Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  “Rifles are my passion, Sergeant. I can’t help but prose away about them.”

  Another ball passed between them and made its little musical note.

  “That’s just seven or eight men firing to amuse us. I’ll see to that immediately with my lads. You’ll sweep the ground? I think you’ll find they have a force in those woods, but I doubt it will prove considerable.” Hangar took Crawford’s glass, looked for a moment, and handed it back. “A pleasure, gentlemen. Damn me, I hate the heat. Let’s get this done.”

  Lieutenant Martin came up to them and was immediately touched by a ball fired from the gloom to their front. It was a slight wound but he seemed proud of it. Caesar wrapped it with his handkerchief as they scrambled back from their exposed position.

  “Good practice,” said Crawford. “They can shoot.”

  “They shoot best when there ain’t anybody shooting back,” Jeremy quipped.

  A moment later they could hear the heavy barks of the Jaegers’ rifles returning fire off to their left. Caesar looked at Martin. “It was my intention to take the company out and cover the ground as quickly as possible.”

  Martin nodded. “I expect you know the business, Sergeant. I just want to see it done.” Martin was jealous of Lieutenant Crawford, who was shouting orders rapidfire at Captain Stewart’s company, already formed off to the right. A further company, the Forty-second lights, was moving cautiously down into the low ground farther off to the right. Captain Stewart could be seen riding that way.

  Caesar hated the oppressive heat, which made both uniform and equipment uncomfortable. He used a cloth to wipe his face, shifted his belts to allow a little more of the fetid air to reach his skin, and blew his whistle twice. The company moved forward.

  The rifles fired again, off at the woodline in the distance, and their smoke hung in an ugly cloud just over the position of the shooters. Because there was no breeze to move the smoke away, it provided a screen that kept them safe. Caesar could just see the shine of the new sun on a ramrod or a barrel as the man loaded. Caesar raised both his arms and waved them forward and started to trot. Captain Stewart came up behind him on horseback.

  “Right to the woods!” Stewart shouted. Caesar just raised a hand in acknowledgment. He could see the riflemen scrambling now, one pausing to take a last shot, another leaping over a log. The last shot vanished into the morning, doing no immediate harm that Caesar could see, and then they were at the woodline. He blew a long blast on his whistle and heard the corporals shouting “Skirmish” just as Stewart’s bugles began to send the same signal. He aimed at a retreating figure and fired to no effect. The range was already too long for muskets.

  Caesar waved Fowver’s platoon forward. Willy Smith passed him, yelling “Moses, get it loaded, there.” From his vantage point commanding the stationary platoon, Caesar watched Fowver’s men with pride as they picked their way forward, the files staying together and the men covering both the front and flanks with their eyes. Off to the left, Stewart’s company was moving forward more aggressively, and Caesar could hear McDonald pushing them with his voice. Caesar started his own platoon forward.

  It seemed only a moment later that Stewart and Jeremy appeared by him at the far edge of the wood.

  “No point in it,” said Jeremy, looking through his master’s glass. Stewart held out his hand for the instrument and shook his head. They had come three-quarters of a mile from their camp and Caesar was soaked in sweat from the little run. Jeremy looked as if he had a private store of ice in his coat, but Captain Stewart’s hair was every which way, as if he had come to battle straight from his pillow. Caesar wondered if Sally were with the army baggage back in the center of camp, or whether she had gone to New York by ship, like the Guides’ women.

  Stewart shook his head, cocked his leg over the cantle of his saddle to steady himself, and looked into the gloom again.

  “Damn the heat,” he said, snappishly.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Drink some water, sir.”

  “I don’t want water.”

  “You should drink some water, sir.”

  Stewart turned and glared at them both for a moment, and then smiled.

  “Well, gentlemen, we missed them.”

  Caesar nodded. Lieutenant Martin approached and Caesar gave him a description of what they had hoped to accomplish. Stewart handed Martin the glass and he looked into the haze for a moment before giving an exclamation.

  “Isn’t that the gleam of bayonets?” he said, pushing the glass at Stewart. Stewart finished a long pull at the canteen that Jeremy had held out to him and looked guilty for a moment before seizing the telescope and taking a look.

  “Look at that,” he said. “Jeremy, get back immediately. Find Colonel Musgrave and tell him that the Continentals are forming to attack our right.” He looked for a moment. “Well spotted, young Martin. Look at them all. Tell the colonel that I have no idea of a count in this haze but that they appear to be formidable.”

  Caesar shook his head. “I don’t want to fight in this heat,” he said.

  “Just so.” Stewart motioned at their companies. “I had thought to leave a detachment here, but there is no purpose if they are coming to contest these woods.”

  “We could give them a little harassing fire as they came up,” said Martin eagerly.

  Stewart nodded, motioning to his bugler to sound the retreat.

  “Good thought. Keep the Guides here for a bit. Be ready to move, though—if the army marches, we won’t keep this ground.”

  Martin looked at Caesar. “Did I do right, Sergeant?”

  Caesar smiled. “We’ll see, sir. But I’d rather be doing the harassing fire than taking it all morning.”

  George Lake led his company at the head of the column, and he saluted General Lee as he passed him, turning his head to the right and bringing his sword up in a smart salute. Lee waved with his whip.

  All the light companies of the army had been concentrated in a single division with several crack regiments. They were all veterans and all tried troops, and George gathered that they were actually going to attack the British, a thing that hadn’t really been done since he was at Trenton. He was excited, but under the excitement he worried about the heat, which was already affecting his older men, and he worried about the dissension. He knew officers who said that General Lee thought this plan to be fatally flawed, and he knew officers who thought that there was no plan. George knew that Lee had not ridden out to view the enemy or the ground in any detail, and this negligence worried him. But Lee was popular, and he looked every inch a soldier, sitting on his horse and watching the columns march forward. Lake could only hope.

  In three years of fighting, Caesar had never been a spectator in a major action. They occupied the fringe of woods facing west and waited. Twice in the morning, they drove off parties of the enemy, but although these actions helped steady the new men, they were minor affairs. The enemy only came in small patrols and were happy to be seen off with a burst of fire. They took one prisoner from the second patrol, an elderly private in the Second Virginia.

  To the south, they could just make out the enemy columns forming in the dust and haze. After they repulsed the second patrol, Caesar went to the edge of the woods at Virgil’s urging and watched both of the grenadier battalions forming front from columns to attack a steep hill over a mile away. Caesar nodded.

  “I wondered last night why we didn’t occupy that hill, and today we have to take it back.”

  Virgil pointed with his chin at the main camp, where the long lines of wagons were moving out to the north. Caesar nodded again.

  “I see them.”

  “So it won’t be no big battle. The line regiments is already movin’.” Virgil, a great respecter of the British line, thought it unfair that the British generals seemed to fight their battles in America with only their lights and grenadiers.

  “If’n they never use them boys for ought but replacements, they’ll be sorry soldiers when the day comes.”
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  Caesar looked at Virgil, a little surprised, as it wasn’t Virgil’s usual line of thought.

  “What day, Virgil?”

  “The day when them Continentals is ready for a proper battle.”

  They marched and countermarched in the heat, and the British artillery played on them like a deadly cloud of insects, the big balls emitting a deadly whine as they flew, or rolling and bouncing ominously over the hard-packed ground. Despite the moisture in the air, the ground seemed as hard as rock, and it reflected the heat like a great brown mirror. George had already lost two men to the cannon, but he had lost five to the heat.

  And they hadn’t come to grips yet.

  He saw the distant columns of red come together and shake out into a line and he watched with professional admiration as the British came on, rounding a little bend in the road with their columns behind. Two of their sixpounders set up at the head of the near column and fired a round of grape into the battalion next to George, and it gave ground. It didn’t run, like in the old days, but just fell back a little, giving the British the crest of the hill.

  George ran to his commander, Colonel Weedon. “Are there any orders, sir?” he asked, pointing at the British grenadiers.

  “None since we marched this morning, Captain.” He looked at his watch and then down at the British. “Last I heard, we were attacking.”

  “Guess no one told them,” said George. He turned and found Caleb Cooke at his side.

  “I’m holding this position until General Lee should choose to honor me with his commands,” said the Yankee captain. His bitterness was obvious.

  George ran back to his company in time to see the head of the British column start forward up the hill aimed at the space to his left. He marched his company forward a few paces until they had a clear shot down the hill and ordered his sergeant to open fire. Companies to his right were doing the same. Colonel Weedon was pushing two companies a little down the slope to fire into the flank of the attack when the woods in front of them erupted with more grenadiers. George had never seen an attack like it. The British were in no sort of line, and he watched a group of their officers run into the little patch of swamp at the base of the hill to his right and wade through, a dozen grenadiers pushing along strongly in their wake until the whole group was across. The two companies that had gone forward to flank the first column were now caught in the flank by this second group. Despite outnumbering them heavily, they were so caught by the initial surprise that they ran, with fewer than twenty grenadiers pursuing them to the top of the ridge. In a moment, both his flanks were lost and the hilltop was a sea of red jackets.

  He wanted to stand and gape unbelievingly. This wasn’t some superior performance by the British, but massive incompetence by his own.

  “Get them back!” he yelled to his sergeants, and then pointed at his new bugler, a little black boy of twelve or so that he had found in a cottage. “Sound retreat.”

  Washington rode forward, listening to the sounds of musketry in the heavy air and concerned at its volume and direction.

  “Surely that sounds closer than the last,” he said to Lafayette.

  He began to gallop and his staff followed him forward. They began to pass panicked men and deserters, and the junior officers of the staff set themselves to round these up. Then they passed a trickle of wounded men moving to the rear.

  “Damn the man,” Washington said aloud. These were his very best troops, the light companies of the old Continental regiments and the rangers and riflemen, as well as whole battalions of crack veterans. Off to the left he could see a column of Massachusetts men standing to, drooping in the heat. He turned to Fitzgerald.

  “Tell whoever commands that column to get those men out of the sun. What is he thinking of?” He rode forward, his horse lathered in sweat but still full of spirit. Washington didn’t seem in the least fazed by the oppressive heat. Lafayette was invigorated by his burst of energy, and the little flow of breeze generated by the gallop had helped.

  He rode into the middle of a rout. The whole of the road was choked with disorganized units trying to force past each other, with officers striving to rally their men, and men too panicked to be rallied. A battery of guns had cut their traces and left their pieces sitting on the hard-packed road to get away on the horses. Washington fumed. He rode back and forth, suddenly everywhere, cautioning a colonel, soothing a jittery captain, praising the efforts of the men who suddenly found themselves in the rearguard. All his staff flew about like demons, riding from unit to unit, bringing up clumps of men who seemed willing to return to their duty, in some cases simply giving men heart who had lost it, or telling commanders to make their men drink water. It all helped, and little by little they turned the shambles back into the cream of the army.

  Through it all, Washington looked for Charles Lee. He found him sitting quietly on his horse amidst his small staff, gazing at a distant hilltop where a battalion of British grenadiers were putting themselves in a state of defense.

  “What are you about, sir?” asked Washington, as soon as he rode up. Lee looked as if he had been struck.

  “I told you they wouldn’t stand,” Lee said bitterly. “Those grenadiers rolled the so-called elite of our army off that hill like so many children. They won’t stand.”

  Washington looked at him with something pretty near loathing.

  “Sir, they are able, and by God they shall do it! Your retreat is a disgrace. Do me the favor of accepting responsibility for your own errors and not blaming the men who sought to serve you.”

  Lee rounded on him. “There’s irony for you, sir. You are going to criticize my command?”

  “I am. I can see that the scale of this operation was beyond your grasp.” Washington turned aside as a trooper of the light horse cantered up and saluted, presenting a message. Washington read it. Lee made no attempt to see it, but sat fuming.

  “Was it your intention to attack the enemy rearguard from both flanks?” Washington asked.

  “Once I had lured them with a feigned retreat.”

  Washington looked at the reforming army.

  He turned his horse so that he was nose to tail with the messenger, scanning the distant hill where the grenadiers could be seen. He beckoned to Hamilton and looked at a map for a moment.

  “I’m taking command,” he said. Lee was clearly stunned. He rode off a distance and sat quietly. Perhaps he had mistaken his man.

  Washington finished his map study, lining up features visible in the endless heat shimmer with marks on the map. He turned back to the messenger.

  “Attack!” he said.

  George Lake’s men were not beaten. They made that clear by cheering Washington as he rode up to them in the full heat of the afternoon, despite their parched throats, and the cheer was taken up along the line, even by men who had run from a handful of grenadiers an hour before. They cheered and cheered. Washington smiled a little, hiding his teeth but visibly pleased. Lake stepped out of his spot at the head of his company and caught at Lafayette’s bridle. The young general smiled down at him.

  “What happened?” Lake pleaded.

  “I don’t think we will ever know. I am not experienced, eh? But it seems to me that Lee had no plan.”

  Lake shook his head in angry negation. “We marched out there smartly enough and then there were no orders.”

  “Perhaps he had a plan. And the British attack surprised him. I think perhaps General Lee does not like being surprised.”

  Lake nodded, agreeing now.

  “But war is nothing but a series of surprises and disappointments. That is why this one is so very good,” and Lafayette pointed at Washington. “He is never ruined by a surprise, eh?”

  Lake smiled up at Lafayette.

  “Now we attack? General?” Lake was never quite sure if Lafayette really was a general as he was twenty years younger than the others.

  “It is hot,” Lafayette responded warily. “And many of these troops have already fought, whether
well or badly. I think that I have learned that most soldiers will only fight once in a day.”

  The men behind Lake cheered again, as if to prove the young general wrong.

  Lake went back to where his company was waiting in the shade and told them to be ready. Then he took out his horn inkwell, suddenly his most precious possesion, and started to add to his endless letter to Betsy.

  Caesar watched the grenadiers attack in the distance and then settled down to a long exchange of fire with some militia to their flank. As the morning wore on, the militia began to come closer and there were some rifle balls among the shots coming at their woodline. Mr. Martin moved up and down the line quite boldly and set a good example, and Caesar developed a new liking for the man. Several of the soldiers of the Guides who had been down on him noted that he did not hesitate to share his canteen with a black soldier—a sin that had been imputed to him at spring drill.

  Jeremy visited them from time to time, checking on their position and a similar one occupied by some men from the Queen’s Rangers just to the south. In late morning his horse took a ball, and he had to walk back to the light infantry camp. It was quite a feat of bravery, unnoticed on that busy day, but Caesar watched him go the whole distance, under fire much of the way, with deep misgiving, because Jeremy seemed to be above such notions as using the available cover, or running.

  He was back on a new horse by early afternoon. He rode up to Mr. Martin, and Caesar trotted over through the heavy air. There were guns firing to the north, or perhaps low summer thunder—it was difficult to be sure. Caesar had soaked his jacket with sweat, and his hatband and even his leather equipment was damp.

  “Men are low on powder and we’re all out of water,” Caesar said without preamble.

  “I just said the same,” added Martin, a little defensively.