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Boswell, James, 1740-1795

"1776-1780"

One of the articles of the Convention was 'that the army
should march out of the camp with all the honours of war to a fixed
place where they were to deposit their arms. It is said that General
Gates [the American Commander] paid so nice and delicate an attention
to the British military honour that he kept his army close within their
lines, and did not suffer an American soldier to be a witness to the
degrading spectacle of piling their arms.' _Ann. Reg_. xx. 173, 174.
Horace Walpole, on Lord Cornwallis's capitulation in 1781, wrote:--'The
newspapers on the Court side had been crammed with paragraphs for a
fortnight, saying that Lord Cornwallis had declared he would never pile
up his arms like Burgoyne; that is, he would rather die sword in hand.'
Walpole's _Journal of the Reign of George III_, ii. 475.
[1057] See _ante_, i. 342.
[1058] There was a Colonel Fullarton who took an important part in the
war against Tippoo in 1783. Mill's _British India_, ed. 1840, iv. 276.
[1059] 'To count is a modern practice, the ancient method was to guess;
and when numbers are guessed, they are always magnified.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 95.
[1060] He published in 1714 _An Account of Switzerland_.


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