Seeking to avoid a bloody battle with the approaching British, Washington chose this strong defensive position, where a circle of brooks and swamps protected the Continental troops. Commander-in-Chief Washington and Major-General Lord Stirling arranged their men in three lines, with two battalions of light infantry posted here, Pennsylvania troops to their right, and a line of cannon with several more brigades of infantry behind them partway up the hill, while just over the ridge the Marquis de Lafayette commanded the reserves. The 1st Pennsylvania Brigade saw no infantry action but endured heavy shot and shell; Col. William Irvine wrote that although the brigade he commanded was posted in front of the whole army, it lost only 5 killed and a few wounded. Some of the brigade’s casualties were in Col. James Chamber’s 1st Pennsylvania Regiment, and on June 30 he wrote his wife, Kitty, that at Freehold Church their division had been drawn up in front of their artillery in a small hollow while the enemy’s artillery stood on an eminence before their brigade, placing them directly in the line of fire as both sides fired cannon over their heads, yet only two of his men were killed and four wounded by splinters of rails; the next day, he wrote, they buried upwards of two hundred and fifty British dead.