The men actually had no food.

For days, as Washington wrote, there was no meat at all in camp.

Goaded by hunger, a Connecticut regiment mutinied.
They were brought back to duty, but held out steadily for their pay, which they had not received for five months.

Indeed, the whole army was more or less mutinous, and it was only by the utmost tact that Washington kept them from wholesale desertion.

After the summer had passed and the chance for a decisive campaign had gone with it, the excitement of expected action ceased to sustain the men, and the unclothed, unpaid, unfed soldiers began again to get restive.