and the navy sent ashore guns to mount in them; but
the decisive blow to Mud Island was given by a small armed ship, the
_Vigilant_, 20, which was successfully piloted through a channel on
the west side of the river, and reached the rear of the work, towing
with her a floating battery with three 24-pounders. This was on the
15th of November. That night the Americans abandoned Fort Mifflin.
Their loss, Beatson says, amounted to near 400 killed and wounded;
that of the British to 43. If this be correct, it should have
established the invincibility of men who under such prodigious
disparity of suffering could maintain their position so tenaciously.
After the loss of Mud Island, Red Bank could not be held to advantage,
and it was evacuated on the 21st, when an attack was imminent. The
American vessels retreated up the river; but they were cornered,
and of course ultimately were destroyed. The obstructions being now
removed, the British water communications by the line of the Delaware
were established,--eight weeks after the occupation of the city, which
was to be evacuated necessarily six months later.

While these things were passing, Howe's triumph was marred by the news
of Burgoyne's surrender on the 17th of October. For this he could
not but feel that the home government must consider him largely
responsible; for in the Chesapeake, too late to retrieve his false
step, he had received a letter from the minister of war saying that,
whatever else he undertook, support to Burgoyne was the great object
to be kept in view.

During the operations round Philadelphia, Sir Henry Clinton in New
York had done enough to show what strong probabilities of success
would have attended an advance up the Hudson, by the twenty thousand
men whom Howe could have taken with him. Starting on the 3d of October
with three thousand troops, accompanied by a small naval division of
frigates, Clinton in a week had reached West Point, fifty miles up
the river. The American fortifications along the way were captured,
defences levelled, stores and shipping burned; while an insignificant
detachment, with the light vessels, went fifty miles further up,
and there destroyed more military stores without encountering any
resistance worth mentioning. Certainly, had Howe taken the same line
of operations, he would have had to reckon with Washington's ten
thousand men which confronted him on the march from the Chesapeake to
Philadelphia; but his flank would h