The Fort

by Bernard Cornwell

  “It’s that wretched battery on the harbor foreshore,” the general said, and Wadsworth knew he was referring to the semicircular earthwork the British had dug to cover the harbor entrance. That battery was now the closest enemy post.

  “So if the battery was captured, sir,” Wadsworth suggested, “then the commodore would take advantage?”

  “I would hope he would,” Lovell said.

  “So why don’t I prepare a plan to capture it?” Wadsworth asked.

  Lovell stared at Wadsworth as though the younger man had just wrought a miracle. “Would you do that?” the general asked, immensely pleased. “Yes, do that! Then we can advance together. Soldier and sailor, marine and militia, together! How soon can you have such a plan? By noon, perhaps?”

  “I’m sure I can, sir.”

  “Then I shall propose your plan at this afternoon’s council,” Lovell said, “and urge every man present to vote for it. My goodness, if we capture that battery then the commodore . . .” Lovell checked whatever he might have said because there was an abrupt crackle of musketry. It rose in intensity and was answered by a cannon shot. “What the devil are those rogues doing now?” Lovell asked plaintively and hurried away eastwards to find out. Wadsworth followed.

  As gunfire splintered the morning.

  “You can’t give the enemy any rest,” Brigadier McLean had said. The Scotsman had been astonished that the rebels had not assaulted the fort, and even more surprised when it became clear that General Lovell was digging defenses on the high ground. McLean now knew his opponent’s name, learned from an American deserter who had crept across the ridgetop at night and called aloud to the sentries from the abatis. McLean had questioned the man, who, trying to be helpful, expressed his belief that Lovell had brought two thousand troops to the peninsula. “It may be even more, sir,” the man said.

  “Or fewer,” McLean retorted.

  “Yes, sir,” the miserable wretch had said, “but it looked like plenty enough at Townsend, sir,” which was no help at all. The deserter was a man in his forties who claimed he had been pressed into the militia ranks and had no wish to fight. “I just want to go home, sir,” he said plaintively.

  “As do we all,” McLean had said and put the man to work in the hospital’s cookhouse.

  The rebel guns had opened fire the day after the high ground was lost. The rate of fire was not high, and many of the balls were wasted, but the fort was a big target and a near one, and so the big eighteen-pounder balls thrashed into the newly made rampart, scattering dirt and timber. The new storehouse was hit repeatedly until its gabled roof was virtually demolished, but so far no shot had managed to hit any of McLean’s own cannon. Six were now mounted on the western wall and Captain Fielding was keeping up a steady fire at the distant tree line. The rebels, rather than mount their cannon at the edge of the woods, had emplaced them deep inside the trees, then cut down corridors to give the cannons avenues of fire. “You might not hit much,” McLean had told Fielding, “but you’ll keep them worried and you’ll hide us in smoke.”

  It was not enough to just worry the enemy, McLean knew they had to be kept off-balance and so he had ordered Lieutenant Caffrae to assemble forty of the liveliest men into a skirmishing company. Caffrae was a sensible and intelligent young man who liked his new orders. He added a pair of drummer boys to his unit and four fife players, and the company used the fog, or else the trees to the peninsula’s north, to get close to the enemy lines. Once there the small band played “Yankee-Doodle,” a tune that for some reason annoyed the rebels. The skirmishers would shout orders to imaginary men and shoot at the rebel trenches, and whenever a large party of the enemy came to challenge Caffrae’s company he would withdraw under cover, only to reappear somewhere else to taunt and to shoot again. Caffrae, temporarily promoted to captain, danced in front of Lovell’s men. He provoked, he challenged. He would sometimes go at night to disturb the rebel sleep. Lovell’s men were to be given neither rest nor comfort, but be constantly harassed and alarmed.

  “Let me go, sir,” Lieutenant Moore pleaded with McLean.

  “You will, John, you will,” McLean promised. Caffrae was out in the ground between the lines and his men had just fired a volley to wake the morning. The skirmishers’ fifes were trilling their mocking tune, which always provoked a wild response of ill-aimed musketry from the trees where the rebels sheltered. McLean stared westwards in an attempt to discover Caffrae’s position among the wisps of fog that slowly cleared from the heights, and instead saw the rebels’ gun corridors choke with sudden smoke as the enemy guns began their daily fire. The first shots fell short, plowing into the ridge to throw up plumes of soil and wood chips.

  The rebel gunfire was a nuisance, but McLean was grateful that it was no more than that. If the Scotsman had been commanding the besiegers he would have ordered his gunners to concentrate the balls at one point of the defenses and, when that place had been thoroughly destroyed, to move their aim slightly left or right and so demolish the fort systematically. Instead the enemy gunners fired at whatever they pleased, or else they just aimed generally at the fort, and McLean was finding it a simple enough task to repair whatever damage the balls did to the western curtain wall and its flanking bastions. Yet, if the gunfire was not proving as destructive as he had feared, it was still eroding his men’s confidence. Sentries had to stand with their heads exposed above the rampart if they were to watch the enemy and, on the very first day of the rebel bombardment, one such sentry had been hit by a cannon-ball that had shattered his head into a mess of blood, bone, and brains. The ball had then struck the remnants of the storehouse gable and come to rest, still plastered with bloody hair, against a water butt. Other men had been injured, mostly by stones or splinters jarred from the rampart by a cannon-ball. The rebels were using an howitzer too, a weapon McLean feared more than their largest cannon, but the gunners were inexpert and the howitzer dropped its exploding shot randomly across the ridgetop.

  “I have a job for you now, Lieutenant,” McLean said to Moore.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Come with me,” McLean said and walked towards the fort’s gate, stabbing his blackthorn stick into the soil with each step. He knew that the day’s onset of rebel cannon-fire would make his men nervous and he wanted to allay their fears. “Captain Fielding!”

  “Sir?” the English artilleryman called back.

  “Bide your fire a short while!”

  “I will, sir.”

  McLean went outside the fort, then led Moore west and north until they were standing some twenty paces in front of Fort George’s ditch and in full view of the rebel lines. “Our task is just to stand here, Lieutenant,” McLean explained.

  Moore was amused. “It is, sir?”

  “To show the men they have nothing to fear.”

  “Ah, and if we’re killed, sir?”

  “Then they will have something to fear,” McLean said. He smiled. “But this is a large part of an officer’s responsibility, Lieutenant.”

  “To die very visibly, sir?”

  “To set an example,” McLean said. “I want our men to see that you and I don’t fear the cannonade.” He turned and looked towards the distant trees. “Why in God’s name don’t they attack us?”

  “Maybe we should attack them, sir?” Moore suggested.

  McLean smiled. “I’m thinking we could do that,” he said slowly, “but to what end?”

  “To defeat them, sir?”

  “They’re doing that to themselves, Lieutenant.”

  “They’ll wake up to that knowledge, sir, won’t they?”

  “Aye, they will. And when they realize by how many they outnumber us then they’ll come swarming across that land,” he waved the stick at the ridge, “but we’ve a good few guns emplaced now, and the wall’s higher, and they’ll find us a more difficult nut to crack.” The brigadier was still convinced the rebels numbered at least three thousand men. Why else would they have needed so many transport ships? “But
they needs do it quickly, Lieutenant, because I dare hope there are reinforcements on their way to us.” He handed Moore the blackthorn stick. “Hold that for me, will you?” he asked, then took a tinderbox and a tobacco-filled clay pipe from his pocket. Moore, knowing the general’s wounded right arm made McLean clumsy, took the tinderbox and struck a flame from the charred linen. McLean bent forward to light the pipe, then took back his tinderbox and stick. “Thank you, John,” he said, puffing contentedly as a cannon-ball churned up soil fifteen paces away and bounced to fly above the fort. “And I dare say we could attack them,” McLean continued his earlier train of thought, “but I’ve no mind to do that. Fighting gets very confused among trees, and once they see how few we are, they’re likely to rally and countercharge. It could all get lamentably messy. No, for now it’s better to make them die on Captain Fielding’s guns, eh? And every day that passes, Lieutenant, is worth a thousand men to us. The ditch gets deeper and the wall gets higher. See?” He had turned to watch an ox dragging another oak trunk up the slope from the village. The big trunk would be used to heighten the western rampart.

  McLean turned back as a renewed crescendo of musketry sounded from where Captain Caffrae was evidently poking the wasp’s nest. “Please let me accompany Caffrae, sir,” Moore pleaded again.

  “He knows when to retreat, Lieutenant,” McLean said sternly.

  Moore smarted from that gentle reprimand. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “No, no, you learned your lesson. And you showed the right instinct, I grant you that. A soldier’s job is to fight, God help him, and you fought well. So aye, I’ll let you go, but you take your orders from Caffrae!”

  “Of course I will, sir. And, sir’” Whatever Moore had been about to say went unexpressed, because a sudden blow threw him backwards. It felt as though he had been punched in the belly. He staggered a half-pace and instinctively clutched a hand to where the blow had landed, but discovered he was unwounded and his uniform undamaged. McLean had also been thrown backwards, held upright only by his blackthorn stick, but the brigadier was also untouched. “What’” Moore began. He was aware that his ears rang from a gigantic noise, but what had caused it he did not know.

  “Don’t move,” McLean said, “and look cheerful.”

  Moore forced a smile. “That was a cannon-ball?”

  “It was indeed,” McLean said, “and it went between us.” He looked towards the fort where the ox was bellowing. The round shot, that had flown clean between the two redcoats, had struck the ox’s haunches. The fallen animal was bleeding and bellowing on the track just a few paces from Fort George’s entrance. A sentry ran from the gate, cocked his musket and shot the animal just above the eyes. It twitched and was still. “Fresh beef!” McLean said.

  “Dear God,” Moore said.

  “You brushed with death, Mister Moore,” McLean said, “but I do believe you were born under a lucky star.”

  “You too, sir.”

  “Now we wait for four more shots,” McLean said.

  “Four, sir?”

  “They play four cannon on us,” McLean said, “two eighteen-pounders, a twelve-pounder,” he paused while a rebel gun fired, “and a howitzer.” The shot rumbled high overhead to fall somewhere far to the east. “So the fourth shot, John, will almost certainly be from the same gentlemen who so narrowly missed killing us, and I wish to see if they shoot at us again.”

  “A quite natural curiosity, sir,” Moore said, making the brigadier laugh.

  The howitzer fired next, and its shell landed short of the fort, where it lay trickling smoke from its fuse until it exploded harmlessly. The twelve-pounder slammed a ball into the southwestern bastion, and then the eighteen-pounder that had come so close to killing McLean and Moore fired again. The ball skimmed the abatis well to the general’s north, bounced short of the ditch and flew over the ramparts to crash into a spruce on Doctor Calef’s property. “You see,” McLean said, “they’re not aiming true. There’s no consistency in their aim. Captain Fielding!”

  “Sir?”

  “You may engage the enemy again!” McLean called as he led Moore back to the fort.

  The British guns opened fire. All day long the opposing artillery dueled, Captain Caffrae taunted the enemy, Fort George’s ramparts grew higher, and General Lovell waited for Commodore Saltonstall.

  Peleg Wadsworth wanted a force of marines, sailors, and militia for his attack on the Half Moon Battery. He had decided to attack under cover of darkness, and to do it that very night. The rebels had already captured the British batteries on Cross Island and on Dyce’s Head, now they would take the last of the British outworks and once that was taken there would only be the fort left to conquer.

  “What you don’t understand,” Commodore Saltonstall had told Wadsworth, “is that the fort is formidable.”

  Wadsworth, seeking the help of the marines, had gone that afternoon to the Warren where he discovered Saltonstall examining four iron hoops that had been strapped about the frigate’s damaged mainmast. The commodore had greeted Wadsworth with a grunt, then invited him to the quarter-deck. “I presume you want my marines again?” the commodore asked.

  “I do, sir. The army’s Council voted to make an attack tonight, sir, and to request the assistance of your marines.”

  “You can have Carnes, Dennis, and fifty men,” Saltonstall said briskly, as if by agreeing quickly he could rid himself of Wadsworth’s company.

  “And I’d also be grateful for your advice, Commodore,” Wadsworth said.

  “My advice, eh?” Saltonstall sounded suspicious, but his tone had softened. He looked cautiously at Wadsworth, but the younger man’s face was so open and honest that the commodore decided there was nothing underhand in the request. “Well, advice is free,” he said with heavy humor.

  “General Lovell is convinced the fort will not fall while the enemy ships remain,” Wadsworth said.

  “Which is not your opinion?” Saltonstall guessed shrewdly.

  “I am General Lovell’s deputy, sir,” Wadsworth said tactfully.

  “Ha.”

  “Can the enemy ships be taken, sir?” Wadsworth asked, broaching the subject directly.

  “Oh, they can be taken!” Saltonstall said dismissively. He disconcerted Wadsworth by looking just past the brigadier’s left ear rather than into his eyes. “Of course they can be taken.”

  “Then’”

  “But at what price, Wadsworth? Tell me that! At what price?”

  “You must tell me, sir.”

  Saltonstall deigned to look directly at Wadsworth for a moment as if deciding whether his answer would be wasted on such a man. He evidently decided it would not be, because he sighed heavily as though he was weary of explaining the obvious. “The wind sets from the southwest,” he said, looking past Wadsworth again, “which means we can sail into the harbor, but we cannot sail out. Once inside the harbor we lay under the enemy’s guns. Those guns, Wadsworth, as you may have observed, are efficiently manned.” He paused, plainly tempted to make a comparison with the militia’s artillery, but he managed to suppress the comment. “The harbor is constricted,” he went on, “which dictates that we must enter in file, which in turn means the lead ship must inevitably sustain heavy damage from the enemy’s fire.” He waved briskly towards the Warren’s bows, which still showed evidence of hasty repairs to her bowsprit and forecastle. “Once inside we have no room to maneuver so we must anchor to preserve our position opposite the enemy ships. Either that or sail directly at them and board them. And all that while, Wadsworth, we are under the cannon of the fort, and what you don’t understand is that the fort is formidable.”

  Wadsworth wondered whether to argue, but decided argument would merely goad Saltonstall into stubbornness. “It seems that what you’re saying, sir,” he said, “is that the ships will not fall till the fort is taken?”

  “Precisely!” Saltonstall sounded relieved, as if Wadsworth was a dim pupil who had at last grasped the simplest of propositions.
r />   “Whereas General Lovell is convinced the fort cannot be taken until the ships are destroyed.”

  “General Lovell is entitled to his opinion,” Saltonstall said loftily.

  “If we succeed in capturing the enemy’s remaining shore battery,” Wadsworth suggested, “it will make your task easier, sir?”

  “My task?”

  “Of capturing the enemy ships, sir.”

  “My task, Wadsworth, is to support your forces in the capture of the fort.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Wadsworth said, hiding his exasperation, “but might I assure General Lovell that you will attack their shipping if we mount an assault on the fort?”

  “This presupposes that you have disposed of the enemy’s shore battery?”

  “It does, sir.”

  “A joint attack, eh?” Saltonstall still sounded suspicious, but after a brief hesitation, nodded cautiously. “I would consider a joint attack,” he said grudgingly, “but you do realize, I trust, that the position of Mowat’s ships becomes untenable once the fort is taken?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “But that McLean’s position is still formidable whether the ships are taken or not?”

  “I understand that too, sir.”

  Saltonstall turned to glower at the waist of the Warren, but saw nothing to provoke a complaint. “The Congress, Wadsworth, has spent precious public money building a dozen frigates.”

  “Indeed it has, sir,” Wadsworth said, wondering what that had to do with the fort on Majabigwaduce’s peninsula.

  “The Washington, the Effingham, the Congress and the Montgomery are all scuttled, Wadsworth. They are lost.”

  “Sadly, sir, yes,” Wadsworth said. The four frigates had been destroyed to prevent their capture.

  “The Virginia, taken,” Saltonstall went on remorselessly, “the Hancock, taken. The Raleigh, taken. The Randolph, sunk. Do you wish me to add the Warren to that sad record?”

  “Of course not, sir,” Wadsworth said. He glanced up at the snake-embossed flag flying at the Warren’s stern. It bore the proud motto “Don’t Tread on Me,” but how could the British even try if the snake’s only ambition was to avoid battle?