For Love of Country - Cyrus Townsend Brady (great book club books txt) 📗

to heaven; then, putting spurs to his horse, he galloped over toward the men. The firing had ceased in every direction, and the day was his own; the three regiments were surrendering at discretion, two to him and the other to Lord Stirling. As Major Wilkinson galloped up from the lower division for instructions, Colonel Rahl, pale and bleeding, and supported by two sergeants, presented his sword, which Washington courteously declined to receive. The general then gave orders that every care and assistance should be afforded the unfortunate soldier, who died the next day in a room in Potts' Tavern.

"This is indeed a glorious day for our country," said the general to Seymour.

It was in fact the turning-point in the history of the nation. The captives numbered nearly one thousand men, with twelve hundred stand of arms, six field-pieces, twelve drums, and four colors, including the gorgeous banner of the Anspachers, the Von Lossburg regiment.

Of the Continentals, only two were killed and four wounded, while upward of one hundred of the Hessians were killed and wounded, among the killed being Rahl and Von Dechow, the first and second in command. The whole of this brilliant affair scarcely occupied an hour.

As none of the other divisions had got across, it was scarcely safe for Washington to remain on the east side of the river in the presence of the vastly superior forces of the enemy, which would be concentrated upon him without delay. So that, after giving the men a much needed rest, securing their booty, and burying the dead, the evening found the little army, with its prisoners, retracing its steps toward the ford and its former camping-ground.

But with what different feelings the hungry, worn-out, tattered mass of men marched along in the bitter night! The contrast between the well-clothed and well-fed Hessians and their captors was surprising, but not less striking than that between their going out and coming in. Little recked the frozen men of the hardships of the way. They had shown the world that they possessed other capabilities than facility in retreating, and no American army, however small or feeble, would ever again be despised by any foe.

The return passage was made without incident, save that just on the crest of the hills leading down to the Ford, the general, who was in advance again, noticed a suspicious-looking, snow-covered mound by the roadside. Riding up to it, one of his aids dismounted and uncovered the body of a man, a Continental soldier, frozen to death. The cold weapon was grasped tightly in the colder hand. A little farther on there was another body asleep in the snow,--another soldier! The last was that man of the headquarters guard who had spoken of his little children at home on Christmas day. They would wait a long time before they saw him again. He had been willing to fight the whole English army! Ah, well, a sterner foe than any who marched beneath the red flag of Great Britain had grappled with him, and he had been defeated,--but he had won his freedom!

For forty hours now that little band of men had marched and fought, and when it reached its camp at midnight the whole army was exhausted. The only man among them all who preserved his even calmness, and was apparently unaffected by the hardships of the day, was the commander himself,--the iron man. Late into the night he dictated and wrote letters and orders, to be despatched in every direction in the morning. The successful issue of his daring adventure entailed yet further responsibilities, and the campaign was only just begun. As for himself, the world now knew him for a soldier. And a withered old man in the palace of the Sans Souci in Berlin, who had himself known victories and defeats, who had himself stood at bay, facing a world in arms so successfully that men called him "The Great," called this and the subsequent campaign the finest military exploit of the age!


CHAPTER XXVI


My Lord Cornwallis

And so the departure of my Lord Cornwallis was necessarily deferred. The packet upon which he had engaged passage, and which had actually received his baggage, sailed without him. It would be some days before he would grace the court of St. James with his handsome person, and a long time would elapse before he would once more rejoice in the sight of his beloved hills; when he next returned it would not be with the laurels of a conqueror either! He was to try conclusions once and again with the gentleman he had so assiduously pursued through the Jerseys; and this time, ay, and in the end too, the honors were to be with his antagonist. The Star and Order of the Bath, which his gracious and generous Britannic majesty had sent over to the new Caesar, General Howe, with so much laudation and so many words of congratulation, was to have a little of its lustre diminished, and was destined to appear not quite so glorious as it had after Long Island; in fact, it was soon to be seen that it was only a pyrotechnic star after all, and not in the order of heaven! Both of these gentlemen were to learn that an army--almost any kind of an army--is always dangerous until it is wiped out; and it is not to be considered as wiped out as long as it has any coherent existence at all, even if the coherent existence only depends upon the iron will of one man,--which is another way of saying the game is never won until it is ended.

There was mounting in hot haste in New York, and couriers and orders streamed over the frozen roads, and Lord Cornwallis himself galloped at full speed for Princeton. The calculations of a certain number of his majesty's faithful troops were to be rudely disturbed, and the comfortable quarters in which they had ensconced themselves were to be vacated forthwith. Concentration, aggregation, synthesis, were the words; and this time the reassembled army was not to disintegrate into winter quarters until this pestilent Mr. Washington was attended to, and attended to so effectually that they could enjoy the enforced hospitality of the surly but substantial Jerseymen through the long winter nights undisturbed. For his part, Mr. Washington, having tasted success, the first real brilliant offensive success of the campaign, was quite willing to be attended to. In fact, in a manner which in another sex might be called coquettish, he seemed to court attention. Having successfully attacked with his frost-bitten ragged regiments a detachment, he was now to demonstrate to the world that not even the presence of an army could stop him.

Things were not quiet on the Pennsylvania side of the river either; there were such comings and goings in Newtown as that staid and conservative village had never before seen. Our two friends, the sad-hearted, were both busily employed. Talbot had galloped over the familiar road, and had electrified the good people of Philadelphia with his news, and then had hastened on to Baltimore to reassure the spirits of the frightened Congress. Honest Robert Morris was trotting around from door to door upon New Year's morning, hat in hand, begging for dollars to assist his friend George Washington, and the cause of liberty, and the suffering army; and Seymour, become as it were a soldier, and with Philip for esquire, was waiting to take what he could get, be the amount ever so little, back to General Washington. The sailor had been granted a further leave of absence by the naval committee, at the general's urgent request, and was glad to learn that he should soon have command of the promised ship of war, which was even then making ready in the Delaware. Honest Bentley--beloved of the soldiery in spite of his genuinely expressed contempt for land warriors--was lending what aid he could in keeping up the spirits of the men, and in other material ways in the camp. Some of the clothing, some of the guns from the Mellish, some of the material captured from the Hessians had gone into the hands and over the backs and upon the feet of the men. But the clothed and the naked were equally happy, for had they not done something at last? Ay! they had given assurance that they were men to be reckoned with.

Fired by the example set them by the Continentals, the Pennsylvania militia, under Cadwalader and Ewing and Mifflin, had at last crossed the Delaware and joined Griffin's men. Washington had followed them, and the twenty-ninth of December found him established in new headquarters at Trenton. A number of mounds in the fields, covered with snow, some bitter recollections and sad stories of plunder, robbery, rapine, and worse, told with gnashing teeth or breaking heart by the firesides, were all that remained of their strange antagonists in the town. But the little town and the little valley were to be once more the scene of war. The great game was to be played again, and the little creek of the Assunpink was to run red under its ice and between its banks.

On the twenty-ninth, Washington's troops began to cross the river again. Two parties of light dragoons were sent on in advance under Colonel Reed, assisted by parties of Pennsylvania riflemen despatched by Cadwalader. They clung tenaciously to the flanks of Von Donop. That unfortunate commander had been led away from his camp at Burlington in pursuit of Griffin's gallant six hundred. When he returned, unsuccessful, the news from Trenton had so alarmed him that he fled precipitately, abandoning his heavy baggage and some of his artillery. It was a work of joy for the pursued to pursue, a reversal of conditions which put the heavy German veterans at a strange disadvantage compared with their alert and active pursuers. They had marched through that country with a high hand, plundering and abusing its inhabitants in a frightful way, and they were now being made to experience the hatred they themselves had enkindled. The country people rose against them, and cut them off without mercy.

It took two days to get the troops across, on account of the ice in the river. And now came another difficulty. The time of the major part of the Americans had expired on the last day of the year, but Washington had them paraded and had ridden up and addressed them in a brilliant, soldier-like fashion, and they had to a man volunteered to remain with him for six weeks longer, or as much more time as was necessary to enable him to complete his campaign before he went into winter quarters. He was at last able to pay them their long deferred salary out of the fifty thousand dollars sent him by Robert Morris, which Seymour and Talbot that day had brought him; and for their future reward he cheerfully pledged his own vast estate, an example of self-sacrifice which Greene, Stark, Talbot, Seymour, and others of the officers who possessed property, at once emulated. The men were put in good spirits by a promise of ten dollars' bounty also, and they were ready and eager for a fight.

Reed, attended by six young gentlemen of the Philadelphia Troop, had been sent out to reconnoitre. Up toward Princeton they had surprised a British outpost composed of a sergeant and twelve dragoons; the sergeant escaped, but the twelve dragoons, panic-stricken, were captured after a