Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (8 page)

He sighed, sitting back, rubbing his eyes.

He knew, only too well…it was the voice of Satan.

It was the voice that had betrayed every revolution throughout history. The voice whispering to a general so falsely used by the politicians he must take orders from, until at last came a day, for some out of their own desires, perhaps for others out of sympathy and loyalty to the men who followed them, that they should strike down the very government they were sworn to obey, with the wild, mad dream that once things were set aright, the “proper authorities” could be restored.

It was the whispered voice of Satan, of betrayal, of a history to come that would then be stained by coup, countercoup, revolution, and yet another revolution, a dream for a future nation that, in the end, would be a land as blood-soaked and tyrannical as Europe and the realms of the Eastern potentates.

He held the letter between thumb and forefinger, and then, with a defiant gesture, tossed it to the frozen ground.

“No reply at all to that one, Tench,” he said, his voice husky with emotion.

“Yes, sir.”

“We can no longer count on Congress for our supplies. I will therefore use the authorization given to me. I still have several hundred Dutch dollars in my possession, some English guineas as well. Pass the word to the other officers of some worth that I expect them to make the appropriate contributions as well.”

He hesitated, Tench smiling. Tench, he knew, was a wealthy man, but of a family that this war had torn apart. His father was a king’s official appointee;
all his male siblings and relatives were either serving the Crown forces or wearing the uniform of Loyalist regiments.

“I still have three pounds sterling, sir, and a brooch containing a portrait of my mother mounted in gold that is worth several pounds more.” Tench fell silent for a moment. “Put that in with the rest, sir.”

Washington, his throat constricted with emotion, was afraid to reply.

“Parties to be formed of reliable, trustworthy men who for good measure should be devout Christians as well and not given to thievery. They are to fan out, seeking to purchase supplies for this army, along with all tools necessary for the construction of shelters. I will authorize that if such tools cannot be purchased they are to be borrowed, with receipts given, to be returned once our encampment and proper fortifications have been built.”

“Very good, sir.”

He settled back on the stool. The thin stream of ice water dripping down through the tent from outside was increasing now to a steady cascade. If they had not been in so desperate a situation, there would have been almost a strange, comic quality to the moment. He wondered how General Howe would react if caught in similar circumstances. Undoubtedly a dozen men of various ranks would be expressing their dismay, holding up their cloaks over Howe’s head, thinking themselves to thus be immortalized the way Sir Walter Raleigh had been with the gesture of a cloak laid beneath the feet of a queen.

“Sir.”

It was Billy Lee, half opening the tent flap and peering in.

“What is it, Billy?”

“Dispatch rider reporting in from Major Clark and Colonel Morgan.”

“Show him in.”

Tench stood up to open the flap wide. Washington, at this moment strangely cognizant of his role, remained in his seat, as if under this cascade of ice water he was simply carrying on the routine of a commander in chief. Willing himself to endure the discomfort rather than avoid it. Feeling it as one more proof of the virtuous burden of freedom.

The man came in, walking in a strange, shuffling gait that somehow triggered a memory. Washington stood up, his stool falling backwards. “Old Moses?” he exclaimed.

The man gazed up at him with genuine delight, a toothless smile cracking his face, even offering what he thought was a salute, a quick knuckling of his forehead with his left hand while he produced the dispatch with his right.

Breaking custom, Washington grasped the man’s hand.

Moses was old, at least by the reckoning of the frontier, twenty years ago. As a young man, the general had shared more than one campfire with this unusual frontiersman out along the Ohio, never tiring of hearing his story, which with time became more embellished, of his capture, torture, and scalping by the Shawnee. He had had no idea that this old man, who surely must be an ancient of sixty-five years or more of age, was actually serving with the army.

“General, you got anything to drink? It is colder than the devil’s tail out there.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Nothing but some half coffee, half chickory.”

“Damn, I should have stayed with Dan, he could always find a jug or two, properly, of course, begging your pardon, sir.”

“Maybe one of my men can find you something I’m not aware of,” he offered, nodding to Billy Lee to find a drink for his guest.

Taking the crumpled dispatch, he opened it up. He read slowly at first, but then hurriedly sweeping to the end. He handed it over to Tench, who read it as well. His aide broke into a grin.

“A full brigade?” Washington asked, looking back at Moses. “Yup, sir, seen them myself, and you know I got the sharpest eyes of any man alive, and be damned to my age.”

“I believe you. Now tell me their composition. What units?”

And Moses rattled off the details just as Clark’s letter had reported, a mixed command primarily of light infantry, dragoons, several companies of heavy infantry, perhaps a battalion, more than two hundred wagons—and the most tempting of all…no artillery sighted, and the belief that Howe himself might be with them.

He looked over at Tench.

“Find Generals Greene and Wayne immediately.”

Tench leapt from his chair and ran out to fetch the generals.

“Moses, thank you. I’ll have a reply written to Colonel Morgan for you to take back. Billy Lee will bring you something warm to drink.”

“Thank ya, General.”

Moses looked at him appraisingly.

“And you, barely out from behind your mother’s skirts when I first laid eyes on you, begging your pardon, sir. Knew then you would be an important man some day, God bless ya. Never dreamed it would be this important, though. You’re the future we fight for.”

Embarrassed by this outpouring, and glad that Tench and Billy Lee had not witnessed it, he shook Moses’s hand again and guided him out of the tent.

The two generals came in, each reading the note in turn, but his enthusiasm was not reflected by the gazes they exchanged when they finally passed the note back to him.

“What is it, gentlemen?” he asked.

“Sir,” Wayne asked. “Are you proposing that this army march now, today?”

“I doubt if we could today. Let us see how this raid of Howe’s develops. They might be back across the Schuylkill by nightfall. But if they stay on this side, I would propose we march at midnight, just as we did last year before Trenton. The left wing of the advance to seize the Middle Ford and block retreat. The main body to then fall upon this brigade and defeat it in detail.”

Neither spoke in reply.

“Gentlemen?”

Greene nervously cleared his throat.

“Sir, you rode out there an hour ago. You saw the men.”

“Yes, I saw them.”

“And you heard them.”

He did not reply.

“Sir, this army is finished. It is played out.”

Washington bristled at the blunt words.

“Sir,” Greene quickly replied, “I do not mean played out forever. It is still an army loyal to you. But as an offensive force?”

“They did it last year at Trenton.”

“Sir, at least they had half a meal in their stomachs, and a march of but nine miles. It is more than twenty to Darby. This storm is still rising. Most of the men have not eaten even a single morsel in more than two days. If you try a forced night march, you will lose the entire army before dawn.”

“Lose them? What do you mean lose them?”

Greene hesitated but, ever the blunt-spoken Quaker turned warrior, he would not shy away now.

“Half will collapse and freeze to death. The other half will desert and head for home, looting as they go, and the Revolution will be lost.”

Washington could not reply.

“That is what Howe is all but begging you to do by this raid. We know he has spies among us. They know our situation as well as we do. He is goading us and we must not rise to the taunt.”

The general shifted his gaze to Anthony Wayne. If ever there was an officer in this army thirsting for vengeance it was he. Two months ago, at Paoli, a surprise attack at night had caught him totally unprepared. The attackers were a column of light infantry led by General Grey. Rumors had exploded after the battle that it had in fact been a massacre, though a court of inquiry had found no evidence of actual butchering of prisoners. The terrible injuries of the dead and wounded had been caused when Grey ordered his attacking column to remove the flints from their muskets and go in with bayonet alone in order to avoid the accidental discharge of a weapon and thus give warning to their intended victims.

It had been a swift action at bayonet point, barely a shot fired in return as Wayne’s men panicked and fled, many of them found stabbed in the back.

Grey had even sent a note through the lines denying the reports of the American newspapers of savage butchering of fallen wounded pleading for their lives, pointing out that over a hundred wounded had been taken in and were now being well treated in Philadelphia, which was more than could be said for their comrades who had fled and were now starving in the countryside.

It had been such a nightmare for Wayne that he had demanded a formal court-martial and there had faced down the whisper campaign that he had been drunk and derelict that night.

“I must concur with the judgment of General Greene,” he finally replied. “This army is no longer fit to move another mile in attack or retreat. And if we do not find food by tomorrow morning, by tomorrow night we will have no army at all.”

Washington snatched the dispatch back from Tench and gazed at it with anger. It was a reproach; yes, actually a deliberate taunt by Howe, who knew as well as he did just how desperate he truly was. It was defiance, a parading of British strength before a starving rabble in arms.

Washington turned away from the two, went back to the table, pulled the camp stool back up, and sat down with a sigh. No one spoke.

How could he tell them now of the even grander plan he had already mapped out and tucked in the locked box of secret papers that he would not share even with Tench?

Starting three days ago, just before arriving here, he had sat up late and mapped out a bold plan modeled after Trenton. More than anyone, he knew that the new country needed another such victory as Trenton if this army was to be held together by the first of the following year. Many of the reports he
had requested from Major Clark had been for the purpose of developing this plan. Which men were to be quartered where, would officers live separately from their troops and if so where, how many ships were to be tied off along the wharves and what cargo would they carry.

As at Trenton, the new attack would be launched on Christmas night. Safe and secure in Philadelphia, he knew without doubt that almost every enemy officer would be up late at dances, or in the taverns. The reports from Major Clark and his spies indicated plans were already being openly discussed and anticipated in the city for a night of revelry. Though the Quakers and Presbyterians of the city did not hold much with celebrating Christmas, the English gentry and German officers did, and they were feeling safe in what had been the former capital of the rebels. It would be a time to celebrate.

His plan was for the army to break camp late in the afternoon. Flying columns of the few mounted men left with his command, reinforced by Morgan’s riflemen, would precede the advance, securing every Tory household ahead of the line of march. By the time the army reached the upper fords of the Schuylkill, night would have fallen and the parties within the city would be in full fling.

His men were to ford the river at three different points and then advance at the double. Once into the city it would surely be chaotic, but the chaos would favor his side with the drunken British officers and enlisted men and commanders separated from their units.

Specially designated units of raiders were to move along the wharves, torching every ship moored at the docks. A conflagration would be started that would sweep the length of the waterfront and adjoining warehouses, consuming millions of rations and hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of military supplies.

Once into the city, he would establish headquarters where Congress had once convened. If all went perfectly to plan, by dawn he would there accept the surrender of General Howe. He was pragmatic enough to know, however, that no action ever went according to plan once combat was joined. If he sensed he could not hold the city, he would order a withdrawal…and grim though it must be, the city would be set to the torch as they pulled out.

A grim and terrible act, but in so doing it would force the British to withdraw as best they could after the loss of so much shipping. Their only other escape route would be to march back across Jersey to New York, and in that event he would harass and attack them every inch of the way. It would send a message straight to the king and to all of Europe as well that this Revolution
was far from over. That we are willing, if need be, to destroy even our own capital as an act of final defiance, to then draw back and be ready to pounce yet again and again until the last of our foes left our shores forever.

A city could be rebuilt. Freedom? Freedom, as Thomas Paine had written, was so celestial an object that it could never be purchased cheaply. The destruction of Philadelphia would stand as a statement to the world of just how determined Americans were to see this through to final victory.

That had been his plan for this Christmas night. And now two of his most trusted generals were telling him that even a response to a raid by a single brigade, without artillery and hindered by the need to guard hundreds of wagons, could not be mounted.