To Try Men's Souls - George Washington 1

by Newt Gingrich

  All the time daylight was approaching. Its coming drove the General forward, as if goading him along. Peter and he had to run at a steady trot to keep up now. His lungs felt like a bellows drawing in fire.

  And then they heard the sound of horses approaching, a movement in the mists ahead.

  The sergeant behind them snapped a command and the headquarters company, moving at a flat-out run, two men spilling on the ice-covered ground, raced to either side of the road and began to form into a semblance of a line, men unslinging muskets from shoulders. All Jonathan could think of at that moment was the utter absurdity of the gesture. If there were Hessians ahead, chances were that few men in the entire army behind him or now deploying had a weapon with dry powder that could fire.

  As Washington heard the sounds ahead there were a few seconds of tension, a coiling up, a quick thought that his horse pistol in the saddle holster was most likely soaked. If there were Hessians, deploying out, the first volley would strike quickly.

  I’ve faced worse he thought. There had been that moment on the Monongahela when a Frenchman stepped out from behind a tree, not ten paces off, and in that instant he had actually been looking into the muzzle of the musket, could see the man’s eye squinting as he aimed, time seeming to drag out, the flash of fire in the pan, the explosion of flame from the barrel, so close he could feel the heat of it . . . and the ball had clipped the side of his hat, not an inch away from his temple. Behind a curtain of smoke the Frenchman disappeared, and with drawn sword he had saluted in his direction and turned back to the center of the fight.

  They’ll volley fire he thought, then charge, so be ready to fall back . . . Get Knox to push the guns off to the side of the road . . . Be ready to give ground. It is still dark enough that in the confusion I can run artillery out into the fields to either side while trying to push this column into a hammering charge at their center.

  The shadows drew closer, a man mounted in the lead, others behind him, moving swiftly. They appeared to be Virginia troops, a captain of rifles leading the way.

  They slowed at the sight of him. His heart still pounding, he assumed the role of actor upon the stage, knowing others were watching. He nudged his mount forward, as if expecting this encounter all along.

  “Sir!”

  The captain, breathing hard, stopped before him.

  “Do you have something to report?” Washington asked, and then he could not contain himself. “The Hessians, are they coming?” he asked. “Are they behind you?”

  He knew his questions were too hurried, his thought now being that these men were falling back to the main column with the enemy in hot pursuit.

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  More men were coming out of the snow and fog, traversing an open field to the right that was covered with ice, corn stubble sticking up out of the frozen ground, hard going for some of the men who were barefoot and moving slowly.

  “Your report then?”

  “Sir, I must say it’s a surprise to see you here.”

  The captain looked up at him excitedly, actually smiling.

  “Who are you?”

  “Captain Anderson, sir. Third Virginia, sir.”

  Third Virginia? He felt a moment of confusion. No advance scouts had been detached from that regiment.

  “Yes, sir, Third Virginia. General Stephens, sir, we were talking to him yesterday and said that it was a shame, its being Christmas and all, and given how those damn Germans like to celebrate, that maybe we could come over and stir their party up a bit.”

  The captain actually chuckled at what he obviously thought was a delightful, boyish prank.

  “So, General Stephens, he told me to take some men, get across the Delaware, poke around a bit and go ahead and have some fun. Up until yesterday it was only some militia with Ewing that were having all the fun, and the honor of Virginia was at stake if we didn’t join in.”

  Washington felt that his heart was about to stop. Stephens had not been briefed until late yesterday afternoon on the plans for an attack. During that briefing Stephens had not said a word about this impromptu raid. He wondered if the man had forgotten or had decided simply not to say anything.

  “And what happened?” Washington asked slowly, sick at heart with what he expected to be the reply, the excitement of the young captain answer enough.

  “Sir, we hit them good. Waited until about four hours ago, got to the edge of the town and fired a few volleys right into the house where some of those damn Germans were keeping warm. We made it warm for them all right! Think we even got a few and, sir, we certainly stirred them up! Must’ve woke up the whole town, it did. We could hear drums rolling and men running about.

  “Ruined their night of precious sleep, I’m certain of it. It was like hitting a hornet’s nest with a rock. You should have heard them buzzing, but we was gone and nothing for them to sting! I bet they are still running around in circles.”

  The young captain was beaming with pride. The rest of his command, coming in from the nearby field, were gathering around, nodding their heads, obviously delighted with themselves.

  “Well, that kicked up a stir, sir. We just headed back up into these fields. Got comfortable in a house and barn owned by some good patriot who, forgive us, sir, gave us some buttered rum to take away the chill, and we’re just coming back out now when someone said you were on the road, so we came down to find out. We were thinking of maybe kicking ’em up again before heading back across the river and——”

  “Damn you! Damn you, sir!”

  The words exploded out of him with thunderous rage.

  “You damn fools. You damnable fools!”

  Washington’s explosive outcry startled his mount, causing the horse to rear up slightly.

  Turning, he looked to the troops behind him, struggling to keep the pace, were coming forward, still several dozen yards off.

  “General Stephens!” he cried. “Up here now!”

  He gazed angrily at the column of infantry that was slowing at the sight of their General stopped in the middle of the road, the headquarters company deploying as if for a fight. In the snow and mist it was impossible to see if Stephens was close by or not.

  “You say you stirred them up after dark?” Washington shouted at the now thoroughly confused and frightened captain.

  “Sir. I’m sorry, sir, but General Stephens told us we could do it, sir.”

  Washington could feel his temper about to descend on this man, to curse him, berate him. All was now in ruins, absolute ruins. Gates had not crossed. It was already well past dawn, and the plan had been to attack nearly three hours before dawn and catch the enemy while still fast asleep. He had no word whatsoever whether the blocking force south of the town had crossed the river, and if it had done so undetected. And now this. Stephens had allowed some over eager men to cross the river to “stir things up a bit,” and then had not admitted it or had conveniently forgotten to tell him.

  The plan might well be in ruins. These men surely had aroused the Hessian garrison, most likely just before the watch was about to change. Any officer expecting further raids or suspecting that the evening sortie was the beginning of a full-scale attack would have now doubled his watch and kept most of the men under arms until dawn. He would have sent out probing parties to patrol the surrounding countryside.

  The plan was ruined.

  He glared down at the captain, and he could see the fear in the man’s eyes.

  The look disarmed him. The young man and his comrades had crossed over the river the day before, an act few would undertake, and was most likely returning expecting praise, and now he towered above him, filled with rage.

  Washington closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  If Providence, in His wisdom has willed all this so, then what more can I do? Gates, the storm, the maddening delay at Jacob’s Creek, and now this. Is this the will of Providence?

  We cannot turn back now, and to rage at this man will solve nothing. His heart
told him the assault was truly doomed. But if that indeed was his fate, and of the men who had trusted in him, he would face it . . . and not curse an innocent man who believed he had been doing his duty.

  He opened his eyes and shook his head wearily. “Captain, it is not your fault. Do you still have some fight in you?”

  The captain was, startled, having expected something far different.

  “Well, do you still have some fight in you?”

  “Well, sir, we were planning to try and raid one of their outposts just down the road and then you came along, sir, and, well, I thought, sir——”

  “Good then,” Washington replied softly. “Fall in behind me, captain, and I will lead you into a bigger fight.”

  The captain, almost like an eager boy, saluted and shouted for his men to follow.

  Washington’s headquarters company had gathered around behind him, most likely hearing a fair part of the exchange. He could only hope that word of it did not race back up the column, for it would surely unnerve men already staggering with exhaustion and cold to realize that any hope whatsoever of surprise was gone. This attack, advancing against an enemy rested, warm, and already aroused, was doomed.

  Indeed it was a time to try a man’s soul.

  “Forward, men. Forward,” he announced to his headquarters company. The men of the raiding party were falling in with him.

  “Anyone got any dry powder?” he heard someone ask.

  “If your powder is wet, use cold steel,” Washington called to him. “Pass the word back. Fix bayonets if your powder is wet.”

  He could hear his order picked up, shouted back to the marching column.

  He caught a glimpse of the two boys from Jersey. Both had un-slung their muskets and advanced with them leveled. Neither had a bayonet.

  He drew his sword and spurred his mount forward, picking the pace up again. In the early light of a stormy dawn, he saw a scattering of houses ahead.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Philadelphia

  December 13, 1776

  A cold wind rattled the windowpanes of the bedroom.

  Tom Paine woke up, confused, not sure for a moment where he was. The room was semidark, curtains drawn. It felt stifling, confining, and chokingly hot, with heat radiating from one of Franklin’s stoves. Pulling back the covers, still not sure where he was, he was startled to discover he was naked. The room was elegant in its simplicity, candlesticks of fine pewter, sideboard of well-polished cherry wood, bed with a wool-stuffed mattress and down comforter.

  Memory finally came back. His army uniform, which but a few months before he had worn so proudly, was gone, burned in the fireplace of Rush’s kitchen. He remembered now the exclamations of disgust of the old woman who had picked it off the floor, holding the rags between forefinger and thumb before hurling them into the roaring fire. Michael had bathed him in the tin tub set by the fireplace, the old woman pouring gallons of warm water over him. In his exhaustion he had not even been embarrassed by her ministrations as she helped Michael to clip off his beard and shave him clean.

  Several times she had drawn back in horror as one of the surviving lice still clinging to his body tried to make a dash for a new haven. She would vigorously slap her hands, then peer at the floor to make sure the pest had fallen to the brick paving where she could crush it.

  In exasperation they had cut his hair short, picking out the nits with a fine-toothed comb. Then he had dozed off, having drunk the whole tankard of hot buttered rum that Michael had given him.

  He stepped close to the mirror mounted in a dark mahogany frame over the sideboard. Leaning forward, he peered into it.

  It was the first time he had looked at himself in weeks, and the reflection startled him. His features were gaunt, pale in the soft light. Was it dusk or dawn streaming in that gave his features a sickly tinge of gray? His leathery skin was deeply lined, as if several months at war had aged him ten years or more. Gray eyes peering back at him showed a weariness of body and soul.

  His nearly shaved head was covered with red welts from the lice and flea bites. In fact, his entire body itched with the small pinprick sores. When living on the streets of London he had been lousy, too; everyone was. But this time the infestation had been especially acute, and it felt strange now to be standing naked, in a warm room, looking at himself.

  He felt aged, bowed down by weight and by guilt. He remembered how he must have looked six months past. After Common Sense had been published, he was “the Thomas Paine,” and had never had to buy a meal for months. He had merely to walk into any inn and someone would call out his name; sometimes it would be one of the workers he had known from the docks and warehouses before his fame; or if he chose the right place at a convenient time when Congress was not in meeting, it would be one of the hangers-on seeking favor or appointment and believing that buying a meal and rum for “Mr. Thomas Paine” might help his cause. And he had been more than happy to accept that largess. At times it might even be a member of Congress. He had dined with Jefferson and Stockton off fine china with a servant at his shoulder. Or late at night in a back room, he had drained tankard after tankard of the finest rum while debating the meaning of this thing called Revolution.

  And he had grown fat.

  He remembered now how he had looked in those heady days of July and August. A man of some renown at a time when all toasted the Revolution, General George Washington, God bless him, and these United States. And always the drinks had been free. The roast beef thick with fat, the pies covered with cream, the sausages and fresh lamb chops brought in from the countryside by German farmers——all of it free for Mr. Paine.

  Now what am I?

  He was again a skeletal scarecrow, pinched sallow cheeks making his hook nose even more pronounced.

  Laid out on a chair by the side of the bed were breeches and a jacket of brown broad cloth, soft cotton shirt, hose, and shoes . . . actual shoes. The sight of them flashed memory to a few days before, the struggling march from Princeton to Trenton, men sliding calf deep into the churned-up mud, most of them barefoot. How much would these shoes have fetched then in trade?

  No, the thought was absurd. With an army they were useless; the mud would suck them off your feet within a few hundred paces. If you managed to somehow keep them on, they would be disintegrating from the mud and slush by the end of the day, the leather gone soggy and useless.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and picked the shoes up, examining them, the fine stitching, blackened tanned tops and leather bottoms, and pewter buckles. Such simple things, and how many men were dying for lack of proper boots. Yet here these waited for him.

  My papers?

  There was a flash of panic. Frantic, he looked around the room. Where are the papers?

  “So the dead have arisen!” Benjamin Rush stood at the open door.

  He felt a flash of embarrassment as he sat there naked.

  Rush came into the room, Michael his servant following, carrying a tray covered with a cloth.

  Tom let the shoes drop and reached around, pulling the comforter around his naked waist.

  “Now, no false modesty, Thomas,” Rush announced. “I was a doctor before I got swept into all this revolutionary madness.”

  Michael put the tray down on the sideboard, left the room, and returned a moment later with a smaller tray, this one with a steaming cup of coffee and a plump roll slathered with melted butter.

  “Breakfast, sir,” Michael announced.

  “Breakfast?”

  “My good man, you’ve been sick and sleeping for days. It’s dawn. We wanted you to sleep as long as you could.”

  Days? What a luxury. There had been days over the last month when he had actually dozed off while marching, leaning on some unnamed comrade. Twenty minutes of sleep was a blessing.

  “Go ahead, a light repast first, then more later downstairs,” Rush said cheerfully.

  Tom did not wait for formalities. He gulped the brew down after devouring the roll and
sighed, the coffee helping to jolt him awake.

  “Now let me look you over.”

  The ministrations of a doctor, one who many claimed was the finest in the Americas, was still something of a shock to him, for, after all, only a few years ago he was one of the nameless poor of London, where from womb to grave visit with an actual doctor was as rare as an audience with the king.

  “Stand now and let me look you over.”

  He nervously stood up, staring past Rush as if he were not there. Again he felt nervousness and shame over his spindly, emaciated body, sagging with an exhaustion that no amount of sleep could wash away.

  Rush looked at his scalp, poking at a couple of the bites, muttering to himself, then asked him to open his mouth and stick out his tongue.

  Next his eyes, peeling a lid down and staring closely.

  “Jaundice, for starters,” he muttered.

  He drew a silver stick from his jacket pocket, and poked around inside Tom’s mouth. There were flashes of real pain.

  “Your breath is as fetid as a goat’s. I think a couple of those teeth will have to go. I’ll arrange for a man who is quick and nearly painless.”

  Tom shuddered at the thought of that.

  Rush thumped at his chest, putting an ear to his sunken ribs, poked hard just below his ribs at the right side.

  “Liver swollen. Bile is backed up for certain. And your bowels?”

  “What the hell do you think?” Tom retorted, feeling embarrassed.

  “Dysentery perhaps, bloody fluxes, definitely worms.”

  Tom sighed, saying nothing.

  Rush drew out his pocket watch. Gold, of the finest, one of the newer ones with a second hand, and taking his wrist he counted off the beats, then put his head to Tom’s chest, listening.

  “Pulse is quick and reedy. Your blood is thick, my friend, your heart labored, lungs rattling.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In a moment, Thomas.”

  He looked back at Michael and rattled off a few sentences in Latin, Michael nodding.

  “What was that about,” Tom asked testily as Michael went out of the room.