Seventy-two hours later Harry led his men on another, similar raid, and proved that his first success had not been accidental. He took seventeen wagons, most of them loaded with fresh beef, and that night Washington’s corps dined in a style to which it had long been unaccustomed. In both ventures the Fifth Troop had escaped unharmed, and word of Harry Lee’s prowess spread quickly through the army. His gaudy uniform had remained unspotted, and aside from a film of dust on his knee-high boots, he was none the worse for wear.
At some time during the slow, autumn-long retreat through New Jersey into Pennsylvania, the commander of the Fifth Troop acquired the name of Light-Horse Harry. The origin of the phrase is unknown, and its original author has never been identified. But grateful foot soldiers quickly developed great affection for the Virginian who magically produced food when they were hungry, and soon the whole army knew the identity of Light-Horse Harry.
The quantities of food he captured on a half-dozen lightning raids were insufficient for the needs of so many thousands of weary soldiers, of course, but his remarkable success did more to raise the flagging spirits of the defeated army than did the relatively meager quantity of supplies he brought back to headquarters. Here, at last, was an American capable of defying the British, someone who thumbed his nose at the Redcoats and escaped unpunished and unscathed.
“Captain Lee,” wrote Alexander Hamilton, one of Washington’s aides, “warms the blood of the footsore more than would casks of brandywine or rum.”
Some of Harry’s admirers on the commander-in-chief’s staff claimed that his raids were at least partly responsible for the reduced rate of desertions, but their claims were, in all probability, exaggerated. The faint-hearted had already decamped, and those who remained were determined to stand by Washington until the bitter end. That end seemed close at hand, and after crossing the Delaware River into Pennsylvania in December, the dejected commander-in-chief wrote. “Ten days more will put an end to the existence of our army.”
His forecast was overly pessimistic, but not even he could have correctly judged the stamina and courage of those who had chosen to cast their lot with him and the infant United States. No one displayed greater fortitude during this grim period than the blithe and debonair Harry Lee, who would soon celebrate his twenty-first birthday.
Harry had now reduced his raids to a carefully determined science, and his success was still phenomenal, almost uncanny. In all, he conducted fifteen known raids on the British, either in the field or on supply depots, between October and the end of December 1776. His only casualties were two troopers slightly wounded and one horse shot. The boy who had been fascinated by the tactics of ancient Greek and Roman generals had won his spurs as a man.
It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to analyze and evaluate Captain Henry Lee’s record. He had never received formal military training, had never commanded men and had been completely lacking in field experience when he had accepted his commission from Patrick Henry and taken charge of the Fifth Troop. Yet he was beating seasoned professionals at their own game. The British were now keeping a sharp watch for him, and had acquired so much respect for his raiders that the guard had been doubled at all quartermaster posts and installations.
Speed, stealth, and thorough reconnaissance work were the keys to Harry’s triumphs. His men were capable of moving swiftly, knew each other and their horses, and had developed a blind, unquestioning faith in the captain. They knew that, when he struck, he had already acquired a thorough knowledge of the enemy’s strength and dispositions, and with each success their faith in him — and in themselves — grew greater. They were truly the elite, the pride of the miserable little army that had so little reason to boast about anything, and they were quick to accept the aura of invincibility that others attributed to them.
Above all else, Harry Lee appears to have been a natural-born soldier, a trait that he passed along to his even more renowned son, Robert Edward. Both knew precisely what to do in a moment of crisis, and how to do it. Robert E. Lee attended the United States Military Academy at West Point and gained experience in the Mexican War, but neither training nor experience can explain the rare genius he demonstrated at the apex of his great career. His father, completely untrained and totally lacking in experience, performed exploits that made him the darling of all America and Washington’s personal favorite. A biographer, piecing together a man’s personality and accomplishments from a distance of almost two centuries, can only agree that genius is inexplicable.
Not the least of Harry Lee’s talents was his ability to handle his men. Praise quickly went to the heads of his strutting young cavalrymen, and the soldiers of other units, Continentals and militia alike, resented the heroes who had never fought in an actual battle, but had won glory by stealing food from the foe. Brawls broke out in the American camp, and when Harry discovered that his men had taken part in fist fights on two successive nights, he took quick action before he himself was reprimanded by higher authority.
He mustered the troop for an inspection and, making no mention of the fights, ordered his sergeant major to pass out thistles to every man — except the brawlers. Those who had not engaged in fisticuffs proudly wore their thistles in their hats. The others, envying them, thereafter kept the peace. This simple solution enabled Harry to restore order without resorting to harsh discipline that might have injured the morale of his troop.
In its way, it was the greatest of the minor miracles he had as yet performed. He — and the hard-bitten youngsters of the Fifth Troop — were now ready for the rugged campaigning that lay ahead.
III: THE GALLANT BAND
Whether circumstances and times produce the great heroes and villains of history, or whether genius creates an era, is a little like trying to decide which came first, the chicken or the egg. Could Napoleon Bonaparte have risen to supreme power had the French Revolution never taken place? Could Light-Horse Harry Lee’s son, Robert E., have won enduring fame as a field marshal had there been no war between the American North and South? Such questions can be debated endlessly — and inconclusively.
There is little doubt, however, that the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth saw horse cavalry achieve their greatest glory on the world’s fields of battle. The horse was no stranger to war, to be sure, from earliest antiquity. It was apparent to the ancients as well as their descendants that a mounted man had a natural advantage over one who fought on his own two feet.
Persians used cavalry to great advantage, and so did the man who destroyed their mighty empire, Alexander the Great. The horse went out of military fashion during the centuries when the infantry phalanxes of Rome conquered the known world, but Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun subsequently demonstrated anew what a trained corps of riders could accomplish.
Knighthood restored the horse to his preeminent position in the Age of Chivalry, but not until England’s Revolution in the seventeenth century did the dashing Royalist leader, Prince Rupert, reveal the true capabilities of power, thrust and mobility that a cavalry corps employed.
Horsemen tipped the scales in a majority of the battles fought in the War of the Spanish Succession, and the Duke of Marlborough’s great ally and good friend, Prince Eugene of Savoy, a Frenchman who became Austria’s field commander, helped bring Louis XIV to his knees and later saved Vienna from the Turks, developed the use of cavalry into a science.
Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, who enjoyed a very brief reign as King of Naples, was the striking arm of the French legions that conquered all Europe. And on this side of the Atlantic, a genial Tennessee giant, John Coffee, a superb and unsung cavalry hero, provided the margin of victory in most battles fought by his friend, neighbor, and relative by marriage, Andrew Jackson.
Perhaps it is not accidental, then, that the two most glamorous figures of the American Revolution, Light-Horse Harry Lee and his ever-implacable foe, Banastre Tarleton, were cavalrymen. They lived and fought in the heyday of the horse soldier, and made major contributio
ns to the portrait of the cavalryman that has survived for almost two hundred years after they rode at full tilt leading charges that were wild, romantic, and required the utmost in personal courage and stamina.
The cavalryman continued to play a major role in war after his time, however, but the accurate, high-powered infantry and artillery weapons mass-produced during the Industrial Revolution doomed him to extinction. The military student took to heart the slaughter of Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade at Balaklava in the Crimean War in 1854, and Robert E. Lee, who preferred cavalry to every other branch of service, recognized the futility of the accomplishments of his great leader of horse, Jubal Early.
A relatively little-known function of cavalry, infinitely less glamorous than the battle charge but at least equal to it in importance, was that of engaging in reconnaissance missions. The science — or art — of scouting has always been delicate, hazardous and difficult. A reconnaissance leader is required to spy on the enemy, himself remaining unseen, if possible. He must learn the foe’s size and troop dispositions, destination, and intentions.
Therefore he must be more than a scout who merely reports back to his own headquarters that he has located the whereabouts of the enemy. He needs to be a student of warfare, capable of studying and analyzing opposing forces. He is the eyes and ears of his commanding general, but he is also something of a prophet, with the touch of a soothsayer and soul of an oracle.
Light-Horse Harry Lee, from the outset of his astonishing career, was a brilliant scout, and his lack of military training makes his success all the more remarkable. His superior, George Washington, was one of the most complicated of human beings, a man who never showed favoritism, tried to be calm and objective in all his judgments and in his official life held himself aloof from his fellow men.
So Harry Lee, whom the general had known from birth, had a harder row to hoe than any other officer in the American Army. The fact that his parents were close friends of the Washingtons made him suspect in the general’s eyes, and he had to work harder and accomplish more than anyone else to win a place for himself in his own right.
The young captain, not yet twenty-one years of age, quickly and confidently demonstrated his worth. By late December 1776 the tattered American forces, numbering approximately forty-five hundred men, were ready to give up the struggle for independence. Their cause appeared hopeless, and the commander-in-chief knew the only tonic that would rejuvenate them would be a victory. So he and his staff, quartered in Newtown, Pennsylvania, planned a daring project.
A large enemy force, made up in the main of German mercenaries, had made itself comfortable in winter quarters across the Delaware River in Trenton, New Jersey. Washington decided to attack them on Christmas night, when they would not be expecting an assault. First, however, he wanted to know more about their strength and dispositions.
Harry Lee had shown enough talent in his raids to be chosen for the scouting operation that was a necessary prelude to an attack. It was essential that he learn all he could, and imperative that he and his men avoid detection. If Americans should be seen snooping in the vicinity of the Hessian barracks, it would be obvious to the enemy that something was stirring.
Staff members made less than helpful suggestions. One thought the Fifth Troop should wear civilian clothes on its surveillance, but Washington himself vetoed the idea. Soldiers who were not wearing uniforms when on espionage missions were candidates for a firing squad or hangman’s rope.
Another urged that the cavalrymen swim their horses across the Delaware, but Harry himself refused. The river was too broad, and the weather was so cold that men and horses would become ill.
He decided to use only a small part of his Troop for the assignment, and believed it wise that he, a junior officer, and fourteen of his best men be ferried across the Delaware five miles upstream, by barge. Everyone taking part in the expedition was sworn to secrecy, and the crossing was made on Christmas Eve.
The mission was so successful that, like all good reconnaissance operations, it was totally lacking in drama. The crossing was accomplished shortly before midnight in viciously cold weather. Civilians, farmers, and townsmen alike were at home behind locked doors, and the scouts neither saw nor spoke to anyone. They made a wide circle around the mercenaries’ camp, staying far enough away not to arouse the sleepy, numbed sentries, and then returned to their waiting barges. They reached the American headquarters in Newtown around five o’clock on Christmas morning, and Harry made his report to Washington a few hours later, while the general ate his breakfast.
Washington thanked him courteously for the information, but offered him no praise. He had been given an assignment, which he had performed efficiently, as expected, and the commander-in-chief was not one to lavish words on subordinates who did their jobs. Harry must have indicated his disappointment to someone at headquarters, as Henry Knox commented, “I think Captain Lee’s nose was nipped by the frost of his reception.”
Another year would pass before the eager, glory-seeking young officer would understand the personality of his father’s friend, who had always treated him with so much kindness and charm when the Lee family had visited Mount Vernon. Washington, in the field, was as icy as the frost on the windowpanes of his farmhouse headquarters.
An even greater disappointment shocked Light-Horse Harry that Christmas Day. There was no place for cavalry in the attack on the Hessians. The barges he had used the preceding night were too few and too cumbersome for the swift recrossing of the Delaware that Washington planned. So the Fifth Troop was left behind as part of the guard assigned to stand duty at the American camp, and the young horsemen fumed in impotent dismay while their infantry comrades conducted one of the most daring raids in American history, completely surprising the Hessians and taking one thousand prisoners.
Harry’s sense of frustration was intensified by the fact that his own part in the operation was swallowed up by the greater glory of the triumph. Scouts, he discovered, remained virtually anonymous, and he had no passion for anonymity. However, he was given little time to brood.
Washington decided to follow up his victory with another strike, a new action having been made necessary because Billy Howe’s able, tough subordinate, Lord Charles Cornwallis, had been sent into the field. The American commander knew of Cornwallis by reputation, and decided to clip the noble eagle’s wings. A direct confrontation was out of the question, as the Americans, still short on supplies, lead, and powder, were badly outnumbered.
An unexpected thaw that melted ice on roads enabled the wily Washington to repeat the tactics he had employed at Trenton. The better part of Cornwallis’ force was stationed at Princeton, his lordship having requisitioned the College of New Jersey as a barracks. Washington, experienced in Indian fighting, determined to hit where least expected.
On January 2, 1777, his corps of less than five thousand began the march toward Princeton. The cavalry vanguard was commanded by Colonel Thomas Rodney of the Delaware militia, and the bulk of horse troops were supplied by the Philadelphia Red Feathers, an elite regiment of light-horse. Harry Lee’s Virginians were assigned to ride with the rest.
The American column was anything but awe-inspiring, and when a heavy, cold fog set in, Henry Knox, who was bringing up the rear, was heard to remark that he was afraid the damp might melt the glue that held his artillery ammunition carts together. Relatively few of the men were fully uniformed, it was dubious that the cannon could be fired, and everyone, the commander-in-chief included, was hungry — as usual. But at least the Army was on the move, and was going forward rather than in retreat, so the men were relatively cheerful, although the wet ground soaked the boots of those fortunate enough to own footgear.
In the main body, no one except the generals knew the corps’ destination. All vanguard commanders were told the secret, necessarily, and Harry Lee was pleased. Having spent three years at Princeton, he was thoroughly familiar with the surrounding countryside.
The Americans avoi
ded the much-traveled Post Road, and marched on a connecting series of old, back roads that ran parallel to it. As they drew nearer to Princeton, Harry, who had volunteered his services as an advance scout, expected Rodney to call on him. But there were others in the column who knew the territory even better, having been born and reared in the area. So the Virginians kept their modest places in the cavalry ranks.
Washington again caught the enemy by surprise, but the Americans almost lost the battle, thanks to the inexperience of their militia, who panicked when the disciplined Redcoats quickly rallied. But Henry Knox found a way to make his guns work, and gave the infantry support at a time when it was most needed. Washington abandoned his usual role, that of the cool and detached commander who observed an operation and relayed orders to subordinate leaders through his staff assistants. Aware that he himself had to participate if he hoped to prevent his entire corps from disintegrating, he rode up and down in full view of the enemy, exhorting his troops to hold firm.
They did, and the Americans resumed their offensive, sending the enemy scurrying out of Nassau Hall. The commander-in-chief, in a rare display of emotional exuberance, led the chase in person as the British fled down the Post Road toward Trenton. Perhaps he was inspired by the sight of Redcoats in retreat, a pleasure he had seldom enjoyed since accepting the invitation of the Continental Congress to lead his fellow countrymen in the field.
According to several accounts, he was so carried away by the unique joys of the day that he half-stood in his stirrups, waved his hat in the air and shouted, “It’s a fine fox-chase, lads!”
Washington’s exuberant leadership gave subordinates little opportunity to share his limelight, and a junior officer commanding a small body of Virginia militia went unnoticed. If Harry Lee performed feats of valor in the Battle of Princeton, they are unrecorded. Apparently neither he nor his Fifth Troop accomplished anything of note, for he makes no mention of the battle in his Memoirs, an account of his career that pays attention to minute details, even though written in an impersonal, sometimes frigid style.
Light-Horse Harry: A Biography of Washington’s Great Cavalryman, General Henry Lee (Heroes and Villains from American History) Page 4
