There was a small gap in the abatis, left there deliberately so the defenders could negotiate the tangled branches, and the fleeing redcoats filed through that gap where McLean met them. “Form ranks,” he greeted them. Men looked at him with startled expressions. “Form in your companies,” he said. “Sergeant? Dress the ranks!”
The fugitives made three ranks, and behind them, summoned from their picquet duty on the ground overlooking the neck, Major Dunlop and Lieutenant Caffrae’s company arrived. “Wait a moment, Major,” McLean said to Dunlop. “Captain Campbell!” he shouted, indicating with his stick that he meant Archibald Campbell, who had retreated just as precipitously as his men.
Campbell, nervous and lanky, fidgeted in front of McLean. “Sir?”
“You were driven back?” McLean asked.
“There are hundreds of them, sir,” Campbell said, not meeting McLean’s gaze, “hundreds!”
“And where is Lieutenant Moore?”
“Taken, sir,” Campbell said after a pause. His eyes met McLean’s and instantly looked away. “Or worse, sir.”
“Then what is that firing about?” McLean asked.
Campbell turned and stared at the far trees from where musketry still sounded. “I don’t know, sir,” the highlander said miserably.
McLean turned to Major Dunlop. “Quick as you can,” he said, “take Caffrae’s company and advance at the double, see if you can discover young Moore. Don’t tangle with too many rebels, just see if Moore can be found.” Major Dunlop, the temporary commander of the 82nd, was an officer of rare verve and ability and he wasted no time. He shouted orders and his company, with their muskets at the trail, started westwards. It would have been suicide to advance along the cleared spine of the ridge and thus straight towards the rebels who were now gathering at the edge of the trees, so instead the company used the low ground by the harbor where they were concealed by the scatter of houses and by small fields where the maize had grown taller than a man. McLean watched them disappear, heard the fighting continue, and prayed that Moore survived. The general reckoned that young John Moore had promise, but that was not sufficient reason to rescue him, nor was it reason enough that Moore was a friend of the regiment’s patron, the Duke of Hamilton, but rather it was because Moore had been given into McLean’s charge. McLean would not abandon him, nor any other man under his care, and so he had sent Dunlop and the single company into danger. Because it was his duty.
Solomon Lovell landed on the narrow beach an hour after Captain Welch’s marines had spearheaded the American attack. The general arrived with Lieutenant-Colonel Revere and his eighty artillerymen who, today, were armed with muskets and would serve as a reserve force to the nine hundred and fifty men who had already landed, most of whom were now at the top of the bluff. A few had never made it and their bodies lay on the steep slope, while others, the wounded, had been carried back to the beach where Eliphalet Downer, the surgeon general of the Massachusetts Militia, was organizing their treatment and evacuation. Lovell crouched beside a man whose eyes were bandaged. “Soldier?” Lovell said. “This is General Lovell.”
“We beat them, sir.”
“Of course we did! Are you in pain, soldier?”
“I’m blinded, sir,” the man said. A musket-ball had spattered razor-sharp splinters of beechwood into both eyes,
“But you will see your country at liberty,” Lovell said, “I promise.”
“And how do I feed my family?” the man asked. “I’m a farmer!”
“All will be well,” Lovell said and patted the man’s shoulder. “Your country will look after you.” He straightened, listening to the staccato rattle of musketry at the bluff’s summit, which told him that some redcoats must still be fighting on the heights. “We’ll need to bring artillery ashore, Colonel,” he said to Revere.
“Soon as you release us, General,” Revere said. There was an edge of resentment in his voice, suggesting that he thought it demeaning for his men to carry muskets instead of serving cannons. “Just as soon as you release us,” he said again, though more willingly this time.
“Let’s first see what we’ve achieved,” Lovell said. He patted the blinded man’s shoulder a second time and started up the bluff, hauling himself on saplings. “It’ll be a hard job to get cannon up this slope, Colonel.”
“We’ll manage that,” Revere said confidently. Taking heavy artillery up a bluff’s steep face was a practical problem, and Lieutenant-Colonel Revere liked overcoming such challenges.
“I never did congratulate you on the success of your gunners at Cross Island,” Lovell said. “You’ve hurt the enemy ships! A splendid achievement, Colonel.”
“Just doing our duty, General,” Revere said, but pleased all the same at the compliment. “We killed some damned Britons!” He went on happily. “I’ve dreamed of killing the damned beasts!”
“And you drove the enemy’s ships back! So now there’s nothing to stop our fleet from entering the harbor.”
“Nothing at all, General,” Revere agreed.
The stutter of musketry still sounded from Lovell’s right, evidence that some redcoats yet remained on the high ground above the bay, but it was clear that most of the enemy had retreated because, as Lovell reached the easier slope at the top of the bluff, he found grinning militiamen who gave him a cheer. “We beat them, sir!”
“Of course we beat them,” Lovell said, beaming, “and all of you,” he raised his voice and lifted his hands in a gesture of benediction, “all of you have my thanks and my congratulations on this magnificent feat of arms!”
The woods at the top of the bluff were now in rebel hands, all but for a stand of pines above Dyce’s Head, which was far to the general’s right and from where the musketry still sounded. Lovell’s militia were thick in the woods. They had climbed the precipitous slope, they had taken casualties, but they had shot the British off the summit and all the way back to the fort. Men looked happy. They talked excitedly, recounting incidents in the fight up the steep slope, and Lovell enjoyed their happiness. “Well done!” he said again and again.
He went to the edge of the trees and there, in front of him, was the enemy. The fog had quite gone now and he could see every detail of the fort that lay only half a mile to the east. The enemy had made a screen of branches between the woods and the fort, but from his high ground Lovell could easily see over that flimsy barricade and he could see that Fort George did not look like a stronghold at all, but instead resembled an earthen scar in the ridge’s soil. The nearest rampart was thickly lined with redcoats, but he still felt relief. The fort, which in Lovell’s imagination had been a daunting prospect of stone walls and sheer ramparts, now proved to be a mere scratch in the dirt.
Colonel McCobb of the Lincoln County militia hailed the general cheerfully. “A good morning’s work, sir!”
“One for the history books, McCobb! Without doubt, one for the history books!” Lovell said. “But not quite done yet. I think, don’t you, that we should keep going?”
“Why not, sir?” McCobb answered.
Solomon Lovell’s heart seemed to miss a beat. He scarcely dared believe the speed and extent of the morning’s victory, but the sight of those distant redcoats behind the low rampart told him that the victory was not yet complete. He had a vision of the redcoats’ muskets flaring volleys at his men. “Is General Wadsworth here?”
“He was, sir.” McCobb said Wadsworth had been at the wood’s edge where he had encouraged Colonel McCobb and Colonel Mitchell to keep their militiamen moving forward onto the cleared land, but both colonels had pleaded they needed time to reorganize their troops. Units had become scattered as they clambered up the bluff and the necessity of carrying the wounded back to the beach meant that most companies were shorthanded. Besides, the capture of the high woods had seemed like a victory in itself and men wanted to savor that triumph before they advanced on Fort George. Peleg Wadsworth had urged haste, but then had been distracted by the musket-fire which still filled the tr
ees at Dyce’s Head with smoke. “I believe he went to the right.” McCobb continued, “to the marines.”
“The marines are still fighting?” Lovell asked McCobb.
“A few stubborn bastards are holding out there,” McCobb said.
Lovell hesitated, but the sight of the enemy’s flags tipped his indecision towards confidence. “We shall advance to victory!” he announced cheerfully. He wanted to add those arrogant enemy flags to his trophies. “Form your fine fellows into line,” he told McCobb, then plucked at the colonel’s sleeve as another doubt flickered in his mind. “Have the enemy fired on you? With cannon, I mean?”
“Not a shot, General.”
“Well, let’s stir your men from the woods! Tell them they’ll be eating British beef for their suppers!” The musketry from Dyce’s Head suddenly intensified into an angry and concentrated crackle, and then, just as suddenly, went silent. Lovell stared towards the smoke, the only visible evidence of whatever battle was being fought among those trees. “We should tell the marines we’re advancing,” he said. “Major Brown? Would you convey that message to Captain Welch? Tell him to advance with us as soon as he’s ready?”
“I will, sir,” Major Gawen Brown, the second of Lovell’s brigade majors, started off southwards.
Lovell could not stop smiling. The Massachusetts Militia had taken the bluff! They had climbed the precipitous slope, they had fought the regulars of the British Army, and they had conquered. “I do believe,” he said to Lieutenant-Colonel Revere, “that we may not need your cannon after all! Not if we can drive the enemy out of their works with infantry.”
“I’d still like a chance to hammer them,” Revere said. He was staring at the fort and was not impressed by what he saw. The curtain wall was low and its flanking bastions were unfinished, and he reckoned his artillery could reduce that feeble excuse for a fort into a smear of bloodied dirt.
“You zeal does you credit,” Lovell said, “indeed it does, Colonel.” Behind him the militia sergeants and officers were rousting men from among the trees and shouting at them to form line on the open ground. The flags of Massachusetts and of the United States of America flew above them and it was time for the decisive assault.
Lieutenant Moore heard the bellowed order to charge and saw the green-uniformed men erupt out of the trees and he was aware of muskets flaming unexpectedly from his left and the chaos of the moment overwhelmed him. There was only terror in his head. He opened his mouth to shout an order, but no words came, and a hugely tall rebel in a green coat crossed by white belts, and with a long black pigtail flapping behind his neck, and with a cutlass catching the morning sun in his right hand was running straight towards him and John Moore, almost without thinking, raised the musket he had rescued from Private McPhail and his finger fumbled at the trigger, and then he realized he had not even loaded or cocked the musket, but it was too late because the big rebel was almost on him and the man’s face was a savagely frightening grimace of hatred and Moore convulsively pulled the trigger anyway and the musket fired.
It had been cocked and loaded and Moore had never noticed.
The ball took the rebel under the chin, it seared up through his mouth and out through his skull, lifting his hat into the air. The shock wave of the ball, compressed by the skull, drove an eye from its socket. Blood misted, blurring red in fine droplets as the rebel, dead in an instant, fell forward onto his knees. The cutlass dropped and the man’s dead arms wrapped themselves round Moore’s waist and then slid slowly down to his feet. Moore, aghast, noticed that the pigtail was dripping blood.
“For God’s sake, young Moore, you want to win this bloody war single-handed?” Major Dunlop greeted the young lieutenant. Dunlop’s men had fired a company volley from the trees to Moore’s left, and that sudden volley had served to drive the momentarily outnumbered marines back to the trees.
Moore could not speak. A musket-ball plucked at the tails of his coat. He was gazing down at the dead rebel whose head was a mess of blood, red-wet hair, and scraps of bone.
“Come on, lad,” Dunlop took Moore’s elbow, “let’s get the devil out of here.”
The company retreated, taking Moore’s surviving men with them. They withdrew along the lower ground beside the harbor as the American marines captured the three naval cannon abandoned on Dyce’s Head. The rebel battery was firing from Cross Island, relentlessly thumping round shot into Captain Mowat’s ships. The crest of the bluff was thick with rebels and the redcoats had no place to go now except the unfinished Fort George.
And Captain John Welch was dead.
It took time to fetch the militia from the trees, but gradually they were formed into a line. It was a rough line stretching clear across the high ground with the marines on its right, the Indians on the left, and the flags at its center. Paul Revere’s men, Lovell’s reserve, were in three ranks behind the two flags, one the proud starred stripes of the United States and the other the pine-tree banner of the Massachusetts Militia.
“What a magnificent morning’s work,” Lovell greeted Peleg Wadsworth.
“I congratulate you, sir.”
“I thank you, Wadsworth, I thank you! But on to victory now?”
“On to victory, sir,” Wadsworth said. He decided he would not tell Lovell about Captain Welch’s death, not till the battle was over and the victory gained.
“God has granted us the victory!” the Reverend Jonathan Murray announced. He had joined Lovell on the heights and, besides his brace of pistols, carried a Bible. He lifted the book high. “God promises us ‘I will scatter them as with an east wind!’”
“Amen,” Lovell said. Israel Trask played his fife behind the marines, while three drummer boys and two more fifers played the “Rogue’s March” beside the two flags. Lovell’s heart swelled with pride. He drew his sword, looked towards the enemy, and pointed the blade forward. “On to victory!”
A half mile away, inside the fort, General McLean watched the rebels form at the tree line. He had seen Major Dunlop’s men climb to the battery on Dyce’s Head and, with the help of a telescope, he had seen that young Moore and his men had been rescued. Those redcoats were now coming back to the fort through the low ground beside the harbor, while the remaining picquets that had guarded the neck were all inside Fort George, where McLean’s troops stood in three ranks behind the western rampart. Their job now was to defend that low wall with volley fire. McLean, watching the rebel line thicken, still believed he was faced by thousands, not hundreds, of enemy infantry, and now more rebels appeared to the north, showing at the trees above the neck. So he would be attacked from two sides? He glanced at the harbor and saw, to his surprise, that the enemy ships had made no aggressive move, but why should they? The fort was going to fall without their assistance. McLean limped up onto the unfinished western rampart. “Captain Fielding!”
“Sir?” The English artillery commander hurried to join McLean.
“We’ll give them a few shots, I think?”
“Wait till they advance, sir?” Fielding suggested.
“I think we might treat them now, Captain,” McLean said.
“They’re too far for grape or case, sir.”
“Then give them round shot,” McLean said. He spoke wearily. He knew what must happen now. The rebels would advance and such was the length of their line that they must inevitably wrap around three sides of his unfinished fort. They would take some casualties at the abatis, which was well within the effective range of the grape shot that Captain Mowat had sent ashore, but Fielding’s few guns could do only limited damage and the rebels would surely surge on to assault the low walls. Then there would be chaos, panic, and bayonets. His men would stand, of that McLean was sure, but they would stand and die.
So the battle was lost. Yet honor alone dictated that he showed some resistance before he surrendered the fort. No one would blame him for its loss, not when he was so outnumbered, but he would be universally despised if he yielded without showing some defiance, and so McLea
n had determined on his course of action. He would fire round shot and keep firing as the rebels began their advance, and then, before they came into range of Captain Fielding’s more lethal case and grape shot, he would haul the flag down. It was sad, he thought, but surrender would save his men from massacre.
McLean walked to the flagpole in the southwestern bastion. He had asked his aides to place a table beside the tall staff, but his slight limp and his crippled right arm made the effort of climbing onto the table difficult. “Need a hand, sir?” Sergeant Lawrence asked.
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
“You want to see how well our guns can cut down rebels, sir?” the sergeant asked happily after he had helped McLean onto the table.
“Oh, I know you lads can defend us,” McLean lied. He stood on the table and wondered why no bagpipers had come with the two regiments. He smiled that so strange a thought should have occurred to him at such a moment. “I do miss the pipes,” he said.
“Bagpipes, sir?” Lawrence asked.
“Indeed! The music of war.”
“Give me a good English band any day, sir.”
The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War Page 22