Fifth in a series of articles recounting Philadelphia's days in the Revolutionary War.

Sir William Howe has his prize.

Philadelphia, the largest and most important city in England's rebellious North American colonies, has fallen to Howe's army.

The date is Sept. 26, 1777. On a brilliant morning that seems made for red coats and gold braid, Lt. Gen. Earl Charles Cornwallis, Howe's second-in-command, leads a column of 3,000 British and German troops into the capital of the rebellion, a city now emptied of rebels but resounding with the cheers of loyalists.

Howe himself remains in Germantown, with about 9,000 troops. He will wait until Cornwallis secures the city and fortifies it against attack by land and river before bringing in the whole army.

After all the marching and fighting since Howe's army landed on the Elk River in Maryland on Aug. 25, the final push into the capital of the rebellion has been easy.

It takes only one more move in the game of fox-and-hound that Washington and Howe have been playing for months.

On Sept. 21, the morning after British light infantry maul American troops in a bayonet attack at Paoli, Howe moves part of his force up the western bank of the Schuylkill toward Gordon's Ford (near present-day Phoenixville).

Washington believes that the British are trying either to outflank him (which they have done before, at Long Island and Brandywine) or to seize the Continental Army's stores at Reading.

Either would be bad.

In response, Washington moves his army along the eastern bank to the area of Pottsgrove, "determined to keep pace," he writes on Sept. 23 to John Hancock, the president of Congress.

With Washington fooled by the British feint, Howe is able to get his troops across the Schuylkill unopposed at Fatland Ford, near Valley Forge, in the middle of the night on Sept. 22.

Washington is now far in Howe's rear and his army is hobbled by a lack of shoes ("... our distress for want of Shoes is almost beyond conception," Washington writes) that makes a quick march to catch the British impossible.

Howe's way to Philadelphia is clear.

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Howe's progress northward from the Elk River has been slow enough to give Philadelphia plenty of time to prepare for his arrival.

Still, Washington's aide, Alexander Hamilton, creates a scare on the night of Sept. 18 when he warns Congress that the British could have a raiding party in the city within a few hours.

Congress, reacting to Hamilton's alarm with uncharacteristic speed and unanimity, bolts town that very night, heading north through Bristol, then circling to the west and stopping at Lancaster before ending up in York.

Prominent supporters of independence, such as the artist and militiaman Charles Willson Peale, have also left town. Peale, a veteran of the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, has spent the last days before the British arrival finding a refuge outside Philadelphia for his family, and now has gone off to rejoin the American forces.

(The most famous of all Philadelphians, Benjamin Franklin, is already in Paris, seeking aid for the revolutionary cause.)

The Liberty Bell has been whisked off to Allentown and hidden, lest the British melt it down to make cannonballs. Congress has ordered virtually all printing presses moved out of town. Washington has already sent Hamilton to Philadelphia to bring back all the shoes, blankets, and anything else he can find for the Continental Army, using force if necessary. And revolutionary officials in the city have removed as many horses and cattle as possible.

Between one-sixth and one-third of Philadelphia's population - which historian Billy Smith estimates at more than 34,000, including the Northern Liberties and Southwark - appears to have left town, according to Howe's aide, Maj. John André.

But the British do not march into a city that is sullen with defeat. While many Philadelphians are ardent supporters of the Revolution, many others are loyal to King George III, or at least neutral.

Historians estimate that about 3,000 Loyalists depart with the British army when it leaves the city in June 1778. (The historian Paul H. Smith believes that about 17 percent of the total population of the rebellious colonies remained loyal - far fewer than the one-third that John Adams estimated long after the Revolution.)

Robert Morton, a Quaker teenager, records in his diary that the British arrive in Philadelphia "to the great relief of the inhabitants who have too long suffered the yoke of arbitrary Power; and who testified their approbation of the arrival of the troops by the loudest acclamations of joy."

Morton, who is 16, is the stepson of James Pemberton, a Quaker recently arrested with 16 other members of the Society of Friends for refusing to affirm their allegiance to Pennsylvania. For their refusal, the Pennsylvania Executive Council, the state's governing body, has ordered the men exiled to Winchester, Va.

"Oh, Philada. my native City," Morton laments in his diary, "thou that hast heretofore been so remarkable for the protection of thy Rights, now sufferest those who were the Guardians, Protectors, and Defenders of thy Youth... to be dragged by a licentious mob from their near and dear connections, and by the hands of lawless power banished from their country unheard, perhaps never more to return, for the sole suspicion of being enemies to that cause in which thou art now engaged."

Accompanying the British into the city are some of Philadelphia's most prominent loyalists, including Benjamin Franklin's old political protege Joseph Galloway, formerly speaker of the Assembly and a delegate to the First Continental Congress. Galloway has been an advocate of American rights, but opposes independence.

Galloway has provided the British with invaluable information throughout the Philadelphia campaign. Howe, who wants to establish a civilian government in the city, will later make Galloway the superintendent of police.

For now, the people who need policing the most are the British soldiers. The young diarist Morton complains that the troops have begun looting and that the army has responded with floggings.

Philadelphia quickly finds that an occupying army, "however friendly," (in Morton's words) is a troublesome guest.

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Some revolutionaries profess to be unfazed by the loss of Philadelphia.

John Adams, who has written in his diary on Sept. 16 that the loss of Philadelphia would be a blow, but not a fatal one, writes to his wife, Abigail, on Sept. 30: "I am still of Opinion that Philadelphia will be no Loss to Us."

While losing the city may not be a disaster for the revolutionary cause, it is embarrassing.

Samuel Shaw, a first lieutenant from Boston and a Continental artillery officer, writes to his father, Francis, also on Sept. 30, that since his last letter home, "... we have had (I don't know that I ought to call it the misfortune) the mortification of seeing the enemy possess themselves of Philadelphia."

Shaw continues: "... the inquiry naturally arises, What is to be done? are the enemy peaceably to remain in Philadelphia? I hope not... . Our lads are unwilling to relinquish their prospects of yet having the city for winter-quarters."

Moreover, morale is high among Washington's troops, who have heard that the American army under Horatio Gates has stopped a British advance on Albany at Freeman's Farm in Upstate New York. Shaw writes to his father that "... the general wish [among Washington's troops] is for a fair opportunity to signalize themselves."

They will get the chance soon.