It was serious. This uprising of an undisciplined population could not defeat, or even damage seriously, the great army. But it could hamper it. It would force a wide scattering of troops to break down the sporadic opposition. It would make a dangerous country—dangerous in front of the advancing soldiers, dangerous in their rear, continually dangerous around them.
In that sense it was more serious than deliberate, military opposition by the American army would have been. Had the enemy commander faced only a defending army, it would have been a quiet, technical matter of advance guards against advance guards. These pawns in the old game of war would have thrust each other back here, receded before each other there, fighting only when it was forced on them, and so, gradually, properly, they would have cleared the board that the great game might be played.
This incoherent uprising was disorganizing all his tactics. From the western army that had set out to sweep through Connecticut, came
word that everywhere patrols had been attacked. Men in a swift power boat on the Thames River above New London had succeeded in three places in firing on scouting parties with a Hotchkiss rifle, apparently taken from a yacht.
The line north of Norwich along the same river reported four men killed from ambush. At Willimantic there had been firing from mill buildings, which had been destroyed for punishment.
The Commander of the brigade that was advancing on Worcester in Massachusetts from Connecticut had halted his advance, and was asking headquarters if the extent of the disorder were great enough to imperil his communications.
The eastern division, moving on Boston, reported that the patrols had been ordered in from the line North Middleboro—East Middleboro—Plymouth. “Our men can move only in considerable force,” reported the Commander. “Small parties are constantly in danger of being assassinated. The population appears to be in a frenzy. Seven cavalry at Nemasket, engaged in foraging for their horses, were burned alive in a barn. We have fired the town. It is still burning. Have shot ten citizens.”
“My men are getting out of hand,” telegraphed the Commander of a brigade moving toward Mansfield. “Stern reprisals required at once.”