In such an event, or in any other except the mastery of New York, which, with its inevitable consequences, seemed to establish the supremacy of Great Britain beyond the possibility of dispute, the French alliance would have been a matter of months instead of years. After the evacuation of New York by its small British garrison, in •Tune, 177."), the city, although in fact fully controlled by the patriot party, remained nominally for a brief time under a divided authority. It is a curious fact that on the same day when Washington arrived in New York en route to the army in Massachusetts, the royal Governor Tryon returned there after a short absence, and that both were received with every manifestation of popular respect. But before many weeks Governor Tryon perceived that his residence in the city was perilous. Intimations were given him of a plot to seize his person and arraign him before tin1 provincial congress, which hud already begun to take high-handed measures against loyal British subjects. lie accordingly fled to a ship in the harbor, from which safe retreat he continued to administer the forms of government until the retaking of the city. The removal of the guns in the city to Kingsbridge by the Sons

. : >^^

FROM

JANUARY,

1775,

JULY

9, 1776

of Liberty, after the news of Lexington, was, as we have seen, the first overt demonstration by the Revolutionary element in New York. The guns taken up at that time, and during the next few months, did not include, however, the tine ordnance of the fort. Nevertheless they made a formidable showing as to numbers, although hardly as to serviceability. At Kingsbridge they were divided, by the order of congress, into three parcels, one portion being left there, another sent to Williams's Bridge, and a third to Valentine's Hill, near Kingsbridge.1 "Before the close of the year 1775," says Dawson, whose facts may generally be accepted without question, " between three and four hundred cannon, of all calibers, grades, and conditions, some of them good and serviceable, others less valuable and less useful, the greater number honeycombed and worthless, unless for old iron, and all of them unmounted and without carriages, were accumulated in three large gatherings, one of about fifty guns being at ' John Williams's,' the Williams's Bridge of the present day, one ' at or near Kingsbridge," and the third or larger parcel within two hundred and fifty yards of Isaac Valentine's house, the Valentine's Hill of that period as well as this." For a number of months they received no further attention, and were even left unguarded.