Liberty 1784: The Second War for Independence (41 page)

Chapter 23

D
rake and Washington saw the British force start to turn and pull back and quickly recognized their peril. If they stayed put, they would be overrun by a mass of angry humanity. They quickly determined that pulling the guns to the American lines was not practical. “Destroy them,” Washington ordered.

Will Drake signaled and a number of men ran forward. They loaded as much powder as they could find down the barrels of the four cannon and then jammed in cannonballs and rocks.

Will set a long fuse, lit it, and ran like the devil was after him. As before, he had no idea what was a safe distance. Nor did any of the others. They all just ran. He found a depression in the earth and threw himself in it. He had just covered his head with his hands when the first of a rapid series of explosions rocked him, sending shock waves over him. He closed his eyes tightly as debris rained down on him.

“I think we’re still alive,” William Washington said after a moment. Drake looked up. He and the others were covered with dirt.

Drake stood and looked at the four craters that marked the location of the guns. Their barrels had been ripped apart and were lying well away from where they had been. Their carriages were nowhere to be seen. “Well,” he said happily, “I guess that was enough powder.”

They ran to their horses and mounted quickly. The retreating British had been slowed by the explosions, but had recommenced their movement to the rear. The small American cavalry force again skirted the British and moved back through the gap in the defenses. Once through, they rode to the rear of the American lines where hundreds of American and British wounded and dying were being tended. They found General Stark. His uniform was torn and he looked exhausted. Still, there was a ferocious glint in his eye.

“Well done,” Stark said to Washington. “Now I have another assignment for you.”

“Name it, sir,” Washington said.

“Look around you. Our army was mauled and is in disarray. It is exhausted, wounded, and out of ammunition. Right now we are trying to care for the wounded, bury the dead, and provide food and water for the living. While we do this, much of our defenses have been destroyed by the British. Since your men appear reasonably healthy, I want you to repair the earthworks and the wood thicket. Will you do that?”

Washington and Drake looked at the milling hundreds. Drake wanted desperately to find Sarah. Was she alive? Hurt? Was she as worried about him as he was about her?

Still, they had their duty. If the British attacked again, the American lines were wide open and would collapse.

Washington shrugged and grinned amiably. “Where are the shovels, General?”

* * *

Burgoyne’s head sagged and his chin nearly touched his chest. “How long has it been?”

How long since what, Fitzroy wondered. He pulled out his pocket watch. “It’s been a little more than two hours since the fighting began, sir.”

Both men looked at each other. It had taken just two hours for the rebels to defeat, at least temporarily, the greatest army in North America. Thousands of soldiers streamed disconsolately by them. Few bothered to look at their commander. The men were looking out for their own well-being and cared nothing for what generals thought. Despite the chaos, Fitzroy saw a number of officers trying to impose order and control and, to a large part, succeeding. The regiments had been stopped and mauled but not destroyed. Even so, it would be a while before they fought again.

Burgoyne walked away, heading to the privacy of his tent. He didn’t wish to see or speak with anyone until he had come to grips with the situation. Reports would be taken later. Everything could wait, along with the inevitable excuses and recriminations.

Fortunately, the Americans were in no shape to counterattack. From where Fitzroy could see, they were working on repairing their defenses. Thank heaven for small favors, Fitzroy thought.

“Have you noticed it’s raining?”

It was Danforth. His uniform was in shreds and a large scab had formed on his forehead. “Perhaps it will clean you up,” Fitzroy said and put his arm around the other man’s shoulders. “Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too, James,” Danforth said and plunked himself down on a folding chair that Burgoyne had been using. “And don’t ask me how bad it was, damn it; it was bloody awful. I’ve never seen such a slaughter and I’ve never seen British soldiers take such punishment. They only gave up after enduring more than any men should be called upon to endure. I hope history will be kind to them.”

“Agincourt,” Fitzroy said, “only we played the role of the French on this date,” he said referring to the climactic battle of 1415 in which a smaller British army had slaughtered a much larger French army that had attacked them on a narrow front.

“We attacked in a narrow front mass that invited flanking attacks and eliminated our strength in numbers. Had we won, of course, Burgoyne would be proclaimed a genius. Now what will happen to him, to us?”

Fitzroy thought that history would be kinder to the soldiers than it would be to the generals. “And General Grant is truly dead?”

Danforth found a bottle with some brandy in it and took a long swallow. “Well and truly dead and with a rock stuck squarely in the middle of his skull like some great and unblinking third eye.” Danforth shuddered. “Absolutely hideous. No man should die like that and he took forever to collapse and finally stop breathing. I swear he was trying to talk, to say something.” He laughed bitterly. “Perhaps he was saying something like take this fucking rock out of my head.”

“You stayed with him, I take it?”

“Of course. Now you’re going to ask me how I got away. Well, it was quite easy. When our own soldiers fell back, some of them knocked me over and likely trampled me for good measure. I do believe I was stunned for a few minutes. When I came to, I simply crawled away until I thought it was safe enough to stand up. At that point, I got up and walked back to our lines with as much dignity as I could muster. I wasn’t the only one. A lot of lightly wounded men or some unwounded soldiers simply trying to save their own skins were doing the same thing. Thank God the Americans were not in the slightest bit interested in stopping us from departing. They had a handful of men working to repair their defenses and, by the way, I think I saw the man you were negotiating with. Drake, I believe.”

Fitzroy took it in. For some strange reason he was pleased that the rebel had also lived to fight another day. It had begun to rain again, a fitting end to a miserable day and it was still early afternoon. Damn.

“What’s going to happen now?” Danforth asked.

“Well, we won’t be attacking again, at least not for a while. Burgoyne’s called for a council of war, which will now only include Tarleton and Arnold, since Grant is dead.”

Danforth shook his head. “Why in God’s name couldn’t either Arnold or Tarleton have been killed instead of Grant? Better yet, why not both of them?”

Why indeed? Fitzroy could not think of an answer.

* * *

Drake was working with men who were repairing the defenses and was soaking wet from the sudden rain and up to his knees in the mud it had created.

Along with repairing the earthworks and replacing the thicket, they’d been dragging dead British soldiers out to where other Redcoats could retrieve them and carry them back for a proper burial. The British wounded were allowed to either return to their own lines if they were able, or were cared for as best they could by the Americans. These activities caused the British and American soldiers into close proximity with each other. Either out of respect or exhaustion, there was little or no conversation and no hostility. Simple nods and grunts sufficed. There had not been a formal truce. The men simply decided to solve their problem without any help from higher-ups.

A mud-splattered British officer appeared and politely requested permission to search for the remains of General Grant and Will gave it. Within a few minutes the dead general was found and his body taken away. The officer thanked Will profusely. They both agreed it was a strange way to run a war.

Thus, Will had no time to search for Sarah. Instead, she found him. She rushed to him and they embraced, with both of them weeping from relief. No one noticed. Similar reunions were taking place around them as the fortunate ones found each other. There were also howls of pain and grief as a loved one was found dead. There was a cut on Sarah’s cheek and another on her arm. Both would leave scars. He didn’t care. Her clothing was bloody and torn. But she was alive.

Finally they pulled apart. “What about the others?” Will asked, half fearing the answer.

“Too many are dead,” she said sadly. “Faith is alive and unhurt, as is Owen who is still out in the swamp. But my uncle Wilford is dead with a bayonet in the chest, and my aunt is badly wounded and may not make it. Little Winifred Haskill is dead. She thought her friend Sergeant Bahlmann had been killed and went crazy. Ironically, Bahlmann did survive, but most of his fellow Hessians didn’t.”

The loss of so many civilians saddened him deeply. Soldiers were supposed to die, but the civilians? “Thank God Stark lives.”

Sarah nodded. “Unhurt, as you are aware, but Wayne and von Steuben are dead and Morgan is wounded. The army is in grievous shape. Dear God, Will, if there’s another battle there’ll be no one left to fight it.”

Hannah van Doorn approached and interrupted. “Then let’s see that there isn’t another battle,” she said grimly. Like the others, she was filthy and exhausted and the once plump woman had lost a considerable amount of weight.

“How do you propose to stop it?” Will asked.

She handed him a folded piece of paper. “When you next see Major Fitzroy, will you give him this? Since his place was with his general, I am presuming that he too lives.”

Will was puzzled. “Just why do you think I am going to see the British again?”

“Because General Tallmadge asked me to find you and bring you to him and General Stark. I can think of no other reason than that you are going to speak again with the British and that likely means Major Fitzroy.”

Despite his exhaustion, Will almost laughed. What kind of world was it coming to when women were part of the military?

* * *

“I have decided to assume direct command of our center as well as the army as a whole,” Burgoyne announced. Night had fallen and only one small and flickering candle lighted the interior of the general’s tent. Arnold and Tarleton simply nodded. Each knew that neither was acceptable in Burgoyne’s eyes as eligible for promotion to Grant’s position. Nor did they think for one second that Burgoyne would divide the army into two divisions instead of three.

“What are our casualties?” Burgoyne asked and winced. He didn’t really want to know the answer to that question.

Fitzroy took a deep breath. He’d been all over the field for as long as daylight lasted, inquiring and compiling the awful numbers.

“I can only give estimates, sir, but we have suffered at least twelve hundred dead and likely twice that many wounded, with many grievously.”

He shuddered, thinking of the long rows of moaning and crying soldiers, some of whom were being cared for by their comrades while others simply lay and waited for someone to help them, or for death to end their pain. The worst ones were those whose wounds were the most terrible and who said nothing, simply awaiting their fate. Even if they lived, many, perhaps most of the wounded would never fight again. So many had lost limbs or eyes, or even both, that a host of smashed and broken men would have to be carted back to Detroit to begin their long arduous trek to England. If they lived, of course. It was understood that many would die en route to New York, and so many others would pass on before ships made it back to England.

There had to be a better way to care for the wounded, he thought ruefully, but could think of nothing. Doctors were not an answer. Few in their right mind would trust anyone’s health to a barber-surgeon who thought it wise to bleed people who had already bled copiously because of their wounds.

Fitzroy continued. “And there are at least two thousand missing, although most of them will doubtless turn up sooner or later when they get tired of running and regain their senses. When all is said and done, I estimate our total casualties will be in excess of four thousand.”

There were gasps. Even the normally unfeeling Tarleton was shocked. Four thousand was about a third of the force they’d committed this day and four thousand was approximately the number of men in the whole American army. This did not include the women and old men among the rebels. Those old men and women had inflicted terrible casualties while sustaining many of their own.

“It is worse than the numbers,” Fitzroy added. “Many of the survivors are the remnants of the regiments that were in the fore of the attack and those units no longer exist as anything more than disorganized clusters of men. I would estimate that our true fighting strength is about half of what it was this time yesterday.”

“Any thoughts on American casualties?” Tarleton asked.

“None whatsoever, except for the obvious. They too must have suffered heavily. I would not be surprised if they lost half their army as well.”