To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1 (35 page)

“Again, boys. Hit them again!”

Unable to fire, Jonathan stood there, having to double over for a moment as a coughing seized him.

Coming back upright, he saw where several of the enemy had reloaded. One of them was pointing his musket straight at him.

At least I can do something, Jonathan thought. “He that stands it now . . . ,” and he stood defiant, not cringing as the enemy musket, from a range of less than forty yards, ignited.

For Colonel Rall remembering home as he lay half awake was a rare indulgence. His custom across so many decades of service was to be up an hour before dawn. This day he had drifted off after deciding to shed the damp weight of his jacket. Potts’s servant had come in and piled more wood on the fire to take the chill out of the room and hung the jacket by the fire to dry.

So he had drifted off, half awake, half asleep, the first light of dawn rousing him for a moment. It was time to be up, to have his men fall out for morning parade, but the storm still raged outside, slashing against the windowpanes. He knew that barely a man had slept, having been repeatedly rousted out by the alarms. In his own exhausted state, he decided to let them, and himself, have an hour more of rest. Unlike proper Christians, many of those in this wretched land did not hold to the custom of celebrating Christmas; some, such as the hard-shelled peasants of New England, even asserted it was a pagan holiday and did not observe it at all. His men, however, had stood to arms throughout Christmas Day.

He had half assumed it would be like these people to disrupt a day that most held sacred, and thus he had ordered the men to stand at arms, nothing to drink other than the standard issue, which in this land was not even proper brandy but instead a vile brew made from their corn, and some rum at least halfway decent that had been seized in New York and brought down by supply wagons with his troops.

He thought of that city, settled by the Dutch. They were almost German, and thus a fairly decent sort who were more than glad to be shed of the rebels.

Most of the British army was back there, and their Christmas had been, without a doubt, a time of pleasure, filled with toasts, good food, and warmth, with admiring young ladies of the town joining in.

And we are stuck here, at the edge of the wilderness, in this squalid little village, harassed by damn cowards.

It was some thanks for loyal service. He wondered for the hundredth time why it was that the German troops were sent to the forward edge while the British, whose war this really was, garrisoned the towns at the rear. At least Princeton, where several regiments were now lodged, boasted a semblance of a college and what in this country passed for a library, with several mansions to serve as proper headquarters. Cornwallis rested in Amboy and word had come that he had been granted leave to return to England in thanks for his service. His headquarters had undoubtedly enjoyed Christmas Day as well, for as always British headquarters were well stocked with the best of food, wine even, and ladies, some of dubious virtue, others perhaps of more refinement who could be seen in company at a social occasion without inspiring degrading rumors afterward. He half suspected that, when the time came, it would be the British who went home first, while his own prince hired his unit out for another year of service as garrison troops, unless, with luck, another war began with the Austrians or the French, or, better yet, the great Frederick decided to go on campaign again and rallied some of the various German states to his side.

That thought bothered him. It would be our luck that, even so, we would be stuck here and miss the chance for glory on a proper battlefield, and gone, too, would be his opportunity to rise to the rank of general before retiring. But we are here, the British are safe and secure, and so my prince has ordered it, and I have always obeyed.

It triggered a memory of boyhood, when his father was an officer, garrisoned in a town he could not remember, a memory of another Christmas dinner, the men about the table recalling a battle of the war of the Spanish Succession in which his father had distinguished
himself as a young lieutenant. He retained a warm memory of that snowy night, filled with anticipation of the ceremonial parade of Christmas Day for the pleasure of the Prussian king, with sweetmeats and candy for the children afterward.

He had drifted in thought too long, a sense of duty telling him it was time to rise, to call for poor overworked Münchasen to send word down the street for the men to finish their breakfasts, don uniforms, and muster. But after such a damn miserable night of alarms and false alarms triggered by such maddening cowards, it could wait for a few more minutes.

He closed his eyes.

A distant rattle. Was it the storm?

He half opened his eyes.

A shout of alarm?

Then another rattle. It was musketry. Close.

Damn them! Damn all of them. Another infuriating raid.

He threw back the comforter, bare feet hitting the cold floor, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

And then the door was flung open, a wide-eyed Münchasen rushing in.

“The rebels.”

“Yes, I know, damn it. How many?”

“Their army, sir! It looks like their entire army!”

“Colonel Knox! Bring your guns up here!”

Knox was at the lead, pointing the way to a fair rise of ground that Washington was indicating, the ground sloping up from the center of Trenton a hundred yards away.

It was ideal for a gun position. Washington reined in by Knox’s side, incredulous at the folly, the utter folly, of the enemy he faced. Such a rise of ground should have a redoubt. A simple fortification here, properly made with moat and wall, garrisoned by fifty men and two guns, would have stopped this attack in its tracks. Instead, it was wide-open ground offering a prospect of the entire village.

The sight of it left him with mixed feelings——absolute delight and more confidence in his agents, who had so craftily scouted the ground and reported it to be unguarded, and increased rage that his enemies held him in such contempt that they could not bother to make an effort to take so basic a precaution.

In a few minutes they would learn the folly of that contempt.

The first two guns came on, horses slipping, breaking through the crust of ice, gaining footing; gun crews urged them on, some actually risking a crushed foot or leg as they leaned into the wheels to help the animals up the last dozen feet of the slope.

There was a crackling roar off to the right. Washington turned, facing the sound. A definite volley. Whose?

Then he saw them. Again he wondered if somehow God’s hand was in play at this moment. For the wind had shifted more to the northwest, bringing with it a momentary clearing.

Sullivan’s men!

Deployed into a regiment-wide front, they were sweeping down either side of the River Road, driving a scattering of panicked Hessian pickets and guards before them.

“Load solid shot!” It was Knox. “Make sure your linstocks are lit and glowing!”

Washington turned back.

The first two guns, six-pounders, were being unlimbered. Two gunnery sergeants were swinging their linstocks over their heads. The linstocks were nothing more than short poles with slow-burning match tapers attached to them. The ends of the saltpeter-encrusted tapers on the brass cross trees at the end of the linstocks glowed red hot when whirled about, in spite of the storm. The sergeants had done their jobs well, protecting the precious flames, stowing burning tapers throughout the long march. They were ready. The men turned their backs to the storm, holding the linstocks close in against their bodies to protect the glowing tapers.

Loading crews were tearing open the limber chests, pulling out wooden containers, each one sealed tight, then breaking them open
to grab at one-pound powder charges wrapped in a serge bag. With the sergeants hovering over them they ran the powder charges to the bores of their guns.

Slamming them in, they stepped back, and rammers pushed the charges home. Boys, bringing up the six-pound shot, placed them in the barrels to be rammed down in turn, everything now topped with wadding to keep all in place.

Horns filled with fine-grain powder were uncorked and upended at the touchholes in the breeches of the guns. Behind the guns, Knox paced, then squatted, sighting along the barrels, and shouting for one crew to drop their elevation.

Washington gave a quick glance toward the town when for a moment it was clearly visible. Sullivan was pushing down from the northwest, trading volleys with a thin line of Hessians at the very edge of the village. The enemy was already giving back.

Trenton was not a big town. The two main streets, King and Queen, starting at the end of the road his army had struggled along, spread out at slightly divergent angles, and swept down toward the Delaware. Other streets intersected them at right angles. Just above the river there was a small open square with several side streets radiating out. The distance from where he stood to the river was not much more than six hundred yards, and for a few moments he could almost see it.

He remembered it well from having just marched through it three weeks past, seeking the refuge of the far bank of the Delaware. A barracks from the French and Indian wars loomed high on one of the side streets down near the river and was capable of housing several hundred men. Along the main streets there were several churches, shops, and homes, some of them prosperous three-storied affairs. Beyond them, several wharves lined the river.

In the center of the town, visible for the moment, he could see men stirring, some beginning to emerge from the stone barracks, others pouring out of houses, barns, and warehouses. A knot of soldiers was trying to form into ranks while moving up King Street, and there was
a flag being uncased. No semblance of order yet, but these were Hessians. If they were given a few minutes of breathing room, they would most certainly form up.

He looked back at Knox, but no order needed to be given.

“Ready! Stand clear!” Knox cried.

Gunners jumped back from their pieces.

“Number one, fire!”

One of the sergeants, turned about, arm extended, linstock with burning taper coming down. The burning rope touched the mound of powder over the touchhole of the six-pounder and instantly ignited.

The gun leapt back with a roar even as Knox screamed for the second gun to fire.

The roar of the two guns even overcame the howling of the wind. There was a momentary glimpse of a partial line of Hessians forming and, a second later, scattering, several men going down near the flag.

“That’s it!” Washington roared. “Feed it to them!”

So much was unfolding at once. He scanned the rise of ground and the open fields rimming the town.

Greene’s column was coming up. He was standing tall in the stirrups, sword raised, breaking the column in half, sending a regiment directly toward the town, the men spreading out as they ran, to try to form on the left of Sullivan’s line, which was nearly in the village.

The rest of Greene’s men raced straight toward the low hill where the first guns had deployed, then moved along the hillside to come in behind the artillery and extend the line of attack and envelop the town from the southeast.

The left?

He looked in that direction, south of the town. If the plan had been followed, the fifteen hundred Jersey militia men who were supposed to cross south of Trenton should now charge in. Nothing.

Did they make it across and were they now ready to fall in on his left? He didn’t know.

This was not the time to stop and think about it. Looking down at the village he sensed that now, without doubt, the miracle was real. The way the Hessians were dribbling out of barracks, homes, and shops, many of them milling about in confusion, showed that, for whatever reason, they had been caught completely off guard.

“Knox!”

“Here, sir!”

Knox came running even as the first two guns were reloading.

“Down there!” Washington pointed to the edge of the village where the road split into King and Queen Streets. “I want guns literally on the streets. Sweep them with grapeshot. Bottle them up inside the houses while your guns up here hit the rest of the town!”

Knox grinned like a child who had been told to play a game that would create havoc. He was at last unleashed.

Without taking time to reply, he was off, a giant of man, running full out, waving to the next section of guns to swing down toward the edge of the town.

Meanwhile the two six-pounders fired again, solid shot streaking into the center of town, scattering the Hessians as they tried to form. Several more guns came up to the top of the slope, howitzers, the heavy pieces so laboriously brought across the Delaware and manhandled over Jacob’s Creek. In a few minutes their heavy five-and-a-half-inch shells would be bursting in the village square.

And down in that village he could see two Hessian guns, pulled by teams of horses, trying to move up King Street in order to block the attack, but Knox was already on them, shouting for his gunners to tear the enemy pieces apart.

Hundreds of men were running past him, the men of Greene’s command, shouting, hollering, some heading southward to bottle up the far side of the village, others deploying to support Knox’s guns, which were swinging into position to fire down King and Queen Streets. His heart nearly broke at the sight of the men.

Their passage was marked by blood. Not blood from any wound by bullet or sword. Nearly all were barefoot, and after nine miles of
marching and running toward the fight, their frozen, lacerated feet left splattered trails of blood.

George Washington stood up in his stirrups, sword raised. “Forward, men!” he cried. “Forward!”

Münchasen struggled to help Rall get his wet boots on, Potts’s servant kneeling beside him to help with the other foot. The sharp clap of artillery fire rattled the windows.

Startled, Rall stood up, his left foot not fully into his boot. The artillery could not be his, for the guns were stowed in sheds against the storm. No matter how well drilled his men, it would take long minutes to deploy them.