[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] refit leaving General Sullivan in a dangerous situation from which he had much difficulty in extricating himself. The behavior of the French in this first test of the practical value of the alliance excited o'reat disgust throughout the country. b The departure of the French to Boston was followed in September bv a o-reat stir of British preparations in New York for some un-known obiect. Washington, at White Plains, feared an attack on the rlrghhamls, which, in the elementary condition of the West Point defenses, were ill prepared for resistance; but he equally eared an expedition against Boston. In this uncertainty he proceeded as he had done the year before while waiting for Howe to unfold his projects He largely re-enforced the troops at Peekskill and above, and stationed Putnam with two brigades near West Point, mean-while removing his own camp from Westchester County to a pose tion farther north on the Connecticut border, from where he move either to Boston or to the Hudson River, as the result should require. But the new enterprise of Sir Henry Clinton proved to have only local purposes. He sent an expedition to Little Egg Harbor,N J ) which had been used by the Americans as an important base for privateering operations, and, to cover it, threw 5,000 men under Cornwallis into northern New Jersey and 3,000 under knyphausen into Westchester County.