1655.] HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY. 07 



of Fort Christina a bloodless siege of fourteen days was re- 

 quired. As a matter of neeessity, it yielded to an immensely 

 superior force on the 2oth of September, on even more favor- 

 able terms than had been granted to the garrison of Fort Trinity. 



Agreeably to special instructions from the home government, 

 an offer was made to restore the possession of Fort Christina to 

 Governor Rysingh, but he declined the off'er, preferring to abide 

 by the articles of capitulation. ' 



The magnificent scale on which the expedition was got up by 

 Stuyvesaut for the captin-e of these inconsiderable forts, with 

 the slow caution observed by him in conducting the siege of Fort 

 Christina, borders on the ridiculous, and has afforded an ample 

 field for the satire of the veritable Knickerbocker. Ilis igno- 

 rance of the weak condition of the enemy, will, in a measure, 

 defend him from the shafts of ridicule, but it will be difficult to 

 find an excuse for the acts of wantonness his soldiers were per- 

 mitted to exercise towards the peaceable inhabitants of the 

 country. If the official report of Rysingh is to be relied upon, 

 " they killed their cattle, goats, swine and poultry, broke open 

 houses, pillaged the people, without the sconce, of their property, 

 and higher up the river they plundered many and stripped them 

 to the skin. At New Gottenburg, they robbed Mr. Papegoya's 

 wife of all she had, with many others, who had collected their 

 property there."^ Nor does Rysingh fail to remind Stuyvesant 

 of these unjustifiable acts. "His men," he says, "acted as if 

 they had been on the lands of their inveterate enemy," as for 

 example, the plundering of '" Tennakong, Upland, Finlandt, 

 Printzdorp, and several other places,^ * * * * j^,j|. ^^^ ^.^^ ^ word 

 of what was done in Fort Christina, where women were violently 

 torn from their houses, whole buildings destroyed, and they 

 dragged from them, yea, the oxen, cows, swine and other crea- 

 tures, were butchered day after day ; even the horses were not 

 spared, but wantonly shot, the plantations destroyed, and the 

 whole country left so desolate, that scarce any means are re- 

 maining for the subsistence of the inhabitants." He also tells 

 him, "your men took away at Tennekong, in an uncouth manner, 

 all the cordage and sails of a new vessel, and then they went to 

 the magazine, and without demanding the keys entered it alone, 

 broke the boards of the church, and so took away the cordan^e 

 and sails."^ 



1 Hist. New Netherland, ii. 289. ^ X. Y. Hist. Col. N. S. i. 446. 



' Smith, in his history of N. J. sajs, they " destroyed New Gottenburg, with such 

 houses a:* were without the fort, plundering the inhabitants of what they had and kill- 

 ing their cattle," p. 34. It would appear from Smith's account of the transaction, that 

 the fort at Tinicum was defended fourteen days, and that the depredations were com- 

 mitted previous to iti surrender. 



* Rysingh's reply to Stuyvesant, Haz. Ann. 201 ; as extracted from Albany Recordi, 

 xiii. 363-367. 



