unlawfully acquired government-owned farming tools or other stores looted and discarded by the Americans, and demanded that they be handed back. The looting of York occurred in spite of Pike's earlier orders that all civilian property be respected and that any soldier convicted of such transgressions would be executed. Dearborn similarly emphatically denied giving orders for any buildings to be destroyed and deplored the worst of the atrocities in his letters, but he was nonetheless unable or unwilling to rein in his soldiers. Dearborn himself was embarrassed by the looting, as it made a mockery of the terms of surrender he arranged. His soldiers' disregard for the terms he arranged, and local civil leaders' continued protest against them, made Dearborn eager to leave York as soon as all the captured stores were transported. Aftermath The Americans occupied the town for nearly two weeks. They sent the captured military stores, including 20 artillery pieces, away on May 2 but were then penned in York harbour by a gale. Chauncey's vessels were so overcrowded with troops that only half of them could go below decks to escape the rain at any time. They left York on May 8, departing for the Niagara peninsula. where they required several weeks to recuperate. Sheaffe's troops endured an equally miserable fourteen-day retreat overland to Kingston. Around 300 to 400 Iroquois warriors assembled and marched towards York shortly after the battle, in an effort to launch an attack on the American forces there. The Iroquois were approximately west of York, in present-day Burlington, when they learned that the Americans had departed York; resulting in the expedition to be called off. Effects on the war Many members of the Provincial Assembly and other prominent citizens severely criticized Sheaffe, both for his conduct generally and during the fighting at York. For example, Militia officers Chewitt and Allan, the Reverend Strachan and others wrote to Governor General Prévost on May 8, that Sheaffe "kept too far from his troops after retreating from the woods, never cheered or animated them, nor showed by his personal conduct that he was hearty in the cause." Sheaffe lost his military and public offices in Upper Canada as a result of his defeat. However, the Americans had not inflicted crippling damage on the Provincial Marine on Lake Ontario, and they admitted that by preserving his small force of regulars rather than sacrificing them in a