Howe had hoped that his royal legions would be welcomed in the middle colonies as liberators rather than as conquerors. But the invading force was rife with what one loyalist called “fire-and-sword men.” Even before returning to New York, Howe decreed that flour and salt provisions exceeding a family’s need should be considered “a rebel store, [to] be seized for the Crown.” Confiscation hardly stopped with flour. “They have taken hogs, sheep, horses, and cows, everywhere,” Lieutenant Peale told his journal. “Even children have been stripped of their clothes,
