Prelude to Glory, Vol. 4

by Ron Carter

  “Yes, sir.”

  The young major mounted his horse, wheeled it around to the east, and was gone in a pounding of hooves.

  Two minutes later an American lieutenant stopped before Arnold, fighting for breath from a run. “Sir, Burgoyne just sent a messenger east, toward the river. General von Riedesel and his Germans are over there!”

  Arnold’s eyes opened wide. “Riedesel! He’s calling in reinforcements. We’ve hurt him worse than I thought.” He leaped on his horse and drove his spurs home. The sweated mount hit stampede gait in three jumps as Arnold reined him through the woods and fields, headed south. He hauled the lathered animal to a stiff-legged, sliding stop before Gates’s cabin headquarters, dismounted, and barged through the door, sweating, face streaked with stains from gunsmoke.

  Gates recoiled like he had been struck, voice high, angry. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Breathing hard, Arnold paid no heed. “We’ve got Burgoyne’s whole army in trouble. He’s sent for reinforcements. If we can hit him quick, on his left flank, we can get in behind his Germans that are coming to reinforce him, and he’s finished. We can end this thing now.”

  Gates stood silent, bewildered. Arnold plowed on.

  “I know where to hit him. I’m offering to lead Learned’s brigade. They’re waiting in the woods, fresh, and there’s enough of them. Burgoyne can’t fight what’s in front of him, and at the same time fight Learned’s men coming up behind. There’s no time to waste.”

  Gates licked dry lips, hating the fact that Arnold had been on the field of battle when he had not, hating the fact that he must now listen to a man he thoroughly detested, hating the fact that if Arnold’s request succeeded, it would be Arnold, and not Gates, who would receive the laurels.

  Gates straightened and raised his chin. “Very good. I shall order General Learned and his men to take the field immediately.”

  Stunned, Arnold stared for three full seconds. His voice was venomous as he nearly shouted, “To go where? He doesn’t know where Burgoyne is, or how to get in behind him!”

  Gates’s chin was still high, domineering. “He can find Burgoyne, and he can use his own judgment in how to flank him.”

  Arnold’s finger shot up, pointing, accusing. “You send him out there to engage Burgoyne, he’ll fail!”

  “Nonsense.” Gates strode to the door, threw it open, and stalked to the tent beside the cabin. He threw the flap aside and called to Major James Wilkinson inside. Wilkinson bolted from his chair and charged outside, facing Gates.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Major, go tell General Learned I’m ordering him to proceed north immediately. He’s to locate General Burgoyne, and move immediately on Burgoyne’s left flank. Stop the Germans coming to reinforce Burgoyne. Stay with the general and report back to me when he makes contact. Am I clear?”

  Wilkinson looked into Gate’s defiant eyes, and then at Arnold’s face, livid, red, ready to explode, and he understood.

  “Yes, sir.” Three minutes later Wilkinson left camp with his horse at a gallop, headed west toward the distant trees.

  Arnold threw up his arms in despair and strode to his mount. He had his foot in the stirrup when Gates’s voice came from behind.

  “General, you will remain here at headquarters.”

  Arnold dropped his foot to the ground and turned, incredulous. “The battle’s four miles north. I’m going.”

  Gates’s voice was cool, level. “I am ordering you to remain here. You may be needed here. Are you going to disobey a direct order?”

  A quiet voice reached through Arnold’s boiling anger. He’s baiting you. He wants a reason to put you in irons—report you to Congress—revoke your commission. Slowly Arnold brought his outrage under control. He said nothing. He reached for the cinch on his saddle, to remove it to get air to his sweated horse.

  Seldom had Arnold suffered the agonies he now endured. The crackle of musketfire and an occasional cannon drifted over the walls of the American headquarters, and Arnold closed his eyes to listen intently. That’s not from Burgoyne in the center. That’s off to the west. Learned! He’s in trouble! Arnold lost track of time as minutes became half an hour, then an hour. He saddled his horse once again, then tried to read the battle by the shifting of the sound. Learned was locked in a death struggle. Arnold’s hands were trembling when the sound of a galloping horse turned him, and he watched Major Wilkinson coming from the west, his horse lathered, laboring. Wilkinson pulled his mount to a stop before Gates’s quarters, leaped down, and pounded on the door.

  “Enter.”

  Wilkinson pushed through the door, Arnold right behind, standing in the door frame.

  “Sir,” Wilkinson cried, panting, “General Learned sent me to report. He got lost in the woods and was caught by light infantry, probably under command of General Fraser. He’s there now, sir, fighting his way out. He never did reach Burgoyne. He wanted you to know.”

  Behind him Arnold’s face filled with lightning. He could take no more. His voice filled the room like thunder. “By the Almighty, I’ll soon put an end to it.” He ran to his horse, swung up, and left Gates waving his arms in his doorway as he disappeared at a gallop, heading west.

  Gates grasped Wilkinson’s arm and bellowed, “Catch that man and tell him I’ve ordered him to return here at once.”

  One mile west of the big wall surrounding the American headquarters, Wilkinson shouted Arnold to a stop.

  “General Gates sent me with a direct order. You are to return to his headquarters at once.” He paused while his winded horse fought for air, throwing its head, stuttering its feet, and Arnold once more brought his wrath under control. Without a word he reined his horse around and started back to headquarters.

  * * * * *

  Four miles north, on a battlefield now strewn with the bodies of dead and dying men from both armies, in the silence of the lull that had lasted nearly two hours, the British once more loaded their cannon, and in the heat of the waning afternoon blasted round and grapeshot into the woods where the Americans had taken cover, regrouping, bracing for another attack. The Americans answered, and once again brave men from both ends of the field charged into the open, dodging as they came, firing, loading, firing.

  Within minutes the air was filled with the continuous concussion and blasts of cannon and the rattle of musketfire, so thick and heavy it was as an unending roll of thunder. General John Glover and his Marblehead Regiment drove straight north to meet the center thrust of Burgoyne’s army. The roar of the guns overrode all commands shouted by the officers, and the men were left to decide from moment to moment the direction and heat of the battle.

  Dearborn saw Glover’s regiment stop Burgoyne’s attack in its tracks, and instantly swung his command to his right, to support Glover. General Poor sensed they were about to turn Burgoyne’s center, flank them, trap them, and end the battle, and led his command in a headlong charge to their right, hot on Glover’s flank, and the Americans surged forward.

  In the leading company of Dearborn’s command, Billy and Eli were in the second rank when it closed with the red-coated British regulars, and they plunged into the midst of them, hand-to-hand, knocking aside bayonets, Eli swinging his tomahawk like a wild man, Billy using his musket like a scythe to clear men out before him. Billy scooped up the sword of a fallen British officer and with a battle cry surging from his throat, swung it like an avenging angel. The Americans behind the two men leaped to follow, cutting a hole in the British line, widening it, and Dearborn’s command poured through, then angled right to rip into the side of Burgoyne’s center command.

  From the American’s left came the sound of cannon, then the first volley from Brown Bess muskets, and the patriots paused for one second to peer to their left. From the woods, a company of redcoats was charging straight at them, cannon blasting, the British firing in volleys, one rank at a time. They were just over one hundred yards distant—too far for accuracy with their muskets, but they did not ca
re. They came shooting, and the random musketballs reached the Americans to knock some stumbling.

  Billy saw the British officer leading them, astride a tall, brown gelding. He was young, taller than usual, sword drawn and waving above his head as he led his men forward, shouting them on, uniform showing battle stains, with the epaulets of a captain bright on his shoulders. With their leader five yards in front of them, lifting them, inspiring them, the regulars drove on, coming in like a horde to break the American charge.

  With grapeshot and musketballs whistling from every quarter, Billy’s arm shot up and he shouted, “Eli!” as he pointed.

  Eli was already slamming his ramrod down his rifle barrel against a rifle ball seated on a linen patch when Billy shouted. He had seen the young British captain leading his men, and in the wild chaos of the battle, he went to one knee. He tapped powder from his powder horn into the pan of the rifle, slapped the frizzen closed, and settled his left elbow onto his knee as he brought the thin blade of his foresight squarely into the center of the notch of the rear sight. He eared the hammer back and brought the sights to bear on the incoming British officer. He gauged the distance—ninety yards—and in the instant the gunsights lined perfectly he squeezed off his shot in the dead air. He moved his head to the left to avoid the white cloud of rifle smoke, and he saw the hit, squarely through the cross made by the two white belts on the officer’s chest. The impact of the .60-caliber rifle ball jolted the young captain in the saddle, sent him reeling, grasping for the horse’s mane to stay mounted. He lost his reins, tried to regain them while keeping his sword high, and turned to shout his men onward. Then, slowly, his arm lowered, his sword fell from his hand, his head bowed, and he went slack in the saddle. He rolled from his horse to land heavily on his head and shoulder, and lay motionless on the ground.

  Even in the tumult of the battle, in an instant his men were around him, straightening his legs and his right arm, and his crooked left one—the one that had been broken by a rebel musketball in the retreat from Concord two years before. They wiped the sweat and smoke stains from his face and closed his vacant eyes. They retrieved his sword and slipped it into his scabbard, straightened his tunic, and covered the bullet hole directly over his heart. Some wiped at their eyes while others stopped to take their last look at the young face of their fallen leader. They studied the prominent nose, the square jaw, the build of a face that was at once plain and handsome. But most of all, they looked for the last time at the deep scar that divided his left eyebrow. The scar he had taken years ago in his desperate attempt to save some of his beloved comrades from a burning warehouse filled with munitions.

  The relentless heat of battle gives no time to mourn the fallen. The charge of the company led by the fallen British captain came to a standstill, and with the threat of his attack gone, Billy and Eli had not one second to ponder who he was. They turned their faces back toward Burgoyne’s stalled army, and they ran on with Dearborn’s command, reloading, firing, knocking redcoats back with tomahawk and sword.

  The American officers caught it like a scent in the air. We can win! We’ve got Burgoyne’s center turned! We can beat him! It lifted them above themselves, and they raised their voices in a shout that caught among their men, and they raised their voices as one. They were no longer an army. They were a horde, surging forward like a tide, rolling over everything in front of them.

  Three hundred yards—two hundred—just two hundred more yards and they are ours!

  At one hundred yards, the first blast of grapeshot ripped into the right side of the screaming mass of rebels, knocking men down, rolling, stumbling. An instant later the second blast, and grapeshot opened a hole in the American right. They faltered, stunned, looking east, unable to grasp what had happened. They saw the white smoke from the cannon and in the same instant saw the blue-coated Germans under General von Riedesel surge out of the forest, bayonets gleaming. On command, the first rank of Germans went to one knee, aimed, and fired. They rose and reloaded while the second rank moved in front of them and went to one knee to deliver the second volley. Both volleys tore into the American right, and the startled rebels broke to their left, away from the timed firing. Instantly the Germans sprinted forward, raising a battle cry, and the surprised Americans fell back. They were fifty yards from flanking Burgoyne, folding his command in on top of itself, beating him, when the howling charge of von Riedesel’s crack German troops broke their forward momentum, turned them west, slowed them, stopped them. In the chaos, the Americans fell back, gave ground, retreated, stumbling over the bodies of those who had fallen, both British and American. Within minutes the tremendous victory that had been within their grasp was turned into a rout as they pulled back across the open field. Far to the west, in the woods, General Learned was still locked in a running fight, trying to escape the advance skirmishers of Fraser’s command.

  Only a few ever understood that had Gates granted Arnold his request to lead the regiment to trap Burgoyne, Arnold would have intercepted von Riedesel, spoiled his surprise, blunted his attack, and taken down Burgoyne’s entire command. Burgoyne’s expedition to take the Hudson River corridor would have ended in the afternoon of that day.

  But Gates, the politician, had allowed his animosity toward Arnold, the warrior, to blind him, and he had sent Learned instead—Learned, who had become lost in the woods and never did reach von Riedesel, the man he had been sent to stop.

  Their charge and momentum broken, the Americans fell steadily back, and the British and Germans surged forward. Sweating, smoke-stained, bloodied, the two armies struggled desperately on, giving ground, regaining it, the blasting of cannon and muskets making a rolling thunder that reached Gates’s headquarters four miles to the south, and Burgoyne’s headquarters to the north. The sun touched the western trees, and then it was gone. In the purple of dusk the cannon and muskets blasted their last volleys of the day, with flame and smoke leaping from their muzzles, and then they stopped.

  In the eerie silence the Americans withdrew from the battlefield with what wounded they could carry, leaving their dead, and in late dusk the British gathered their wounded and backed away. Baroness Frederika von Riedesel, petite, beautiful, caring, the wife of General von Riedesel, opened her quarters for the wounded. She put her three small children beyond harm, then spent the night tirelessly gathering bandages, persuading other wives to come, nursing, tending the wounded.

  In full darkness Burgoyne’s officers came to report their losses, and Burgoyne took the figures in dead silence. More than six hundred of his best troops, dead, wounded, missing. One general forced a grin, tried to put a bold face on the battle. “But we won, sir. We drove them from the field.”

  Burgoyne nodded, said nothing, and waved the general on. In his heart he knew. They had not driven the Americans from the field. The Americans had simply left the field first. As for the casualty count, it was clear that the Americans had lost far fewer men than Burgoyne. And one thing he sensed from every officer who reported to him: the Americans, without uniforms, understanding nearly nothing of military protocol, dressed in homespun, carrying the rifles and muskets they had used for years to feed their families and survive in the wooded frontier, had met the best the British army had to offer. Met them in a fair fight, in the forest, and in the open fields, and had given the British better than they got. For the first time the British army sensed that this rabble, who came from farms and forges and shops, with no pretense of military training or skills, had something inside of them that rose above all else to drive them on. The red-coated officers shook their heads in wonder. With king and God and right clearly on their side, what was it these rebels had?

  Few understood that they were not fighting men. They were fighting an idea, a feeling. Freedom. Liberty. And no cannon, no musket, had yet been invented that could kill the idea once it had taken root in the heart of a free man.

  In the American camp Billy and Eli stripped to the waist, and one poured water from a bucket while the other
washed away the battle stains of the day. With the stars and a quarter moon overhead, they sat on their blankets, gnawing on crisped sowbelly and brown bread and raw turnips. They tried not to hear the sound of hundreds of wolves in the forest, and on the open battlefield, prowling among the dead and wounded, howling, snarling, fighting as they attacked the bodies.

  Billy spoke. “We were close. We could have ended it if the Germans hadn’t come in.”

  Eli nodded. “Did you get a feeling out there today?”

  Billy looked at him, waiting.

  “Something happened to our side. I think they started to believe they could really beat Burgoyne. A strange feeling.”

  “I felt it. And I think the British caught the notion we could do it.”

  “They did.”

  Billy reached for his pouch and took out the packet of letters, his pencil stub, and the few badly wrinkled sheets of paper that were left.

  Surprised, Eli asked, “Going to write home?”

  “No. Just wanted to be sure I hadn’t lost them.”

  With the campfire casting its flickering yellow glow, the two men laid down on their blankets, weapons at hand, staring into the flames while their thoughts drifted.

  Inside his small, austere office, Gates laid down his quill and reread his written report of the battle. The battle he had not seen. The carefully worded document smacked of confidence, was replete with incidents of American genius and bravery, painted a picture of smashing the British attacks in open battle. He smiled broadly in the lantern glow, knowing that when Congress received it, there would be crowing and backslapping, and his name would become the word of the day. He folded the document and laid it on his desk. He would send it by messenger at first light. He began unbuttoning his tunic, and again the broad smile split his jowled face. The name Benedict Arnold did not appear once in his official report.