However, we could then know nothing of what lay in pickle for us, and had perfect confidence in General Burgoyne, in our own arms, and in the righteousness of our cause.
Our fleet had been strengthened by a new frigate, the Royal George; and a radeau, big as a castle, which was sunk at St John’s by the Americans in the previous year, had been raised from the river-bed. Our army consisted of some four thousand British troops and three thousand German. Two thousand Canadian levies had been expected to swell our numbers but the service proved unpopular. No more than one hundred and fifty appeared in arms with us; they hung back even from transport work. Besides these, there were the Indians, many hundreds of whom had promised to take up the hatchet.
At the beginning of June 1777 we marched out of Canada by way of St John’s and encamped on the western side of Lake Champlain; where we waited for batteaux to transport us, under convoy of the fleet, to the southern extremity of the lake, close to Crown Point.
In our passage down the lake we frequently encamped upon the islands, the brigades regularly following one another, and making about seventeen to twenty miles a day. The order of progress was so regulated that each brigade occupied at night the encampment vacated in the morning by the brigade preceding. It would have been a very pleasant time had it not been for the mosquitoes, which were more venomous here than anywhere else on the American continent, but only at Skenesborough, a little farther to the south, where (as General Washington himself averred) they would not scruple to bite through boot and stocking. At this time great clouds of turtle-doves were migrating from New York State past us into Canada; they were decorated with beautiful plumage of shifting hues and were much wearied by their long flight. It was with difficulty that they gained the trees near our bivouac to roost upon, and some even dropped into the water and drowned. Our people struck them down from the branches with sticks and wrung their necks as they fell. Turtle-doves furnished subsistence for six weeks of the year to the Canadian farmer, who erected ladders from the ground to the tops of the pines where the flocks were accustomed to resort. The turtle-doves perched upon the ladders, several to each rung. Coming softly to the trees by night with a musket full of small shot, the Canadian would fire upwards along each ladder and seldom fail to kill or wound forty or fifty birds, which he would subsequently eat in a delicious fricassee with garlic and sour cream.
An event remarkable, even if it can be dismissed as coincidence, occurred as we were approaching Crown Point. Picture to yourself the scene: a fine June day with the wide lake undisturbed by a breeze, and the whole army in array, forming a perfect regatta, a great number of Indians paddling ahead in their birchen canoes, twenty or thirty to a canoe, followed by the advanced corps, our Light Infantry and Grenadiers, the Canadians and a few American Loyalist volunteers, upon the gunboats; next, the two frigates, Royal George and Inflexible, towing large booms, the schooners, sloops, and other ships a little astern, including the newly raised radeau which transported the heavy artillery; after them the first brigade, with scarlet uniforms and flashing arms, in a regular line of batteaux and with the three generals in their smart pinnaces following next, the second brigade, an equally brave sight, with the German brigades supporting; and far in the rear, the sutlers and camp-followers pushing along in a variety of craft.
The crystal surface of the lake became an indefinitely extended mirror reflecting the calm heavens, the tall trees of the islands past which we sailed, the great flock of laden boats and ships. It was like some stupendous fairy-scene of a dream, which the waking fancy can hardly conceive.
In our gunboat it happened that nobody was supplied with a tinderbox, though several of us felt the need of a pipe of tobacco. However, I rummaged in my knapsack and found there a dry piece of the fungus which I kept as a specific against the flux, together with a burning-glass and a candle-end of yellow wax. I concentrated the rays of the sun in a focus upon the fungus, which soon broke into flame when I blew upon it; whereupon I lighted the candle from this tinder and it was passed from hand to hand among the smokers on the benches.
All at once the sun was darkened by a cloud and a most violent and unexpected tempest blew up from the Green Mountains to the north-east, so that the whole vast sheet of water was agitated in a terrible manner. A small sloop carrying but little sail, not fifty yards from us, was laid flat on her side by the first gusts and the crew were obliged to chop away the masts in order to right her. I thought that the greater part of the army must of necessity be swallowed up, for the batteaux were most unmanageable vessels in rough weather and now heaved about frightfully. Suddenly a superstitious thought crossed my mind: I had inadvertently lighted the Holy Thursday candle in a flat calm and had therefore been instrumental in loosing the very danger that these two inches of bees-wax had been intended to allay! I noticed that one of my comrades still held the lighted relic under the shelter of his greatcoat, where he was endeavouring to kindle his pipe from it. I snatched it from him, when it was instantly extinguished, and, lo, the storm began sensibly to abate. The whole brigade of batteau weathered the storm safely except for two, carrying men of The Ninth, both of which swamped just as they got close in shore, but our comrades were within their depth and lost neither their lives nor their arms.
At the mouth of the River Bouquet, where we finally disembarked, a great body of Indians joined us, and General Burgoyne held a Congress with their chiefs and principal warriors. Not only had the Six Nations appeared in full strength, but their sworn enemies the Algonquins and Wyandots also. General Burgoyne addressed them through an interpreter in his oratund manner, as follows:
CHIEFS AND WARRIORS,
The Great King, our common Father, and the patron of all who seek and deserve his protection, has considered with satisfaction the general conduct of the Indian tribes, from the beginning of the troubles in America. Too sagacious and too faithful to be deluded or corrupted, they have observed the violated rights of the parental power they love, and burned to vindicate them. A few individuals alone, the refuse of a small tribe, at the first were led astray: and the misrepresentations, the specious allurements, the insidious promises, the diversified plots in which the rebels are exercised, and all of which they employed for that effect, have served only in the end to enhance the honour of the tribes in general, by demonstrating to the world how few and how contemptible are the apostates! It is a truth known to you all, these pitiful examples excepted (and they have probably, before this day, hid their faces in shame) that the collective voices and hands of the Indian tribes, over this vast continent, are on the side of justice, of law, and of the King.
The restraint you have put upon your resentment in waiting the King your Father’s call to arms, the hardest proof, I am persuaded, to which your affection could have been put, is another manifest and affecting mark of your adherence to that principle of connection to which you were always fond to allude, and which is the mutual joy and the duty of the parent to cherish.
The clemency of your Father has been abused, the offers of his mercy have been despised, and his further patience would, in his eyes, become culpable, in as much as it would withhold redress from the most grievous oppressions in the provinces that ever disgraced the history of mankind. It therefore remains for me, the General of one of His Majesty’s armies, and in this Council his representative, to release you from those bonds which your obedience imposed – Warriors, you are free – go forth in might and valour of your cause – strike at the common enemies of Great Britain and America – disturbers of public order, peace, and happiness, destroyers of commerce, parricides of state.
The General, then pointing to the officers, both German and British, who attended this meeting, proceded:
The circle round you, the Chiefs of His Majesty’s European forces, and of the Princes his allies, esteem you as brothers in the war; emulous in glory and in friendship, we will endeavour reciprocally to give and to receive examples; we know how to value, and we will strive to imitate your perseverance
in enterprise, and your constancy to resist hunger, weariness, and pain. Be it our task, from the dictates of our religion, the laws of our warfare, and the principles and interest of our policy, to regulate your passions when they overbear, to point out where it is nobler to spare than to revenge, to discriminate degrees of guilt, to suspend the uplifted stroke, to chastise and not destroy.
This war to you, my friends, is new; upon all former occasions, in taking the field, you held yourselves authorized to destroy wherever you came, because everywhere you found an enemy. The case is now very different.
The King has many faithful subjects dispersed in the provinces, consequently you have many brothers there, and these people are more to be pitied, that they are persecuted or imprisoned wherever they are discovered or suspected; and to dissemble, to a generous mind, is a yet more grievous punishment.
Persuaded that your magnanimity of character, joined to your principles of affection to the King, will give me fuller control over your minds than the military rank with which I am invested, I enjoin your most serious attention to the rules which I hereby proclaim for your invariable observation during the campaign.
I positively forbid bloodshed, when you are not opposed in arms. Aged men, women, children, and prisoners must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict. You shall receive compensation for the prisoners you take, but you shall be called to account for scalps.
In conformity and indulgence of your customs, which have affixed an idea of honour to such badges of victory, you shall be allowed to take the scalps of the dead, when killed by your fire, and in fair opposition; but on no account, or pretence, or subtility or prevarication, are they to be taken from the wounded, or even dying; and still less pardonable, if possible, will it be held to kill men in that condition, on purpose, and upon a supposition that this protection to the wounded would be thereby evaded.
Base, lurking assassins, incendiaries, ravagers, and plunderers of the country, to whatever army they may belong, shall be treated with less reserve; but the latitude must be given you by order, and I must be the judge on the occasion.
Should the enemy, on their parts, dare to countenance acts of barbarity towards those who may fall into their hands, it shall be yours also to retaliate: but till this severity be thus compelled, bear immovable in your hearts this solid maxim (it cannot be too deeply impressed), that the great essential reward, the worthy service of your alliance, the sincerity of your zeal to the King, your Father and never-failing protector, will be examined and judged upon the test only of your steady and uniform adherence to the orders and counsels of those to whom His Majesty has entrusted the direction and honour of his arms.
After the General had finished his speech, they all of them cried out, ‘Etow! Etow! Etow!’ and after remaining some little time in consultation, Little Abraham, as the most respectable and aged Chief among the Six Nations rose up, and made the following answer:
I stand up, in the name of all the nations present, to assure our Father that we have attentively listened to his discourse – we receive you as the Father, because when you speak we hear the voice of our Great Father beyond the Great Lake.
We rejoice in the approbation you have expressed of our behaviour.
We have been tried and tempted by the Bostonians; but we have loved our Father, and our hatchets have been sharpened upon our affections.
In proof of the sincerity of our professions, our whole villages able to go to war are come forth. The old and infirm, our infants and wives, alone remain at home.
With one common assent, we promise a constant obedience to all you have ordered, and all you shall order, and may the Father of Days give you many, and success.
They all cried, ‘Etow, Etow’, again, and the Congress then dispersed.
A war-dance followed that same evening.
I sought out Thayendanegea meanwhile in his wigwam, who greeted me with every mark of friendship. He was in full war-paint and grasped in his hand a war-banner, consisting of a spear dressed with coloured silks, feathers of the spruce-partridge and skins of polecats. I inquired privately of him the whereabouts and condition of Kate. He told me that she was under the protection of Miss Molly in his abode by the Genisee River, and already big with child; but counselled me to forget her. She had informed him of her decision never again to be my squaw, in any event, once I had quitted her for the sake of my Duty; she would return to Harlowe, soon as her child was born, for the sake of her duty as a wife. As my friend, Thayendanegea remarked, he deeply regretted her resolution, for (clenching his hands tightly together) he knew our hearts were and would always remain thus united in love, though in body separated. He added, however, that as a Christian he felt obliged to applaud Mrs Harlowe’s resolution, reminding me that whom God had joined, no man should put asunder, etc., etc.; a text which I heard with a certain feeling of remorse, being now again in British dress and company. My life in the woods during the previous winter seemed but a beautiful and idle dream.
I asked, what would become of the child? He replied: that was provided for already.
Chapter XX
IF GENERAL BURGOYNE had in a manner made injudicious use of political power to supplant General Carleton in the command of our army, no scandal was caused by it; and General Carleton, as I have told, was very loyal in doing all within his power to ensure the success of our invasion of the United States. He even prevailed upon a few Canadian Habitants, during the very period when crops were sown, to hire him their teams for drawing our transport wagons and engage themselves as boatmen upon the lakes; others he set to improving the defences of St John’s, Chambly, and Sorel. This decent amity was not shown in a corresponding situation upon the American side, where the Commander of their Northern army, Major-General Philip Schuyler, was assailed in Congress by the intriguing New England representatives, headed by Samuel and John Adams: on the ground that he was a secret Loyalist. They pointed out, truly enough, that he valued the aristocratic spirit, which inspires officers to command and soldiers to obey, before the spirit of Liberty, which makes all men believe themselves the equal of, or superior to, those who are their betters by birth or education. They found an ally and instrument in Major-General Horatio Gates, who had been Adjutant-General of the Americans during the siege of Boston and was now second in command to General Schuyler.
This General Gates was no gentleman in behaviour and sensibilities, whatever his quality by birth, nor was he endowed with any officer-like gifts, though he had once held a commission in our Army, which was well rid of him. He was an urbane, sneaking, and ambitious person of good presence, with a talent for ingratiating himself into the confidence of mediocre men by traducing persons of character and merit: General Washington was later to feel and suffer from his spite. Although set by General Schuyler in command of the American advanced forces at Ticonderoga, General Gates murderously (as they themselves complained) left his people there to their fate. They were now suffering more pitiably than ever from bad food, disease, and lack of medical supplies. All were living in poor, thin tents and without greatcoats or sufficient blankets; and a third part of them were even obliged to go shoeless in a temperature that stood fixed below zero on Fahrenheit’s thermometer. It is said that New Englanders had never sworn or taken God’s name in vain until this experience of the camp at Ticonderoga forced them to it; where ‘that most foolish and unaccountable of vices’ took such root among them that every second word was now either the name of God or some base part of speech smacking of grogshop or nanny-house.
In November General Gates went down to Baltimore in Maryland, where Congress was assembled, and up again in February to Philadelphia, in which city their next session took place: insidiously pressing upon the Congress-men in lobbies, lodgings, and the street his superior fitness to command in General Schuyler’s place.
Congress at last yielded to his persistent voice and passed a resolution giving him the independent command of the troops based upon Albany,
just as General Burgoyne had been given an independent command of the troops based upon St John’s. However, General Schuyler did not assent so amiably to his supersession as had General Carleton. He suggested to his powerful friends in New York that this was an act of spite against him for the part that he had once taken in a land-dispute between New York and Massachusetts, over the possession of what is now known as the State of Vermont; and New York thereupon elected him as their representative to Congress, where he rose to demand an official inquiry into his conduct. This put the two Adamses into an awkward position; and in the end his merits were publicly acknowledged and he was sent north to resume his authority from General Gates. He arrived back at Albany early in June, the same time as we began our expedition down the lake; and immediately appointed Brigadier-General St Clair to the defence of Ticonderoga, as a less offensive choice to the Massachusetts men than Brigadier-General Benedict Arnold, who was otherwise more fitted to undertake it. The next scene in this farce was that General Gates, who had not yet visited his army at Ticonderoga, grew reckless with rage and ran once more to Philadelphia to call Congress to account for their double-dealing!
Sergeant Lamb's America Page 29
