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By Root 961 0

New Haven from nearby towns to a total of several thousand. Knowing every tree and fence, and fighting for their homes and rights, they fired upon the invaders from the protection of the tall Indian corn now at its full July height. As excellent marksmen, they severely damaged General Tryon’s assumptions, but they could not repel his numbers nor save their homes and neighbors from pillage, fire and murder. The sharp crack of musketry and the smoke of burning buildings marked the invaders’ line of march. Smashing their way into every house, they tore and trampled on furnishings, piled up furniture to set it in flame, beat, raped and savaged the residents, and in one case murdered an aged and defenseless victim. He was Mr. Benjamin English, who, according to an account in the Connecticut Journal two days later, reproved a group of drunken redcoats for rough and insulting behavior to his daughter when they broke into his house demanding refreshments. They ran him through the body several times with bayonets. His daughter, on entering the room where he lay on the floor bleeding as he died, cried out, “Oh! How could you murder my poor old father so cruelly?” One of the soldiers asked “Is he your father?” and at her reply of “Yes,” he stamped upon the old man’s chest and upturned face, crushing his nose.

In the midst of the skirmish in New Haven, a body of students from Yale College, marching to meet the enemy, raised a cheer as they saw their former president, the Reverend Dr. Naphtali Daggett, astride his old black mare and carrying his fowling piece ready for action, riding furiously to the attack. Professor of divinity and president of Yale for nine years, he galloped past and soon was seen standing alone on a nearby hillside, firing upon the advancing British column. Coming up, the officer of the column shouted, “What are you doing there, you old fool, firing on His Majesty’s troops?” Firmly, Daggett replied, “Exercising the rights of war.” Asked whether, if his life were spared, he would do such a thing again, he answered, “Nothing more likely. I rather think I should.” Cool defiance can invite respect, if only temporary. Instead of shooting him, the soldiers permitted Daggett to surrender and marched him back to town at the point of their bayonets, wounding him with small stabs as they pricked him forward under the burning midday sun of the hottest day, one observer said, he had ever known. “The stoutest man almost melted in the heat.” When the Reverend’s strength failed and he was ready to sink to the ground in exhaustion, the soldiers drove him on with blows and bruises from the barrels of their guns and stripped his shoes from him to take their silver buckles, while they called him a “damned old rebel” and a thousand insults. Bleeding from his wounds, he was finally left where neighbors took him in and cared for him, but the battering had been too much. He died within the year—as everyone firmly believed, from the treatment he had received.

Two churches and a meetinghouse were burned at New Haven, which Tryon excused on the ground that they had caught fire accidentally from houses burning nearby. Papers and manuscripts taken from Yale College were not recovered, despite the indignant protest of President Ezra Stiles to Tryon, telling him that a war “against science” had been “reprobated for ages by the wisest and most powerful generals.” As the Duke of Alva would not have done, Tryon actually replied, saying that an inquiry had turned up no information about the papers. It was an insignificant item amid tragedy that did not end at New Haven. Governor Tryon’s forces moved on to pillage and burn Fairfield and Norwalk and destroy the salt pans at Horse Neck before they re-embarked for New York.

What could they have thought to gain by this persecution of civilians—to persuade Americans to give up their cause and return obediently to the sovereignty of Britain? To be worth the effort, war requires a rational objective, political and, in the short run, military, not just foolish aggression. Ultimately, the end sought is