The Virginians Part 48

There were two or three persons in the world (for I had not told my mother how I was resolved to cede to my brother all my life-interest in our American property) who knew that I had no mercenary motives in regard to the conduct I pursued. It was not worth while to undeceive others; what were life worth, if a man were forced to feel himself a la piste of all the calumnies uttered against him? And I do not quite know to this present day, how it happened that my mother, that notorious Loyalist, was left for several years quite undisturbed in her house at Castlewood, a stray troop or company of Continentals being occasionally quartered upon her. I do not know for certain, I say, how this piece of good fortune happened, though I can give a pretty shrewd guess as to the cause of it. Madam f.a.n.n.y, after a campaign before Boston, came back to f.a.n.n.y's Mount, leaving her Colonel. My modest Hal, until the conclusion of the war, would accept no higher rank, believing that in command of a regiment he could be more useful than in charge of a division. Madam f.a.n.n.y, I say, came back, and it was remarkable after her return how her old asperity towards my mother seemed to be removed, and what an affection she showed for her and all the property. She was great friends with the Governor and some of the most influential gentlemen of the new a.s.sembly:-Madam Esmond was harmless, and for her son's sake, who was bravely battling for his country, her errors should be lightly visited:-I know not how it was, but for years she remained unharmed, except in respect of heavy Government requisitions, which of course she had to pay, and it was not until the redcoats appeared about our house, that much serious evil came to it.

CHAPTER XC

In which we both fight and run away

What was the use of a Colonel without a regiment? The Governor and Council who had made such a parade of thanks in endowing me with mine, were away out of sight, skulking on board s.h.i.+ps, with an occasional piracy and arson on sh.o.r.e. My Lord Dunmore's black allies frightened away those of his own blood; and besides these negroes whom he had summoned round him in arms, we heard that he had sent an envoy among the Indians of the South, and that they were to come down in numbers and tomahawk our people into good behaviour. "And these are to be our allies!" I say to my mother, exchanging ominous looks with her, and remembering, with a ghastly distinctness, that savage whose face glared over mine, and whose knife was at my throat when Florac struck him down on Braddock's Field. We put our house of Castlewood into as good a state of defence as we could devise; but, in truth, it was more of the red men and the blacks than of the rebels we were afraid. I never saw my mother lose courage but once, and then when she was recounting to us the particulars of our father's death in a foray of Indians more than forty years ago. Seeing some figures one night moving in front of our house, nothing could persuade the good lady but that they were savages, and she sank on her knees crying out, "The Lord have mercy upon us! The Indians-the Indians!"

My lord's negro allies vanished on board his s.h.i.+ps, or where they could find pay and plunder; but the painted heroes from the South never made their appearance, though I own to have looked at my mother's grey head, my wife's brown hair, and our little one's golden ringlets, with a horrible pang of doubt lest these should fall the victims of ruffian war. And it was we who fought with such weapons, and enlisted these allies! But that I dare not (so to speak) be setting myself up as interpreter of Providence, and pointing out the special finger of Heaven (as many people are wont to do), I would say our employment of these Indians, and of the German mercenaries, brought their own retribution with them in this war. In the field, where the mercenaries were attacked by the Provincials, they yielded, and it was triumphing over them that so raised the spirit of the Continental army; and the murder of one woman (Miss McCrea) by a half-dozen drunken Indians, did more harm to the Royal cause than the loss of a battle or the destruction of regiments.

Now, the Indian panic over, Madam Esmond's courage returned: and she began to be seriously and not unjustly uneasy at the danger which I ran myself, and which I brought upon others, by remaining in Virginia.

"What harm can they do me," says she, "a poor woman? If I have one son a colonel without a regiment, I have another with a couple of hundred Continentals behind him in Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's camp. If the Royalists come, they will let me off for your sake; if the rebels appear, I shall have Harry's pa.s.sport. I don't wish, sir, I don't like that your delicate wife and this dear little baby should be here, and only increase the risk of all of us! We must have them away to Boston or New York. Don't talk about defending me! Who will think of hurting a poor, harmless, old woman? If the rebels come, I shall shelter behind Mrs. f.a.n.n.y's petticoats, and shall be much safer without you in the house than in it." This she said in part, perhaps, because 'twas reasonable; more so because she would have me and my family out of the danger; and danger or not, for her part felt that she was determined to remain in the land where her father was buried, and she was born. She was living backwards, so to speak. She had seen the new generation, and blessed them, and bade them farewell. She belonged to the past, and old days and memories.

While we were debating about the Boston scheme, comes the news that the British have evacuated that luckless city altogether, never having ventured to attack Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton in his camp at Cambridge (though he lay there for many months without powder at our mercy); but waiting until he procured ammunition, and seized and fortified Dorchester heights, which commanded the town, out of which the whole British army and colony was obliged to beat a retreat. That the King's troops won the battle at Bunker's Hill, there is no more doubt than that they beat the French at Blenheim; but through the war their chiefs seem constantly to have been afraid of a.s.saulting entrenched Continentals afterwards; else why, from July to March, hesitate to strike an almost defenceless enemy? Why the hesitation at Long Island, when the Continental army was in our hand? Why that astonis.h.i.+ng timorousness-of Howe before Valley Forge, where the relics of a force starving, sickening, and in rags, could scarcely man the lines, which they held before a great, victorious, and perfectly appointed army?

As the hopes and fears of the contending parties rose and fell, it was curious to mark the altered tone of the partisans of either. When the news came to us in the country of the evacuation of Boston, every little Whig in the neighbourhood made his bow to Madam, and advised her to a speedy submission. She did not carry her loyalty quite so openly as heretofore, and flaunt her flag in the faces of the public, but she never swerved. Every night and morning in private poor Hagan prayed for the Royal Family in our own household, and on Sundays any neighbours were welcome to attend the service, where my mother acted as a very emphatic clerk, and the prayer for the High Court of Parliament under our most religious and gracious King was very stoutly delivered. The brave Hagan was a parson without a living, as I was a Militia Colonel without a regiment. Hagan had continued to pray stoutly for King George in Williamsburg, long after his Excellency our Governor had run away: but on coming to church one Sunday to perform his duty, he found a corporal's guard at the church-door, who told him that the Committee of Safety had put another divine in his place, and he was requested to keep a quiet tongue in his head. He told the men to "lead him before their chiefs" (our honest friend always loved tall words and tragic att.i.tudes); and accordingly was marched through the streets to the Capitol, with a chorus of white and coloured blackguards at the skirts of his gown; and had an interview with Messrs. Henry and the new State officers, and confronted the robbers, as he said, in their den. Of course he was for making an heroic speech before these gentlemen (and was one of many men who perhaps would have no objection to be made martyrs, so that they might be roasted coram populo, or tortured in a full house), but Mr. Henry was determined to give him no such chance. After keeping Hagan three or four hours waiting in an anteroom in the company of negroes, when the worthy divine entered the new chief magistrate's room with an undaunted mien, and began a prepared speech with-"Sir, by what authority am I, a minister of the--" "Mr. Hagan," says the other, interrupting him, "I am too busy to listen to speeches. And as for King George, he has henceforth no more authority in this country than King Nebuchadnezzar. Mind you that, and hold your tongue, if you please! Stick to King John, sir, and King Macbeth; and if you will send round your benefit-tickets, all the a.s.sembly shall come and hear you. Did you ever see Mr. Hagan on the boards, when you was in London, General?" And, so saying, Henry turns round upon Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's second in command, General Lee, who was now come into Virginia upon State affairs, and our shamefaced good Hagan was bustled out of the room, reddening, and almost crying with shame. After this event we thought that Hagan's ministrations were best confined to us in the country, and removed the worthy pastor from his restive lambs in the city.

The selection of Virginians to the very highest civil and military appointments of the new government bribed and flattered many of our leading people, who, otherwise, and but for the outrageous conduct of our government, might have remained faithful to the Crown, and made good head against the rising rebellion. But, although we Loyalists were gagged and muzzled, though the Capitol was in the hands of the Whigs, and our vaunted levies of loyal recruits so many Falstaff's regiments for the most part, the faithful still kept intelligences with one another in the colony, and with our neighbours; and though we did not rise, and though we ran away, and though, in examination before committees, justices, and so forth, some of our frightened people gave themselves Republican airs, and vowed perdition to kings and n.o.bles; yet we knew each other pretty well, and-according as the chances were more or less favourable to us, the master more or less hard-we concealed our colours, showed our colours, half showed our colours, or downright apostatised for the nonce, and cried, "Down with King George!" Our negroes bore about, from house to house, all sorts of messages and tokens. Endless underhand plots and schemes were engaged in by those who could not afford the light. The battle over, the neutrals come and join the winning side, and shout as loudly as the patriots. The runaways are not counted. Will any man tell me that the signers and ardent well-wishers of the Declaration of Independence were not in a minority of the nation, and that the minority did not win? We knew that apart of the defeated army of Ma.s.sachusetts was about to make an important expedition southward, upon the success of which the very greatest hopes were founded; and I, for one, being anxious to make a movement as soon as there was any chance of activity, had put myself in communication with the ex-Governor Martin, of North Carolina, whom I proposed to join, with three or four of our Virginian gentlemen, officers of that notable corps of which we only wanted privates. We made no particular mystery about our departure from Castlewood; the affairs of Congress were not going so well yet that the new government could afford to lay any particular stress or tyranny upon persons of a doubtful way of thinking. Gentlemen's houses were still open; and in our southern fas.h.i.+on we would visit our friends for months at a time. My wife and I, with our infant and a fitting suite of servants, took leave of Madam Esmond on a visit to a neighbouring plantation. We went thence to another friend's house, and then to another, till finally we reached Wilmington, in North Carolina, which was the point at which we expected to stretch a hand to the succours which were coming to meet us.

Ere our arrival, our brother Carolinian Royalists had shown themselves in some force. Their encounters with the Whigs had been unlucky. The poor Highlanders had been no more fortunate in their present contest in favour of King George, than when they had drawn their swords against him in their own country. We did not reach Wilmington until the end of May, by which time we found Admiral Parker's squadron there, with General Clinton and five British regiments on board, whose object was a descent upon Charleston.

The General, to whom I immediately made myself known, seeing that my regiment consisted of Lady Warrington, our infant, whom she was nursing, and three negro servants, received us at first with a very grim welcome. But Captain Horner of the Sphinx frigate, who had been on the Jamaica station, and received, like all the rest of the world, many kindnesses from our dear Governor there, when he heard that my wife was General Lambert's daughter, eagerly received her on board, and gave up his best cabin to our service; and so we were refugees, too, like my Lord Dunmore, having waved our flag, to be sure, and pocketed it, and slipped out at the back door. From Wilmington we bore away quickly to Charleston, and in the course of the voyage and our delay in the river, previous to our a.s.sault on the place, I made some acquaintance with Mr. Clinton, which increased to a further intimacy. It was the King's birthday when we appeared in the river: we determined it was a glorious day for the commencement of the expedition.

It did not take place for some days after, and I leave out, purposely, all descriptions of my Penelope parting from her Hector, going forth on this expedition. In the first place, Hector is perfectly well (though a little gouty), nor has any rascal of a Pyrrhus made a prize of his widow: and in times of war and commotion, are not such scenes of woe and terror, and parting, occurring every hour? I can see the gentle face yet over the bulwark, as we descend the s.h.i.+p's side into the boats, and the smile of the infant on her arm. What old stories, to be sure! Captain Miles, having no natural taste for poetry, you have forgot the verses, no doubt, in Mr. Pope's Homer, in which you are described as parting with your heroic father; but your mother often read them to you as a boy, and keeps the gorget I wore on that day somewhere amongst her dressing-boxes now.

My second venture at fighting was no more lucky than my first. We came back to our s.h.i.+ps that evening thoroughly beaten. The madcap Lee, whom Clinton had faced at Boston, now met him at Charleston. Lee, and the gallant garrison there, made a brilliant and most successful resistance. The fort on Sullivan's Island, which we attacked, was a nut we could not crack. The fire of all our frigates was not strong enough to pound its sh.e.l.l; the pa.s.sage by which we moved up to the a.s.sault of the place was not fordable, as those officers found-Sir Henry at the head of them, who was always the first to charge-who attempted to wade it. Death by shot, by drowning, by catching my death of cold, I had braved before I returned to my wife; and our frigate being aground for a time and got off with difficulty, was agreeably cannonaded by the enemy until she got off her bank.

A small incident in the midst of this unlucky struggle was the occasion of a subsequent intimacy which arose between me and Sir Harry Clinton, and bound me to that most gallant officer during the Period in which it was my fortune to follow the war. Of his qualifications as a leader there may be many opinions: I fear to say, regarding a man I heartily respect and admire, there ought only to be one. Of his personal bearing and his courage there can be no doubt; he was always eager to show it; and whether at the final charge on Breed's Hill, when at the head of the rallied troops he carried the Continental lines, or here before Sullivan's Fort, or a year later at Fort Was.h.i.+ngton, when, standard in hand, he swept up the height, and entered the fort at the head of the storming column, Clinton was always foremost in the race of battle, and the King's service knew no more admirable soldier.

We were taking to the water from our boats, with the intention of forcing a column to the fort, through a way which our own guns had rendered practicable, when a shot struck a boat alongside of us, so well aimed, as actually to put three-fourths of the boat's crew hors de combat, and knock down the officer steering, and the flag behind him. I could not help crying out, "Bravo! well aimed!" for no ninepins ever went down more helplessly than these poor fellows before the round shot. Then the General, turning round to me, says, rather grimly, "Sir, the behaviour of the enemy seems to please you!" "I am pleased, sir," says I, "that my countrymen, yonder, should fight as becomes our nation." We floundered on towards the fort in the midst of the same amiable attentions from small arms and great, until we found the water was up to our b.r.e.a.s.t.s and deepening at every step, when we were fain to take to our boats again and pull out of harm's way. Sir Henry waited upon my Lady Warrington on board the Sphinx after this, and was very gracious to her, and mighty facetious regarding the character of the humble writer of the present memoir, whom his Excellency always described as a rebel at heart. I pray my children may live to see or engage in no great revolutions,-such as that, for instance, raging in the country of our miserable French neighbours. Save a very, very few indeed, the actors in those great tragedies do not bear to be scanned too closely; the chiefs are often no better than ranting quacks; the heroes ign.o.ble puppets; the heroines anything but pure. The prize is not always to the brave. In our revolution it certainly did fall, for once and for a wonder, to the most deserving: but who knows his enemies now? His great and surprising triumphs were not in those rare engagements with the enemy where he obtained a trifling mastery; but over Congress; over hunger and disease; over lukewarm friends, or smiling foes in his own camp, whom his great spirit had to meet and master. When the struggle was over, and our important chiefs who had conducted it began to squabble and accuse each other in their own defence before the nation-what charges and counter-charges were brought; what pretexts of delay were urged; what piteous excuses were put forward that this fleet arrived too late; that that regiment mistook its orders; that these cannon-b.a.l.l.s would not fit those guns; and so to the end of the chapter! Here was a general who beat us with no shot at times, and no powder, and no money; and he never thought of a convention; his courage never capitulated! Through all the doubt and darkness, the danger and long tempest of the war, I think it was only the American leader's indomitable soul that remained entirely steady.

Of course our Charleston expedition was made the most of, and p.r.o.nounced a prodigious victory by the enemy, who had learnt (from their parents, perhaps) to cry victory if a corporal's guard were surprised, as loud as if we had won a pitched battle. Mr. Lee rushed back to New York, the conqueror of conquerors, trumpeting his glory, and by no man received with more eager delight than by the Commander-in-Chief of the American Army. It was my dear Lee and my dear General between them, then; and it hath always touched me in the history of our early Revolution to note that simple confidence and admiration with which the General-in-Chief was wont to regard officers under him, who had happened previously to serve with the King's army. So the Mexicans of old looked and wondered when they first saw an armed Spanish horseman! And this mad, flashy braggart (and another Continental general, whose name and whose luck afterwards were sufficiently notorious) you may be sure took advantage of the modesty of the Commander-in-Chief, and advised, and bl.u.s.tered, and sneered, and disobeyed orders; daily presenting fresh obstacles (as if he had not enough otherwise!) in the path over which only Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's astonis.h.i.+ng endurance could have enabled him to march.

Whilst we were away on our South Carolina expedition, the famous Fourth of July had taken place, and we and the thirteen United States were parted for ever. My own native state of Virginia had also distinguished itself by announcing that all men are equally free; that all power is vested in the people, who have an inalienable right to alter, reform, or abolish their form of government at pleasure, and that the idea of an hereditary first magistrate is unnatural and absurd! Our General presented me with this doc.u.ment fresh from Williamsburg, as we were sailing northward by the Virginia capes, and, amidst not a little amus.e.m.e.nt and laughter, pointed out to me the faith to which, from the Fourth inst. inclusive, I was bound. There was no help for it; I was a Virginian-my G.o.dfathers had promised and vowed, in my name, that all men were equally free (including, of course, the race of poor Gumbo), that the idea of a monarchy is absurd, and that I had the right to alter my form of government at pleasure. I thought of Madam Esmond at home, and how she would look when these articles of faith were brought her to subscribe; how would Hagan receive them? He demolished them in a sermon, in which all the logic was on his side, but the U.S. Government has not, somehow, been affected by the discourse; and when he came to touch upon the point that all men being free, therefore Gumbo and Sady, and Nathan, had a.s.suredly a right to go to Congress: "Tut, tut! my good Mr. Hagan," says my mother, "let us hear no more of this nonsense; but leave such wickedness and folly to the rebels!"

By the middle of August we were before New York, whither Mr. Howe had brought his army that had betaken itself to Halifax after its inglorious expulsion from Boston. The American Commander-in-Chief was at New York, and a great battle inevitable; and I looked forward to it with an inexpressible feeling of doubt and anxiety, knowing that my dearest brother and his regiment formed part of the troops whom we must attack, and could not but overpower. Almost the whole of the American army came over to fight on a small island, where every officer on both sides knew that they were to be beaten, and whence they had not a chance of escape. Two frigates, out of a hundred we had placed so as to command the enemy's entrenched camp and point of retreat across East River to New York, would have destroyed every bark in which he sought to fly, and compelled him to lay down his arms on sh.o.r.e. He fought: his hasty levies were utterly overthrown; some of his generals, his best troops, his artillery taken; the remnant huddled into their entrenched camp after their rout, the pursuers entering it with them. The victors were called back; the enemy was then pent up in a corner of the island, and could not escape. "They are at our mercy, and are ours to-morrow," says the gentle General. Not a s.h.i.+p was set to watch the American force; not a sentinel of ours could see a movement in their camp. A whole army crossed under our eyes in one single night to the mainland without the loss of a single man; and General Howe was suffered to remain in command after this feat, and to complete his glories of Long Island and Breed's Hill, at Philadelphia! A friend, to be sure, crossed in the night to say the enemy's army was being ferried over, but he fell upon a picket of Germans: they could not understand him: their commander was boozing or asleep. In the morning, when the spy was brought to some one who could comprehend the American language, the whole Continental force had crossed the East River, and the empire over thirteen colonies had slipped away.

The opinions I had about our chief were by no means uncommon in the army; though, perhaps, wisely kept secret by gentlemen under Mr. Howe's immediate command. Am I more unlucky than other folks, I wonder? or why are my imprudent sayings carried about more than my neighbours'? My rage that such a use was made of such a victory was no greater than that of scores of gentlemen with the army. Why must my name forsooth be given up to the Commander-in-Chief as that of the most guilty of the grumblers? Personally, General Howe was perfectly brave, amiable, and good-humoured.

"So, Sir George," says he, "you find fault with me, as a military man, because there was a fog after the battle on Long Island, and your friends, the Continentals, gave me the slip! Surely we took and killed enough of them; but there is no satisfying you gentlemen amateurs!" and he turned his back on me, and shrugged his shoulders, and talked to some one else. Amateur I might be, and he the most amiable of men; but if King George had said to him, "Never more be officer of mine," yonder agreeable and pleasant Ca.s.sio would most certainly have had his desert.

I soon found how our Chief had come in possession of his information regarding myself. My admirable cousin, Mr. William Esmond-who of course had forsaken New York and his post, when all the Royal authorities fled out of the place, and Was.h.i.+ngton occupied it,-returned along with our troops and fleets; and, being a gentleman of good birth and name, and well acquainted with the city, made himself agreeable to the newcomers of the Royal army, the young bloods, merry fellows, and macaronis, by introducing them to play-tables, taverns, and yet worse places, with which the worthy gentleman continued to be familiar in the New World as in the Old. Coelum non animum. However Will had changed his air, or whithersoever he transported his carcase, he carried a rascal in his skin.

I had heard a dozen stories of his sayings regarding my family, and was determined neither to avoid him nor seek him; but to call him to account whensoever we met; and, chancing one day to be at a coffee-house in a friend's company, my worthy kinsman swaggered in with a couple of young lads of the army, whom he found it was his pleasure and profit now to lead into every kind of dissipation. I happened to know one of Mr. Will's young companions, an aide-de-camp of General Clinton's, who had been in my close company both at Charleston, before Sullivan's Island, and in the action of Brooklyn, where our General gloriously led the right wing of the English army. They took a box without noticing us at first, though I heard my name three or four times mentioned by my brawling kinsman, who ended some drunken speech he was making by slapping his fist on the table, and swearing, "By--, I will do for him, and the b.l.o.o.d.y rebel, his brother!"

"Ah! Mr. Esmond," says I, coming forward with my hat on. (He looked a little pale behind his punch-bowl.) "I have long wanted to see you, to set some little matters right about which there has been a difference between us."

"And what may those be, sir?" says he, with a volley of oaths.

"You have chosen to cast a doubt upon my courage, and say that I s.h.i.+rked a meeting with you when we were young men. Our relations.h.i.+p and our age ought to prevent us from having recourse to such murderous follies" (Mr. Will started up, looking fierce and relieved), "but I give you notice, that though I can afford to overlook lies against myself, if I hear from you a word in disparagement of my brother, Colonel Warrington, of the Continental Army, I will hold you accountable."

"Indeed, gentlemen! Mighty fine, indeed! You take notice of Sir George Warrington's words!" cries Mr. Will over his punch-bowl.

"You have been pleased to say," I continued, growing angry as I spoke, and being a fool therefore for my pains, "that the very estates we hold in this country are not ours, but of right revert to your family!"

"So they are ours! By George, they're ours! I've heard my brother Castlewood say so a score of times!" swears Mr. Will.

"In that case, sir," says I, hotly, "your brother, my Lord Castlewood, tells no more truth than yourself. We have the t.i.tles at hone in Virginia. They are registered in the courts there; and if ever I hear one word more of this impertinence, I shall call you to account where no constables will be at hand to interfere!"

"I wonder," cries Will, in a choking voice, "that I don't cut him into twenty thousand pieces as he stands there before me with his confounded yellow face. It was my brother Castlewood won his money-no, it was his brother; d-- you, which are you, the rebel or the other? I hate the ugly faces of both of you, and, hic!-if you are for the King, show you are for the King, and drink his health!" and he sank down into his box with a hiccup and a wild laugh, which he repeated a dozen times, with a hundred more oaths and vociferous outcries that I should drink the King's health.

To reason with a creature in this condition, or ask explanations or apologies from him, was absurd. I left Mr. Will to reel to his lodgings under the care of his young friends-who were surprised to find an old toper so suddenly affected and so utterly prostrated by liquor-and limped home to my wife, whom I found happy in possession of a brief letter from Hal, which a countryman had brought in; and who said not a word about the affairs of the Continentals with whom he was engaged, but wrote a couple of pages of rapturous eulogiums upon his brother's behaviour in the field, which my dear Hal was pleased to admire, as he admired everything I said and did.

I rather looked for a messenger from my amiable kinsman in consequence of the speeches which had pa.s.sed between us the night before, and did not know but that I might be called by Will to make my words good; and when accordingly Mr. Lacy (our companion of the previous evening) made his appearance at an early hour of the forenoon, I was beckoning my Lady Warrington to leave us, when, with a laugh and a cry of "Oh dear, no!" Mr. Lacy begged her ladys.h.i.+p not to disturb herself.

"I have seen," says he, "a gentleman who begs to send you his apologies if he uttered a word last night which could offend you."

"What apologies? what words?" asks the anxious wife.

I explained that roaring Will Esmond had met me in a coffee-house on the previous evening, and quarrelled with me, as he had done with hundreds before. "It appears the fellow is constantly abusive, and invariably pleads drunkenness, and apologises the next morning, unless he is caned over-night," remarked Captain Lacy. And my lady, I dare say, makes a little sermon, and asks why we gentlemen will go to idle coffee-houses and run the risk of meeting roaring, roystering Will Esmonds?

Our sojourn in New York was enlivened by a project for burning the city which some ardent patriots entertained and partially executed. Several such schemes were laid in the course of the war, and each one of the princ.i.p.al cities was doomed to fire; though, in the interests of peace and goodwill, I hope it will be remembered that these plans never originated with the cruel government of a tyrant king, but were always proposed by gentlemen on the Continental side, who vowed that, rather than remain under the ignominious despotism of the ruffian of Brunswick, the fairest towns of America should burn. I presume that the sages who were for burning down Boston were not actual proprietors in that place, and the New York burners might come from other parts of the country-from Philadelphia, or what not. Howbeit, the British spared you, gentlemen, and we pray you give us credit for this act of moderation.

I had not the fortune to be present in the action on the White Plains, being detained by the hurt which I had received at Long Island, and which broke out again and again, and took some time in the healing. The tenderest of nurses watched me through my tedious malady, and was eager for the day when I should doff my militia coat and return to the quiet English home where Hetty and our good General were tending our children. Indeed I don't know that I have yet forgiven myself for the pains and terrors that I must have caused my poor wife, by keeping her separate from her young ones, and away from her home, because, forsooth, I wished to see a little more of the war then going on. Our grand tour in Europe had been all very well. We had beheld St. Peter's at Rome, and the Bishop thereof; the Dauphiness of France (alas, to think that glorious head should ever have been brought so low!) at Paris; and the rightful King of England at Florence. I had dipped my gout in a half-dozen baths and spas, and played cards in a hundred courts, as my Travels in Europe (which I propose to publish after my completion of the History of the American War) will testify. [Neither of these two projected works of Sir George Warrington were brought, as it appears, to a completion.] And, during our peregrinations, my hypochondria diminished (which plagued me woefully at home); and my health and spirits visibly improved. Perhaps it was because she saw the evident benefit I had from excitement and change, that my wife was reconciled to my continuing to enjoy them; and though secretly suffering pangs at being away from her nursery and her eldest boy (for whom she ever has had an absurd infatuation), the dear hypocrite scarce allowed a look of anxiety to appear on her face; encouraged me with smiles; professed herself eager to follow me; asked why it should be a sin in me to covet honour? and, in a word, was ready to stay, to go, to smile, to be sad; to scale mountains, or to go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps; to say that cold was pleasant, heat tolerable, hunger good sport, dirty lodgings delightful; though she is wretched sailor, very delicate about the little she eats, and an extreme sufferer both of cold and heat. Hence, as I willed to stay on yet a while on my native continent, she was certain nothing was so good for me; and when I was minded to return home-oh, how she brightened, and kissed her infant, and told him how he should see the beautiful gardens at home, and Aunt Theo, and grandpapa, and his sister, and Miles. "Miles!" cries the little parrot, mocking its mother-and crowing; as if there was any mighty privilege in seeing Mr. Miles, forsooth, who was under Doctor Sumner's care at Harrow-on-the-Hill, where, to do the gentleman justice, he showed that he could eat more tarts than any boy in the school, and took most creditable prizes at football and hare-and-hounds.

CHAPTER XCI. Satis Pugnae

It has always seemed to me (I speak under the correction of military gentlemen) that the entrenchments of Breed's Hill served the Continental army throughout the whole of our American war. The slaughter inflicted upon us from behind those lines was so severe, and the behaviour of the enemy so resolute, that the British chiefs respected the barricades of the Americans hereafter; and were they firing from behind a row of blankets, certain of our generals rather hesitated to force them. In the affair of the White Plains, when, for a second time, Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's army was quite at the mercy of the victors, we subsequently heard that our conquering troops were held back before a barricade actually composed of cornstalks and straw. Another opportunity was given us, and lasted during a whole winter, during which the dwindling and dismayed troops of Congress lay starving and unarmed under our grasp, and the magnanimous Mr. Howe left the famous camp of Valley Forge untouched, whilst his great, brave, and perfectly appointed army fiddled and gambled and feasted in Philadelphia. And, by Byng's countrymen, triumphal arches were erected, tournaments were held in pleasant mockery of the middle ages, and wreaths and garlands offered by beautiful ladies to this clement chief, with fantastical mottoes and posies announcing that his laurels should be immortal! Why have my ungrateful countrymen in America never erected statues to this general? They had not in all their army an officer who fought their battles better; who enabled them to retrieve their errors with such adroitness; who took care that their defeats should be so little hurtful to themselves; and when, in the course of events, the stronger force naturally got the uppermost, who showed such an untiring tenderness, patience, and complacency in helping the poor disabled opponent on to his legs again. Ah! think of eighteen years before and the fiery young warrior whom England had sent out to fight her adversary on the American continent. Fancy him for ever pacing round the defences behind which the foe lies sheltered; by night and by day alike sleepless and eager; consuming away in his fierce wrath and longing, and never closing his eye, so intent is it in watching; winding the track with untiring scent that pants and hungers for blood and battle; prowling through midnight forests, or climbing silent over precipices before dawn; and watching till his great heart is almost worn out, until the foe shows himself at last, when he springs on him and grapples with him, and, dying, slays him! Think of Wolfe at Quebec, and hearken to Howe's fiddles as he sits smiling amongst the dancers at Philadelphia!

A favourite scheme with our ministers at home and some of our generals in America, was to establish a communication between Canada and New York, by which means it was hoped New England might be cut off from the neighbouring colonies, overpowered in detail, and forced into submission. Burgoyne was entrusted with the conduct of the plan, and he set forth from Quebec, confidently promising to bring it to a successful issue. His march began in military state: the trumpets of his proclamations blew before him; he bade the colonists to remember the immense power of England; and summoned the misguided rebels to lay down their arms. He brought with him a formidable English force, an army of German veterans not less powerful, a dreadful band of Indian warriors, and a brilliant train of artillery. It was supposed that the people round his march would rally to the Royal cause and standards. The Continental force in front of him was small at first, and Was.h.i.+ngton's army was weakened by the withdrawal of troops who were hurried forward to meet this Canadian invasion. A British detachment from New York was to force its way up the Hudson, sweeping away the enemy on the route, and make a junction with Burgoyne at Albany. Then was the time when Was.h.i.+ngton's weakened army should have been struck too; but a greater Power willed otherwise: nor am I, for one, even going to regret the termination of the war. As we look over the game now, how clear seem the blunders which were made by the losing side! From the beginning to the end we were for ever arriving too late. Our supplies and reinforcements from home were too late. Our troops were in difficulty, and our succours reached them too late. Our fleet appeared off York Town just too late, after Cornwallis had surrendered. A way of escape was opened to Burgoyne, but he resolved upon retreat too late. I have heard discomfited officers in after days prove infallibly how a different wind would have saved America to us; how we must have destroyed the French fleet but for a tempest or two; how once, twice, thrice, but for nightfall, Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton and his army were in our power. Who has not speculated, in the course of his reading of history, upon the "Has been" and the "Might have been" in the world? I take my tattered old map-book from the shelf, and see the board on which the great contest was played; I wonder at the curious chances which lost it: and, putting aside any idle talk about the respective bravery of the two nations, can't but see that we had the best cards, and that we lost the game.

I own the sport had a considerable fascination for me, and stirred up my languid blood. My brother Hal, when settled on his plantation in Virginia, was perfectly satisfied with the sports and occupations he found there. The company of the country neighbours sufficed him; he never tired of looking after his crops and people, taking his fish, shooting his ducks, hunting in his woods, or enjoying his rubber and his supper. Happy Hal, in his great barn of a house, under his roomy porches, his dogs lying round his feet; his friends, the Virginian Will Wimbles, at free quarters in his mansion; his negroes fat, lazy, and ragged: his shrewd little wife ruling over them and her husband, who always obeyed her implicitly when living, and who was pretty speedily consoled when she died! I say happy, though his lot would have been intolerable to me: wife, and friends, and plantation, and town life at Richmond (Richmond succeeded to the honour of being the capital when our Province became a State). How happy he whose foot fits the shoe which fortune gives him! My income was five times as great, my house in England as large, and built of bricks and faced with freestone; my wife-would I have changed her for any other wife in the world? My children-well, I am contented with my Lady Warrington's opinion about them. But with all these plums and peaches and rich fruits out of Plenty's horn poured into my lap, I fear I have been but an ingrate; and Hodge, my gatekeeper, who shares his bread and sc.r.a.p of bacon with a family as large as his master's, seems to me to enjoy his meal as much as I do, though Mrs. Molly prepares her best dishes and sweetmeats, and Mr. Gumbo uncorks the choicest bottle from the cellar. Ah me! sweetmeats have lost their savour for me, however they may rejoice my young ones from the nursery, and the perfume of claret palls upon old noses! Our parson has poured out his sermons many and many a time to me, and perhaps I did not care for them much when he first broached them. Dost thou remember, honest friend? (sure he does, for he has repeated the story over the bottle as many times as his sermons almost, and my Lady Warrington pretends as if she had never heard it)-I say, Joe Blake, thou rememberest full well, and with advantages, that October evening when we scrambled up an embrasure at Fort Clinton and a clubbed musket would have dashed these valuable brains out, had not Joe's sword whipped my rebellious countryman through the gizzard. Joe wore a red coat in those days (the uniform of the brave Sixty-third, whose leader, the bold Sill, fell pierced with many wounds beside him). He exchanged his red for black and my pulpit. His doctrines are sound, and his sermons short. We read the papers together over our wine. Not two months ago we read our old friend Howe's glorious deed of the first of June. We were told how the n.o.ble Rawdon, who fought with us at Fort Clinton, had joined the Duke of York: and to-day his Royal Highness is in full retreat before Pichegru: and he and my son Miles have taken Valenciennes for nothing! Ah, parson! would you not like to put on your old Sixty-third coat? (though I doubt Mrs. Blake could never make the b.u.t.tons and b.u.t.ton-holes meet again over your big body). The boys were acting a play with my militia sword. Oh, that I were young again, Mr. Blake! that I had not the gout in my toe; and I would saddle Rosinante and ride back into the world, and feel the pulses beat again, and play a little of life's glorious game!

The last "hit" which I saw played, was gallantly won by our side; though 'tis true that even in this parti the Americans won the rubber-our people gaining only the ground they stood on, and the guns, stores, and s.h.i.+ps which they captured and destroyed, whilst our efforts at rescue were too late to prevent the catastrophe impending over Burgoyne's unfortunate army. After one of those delays which always were happening to r.e.t.a.r.d our plans and weaken the blows which our chiefs intended to deliver, an expedition was got under weigh from New York at the close of the month of September, '77; that, could it have but advanced a fortnight earlier, might have saved the doomed force of Burgoyne. Sed Dis aliter visum. The delay here was not Sir Henry Clinton's fault, who could not leave his city unprotected; but the winds and weather which delayed the arrival of reinforcements which we had long awaited from England. The fleet which brought them brought us long and fond letters from home, with the very last news of the children under the care of their good Aunt Hetty and their grandfather. The mother's heart yearned towards the absent young ones. She made me no reproaches: but I could read her importunities in her anxious eyes, her terrors for me, and her longing for her children. "Why stay longer?" she seemed to say. "You who have no calling to this war, or to draw the sword against your countrymen-why continue to imperil your life and my happiness?" I understood her appeal. We were to enter upon no immediate service of danger; I told her Sir Henry was only going to accompany the expedition for a part of the way. I would return with him, the reconnaissance over, and Christmas, please Heaven, should see our family once more united in England.

A force of three thousand men, including a couple of slender regiments of American Loyalists and New York Militia (with which latter my distinguished relative, Mr. Will Esmond, went as captain), was embarked at New York, and our armament sailed up the n.o.ble Hudson River, that presents finer aspects than the Rhine in Europe to my mind: nor was any fire opened upon us from those beetling cliffs and precipitous "palisades," as they are called, by which we sailed; the enemy, strange to say, being for once unaware of the movement we contemplated. Our first landing was on the Eastern bank, at a place called Verplancks Point, whence the Congress troops withdrew after a slight resistance, their leader, the tough old Putnam (so famous during the war) supposing that our march was to be directed towards the Eastern Highlands, by which we intended to penetrate to Burgoyne. Putnam fell back to occupy these pa.s.ses, a small detachment of ours being sent forward as if in pursuit, which he imagined was to be followed by the rest of our force. Meanwhile, before daylight, two thousand men without artillery, were carried over to Stoney Point on the Western sh.o.r.e, opposite Verplancks, and under a great hill called the Dunderberg by the old Dutch lords of the stream, and which hangs precipitously over it. A little stream at the northern base of this mountain intersects it from the opposite height on which Fort Clinton stood, named not after our general, but after one of the two gentlemen of the same name, who were amongst the oldest and most respected of the provincial gentry of New York, and who were at this moment actually in command against Sir Henry. On the next height to Clinton is Fort Montgomery; and behind them rises a hill called Bear Hill; whilst at the opposite side of the magnificent stream stands "Saint Antony's Nose," a prodigious peak indeed, which the Dutch had quaintly christened.

The attacks on the two forts were almost simultaneous. Half our men were detached for the a.s.sault on Fort Montgomery, under the brave Campbell, who fell before the rampart. Sir Henry, who would never be out of danger where he could find it, personally led the remainder, and hoped, he said, that we should have better luck than before the Sullivan Island. A path led up to the Dunderberg, so narrow as scarcely to admit three men abreast, and in utter silence our whole force scaled it, wondering at every rugged step to meet with no opposition. The enemy had not even kept a watch on it; nor were we descried until we were descending the height, at the base of which we easily dispersed a small force sent hurriedly to oppose us. The firing which here took place rendered all idea of a surprise impossible. The fort was before us. With such arms as the troops had in their hands, they had to a.s.sault; and silently and swiftly, in the face of the artillery playing upon them, the troops ascended the hill. The men had orders on no account to fire. Taking the colours of the Sixty-third, and bearing them aloft, Sir Henry mounted with the stormers. The place was so steep that the men pushed each other over the wall and through the embrasures; and it was there that Lieutenant Joseph Blake, the father of a certain Joseph Clinton Blake, who looks with the eyes of affection on a certain young lady, presented himself to the living of Warrington by saving the life of the unworthy patron thereof.

About a fourth part of the garrison, as we were told, escaped out of the fort, the rest being killed or wounded, or remaining our prisoners within the works. Fort Montgomery was, in like manner, stormed and taken by our people; and, at night, as we looked down from the heights where the king's standard had been just planted, we were treated to a splendid illumination in the river below. Under Fort Montgomery, and stretching over to that lofty prominence, called Saint Antony's Nose, a boom and chain had been laid with a vast cost and labour, behind which several American frigates and galleys were anch.o.r.ed. The fort being taken, these s.h.i.+ps attempted to get up the river in the darkness, out of the reach of guns which they knew must destroy them in the morning. But the wind was unfavourable, and escape was found to be impossible. The crews therefore took to the boats, and so landed, having previously set the s.h.i.+ps on fire with all their sails set; and we beheld these magnificent pyramids of flame burning up to the heavens and reflected in the waters below, until, in the midst of prodigious explosions, they sank and disappeared.

On the next day a parlementaire came in from the enemy, to inquire as to the state of his troops left wounded or prisoners in our hands, and the Continental officer brought me a note, which gave me a strange shock, for it showed that in the struggle of the previous evening my brother had been engaged. It was dated October 7, from Major-General George Clinton's divisional headquarters, and it stated briefly that "Colonel H. Warrington, of the Virginia line, hopes that Sir George Warrington escaped unhurt in the a.s.sault of last evening, from which the Colonel himself was so fortunate as to retire without the least injury." Never did I say my prayers more heartily and gratefully than on that night, devoutly thanking Heaven that my dearest brother was spared, and making a vow at the same time to withdraw out of the fratricidal contest, into which I only had entered because Honour and Duty seemed imperatively to call me.

I own I felt an inexpressible relief when I had come to the resolution to retire and betake myself to the peaceful shade of my own vines and fig-trees at home. I longed, however, to see my brother ere I returned, and asked, and easily obtained an errand to the camp of the American General Clinton from our own chief. The headquarters of his division were now some miles up the river, and a boat and a flag of truce quickly brought me to the point where his out-pickets received me on the sh.o.r.e. My brother was very soon with me. He had only lately joined General Clinton's division with letters from headquarters at Philadelphia, and he chanced to hear, after the attack on Fort Clinton, that I had been present during the affair. We pa.s.sed a brief delightful night together: Mr. Sady, who always followed Hal to the war, cooking a feast in honour of both his masters. There was but one bed of straw in the hut where we had quarters, and Hal and I slept on it, side by side, as we had done when we were boys. We had a hundred things to say regarding past times and present. His kind heart gladdened when I told him of my resolve to retire to my acres and to take off the red coat which I wore: he flung his arms round it. "Praised be G.o.d!" said he. "Oh, heavens, George! think what might have happened had we met in the affair two nights ago!" And he turned quite pale at the thought. He eased my mind with respect to our mother. She was a bitter Tory, to be sure, but the Chief had given special injunctions regarding her safety. "And f.a.n.n.y" (Hal's wife) "watches over her, and she is as good as a company!" cried the enthusiastic husband. "Isn't she clever? Isn't she handsome? Isn't she good?" cries Hal, never, fortunately, waiting for a reply to these ardent queries. "And to think that I was nearly marrying Maria once! Oh, mercy, what an escape I had!" he added. "Hagan prays for the King, every morning and night, at Castlewood, but they bolt the doors, and n.o.body hears. Gracious powers! his wife is sixty if she is a day; and oh, George! the quant.i.ty she drinks is..." But why tell the failings of our good cousin? I am pleased to think she lived to drink the health of King George long after his Old Dominion had pa.s.sed for ever from his sceptre.

The morning came when my brief mission to the camp was ended, and the truest of friends and fondest of brothers accompanied me to my boat, which lay waiting at the riverside. We exchanged an embrace at parting, and his hand held mine yet for a moment ere I stepped into the barge which bore me rapidly down the stream. "Shall I see thee once more, dearest and best companion of my youth?" I thought. "Amongst our cold Englishmen, can I ever hope to meet with a friend like thee? When hadst thou ever a thought that was not kindly and generous? When a wish, or a possession, but for me you would sacrifice it? How brave are you, and how modest; how gentle, and how strong; how simple, unselfish, and humble; how eager to see others' merit; how diffident of your own!" He stood on the sh.o.r.e till his figure grew dim before, me. There was that in my eyes which prevented me from seeing him longer.

Brilliant as Sir Henry's success had been, it was achieved, as usual, too late: and served but as a small set-off against the disaster of Burgoyne which ensued immediately, and which our advance was utterly inadequate to relieve. More than one secret messenger was despatched to him who never reached him, and of whom we never learned the fate. Of one wretch who offered to carry intelligence to him, and whom Sir Henry despatched with a letter of his own, we heard the miserable doom. Falling in with some of the troops of General George Clinton, who happened to be in red uniform (part of the prize of a British s.h.i.+p's cargo, doubtless, which had been taken by American privateers), the spy thought he was in the English army, and advanced towards the sentries. He found his mistake too late. His letter was discovered upon him, and he had to die for bearing it. In ten days after the success at the Forts occurred the great disaster at Saratoga, of which we carried the dismal particulars in the fleet which bore us home. I am afraid my wife was unable to mourn for it. She had her children, her father, her sister to revisit, and daily and nightly thanks to pay to Heaven that had brought her husband safe out of danger.

CHAPTER XCII. Under Vine and Fig-Tree

Need I describe, young folks, the delights of the meeting at home, and the mother's happiness with all her brood once more under her fond wings? It was wrote in her face, and acknowledged on her knees. Our house was large enough for all, but Aunt Hetty would not stay in it. She said, fairly, that to resign her motherhood over the elder children, who had been hers for nearly three years, cost her too great a pang; and she could not bear for yet a while to be with them, and to submit to take only the second place. So she and her father went away to a house at Bury St. Edmunds, not far from us, where they lived, and where she spoiled her eldest nephew and niece in private. It was the year after we came home that Mr. B, the Jamaica planter, died, who left her the half of his fortune; and then I heard, for the first time, how the worthy gentleman had been greatly enamoured of her in Jamaica, and, though she had refused him, had thus shown his constancy to her. Heaven knows how much property of Aunt Hetty's Monsieur Miles hath already devoured! the price of his commission and outfit; his gorgeous uniforms; his play-debts and little transactions in the Minories;-do you think, sirrah, I do not know what human nature is; what is the cost of Pall Mall taverns, pet.i.ts soupers, play even in moderation-at the Cocoa-Tree; and that a gentleman cannot purchase all these enjoyments with the five hundred a year which I allow him? Aunt Hetty declares she has made up her mind to be an old maid. "I made a vow never to marry until I could find a man as good as my dear father," she said; "and I never did, Sir George. No, my dearest Theo, not half as good; and Sir George may put that in his pipe and smoke it."

And yet when the good General died (calm, and full of years, and glad to depart), I think it was my wife who shed the most tears. "I weep because I think I did not love him enough," said the tender creature: whereas Hetty scarce departed from her calm, at least outwardly and before any of us; talks of him constantly still, as though he were alive; recalls his merry sayings, his gentle, kind ways with his children (when she brightens up and looks herself quite a girl again), and sits cheerfully looking up to the slab in church which records his name and some of his virtues, and for once tells no lies.

I had fancied, sometimes, that my brother Hal, for whom Hetty had a juvenile pa.s.sion, always retained a hold of her heart; and when he came to see us, ten years ago, I told him of this childish romance of Het's, with the hope, I own, that he would ask her to replace Mrs. f.a.n.n.y, who had been gathered to her fathers, and regarding whom my wife (with her usual propensity to consider herself a miserable sinner) always reproached herself, because, forsooth, she did not regret f.a.n.n.y enough. Hal, when he came to us, was plunged in grief about her loss; and vowed that the world did not contain such another woman. Our dear old General, who was still in life then, took him in and housed him, as he had done in the happy early days. The women played him the very same tunes which he had heard when a boy at Oakhurst. Everybody's heart was very soft with old recollections, and Harry never tired of pouring out his griefs and his recitals of his wife's virtues to Het, and anon of talking fondly about his dear Aunt Lambert, whom he loved with all his heart, and whose praises, you may be sure, were welcome to the faithful old husband, out of whose thoughts his wife's memory was never, I believe, absent for any three waking minutes of the day.

General Hal went to Paris as an American General Officer in his blue and yellow (which Mr. Fox and other gentlemen had brought into fas.h.i.+on here likewise), and was made much of at Versailles, although he was presented by Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette to the Most Christian King and Queen, who did not love Monsieur le Marquis. And I believe a Marquise took a fancy to the Virginian General, and would have married him out of hand, had he not resisted, and fled back to England and Warrington and Bury again, especially to the latter place, where the folks would listen to him as he talked about his late wife, with an endless patience and sympathy. As for us, who had known the poor paragon, we were civil, but not quite so enthusiastic regarding her, and rather puzzled sometimes to answer our children's questions about Uncle Hal's angel wife.

The two Generals and myself, and Captain Miles, and Parson Blake (who was knocked over at Monmouth, the year after I left America, and came home to change his coat, and take my living), used to fight the battles of the Revolution over our bottle; and the parson used to cry, "By Jupiter, General" (he compounded for Jupiter, when he laid down his military habit), "you are the Tory, and Sir George is the Whig! He is always finding fault with our leaders, and you are for ever standing up for them; and when I prayed for the King last Sunday, I heard you following me quite loud."

"And so I do, Blake, with all my heart; I can't forget I wore his coat," says Hal.

"Ah, if Wolfe had been alive for twenty years more!" says Lambert.

"Ah, sir," cries Hal, "you should hear the General talk about him!"

"What General?" says I (to vex him).

"My General," says Hal, standing up, and filling a b.u.mper. "His Excellency General George Was.h.i.+ngton!"

"With all my heart," cry I, but the parson looks as if he did not like the toast or the claret.

Hal never tired in speaking of his General; and it was on some such evening of friendly converse, that he told us how he had actually been in disgrace with this General whom he loved so fondly. Their difference seems to have been about Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette before mentioned, who played such a fine part in history of late, and who hath so suddenly disappeared out of it. His previous rank in our own service, and his acknowledged gallantry during the war, ought to have secured Colonel Warrington's promotion in the Continental army, where a whipper-snapper like M. de Lafayette had but to arrive and straightway to be complimented by Congress with the rank of Major-General. Hal, with the freedom of an old soldier, had expressed himself somewhat contemptuously regarding some of the appointments made by Congress, with whom all sorts of miserable intrigues and cabals were set to work by unscrupulous officers who were greedy of promotion. Mr. Warrington, imitating perhaps in this the example of his now ill.u.s.trious friend of Mount Vernon, affected to make the war en gentilhomme took his pay, to be sure, but spent it upon comforts and clothing for his men, and as for rank, declared it was a matter of no earthly concern to him, and that he would as soon serve as colonel as in any higher grade. No doubt he added contemptuous remarks regarding certain General Officers of Congress army, their origin, and the causes of their advancement: notably he was very angry about the sudden promotion of the young French lad just named-the Marquis, as they loved to call him-in the Republican army, and who, by the way, was a prodigious favourite of the Chief himself. There were not three officers in the whole Continental force (after poor madcap Lee was taken prisoner and disgraced) who could speak the Marquis's language, so that Hal could judge the young Major-General more closely and familiarly than other gentlemen, including the Commander-in-Chief himself. Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton good-naturedly rated friend Hal for being jealous of the beardless commander of Auvergne; was himself not a little pleased by the filial regard and profound veneration which the enthusiastic young n.o.bleman always showed for him; and had, moreover, the very best politic reasons for treating the Marquis with friends.h.i.+p and favour.

Meanwhile, as it afterwards turned out, the Commander-in-Chief was most urgently pressing Colonel Warrington's promotion upon Congress; and, as if his difficulties before the enemy were not enough, he being at this hard time of winter entrenched at Valley Forge, commanding five or six thousand men at the most, almost without fire, blankets, food, or ammunition, in the face of Sir William Howe's army, which was perfectly appointed, and three times as numerous as his own; as if, I say, this difficulty was not enough to try him, he had further to encounter the cowardly distrust of Congress, and insubordination and conspiracy amongst the officers in his own camp. During the awful winter of '77, when one blow struck by the sluggard at the head of the British forces might have ended the war, and all was doubt, confusion, despair in the opposite camp (save in one indomitable breast alone), my brother had an interview with the Chief, which he has subsequently described to me, and of which Hal could never speak without giving way to the deepest emotion. Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton had won no such triumph as that which the dare-devil courage of Arnold and the elegant imbecility of Burgoyne had procured for Gates and the northern army. Save in one or two minor encounters, which proved how daring his bravery was, and how unceasing his watchfulness, General Was.h.i.+ngton had met with defeat after defeat from an enemy in all points his superior. The Congress mistrusted him. Many an officer in his own camp hated him. Those who had been disappointed in ambition, those who had been detected in peculation, those whose selfishness or incapacity his honest eyes had spied out,-were all more, or less in league against him. Gates was the chief towards whom the malcontents turned. Mr. Gates was the only genius fit to conduct the war; and with a vaingloriousness, which he afterwards generously owned, he did not refuse the homage which wa