Major Austin was immediately brought to trial before a Court Martial which sentenced him to be reprimanded, but General Lee ordered a new Court Martial "with a charge of wanton, cruel and barbarous treatment of helpless women and children, not only unworthy the character of an officer, but of a human creature." On this second trial it appeared, that one of the houses burnt was filled with women and children, who had returned from the place of refuge they had sought, on the approach of the British army; that the females were insulted with abusive language, and threatened with death by Austin and his party, who would not suffer the mother to dress her children but drove them out of doors naked. Austin acknowledged that he had no orders to burn the houses. The following was the decision of the Court Martial, i.e.: "The Court having considered the case of the prisoner, Major Austin, are of opinion that he is guilty of a breach of the twenty-first article in the fourteenth section of the rules for the government of the Forces of the United States of America, and therefore sentence him to be dis-charged from the service." Until the French government furnished Congress with muskets, the American troops, and the militia especially, were badly armed. They carried firelocks of various calibre

BATTLE OF WHITEPLAINS, ETC. 61 and were often without bayonets. So great was the deficiency of these latter weapons, that some of the men were furnished with pikes hastily and roughly manufactured, for the purpose of resisting the British cavalry. The want of bayonets was one reason why upon Chatterton Hill, the levies and militia fled before the Seventeenth light dragoons. Washington seems to have had no mounted force at White-plains with the exception of a small corps of light dragoons.