Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (7 page)

He needed tons of corn, dried fruit, vinegar for the surgeons to clean the hospitals yet to be built, stout ale and broth to feed the sick, at least thirty pounds or more of good fodder per horse, at least fifty wagonloads a day for fodder, though he wondered if a single horse would still be alive in another few days. There were reports that artillery crews were killing off the weakest animals to eat them. Along the Guelph Road leading to this place, he had seen the frozen and butchered carcasses of more than one animal that had collapsed and within minutes had its flesh stripped clean from the bones by hungry troops. Even the bones had been scooped up to be boiled.

It was worse than the nightmare retreat across New Jersey. The small cadre of men who had endured the campaign a year ago, and stayed on with the army, was now enduring another season of misery. Two winters in a row was asking too much of any man.

And what am I asking of myself
, he wondered, as he rode back toward his headquarters tent.

“Meat, General! For God’s sake, where’s our food?”

One of the men lay on his back and held his feet up in the air for him to see. His feet were black, swollen, and cracked; it was obvious that in a few more days the surgeon would take both of them off.

“Is this my reward for standing with you since Long Island?” the man cried. His voice broke into sobs of anguish.

Washington lowered his head so they would not see his own tears, and he rode back to the command tent, pitched in an open grove of chestnuts. Even nuts from the trees had already been scavenged by his hungry troops.

As the storm increased its intensity, sleet slashed down on the melancholy landscape. The tree limbs glistened and the tent groaned under the weight of the ice. It would certainly not survive this storm; he made a mental note to send guards out to approach the nearby farmers with a request to rent their homes as headquarters.

He had become quite firm on that issue. For Americans, this was a war for the hearts of a people who were indeed wavering after two and a half years of bitter fighting. To loot, to forage, and to take without asking only created yet more enemies to fight. It brought to mind the rejoinder of Henry V just before he hanged an old comrade for looting: that at times the gentler of souls gained the greater victory with the people who must endure the passing of armies.

He came to a halt in front of his tent. A headquarters guard immediately took the bridle of his horse.

“Thank you, Peter,” he whispered.

The young soldier forced a smile. He was one of the men who had joined the headquarters guards before Trenton and then stayed on rather than return to his Jersey militia unit.

Major Tench Tilghman, his aide-decamp, waited by the open tent flap. “Did the ride help at all, sir?” he asked. “No, it did not,” he replied wearily.

Tench offered his general a tin cup of tepid coffee mixed with roasted barley. Washington refused; the guilt of having indulged in a meager meal of slightly rancid but tolerable bacon and coffee with his staff this morning still gnawed at him.

“Have you thought of a reply, sir?” Tench inquired, as he sat across the conference table and motioned to the stack of correspondence. Atop it were the three letters, the cause of his explosive rage an hour ago. He had ordered the ever-present Billy Lee and the rest of his staff to stay behind as he stormed out and mounted to ride. They had waited nervously for his return.

The tent began to leak through a burst seam; a steady trickle dropped onto the table, splattered the papers, and caused the ink to smear and run.

“Will all of you, except Tench, please excuse me,” he sighed.

His staff and the waiting generals obliged and filed out into the storm. Billy Lee closed the flap of the tent behind him. He overheard General Greene ask profanely where in the hell they should go now.

He promptly turned his attention back to Tench.

“Tell Sergeant Harris to go back down the Guelph Road toward the forge. The first house he reaches, I believe the name of the owner is Potts, tell him to ask respectfully if we might move in there for now. We will pay a fair price.”

He hesitated.

“That is, in Dutch silver, not Continentals.”

“Yes, sir.”

Washington picked up the three papers that had come in over the last day. It never ceased to amaze him just how much correspondence arrived. There were the letters from parents begging for news of the fate of a son last heard of during the Battle of Long Island. There were letters of complaint—a representative of Congress stated that soldiers had stolen five pigs and a cow, that he was shocked to hear of such behavior by troops under Washington’s command, and now threatened an investigation. Washington picked up the first of the three letters that had set off a long-simmering rage. The first bore a formal title: “A Letter of Remonstration.”

It was an official note from Congress declaring that the patriots of New Jersey were suffering under the yoke of British and Hessian depredation. He was hereby ordered to send the appropriate number of troops needed to drive the interlopers out of that state, reassert control, and capture the governor appointed by the Crown.

Incredible. Over twelve thousand of his men were huddled on these hills of Valley Forge, not one hut was yet built to shelter them, he possessed at most a hundred axes to fell the trees, there had been no food for two days…and he was to detach sufficient numbers to reoccupy New Jersey in a winter campaign? And while he was at it, capture the son of Ben Franklin, who had stayed loyal to the Crown?

He clenched the letter with his gloved hands and with frustrated disgust tossed it to one side.

“Sir, do you have a reply?” Tench asked. He made the gesture of trying to find a dry spot on the table to spread out a sheet of paper and produced a small
ink pot from inside his jacket where he kept it ready during cold weather so that it would not freeze.

Tench, along with Billy Lee, was among the few he allowed to see his emotions of the moment. He was, after all, a gentleman and, as such, bore the responsibilities and displayed the expected behavior of a gentleman. He did not subscribe to the extravagant and overdramatized diffidence of the English aristocracy and their officer class, but instead always strived to portray the quiet, resolute gravitas of a leader of a free people, attempting to shape a republic.

And thus, in spite of the boiling rage, he forced a smile.

“Nothing we can write down yet, Tench. Let it wait for now.”

Tench returned the smile.

He scanned the next letter. It was yet another letter of remonstration. This one was from a committee of state representatives of Pennsylvania, proclaiming that there were no Tory loyalists left in the region surrounding Philadelphia, that all were patriots who supported the cause of freedom, and that, therefore, he, General Washington, was hereby ordered to cease this unwise retreat to the north, turn around, and defend the patriotic citizens of the region to the west and south of Philadelphia. In addition, it was expected, before the year was out, that Philadelphia and those within the city who cried out for liberty would be free of the brutal occupation and, in so doing, restore trust in the name of General Washington.

The last line stung deeply. Unless I wager this army in a desperate bid, Congress itself is now openly saying it has lost its trust in me.

Deep in the pile of papers was a note that only Tench knew about. A note from “a friend” within Congress. Gates, the hero of Saratoga, was even now being feted in York, where food was plentiful, of course, and already he was being held up as the appropriate replacement for the incompetent Washington, who had lost Philadelphia and with it, the hope of French acknowledgment and support.

He knew the rumors to be true. A year ago he had placed great trust in his friend Doctor Benjamin Rush, but, since the fall of Philadelphia, and the reported looting of Rush’s home, even his private correspondence had grown somewhat icy. Rush was asking if there was any hope whatsoever of retaking the city by a coup de main such as the one that had brought success at Trenton this time a year ago.

If even Rush was now doubting me, when would the axe fall?
If ordered to do so, of course, he would resign and return to Mount Vernon. In some ways he
even longed for that release. But he knew as well, without any sense of self-inflation, that his forced resignation would doom this Revolution.

Gates was a strutting political fool. If anyone had gained the victory at Saratoga, it was his own friend Benedict Arnold. But Arnold was down with yet another crippling wound; this time he had nearly lost his leg, and he would not be fit for field command until spring. Arnold would not be the right choice anyhow. He remained a New Englander of volatile temperament who still needed grooming before being given an independent command. Washington’s personal choice would be Nathanael Greene, but he was, unfortunately, another New Englander like Arnold. He had learned to set aside his prejudices against these hard-shelled Yankees—they had proven their worth often enough in battle—but there was a firm realization that the leader of this war had to come from the middle states in order to hold the thirteen independent together.

Gates tried to claim he was a son of Virginia. In reality he had been born and bred in England and had served as an officer with the British army for nearly two decades, leaving for America only when his ambitions for higher command were thwarted because he lacked the proper influence and the money needed to purchase command of a regiment.

And now Gates was maneuvering for the highest command of all, the entire army. Every general beneath him had come close to mutiny during the Saratoga campaign—in fact, Arnold had been under arrest when the climactic battle started, for calling Gates, in front of the troops, a damnable fool who would serve them all better by going over to the other side. Arnold had broken free from confinement, rushed to the front line, and was nearly killed rallying the soldiers who were beginning to flee, and then himself led them to victory.

Gates, ever the consummate politician, through dispatches and by personally appearing before Congress, garnered the laurels of victory for himself while at the same time denouncing every other general. He had even taken the nearly unbelievable step of seeking a political appointment, head of a congressional committee, the Board of War, while still serving in the field, technically under Washington’s direct command. As head of that board, he bypassed his supposed superior officer, routing all of his correspondence and self-aggrandizing reports directly to Congress. At the civilian level, Washington now technically answered to the board, even while its head served in the field and was supposed to answer to him. The arrangement was so absurd that even the British were laughing at it, as yet another sign of the irrationality of this rebel experiment, which was obviously descending into an arguing mob
whose self-serving and factional maneuverings would inevitably lead to self-destruction.

If Gates gained ultimate command, Washington knew with utter certainty that the Revolution would be lost.

He sighed and tossed the second letter to one side.

“Same as the first, Tench,” he announced. “I’ll send some reply in a day or two.”

What reply? That I take umbrage with the statement that Congress feels I need to restore my honorable name?

It was the third letter on the pile that he had to face next, and that truly produced an explosion of rage. It was a letter from the Commissary Department of Congress, informing him that supplies, or lack of supplies, at Valley Forge was now his responsibility.

“My responsibility,” he hissed through clenched teeth, picking up the note and looking at it again.

If, by some miracle, using some strange device conceived of and built by Doctor Franklin, he could fly to York in an instant, he would pick up the authors of this infamous tatter of failed promises and lies, wing them here, deposit them in front of his troops, and let them endure the taunts he had just heard, the agonies he had just witnessed.

If only the Congress could spend a week in the field with his men. If only they could come out of their warm rooms, pleasant banquets, and evenings of good drink in front of a fire and learn what the War of Independence was really like. But then they wouldn’t be the same politicians who now infested this Congress.

He had communicated his intention to retreat to this place weeks ago and here build winter quarters. There was, as well, more than a hint of advice on his part that rather than adjourn themselves to the far bank of the Susquehanna, the Congress should reconstitute here, with the army, and share their lot with them. Or at least choose Reading instead. The British were openly mocking the flight to York as an act of wanton self-preservation and cowardice, and asserting that by spring a few companies of dragoons would cause them to spring in terror to the far banks of the Mississippi or perhaps even seek refuge in the Spanish lands of the far Pacific coast.

And now this? He thought of the man holding up his frostbitten, dead feet. Chances were good he would not survive the amputations.

“Is this my reward for standing with you since Long Island, sir?”

If but Congress would convene here. Would any of them offer to take that
man and put him in his bed tonight, and would any stand his watch, having first taken off his shoes and humbly offering them, as if any shoes at all could now fit those swollen, disfigured members.

He knew what some whispered. It was the same whisper down through the long millennia of history. The same whisper that had beguiled Sulla, Caesar, Cromwell, and so many others. It was the whisper that if at this moment he rode back out, called his men together, and announced they would march on York, arrest Congress, and seize the food they most likely had well hidden away, nearly all would follow him.

He let the thought dwell for a moment. Whether, he were in control of this fight and by placing officers such as Greene, Wayne, and Arnold in the right commands, finding the supplies needed, he could drive the enemy out of Philadelphia and into the sea next spring.