James
River, but arrived too late to offer any opposition to the landing of
the enemy. Arnold, at one o'clock of the next day after he marched from
Westover, entered the infant capital without having encountered any
resistance, although his route was very favorable for it. The energetic
Simcoe, with a detachment, proceeded a few miles beyond Richmond and
destroyed the foundry, emptied the contents of the powder magazine,
struck off the trunnions of the cannon, and set fire to the warehouses
and mills, the effect of the conflagration being heightened by
occasional explosions of gunpowder. Many small arms and a stock of
military supplies were destroyed, and five tons of gunpowder thrown into
the river. At Richmond the public stores fell a prey; private property
was plundered and destroyed; the soldiers broke into houses and procured
rum; and several buildings were burnt. Part of the records of the
auditor's office, and the books and papers of the council office shared
the same fate.

Governor Jefferson used every effort in his power to remove the public
stores, and part were rescued by being removed across the river at
Westham. Late on the night of the fourth he went to Tuckahoe, and on the
next day went down to Manchester, opposite Richmond, where the busy
movements of the enemy were in full view. When they advanced upon that
place only two hundred militia were embodied--too small a number to make
any resistance. The governor, having repaired to Colonel Fleming's, in
Chesterfield, to meet Steuben, received there a message from Arnold,
offering not to burn Richmond, on condition that British vessels should
be permitted to come to it unmolested and take away the tobacco. The
proposition was rejected.

The inhabitants of Richmond were, for the most part, Scotch factors, who
lived in small tenements scattered here and there between the river and
the hill, som