Prelude to Glory, Vol. 4

by Ron Carter

  “Mohawk scouts. Sent from Canajoharie by Mary Brant to tell us. Herkimer is coming from Oriskany with militia to Fort Stanwix. Many militia.”

  St. Leger’s breath slowed. “Herkimer? How many men?”

  Brant spoke to the Indians, listened, then turned to St. Leger.

  “One thousand. Some Oneida scouts with them.”

  “One thousand!” St. Leger’s face fell as he turned to peer at Fort Stanwix, eight hundred yards west with the sun shining brightly off its walls and flying the newly received flag of red and white bars and thirteen stars in a field of blue. “We’re about to begin a siege, and we’ve got one thousand rebel militia coming in from behind us?”

  Brant remained silent, his dark face a blank.

  St. Leger threw his hands in the air. “How far behind?”

  Brant spoke to the Indians, took their answers, then replied, “Two hours. Three at the most.”

  St. Leger shook his head. “We’ve got Gansevoort and six hundred men in the fort, and Herkimer and one thousand behind us. Suddenly we’re caught in the middle! We don’t have the men to engage both. What do we do?”

  Brant’s expression did not change. “I know the place to stop Herkimer. A ravine, four miles to the east. He can be trapped and destroyed. It can be done by four hundred Indians.”

  Hope leaped in St. Leger’s eyes. “Are you sure?”

  Brant nodded but remained silent.

  St. Leger racked his brain for other options, but there were none. “All right.” He turned to Major Butler. “Take four hundred Mohawk and twenty rangers and follow Brant. Set an ambush and destroy Herkimer’s column. You can’t let them flank us. You must—”

  The report of cannon froze the group for a moment, then all their heads swung around to stare at Fort Stanwix, where a cloud of white smoke drifted upward from an eastwall gunport. St. Leger raised an arm to point, and his entire command came to a standstill as a second blast rolled out across the clearing, and then a third shot, timed on the same interval.

  For five seconds no one moved, and then everyone moved as talk and gestures broke out all up and down the breastworks. Regulars and Indians alike pointed at the three clouds of smoke dissipating lazily into the blue sky, puzzled, a growing sense that something was wrong spreading among them.

  St. Leger spoke. “I calculate that was a signal of some sort. Maybe to Herkimer.” He turned instantly to Butler and Brant. “Get your men and leave. If that was a signal to Herkimer, he can’t be far.”

  At that moment Sir John Johnson, the ranking officer, came running. “Colonel, those shots weren’t to engage us. They had to be a signal.”

  St. Leger bobbed his head. “I just learned that General Herkimer’s coming in from our rear with one thousand militia.”

  Johnson’s eyes popped. “What?”

  “I’m sending Brant and four hundred Indians east to meet him. Butler’s taking command.”

  Johnson squared his shoulders. “I’m going with them.” Johnson outranked both Butler and St. Leger, and St. Leger wasted no time. “Take command. Butler, you assume second in command.”

  Johnson turned to Brant. “I’ll expect your Indians to be ready within ten minutes, and we will move at double time.”

  Brant turned and hurried to his waiting Mohawk. Within five minutes they were gathered, painted, anxious, as blood lust rose in their veins. Half a dozen sub-chiefs confronted Brant with words and gestures, and Brant listened. He shook his head and turned to go when two of them stepped forward to call angry words. Slowly Brant turned, barely in control of his disgust, and answered them. Instantly, the Indians nodded their heads and broke into loud talk and broad gestures as Brant strode quickly back to Johnson.

  “My men say they were promised rum. They want it before they fight.”

  Johnson recoiled in disbelief. “Rum? Now? There is no time!”

  Brant remained stoic. “It will take only a few minutes. They will not leave without it.”

  Johnson spoke through gritted teeth. “All right. Break out one barrel of rum, and see to it your men are moving east within ten minutes, double time.”

  * * * * *

  In the light and shadow of the deep forest, Lieutenant Colonel Marinus Willet turned silently toward his column and raised both hands. Instantly his two hundred fifty men soundlessly dropped to their haunches and all but disappeared in the thick foliage and trees. He worked his way back among them, called his captains together, and spoke softly.

  “There’s a British camp up there about two hundred fifty yards, not too big. I don’t think they know we’re here. We’re going to separate, half each direction, and move in from two sides. I’ll lead the right half, Major Driscoll the left. When I’m in position, I’ll count off three minutes to be sure you’re in position, and then fire the first shot. That’s when we all come in hard and fast.”

  Ten minutes later Willet wiped his hand across his mouth, cocked his pistol, took aim at the nearest tent, and pulled the trigger. The shot cracked out to echo in the forest, and two hundred fifty rebel soldiers rose from the brush as one and stormed into the British camp. The leaders had gone fifty yards before they realized something was badly wrong. As they stampeded in from both sides, one woman, and less than ten men, had thrown down whatever was in their hands and sprinted north, through the only opening left to them, to disappear instantly in the forest. Three redcoats reached for their muskets, and all three went down when the rebels fired first. Two startled Indians pushed through a tent flap with tomahawks dangling from their wrists, and toppled when the nearest rebels fired their muskets without raising them to aim. Four dumbfounded British soldiers emerged from a tent and instantly threw their hands high in surrender.

  Not another living thing stirred in the camp. The rebels slowed and stopped, and their war cries quieted as they turned their heads to look every direction, suspicious, groping to understand. Willet lowered his raised sword and in near silence stood stock-still, searching for an explanation. Have they surrounded their own camp, and set an ambush for us? No, they couldn’t have. We’d have seen them when we moved in.

  He jammed his sword back into its scabbard and shouted orders. “Collect anything of value and get ready to leave. St. Leger’s heard us and by now he’s sent someone to engage us. Be quick!”

  Fifteen minutes later he lead his column back toward the fort at a trot, carrying with them fifty brass cooking kettles and over one hundred blankets, both items badly needed inside Fort Stanwix. They had also gathered up as many muskets, tomahawks, and spears, along with as much ammunition and clothing as his men could carry. Major Badlam’s men were dragging their small cannon, bouncing, jolting along on its wheels. They plunged through the dense foliage, dodging, running, and then the fort was there before them through the trees, and then they were in the open.

  The cannoneers on the high walls of Fort Stanwix had heard the distant rattle of muskets and instantly swarmed to their guns. They rammed roundshot home, lighted their linstocks, and waited in silence, eyes straining to see movement in the trees. When Willet’s men broke into the open at a run, a shout rolled from the throats of a hundred cannoneers, who jammed clenched fists into the air. “Come on! Come on! You can make it!”

  Twenty seconds later they saw the flashes of red in the trees, and the British regulars were there led by Captain Reginald Hoyes, sprinting to catch Willet’s men. The British were carrying nothing but their muskets, and steadily gaining on the Americans, who were burdened with the spoils they had raided from the British camp.

  Instantly the cannoneers on the walls of the fort raised a shout, “Behind you, behind you!” They gestured wildly, pointing.

  The incoming Americans heard the bedlam. They could not understand the words, but one thing Major Badlam did understand was the wildly pointing arms. He turned his head and saw the redcoats a scant two hundred yards behind. Instantly he stopped, and barked orders to his cannon crew.

  “Turn the gun around, load it heavy with gra
pe, and stop those men!”

  His crew spun around, recovered from the shock, and then quickly swung the small gun around. They rammed an overload of powder down the barrel and dumped a double load of grapeshot home, then pointed it back at Hoyes’s oncoming redcoats, and touched it off. The small gun roared and bucked two feet in the air, but did not explode, as the grapeshot tore into the pursuing British, and the leaders stumbled and went down. The British detachment stopped in its tracks, then backed up to recover before once again moving quickly after the Americans.

  The gunners on the high walls in the fort cheered wildly, then set the elevations on their own guns, and waited. The instant the British reached the eight-hundred-yard mark, every cannon on the east wall erupted. Willet’s command instinctively ducked as the cannonballs ripped whizzing over their heads, and one second later the pursuing British were in the midst of flying dirt and rocks as the roundshot hit home and exploded. At the fort, the gate detail swung the huge east gates open, and Willet and his command came on through, gasping, sweating, spent, amid the cheers of every man in the fort. They had not lost a single man.

  Nor had they reached Herkimer.

  * * * * *

  With the sun not yet to its zenith, Brant held up a hand and the column stopped. They were five miles east of Fort Stanwix, standing at the head of a ravine more than a mile long, at the bottom of which ran the narrow, crooked road that connected Fort Stanwix to Oriskany. The steep sides of the ravine were choked with trees and foliage and underbrush, and sloped gradually away from the road to suddenly rise sharply. In most places, men could be ten feet apart without knowing the other was there. At fifty feet, a musket or rifle would be almost useless. A battle in this ravine would be fought with knives and tomahawks, hand-to-hand, face-to-face, and Brant’s eyes gleamed. As a battleground between white men trained to fight with cannon and muskets at a distance, and his Mohawk Indians trained to fight face-to-face, this was the place for the ambush. The first volley from his hidden Indians would cut down most of the rebel officers, and from there, the combatants would be plunged into a wild, chaotic, fragmented melee. The battle would go to those who best understood how to kill quickly with close-quarter weapons: the feared tomahawk, and the knife.

  Brant spoke rapidly to Johnson and St. Leger. “I will divide my men, half on each side of the road, spaced the length of the ravine. You will go back fifty yards, just across the stream. When the rebel leaders have come out of the ravine and are very close to you, fire your first volley at them. That will be the signal. Most of the rebel column will still be in the ravine. My men will instantly fire from both sides and kill as many officers as they can. Then they will attack with tomahawk and knife. We must remember, they have one thousand, we have four hundred. Surprise is our greatest weapon. If we spring the trap well, they will have little chance to recover before most of them are dead. Remember. Surprise.”

  Johnson looked at Butler, who nodded. Johnson took one deep breath, then said, “Proceed.”

  Less than fifteen minutes later, only the ravens and jays knew that Brant’s men were on both slopes of the ravine, and that Butler’s men were at the head—all of them sweating, listening, waiting. Minutes that seemed to be an hour, passed. Certain that the afternoon was upon them, men squinted up at the sun, wondering why it had not moved. An opossum crossed the road, with two hundred pairs of eyes watching. A large porcupine followed by two smaller balls of quills ventured onto the road, to turn back into the undergrowth and disappear.

  It seemed an eternity before the first sounds of marching men reached them from the east. Brant’s men instantly became part of the forest, silent, unmoving. From hidden places they watched tall, angular General Herkimer, with Ebenezer Cox just behind, lead the column forward, heads turning from side to side, searching, smelling for an ambush. Behind them came Colonel Peter Bellinger, and finally, Colonel Frederick Visscher, leading the rear guard and wagons. Herkimer moved steadily on—two hundred yards, four hundred, eight hundred. The front of the column passed the midpoint of the ravine. Birds rose from the trees, cursing the invaders as they continued their hot, sweaty march.

  The flesh between Herkimer’s shoulder blades was crawling as he counted paces, judging the distance to the head of the ravine where his command would be out and away from what was clearly a perfect place for an ambush. He glanced back, but could see nothing except what eons of time had put there. He could not see the end of his column, one mile back, with the fifteen wagons and carts filled with their supplies and ammunition bringing up the rear.

  With Herkimer now only three hundred yards away, moving straight toward him and his waiting command, Butler raised his right hand six inches. Muskets clicked onto full cock and slowly came to bear on the leaders, waiting, waiting. The distance closed—two hundred yards. One hundred fifty.

  The blood lust, the rum, the proximity of enemies to be killed and scalps to be taken was too much to endure. Before the wagons at the rear of Herkimer’s column entered the ravine, some of the Mohawk near the east end suddenly stood, fired their muskets, threw them down, and came running, leaping into the startled rebel column. Instantly the Mohawk all up and down the ravine fired and charged, bounding through the undergrowth and over rocks into the midst of the bewildered, terrified Americans, tomahawks swinging wildly, knives slashing.

  At the head of the ravine, Butler screamed a curse at the Mohawk who had disobeyed orders and sprung the trap too soon, then shouted, “Fire!” He followed his first volley with a charge, into the mouth of the ravine, where he ordered a halt while his men reloaded and knelt for their second volley.

  At the rear of the column, Colonel Visscher stood stock-still for five full seconds, brain frozen, unable for a time to comprehend what had happened in the ravine ahead of him. One moment it had been deserted, the next, filled with blasting muskets, screaming red men, and the heart wrenching sounds of dying men. The rear guard, under his command, took one look at the scene from his worst nightmare, turned, and sprinted back the way they had come. Too late, Visscher turned to give his commands. His men were already in blind, headlong retreat.

  “Halt! Halt or I’ll have you all shot as deserters!”

  Not one man slowed. The abandoned wagons sat in the rutted dirt trail as they disappeared.

  In the first sixty seconds, more than one hundred of Herkimer’s command were down—dead or dying. Over half his officers were dead, including Ebenezer Cox. The fighting lost all sense of focus; there was no center, no breastwork or hill that could be taken to end it. The American militia had been stunned beyond their ability to rally. One moment they had been sweating their way up a ravine; the next instant the world was filled with high, terrifying Mohawk war cries as hideously painted men swept over them like an avalanche, swinging tomahawks with deadly accuracy, slashing with knives, driving lances home, giving no quarter, hacking, shouting, scalping, cutting, moving like lightning to strike hard and fast, left and right. The column fragmented, to become small groups, three, four, five men clustered together, swinging their muskets like clubs, thrusting clumsily with their bayonets, fighting with their hands, or a rock, or anything they could seize. Within minutes the floor of the ravine was covered with bodies. Blood stained the ground everywhere. Wounded men moaned, calling, but there was no one to heed or help.

  Herkimer stood bolt upright and shook his head, trying to force a focus to his shattered thoughts. Then he cupped his hands to shout, “Get out of the ravine! To the left! Up the left slope! Get up onto flat land where we can form a defensive line! To the left!”

  He jerked his sword from its scabbard and plunged from the trail, up the left slope, when suddenly he felt a hammer blow to his left knee, and it buckled and Herkimer went down. Militiamen nearby formed a circle around him while others lifted him, and they started the impossible climb up the left slope of the ravine. Soldiers around them saw and heard it, and began to follow. They did not know what lay at the top of the slope; they only knew that if they remain
ed in the slaughter around them, they would be dead. Struggling to reach the top, the leaders broke over the rim, followed by those who could.

  Beyond the rim the land was flat, but the trees and the undergrowth were just as thick. There was no place to form a battle line and bring some sense of military discipline or order to the running fight. With the survivors gathering around him, Herkimer ordered his men to prop him against a tree, where he dug inside his tunic to bring out his long-stemmed stone pipe, which he filled with tobacco and lit. With his back to the tree, and his shattered left leg laid out straight before him, Herkimer puffed on his pipe while he pointed with his sword and gave orders to his men, trying to rally them to a focus. Men who saw him hesitated, startled by the sight of a man smoking his pipe in the midst of the wildest massacre any of them had ever seen.

  One mile away, Eli suddenly stopped and raised a hand. Billy halted beside him, breathing hard from their four-mile run. They turned their heads and held their labored breathing for a moment, listening intently to unmistakable sounds they had heard all too often. A major battle was being fought not far ahead.

  Pain crossed Billy’s face as Eli spoke. “We’re too late. Brant’s got him.”

  Instantly they broke into a headlong run east, dodging through the forest, hurdling fallen trees, brush, and rocks. They slowed when they saw movement in the trees ahead, then worked their way slowly forward, trying to understand the chaos ahead. With the bloody fight raging just thirty yards in front of them, they dropped to their haunches, studying the shouting, screaming men, red and white, grappling, struggling, swinging their weapons in mortal, deadly combat.

  Billy’s arm shot up. “There!” he exclaimed. “Herkimer’s trying to rally his men over there!”

  “They’re not going to make it the way they’re doing it,” Eli shouted. “Come on!”