“Good God!”

General Washington cried in despair as he watched the carnage being inflicted on his ragtag troops during the Battle of Brooklyn. “What brave fellows I must this day lose!”

And not just his fellows, though they died by the hundreds on Aug. 27, 1776, but the city of New York across the East River. And not just the city, though it was clear the Americans could not defend it from British occupation, but perhaps the war itself.

“If they had captured Washington, that would have been the death of the Revolution,” said Julie Golia, director of public history at the Brooklyn Historical Society.