Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  The snow came in gusts, and the flat countryside of Pennsylvania began to be clearer as the light grew. But soon enough, almost too soon for the busy Private Clarke, the columns began to form and move. Some troops went up the main road to Pennington, and others went with General Sullivan on the more direct route to Assunpink Bridge. Once the column stepped off, they moved briskly, and it warmed their feet and gradually made all their various discomforts into one dull ache. At least they were moving. The snow began to fall a little harder, and George noted that Bludner’s hat was developing a little triangle of the stuff, like the top of a grenadier’s hat.

  They halted for a spell, and the men began to be cold again. Bludner stayed with Captain Lawrence and seemed to have little interest in the company, so George sent out two files to watch the ground beyond the road and tried to cudgel his mind for other ways of keeping the men busy on the march. As he began to consider having them collect wood, the column formed up quickly, and he had to race to recall his pickets before they moved off.

  In another mile, they turned a corner. It was almost full light, and they could just see the village of Trenton laid out before them in the middle distance. Then another gust of snow hid the little town of stone houses.

  In Washington’s experience, war consisted mostly of waiting to see how well other men had understood their orders. The waiting was interspersed with brief flashes of danger and action, usually caused by his attempts to repair his own defects, or those that others had added to his plans through inattention or neglect. He was not confident in this plan, a complex series of three converging columns that depended on luck and timing and the quality of his generals. It was dictated by the shape of the village.

  He wanted a complete victory. His idea of victory required that he take or kill the Hessian garrison of Trenton, the dreaded German regulars that his men feared. Their outposts routinely injured his own, and their Jaegers were the scourge of his lines. He was not attempting an easy target, but a very difficult one, and his chosen enemy was not much less in men and guns than his own small army.

  Where was Sullivan? He waited as the light grew for discovery, or news. He no longer expected General Ewing’s column to show at all. They had been intended for a different ferry, and as he had not directed their operation in person, he had little confidence in them. At this point, in the growing light and the snow, he had little confidence in the whole plan. He began to dread what would lie around each turn of the road. The feeling was unaccustomed. He tried to shrug it off.

  His horse was warm, because he kept moving along the column. The men were silent.

  A dark, wet man was brought to him near the head of the column, a messenger from Sullivan. He sighed with inward relief. Sullivan was moving well, but concerned about his wet muskets. Washington had watched some Virginians using tow to wipe their muskets dry at the ferry and wondered that the whole army hadn’t performed this simple operation.

  He nodded his thanks to the messenger and turned to young General Greene, who was waiting on him.

  “Let us go as rapidly as we may, General Greene,” he said, and pushed his horse ahead. Close by him, a company commander caught the order and raised his voice.

  “March-march!” he called. The men began to shuffle along at something like a trot.

  George Lake’s company was in the center of General Greene’s column, and it began to move faster and to expand, as columns do when they change speed. As each company and each platoon heard the order to trot, they went off, increasing the distance to the next. George left his place on the front right of his company and began to run down the column, coaching the corporals and sergeants to close up and keep their intervals. The Third Virginia began to form again. He ran back up the column, passing Bludner, who looked at him dully.

  “In a hurry to get beat?” asked Bludner as he ran by. George didn’t spare him a reply. He raced for the front of their battalion and passed the word up to the last sergeant in the Fifth Virginia, a man who knew a little, and that man headed off to close his men.

  It was the sort of detail that officers generally overlooked, even when they were veterans. The newer ones wouldn’t even know how vital a few moments could be in bringing your column up to a line and beginning to fire, had no idea how hard simple maneuvers would be in the blowing snow.

  He was sweating now, and his feet were warm. If he had a particular friend left, he would have shared the irony with him, but they were all gone now, and so he kept it to himself, and they trotted on.

  There was a flutter of firing ahead.

  Washington watched the Hessian outpost form rapidly, fire a volley, and vanish in the growing storm of snow. It was well done, as the men fulfilled their duty to provide an alarm and then ran for the town. Washington was quietly impressed by their quality. But his own men moved past the post, a cooper’s shop a little outside the town, and began to trot forward again. None of them had been hit.

  He trotted his horse along the verge of the road, careful to keep clear of the column. The men seemed afire with enthusiasm suddenly, every one of them racing forward, faster and faster, the column beginning to resemble a giant race, at least in the vanguard. Back in the main body, Washington could see that the companies were moving well, better closed up, which would be vital if the plan was to work. Greene’s entire column would have to form line to the right, a complex maneuver. He watched them for a moment, and then heard the welcome sound of musketry from the direction of Sullivan’s column. The alarm was sounded. Any surprise was over. Now it would be a battle, and in truth, the die was cast.

  George Lake had plenty of time to watch the last moment of the preparation, as a flaw in the wind cleared the snow for a moment. Off to the south, Sullivan’s column was a dark mass on the low road, and his own column lay ahead and behind him. And then in an instant, all the order was chaos as they reached the outlying buildings. Mercer’s men began to hurl themselves at the stone houses, and there were scattered shots. He had no idea who was firing or at what. He could hear the head of the column cheering, cheering like madmen, and his own men began to press forward. He hadn’t heard such cheering in all his time in the army. He pressed them back with his musket.

  “Keep your intervals!” he bellowed.

  A scattering of shots came their way, and he heard one whicker past. It made little impression on him. The head of the column was trying to form in the narrow streets, and Captain Lawrence was shouting for them to “form front by company”, but George could see that the guns which the army had moved with so much labor from across the river were trying hard to reach the front.

  “Stand fast!” Lake bellowed. He pointed at the guns. Lawrence froze for a moment with a look of pure hatred on his face and then it cleared as he saw the guns moving, and he nodded sharply. The Fifth Virginia detached men to move the guns faster, and suddenly there were heavy bangs and the heady smell of sulfur. The column shuffled forward again. The guns were commanding one street, but it seemed that the Germans were forming on another and suddenly, unexpectedly, George Lake was in the front rank facing them. The rest of the column must have suddenly gone down the other road. An arm’s length away, a four-pounder fired, the canister of little metal balls cutting men down in tens. The noise made his ears ring. Captain Lawrence sprang to the front.

  “Follow me!” he yelled. Instantly he took a ball and went down. The men, most of whom had taken a step forward, shuffled. It was a moment of hesitation, and Lake wouldn’t have it.

  “At them, Virginians!” he yelled, and his company followed him forward. Behind the little screen of German infantry were two of their battalion guns, three-pounders that could shred their company in a heartbeat. Screaming their huzzas, the Virginians raced down the street as the German gunners struggled with the high wind to get the touch holes of their guns primed. George Lake watched it all, his whole being focused on the man placing a quill of powder in the touch hole and then stepping back. The Germans were afraid, caught unprepared in the stree
t, and the man with the linstock that could fire the piece was slow, he fumbled his movement a little and George was there, atop him, sweeping him off his feet. He rolled off the man and hit him in the breast with his musket butt and before he could move to another enemy, the guns were taken.

  He picked himself up slowly, covered in the nasty slush and mud of the street, to find that he was standing at the feet of General Washington’s horse.

  “Well done, Virginians,” Washington said, and rode off.

  “What’s your name, Sergeant?” asked an aide, riding up.

  “I’m George Lake, an’ it please you, sir.” Lake suddenly felt old and tired. The officer looked calm, comfortable, and elegant, all things that were beyond George Lake this morning. The officer saluted him, raising his hat, a gesture that he never expected, and rode off. Lake turned on his men, busy looting every German in sight.

  “Form on me!” he yelled.

  Victory. Not since Boston had he had this feeling, this gentle elation of spirit that held him above the earth as if floating along in a gallop. They had taken nearly the whole garrison of Trenton, three regiments, and more driven off in the snow without their guns. He had a further gamble in mind, a quick lunge against the British concentration at Princeton a few miles away to break up their timing and disrupt their attempts to attack him. It was a technique that every fencing master taught, to attack into your enemy’s preparation. He thought now that he had timed it well, that he was across and into the enemy with something like total surprise. He felt his confidence return, and he could see on every face around him that they were confident as well. Indeed, Mercer’s men looked like they were drunk, so great was their flow of spirit. But they were under control soon enough, and he would have his attempt on Princeton. More men would come across the ferry today. The word of the victory would spread, and the sunshine soldiers and summer patriots who fought at convenience would suddenly appear to bulk his forces.

  There in the snow, surrounded by the adulation of his staff and the cheers of his men, he saw that it would only take a few such victories to put the chance of defeat behind him. The British had to defeat him. He had only to survive.

  General Greene, flushed with the success, took his hand in Quaker directness.

  “Give you the joy of your glorious victory, General,” he said. Washington smiled broadly, his rare bad-tooth smile that he hid from all but Martha.

  “Their enlistments still run out in four days, Nathan,” he said. Greene shook his head, and Sullivan sneered.

  “Let the faint hearts go home. After this, men will flock to us.”

  And Washington rose in his stirrups, looked at the men about him, and waved to his escort commander to start down the road.

  “Perhaps, General Sullivan. But in any case, they will need to be trained, and fed, and clothed, and we will spend another winter building the army.”

  Greene touched his arm, a contact Washington had used to resent.

  “You sound tired, sir.”

  “Tired?” Washington held in his horse. The big stallion was unwinded by the morning, restless, his ears pricking for new adventure. “Perhaps I am tired, Nathan. But I now see why they chose a farmer to lead this army. Farmers are used to having to start anew every spring. And farmers know that before you begin a job of work, you have to build your tools.” He looked at his staff, his generals, his army. The tools were there. He had trusted them, and they, him. And they had won.

  IV

  Liberty or Death

  …If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were:

  Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

  JOHN DONNE, 1623

  1

  Morristown, Pennsylvania, April 5, 1777

  George Lake was on his last days with the company. Spring was bringing changes throughout the army, as had the victories at Trenton and Princeton. Princeton was a confused memory, hazier than the brief fight in the streets of Trenton. It had not felt like a victory until the last moments, when the British line wavered and fell back, leaving the Continentals the field and a clear route back to their own side of the river. But the victories were a tonic, and when the enlistments ran out more men stayed than George had ever hoped. Most of the men who stayed now felt that they would win the war, and the veterans had something that they had lacked before, a steady confidence in their movements and their drill.

  One of the changes was that George was being promoted. He was leaving the rank of sergeant and moving up to be an officer in another company, the new light infantry company, supposedly composed of the best men in his regiment. He had watched the men being chosen and was aware that the new company had more than its share of awkward men, new recruits, and lazy men the other companies didn’t want, but he also noted that it would have the highest proportion of true believers, young men from trades and farms who had a stake in the new nation, and that meant something.

  He had two days left until his promotion became official, and in those days he was the odd man out, with a new tent all to himself and new equipment to find, and he sat on the fresh straw over boards that made the floor of his tent and mended his ragged uniform. In the street outside, Bludner was preaching to his platoon.

  Bludner sounded a little too pleased with himself. George Lake told himself not to care—he was on his last days in the company and Bludner’s opinion of him no longer mattered. But old habits die hard, they say, and he waited his time as the man went on with his bombast to his cronies, pulling on an old coat that wouldn’t mind the April mud. The rain had stopped for the first time in days.

  “…found some of my property, gone missing on its legs, as it were. I hope you gentlemen take mah meanin’.”

  George couldn’t help but hear him. Now that they had proper tents, everyone could hear everything that was said in their company street. He opened the hooks and eyes on his own and stooped out, passing his sword belt over his shoulder as he did so.

  It pained George to see the eagerness with which some of Bludner’s men received his words. The divide between the true believers and the backwoodsmen was, if anything, deeper in the new drafts. Too many of the recruits were landless men, or laborers, serving for the land grants promised. Too few were young men from families or from trades. The war is using up our patriotism, he thought. It is going on too long. He felt it himself. He limped a little as he made his way over to the circle of men around Bludner.

  “…nice piece, a black piece I mean to recover when this is over. An’ she can tell us a thing or two about what them lobsters is up to in New York. She’ll be scare’t of me from here!” He laughed at the thought, an ugly sound.

  George Lake stopped by the edge of the group and stood silent with his hand on his hip.

  “Why, lookee here, boys. It’s the new officer of the light company.” Bludner’s sneer was all too obvious. George thought the man looked a little drunk.

  “Sergeant Bludner?” George spoke quietly. His voice was steady.

  “Frien’ o’ mine jus’ got free from New York. He saw one o’ mah slaves there. An’ he says that the Jerseys is full o’ free blacks jus’ waitin’ for us to take them. Now that don’ interest Mr. Lake, here. He wants to protect them niggers, don’ you, Mister Lake?”

  Bludner was looking for a fight, spoiling for it as he had been since the news of George’s promotion came down from the regiment. George was ready to give it to him, but wanted the man to make the fight himself. George could watch Bludner looking for a means to be offensive.

  “Did you ever own a slave, Sergeant Bludner?” George knew that Bludner always claimed he had, but as he had never owned any land, George couldn’t see why.

  “I owned a couple, yes. More ’an you, boy.”

  George stepped toward him. “How did you come to own slaves when you didn’t own a
ny land?” George was getting angry. He wasn’t even sure why he was angry, but the anger was growing in him. Perhaps it was the term boy. Perhaps it was just two years of steady abuse. “Was you a pimp, Bludner?” he asked, stepping in close.

  Sometimes a chance remark touches a nerve. Perhaps someone else had once made the comparison, some time in the past, but Bludner was all rage, a blur of fists coming at George. Except that George had been ready since he left his tent.

  He took the first blows on his arms and retaliated, hitting Bludner twice in the face, snapping his head back. Bludner was relentless, pounding away at his arms, slipping blows through into his chest and belly through perseverance and rage, but George hung on, punishing his man with punches to the head. Bludner tried to close and George leapt back, bent low and lunged like a fencer, smashing his left fist into Bludner’s throat and putting him down. As Bludner started to rise, George smashed him in the crotch with a kick, and then another to his head. He was breathing as if he had run a race. Bludner lay in the mud, spasming like a slaughtered lamb, his eyes open and blind.

  George stumbled back and looked at the ring of men, some frightened and some deeply inimical. He stood straight, covering his panting, trying to be like the gentlemen officers he had seen. His voice was remarkably like Washington’s when he spoke, steady, commanding. “Clean him up and see he’s on parade,” he said, and walked through the circle. He felt cleaner.

  George needed to get clear of the camp, clear of Bludner and the divided loyalties of the men. He decided to take his few shillings and his loot from Trenton into the city of Philadelphia and get himself some new shirts and a decent set of clothes, so that he could start life as an officer looking like one. He had no horse and no friend who owned one, so he walked out through the camp, got the password for the day at the adjutant’s tent, and made his way past the quarterguard and up to the head of the camp and the sentry line, where he showed his pass and started for Philadelphia, three miles away.