Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (11 page)

“Brandywine,” Gates sighed. “Sir, forgive me, but I must say it again. It is hard to give credence to the accounts of that disaster which unfolded while our northern armies under my command were surging forward to triumph.

“When I took Burgoyne’s surrender, I believed that before the onset of winter I could retire my sword and return to the warmth of my family. If only Brandywine had been the victory our nation deserved, and should have been, rather than the debacle that army was led into. I daresay even now we would be seeing the last ships of the king fleeing with the last of their soldiers and mercenaries, and our freedom assured.”

Reluctantly, Rush had to nod in agreement at this little impromptu speech, spoken with sufficient gusto that others in the room could hear. Nearly all turned, and several nodded in agreement.

“I tell you, sir,” and as he spoke he motioned for the innkeeper to refill their tankards of buttered rum, “this talk of trying to create a permanent standing army as the only means of achieving victory is ruinous and smacks of Cromwell and Caesar.”

“Hear, hear,” replied one of the congressmen, well into his after-dinner cups and sitting by the fireplace smoking a pipe, raising his tankard in salute.

“I tell you, sir, I wish all of you had stood with me at Saratoga and had seen the way my militiamen stormed forward like heroes, driving before them the so-called professional long-serving minions of the king. I know, sir; I know their mettle because I saw it with my own eyes. Officers who know how to lead free men who but set aside the plow and their tools to serve until a battle is won can wring miracles out of them. I must, as a member of the Board of War, question the sanity of a general who demands an army of dullards, of such lowly sort that they are willing to sign away their liberty and freedom for three years, five years, in exchange for what? A chance to plunder, a chance to
become like Cromwell’s army and put a despot on a throne once the revolution is won and then betrayed?”

Rush sighed and extended his hand in a gesture of moderation. “Sir, please lower your voice. Not everyone in this room is of the same sentiment at this moment.”

“I speak only the truth, sir,” Gates replied pompously.

Rush leaned back in the booth, examining this man.

It was near to heartbreaking, but he found he had to agree with him…Washington had to go.

A year ago, without hesitation, he would have given his own life for that of the Virginia general. But that was a year ago.

That was before the summer campaign, with New Jersey again lost and in Tory hands. That was before Howe appeared in the Chesapeake below Wilmington and stormed forward to victory after victory. That was before the horrors he had witnessed on the battlefield, in hospitals, and in prisons where hundreds of men now languished. He turned his gaze back to the room.

And that was before this Congress, of which he had once been a member, had fled to this frontier outpost.

While in the north, Gates had indeed, according to all dispatches, wrought a miracle by whipping a retreating American army back into shape in a few short weeks, rallied them to stand at Saratoga, cornered the arrogant Burgoyne, and taken the entire lot—more than seven thousand of their elite infantry, including entire regiments of once-haughty Hessians.

In the nearly two years since the heady days of early 1776, when the British evacuated Boston, General Washington had achieved but two victories. Glorious at the moment, to be sure, but in the grander scheme of things they remained not much more than skirmishes at Trenton and Princeton. He had lost every major engagement before and since, lost the capital, perhaps the war. When word of Saratoga reached Congress, dispatches had been sent flying by the fastest ships to the courts of Europe. Surely by now his old friend Benjamin Franklin was using that news to push France forward into recognition of this new nation and aiding it by declaring war on their old rival.

Franklin would know how to fan the ancient jealousy and hatreds of Europe and, in so doing, divert England, bring much-needed supplies through the blockade, and, with diplomatic recognition, perhaps bring the rest of Europe into the war against an overweening and arrogant England.

News of the defeat of Washington, who commanded what all Europe knew to be the main army of resistance and, along with that, the loss of the capital
of their nation, had, however, flown to Europe as well. The news was delivered by the English as proof that the war was near an end, and that any nation so foolish as to ally with the rebellion would, in the spring, face the full fury and might of England, undiluted by a minor annoyance in one of her colonies.

Washington’s failure, Rush reasoned, had canceled out Gates’s brilliant success.

Rush leaned forward, his voice pitched so that others could hear. Though he was in agreement that Washington had failed, he believed him to be an honorable man. “This call for a Continental line, serving for the duration of the war, that Washington keeps insisting upon. I cannot believe he carries an ulterior motive. I know the man. He is a Roman of the old school.”

“So was Caesar.”

Rush fixed him with a cold gaze, and Gates, sensing he had pushed a bit too far with this man, retreated.

“There are those around him who would see differently,” he quickly interjected, backing away from an outright accusation.

Rush nodded. He had seen the near-fanatical devotion of some around Washington. Men like Greene, Lord Stirling, and Anthony Wayne, who more than a few were calling “Mad Anthony” for his fury in battle, and especially that French boy, Lafayette, were outright slavish in adoration.

It would be an unsettling mix. A permanent army, made up of those who saw their general as the country’s only hope, and who openly detested Congress. The French boy, for one, had been secretly writing letters denouncing Congress for the supposed failure to provide supplies.

Suppose Washington should fall on the field of battle. There was no denying that he was brave in action to the point of utter recklessness. It was known as well that he was prone to fevers and other complaints. It was hard to imagine him harboring dreams of Caesar, but without doubt, others around him did. Cromwell had not started off with plans for the Protectorate; he was just another general in the field against the tyranny of a king. But in the end? Washington’s followers were more than eager to push him forward.

The danger of a revolution, as nearly all who were educated knew, was that ultimately, in nearly every case, it had been betrayed, usually by a triumphant general in the field.

He thought of his old friend Thomas Paine. His first chapter of
The American Crisis
had set the nation ablaze with renewed calls for resistance and lent fire to the soul of the army that night before Trenton. But now? A year later? Last word was that Paine had taken refuge somewhere in the countryside, his
writings of the last year a mere dribble, perhaps, sadly, drowned out by his old nemesis, drink. What little he had written were polemics calling for the revolutionary fervor of the common man and not for a war of Fabian tactics, defeat, and demoralization, and continued pleas to the independent states to create a single unified army.

“General Conway leaves for Valley Forge tomorrow, sir,” Gates said, again interrupting his thoughts.

“And?”

“Would you consider going with him to see for yourself the abysmal state the army is now in?” Gates offered.

Rush shook his head.

“For what good? My recommendations were for naught.”

He sighed.

“I fear, sir, by the time I arrived there, what little is left of the army will already have melted away, and my duty as a physician would then come first, even over that of a patriot. I would tell them to go home until spring and restore themselves from the deprivations of the field and battle, to heal, regain their strength, and then to plant their crops in a timely manner before returning to arms.

“Without a city to quarter the men, they will die out in those fields. Washington lost the city and now payment is upon us. No, there is nothing I can do by going there now.”

The innkeeper had brought over a steaming pitcher, stirring it with a hot poker drawn from the fireplace, and refilled their tankards with hot buttered rum. He did not withdraw until Rush had fished out a shilling and handed it to him.

Rush took a sip. The mix was tolerably good. He had never been much of a drinker of hard liquor before the war, preferring instead the refinement of a good port or sherry. But out here? It was either buttered rum or the vile corn liquor brewed by the frontier settlers. The only real use of that, Rush believed, was to deaden a man’s senses to some degree before putting him under the knife.

Gates, though a Methodist before the war, and behind his back called by his men “Old Granny” because of his portliness, spectacles, and tendency to lecture the troops about drink and immoral vices, did not refuse the buttered rum. At the banquet earlier this afternoon, another one given in celebration of the “hero of Saratoga,” the general had insured that his rotund form would be maintained. He had consumed, with relish, the platters of venison, fresh
ham, roasted ears of Indian corn, pea porridge, baked potatoes, roasted lamb, and pumpkin and apple pies spread before the gathering.

Rush did feel a twinge of guilt that he was privileged to eat and drink so freely, and he looked back over at Mifflin, whispering away with the new inspector general, Conway. He knew the reports coming in by fast courier from Valley Forge. No supplies, not one barrel of flour, not one head of cattle or swine were there, though the committee responsible stated that they had clear enough evidence that it was the failure of General Washington, who had not heeded their written warnings sent out weeks ago, which Mifflin had confirmed by his own reports and lengthy manifests. True, more than a hundred barrels of flour were reported to be lying by the banks of the Susquehanna, not twenty miles from here, left out in the open and now spoiled by rain, but that was the failure of army supply to present sufficient wagons for transport.

He looked back at Mifflin and then to Gates again. The army would need a thousand barrels of flour a month, a hundred head of cattle or five hundred swine and sheep a week until spring.

The figures were staggering.

Washington, it was obvious to him, had failed to work with Congress. Gates, the hero of the hour, held Congress in the palm of his hand.

For Dr. Benjamin Rush, the answer was obvious, though he was dismayed that they had ever reached this point.

He stood up, hesitated for a moment, then decided to take the tankard with him, for he had, after all, paid for it. He knew that most in the room were watching him, and that Gates had come to sit in his booth with obvious intent.

“You shall have my support when the time comes, General,” he whispered, and left the room, leaving those behind all abuzz that even the legendary doctor had now openly switched sides.

Valley Forge
December 22, 1777

“General.”

He looked up from his desk. There was, of course, no door to knock upon, since he was still quartered in his tent, half of it all but collapsed under the weight of ice. One of his sergeants had returned by mid afternoon with the report that the woman who resided in the house in question had agreed to rent
it out as headquarters. To pack up all and move it before nightfall was out of the question. Besides, to hurriedly abandon this sagging tent so late on the afternoon of this day of anguish, while his men huddled around fires out in the open…he could not bring himself to do it.

He had to maintain an efficient running of this army, and that alone assuaged any sense of guilt over taking quarters in a solid fieldstone house while twelve thousand men shivered in the cold. He needed quarters for his staff, for the reams of paperwork that flooded in each day from Congress, from every state, from committees and more committees. And he knew as well that he needed to present some sort of show. That he was indeed an actor performing a part on the stage, and that proper form required a proper headquarters and not this sagging, collapsing marquee.

He turned to face the tent entrance.

“You may enter.”

It was Colonel Tilghman, with the Marquis de Lafayette by his side, the two of them forcing smiles.

“Sir, there is a delegation from the First Pennsylvania here to see you.”

“What is it?”

He tried to sound confident and calm, but if it was a demand for food, he could not bear another such delegation today.

“They wish to show you something.”

Lafayette, who at nineteen seemed to actually relish the extremes of this climate, stepped into the tent.

“Sir. I can assure you, it will be for your pleasure.”

Washington smiled. The young man had indeed won his confidence over the last year. Viewed with curiosity at best by many in the army, and with open disdain by some as a rich French aristocrat playing at war, the lad had nevertheless shone forth, earning the open admiration of all by his reckless display of courage at Brandywine: Racing to Washington’s side when for a few moments it appeared that the general might very well be captured, he had rallied troops to the general’s defense, and nearly died from the bullet wound to his leg. He still walked with a bit of a limp, and Washington could sense the young man was actually proud of that limp, a proven mark of his courage and devotion to the cause of America and of freedom.

“All right, then,” Washington replied, setting aside his quill, putting on a cloak, and stepping out into the storm.

Half a dozen men of the First Pennsylvania, led by a beaming captain, were lined up and saluted as he emerged.

“Sir, we wish to show you something,” the captain announced proudly, and amusingly his voice actually broke into a high-pitched squeak from nervousness.

“What is it, sir?” Washington replied calmly, not allowing himself to smile at the young man’s nervousness. Besides, the weather was brutal, the storm a mix of ice and rain, though at least it was shifting more to a northerly, which would mean snow—more tolerable for those out in the open.