Heath resolutely demanded and received from Lee a certificate that he had assumed command of the post. Then, when the comedy was all played, and his wayward will satisfied, the usurper of authority changed his mind and recalled the regiments he had ordered out. "The erratic Lee," as some one has called him, crossed the Hudson with his army on the 2nd and 3rd of December, to the great relief of the commander of the post. When the French allies, under Rochambeau, marched north after the winter of 1782, they were received by their American brothers-in-arms at Verplanck's Point and conducted to their encampment south of Peekskill. Seeing the steadiness and discipline of the lines extending from the ferry to headquarters, the French commander exclaimed ui admiration: "You have formed an alliance with the King of Prussia! These

troops are Prussians!" The house at which Washington stopped at one time during the war, and where not a few of the

At the Gate of the Highlands 3^7

notable figures of Revolutionary story were entertained from time to time, was that Ixiilt In- the Hon. Pierre Van Cortlandt in 1773. This must not be confounded with the manor-house at Croton, to which reference has already been made. A year after the building of the Peekskill house, Van Cortlandt seems to have been living in the older one at the Point, for it was there that Governor Tryon visited him in 1774, to secure, if possible, his interest for the King's cause in the approaching contest. In 1775, Phili]), the son of General Van Cortlandt, accepted a commission in the Continental army, an act which incurred the enmity of the Royalists against the whole family and led to f)itter persecutions. The Peekskill house was the one occupied by Mrs. Beekman during the war.