A History of New York (32 page)

The great Stuyvesant had no particular veneration for the ingenious experiments and institutions of his shrewd predecessor, and among other things, held the militia system in very considerable contempt, which he was often heard to call in joke—for he was sometimes fond of a joke—governor Kieft's broken reed. As, however, the present emergency was pressing, he was obliged to avail himself of such means of defence as were next at hand, and accordingly appointed a general inspection and parade of the train bands. But oh! Mars and Bellona, and all ye other powers of war, both great and small, what a turning out was here!—Here came men without officers, and officers without men—long fowling pieces, and short blunderbusses—muskets of all sorts and sizes, some without bayonets, others without locks, others without stocks, and many without lock, stock, or barrel.—Cartridge-boxes, shot belts, powder-horns, swords, hatchets, snicker-snees, crow-bars, and broomsticks, all mingled higgledy, piggledy—like one of our continental armies at the breaking out of the revolution.

The sturdy Peter eyed this ragged regiment with some such rueful aspect, as a man would eye the devil; but knowing, like a wise man, that all he had to do was to make the best out of a bad bargain, he determined to give his heroes a seasoning. Having therefore drilled them through the manual exercise over and over again, he ordered the fifes to strike up a quick march, and trudged his sturdy boots backwards and forwards, about the streets of New Amsterdam, and the fields adjacent, till I warrant me, their short legs ached, and their fat sides sweated again. But this was not all; the martial spirit of the old governor caught fire from the sprightly music of the fife, and he resolved to try the mettle of his troops, and give them a taste of the hardships of iron war. To this end he encamped them as the shades of evening fell, upon a hill formerly called Bunker's hill, at some distance from the town, with a full intention of initiating them into the discipline of camps, and of renewing the next day, the toils and perils of the field. But so it came to pass, that in the night there fell a great and heavy rain, which descended in torrents upon the camp, and the mighty army of swing tails strangely melted away before it; so that when Gaffer Phœbus came to shed his morning beams upon the place, saving Peter Stuyvesant and his trumpeter Van Corlear, scarce one was to be found of all the multitude, that had taken roost there the night before.

This awful dissolution of his army would have appalled a commander of less nerve than Peter Stuyvesant; but he considered it as a matter of but small importance, though he thenceforward regarded the militia system with ten times greater contempt than ever, and took care to provide himself with a good garrison of chosen men, whom he kept in pay, of whom he boasted that they at least possessed the quality, indispensible in soldiers, of being
water
proof.

The next care of the vigilant Stuyvesant, was to strengthen and fortify New Amsterdam. For this purpose he reared a substantial barrier that reached across the island from river to river, being the distance of a full half a mile!—a most stupendous work, and scarcely to be rivalled in the opinion of the old inhabitants, by the great wall of China, or the Roman wall erected in Great Britain against the incursions of the Scots, or the wall of brass that Dr. Faustus proposed to build round Germany, by the aid of the devil.

The materials of which this wall was constructed are differently described, but from a majority of opinions I am inclined to believe that it was a picket fence of especial good pine posts, intended to protect the city, not merely from the sudden invasions of foreign enemies, but likewise from the incursions of the neighbouring Indians.

Some traditions it is true, have ascribed the building of this wall to a later period, but they are wholly incorrect; for a memorandum in the Stuyvesant manuscript, dated towards the middle of the governor's reign, mentions this wall particularly, as a very strong and curious piece of workmanship, and the admiration of all the savages in the neighbourhood. And it mentions moreover the alarming circumstance of a drove of stray cows, breaking through the grand wall of a dark night; by which the whole community of New Amsterdam was thrown into as great panic, as were the people of Rome, by the sudden irruptions of the Gauls, or the valiant citizens of Philadelphia, during the time of our revolution, by a fleet of empty kegs floating down the Delaware.
⁴⁶

But the vigilance of the governor was more especially manifested by an additional fortification which he erected as an out work to fort Amsterdam, to protect the sea bord, or water edge. I have ascertained by the most painful and minute investigation, that it was neither fortified according to the method of Evrard de Bar-le-duc, that earliest inventor of complete system; the dutch plan of Marollois; the French method invented by Antoine de Ville; the Flemish of Stevin de Bruges; the Polish of Adam de Treitach, or the Italian of Sardi.

He did not pursue either of the three systems of Pagan; the three of Vauban; the three of Scheiter; the three of Coehorn, that illustrious dutchman, who adapted all his plans to the defence of low and marshy countries—or the hundred and sixty methods, laid down by Francisco Marchi of Bologna.

The fortification did not consist of a Polygon, inscribed in a circle, according to Alain Manesson Maillet; nor with four long batteries, agreeably to the expensive system of Blondel; nor with the
fortification a rebours
of Dona Rosetti, nor the
Caponiere Couverte,
of the ingenious St. Julien; nor with angular polygons and numerous casemates, as recommended by Antoine d'Herbert; who served under the duke of Wirtemberg, grandfather to the second wife, and first queen of Jerome Bonaparte—otherwise called Jerry Sneak.

It was neither furnished with bastions, fashioned after the original invention of Zisca, the Bohemian; nor those used by Achmet Bassa, at Otranto in 1480; nor those recommended by San Micheli of Verona; neither those of triangular form, treated of by Specie, the high dutch engineer of Strasbourg, or the famous wooden bastions, since erected in this renowned city, the destruction of which, is recorded in a former chapter. In fact governor Stuyvesant, like the celebrated Montalembert, held bastions in absolute contempt; yet did he not like him substitute a
tenaille angulaire des polygons à ailerons.

He did not make use of Myrtella towers, as are now erecting at Quebec; neither did he erect flagstaffs and windmills as was done by his illustrious predecessor of Saardam; nor did he employ circular castellated towers, or batteries with two tier of heavy artillery, and a third of columbiads on the top; as are now erecting for the defence of this defenceless city.

My readers will perhaps be surprized, that out of so many systems, governor Stuyvesant should find none to suit him; this may be tolerably accounted for, by the simple fact, that many of them were unfortunately invented long since his time; and as to the rest, he was as ignorant of them, as the child that never was and never will be born. In truth, it is more than probable, that had they all been spread before him, with as many more into the bargain; that same peculiarity of mind, that acquired him the name of Hard-koppig Piet, would have induced him to follow his own plans, in preference to them all. In a word, he pursued no system either past, present or to come; he equally disdained to imitate his predecessors, of whom he had never heard—his contemporaries, whom he did not know; or his unborn successors, whom, to say the truth, he never once thought of in his whole life. His great and capacious mind was convinced, that the simplest method is often the most efficient and certainly the most expeditious, he therefore fortified the water edge with a formidable mud breast work, solidly faced, after the manner of the dutch ovens common in those days, with clam shells.

These frowning bulwarks in process of time, came to be pleasantly overrun by a verdant carpet of grass and clover, and their high embankments overshadowed by wide spreading sycamores, among whose foliage the little birds sported about, making the air to resound with their joyous notes. The old burghers would repair of an afternoon to smoke their pipes under the shade of their branches, contemplating the golden sun as he gradually sunk into the west an emblem of that tranquil end toward which themselves were hastening—while the young men and the damsels of the town would take many a moonlight stroll among these favourite haunts, watching the silver beams of chaste Cynthia, tremble along the calm bosom of the bay, or light up the white sail of some gliding bark, and interchanging the honest vows of constant affection. Such was the origin of that renowned walk,
the Battery,
which though ostensibly devoted to the purposes of war, has ever been consecrated to the sweet delights of peace. The favourite walk of declining age—the healthful resort of the feeble invalid—the sunday refreshment of the dusty tradesman—the scene of many a boyish gambol—the rendezvous of many a tender assignation—the comfort of the citizen—the ornament of New York, and the pride of the lovely island of Mannahata.

 

 

 

Having thus provided for the temporary security of New Amsterdam, and guarded it against any sudden surprise, the gallant Peter took a hearty pinch of snuff, and snapping his fingers, set the great council of Amphyctions, and their champion, the doughty Alicxsander Partridg at defiance. It is impossible to say, notwithstanding, what might have been the issue of this affair, had not the great council been all at once involved in huge perplexity, and as much horrible dissension sown among its members, as of yore was stirred up in the camp of the brawling warriors of Greece.

The all potent council of the league, as I have shewn in my last chapter, had already announced its hostile determinations, and already was the mighty colony of New Haven and the puissant town of Pyquag, otherwise called Wethersfield—famous for its onions and its witches—and the great trading house of Hartford, and all the other redoubtable little border towns, in a prodigious turmoil, furbishing up their rusty fowling pieces and shouting aloud for war; by which they anticipated easy conquests, and gorgeous spoils, from the little fat dutch villages. But this joyous brawling was soon silenced by the conduct of the colony of Massachusetts. Struck with the gallant spirit of the brave old Peter, and convinced by the chivalric frankness and heroic warmth of his vindication, they refused to believe him guilty of the infamous plot most wrongfully laid at his door. With a generosity for which I would yield them immortal honour, they declared, that no determination of the grand council of the league, should bind the general court of Massachusetts, to join in an offensive war, which should appear to such general court to be unjust.
⁴⁷

This refusal immediately involved the colony of Massachusetts and the other combined colonies, in very serious difficulties and disputes, and would no doubt have produced a dissolution of the confederacy, but that the great council of Amphyctions, finding that they could not stand alone, if mutilated by the loss of so important a member as Massachusetts, were fain to abandon for the present their hostile machinations against the Manhattoes. Such is the marvellous energy and puissance of those notable confederacies, composed of a number of sturdy, self-will'd, discordant parts, loosely banded together by a puny general government. As it is however, the warlike towns of Connecticut, had no cause to deplore this disappointment of their martial ardour; for by my faith—though the combined powers of the league might have been too potent in the end, for the robustious warriors of the Manhattoes—yet in the interim would the lion hearted Peter and his myrmidons, have choaked the stomachful heroes of Pyquag with their own onions, and have given the other little border towns such a scouring, that I warrant they would have had no stomach to squat on the land, or invade the hen-roost of a New Nederlander for a century to come.

Indeed there was more than one cause to divert the attention of the good people of the east, from their hostile purposes; for just about this time were they horribly beleagured and harassed by the inroads of the prince of darkness, divers of whose liege subjects they detected, lurking within their camp, all of whom they incontinently roasted as so many spies, and dangerous enemies. Not to speak in parables, we are informed, that at this juncture, the unfortunate “east countrie” was exceedingly troubled and confounded by multitudes of losel witches, who wrought strange devices to beguile and distress the multitude; and notwithstanding numerous judicious and bloody laws had been enacted, against all “solem conversing or compacting with the divil, by way of conjuracon or the like,”
⁴⁸
yet did the dark crime of witchcraft continue to encrease to an alarming degree, that would almost transcend belief, were not the fact too well authenticated to be even doubted for an instant.

What is particularly worthy of admiration is, that this terrible art, which so long has baffled the painful researches, and abstruse studies of philosophers, astrologers, alchymists, theurgists and other sages, was chiefly confined to the most ignorant, decrepid, ugly, abominable old women in the community, who had scarcely more brains than the broomsticks they rode upon. Where they first acquired their infernal education—whether from the works of the ancient Theurgists—the demonology of the Egyptians—the belomancy, or divination by arrows of the Scythians—the spectrology of the Germans—the magic of the Persians—the enchantment of the Laplanders, or from the archives of the dark and mysterious caverns of the Dom Daniel, is a question pregnant with a host of learned and ingenious doubts—particularly as most of them were totally unversed in the occult mysteries of the alphabet.