On June 17, 1778, the first units of an Anglo-German army withdrawing from Philadelphia to New York descended on Collingswood, Haddon Township, and Haddonfield, where horses grazed and trampled fields of wheat, rye, corn, and hay and soldiers pillaged homes and outbuildings for food, drink, bedding, clothing, and jewelry, though they were better disciplined than the troops that invaded North Jersey in 1776 and left no accounts of rape or murder. After France entered the war on the side of the new United States, orders arrived on May 9, 1778, to abandon Philadelphia, and in late May quartermasters began moving wagons and provisions across the Delaware River to Cooper's Ferry in Camden. Troops and horses began crossing on June 14, and on June 17 Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen crossed with the last of the German and Loyalist infantry and advanced on the Ferry Road toward Haddonfield, where a German rifleman noted that the heat was terrible. Reassembled at Haddonfield on June 18-19, the British army formed a moving city of almost 21,000 men, women, and a few children with about 1,000 vehicles, each drawn by two, three, or four horses. The artillery alone included 46 field pieces and more than a hundred wagons for ammunition, spare parts, traveling forges, provisions, officers' baggage, and horse feed, while British, Loyalist, and Hessian cavalry units and infantry officers added many more horses. Between Cooper's Ferry and Haddonfield, about 4,000 enemy horses grazed along the Ferry Road. Six families lived along this section of the road, including John Estaugh Hopkins, who farmed 400 acres on the west side of Haddonfield, Charles Webb, who leased a 100 acre plantation, and Ebenezer Hopkins II, who was taxed for 368 acres, while Edward Jones rented 12 acres and two other families appear to have lived in cottages on farms where they worked; all became victims of the occupation.