Victory at Yorktown: A Novel (15 page)

The prophetic report that Colonel Wellsley had carried to him back in early spring had, indeed, come to pass. Cornwallis’s campaign to subdue the huge landmass of Georgia and the Carolinas was an exercise in folly that Greene had immediately learned to exploit, all but begging Cornwallis to venture into Virginia.

Why he had not made such an obvious move earlier, Washington wondered? The fertile belt of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey was the breadbasket of the Revolution. Some of the strongest contingents of troops had come from these states as well. Ravage their homelands, and the Virginia line would have collapsed. Why had he not done so earlier and with the forces he had at his command prior to Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and the bruising confrontation Greene had offered him at Guilford Court House?

Again, was it because of a war office trying to run a continent-sized conflict from nearly four thousand miles away that they were so hampered?

All the British really had to do was simply to dig in at New York and some place in the mid-South, raid out when possible, wear us down as they had been doing. Then a meddlesome Empress Catherine or some other monarch would announce a grand peace conference and many in Congress would fall all over themselves to rush to it. As for himself, if such was the case, he would resign, take those men who would never surrender, head out to the Ohio lands, and perhaps in a generation, try again.

But now, this? This undreamed of turn of events? It seemed that finally a French admiral had pierced the veil of the true grand strategy of this war? He sat back in his chair, in front of Rochambeau, Alexander, and even the courier, who still stood rigid as if expecting to immediately receive a return dispatch. He put his spectacles on, something that only a trusted few ever witnessed him doing, and slowly read through the letter, stumbling here and there, a bit embarrassed asking Alexander to provide translation.

There was one line that Alexander, in his enthusiasm, had not announced. Admiral le Grasse said that upon arrival off the “Cape of the Bay of the Chesapeake” he would hold station for six weeks, but then orders from his own admiralty office and the king would compel him to return to the Caribbean once the hurricane season had passed. He looked at the dating of the letter, dispatched by fast courier frigate at the start of August. It was now August 14, so it was fair to wonder if some unforeseen disaster in his passage—a hurricane or violent storm or misnavigation that could put half a fleet aground on a dark night, or an encounter with an unsuspected British fleet—might have prevented him from being there at all. At this moment the twenty-eight ships of the line, the three thousand troops, the chests filled with freshly minted livres to pay his troops, and twenty thousand sailors, might be lost in a storm off Cape Hatteras, or have turned back or fled to safety in France.

There was no clue to their whereabouts, other than this one note.

He hesitated, then handed it to Rochambeau.

“I regret to question the veracity of this letter,” he said, “but can you verify it?”

Rochambeau nodded, carefully taking the letter, holding it up to the shaded light from the window to examine the watermark and the secret coding within the water mark personally assigned to each admiral of the French fleet and no other, holding it close to examine the script, looked at the courier and asked if he had personally received it from the captain of the French ship. The courier said he had, and Rochambeau, smiling, handed it back.

“It is the truth.”

He had never been demonstrative, but this time Washington let out a sigh of relief. His hopes had soared in the last few minutes, but then long years of war, of spy and counterspy, ruse and counter-ruse of which he himself was a master had come rushing in. This could be an elaborate British forgery to try to stir him into an action, and into a trap that could be disastrous. One defeat of his army in the field would be a disaster that would, without doubt, end their cause.

If de Grasse’s promise was true, contrary to all the nightmares he had harbored but a scant hour ago, there was just a chance—a vague, one-in-a-hundred chance. Throughout history all military men knew that the coordination of land to sea forces, especially across vast distances, challenged even the best of generals and admirals. The vagaries of wind, tide, storms, faulty charts, miscommunications, the often tragic inability of one service to understand the needs and timing of the other, had seen to it that few such plans come to fruition. What about this one?

When the dispatch had been sent forward, de Grasse was nearly three thousand miles away. Who knew what he might have encountered since then to thwart his promise?

To make a decision based on this one letter? He stood up and stared out the upper panes of the window not concealed by the shutters. Could he ask this army to endure one more winter without any hope of an end in sight? Then another Valley Forge, another Morristown, when nearly half the army had mutinied because of no pay and lack of food, or even shoes, and had afterward deserted by the hundreds, declaring the cause was lost? What Lafayette and Greene had positioned against Cornwallis in Virginia could in no way stop him if he decided to launch an early fall spoiling campaign to ravage the harvests from Fredericksburg to Petersburg and perhaps, as well, lure Lafayette into a defeat against superior odds.

It all came down to this letter.

There was a polite tap on the door. Colonel Laurens, whose father was president of Congress and who had just returned, himself, from service as ambassador to France, entered, followed by his secretary William Smith and Peter Wellsley, who again handled spying and intelligence in his native state of New Jersey.

Hamilton, invoking the strictest confidentiality, read de Grasse’s dispatch to them and all stood silent, awed.

He could see Colonel Wellsley barely able to contain his excitement, like a child gazing at a long anticipated missive that promised some great reward.

“Your thoughts, Colonel?” Washington asked.

“It is exactly as General Greene had hoped for after the battle at Guilford. To drive Cornwallis north and now into this trap,” he quickly looked over at Rochambeau, “that our gallant French allies now give unto us the opportunity to complete.”

He did not add in front of Rochambeau that it was what he hoped Thomas Paine and Laurens would urge the French king to do as well. Perhaps they had played a hand in this as well.

Washington nodded deferentially to Rochambeau, then turned to those gathered and uncharacteristically, he smiled.

“Gentlemen, in light of this startling news, I propose the following plan.”

Six

NEW YORK

AUGUST 16, 1781

The day was already turning scorching hot as Lt. Colonel Allen van Dorn, of the staff of General Clinton, slowly rode up the “Broad Way” of New York City. It was a typical marketing day. During the night, drovers from New Jersey and Long Island had ferried across pigs, goats, sheep, and a score of cattle, and were driving them to the holding pens where they would be slaughtered. This evening, they would be on the plates of the seven thousand men of His Majesty’s army who occupied this city and the ten thousand sailors idling at anchor aboard the score of ships of the line and dozens of lesser craft, from light sloops to frigates, lying in the lower harbor off Staten Island.

Carts, loaded with the early harvest of late summer and drawn by slow oxen, made their way up the road, piled with Indian corn, cabbages, and other fresh vegetables. Also sacks of wheat for the bakeries of the army and the nearly thirty thousand civilians who lived under military occupation and military law.

It was nearly five years ago that His Majesty’s army had occupied this city after the pathetic resistance of Washington’s rabble. A fair part of the city had burned only days after Washington’s retreat. Both sides blamed the other for the conflagration, but after five years, with the king’s money pouring in, the trade created by an occupying army, and the need to support and supply the armada of war and supply ships, the city had actually prospered under military rule. The hundreds of burned houses, mansions, taverns, dives, brothels, and warehouses had long since been rebuilt, and with each passing year the city spread another block or two northward up from lower Manhattan.

The only signs of war here were the fortifications and batteries in what even before the war was called “Battery Park,” the ever-present ships of war at anchor, the hundreds of red British uniforms and blue Hessian garb of soldiers granted leave for a day to quench their thirst for rum, beer, schnapps, or women. Officers, far more refined, had taken to early morning or evening carriage rides with their mistresses, and even, in some cases, their new American wives. They rode up from their quarters to the lush countryside around the Harlem Heights for a dignified picnic and to watch the sunset beyond the Palisades of New Jersey.

Before the horrific affair with his friend Andre, Allen’s missions often carried him across the river to those heights and beyond, venturing at times as far as the Watchung Hills and the Short Hills a dozen miles west of Elizabethtown, especially when Washington’s army was encamped but twenty miles farther on at Morristown.

He had been present at the disastrous Battle of Springfield in June of last year, the last foray with significant troops into New Jersey. It was a bungled affair—humiliating, actually—as Continentals led by Mad Anthony Wayne, still thirsting for revenge for what they called the “massacre” at Paoli, along with a swarm of Jersey militia had driven them back. He had barely escaped with his own life when Light Horse Harry Lee had led the Rebel cavalry in a charge around the flank. That, and the base capture of his friend John Andre, had led General Clinton to order him to remain in Manhattan for fear of his own capture or death. Among the New Jersey militia in particular he was recognized as “that damn Loyalist from Trenton,” and contrary to the profile he needed, all knew that he was now responsible for coordinating efforts of British spying and the blocking of Rebel spies in what had once been his home colony.

Before dawn, he had met with his “usual agents” in an upper story room of a slop house just off of Battery Park, typically frequented by drunken sailors and those who preyed upon them. The crowd included the drover known to him only as “Crazed George,” a slatternly woman, “Fat Dianne,” from Elizabethtown, an honest preacher from Chatham disgusted with the God-cursed depredations of the Rebels upon honest men and women still loyal, and a shrewd lad simply known as Edward, who did odd chores around the militia camps occupying Elizabethtown and Newark, and would then slip across the river at night for his half crown pay in exchange for the latest gossip.

Allen had labored over his daily reports, now neatly tucked into his breast pocket. He trotted past a couple of carriages at the edge of the city, filled with officers and their “ladies,” more than a few already in their cups though it was not even midmorning but observant to salute a superior when necessary. After all, even after five years of service, and his known friendship with Andre, all knew he was “merely” a Loyalist—a colonial—and the slightest breech of etiquette would surely be spoken of loudly within earshot of Clinton.

Sprawled under an apple tree just outside the limits of the city he saw two soldiers passed out cold. He edged off the road and approached them, wondering for a moment if they were dead. It was a common enough occurrence, usually blamed on Rebel scum and spies, but more often than not it had been a “soldier’s fight” to settle a score over a hand of cards or some woman. Other times, the notorious cut-purses and thieving gangs, who did not give a damn which army was in this city, would fall upon a couple of drunks to rob.

These two were simply drunk and sleeping it off.

“You two, wake up!” he snapped.

One half-opened his eyes, shading them against the early morning sun, and groaned.

The man sat up, kicking his companion in the side as he came to his feet, looked at Allen, and realized he was an officer.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” he said as he offered a wobbly salute.

“Get back to your regiment.”

“And the time, if I may ask, your honor?”

“Long past morning roll.”

“Christ in heaven,” the second soldier sighed, barely able to stand. “’Tis a flogging for sure.”

“Worse, if you don’t get back now,” Allen replied without rancor. If they were lucky, maybe a sergeant had covered for them at morning roll and the usual bribe paid afterward. If not, it was twelve lashes for being drunk and absent without leave.

He rode on, looking back over his shoulder at the two pathetic men, one of them stopping to lean over and vomit, the other then pulling him along. From the sound of them, they were Irish, had taken the king’s shilling to escape the poverty of that isle, with little heart in this war other than the fact it was what they were paid to do.

As he rode on and crested a low rise, morning mist was rising off the Hudson to his left, and the East River to his right. The view to his right was not a pleasant one. There were the prison ships, in which thousands of men had died of starvation, disease, and neglect. His old friend Peter had legitimately spoken of them with heartfelt bitterness when last they met, on the day John Andre died.

Allen, as a Loyalist now trusted by Clinton himself, had appealed several times, trying to persuade the commanding general that removing the surviving men to dry land, to offer good rations, clothing, and medical care, to parole home those men who were obviously too infirm or injured to ever fight again, and to symbolically burn those damn ships to the waterline would be a message of reconciliation that would echo far and wide. It would even serve as an indicator that their side wished for this war to end with a fair peace.

His last appeal had been met with incredulous disbelief, mockery, and even reproach. General Grey, under whom he had served at Paoli, had snapped, “I thought you were Andre’s friend? After what they did to him, I thought you’d want to see every damn Rebel hanged, or are you growing soft, van Dorn?”