France had been shorn of her possessions
in Canada, and she was losing her islands in the West Indies, where,
early in 1762, beautiful Martinique (to become famous as the birthplace
of the Empress Josephine, and a rich land of sugar and spices) was
captured by the British.
In fact, the theater of war was transferred to the more southern regions
of the Caribbean Sea, and the New Englanders took a long breath and
congratulated themselves that at last they were at liberty to pursue
their callings unmolested. But in this they were somewhat premature, as
England was still engaged in fighting, and, no matter where her battles
were fought, she seemed to expect the loyal American colonists to
furnish soldiers for her wars. Connecticut, Putnam's home State, was
again called upon for the same number of able-bodied men she had
furnished year by year, and promptly proffered her bone and sinew to
fight the wars of King George the Third.
A thousand men, besides fifteen hundred from New York and New Jersey,
embarked at the port of New York, in the month of June, 1762, bound for
Havana in Cuba, where British regulars were dying by hundreds of
pestilence, and sorely needed those colonial reenforcements.
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