The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (239 page)

The two emperors met at Villafranca, a small place near Solferino. At the close of their interview Francis Joseph looked humiliated and sombre — Louis Napoleon was smilingly at ease. He, the parvenu, had made terms with a legitimate emperor, and was pleased with himself. He had arranged that Lombardy was to be united to Piedmont, while Venetia remained Austrian. When Victor Emmanuel was told of these terms he could only say coldly that he must ever remain grateful for what Napoleon
had
done, but he murmured “Poor Italy!”

And Cavour? Cavour was struck to the heart. Had he arranged such a finale as
this
with the upstart emperor — that he should leave the game when it suited his pleasure, and make terms with the Austrian emperor all by himself — insolently disregarding Victor Emmanuel? He wept with grief and anger. He left at once for the camp, and there he told the emperor his opinion of him in stinging words. He begged his king to repudiate the treaty and reject Lombardy, but Victor Emmanuel, although as bitterly disappointed as Cavour, felt that he must be prudent for his people’s sake.

Angered at the king’s refusal, Cavour resigned his office and retired to his farms at Lèri, but after a few months he was back in his old place in the cabinet. All his hopes and ambitions came back — although physically the shock had broken him — and he laboured for Italy till his death in June of 1861. The whole Italian people, from king to peasant, knew that they had lost their best friend. But Cavour’s life-work was nearly finished. Garibaldi had taken up the work of emancipation where Napoleon had abandoned it, and before he left him for ever, to Cavour was given the triumph of hearing his beloved master proclaimed King of Italy.

THE
BATTLE
OF
BUNKER
HILL

ON the 12th of June, 1775, Captain Harris, afterwards Lord Harris, wrote home from the town of Boston, then occupied by British troops:

“I wish the Americans may be brought to a sense of their duty. One good drubbing, which I long to give them, by way of retaliation, might have a good effect towards it. At present they are so elated by the petty advantage they gained the 19th of April, that they despise the powers of Britain. We shall soon take the field on the other side of the Neck.”

This very fairly expressed the irritation in the British camp. The troops had been sent to Massachusetts to subdue it, but as yet nothing had been done in that direction.

The ignominious flight of the British regulars from Lexington and Concord was still unavenged. More than that, they had been kept close in Boston ever since by the provincial militia.

“What!” cried General Burgoyne when on his arrival in May he was told this news. “What! Ten thousand peasants keep five thousand King’s troops shut up? Let
us
get in, and we’ll soon find elbow-room!”

“Elbow-room” was the army’s name for Burgoyne after that.

A little later General Gage remarked to General Timothy Ruggles, “It is impossible for the rebels to withstand our arms a moment.”

Ruggles replied: “Sir, you do not know with whom you have to contend. These are the very men who conquered Canada. I fought with them side by side. I know them well; they will fight bravely. My God, sir, your folly has ruined your cause!”

Besides Burgoyne, the
Cerberus
brought over Generals Clinton and Howe, and large reinforcements, so that the forces under General Gage, the commander-in-chief, were over ten thousand. By June 12 the army in Boston was actually unable to procure fresh provisions, and Gage proclaimed martial law, designating those who were in arms as rebels and traitors.

The
Essex Gazette
of June 8 says: “We have the pleasure to inform the public that the Grand American Army is nearly completed.” This Grand American Army was spread around Boston, its headquarters at Cambridge, under command of General Artemas Ward, who had fought under Abercromby. The Grand American Army was an army of allies. Ward, its supposed chief, was authorised to command only the Massachusetts and New Hampshire forces, and when the Connecticut and Rhode Island men obeyed him it was purely through courtesy. Each colony supplied its own troops with provisions and ammunition; each had its own officers, appointed by the Committee of Safety.

To this committee, June 13, came the tidings that Gage proposed to occupy Bunker Hill, in Charlestown, on the 18th, and a council of war was held, which included the savagely bluff, warm-hearted patriot, General Israel Putnam, of the Connecticut troops; General Seth Pomeroy; Colonel William Prescott; the hardy, independent Stark; and Captain Gridley, the engineer — all of whom were veterans of the French and Indian war.

As a result of the meeting, a detachment of nine hundred men of the Massachusetts regiments, under Colonels Prescott, Frye, and Bridge, with two hundred men from Connecticut, and Captain Gridley s artillery company of forty-nine men and two field-pieces, were ordered to parade at six o’clock P.M., the 16th, on Cambridge Common. There they appeared with weapons, packs, blankets, and entrenching tools. President Langdon, of Harvard College, made an impressive prayer, and by nine o’clock they had marched, the entire force being under the command of Colonel Prescott.

A uniform of blue turned back with red was worn by some of the men, but for the most part they wore their “Sunday suits” of homespun. Their guns were of all sorts and sizes, and many carried old-fashioned powder - horns and pouches. Prescott walked at their head, with two sergeants carrying dark lanterns, until they reached the Neck.

The Neck was the strip of land leading to the peninsula opposite Boston, where lay the small town of Charlestown. The peninsula is only one mile in length, its greatest breadth but half a mile. The Charles River separates it from Boston on the south, and to the north and east is the Mystic River. Bunker Hill begins at the isthmus and rises gradually to a height of one hundred and ten feet, forming a smooth round hill.

At Cambridge Common, the night the troops started for Bunker Hill, Israel Putnam had made this eloquent address: “Men, there are enough of you on the Common this evening to fill hell so full of the redcoats to-morrow that the devils will break their shins over them.”

At Bunker Hill the expedition halted, and a long discussion ensued between Prescott, Gridley, Major Brooks, and Putnam as to whether it would be better to follow Ward’s orders literally and fortify Bunker Hill itself, or to go on to the lesser elevation south-east of it, which is now known as Breed’s Hill, but had then no special name. They agreed upon Breed’s Hill. They began to entrench at midnight.

Prescott was consumed with anxiety lest his men should be attacked before some screen could be raised to shelter them. However enthusiastic they might be, he did not think it possible for his raw troops to meet to any advantage a disciplined soldiery in the open field.

So the pickaxe and the spade were busy throughout the night. It was silent work, for the foe was near. In Boston Harbour lay the
Lively
, the
Somerset,
the
Cerberus,
the
Glasgow,
the
Falcon,
and the
Symmetry
, besides the floating batteries. On the Boston shore the sentinels were pacing outside the British encampment. At intervals through the night Prescott and Brooks stole down to the shore of Charles River and listened till the call of “All’s well!” rang over the water from the ships and told them that their scheme was still undiscovered.

At dawn the entrenchments were six feet high, and there was a great burst of fire at them from the
Lively,
which was joined in a few moments by the other men-of-war and the batteries on Copp’s Hill, on the Boston shore.

The strange thunder of the cannonade brought forth every man, woman, and child in Boston. Out of their prim houses they rushed under trellises heavy with damask roses and honeysuckle, and soon every belfry and tower, house-top and hill-top, was crowded with them. There the most of them stayed till the thrilling play in which they had so vital an interest was enacted.

Meanwhile Prescott, to inspire his raw men with confidence, mounted the parapet of the redoubt they had raised, and deliberately sauntered around it, making jocular speeches, until the men cheered each cannon-ball as it came.

Gage, looking through his field-glasses from the other shore, marked the tall figure with the three-cornered hat and the banyan — a linen blouse — buckled about the waist, and asked of Councillor Willard, who stood near him —

“Who is the person who appears to command?”

“
That is my brother-in-law, Colonel Prescott.”

“Will he fight?”

“Yes, sir; he is an old soldier, and will fight as long as a drop of blood remains in his veins.”

“The works must be carried,” said Gage.

Gage was strongly advised by his generals to land a force at the Neck and attack the Americans in the rear. It was also suggested that they might be bombarded by the fleet from the Mystic and the Charles, and, indeed, might be starved out without any fighting at all. But none of this suited the warlike British temper; the whole army longed to fight — to chase the impudent enemy out of those entrenchments he had so insolently reared. The challenge was a bold one; it must be accepted. The British had the weight in all ways, but they also had the preposterous arrogance of the British army, which always deems itself invincible because it remembers its traditions, and traditions are dubious and improper weapons to fire at a foe.

At noon the watchers on the house-tops saw the lines of smart grenadiers and light infantry embark in barges under command of General Howe, who had with him Brigadier-General Pigot and some of the most distinguished officers in Boston. They landed at the south-western point of the peninsula.

When the intelligence that the British troops had landed reached Cambridge it caused great excitement. A letter of Captain Chester reads:

“Just after dinner on the 17th ult. I was walking out from my lodgings, quite calm and composed, and all at once the drums beat to arms, and bells rang, and a great noise in Cambridge. Captain Putnam came by on full gallop. ‘What is the matter?’ says I. ‘Have you not heard?’

‘No.’

‘Why, the regulars are landing at Charlestown,’ says he, ‘and father says you must all meet and march immediately to Bunker Hill to oppose the enemy.’ I waited not, but ran and got my arms and ammunition, and hastened to my company (who were in the church for barracks), and found them nearly ready to march. We soon marched, with our frocks and trousers on over our other clothes (for our company is in uniform wholly blue, turned up with red), for we were loath to expose ourselves by our dress; and down we marched.”

After a reconnaissance, Howe sent back to Gage for reinforcements, and remained passive until they came.

Meanwhile, there were bitter murmurings among the troops on Breed’s Hill. They had watched the brilliant pageant, — the crossing over of their adversaries, scarlet-clad, with glittering equipments, with formidable guns in their train, — and were conscious of being themselves exhausted from the night’s labour and the hot morning sun. It was two o’clock, and they had had practically nothing to eat that day. Among themselves they accused their officers of treachery. It seemed incredible that after doing all the hard work they should be expected to do the fighting as well. Loud huzzas arose from their lips, however, — these cross and hungry Yankees, — when Doctor — or General — Joseph Warren appeared among them with Seth Pomeroy.

Few men had risen to a higher degree of universal love and confidence in the hearts of the Massachusetts people than Warren. He had been active in every patriotic movement. The councils through which the machinery of the Revolution was put in motion owed much to him. He was president of the Committee of Safety, and probably had been one of the Indians of the Boston Tea Party. But a few days before he had been appointed major-general. In recognition of this, Israel Putnam, who was keeping a squad of men working at entrenchments on Bunker Hill, had offered to take orders from him. But Warren refused, and asked where he might go to be of the greatest service. “Where will the onset be most furious?” he asked, and Putnam sent him to the redoubt. There Prescott also offered him the chief command, but Warren replied, “I came as a volunteer with my musket to serve under you, and shall be happy to learn from a soldier of your experience.”