The Fort

by Bernard Cornwell

  A musket-ball thumped into a tree beside Wadsworth, opening a scar of fresh wood. He pulled himself up the hill. He could hear the musketry close ahead, and he could hear Welch roaring orders above that splintering noise. The marines were still advancing, but the slope had eased now, which freed their hands to use their muskets. A scream sounded from the trees and was abruptly cut off. “Don’t let the bastards stand!” Welch shouted. “They’re running! Keep the bastards running!”

  “Come on, Fletcher!” Wadsworth called. He felt a sudden exaltation. The scent of victory was redolent in the rotten egg stench of powder smoke. He saw a redcoat among the trees to his left and pointed his pistol and pulled the trigger, and though he doubted his aim at that distance, he felt a fierce delight in shooting at his country’s enemies. James Fletcher fired his musket uphill, the recoil almost throwing him back off the track. “Keep going!” Wadsworth shouted. More militia were landing, and they too sensed that they were winning this fight and scrambled upwards with a new enthusiasm. Muskets were firing all along the bluff now, American as well as British, and the shots were filling the trees with balls and smoke, but Wadsworth sensed that the heavier fire came from the Americans. Men were shouting at each other, encouraging each other and whooping with delight as they saw the redcoats retreating ever higher. “Keep them running!” Wadsworth bellowed. My God, he thought, but they were winning!

  A militiaman brought the American flag ashore and the sight of it inspired Wadsworth. “Come on!” he shouted at a group of Lincoln County men, and he pushed uphill. A musket-ball slashed close enough to his cheek for the wind of its passage to jar his head sideways, but Wadsworth felt indestructible. To his right he could see a rough line of marines, their bayonets glinting as they climbed the shallower upper slope of the bluff while to his left the woods were thick with militiamen in their deerskin coats. He heard the distant war cries of the Indians on the American left, then the militia took up the sound to fill the trees with the eerie, high-pitched shout. The rebel fire was much denser than the enemy’s musketry. The two warships had ceased firing, their broadsides more a danger to their own side than to the enemy, but the sound of American musket-fire was incessant. The top of the bluff was being riddled by musketry and every moment took the attackers higher.

  Rachel, one of the smallest transport schooners, had been rowed to the shore. Her bows touched the shingle and still more attackers jumped down onto the beach. They brought the flag of the Massachusetts Militia. “Get on up!” Israel Trask paused in his playing to shout at them. “You’ll miss the fighting! Get on up!” The men obeyed him, streaming up the path to reinforce the attackers. Wadsworth realized he was close to the summit now and he reckoned he might rally the attackers there and keep them moving along Majabigwaduce’s ridge as far as the fort itself. He knew the fort was unfinished, he knew it was short of guns, and with such fine men and with such impetus why should the job not be done before the sun evaporated the fog? “Onwards,” he shouted, “on! On! On!” He heard a cannon fire, its sound much deeper and more percussive than any musket, and for an instant he feared the British had artillery on the bluff’s crest, then he saw the smoke jetting southwards and realized that the small enemy cannon on Dyce’s Head must still be firing at Cross Island. No danger from those guns, then, and he shouted at the marines that the cannon-fire was not aimed at them. “Keep going!” he bellowed, and scrambled upwards amidst a tangle of marines and militia. A man in a homespun tunic was leaning against a fallen tree, panting for breath. “Are you wounded?” Wadsworth asked, and the man just shook his head. “Then keep going!” Wadsworth said. “Not far now!” A body lay sprawled across Wadsworth’s path and he saw, almost with astonishment, that it was the corpse of a redcoat. The dead soldier wore a dark kilt and his hands were curled into fists and flies were crawling on the butcher’s mess that had been his chest. Then Wadsworth reached the summit. Men were cheering, the British were running, the American flags were being carried uphill and Wadsworth was triumphant.

  Because the bluff was taken, the redcoats were defeated, and the way to the fort lay open.

  It suddenly dawned on Lieutenant John Moore that the incon-ceivable was happening, that the rebels were winning this fight. The realization was horrible, damning, overwhelming, and his response was to redouble his efforts to beat them back. His men had been firing down the bluff’s steep slope, and at first, as his green-coated enemies struggled on the steepest portion of their climb, Moore had seen his fire throw the assailants backwards. Those attackers had been following a rough and uneven path that zigzagged up the bluff, and Moore’s men could fire down at them, though in the shadowed darkness the attackers were hard to see. “Fire!” Moore shouted, then realized the call was unnecessary. His men were shooting as fast as they could reload, and all along the bluff the redcoats were hammering musket-fire down into the tangled trees. For a few moments Moore had thought they were winning, but there were scores of attackers who, as they reached less precipitous ground, began to shoot back. The bluff crackled with unending musket-fire, smoke filling the branches, heavy balls thumping into trees and flesh.

  Captain Archibald Campbell, appalled by the sheer numbers of attackers, shouted at his men to retreat. “You heard that, sir?” Sergeant McClure asked Moore.

  “Stay where you are!” Moore snarled at his men.

  He tried to make sense of what had happened, but the noise and smoke were chaotic. All he was certain of was that beneath him on the slope were uniformed men and Moore’s duty was to throw them back to the sea, and so he stayed on the bluff’s upper face as the rest of Campbell’s picquet retreated to the summit. “Keep firing!” he told McClure.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” McClure said, and fired his musket down into a group of attackers. The response was a crash of musketry from below, flames leaping upward in smoke, and Private McPhail, just seventeen, gave a mewing sound and dropped his musket. A sliver of rib, astonishingly white in the dawn, was protruding through his red coat and his deerskin trousers were turning red as he fell to his knees and mewed again. “We can’t stay here, sir,” McClure shouted over the musket din to Moore.

  “Step back!” Moore conceded. “Slow now! Keep firing!” He stooped beside McPhail, whose teeth were chattering, then the boy gave a convulsive shudder and went still and Moore realized McPhail had died.

  “Watch right, sir,” McClure warned, and Moore had a second’s panic as he saw rebels climbing past him through the thick brush. Two squirrels went leaping overhead. “Time to get the hell uphill, sir,” McClure said.

  “Go back!” Moore called to his men, “but slowly! Give them fire!” He sheathed his sword, unbuckled McPhail’s belt with its cartridge pouch, then carried the belt, pouch, and musket up the slope. The marines to the north had seen him and their musket-balls slashed around him, but then they veered away to attack Captain Campbell’s rearward men, and that distraction gave Moore time to struggle up the last few feet to the bluff’s top where he shouted at his men to form a line and stand. Some pine needles had dropped down the back of his neck and were trapped by his collar. They irritated him. He could not see Captain Campbell’s men and it seemed that his small picquet was the only British presence left on the bluff, but just then a blue-coated artillery lieutenant came running from the east.

  The lieutenant, one of Captain Fielding’s men, commanded the three small cannon placed just behind Dyce’s Head. The gunners had replaced the naval crews, releasing the sailors back to their ships, which expected an attack by the enemy fleet. The gunner lieutenant, a boy no older than Moore, stopped beside the picquet. “What’s happening?”

  “An attack,” Moore said with brutal simplicity. He had looped the dead man’s belt through his sword belt and now fumbled in the pouch for a cartridge, but McClure distracted him.

  “We should go back, sir,” the sergeant declared.

  “We stay here and keep firing!” Moore insisted. His Hamiltons were now in a single line at the bluff’s top. Beh
ind them was a small clearing, then a stand of pines beyond which the three cannon still fired across the harbor at the rebel battery on Cross Island.

  “Should I take the guns away?” the artillery lieutenant asked.

  “Can you fire down the bluff?” Moore asked.

  “Down the bluff?”

  “At them!” Moore said impatiently, pointing to where the green-coated attackers were momentarily visible in the shadowed undergrowth.

  “No.”

  A blast of musketry erupted on Moore’s right. Two of his men collapsed and another dropped his musket to clutch at his shoulder. One of the fallen men was writhing in agony as his blood spread on the ground. He began to scream in high-pitched yelps, and the remaining men backed away in horror. More shots came from the trees and a third man fell, dropping to his knees with his right thigh shattered by a musket-ball. Moore’s small line was ragged now and, worse, the men were edging backwards. Their faces were pale, their eyes skittering in fear. “Will you leave me here?” Moore shouted at them. “Will the Hamiltons leave me alone? Come back! Behave like soldiers!” Moore rather surprised himself by sounding so confident, and was even more surprised when the picquet obeyed him. They had been gripped by fear and the fear had been a heartbeat away from panic, but Moore’s voice had checked them. “Fire!” he shouted, pointing towards the cloud of powder smoke showing where the enemy’s destructive volley had been fired. He tried to see the enemy who had shot that volley, but the green coats of the marines melded into the trees. Moore’s men fired, the heavy musket butts thumping back into bruised shoulders.

  “We have to get the guns out!” the artillery lieutenant said.

  “Then do it!” Moore snarled and turned away. His men’s ramrods rattled in powder-fouled barrels as they reloaded.

  A musket-ball hit the artillery lieutenant in the small of his back and he crumpled. “No,” he said, more in surprise than protest, “no!” His boots scrabbled in the leaf mold. “No,” he said again, and another volley came, this time from the north, and Moore knew he was in danger of being cut off from the fort.

  “Help me,” the artillery lieutenant said.

  “Sergeant!” Moore called.

  “We have to go, sir,” Sergeant McClure said, “we’re the only ones left here.”

  The artillery lieutenant suddenly arched his back and gave a shriek. Another of Moore’s men was on the ground, blood sheeting his bleached deerskin trousers.

  “We have to go back, sir!” McClure shouted angrily.

  “Back to the trees,” Moore called to his men, “steady now!” He backed with them, stopping them again when they reached the stand of pines. The guns were just behind them now, while in front was the clearing where the dead and the dying lay and beyond which the enemy was gathering. “Fire!” Moore shouted, his voice hoarse. The fog was much thinner and being lit by the rising sun so that the musket smoke seemed to rise into a glowing vapor.

  “We have to go, sir,” McClure urged, “back to the fort, sir.”

  “Reinforcements will come,” Moore said, and a musket-ball struck Sergeant McClure’s mouth, splintering his teeth, piercing his throat, and severing his spine. The sergeant dropped noiselessly. His blood spattered John Moore’s immaculate breeches. “Fire!” Moore shouted, but he could have wept for frustration. He was in his first battle and he was losing it, but he would not give in. Surely the brigadier would send more men, and so John Moore, the dead man’s musket still in his hand, stood his uncertain ground.

  And still more rebels climbed the bluff.

  Captain Welch was frustrated. He wanted to close on the enemy. He wanted to terrify, kill, and conquer. He knew he led the best soldiers and if he could just lead them to the enemy then his green-jacketed marines would rip through the red ranks with a ferocious efficiency. He just needed to close on that enemy, drive him back in terror, and then keep advancing until the fort, and every damned redcoat inside it, belonged to the marines.

  The slope frustrated him. It was steep and the enemy, retreating slowly, kept up a galling fire on his men, a fire the marines could scarcely return most of the time. They shot upwards when they could, but the enemy was half-hidden by trees, by shadow, and by the smoke-writhing fog, and too many musket-balls were deflected by branches, or just wasted in the air. “Keep going!” Welch shouted. The higher they went the easier the slope became, but until they reached that friendlier ground good men were being killed or wounded, struck by musket-balls that plunged relentlessly from above, and every shot made Welch angrier and more determined.

  He sensed, rather than saw, that he was opposed by a small group of men. They fired constantly, but because they were few their fire was limited. “Lieutenant Dennis! Sergeant Sykes!” Welch shouted, “Take your men left!” He would outflank the bastards.

  “Aye aye, sir!” Sykes roared back. Welch could hear the cannons firing above him, but no round shot or grapeshot came his way, just the damned musket-balls. He gripped a spruce branch and hauled himself up the slope, and a musket-ball smacked into the spruce’s trunk and showered his face with splinters, but he was on easier ground now and he yelled at the men following to join him. He could see the enemy now, he could see they were a small group of men wearing black-faced red jackets who were stubbornly retreating across an open patch of ground. “Kill them!” he called to his men, and the muskets of the marines belched smoke and noise, and when the smoke thinned Welch could see he had hurt the enemy. Men were on the ground, but still the rest stood and still they fired back, and Welch heard their officer shout at them. That officer annoyed him. He was a slight and elegant figure in a coat that, even in the misted dawn, looked expensively tailored. The buttons glinted gold, there was lace at the officer’s throat, his breeches were snow-white, and his top boots gleamed. A puppy, Welch thought sourly, a sprig of privilege, a target. Welch, in his captivity, had met a handful of supercilious Britons and they had burned a hatred of the breed into his soul. It was such men who had taken Americans to be fools, who had thought they could lord it over a despised breed, and who must now be taught a bloody lesson. “Kill the officer,” he told his men, and the marines’ muskets crashed another volley. Men bit cartridges, skinned their knuckles on the fixed bayonets as they slammed ramrods down barrels, primed locks, shot again, but still the damned puppy lived. He was holding a musket, while his sword, which hung from silver chains, was in its scabbard. He wore a cocked hat, its brim edged with silver, and beneath it his shadowed face looked very young and, Welch thought, arrogant. Goddamned puppy, Welch thought, and the goddamned puppy shouted at his men to fire and the small volley slammed into the marines, then Lieutenant Dennis’s men shot from the north and that outflanking fire drove the puppy and his redcoats further back across the clearing. They left bodies behind, but the arrogant young officer still lived. He stopped his redcoats at the far trees and shouted at them to kill Americans and Welch had taken enough. He drew his heavy cutlass from its plain leather scabbard. The blade felt good in his hand. He saw the redcoats were reloading, tearing at cartridges while their muskets were butt-down on the ground. Another redcoat was struck down, his blood spattering the clean white breeches of the young officer whose men, because they were still reloading, were now defenseless. “Use your bayonets!” Welch shouted, “and charge!”

  Welch led the charge across the clearing. He would cut the puppy down. He would slaughter these damned fools, he would take the guns behind them, then lead his green-coated killers along Majabigwaduce’s spine to take the fort. The marines had reached the bluff’s summit and, for Captain John Welch, that meant the battle was won.

  * * *

  General McLean had convinced himself that the rebel attack would be launched across the neck and so was surprised by the dawn’s assault on the bluff. At first he was pleased with their choice, reckoning that Archibald Campbell’s picquet was heavy enough to inflict real damage on the attackers, but the brevity of the fight told him that Campbell had achieved little. McLean could no
t see the fighting from Fort George because fog shrouded the ridge, but his ears told him all he needed to know, and his heart sank because he had readied the fort for an attack from the north. Instead the assault would come from the west, and the intensity of the musket-fire told McLean that the attack would come in overwhelming force. The fog was clearing quickly now, coalescing into tendrils of mist that blew like gunsmoke across the stumps of the ridge. Once the rebels gained the bluff’s summit, and McLean’s ears told him that was already happening, and once they reached the edge of the trees on that high western ground, they would see that Fort George was merely a name and not yet a stronghold. It had only two guns facing the bluff, its rampart was a risible obstacle and the abatis was a frail barricade to protect the unfinished work. The rebels would surely capture the fort and Francis McLean regretted that. “The fortunes of war,” he said.

  “McLean?” Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, the commanding officer of the highlanders, asked. Most of Campbell’s regiment, those who were not on the picquet line, now stood behind the rampart. Their two colors were at the center of their line and McLean felt a pang of sadness that those proud flags must become trophies to the rebels. “Did you speak, McLean?” Campbell asked.

  “Nothing, Colonel, nothing,” McLean said, staring west through the thinning fog. He crossed the rampart and walked towards the abatis because he wanted to be closer to the fighting. The crackling noise of musketry still rose and fell, sounding like dry thorns burning and snapping. He sent one of his aides to recall Major Dunlop’s picquet, which had been guarding the isthmus, “and tell Major Dunlop I need Lieutenant Caffrae’s company! Quick now!” He leaned on his blackthorn stick and turned to see that Captain Fielding’s men had already moved a twelve-pounder from the fort’s northeastern corner to the northwestern bastion. Good, he thought, but he doubted any effort now would be sufficient. He looked back to the high ground where smoke and fog filtered through the trees, and from where the sound of musketry grew louder again and where the redcoats were appearing at the edge of the far trees. So his picquet, he thought regretfully, had not delayed the enemy long. He saw men fire, he saw a man fall, and then the redcoats were streaming back across the cleared land, running through the raw tree stumps as they fled an enemy whose coats made them invisible among the distant trees. The only evidence of the rebels was the smoke of their muskets, which blossomed and faded on the morning’s light breeze.