The smoke became so dense that we could not see what we were about, but the British huzza and the ‘Southern yell’ of the Americans—which they had adopted, I think, from their neighbours, the Cherokee Indians—gave us an indication of who was friend and who foe. We did not pause to pursue the militia, but wheeled sharply to the left and with charge-bayonet and volley engaged the flank of the Maryland regiment as it came up from the rear.
The action continued for three-quarters of an hour, being very obstinate in the centre, where The Thirty-Third and The Volunteers of Ireland lost heavily from artillery and small-arms fire. At last the cavalry of Tarleton’s Greens came around under cover of the smoke and charged with their sabres. I had never before witnessed a cavalry charge and its excitement intoxicated me, as I saw through the smoke the green uniforms sweep down, with sabres slashing and hacking, on the buff and blue ranks of the Continentals. Only remarkably well-trained and well-posted infantry can accept a cavalry charge; these were resolute enough men, but not cavalry-proof. They began to break.
Soon it was all over, though their right wing, unaware that the game was already lost, were making a brave push against the Loyalist corps opposed to them. The American commander here was Major-General Baron de Kalb, a German in the French service, whose ruddy youthful looks made him seem twenty years younger than the sixty-three which were his true age. He fell with eleven bayonet wounds in him, after having killed one or two of our people with his sword; and Lord Cornwallis afterwards buried him, very properly, with all the honours of war.
About one hundred Americans escaped in a compact body by wading through a swamp on our left, and got clear away. The remainder fled indiscriminately down the Rugeley road, and were pursued about twenty miles by the cavalry of The Greens; the road was covered with abandoned arms and baggage. Almost all the officers overtaken had lost their commands. One thousand Americans surrendered, six hundred lay dead, three hundred severely wounded were conveyed to our hospital at Camden. They lost the whole of their artillery (eight brass field-pieces), all their ammunition, all their baggage, all their two hundred wagons; and seventy officers, killed, wounded or prisoners.
The Regiment’s losses were not heavy, being only six killed and seventeen wounded, of the two hundred and ninety to which sickness and skirmishing had now reduced our five hundred. Captain Drury, a valuable officer of ours, who was lying under a tree wounded in the leg, was hotly reproached by a party of twenty prisoners, two of them sergeants, because he ordered them back to the rear under the command of the slave Jonah. They told him that it was a monstrous indignity for white men to be left to the tender mercies of ‘a rascal blackamoor’, who threatened, if they attempted to escape, to ‘blow them through’. Said the Captain, pretty testily, for his wound irked him: ‘My good fellows, I cannot spare soldiers for the service. And let me tell you: your Massachusetts allies boast in their newspapers that my friend, Major Pitcairne of the Marines, was shot dead at Bunker’s Hill by a negro, Peter Salem. If negroes are qualified to shoot British officers, God damn it, they are equally capable to act as escort to American rank and file. If you prefer, however, to be shot out of hand, that can be arranged too, by Heaven!’ However, on the whole, the prisoners behaved with politeness and gave no trouble.
Jonah was very scornful of the defeated Americans. He said: ‘It am high time for dem damned rebels to turn deir bayonets into pitchforks, den dey go foddering de beeves.’ For this sentiment I severely reproved him.
It was nearly three years since Mad Johnny Maguire and I had fought side by side against General Gates’ men. Maguire came up to me after the fight, his face and regimental well grimed with gunpowder, as ours all were. With that relaxation of decorum allowed, among the Fusiliers, only after a conspicuous victory or on St. David’s Night, he cried: ‘By my soul, Gerry my jewel, we are at last revenged for Saratoga. Now I wonder what in the holy name of God has become of that spectacled scoundrel Gates? I was looking for him in the smoke with my bayonet, like Diogenes with his lantern, whoever that same busy Diogenes may have been. But the Devil a sight of him did I get.’
Says I: ‘Well, Johnny, you know I could never forgive General Gates for charging our officers and ourselves, after we were in his power, with depredations that never existed but in his own imagination. Ay, where is he? I haven’t heard that he’s been taken, or his body found among the slain.’
General Gates had attempted, as he afterwards explained to Congress, to rally the flying militiamen. Indeed, he was heard to vociferate: ‘I will bring the rascals back into line.’ He was then ‘swept away by the torrent of fugitives’. However, he soon shook himself free of them. He was mounted on a race-horse of some reputation, which took him sixty miles before it foundered. It is said that he killed two more horses of lesser value before he reached Hillsborough in North Carolina, from whence he had started. An old letter, by the bye, was lately published, written from General Gates to General Lee, which he concluded with the following emphatic and patriotic lines:
‘On this condition would I build my fame,
And emulate the Greek and Roman name;
Think Freedom’s rights bought cheaply with my blood,
And die with pleasure for my Country’s good!’
Congress never trusted General Gates with an army again, and presently noticed him officially to resign his command. He was greatly chagrined that, for one little defeat, his victory at Saratoga trumpeted across the whole of America, and indeed the world, had been blotted from the page of glory and made as if it had never been. He turned away to his private affairs, in disgust with political and party distractions. But now his former admirers and well-wishers suddenly struck their heads in surprise, and ‘Heigh!’ they cried, ‘why did we never think of it?—in that whole Northern campaign he contrived never once to come under fire. And did he not shirk taking part in the famous battle of Trenton when invited to do so by General Washington?’ General Benedict Arnold, now commanding the chief fortress in America, West Point on Hudson’s River, was at last remembered by these feather-headed critics as the true victor of Saratoga. Yet their praise came too late, and was soon stifled; as will appear.
***
I was kept very busy for some days after this battle, being appointed temporary surgeon to the Regiment; a duty for the performance of which I earned my officers’ thanks.
CHAPTER X
Our victory at Camden opened the way for a British invasion of North Carolina; and in September 1780, so soon as sufficient provisions arrived, we were marched up the Catawba River to Charlotte, which lies in that province. Movement was the best cure, Lord Cornwallis thought, for the increasing sickness of the army, which had reduced its strength to an alarming extent. Charlotte, which yielded after a slight skirmish, was a place of importance to us on account of its many flour-mills and several large, well-cultivated farms, rich in cattle. The town itself consisted of but two streets, dominated at their intersection by a large brick building, Court House above and market-house below.
While we were there, we were well enough fed: at one mill alone, Colonel Polk’s, twenty-five tons of flour were seized and a quantity of wheat. Fresh beef there was in plenty, for the woods abounded with grass both in summer and winter and black cattle ran wild in them; but the grass being coarse they were exceedingly lean. These cattle were in ordinary times sold to drovers from Pennsylvania at a low price; who took them back to fatten on the rich pastures of the Delaware. The oxen being in general mere hide and bones, unfit to kill, we found it our unpleasant necessity to kill milch-cows, and even cows in calf. We butchered upon an average one hundred head a day. This slaughter caused great indignation among the inhabitants, who were among the most revolutionary people in the whole Southern States. Several messengers with despatches for the Commander-in-Chief were murdered on the road, and our foraging parties were frequently fired upon by marksmen lurking behind trees.
The country about was covered with close, thick woods. The roads were narrow and
crossed in every direction; and the outlying plantations small and ill-cultivated. There may have been a few Loyalists in this district, but the vigilance and animosity of the revolutionaries checked them, and we could not rely upon any information that came to us of the movements of the enemy. For though their field force had been destroyed, the war was by no means at an end. Three bold and intelligent partisan leaders, Sumpter, Marion and Horry, with a few score of active horsemen, armed with sabres hammered from mill-saws and well mounted, kept the flame of rebellion alight. These harried our communications, struck at our isolated posts; they had no base or garrison town against which we could strike, but seemed to be both nowhere and everywhere. They were brave men and lived very frugally upon hoe-cake and sweet-potatoes baked in the embers. Colonel Tarleton with his Greens was always on their track, but the country people in general, to whom these guerrillas seemed heroes, gave them the assistance that they denied our people. A party of them even dared to attack Polk’s Mill, where my company happened to be on piquet duty under Lieutenant Guyon. Our sentinels were vigilant. We drove them off with fire from a loopholed building near by.
In the baggage captured at Camden was found correspondence proving thirty substantial citizens of Charleston to have been our secret enemies, in correspondence with the revolutionaries; and several prisoners taken in the same battle were found to hold certificates of allegiance to King George in their pockets. The former persons, except some who escaped, from being warned in time, were arrested and confined to the hulks; the latter were executed. This strong action inflamed the feeling of the province against us to a still greater degree.
Towards the end of September I fell sick of a dangerous fever and my comrades despaired of my life. It was a month before I was fit for duty again, and I remained very listless and feeble for some time after. I owed my life to the faithfulness of poor Jonah, who played truant from the Mess on my account. He sat by me all night, where I lay in the Camden market-house which had been converted into a hospital. He prevented me by main force from flinging off my clothes in my delirium and rushing down to swim in the river, which I persisted in naming the Liffey; and he was always ready with hot or cold drinks as I needed them. The febrifuge he supplied was salts of wormwood, mixed with lemon-juice, sugar and water. When I could fancy no meat, or heavy diet, this poor mungo caught fish and made me broth, and treated me in short with a solicitous affection that I have never before or since enjoyed at the hand of any man, and seldom from a woman’s.
Sergeant Collins often came to visit me in my sickness. When I was able to converse intelligently with him he said: ‘How now, Gerry Lamb! You seemed to recognize me in the height of your delirium. Do you recollect what you told me?’
‘I remember nothing,’ I assured him. ‘My mind is like a lake over which a storm has raged. It reflects only the blue sky and forgets the thunder and lightning.’
‘Well,’ he said laughing. ‘You were in terrible concern about Major André, the Deputy-Adjutant-General, and declared that he was about to be hanged upon a Judas-tree at Linning’s. You begged me to plead with General Washington for his life. Soon it was not a Judas-tree, it seems, but a gallows. You gave me a very pitiful account of how the Major comported himself during the execution, exactly as if you were a witness of it. “Oh, that villain of a hangman with his black face and his impudent leer,” you shouted. “Is Major André to suffer at the hands of a slouch like him?” Then you muttered: “Look, look, who is the chaplain! Who else would it be but the Reverend John Martin? He was at Pretty Jimmy’s wake, you know. He’s the Devil himself, so he is. And look who stands beside him! It’s Isaac van Wart, the Skinner, with thirty Robertson dollars jingling in his pockets. Thirty Robertson dollars and a Judas-tree—there’s a charming concurrence!”’
I began sweating at Sergeant Collins’ recital, and asked for a drink of grog, which he found for me. ‘Tell me more,’ said I.
‘Why,’ said Sergeant Collins, ‘it was only the delirium. Would you really hear more?’
‘Ay, tell me everything,’ I said.
‘It was really most singular,’ he continued. ‘You described how the Major stood rolling a pebble under the ball of his foot, and how his little dwarf servant burst out weeping and was reproved by him. Then how, with courage and disgust blended, the Major leapt into the cart under an immense gibbet, snatching the halter from the hangman and setting it with dignity about his own neck, with the knot under his right ear; and how he bound his eyes with his own handkerchief. Then, not in your own Irish brogue, but in a gentle English accent, you cried: “All that I request of you, gentlemen, is that you will bear witness to the world that I die like a brave man!” And again a whisper: “It will but be a momentary pang.” You spoke no more after this, though the flesh crawled upon your face, and a few instants later, a violent shock seemed to pass through you and you fell back upon the pallet as if dead.’
‘I remember nothing of that,’ I said aghast. ‘You are not codding me?’
He continued: ‘Jonah set up a howl, thinking you had gone from us; and indeed you had every appearance of a dead man. I could not feel the least tremor in your pulse. But the faithful creature flung himself upon you, breathing into your lungs and slapping your cheeks and hands; and you at last gave a slight groan and returned to life. From that instant your fever abated and you were in a fair way to health.’
It was not for three or four weeks that we heard a report that struck us with stupefaction. The first article was that General Benedict Arnold had deserted to our army at New York, and the second that Major André had been captured by a party of Skinners in neuter ground on the eastern bank of Hudson’s River and was now threatened with death as a spy! Sergeant Collins brought me the news, white to the lips, and ‘I misdoubt,’ said he, ‘that he is already hanged. October 2nd was the day upon which you recounted the particulars of his execution.’
Alas, he was right! The bare report that reached us concealed a most extraordinary story; and before long we knew what the Major had meant when he hopefully assured our officers at the St. David’s Day banquet that an American sheep-dog was soon to lead his flock into our fold, and so end the war.
The history is as follows. Major André had written in a private manner to his friend, Miss Margaret Shippen (whose name he had mentioned to me when I waited upon him in New York), now wife to General Arnold; offering her his services in procuring such slight millinery for her as cap-wire, needles and gauze, which were unobtainable in Philadelphia because of the war. This letter he intended her to show to her husband, whom he believed to be the secret correspondent ‘Gustavus’ who had lately been sending General Clinton most valuable information about the American army. It seems that when she innocently replied, General Arnold, unknown to her, added a note to hers, confirming his identity, and arranging for a safe channel of correspondence between André and himself.
General Arnold, by his own account, had originally taken arms against King George because a redress of American grievances could then only be obtained by force. This reason was, he said, later removed when decent redress was offered by the King’s Commissioners; and when the French alliance was ratified by Congress all his ideas of the justice and policy of the war were changed—he became a secret Loyalist. This does not seem unlikely; and add to this that Congress had from the first goaded him into disaffection by slighting his merits and delaying his promotion. As Governor of Philadelphia, in 1779, he was treated in the same shabby style. The Executive Council of the city laid before Congress a packet of complaints from citizens against his ‘imperious and crooked way of conducting public business’; and Congress was highly pleased to order a court-martial. Then, despite General Arnold’s plea for a speedy trial, his accusers kept the matter suspended over his head for nine months, during which he fretted without cease. After a long investigation he was, indeed, fully acquitted of all charges that touched his honour; but was sentenced to be reprimanded for his ‘imprudence’ in having employed certain publ
ic wagons, then lying idle, for removing private property from the reach of our foragers, and for having once given a pass to a trading vessel on the Delaware River without mentioning the matter to General Washington!
This reprimand General Washington conveyed, as delicately as he could, to General Arnold; but later showed his disapproval of Congress by bestowing upon him the command of the fortress of West Point. West Point, which commanded Hudson’s River a few miles above the fortress of Stoney Point, was the Gibraltar of America. Rocky ridges, ascending one behind the other, protected it against investment by any force less than twenty thousand strong. It was the magazine of immense quantities of stores, and also kept open for the Americans the passage between New England and the middle provinces. Half a million pounds sterling, and immense labour, had been spent in its construction and three thousand men formed its garrison. It was this place that General Arnold now proposed to hand over to King George—a blow that, Sir Henry Clinton thought, would end the war at a stroke. General Arnold asked in return for his gift not a million pounds or so—which would have fallen far short of the real value, since the war, directly or indirectly, was costing us millions every month: he desired only that he should be given a rank in the British Army equal to his rank in the American service, and compensation for the loss of his private property, which he modestly estimated at £6,000. Major André obtained permission from Sir Henry Clinton to attend a private meeting with General Arnold and arrange details for the admission of the British Army into the fortress.
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