By mid-August, 32,000 fully equipped, highly trained, thoroughly professional British and German (Hessian) soldiers—more than the entire population of Philadelphia—were ashore on Staten Island, supported by ten ships-of-the-line and twenty frigates, making in all the largest, most costly British overseas deployment ever until that time. By contrast, the American army gathered in defense of New York, digging in on Manhattan and Long Island, was optimistically thought to number 20,000 troops, these nearly all poorly equipped amateurs led by Washington, who in his year as commander-in-chief had
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