It was during this expedition, that Arnold asked a captain, who had been taken prisoner, what he thought the Americans would do with him, if he should fall into their hands. "They will cut off the leg," replied the officer, "which was wounded when you were fighting for the cause of liberty, and bury it with the honors of war, and hang the rest of your body on a gibbet."
While these things were going on, Sir Henry Clinton received a letter from Lord George Germain, little suited to increase his respect for the judgment, good sense, or honesty of his new American brigadier. Among other inventions to please the ministry, Arnold had represented the facility with which West Point might be taken, if not by a coup de main, yet by a few days' regular attack, and had proposed a sort of plan for that object. Lord George Germain expressed some degree of surprise, that the British commander had not undertaken the business, or at least mentioned his intention of doing it. "Such is the present state of Great Britain," said he, "that every possible means must be employed for the reduction of the rebellion," and he urged a serious consideration of the subject.
These suggestions, to say the least, were a tacit censure upon Sir Henry Clinton, for his want either of discernment or enterprise. He felt their force, and could not entirely conceal his displeasure. In his reply, however, he proved the folly of the scheme, and the impossibility of its execution, according to his view of the state of affairs, with the reduced force then at his command. "As to Major-General Arnold's opinion," he observed, "I can only say, that, whatever he may have represented to your Lordship, nothing he has as yet communicated to me on the subject has convinced me that the rebel posts in the Highlands can be reduced by 'a few days' regular attack.' But if he convinces me now, in the present reduction of the rebel army, that such a thing is practicable, (for to fail would be death to our cause in the present state of the war,) I shall most likely be induced to make the attempt. I have therefore required that general officer to send his plan of operation to me without delay, and to follow or accompany it himself." This was written on the 5th of April, 1781, and Arnold returned, a few weeks afterwards, to New York, thus escaping the fate that might otherwise have awaited him at Yorktown.
How he explained himself to Sir Henry Clinton is not known. We hear no more of the project against West Point, and Arnold seems to have remained in idleness during the summer.
Early in September, however, an enterprise was set on foot, which, from his knowledge of the place of action and other circumstances, he doubtless originated. At New London were deposited public stores; and private property to a considerable amount was known to be on board the vessels in the harbor, feebly defended by Fort Trumbull on one side of the river, and Fort Griswold on the other. Here was an opportunity, too tempting to be resisted, for gaining plunder, gratifying a vindictive spirit, and rendering a service to the cause, which he had espoused, and in aid of which he had hitherto done so little either to sustain his military reputation, or mark the value of his dearly bought allegiance.
Departing from the opposite shore of Long Island, with a force adequate to the undertaking, he crossed the Sound, and landed his troops in two divisions at the mouth of the river. One division marched towards New London, took Fort Trumbull, and entered the town. The other, passing up the east side of the river, ascended the high grounds to Fort Griswold, which, after a short but sanguinary conflict, was carried at the point of the bayonet.
The details of these tragical scenes have often been described, and need not here be recapitulated. New London was reduced to ashes. Several vessels in the harbor shared the same fate. Others escaped up the river towards Norwich. The brave Colonel Ledyard, who commanded in Fort Griswold, was slain by his own sword, when he gave it into the hands of the officer, who headed the assailing party; and many of his companions in arms, inhabitants of the little village of Groton, who had assembled at a moment's warning to defend their homes and their firesides, were butchered in cold blood after the fort was surrendered.
It has been said, that Arnold, while New London was in flames, stood in the belfrey of a steeple, and witnessed the conflagration; thus, like Nero, delighted with the ruin he had caused, the distresses he had inflicted, the blood of his slaughtered countrymen, the anguish of the expiring patriot, the widow's tears and the orphan's cries. And what adds to the enormity is, that he stood almost in sight of the spot where he drew his first breath; that every object around was associated with the years of his childhood and youth, and revived those images of the past, which kindle emotions of tenderness in all but hearts of stone; that many of the dying, whose groans assailed his ears, and of the living, whose houses and effects he saw devoured by the flames, were his early friends, the friends of his father, his mother, his family; and, in short, that these wanton acts of barbarity were without provocation on the part of the sufferers, and not less iniquitous in the motives whence they sprang, than shocking to humanity in themselves.
This was the last exploit of Arnold in his native country. It was indeed the closing scene of his military and public career. And he had done enough. Nothing more was necessary to unfold his character in all the variety of its resources and depth of its depravity, or to convince the world, that, when a man once abandons himself to his passions, contemns the counsels of wisdom and virtue, sears his conscience, confounds duty with selfishness and honor with revenge, the descent is easy and rapid to that state in which he is the object, not more of the reproach and scorn of mankind, than of their pity and contempt.