Complete Works of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  At two o’clock MacMahon’s left wing was completely surrounded by the enemy, but moving forward on the right he boldly turned the Austrian front, and swept everything before him to the village of San Cassiano, adjoining Cavriana. The village was attacked on both sides and carried by Laure’s Algerian sharpshooters; but the Austrians still held Monte Fontana, which unites San Cassiano to Cavriana, and repulsed Laure’s men with deadly skill.

  Reinforced, they made a splendid dash and took Monte Fontana, but the Prince of Hesse brought up reserves and won it back for the Austrians. Napoleon now ordered Mac Mahon to push forward his whole corps to support the attack, and as Manêque’s brigade and Mellinet’s grenadiers had succeeded in routing the enemy from Monte Sacro, they were ordered to advance on Cavriana.

  Lebœuf placed the artillery of the Guard at the opening of the valley facing Cavriana, and Laure’s Algerian sharpshooters after a prolonged hand-to-hand conflict with the Prince of Hesse’s men carried Cavriana at four o’clock. Two hours later Napoleon was resting in the Casa Pastore, where the Austrian emperor had slept the night before. The sultry glare of the day had culminated in a wild, black storm; the wind was a hurricane, and it was under torrents of rain that the Austrians made their retreat, while the thunder drowned the noise of Marshal Niel’s cannon driving them from every stand they made.

  Such overwhelming numbers had been brought to bear on the French that day that their defeat would have been almost certain if it had not been for Napoleon’s generalship and his modern rifled guns. These were new to the Austrians, who became panic-stricken at their effect.

  The Piedmontese troops, under their “Rè Galantuomo,” fought as nobly as their brilliant allies that day. The young Emperor Francis Joseph commanded in person at San Martino, but it was Benedek that Victor Emmanuel had to reckon with — the best general of all the Austrian staff. He beat him out of San Martino, and to the Italians the combat of June 24 is known as the Battle of San Martino to this day.

  The scorching sun of next morning shone upon twenty-two thousand ghastly dead. It has been believed that the horrible sights and scents of this battlefield sickened the emperor and cut short the campaign; but who can tell? Was it perhaps Eugenie’s influence — always used in favour of the pope? Or was it that he realised that the movement could now only end in the complete liberation of Italy — a consummation that he regarded with horror? All that is known is this: three days after the Austrians had been driven back to their own country, and while all Italy went mad with joy at the victory, while Mrs. Browning was writing her “Emperor Evermore” — a cruel satire on later events; — it became known that Napoleon had sent a message to the Austrian kaiser asking him to suspend hostilities.

  The two emperors met at Villafranca, a small place near Solferino. At the close of their interview Francis Joseph looked humiliated and sombre — Louis Napoleon was smilingly at ease. He, the parvenu, had made terms with a legitimate emperor, and was pleased with himself. He had arranged that Lombardy was to be united to Piedmont, while Venetia remained Austrian. When Victor Emmanuel was told of these terms he could only say coldly that he must ever remain grateful for what Napoleon had done, but he murmured “Poor Italy!”

  And Cavour? Cavour was struck to the heart. Had he arranged such a finale as this with the upstart emperor — that he should leave the game when it suited his pleasure, and make terms with the Austrian emperor all by himself — insolently disregarding Victor Emmanuel? He wept with grief and anger. He left at once for the camp, and there he told the emperor his opinion of him in stinging words. He begged his king to repudiate the treaty and reject Lombardy, but Victor Emmanuel, although as bitterly disappointed as Cavour, felt that he must be prudent for his people’s sake.

  Angered at the king’s refusal, Cavour resigned his office and retired to his farms at Lèri, but after a few months he was back in his old place in the cabinet. All his hopes and ambitions came back — although physically the shock had broken him — and he laboured for Italy till his death in June of 1861. The whole Italian people, from king to peasant, knew that they had lost their best friend. But Cavour’s life-work was nearly finished. Garibaldi had taken up the work of emancipation where Napoleon had abandoned it, and before he left him for ever, to Cavour was given the triumph of hearing his beloved master proclaimed King of Italy.

  THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL

  ON the 12th of June, 1775, Captain Harris, afterwards Lord Harris, wrote home from the town of Boston, then occupied by British troops:

  “I wish the Americans may be brought to a sense of their duty. One good drubbing, which I long to give them, by way of retaliation, might have a good effect towards it. At present they are so elated by the petty advantage they gained the 19th of April, that they despise the powers of Britain. We shall soon take the field on the other side of the Neck.”

  This very fairly expressed the irritation in the British camp. The troops had been sent to Massachusetts to subdue it, but as yet nothing had been done in that direction.

  The ignominious flight of the British regulars from Lexington and Concord was still unavenged. More than that, they had been kept close in Boston ever since by the provincial militia.

  “What!” cried General Burgoyne when on his arrival in May he was told this news. “What! Ten thousand peasants keep five thousand King’s troops shut up? Let us get in, and we’ll soon find elbow-room!”

  “Elbow-room” was the army’s name for Burgoyne after that.

  A little later General Gage remarked to General Timothy Ruggles, “It is impossible for the rebels to withstand our arms a moment.”

  Ruggles replied: “Sir, you do not know with whom you have to contend. These are the very men who conquered Canada. I fought with them side by side. I know them well; they will fight bravely. My God, sir, your folly has ruined your cause!”

  Besides Burgoyne, the Cerberus brought over Generals Clinton and Howe, and large reinforcements, so that the forces under General Gage, the commander-in-chief, were over ten thousand. By June 12 the army in Boston was actually unable to procure fresh provisions, and Gage proclaimed martial law, designating those who were in arms as rebels and traitors.

  The Essex Gazette of June 8 says: “We have the pleasure to inform the public that the Grand American Army is nearly completed.” This Grand American Army was spread around Boston, its headquarters at Cambridge, under command of General Artemas Ward, who had fought under Abercromby. The Grand American Army was an army of allies. Ward, its supposed chief, was authorised to command only the Massachusetts and New Hampshire forces, and when the Connecticut and Rhode Island men obeyed him it was purely through courtesy. Each colony supplied its own troops with provisions and ammunition; each had its own officers, appointed by the Committee of Safety.

  To this committee, June 13, came the tidings that Gage proposed to occupy Bunker Hill, in Charlestown, on the 18th, and a council of war was held, which included the savagely bluff, warm-hearted patriot, General Israel Putnam, of the Connecticut troops; General Seth Pomeroy; Colonel William Prescott; the hardy, independent Stark; and Captain Gridley, the engineer — all of whom were veterans of the French and Indian war.

  As a result of the meeting, a detachment of nine hundred men of the Massachusetts regiments, under Colonels Prescott, Frye, and Bridge, with two hundred men from Connecticut, and Captain Gridley s artillery company of forty-nine men and two field-pieces, were ordered to parade at six o’clock P.M., the 16th, on Cambridge Common. There they appeared with weapons, packs, blankets, and entrenching tools. President Langdon, of Harvard College, made an impressive prayer, and by nine o’clock they had marched, the entire force being under the command of Colonel Prescott.

  A uniform of blue turned back with red was worn by some of the men, but for the most part they wore their “Sunday suits” of homespun. Their guns were of all sorts and sizes, and many carried old-fashioned powder - horns and pouches. Prescott walked at their head, with two sergeants carrying dark lanterns, unt
il they reached the Neck.

  The Neck was the strip of land leading to the peninsula opposite Boston, where lay the small town of Charlestown. The peninsula is only one mile in length, its greatest breadth but half a mile. The Charles River separates it from Boston on the south, and to the north and east is the Mystic River. Bunker Hill begins at the isthmus and rises gradually to a height of one hundred and ten feet, forming a smooth round hill.

  At Cambridge Common, the night the troops started for Bunker Hill, Israel Putnam had made this eloquent address: “Men, there are enough of you on the Common this evening to fill hell so full of the redcoats to-morrow that the devils will break their shins over them.”

  At Bunker Hill the expedition halted, and a long discussion ensued between Prescott, Gridley, Major Brooks, and Putnam as to whether it would be better to follow Ward’s orders literally and fortify Bunker Hill itself, or to go on to the lesser elevation south-east of it, which is now known as Breed’s Hill, but had then no special name. They agreed upon Breed’s Hill. They began to entrench at midnight.

  Prescott was consumed with anxiety lest his men should be attacked before some screen could be raised to shelter them. However enthusiastic they might be, he did not think it possible for his raw troops to meet to any advantage a disciplined soldiery in the open field.

  So the pickaxe and the spade were busy throughout the night. It was silent work, for the foe was near. In Boston Harbour lay the Lively, the Somerset, the Cerberus, the Glasgow, the Falcon, and the Symmetry, besides the floating batteries. On the Boston shore the sentinels were pacing outside the British encampment. At intervals through the night Prescott and Brooks stole down to the shore of Charles River and listened till the call of “All’s well!” rang over the water from the ships and told them that their scheme was still undiscovered.

  At dawn the entrenchments were six feet high, and there was a great burst of fire at them from the Lively, which was joined in a few moments by the other men-of-war and the batteries on Copp’s Hill, on the Boston shore.

  The strange thunder of the cannonade brought forth every man, woman, and child in Boston. Out of their prim houses they rushed under trellises heavy with damask roses and honeysuckle, and soon every belfry and tower, house-top and hill-top, was crowded with them. There the most of them stayed till the thrilling play in which they had so vital an interest was enacted.

  Meanwhile Prescott, to inspire his raw men with confidence, mounted the parapet of the redoubt they had raised, and deliberately sauntered around it, making jocular speeches, until the men cheered each cannon-ball as it came.

  Gage, looking through his field-glasses from the other shore, marked the tall figure with the three-cornered hat and the banyan — a linen blouse — buckled about the waist, and asked of Councillor Willard, who stood near him —

  “Who is the person who appears to command?”

  “That is my brother-in-law, Colonel Prescott.”

  “Will he fight?”

  “Yes, sir; he is an old soldier, and will fight as long as a drop of blood remains in his veins.”

  “The works must be carried,” said Gage.

  Gage was strongly advised by his generals to land a force at the Neck and attack the Americans in the rear. It was also suggested that they might be bombarded by the fleet from the Mystic and the Charles, and, indeed, might be starved out without any fighting at all. But none of this suited the warlike British temper; the whole army longed to fight — to chase the impudent enemy out of those entrenchments he had so insolently reared. The challenge was a bold one; it must be accepted. The British had the weight in all ways, but they also had the preposterous arrogance of the British army, which always deems itself invincible because it remembers its traditions, and traditions are dubious and improper weapons to fire at a foe.

  At noon the watchers on the house-tops saw the lines of smart grenadiers and light infantry embark in barges under command of General Howe, who had with him Brigadier-General Pigot and some of the most distinguished officers in Boston. They landed at the south-western point of the peninsula.

  When the intelligence that the British troops had landed reached Cambridge it caused great excitement. A letter of Captain Chester reads:

  “Just after dinner on the 17th ult. I was walking out from my lodgings, quite calm and composed, and all at once the drums beat to arms, and bells rang, and a great noise in Cambridge. Captain Putnam came by on full gallop. ‘What is the matter?’ says I. ‘Have you not heard?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why, the regulars are landing at Charlestown,’ says he, ‘and father says you must all meet and march immediately to Bunker Hill to oppose the enemy.’ I waited not, but ran and got my arms and ammunition, and hastened to my company (who were in the church for barracks), and found them nearly ready to march. We soon marched, with our frocks and trousers on over our other clothes (for our company is in uniform wholly blue, turned up with red), for we were loath to expose ourselves by our dress; and down we marched.”

  After a reconnaissance, Howe sent back to Gage for reinforcements, and remained passive until they came.

  Meanwhile, there were bitter murmurings among the troops on Breed’s Hill. They had watched the brilliant pageant, — the crossing over of their adversaries, scarlet-clad, with glittering equipments, with formidable guns in their train, — and were conscious of being themselves exhausted from the night’s labour and the hot morning sun. It was two o’clock, and they had had practically nothing to eat that day. Among themselves they accused their officers of treachery. It seemed incredible that after doing all the hard work they should be expected to do the fighting as well. Loud huzzas arose from their lips, however, — these cross and hungry Yankees, — when Doctor — or General — Joseph Warren appeared among them with Seth Pomeroy.

  Few men had risen to a higher degree of universal love and confidence in the hearts of the Massachusetts people than Warren. He had been active in every patriotic movement. The councils through which the machinery of the Revolution was put in motion owed much to him. He was president of the Committee of Safety, and probably had been one of the Indians of the Boston Tea Party. But a few days before he had been appointed major-general. In recognition of this, Israel Putnam, who was keeping a squad of men working at entrenchments on Bunker Hill, had offered to take orders from him. But Warren refused, and asked where he might go to be of the greatest service. “Where will the onset be most furious?” he asked, and Putnam sent him to the redoubt. There Prescott also offered him the chief command, but Warren replied, “I came as a volunteer with my musket to serve under you, and shall be happy to learn from a soldier of your experience.”

  At three o’clock the redoubt was in good working order. About eight yards square, its strongest side, the front, faced the settled part of Charlestown and protected the south side of the hill. The east side commanded a field; the north side had an open passage-way; to the left extended a breastwork for about two hundred yards.

  By three o’clock some reinforcements for General Howe had arrived, so that he now had over three thousand men. Just before action he addressed the officers around him as follows:

  “Gentlemen, I am very happy in having the honour of commanding so fine a body of men. I do not in the least doubt that you will behave like Englishmen and as becomes good soldiers. If the enemy will not come out from their entrenchments, we must drive them out at all events; otherwise the town of Boston will be set on fire by them. I shall not desire one of you to go a step farther than where I go myself at your head. Remember, gentlemen, we have no recourse to any resources if we lose Boston but to go on board our ships, which will be very disagreeable to us all.” From the movements of the British, they seemed intending to turn the American left and surround the redoubt. To prevent this, Prescott sent down the artillery with two field-pieces — he had only four altogether — and the Connecticut troops under Captain Knowlton. Putnam met them as they neared the Mystic, shouting —

  “
Man the rail fence, for the enemy is flanking of us fast!”

  This rail fence, half of which was stone, reached from the shore of the Mystic to within 200 yards of the breastworks. It was not high, but Putnam had said:

  “If you can shield a Yankee’s shins he’s not afraid of anything. His head he does not think of.”

  Captain Knowlton, joined by Colonels Stark and Reid and their regiments, made another parallel fence a short distance in front of this, filling in the space between with new-mown hay from the fields.

  A great cannonade was thundering from ships and batteries to cover Howe’s advance. His troops, now increased to three thousand, came on in two divisions: the left wing, under Pigot, towards the breastwork and redoubt; the right, led by Howe, to storm the rail fence. The artillery moved heavily through the miry low ground, and the embarrassing discovery was made that there were only twelve-pound balls for six-pounders. Howe decided to load them with grape. The troops were hindered by a number of fences, as well as the thick, tall grass. Their knapsacks were extraordinarily heavy, and they felt the power of the scorching sun.

  Inside the redoubt the Americans waited for them, Prescott assuring his men that the redcoats would never reach the redoubt if they obeyed him and reserved their fire until he gave the word. As the assaulting force drew temptingly near, the American officers only restrained their men from firing by mounting the parapet and kicking up their guns.

  But at last the word was given — the stream of fire broke out all along the line. They were wonderful marksmen. The magnificent regulars were staggered, but they returned the fire. They could make no headway against the murderous volleys flashed in quick succession at them. The dead and wounded fell thickly. General Pigot ordered a retreat, while great shouts of triumph arose from the Americans.

  At the rail fence Putnam gave his last directions when Howe was nearing him: “Fire low: aim at the waistbands! Wait until you see the whites of their eyes! Aim at the handsome coats! Pick off the commanders!”