Victory at Yorktown: A Novel (29 page)

“Proper fortifications are a multiplier of four to one against any frontal attack,” Clinton replied haughtily, as if annoyed by Smith’s comments.

“That number is cancelled if Cornwallis is cut off, and Washington, following procedures that his army has learned well in the last six years, and backed by the best of French engineers, builds proper siege works and traverses to slowly tighten the noose on Cornwallis.”

“Tightening the noose,” the mere mention of that shattered his reverie regarding Elizabeth, causing Allen to inwardly flinch, thinking of the sound of his friend’s neck snapping.

“I urge you, sir, we must move,” Smith said insistently. “You stated before Graves departed that you would not commit our army to Virginia as long as there was doubt as to Washington’s intent. It is not likely that this maneuver across New Jersey is an elaborate ruse to strip out our forces here to send to Cornwallis aid and relief and then Washington and his French allies turn back to take this city. Yet with that thought still in mind, we allowed Graves to sail without a single additional regiment of infantry of the line to aid our gallant friend in Virginia or better yet, some heavy artillery of which we have a surplus here, to counter any siege attempts against him.”

Allen could sense Clinton bristling. A good adjutant was supposed to have the freedom to offer alternatives, suggestions even to debate a decision already made, but it was always a delicate line and many an adjutant, with a few ill-spoken though correct words, found himself at the end of his career on some damn remote island or back home languishing on half pay.

All knew there was no love lost between Clinton and his second in command, the far more dramatic and aggressive Cornwallis. Allen thought that Smith had made a bad move with how he had worded his argument.

“Sir,” Smith continued, and now extended his hand in a gesture of appeal. “This gallant officer standing before us has delivered to us the proof you yourself asked for at our council of war before Graves sailed. Washington and Rochambeau are bound for Yorktown. North of us, at best they have left behind four or five thousand men as skeleton guard to throw us off, and the usual rabble of militia on the Jersey coast. What they have left behind are not their prime troops. Sir, a thousand, fifteen hundred of our men left behind at most, joined by citizens of this city who are loyal, could easily repulse any action they might make. As you yourself just said, good defensive works are a multiplier of four to one. This city could stand against an assault by six thousand or more of their best. I beg you, sir, we have the transports still in the harbor and enough light frigates and sloops to guard them. We could embark tomorrow with the bulk of our troops and all the Hessians if you gave the order now, join with Cornwallis, and end this war once and for all in our favor in front of Yorktown.”

Smith sat back, and Allen dared to give him a glance and made eye contact with the colonel. He could sense the man’s frustration, that he had just ventured all, and Allen agreed with him fully.

Clinton, finished with his breakfast, leaned back in his chair, taking his mug of tea, from the scent of it liberally dosed with some brandy, and sipped the brew. Then ever so slowly shook his head.

“You say that my reaction is filled with ‘ifs’ but so is yours, Colonel Smith. I thank you for the candor and your personal sense of duty and courage to offer such advice that you know runs counter to my thinking.”

He actually offered a smile of reassurance and reached out to pat Smith on the hand.

“It is one of the reasons I retain you; I need men like you to propose alternatives for me to consider. I shall take it under most serious consideration.”

He looked back down at Allen’s brief report and then back to Smith.

“I’ll dispatch a courier ship today to our good friend Cornwallis,” he said, and Allen could hear the touch of disdain in his voice, “to inform him that we have confirmed information that the combined arms of the French and the Americans, to the total of at least ten thousand, are now marching upon him. We shall advise him to prepare proper works to withstand a siege, which, of course, a man of his experience must already be doing.

“Still, as to moving this garrison south to Virginia based upon this?” and he pointed to Allen’s report as he shook his head.

“Yes, I do believe that Washington, in his foolishness, is now embarked upon this venture, but it is just that, a foolish and desperate folly. Backed up by our navy Cornwallis could withstand four times their number, and let the rabble and their lily white–clad allies bleed themselves out. I will not risk all that we hold here in the north of this damn land to defeat an army on the edge of collapse anyhow, somewhere down in the fever swamps of Virginia. Good God, we could lose ten times as many men to the ague or yellow fever, which is still present there until the first heavy frost, as we could to any poorly aimed shot of one of their rabble.”

He slapped the table lightly with an open palm.

“No, my garrison here in this city is the one rock of stability our king holds on this continent and I shall not dare to risk that on assumptions. Besides, we have plenty of time to still decide.”

“Based on what, sir, may I beg to ask?” Smith’s voice clearly indicated exhausted defeat.

Clinton smiled.

“Let us first consider that our noble friends in the navy have not properly disposed of the French fleet. Can you imagine the slaughter if I embark my men and our Hessians on to the transports you refer to, and somewhere down the Jersey coast we run afoul of Barre and his ships of the line? It would be a slaughter. For that reason alone, I will not risk this garrison. It could be that Cornwallis is in no crisis at all, our fleet already having defeated the French navy, but if I follow your advice and then lose this army at sea and thus lose the war?”

He shook his head like an angry bear.

“No, sir,” he snapped, “I will not have history remember me as the army’s equivalent of Byng. No, sir.”

Smith did not reply.

“Write out a dispatch to Cornwallis this morning. Inform him of our latest intelligence and tell him to expect the arrival of Washington and Rochambeau with ten thousand men under arms in a fortnight. My orders are to properly coordinate holding his position at Yorktown, with the navy of course responsible for securing his lines of communications and supply. If the situation warrants that he personally feels he cannot hold, he must then clearly inform me of his distress or fear of failure, and then, and only then, with proper discretion, will I transfer men of this command to reinforce him. When he personally and specifically declares in writing that he has boxed himself into a situation that requires me to intervene on his behalf, then I will do so.”

He looked up at Allen.

“You, Colonel, please rewrite your report clearly, with proper hand, on decent paper as you were trained to do. That report will be included in the dispatch sent to Cornwallis.”

Neither Smith or Allen spoke for a moment, though the glances exchanged between them spoke volumes. The general was covering himself, and putting onto Cornwallis the onus of asking for support to rescue him. If those reinforcements were then ambushed at sea and lost, and with it New York, it would be Cornwallis who must face the king and a possible court-martial, and not Clinton. If then reinforced, finally, and victory achieved, it would be Clinton who had come as the savior to pull Cornwallis’s chestnuts out of the fire, as the Americans say, and the glory to Clinton as well.

Allen stiffened.

“A request, sir.”

“And that is?”

“Let me go with the dispatch ship and report directly to General Cornwallis all that I observed. I think a firsthand report to him from someone who actually observed and followed the enemy forces would be of far more value than a mere written report.”

Clinton took that in, and just continued to gaze at him.

“Why do you volunteer like this?”

He, of course, did not say what he felt in his heart. That he was sick to death of all of this, of three years here in New York, of the way his friend John had died in a miserable effort of stealth to snatch West Point, that a bold force led by a bold leader could have achieved in a damn good proper stand-up fight. He was sick of all of it, and if there was to be action that decided this war he wished to be there where his services would be of greater value.

None of this he said.

“Sir. I think my duties in New Jersey are no longer necessary. It is held by a few militia and nothing more. The main army will be in Virginia and perhaps my experience can be of service to General Cornwallis given the knowledge I have of them.”

Clinton actually forced a smile.

“Not jumping ship are we?”

“No, sir, of course not; the thought never has crossed my mind.” His years of work had taught him to at least be a halfway decent liar some of the time.

“Go then.”

He formally saluted, catching the eye of Colonel Smith, and thought he caught the flicker of a smile.

“I’ll arrange a courier ship to depart with the tide this afternoon,” Smith said. “Remain here for now and once I’ve finished the dispatches you can carry them. God go with you, Colonel van Dorn.”

Withdrawing, Allen was glad to be out of that room, already stifling with the rising morning heat. To get out of here would be a damn blessing, he thought as he walked down the steps of the mansion, out onto the lawn. Looking about he thought to hell with decorum and a proper display at all times of a proper officer in service to the king. He picked out the shade of a willow tree not unlike the one in the painting of the two lovers. He knew it’d take several hours for all the dispatches and orders to be written out and properly stamped and sealed.

To hell with propriety, he thought as he leaned back against the tree. The view across the East River could almost be considered romantic, except for the fact that down the river, within view, were where the accursed prison hulks sat. Fortunately the wind was not coming from their direction and carrying with it the fetid stench of that hell.

He took off his hat, wiped his sweating brow with the sleeve of his heavy wool uniform, leaned back, closed his eyes, and thought of Elizabeth—what it would be like to have her by his side now, as she was but a few days ago—and he drifted into an exhausted sleep.

ON THE ROAD BETWEEN HEAD OF ELK, MARYLAND, AND CHESTER, PENNSYLVANIA

SEPTEMBER 5, 1781

He still felt guilt over what he had done. Perhaps it was the perverted hunger in the eyes of the Philadelphia militiaman, never obvious in a real battle, but the sick kind of man who took delight in watching another man die, the type that enjoyed a “good hanging.”

Did he spare him out of a friendship he could not fully break? Was it pity for the fear in Elizabeth’s eyes, a cousin he had loved at a distance since still a lad and the war had yet to come? Was it disgust with the all but drooling militia man eager to see a killing, or as he tried to assuage his guilt now, a sense of what General Washington had implied the night before at a council of war that he had attended? The army had cleared New Jersey without incident, and it no longer mattered what Clinton knew, if anything, in New York. He kept trying to tell himself that had been the reason. It would have taken Allen a day and a half, more likely two or even three days, to get back to New York, if he could successfully dodge the patrols. By then they would be on the march again, approaching the northern shore of the Chesapeake. Let Clinton then wander into New Jersey after them; they had a two-week lead. The deeper Clinton ventured into Jersey the more he would be dogged by militia cutting up his supply lines. Let them. If Clinton turned north to try to take West Point, that was a risk he was willing to take. If he now tried to reach Cornwallis and the French fleet failed to appear, or worse yet, were destroyed, then all was moot anyhow. So let them know.

Perhaps, he reasoned yet again, that is why he did not go up that flight of stairs. The general was all but saying they were clear of the deadly threat of marching directly past Clinton in New York. They had not stirred and now nothing could stop this army from linking up with Greene and Lafayette in Virginia.

“Rider coming.”

Peter stirred from his depressed musing and looked up. The day, like nearly every day of this march, was one of oppressive heat and dust. The column of the American troops was stringing out, standard march discipline having broken down from the heat and exhaustion. Men shuffled along at their own pace, step after step, a thousand paces to the mile, five hundred miles, one million paces. Those broken down from the heat and illness lined the road, especially around bottomland muddy creeks, where they could find cool air and a soak to cool off, before donning gear and falling back into the ranks.

Thanks to the miracle of Robert Morris, the talk of refusing to advance farther had been stilled. Though when the men had formed up to be paid, and only received on average a month and a half’s worth in hard cash, it had been enough to still the voices of some who had been whispering about marching back on Philadelphia and looting the “rich bastards” clean and then go home. Of the men remaining in the ranks, everyone was there because he was there to make the march, and unless dropped by exhaustion, would press on. Washington had given orders for provost guards to go lightly, to issue passes freely if need be, and more than one provost had surrendered his saddle, often with two exhausted men mounted, while the provost held the bridle and led his mount. He had seen many a good officer, doing the same, surrendering the symbol and privilege of rank to an exhausted young private. That was now another thing about this army of Revolution. The haughty officers, the ones so full of themselves with their rank and privileges, men like Gates and Charles Lee, had long ago been driven from this army. Those that remained were men who knew how to lead and inspire. Sergeants, which was too often the rank of bullies in other armies and had been in this one at the start, were now mostly older men, often of fatherly demeanor, who shouldered a staggering private’s musket and pack to encourage him to try for just for a few more miles and stay in the ranks.