Notwithstanding, within the preceding six or seven weeks, the farmers who lived along or near the line of the Post-road had been visited by Sears and his gang of Connecticut banditti, both on their way to the City of New York and on their return, thence, to Connecticut, by whom, on each occasion, they had been ruthlessly plundered, 1 they were again visited, during that march of Connecticut-men, under General Lee, by that new detachment of New England freebooters, and robbed, to the full extent of the hungry desires of their brutal visitors. Indeed, notwithstanding the recent visitation of his ruffianly countrymen to each of these peaceful families and the reckless depredations of those cowardly banditti, Colonel Waterbury, who commanded the Regiment whom General Lee had mustered into the Continental service -- himself, as was subsequently seen and heard, in the City of New York, as fine a specimen of the same class as was needed to perpetuate it 2 -- under the direct sanction of the General and with his orders, but without the slightest authority, legal or revolutionary, of either the local or the general Committees or of either of the Congresses, forced his way into every house he reached, ransacked them, and carried away, without even a memorandum of the names of those from whom they were taken, everything which bore the semblance of Arms, 3 leaving his victims, as far ag he could possibly do so, entirely without the means of defense, easy prey for whomsoever might next appear, on an errand of similar pillage and outrage.