To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1

by Newt Gingrich

  He watched, incredulous at the sight of it. Never had he witnessed this. Not at Long Island, Manhattan, Harlem . . . Never had he seen the back of a Hessian . . . and now they were running. The panic of the Hessians was real. God in Heaven, the surprise, so unexpected, so unbelievable minutes ago, just might be true!

  He looked up the road, straight into the eye of the storm, and out of it rode generals Greene and Knox. Behind them the column was advancing at the double. Men bent over, running as best they could on the ice-blanketed road, an unstoppable juggernaut racing down the slope of a mountain.

  “The surprise is complete! We have them!” Washington roared. “Their advance outpost has fled. We have them by the grace of God! Advance at the run, boys!”

  “By column or line?” Greene cried.

  “Keep them moving! No time to deploy,” Washington cried. “General Greene, keep your men moving!”

  He turned to Henry. “Now’s your time, Knox. Bring your guns up at the gallop and stay with me!”

  The head of the column swept past him, and he edged to the side of the road, standing tall in the stirrups, sword raised high.

  “Victory or death! We have them! Stay with your officers! Forward now, forward!”

  Turning, astride his horse, the tallest man on the field, he led them into the battle for Trenton.

  “Peter, a cartridge! Give me a damn cartridge!”

  Jonathan looked down at his musket, frizzen flipped up. He had forgotten to change the powder. The sight that greeted him was a black oozing puddle of wet powder and ice. Frantically he tried to wipe it clean with trembling hands.

  At last a chance to shoot, to actually fight back, and his damn musket misfires!

  Peter had successfully fired off a round and was screamingly wildly, so caught up in the frenzy of the moment he ignored Jonathan’s pleas.

  Men shoved in around them, elbowing Jonathan aside.

  “Take aim, boys!”

  He couldn’t see who was giving the command.

  “Fire!”

  A couple of dozen muskets rattled off, and the sound heightened his frustration and rage.

  A flash thought. Strange. Fifty years from now my grandchildren will ask me about this. I will not be able to claim I fired the first shots of the Battle of Trenton. “I stood there with a soaking wet musket and did nothing.”

  “Charge them! Charge the bastards!”

  Men shoved against him, pushing him forward. He abandoned trying to clear his flint and pan, moving blindly, unable to see Peter, following the back of a man; it looked like the friendly sergeant. Men around him pushed forward as if possessed, and he joined them. The hours of agony of this endless night, in fact the days, weeks, and months of agony, had turned at last. They were striking back!

  “Here it comes!”

  A second later he heard the volley and flinched, but no one fell, and those around him truly began to scream with a wild, animal-like roar.

  Jonathan tried to give voice. He couldn’t. His lungs were afire. It was hard enough even to keep his footing as he ran with the others. They reached the house the Hessians had occupied but a few minutes before. Through the open door Jonathan saw a roaring fire and a table set with food. The temptation was to go inside, grab a biscuit, a piece of bacon, and collapse by the fire, but someone was shouting for them to press forward.

  “Come on lads! Drive the bastards. Drive ’em!”

  The chase was on, and leaving the house behind, he joined in.

  The ragged line, with men from several different units, raced down the road. He saw Peter, angled in to be at his side, and wanted to ask again for a dry cartridge but didn’t have the breath to do so as he struggled to keep up. Sensation was returning to his feet, which had gone numb again after crossing Jacob’s Creek, so that each step was an agony. Someone ahead of him fell. He thought for an instant the man was shot, but even as he ran past him the soldier was half up, cursing the ice.

  He was aware again of the storm. It seemed as if rain, sleet, and snow were all falling at the same time, driven nearly horizontal by the wind out of the north, now at their backs.

  Another flash of thought; in the eyes of the Hessians, it would be our advantage. In his lessons on ancient battles, the Greeks and Romans always had wanted the wind and the sun at their back in a fight.

  Occasionally he glimpsed the retreating Hessians. He had never faced them directly in battle, but he had seen their handiwork, the bayoneting and clubbing of prisoners, had heard of their arrogance, their mocking disdain. And now they were running. The sight filled him with glee, driving him forward in spite of his burning lungs, which labored like tattered bellows for each ragged breath.

  For a few precious minutes he forgot his own ills. The enemy was running hard, disappearing for an instant behind a curtain of snow, then visible again.

  The ground was familiar——the Vanderhaven farm, the front door open, no one visible. The road took a slight curve to the right.

  “The town, it’s just ahead!” Peter cried. “Not a hundred yards!”

  Peter was right. The ground sloped off sharply here, and in the gloom Jonathan could see the outline of the houses and buildings where this road split into King and Queen streets.

  And his home was one of those houses.

  The Hessians they had been pursuing were turning, an officer trying to form them into some semblance of a line. A trickle of men were coming up the street, some of them trying to pull on overcoats, several still in their underbreeches and barefoot.

  “Volley fire, boys!”

  It sounded like the sergeant.

  Men slowed, reaching into cartridge boxes, bringing out cartridges, several of them cursing, throwing the sodden mass to the ground. Jonathan came to Peter’s side.

  “A cartridge, just give me a damn cartridge!”

  Peter, working his ramrod, paused, cursed Jonathan, but reached down and pulled one out. It felt solid and dry in Jonathan’s hand. He placed one end in his mouth, holding it thus while flipping the lock of his musket open, wiping away the gummy mess of wet powder with his thumb. He tried to wipe the flint clean with his forefinger, his hand so numb that he didn’t even realize it when the sharpened flint cut the finger nearly to the bone and blood spilled out.

  Tearing the cartridge open, he filled the pan.

  “Take aim!”

  He tried to keep up, to close the lock, hoping the charge inside the barrel was still dry.

  “Fire!”

  The volley rang out, startling him. The men around him were screaming curses, shouting their defiance, their hatred, and their rage at the enemy, who had turned at the edge of the village.

  He snapped his own frizzen shut and shouldered his musket while others around him were still reloading.

  He was shaking so hard . . . He would never admit it was fear, but he could not even hope to aim properly. Besides, the storm was kicking up snow and sleet around him. The enemy was again like shadows. He pointed his weapon toward the Hessians arrayed not fifty yards off and squeezed the trigger.

  There was a flash of fire and then smoke in the pan of his musket . . . and then nothing.

  Blind rage filled him. His musket was useless. The ball would have to be extracted, powder cleaned out. Impossible in this fight.

  The Hessians fired a ragged volley back. In the confusion, the panic, and the gusting storm, not a single round hit anyone, and that triggered jeers from the men around him. So much for the feared Hessian volley fire! Men to either side of Jonathan finished loading, leveled their weapons, and fired again, and he saw men in the Hessian line going down.

  “Again, boys. Hit them again!”

  Unable to fire, Jonathan stood there, having to double over for a moment as a coughing seized him.

  Coming back upright, he saw where several of the enemy had reloaded. One of them was pointing his musket straight at him.

  At least I can do something, Jonathan thought. “He that stands it now . . . ,” and he stood
defiant, not cringing as the enemy musket, from a range of less than forty yards, ignited.

  For Colonel Rall remembering home as he lay half awake was a rare indulgence. His custom across so many decades of service was to be up an hour before dawn. This day he had drifted off after deciding to shed the damp weight of his jacket. Potts’s servant had come in and piled more wood on the fire to take the chill out of the room and hung the jacket by the fire to dry.

  So he had drifted off, half awake, half asleep, the first light of dawn rousing him for a moment. It was time to be up, to have his men fall out for morning parade, but the storm still raged outside, slashing against the windowpanes. He knew that barely a man had slept, having been repeatedly rousted out by the alarms. In his own exhausted state, he decided to let them, and himself, have an hour more of rest. Unlike proper Christians, many of those in this wretched land did not hold to the custom of celebrating Christmas; some, such as the hard-shelled peasants of New England, even asserted it was a pagan holiday and did not observe it at all. His men, however, had stood to arms throughout Christmas Day.

  He had half assumed it would be like these people to disrupt a day that most held sacred, and thus he had ordered the men to stand at arms, nothing to drink other than the standard issue, which in this land was not even proper brandy but instead a vile brew made from their corn, and some rum at least halfway decent that had been seized in New York and brought down by supply wagons with his troops.

  He thought of that city, settled by the Dutch. They were almost German, and thus a fairly decent sort who were more than glad to be shed of the rebels.

  Most of the British army was back there, and their Christmas had been, without a doubt, a time of pleasure, filled with toasts, good food, and warmth, with admiring young ladies of the town joining in.

  And we are stuck here, at the edge of the wilderness, in this squalid little village, harassed by damn cowards.

  It was some thanks for loyal service. He wondered for the hundredth time why it was that the German troops were sent to the forward edge while the British, whose war this really was, garrisoned the towns at the rear. At least Princeton, where several regiments were now lodged, boasted a semblance of a college and what in this country passed for a library, with several mansions to serve as proper headquarters. Cornwallis rested in Amboy and word had come that he had been granted leave to return to England in thanks for his service. His headquarters had undoubtedly enjoyed Christmas Day as well, for as always British headquarters were well stocked with the best of food, wine even, and ladies, some of dubious virtue, others perhaps of more refinement who could be seen in company at a social occasion without inspiring degrading rumors afterward. He half suspected that, when the time came, it would be the British who went home first, while his own prince hired his unit out for another year of service as garrison troops, unless, with luck, another war began with the Austrians or the French, or, better yet, the great Frederick decided to go on campaign again and rallied some of the various German states to his side.

  That thought bothered him. It would be our luck that, even so, we would be stuck here and miss the chance for glory on a proper battlefield, and gone, too, would be his opportunity to rise to the rank of general before retiring. But we are here, the British are safe and secure, and so my prince has ordered it, and I have always obeyed.

  It triggered a memory of boyhood, when his father was an officer, garrisoned in a town he could not remember, a memory of another Christmas dinner, the men about the table recalling a battle of the war of the Spanish Succession in which his father had distinguished himself as a young lieutenant. He retained a warm memory of that snowy night, filled with anticipation of the ceremonial parade of Christmas Day for the pleasure of the Prussian king, with sweetmeats and candy for the children afterward.

  He had drifted in thought too long, a sense of duty telling him it was time to rise, to call for poor overworked Münchasen to send word down the street for the men to finish their breakfasts, don uniforms, and muster. But after such a damn miserable night of alarms and false alarms triggered by such maddening cowards, it could wait for a few more minutes.

  He closed his eyes.

  A distant rattle. Was it the storm?

  He half opened his eyes.

  A shout of alarm?

  Then another rattle. It was musketry. Close.

  Damn them! Damn all of them. Another infuriating raid.

  He threw back the comforter, bare feet hitting the cold floor, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

  And then the door was flung open, a wide-eyed Münchasen rushing in.

  “The rebels.”

  “Yes, I know, damn it. How many?”

  “Their army, sir! It looks like their entire army!”

  “Colonel Knox! Bring your guns up here!”

  Knox was at the lead, pointing the way to a fair rise of ground that Washington was indicating, the ground sloping up from the center of Trenton a hundred yards away.

  It was ideal for a gun position. Washington reined in by Knox’s side, incredulous at the folly, the utter folly, of the enemy he faced. Such a rise of ground should have a redoubt. A simple fortification here, properly made with moat and wall, garrisoned by fifty men and two guns, would have stopped this attack in its tracks. Instead, it was wide-open ground offering a prospect of the entire village.

  The sight of it left him with mixed feelings——absolute delight and more confidence in his agents, who had so craftily scouted the ground and reported it to be unguarded, and increased rage that his enemies held him in such contempt that they could not bother to make an effort to take so basic a precaution.

  In a few minutes they would learn the folly of that contempt.

  The first two guns came on, horses slipping, breaking through the crust of ice, gaining footing; gun crews urged them on, some actually risking a crushed foot or leg as they leaned into the wheels to help the animals up the last dozen feet of the slope.

  There was a crackling roar off to the right. Washington turned, facing the sound. A definite volley. Whose?

  Then he saw them. Again he wondered if somehow God’s hand was in play at this moment. For the wind had shifted more to the northwest, bringing with it a momentary clearing.

  Sullivan’s men!

  Deployed into a regiment-wide front, they were sweeping down either side of the River Road, driving a scattering of panicked Hessian pickets and guards before them.

  “Load solid shot!” It was Knox. “Make sure your linstocks are lit and glowing!”

  Washington turned back.

  The first two guns, six-pounders, were being unlimbered. Two gunnery sergeants were swinging their linstocks over their heads. The linstocks were nothing more than short poles with slow-burning match tapers attached to them. The ends of the saltpeter-encrusted tapers on the brass cross trees at the end of the linstocks glowed red hot when whirled about, in spite of the storm. The sergeants had done their jobs well, protecting the precious flames, stowing burning tapers throughout the long march. They were ready. The men turned their backs to the storm, holding the linstocks close in against their bodies to protect the glowing tapers.

  Loading crews were tearing open the limber chests, pulling out wooden containers, each one sealed tight, then breaking them open to grab at one-pound powder charges wrapped in a serge bag. With the sergeants hovering over them they ran the powder charges to the bores of their guns.

  Slamming them in, they stepped back, and rammers pushed the charges home. Boys, bringing up the six-pound shot, placed them in the barrels to be rammed down in turn, everything now topped with wadding to keep all in place.

  Horns filled with fine-grain powder were uncorked and upended at the touchholes in the breeches of the guns. Behind the guns, Knox paced, then squatted, sighting along the barrels, and shouting for one crew to drop their elevation.

  Washington gave a quick glance toward the town when for a moment it was clearly visible. Sullivan was pushing down fro
m the northwest, trading volleys with a thin line of Hessians at the very edge of the village. The enemy was already giving back.

  Trenton was not a big town. The two main streets, King and Queen, starting at the end of the road his army had struggled along, spread out at slightly divergent angles, and swept down toward the Delaware. Other streets intersected them at right angles. Just above the river there was a small open square with several side streets radiating out. The distance from where he stood to the river was not much more than six hundred yards, and for a few moments he could almost see it.

  He remembered it well from having just marched through it three weeks past, seeking the refuge of the far bank of the Delaware. A barracks from the French and Indian wars loomed high on one of the side streets down near the river and was capable of housing several hundred men. Along the main streets there were several churches, shops, and homes, some of them prosperous three-storied affairs. Beyond them, several wharves lined the river.

  In the center of the town, visible for the moment, he could see men stirring, some beginning to emerge from the stone barracks, others pouring out of houses, barns, and warehouses. A knot of soldiers was trying to form into ranks while moving up King Street, and there was a flag being uncased. No semblance of order yet, but these were Hessians. If they were given a few minutes of breathing room, they would most certainly form up.

  He looked back at Knox, but no order needed to be given.

  “Ready! Stand clear!” Knox cried.

  Gunners jumped back from their pieces.

  “Number one, fire!”

  One of the sergeants, turned about, arm extended, linstock with burning taper coming down. The burning rope touched the mound of powder over the touchhole of the six-pounder and instantly ignited.

  The gun leapt back with a roar even as Knox screamed for the second gun to fire.

  The roar of the two guns even overcame the howling of the wind. There was a momentary glimpse of a partial line of Hessians forming and, a second later, scattering, several men going down near the flag.