Fusiliers (25 page)

Having fortified their camp, and built log cabins – each to accommodate twelve soldiers – the Continentals set about dealing with a complete collapse of their supply system. Washington directed his men to forage the surrounding countryside, taking by force if necessary the food and clothing they needed to survive. ‘Such procedures’, he warned the President of Congress, ‘may give a momentary relief but if repeated will prove of the most pernicious consequence … not only ruinous to the inhabitants but in many instances to the armies themselves.’

So great were the hardships of the army’s winter at Valley Forge that around one quarter of the 10,000 men billeted there were lost to their regiments. Many died from smallpox and other diseases that ravaged the encampment while others wandered off, unable to bear it any longer.

Although British troops threatened Valley Forge on a couple of occasions, the loss of direction in Howe’s army and news of the supercession of that general meant Washington’s quarters were never seriously in danger.

As 1778 got under way and weather improved, a thoroughgoing programme of training was instituted: ‘it was one constant drill’. With such a large proportion of the Continental Army united in one place, the perfect opportunity presented itself for imposing some standard procedures and manoeuvres. Washington’s bitter experiences with the militiamen of New England or New York led him to believe in a professional army, and he strove to make the troops at Valley Forge fully as proficient as the redcoats. He aped some of their practices, too, creating light infantry companies in each regiment that might be banded together into larger corps. In this way Howe’s success in creating his light battalions, a step taken in response to American tactics, was itself so successful that it prompted Washington to imitate it.

One of those being marched about the training ground of Valley Forge as the longer days began to ease winter’s grip on the land was
William Hewitt who had deserted the 23rd Fusiliers in Boston three years earlier. Hewitt had settled initially in Ipswich, New Hampshire, where he had joined the militia. By early 1778 he had forsaken civilian life and joined the 7th Company of the 1st New Hampshire Regiment. Hewitt undoubtedly felt there was justice in the Patriot cause, but was this all that had caused him to resume the harsh life of a soldier?

For many of the men at Valley Forge, their motives for service were undoubtedly similar to those of British foot-sloggers: the army offered them booze, food and clothing, as well as affording the prospect of adventure. Payment was always a source of difficulty, since the paper money issued by Congress continually depreciated. Some men were lured by the promise of land when the war ended. That perhaps was one of the American army’s secrets: it provided its privates with just enough to keep them going, but continually held out the prospect of a brighter future; of a thumping backlog of pay, of land, and of course of ‘Liberty’.

The men who were serving at Valley Forge were, therefore, for the most part very different to the yeoman farmers or tradesmen who chased Percy’s brigade back to Boston in April 1775. They were closer to the margins of society, more similar to the rank and file of the British army. For this reason, the traffic of deserters became more of a two-way phenomenon. New corps formed from American loyalists began to harvest hundreds of deserters from the Patriot cause.

If the American army became more like those of European powers in its recruitment, so Washington sought to impose discipline in the customary manner. His men became subject more often to the gallows and the lash. The election of officers might still take place in some militia regiments, but in the Continental Army its chief had instilled a system of regular military subordination. This, combined with the intensive tactical training given them during that winter meant that Washington felt confident that his regiments would be ready to attack the British when they quit Philadelphia.

The scene that unfolded on the Delaware on the night of 18 May 1778 proved sensational – Philadelphians would talk about it for decades and it even produced calls for an inquiry in the House of Commons. General Howe was that night brought up the river in an open barge with his suite; Sir Henry Clinton – his successor – was likewise afloat, as were Lieutenant General Knyphausen, the ranking Hessian officer,
and numerous other grand personages. The guest of honour was taken from a jetty through a triumphal arch garlanded with flowers and into handsome gardens where a medieval spectacular, called the
Mischianza
or Medley, had been laid out.

Mingling about the gardens were officers dressed as knights, with flowing capes, feathered helms and shields bearing ancient family arms. Local damsels, similarly accoutred in lavish fancy dress, gave tokens to their champions who enacted jousts in front of them. Nothing was stinted in laying on the finest music, wines and food that could be procured.

Captain Smythe, who had been out on a fighting expedition with the light infantry until just a couple of days before, wandered through it all in fancy dress, eyes wide in wonderment. Smythe called it ‘a most pompous piece of pageantry and parade, the expense reckoned three thousand guineas’. Four officers, among them two of the Guards and Howe’s engineer, Captain Montresor (who would later plead impoverishment), footed most of the bill.

‘I do not believe’, wrote Major John Andre of Howe’s staff, ‘there is upon record an instance of a commander-in-chief having so universally endeared himself to those under his command.’ Balfour might have agreed, but many would have differed. The fireworks that boomed over America’s principal city that night sounded the end of Howe and his misguided idea that threatening Philadelphia would produce a decisive battle or indeed that taking it would provide a mortal blow to the prestige of the revolutionary leaders.

Instead the failure of the 1777 campaign produced a worldwide crisis for the British Empire. It had emboldened France, then Spain and the Netherlands, to join the onslaught against England’s colonies and interests. As the army prepared to quit Philadelphia, the wisdom of driving into the continent had been demolished but the strategy that Howe’s critics had advocated as an alternative, that of crippling the rebel economy through sea-based raiding, had begun to look dubious too.

Powerful French and Spanish fleets were preparing to contest the high seas. Ministers in London knew that a great portion of the army in America would have to be sent to the Caribbean to protect Britain’s spice islands there. This was the dismal strategic panorama opening up for Henry Clinton, the new commander-in-chief, as he downed his wine or chewed over his beef at the
Mischianza
.

Through most of the preceding winter Smythe and others had
regarded imminent peace as ‘the constant topick’. It had not come, and with the spring thaw the young Fusilier captain began thinking about the host that ‘Mr Washington’ had gathered and re-trained at Valley Forge, wondering when and where that general intended to ‘collect the formidable army that is to be offensive’. Smythe was right to be concerned.

What the campaign of 1778 promised the British army was a fight against dramatically worse odds. Within months the 23rd would see action both against Washington’s army and the French. Under their new commanding officer, the Royal Welch Fusiliers had at least been given someone able to lead, someone able to complete its resurrection as a fighting regiment.

 

THIRTEEN

 

Or How Corporal Roger Lamb Declined American Hospitality

Colonel Henley, the American commandant, was known to the inmates of Prospect Hill barracks as a tyrant. True, his job was not the easiest, superintending thousands of British soldiers taken at Saratoga, for they frequently gave little signs of their disdain for the American nation. But Henley returned their contempt with interest, as well as showing himself capable of brutality. One winter’s morning, Henley arrived on horseback at the guardhouse.

The inmates of the makeshift brig, one dozen redcoats including two corporals, were lined up for inspection. Colonel Henley approached them while still mounted, and asked one of the guards why the first man, Corporal Reeves, had been locked up. It was for abusing a Continental officer.

‘What was the reason of your abuse?’ Henley asked.

Reeves replied that he had been in liquor at the time so could hardly remember, was very sorry, and anyway could not recognise the man in question as an officer. Was this a dig at the authority of the man Reeves had sworn at? What followed escalated quickly into a violent confrontation between men speaking the same language but who had grown in a couple of short years to consider themselves utterly different.

At this point, the American commandant tried to end this tense confrontation, turning his attention to the next detainee, Corporal Buchanan of the 9th.

At this point, Colonel Henley exploded in anger and ordered one of his guards to run through Reeves with his bayonet. Nobody obeyed this command. Seeing his men struck immobile, Henley leapt from his horse, grabbed one of their muskets and levelled it at Reeves’s chest.

The Colonel lunged forward with the musket, stabbing the bayonet into Reeves’s chest. The prisoner started back to save himself, so the blade did not go deep.

As Reeves repeated his defiance again, Henley tried to make good his threat with a further lunge, but Corporal Buchanan grabbed the weapon and parried it. Thwarted, Henley ordered the prisoners taken back to their cells.

Matters came to a head once more on 8 January 1778. Henley had paraded the guard at Prospect Hill fort. There were about seventy American soldiers lined up. An audience of 300 or so redcoats had watched the proceedings and began as a crowd to move closer to their custodians until they were actually pressing in on them. The incident with Corporal Reeves had evidently gone around the camp and whetted the appetite for confrontation. When the Americans tried to grab one of the Britons from the crowd, the inmates hauled him back, which produced ‘a good deal of laughing and jeering’. Henley ordered the guard to load their muskets and level them at the men just a few
feet in front. He called out that he would blow out the brains of anyone who attempted another rescue, commanding them to disperse.

The British soldiers began to trudge away from Henley’s men but not without some jeering of ‘damn Yanks’ and other insults. Nettled once more, Henley rushed forward ordering them to move faster. When his command was unheeded by the truculent soldiers he attacked them with his sword, plunging it so hard into the arm of one corporal that he bent the blade. There were further volleys of derision while Henley knelt and, comically, tried to straighten his sword blade over his knee.

These incidents served to show that the Saratoga men were near mutiny by early 1778 but were also evidence of the lively hatred between peoples. Rank and file redcoats did not in these moments of danger adopt the officers’ language of Whig and Tory, but instead declared themselves patriots fighting for King and Country. They considered their enemies a different nation.

Following these violent incidents, which shocked even some of the people of Boston, the Americans acceded to British demands that Henley be brought to a court martial for his brutality. However, he was acquitted by his American fellow-officers.