Rival Caesars

by Desmond Dilg

  “Yes, I admit it is very pathetic,” replied the Captain. “But war is war, not a garden pleasure party. When men go to war they must expect this sort of thing or else they are very stupid. War cannot be carried on as if we were all holy Saints on a church window. War is the Iron Game, the game of the Great Inexorable, and our women folk must also take their chances with us. There is no absolute protection for women and children in war, except convention and agreement. Neither women nor men can escape the consequences of victory or defeat. Man must fight and women must weep for ever and ever. In private life it is the same, the fortunes of women are bound up with their men-folk.

  “The business of a householder is to fight in defense of his home and family and if he is defeated, or if through the fortune of battle he is driven off, then his entire household remains at the absolute mercy of the victor.

  “Now the victor may be kind and generous to the household of a defeated mortal foe, or he may not, according to his disposition (or other circumstances). Unlimited victory places the victor under no obligations to obey any one else's opinion than his own. Who can dictate right and wrong to Caesar?

  “These are elemental and unvanquishable facts that cannot be got over by tears and protests and sympathizing philosophy or eloquent hysteria.”

  “But our own women and children and property-holders may be treated in the same way tomorrow,” replied the more tenderhearted young lieutenant.

  “And they will, if we are defeated. My remarks,” answered the hard-headed Captain of the Farm Burners, “apply all round. If a conquered people receive any consideration at all, it is only by the grace of the conquerors. For example I have great possessions in this State. I have wife, children and relatives by the score, and if the Royalist side loses, what mercy can any of us reasonably expect? For my own part I don’t expect any.

  “If the king's forces are defeated, a new Government must be established by the victors, and assuredly they will (if they are not crazy) confiscate our lands and perhaps also exile us.[*] If they take pity on us, that is their business, but I for my part claim no “rights” of any kind, if my side is worsted. The stakes are for those only who win the game. Let us then be sensible and do unto the enemy even as the enemy would do unto us.”

  “But the Rebels have not burned farms nor carried off the property of our people, have they?” inquired the young lieutenant still unconvinced.

  “Why, of course they have and I don’t in any way blame them for it, either. Their grievances,” said the Captain as the light from the burning barn illuminated his strong dark Norman face, “are not unreasonable. I think myself the king has been badly advised. I sympathized also with them at the beginning of the outbreak, but could not well join them, because my people and all my material interests are bound up with the king's government.

  “Surely you must also know that the war actually began in the open destruction of property in Boston Harbor and elsewhere, including the burning of the 'Peggy Stewart' and the king's revenue cruiser 'Gaspee.' Many of the farms of the Loyalists have also been burned and looted. Only last week Lieut-Colonel Dayton of the Rebel army, burned and totally destroyed the private homestead of Governor Johnston, and carried off all the cattle, horses, negroes, forage, food, and livestock; exactly as we are doing now.”

  “It’s a pity Captain that war could not be conducted on more humane methods,” answered the lieutenant. “War is hell. My own people also own property in New York and are widely connected with the Livingstons, Clintons and Schuylers. Like you, yourself, Captain, I have much at stake.”

  “Humane methods in war are, in my opinion, out of place,” replied the Captain. “They are a weakness and always end in disappointment. When men go to war they should fight on, till one side or the other is thoroughly thrashed. That saves further disputes.

  “You say truly that 'war is hell,' but your quotation is incomplete. 'War is hell to the vanquished,' that is the correct Latin of it. It is heaven to the victors. If there is any heaven on earth, or possibility thereof it is for the great Victor Nations, certainly not for weak and cowardly and unvictorious peoples. The vanquished peoples are really the transgressor peoples, and you know the way of the transgressor is somewhat hard.”

  “I never thought of it in that way before Captain,” answered the lieutenant. “You almost convince me that war is a blessing in disguise.”

  “Exactly what I believe,” said the Captain. Good always results from a great war. The main point is not to be on the wrong side.

  “You must also know that outside the coastal cities, all the ground between the two armies is now a continual scene of rapine and murder. On this debatable land every kind of outrage and brigandage prevails. Ambushes and petty battles are the regular order. No man goes to his bed, whether Tory or Whig, without being under the apprehension of having his house broken into, plundered, or burnt: or of having his cattle driven off before morning.

  “The Tories burn and plunder the farms of the Whigs, and the Whigs burn and plunder the farms of the Tories. There are nights when the whole countryside, as far as eye can see, is lit up with burning hayricks, homesteads, flour-mills and barns.

  “Then, there are professional marauders (assuming to belong to either side as suits their purpose) looting both Whig and Tory.

  “Indeed many of the bushwhackers care naught for either cause, but fight only for their own hand and are making fortunes in the business. Only last week we hung seven of these gentry in Orange County and three in Westchester. The cattle they 'lift' from the Rebels they sell in our camp and the cattle they 'lift' from our people they sell in the Rebel camp.”

  “But all the same, Captain,” said the lieutenant, ‘I don’t like this business of farm-burning and I think I will resign my commission. It seems to me too much like warring on women and children. Of course I know the fate of women and children is inseparably bound up with the fate of their male relatives. War as you say is a grim business and more than all such petty things as rules and regulations. It is a network of Almighty Musts, but I also am an American and my heart revolts against the horrors I see.”

  “If you had seen as much of war as I have,” said the Captain, “you would have had all such sentiment knocked out of your head. I have been with Clive in India and have seen the populations of entire towns and villages wiped out; and I have also seen white regiments of my comrades (including their women folk and little children) annihilated in a night. My heart is just as tender as yours, but I have learnt that feelings and opinions are as powerless to avert the calamities of war as to avert the stroke of a thunderbolt, or to bridle the stars in their courses.

  “At this very moment, for example, the enemy may be creeping upon us to destroy us. Even as we talk here in the glare of the flames, a bullet from the rifle of that handsome dark-eyed woman's husband may come crashing through your skull or through mine. I tell you war is no joke and there shall be grief and mourning, tragedies and blood, to the end of the world.”

  Scarcely had these words left his mouth before four rifle-shots rang out on the night. Four redcoats fell including Captain De Lancey. The Captain's gushing life-blood hissed and spouted in a hot crimson stream from a hole in his throat. The heavy hunter's bullet of Holroyd had completely severed his jugular vein and he was bleeding to death.

  The lieutenant leaned tenderly over his dying captain and attempted to staunch the wound and bind it up, but a bullet came and smashed his own arm and made his efforts clumsy and slow.

  Again the four rifles “talked” at the whisper of Burr.

  “I told you so,” said the dying Captain, as he cooly plugged the hole in his neck with his own thumb. “I am done for. I have got it this time. But you get out of range as quickly as you can, and order the rear-guard to retire immediately beyond the glare of the flames and then take cover, and return the fire.

  “Tell them they must fight to the death and retire slowly, or they will lose the whole convoy and the Christmas cheer to boot. Go M
r. Morris. Attend to your duty. All depends on you now if the Rebels are in force. I’ll be dead in ten minutes. But, but, stay a moment. Put your hand in my breast. Take the packet of letters. Yes, that is it. They are for my wife, mother and daughter in New York and one for my banker Mr. Angerstein. Take them with you. Go, go, go, good by for ever. God bless you Morris. . . . God save the king.”

  Then the Royalist Captain's hand fell limp by his side. His eyes glazed in the flame-glare and the red blood spurted afresh from his wound. It gurgled out like liquid escaping from an inverted bottle. It splashed against the broken grindstone and a wrecked baby-carriage. Hot and warm it spurted and sparks from the fire, blown by the rising wind, fell into it and hissed themselves out.

  The Captain rolled on his side, his head hung down limply, then he pitched backward convulsively, bled white and died.

  And underneath his neck the blood coagulated in a pool.

  Again Colonel Burr's four rifles rang out from the surrounding gloom and four more redcoats tumbled in their tracks and lay there dead, or crept away wounded into the bushes.

  “Holroyd,” spake Burr, “you are the best shot. Now try and bring down that officer before he gets out of range.”

  “I’m doing my level best, Colonel,” replied Holroyd as he lifted the hammer of his musket. I’ve got my eye on him. He has blazed his last trail. I have already hit him once I think. If the light from the fire keeps up, I'll knock him over for certain this shot.”

  Holroyd held his bronze-barrelled hunting rifle against the side of a fence post, took long, careful aim and fired.

  Lieutenant Morris was running for cover. Holroyd's heavy bullet smote him on the spine above the kidneys, glanced upwards and went through his heart. He jumped high in the air and fell heavily forward upon the top of a small sapling stump. The stump being as sharp as a knife penetrated through his bowels coming out at his back. There he died, groaning in extreme agony, with Captain De Lancey's papers grasped tightly in his left hand and his sword in the right.

  (Those papers were brought to Colonel Burr next morning by Holroyd, and proved of great value to him in after years. One was signed “Charles Lee” and another related to the title of an estate called “Richmond Hill.”)

  Again the four rifles “spoke.” Three more of the running enemy fell or were badly wounded. Before the four Americans could load again the redcoats were safe in the distance outside the illuminated circle. But Burr's troopers pursued them cautiously, firing into them at random, until finally the pursuit had to be abandoned owing to the proximity of a squadron of Lancers, sent out as reserve and reinforcement, from the enemies camp.

  When the four soldiers returned to where Burr lay helpless, they bore him on the litter to a sheltered nook in a corner of the garden wall. There, wrapped in his cloak tired out and worn, he soon fell sound asleep, his lullaby being the sad soughing of the wind and the dull roaring of the sinking flames.

  When morning dawned not the sign of an enemy could be seen. The blackened walls of the buildings stood up gaunt and bare. Inside heaps of debris smoked and smoldered, and every now and then portions of the walls fell in with a crash.

  Some wounded horses were limping about, their legs hanging by ligaments of flesh and sinew to broken bones. They whinnied piteously in their pain and seemed to say “come and help us, come and help us.”

  Bleak and cold and raw was the morning. The wind whistled and moaned through the trees disconsolately. Grey rushing clouds gathered in the North and a slight penetrating rain began to fall. The wind bore up the ashes of the fire, re-scattering them far and near in sooty whirls as if in stormy sardonic derision.

  One of the soldiers walked smartly up and down in order to keep himself warm, and at the same time act as sentinel. The other three cooked a rough breakfast. One was busy boiling a kettle of coffee on the prong of a hay-fork over the embers of the house. An other was roasting a fat turkey on the end of a long pole thrust through the parlor window.

  When the kettle boiled Holroyd walked across to where the women of the farm were shivering (along side of the barn walls) and offered each of them a cup of strong coffee with some corn cakes made in the ashes of their own home.

  In their precipitate retreat from the sudden onslaught of Burr's troopers, the redcoats had forgotten the women and children, who thus escaped being carried off as hostages.

  The women smiled graciously through their tears on the soldier-trapper and while gratefully drinking the coffee inquired how many men had been killed on the previous night.

  Holroyd told how the four Americans, because of their superior shooting and strategy, had killed and wounded 15 Britishers. He also told them how his own Colonel had been wounded in the foot and now lay asleep behind the garden wall.

  “Is that your Colonel over there?” said one of the ladies, a very handsome woman with black eyes, a silken turban, and a flowing gown. Her long, loose hair hung down in disheveled hanks over splendidly poised shoulders and bust. She had all the appearance of a distinguished and high-bred matron.

  “Yes, that is he,” replied Holroyd, “he is the bravest and coolest little game-cock you ever saw. And he knows how to plan things too, as well as how to do them. It was his wits last night that made four of us hunt 200 men over the hills and far away.

  The destroyed farmstead belonged to Captain Delafield, (an American officer away with Washington). The women were his wife, her two younger sisters and Mrs. Provost (a near neighbor), together with the latter's two children—two boys overflowing with animal spirits.

  The black-eyed woman with the turban of silk was Mrs. Provost at that time the wife of a brilliant British officer.

  She it was, with whom Alexander Hamilton had became infatuated, as described in a previous chapter.

  Mrs. Provost resided with her younger sister in a most beautiful home at Paramus. She drove over on the day before to Mrs. Delafield's. Mrs. Delafield was her husband's first cousin.

  She witnessed the burning and looting of her friends’ home as already described. Even her own buggy and her favorite trotting pony “Jessie” had been carried off in the foray.

  Presently she wrapped a heavy cloak around her shoulders and walked over to where Col. Burr lay asleep in the dawn. She looked down intently upon his clean-cut features and thought to herself:

  “He looks quite a boy. Yet the soldier who gave me the coffee says he is a very bold and brave man. How handsome he is, too. He lies there in the mist and smoke like the picture of an old-time Roman warrior. I like him. I like his looks, but how pale he is? Perhaps he is badly wounded. I must do something for him. It's a woman’s place to succor the wounded.”

  Whereupon she stooped down and without disturbing him attempted to examine his wounded foot, the bandage of which was saturated with blood.

  Then a sudden idea struck her and she returned to where Mrs. Delafield and the children were. Mrs. Delafield was weeping bitterly as she looked upon the blackened ruins of her home.

  “Don’t give way to your feelings, Mrs. Delafield. Be strong and do not weep,” said Mrs. Provost to her. “We have no house or shelter and there is a snow storm gathering. We cannot stay here. Let us ask one of the soldiers to go over to the next farm and get assistance. The roads are too muddy, and the creeks are all in flood, or we could walk across ourselves. Now try and be calm, Mrs. Delafield. Our lives and the children are safe, and the house can be rebuilt again. There are many worse off than we.”

  “I don’t see what else we can do,” replied Mrs. Delafield sobbing violently. “All our things are gone. Our home is in ruins and the poor young officer who fought for us and saved us from being carried off may die. Where is he wounded?”

  “The bullet is in his ankle. It must be a very painful wound.” said Mrs. Provost.

  “War is terrible,” sobbed Mrs. Delafield. “Perhaps my own husband and son may be wounded like that. O, I wish this cruel war was over. Why did God make men to fight anyhow? O, how I pity the wounded and sick.�
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  Whereupon she seated herself on the hub of a smashed wagon wheel and burst into that universal feminine argument of protesting powerlessness, a torrent of tears.

  Mrs. Provost (who had seen many wars) attempted to console her, but could not.

  Meanwhile the children were very busy with long sticks raking up the smoldering embers of their father’s house in order to see the sparks fly upon the wind. From time to time as they succeeded in tossing a big heap of sparks up in the air they would clap their hands and shout in uproarious glee. They were happy because they knew not and did not understand.

  The four soldiers were busy eating breakfast, having first shared what they had with the women and children. Burr was leaning against the garden wall drinking a cup of hot coffee and near by three slightly wounded prisoners were digging a trench for the dead.

  Far off down the road some moving object approached through the mist and haze and smoke. It came rapidly round a curve, over a low rise, near the river.

  “To your arms, my men,” said Burr as he watched it come nearer and nearer. He thought it might be some ruse of the enemy. The prisoners were ordered to lay down on their faces, each soldier reached for his loaded rifle (took up a commanding position behind the wall) and raised the hammers to half cock.

  The alarm was unnecessary, however, for the moving object proved to be a carriage, driven at a wild gallop by a tall and very beautiful red-headed girl, whose luxuriant locks streamed on the chilly morning blast like some semi-divine Valkyrie out searching for the dead.

  “It is my sister, Miss De Visme with Dr. McDougall's carriage. She has seen the smoke of the burning and is coming to our assistance. She knows I am here,” spoke Mrs. Provost—at whom Burr was looking with much interest.