‘These circumstances are indeed abominable,’ cried Mr. Stedman. ‘But do these poor people expect to live so happily or so undisturbed under any rule but that of the British King?’
‘No, Friend,’ the Quaker replied. ‘Nor does that come in question. The people have experienced such distress between the ebb and flow of revolution and loyalism that they would submit to any government in the world, Christian, Jew or Turk in order only to obtain peace. And so great are the odds against which thy nation is contending and so foolish are thy Ministers (forgive my boldness) that they despair of victory for you. They tend to the side of Congress. Yet be assured of this much—as soldiers in the rebel militia they are of small comfort to General Greene.’
CHAPTER XII
General Greene was unlucky to have lost the services of General Daniel Morgan who after his resounding victory at The Cowpens had retired from the service, pleading the ague and rheumatic pains. These ailments, though painful, would not have been sufficient to keep so courageous and patriotic a soldier from battle had General Morgan felt that he was estimated by Congress at his just worth; but he had too often been disappointed by deferred promotion and given cold thanks for his extraordinary services, nor did he agree very well in policy with General Greene. He retired to his farm and never served against us again. General Greene was what they termed in the South a ‘judgmatical’ man, that is, a man of careful judgment. His military knowledge was wholly derived from reading, not from experience in the field, but his dispositions on this occasion were pretty well. The ground he chose was certainly most favourable for defence.
The whitewashed Court House stood on a gentle slope at the skirt of an irregular clearing of about one hundred and twenty acres. The only other buildings in this clearing were two small farmhouses and three barns. The Court House had been, I suppose, sited here as lying at a road-junction and at a point nearly equidistant from several scattered plantations which formed the township of Guildford. Our approach to it from the south was by a narrow defile with thick woods on either hand. On emerging from the defile, we would first come upon a smaller clearing of about fifty acres, with the road running between. General Greene’s advanced line of defence, consisting of North Carolina militiamen, was posted behind a rail fence on the further edge of the smaller clearing, where the woods began again. Two guns were mounted ahead of this line to distress us as we debouched from the defile; also companies of picked riflemen were thrown forward on either flank, and two squadrons of cavalry were ready to charge if we showed panic. The North Carolina men were to be discouraged from breaking, by a few veteran troops posted immediately in their rear with orders to shoot any man who flinched. This wood extended for half a mile until our road reached the larger clearing at the back of which the Court House stood; in the middle of the wood, behind a stout breastwork, General Greene had placed a second line, of better militia, including the famous riflemen trained by General Morgan. The last line, posted on the slopes about the Court House consisted of the regular and veteran troops. Three-quarters of a mile separated the leading militia from the veterans in reserve.
It may well be wondered why General Greene had placed his lines at so great a distance from one another. The fact was: he knew that General Morgan’s victory at The Cowpens had been gained by defending his position with successive lines of infantry, each strongly posted, so that when one line was dislodged our charge would spend its force before it reached the second position; and he trusted that after we were staggered by the first skirmish the density of the woods would make us break our alignment and come against his best troops in exhaustion and disorder. Had General Morgan been present he would have approved General Greene’s dispositions in principle, but criticized the detail. It is a good thing to separate one’s lines in such a way that the defence is in depth, and the enemy is exhausted in attempting to pierce it; but a bad thing to separate these lines by too great a distance. The front companies will feel lonely, and suspect that they have been devoted to destruction for the benefit of those behind. Unless they are seasoned troops they will not hold their ground for long.
The full circumstances of the battle, which took place on March 15th, 1781, are so complicated and have been so ably presented by Mr. Stedman in his History that it would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to improve upon him. I will therefore content myself with giving my own experiences in the battle, recommending my readers to study Mr. Stedman for a more general account.
The Royal Welch Fusiliers went into action about two hundred and twenty officers and men strong; some eighty having been lost by sickness and skirmishing since the Camden battle. We were marched off at dawn from New Garden, without having eaten our breakfast—and not from our officers’ negligence, but only because there was no breakfast to eat. We had been on very short rations for a week and now possessed no food at all. After a frosty night, the sun shone benignantly and warmed our stiff bodies; while the croaking of frogs and the twittering of birds pleasantly reminded us that the Spring was now well advanced. Life without a daily issue of grog was uncomfortable, I own, for the old soldiers especially. Even Saint David had been cheated of his customary bumpers: the amount of peach-brandy that Captain Champagné had contrived to collect for that pious purpose on March 1st did not amount to more than half a gill for each mess.
At about noon, our cavalry scouts brushed with theirs about four miles from Guildford Court House, and Lord Cornwallis, unable to get any information from prisoners or natives as to the enemy dispositions, was forced to fight blind. We Fusiliers were in the centre of the advancing army, and heard confused artillery and musket fire ahead of us. Presently a rider came down the column with orders to Lieutenant-Colonel Webster of The Thirty-Third, who commanded our division, to hurry forward and deploy to the left so soon as we reached the first clearing. At about half-past one o’clock in the afternoon, we found ourselves advancing across the wet, red clay of a ploughed field, with The Thirty-Third on our left and The Seventy-First on our right. Music of fife and drum was not lacking; but, the regimental drummers being now employed as musket-men, we used young American boys who had joined the Colours at Camden. Our chief fifer was the negro Jonah, who played the Grenadiers’ March and The Noble Race of Jenkin with great spirit.
We were the leading troops, and first came under rifle-fire at about a hundred and fifty paces from the wood towards which we were hurrying. Since our Tower muskets were, as usual, greatly outranged by the American rifles, we were obliged to hold our volley and continue our advance, despite great losses. The marksmen on the flanks especially galled us. Here fell Mad Johnny Maguire with a bullet through the heart; but I did not know of my poor friend’s fate until the next day when he was found by Smutchy Steel lying in a furrow upon his back, his rugged features bent in the pleasant smile which in life had seldom left them.
At sixty paces we halted to fire a volley; then Colonel Webster gave the word ‘Charge!’ But The Thirty-Third, who had suffered heavily, not yet being up in line with us on the left, we paused for a moment, at forty paces from the enemy, to allow them to come up. Colonel Webster, misunderstanding our hesitation, cried out in more than his usual commanding voice, which was well known to our Brigade: ‘Come on, my brave Fusiliers!’ The North Carolina militia were massed with arms presented behind the rail-fence and taking aim with the nicest precision. We went forward at a smart run, and they would not meet our bayonets. Despite the guards set over them to prevent this very thing, five hundred fled away to the flanks and thence dispersed to their homes: ‘to kiss their wives and sweethearts’, as General Greene afterwards amiably expressed it.
Next we came against the Virginians in the middle of the wood, who fired very sharply at us from behind their breastworks of brushwood. We could not get at them because of the trees that they had felled in our path, and must change direction, working round to our left.
I happened to run ahead with a party of about ten men, Smutchy Steel among them. As we gained the end of the b
reastwork, which had cost us many valuable lives, and went in among the Virginians with the bayonet, I observed an American officer attempting to fly across our front. I immediately left my comrades, whom I put under Smutchy’s orders, and darted after him. He saw my intention to capture him and fled with the utmost speed. I pursued—I do not know how far—to where the trees were less dense, but the underwood high and tangled. He fell once or twice, and was slow in rising, and I was gaining on him when suddenly he turned about and threw up his hands. Like a dream is a battle, when the spirit is so highly inflamed that the soldier hopes not, fears not, repines not, but proceeds without astonishment or reflexion from one remarkable or terrible circumstance to the next. It appeared natural enough to me that the American officer should be my former comrade Richard Harlowe—though how he came to be in the enemy’s service I knew not and do not know to this day—and that I should deny him quarter, as I did, shooting him through the head with my fusil in summary conviction of his traitorous dealing. His sword I drew from the scabbard in detestation, and with an effort snapped it across my knee.
I was now aware of a confused noise upon my left, where I saw several bodies of riflemen drawn up behind brushwood, the cast of a crust from me. A vigorous contest had evidently been in progress here between the Second Battalion of Guards and these people: for several dead Guardsmen and Americans lay about me. I stopped by a dead Guardsman, and stooping down, replenished my pouch with the cartridges remaining in his. Then I reloaded my fusil in a very deliberate manner, as one who walks in his sleep, careless of danger; they shouted and fired several shots at me, but not one took effect. Glancing my eye the other way, I saw a company of Guards advancing to the attack, and was glad to observe that they had been belied by popular rumour: so far from being effeminated by the luxuries of the Metropolis or enervated by idleness, they fought with vigour and majesty. I would have joined them now, but to do so I should have had to run the gauntlet of the Americans who lay between. How to act I knew not. I wished to join in the fight, but could effect nothing. I fell back a few paces.
On the instant, however, another remarkable vision seemed to swim up before me: the Earl of Cornwallis himself, riding towards me across the clear part of the wood, unaccompanied by any aide. He was mounted on a common dragoon’s horse, his own charger having been shot. The saddle-bags were under the creature’s belly, which much retarded his progress, because of the underwood that caught against it. I immediately ran forward and snatched at the bridle, turning the horse’s head. ‘Your Lordship,’ I cried, ‘another few yards and you will be surrounded by the enemy. This way, I beg of you.’
He thanked me, mentioned that he was unconscious of the danger, and observing the White Horse on my cap, asked where the Royal Welch Fusiliers were. I told him that I had become detached from them by the pursuit of an officer, but believed, by the shouting and cheering of a few minutes before, that they had now broken the second line. Still keeping the bridle in my hand I ran alongside of the horse in the direction from which the shouts had proceeded, until we came upon the Royal Welch Fusiliers. They were re-formed in the skirt of the wood just short of the farm-land behind which the Court House stood. To their left ran a road and on their right was a small hill. His Lordship noted this hill at once as commanding the Court House, and the very place to post our batteries, which were now coming up the road.
‘General Greene should not have overlooked this place,’ he said in my hearing, as one who mildly reproaches an opponent in a game of chess for a neglected opportunity. The guns were hauled up the hill and unlimbered, and at once opened fire upon the American third line. There was heavy fighting already in that quarter, where Lieutenant-Colonel Webster, who had become separated from us, had led The Thirty-Third and other troops. Presently we heard distant huzzas, and then these drowned by a tremendous Southern yell; and we saw a sight which surprised and dismayed us. The Second Guards, caught in the rear by Colonel Lee’s sabres and in the flank by the bayonets of the First Maryland Regiment, were fairly on the run across an open field. Lord Cornwallis did not hesitate: he ordered Lieutenant Macleod of the gunners to fire grape-shot point-blank into the mêlée! This in a moment broke the American pursuit, by making the horses unmanageable, but it was at great cost to our own people. ‘A necessary evil,’ said his Lordship, returning very pale to where we were formed. ‘So a man would do right to shoot off his own finger where a rattlesnake bit him, lest the poison lose him his whole arm and life itself.’ The Marylanders then returned to their original post in the neighbourhood of the Court House.
Ourselves and The Seventy-First formed a solid line to which five regiments now rallied, including the survivors of the Guards. It was now about three o’clock and the crisis of the battle. But Colonel Tarleton with a cavalry charge broke the enemy militia on our right, where fighting was in progress about a mile distant from us; our re-formed line then swept forward across the farm-land, which was deeply seamed with gullies, and the Americans went off in haste.
The Royal Welch Fusiliers had the luck to capture two of the four brass six-pounders close to the Court House, which General Greene abandoned with their ammunition. A few prisoners were taken. Ourselves and The Seventy-First as the troops least exhausted were ordered to pursue the enemy as they fell back to our left towards a river called Troublesome Creek: but we were near fainting from hunger and our long exertions and could do little against them.
In this desperate battle, we lost in killed and wounded above five hundred men, near one-third of our whole army. Among the mortally wounded was Lieutenant-Colonel Webster, whose death a few days later struck Lord Cornwallis with such pungent sorrow that he exclaimed: ‘I have lost my scabbard.’ The Royal Welch Fusiliers were reduced by sixty-eight officers and men to a total strength of but one hundred and fifty. The Americans left between two and three hundred dead on the battlefield; by which we could estimate their losses in killed and wounded at twice as many as ours. Well, it was a victory, but such a victory as my old commander General Phillips said, when he heard the news, as ‘the sort of victory that ruins an army.’ (General Phillips had lately been exchanged against an American prisoner of equal rank and was now with General Arnold at Portsmouth in Virginia. While in captivity he had caused great resentment among the Americans by his downright manner of speech and by telling his officers ‘not to heed the Americans more than a flock of cackling geese’. Many of our veteran officers and men, I confess, made troublesome prisoners.)
We camped that night upon the field of battle. It was a very black night, and the battle had been scattered over so wild and difficult a country that darkness fell before we had brought in our own and the American wounded. The Court House, with the meagre farm-buildings and sheds, was insufficient to shelter even those whom we found. It rained in torrents all night and the cries of the wounded and dying, for whom no shelter could be found, exceeded all description for painfulness. We had no food, no drink, no shelter. So complicated a scene of horror and distress rarely occurs even in military life; yet I had experienced as bad or worse in the Saratoga fighting, where the gloomy necessity of constant retreat had weighed upon our hearts like lead. To-day at least we had won a resounding victory against a courageous and well-fed enemy, advantageously posted, whose numbers exceeded us by nearly three to one. As for myself, I admit that my heart was strangely elated in spite of all. The death of so many good comrades, especially of Mad Johnny Maguire, should have stilled it to sobriety. But one consideration now dominated every other: Richard Harlowe (or Pearce) was killed, and I was now free to marry the woman whom I had widowed with my own fusil, and who was the mother of my child. For I was convinced by a strong intuition not only that she still lived, but that I would meet her once more, and before many months had passed. I should dearly have loved to seek out Richard Harlowe’s corpse and search it to find his commission or some other proof of his death; but I could not be spared from duty.
Smutchy Steel was promoted to Corporal as a reward for his s
oldier-like services that day, and I was glad to be able once more to discourse with him on equal and familiar terms, we being now both of non-commissioned rank. Though originally of a low and vicious disposition, he had been insensibly improved by the exacting round of duty and discipline: so much so that he was entirely changed in mind and character into an honourable and moral person, whom I was proud to call my friend. Such cases in the Army are as frequent as they are surprising, and constitute a strong argument for the military life; if the officers be worthy of their trust.
The morning after the battle we buried the dead, from whom we took such shoes as were in better condition than our own, and marched back to the New Garden Meeting House. There we left seventy of our most severely wounded under the charge of the good Quakers, with a flag of truce and a petition to the Americans to relieve their distresses. That same afternoon we were fed for the first time for forty-eight hours, the ration being a quarter of a pound of maize flour and the same amount of very lean beef. The nearest place whence we could hope for regular provisions was Wilmington on the North Carolina coast, above two hundred miles away, following the bank of the Cape Fear River. So off we marched, by short stages. General Greene then turned to pursue us; but our rear-guard fought only slight skirmishes with his van, and he did not follow us above forty miles. We were very hungry and for bread we were one day served with liver, and another day with turnips, which roots have small nourishment in them.
A settlement of Highland Loyalists at Cross Creek lay on our route, but even there we could not find four days’ forage within twenty miles, and could not therefore halt for refreshment. These Highlanders, notwithstanding the cruel persecution that they had constantly endured from the Revolutionaries, had shown great affection and zeal towards us, collecting and conveying to us all the flour and spirits in the neighbourhood. Their attention saved the lives of a number of our wounded, worn out by traversing this barren desert; none the less, we lost a great many on the road. The enemy militia did not appear in arms against us, but contented themselves with driving the cattle out of our reach, carrying off supplies of corn and breaking down bridges over the numerous creeks which we must pass.
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