Victory at Yorktown: A Novel

by Newt Gingrich

  Peter looked up at Greene and said nothing, motioning that he would like another drink that Greene readily offered to him.

  “You think we lost today, don’t you, Peter?”

  “It sure looked that way,” Peter replied honestly. “Our lines, sir, if I may be so bold, were not in mutual support range. As they bowled over the first one it encouraged them to take out our second and then our third, at each point of impact the numbers even or on their side.

  “Let me ask you something,” Greene retorted, fetching the jug back and taking another deep swallow.

  “A battle is an agreement by both sides to face off and have it out, young sir. Neither side will ever seek battle unless he thinks he can gain something, or on those rare occasions when one side is backed into a corner from which he cannot escape. I was certainly not backed into a corner. We could have continued to fall back. But Cornwallis? He wanted this battle, he needed it after months of ballyhooing and chasing us back and forth across hundreds of miles. He wanted to finish it today.”

  Greene smiled.

  “If I had presented an impregnable front, outnumbering him two to one, and dug in on the heights as I recall you and some others of my staff urging the night before, do you think he would have attacked us? I wanted my opponent to think I had misdeployed, that I had made a fatal mistake, and thus lure him in. But as to our holding the ground and my risking a close-in brawl with the few solid Continental regiments under my command against half a dozen of the most elite regiments in their entire empire?”

  He chuckled sadly and took another sip.

  “There’s a hundred thousand square miles of land out here. Let him have it. I wanted him to attack, and attack he did. But what was my purpose today? I asked you earlier to try to count their losses—and your report?”

  “Hard to say, sir, but maybe four hundred, five hundred or more on that field before you pulled me back.”

  “If I hadn’t you’d of stood there, gap mouthed, or worse yet, with your blood up and tried to lead a countercharge and gotten your fool head blown off. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” Greene whispered looking over at Peter.

  “But better still, Colonel Wellsley, to live for your country and help build an even stronger one after this damn war is over.”

  Peter nodded, knowing he was right.

  “Victory is not always about holding a field and being the last man standing!”

  He stood up, his head brushing against the canvas ceiling, triggering a cold drenching downpour of rain into their leaky tent.

  “They have no tents, no wagons, no supplies, no medicines. God pity them. Yet now he has four or five hundred wounded—a quarter of his army to take a useless piece of ground. Good heavens, give him one more victory like that and he will lose everything, and he knows it now this night.”

  It was as if a door was beginning to open, and Peter finally did see what this man was driving at.

  “War is about winning a war, not a battle. If he wants to attack me like that again tomorrow, in this driving storm, let him. I will apparently misdeploy and again retreat. Then lure him twenty miles farther from the coast, their navy, resupply, reinforcements, and help. I am willing to bet in that miserable camp of his this evening he realizes just what he won today … nothing.”

  He chuckled softly.

  “Oh, he will write his dispatches claiming a great victory, but some wiser heads, either back in New York or London, will look at the butcher bill, if he reports it honestly, and realize that one or two more alleged victories such as today will mean ultimate defeat.”

  Greene sat back down and patted Peter on the knee.

  “We will sit back and wait for a day or two to see if he wishes to come farther into our wilderness in pursuit, but already I am sending militia round his flank to the south while trying to lure him deeper in here.”

  He smiled after taking another long sip from the jug.

  “Three hundred miles or more of back country, flooded roads, perhaps even ice- or snow-covered at this time of year, separate him from his base of supply at Charleston. If he now tries to turn in that direction, I will dog him every inch of the way. He can turn toward Wilmington, but what is there? No supplies or reinforcements to speak of.

  “Cornwallis will eventually turn north toward the Chesapeake Bay, which is what I want.”

  “Sir?”

  “I think I have a grasp of his thinking. If he tries to pull back through the Carolinas it will be a concession of defeat, surrendering ground every step of the way, and doubtful if he can even gain Charleston now, after this battle today.

  “There is a combined Loyalist and regular force of several thousand harrying Virginia, some of them led by that damn Benedict Arnold. Cornwallis will be drawn to them like a lodestone. They are the only viable force he can link up with, while at the same time not conceding all that he thinks he has won here in the Carolinas these last two years. He will be filled with the belief that if he can drag the war into Virginia, leaving the Carolinas while claiming to have conquered, he can retrieve what happened here. Yet realize that he is not supreme commander here in the Americas, his reports must go back to Clinton in New York and all the way back to London, a month or more away, where armchair generals and politicians will simply push pins into maps without any grasp of the true reality out here tonight in this freezing rain.

  “That is why I will send you off at first light tomorrow, after you have had some rest,” he smiled, “and sobered up, to report back to General Washington, and to him alone, what you witnessed here and what my thinking is regarding future plans to finish off Cornwallis. Not just to defeat him on a battlefield, but to truly bag him, lock, stock, and barrel, and every damn lobsterback and Hessian with him.”

  “I am not sure I follow you, sir,” Peter replied, now thoroughly confused.

  “I will not write out a dispatch to General Washington as to the events here. There will be plenty of dispatches flying about, of course, one of them being my own official report to Congress. I want you, though, to carry back to him your personal observations of what we did here this day and my thoughts as to how I think Cornwallis will next jump. I am entrusting it to you personally, no one else to hear it, not even members of Congress. If they should somehow waylay you and demand an accounting of this battle, that I shall send to them by separate post. Oh, I am sure Granny Gates, if he finds out about your mission, will try to waylay you. So you are to change out of uniform, I’ll have someone find the uniform of a rifleman or something. I’ll dig up several pounds of hard money to see you on your way, the only note you’ll carry is an order for the military postal relay authorizing you to exchange mounts, and I expect you then to ride hard, damn hard. Get to Washington in a week at the most.”

  Peter took that in. Close to five hundred miles. This was going to be one hell of a ride.

  “I want your word of what happened here to Washington before all the usual rumors flood out. Convey to him it is important as well that he immediately tell our French allies what happened here, because in the future, their actions must play into this as well if we are to win a final victory as a result of today.

  “Gates, his cronies, and those in Congress ready to get out of this war because it is now truly hurting their pocketbooks will call this a defeat, but I want Washington to know my thinking and my intent here. We spoke of this very concept of battle before I left West Point.

  “God blessed our arms at King’s Mountain with a damn good victory before we even arrived here. Our victory at Cowpens all but destroyed Cornwallis’s ability to move rapidly and fight an irregular war. So now he is stuck with having to resort to the kind of bloody head-on confrontation that we gave him today, a damn good bloody fight. His only recourse now is either to fall back to Wilmington, and wait for a fleet to pull him out, which he will never do, for it would be a full concession of defeat, or to turn north to link up with that renegade Arnold, and somehow make all this look like a victory in his reports.”
/>
  “Will you follow him north?” Peter asked.

  Greene smiled and shook his head.

  “I will demonstrate south as I have already said, making it clear to Cornwallis that if he should try to regain Charleston he will have to fight every inch of the way, burdened with hundreds of wounded and no supplies. I want him to go north, to reinforce Arnold, perhaps even think he is winning there, while I retake the Carolinas and Georgia that he perforce must abandon.”

  Greene smiled.

  “Convey to General Washington what I have told you and to him only. Cornwallis moves into Virginia thinking to secure that state now, but with God’s good grace, come summer or fall, General Washington, perhaps even with the support of our supposed French allies, can move into Virginia, join forces with Lafayette who is opposing Arnold, pin Cornwallis against the Chesapeake, and finish him.

  “Achieve that,” Greene said excitedly, “and the entire British designs for the South collapse. Collapse those designs that they can at least win back some of their former colonies, then broker a temporary peace, and they will be forced to concede the whole thing. They know they can never conquer New England without garrisoning every city and village with an additional fifty thousand men. With New England holding and New York, too, once outside the city, then Jersey and Pennsylvania will hold out. Their last remaining hope was to split us off and I think, young sir, that we just might have dashed those hopes today. I hope you do not think me full of hubris, but do report clearly to General Washington my thoughts, that we could be on the verge of winning this war if he can take the gamble I am suggesting.”

  Greene looked at Peter, eyes filled with fire and belief.

  “Get a good night’s rest, Peter. I want you off before dawn. I’ll roust out a good mount for you and an escort of several of Dan’s men to ride with you, at least as far as Wilmington, Delaware.”

  Peter left Greene in a state of confusion. He was calling what looked to be a defeat a victory. He had laid out a plan that would cover hundreds of miles of marching even if Washington should see a hope in this. Either they were all mad, or maybe, just maybe, there was a real hope of ending this war, after so many bloody years of stalemate that would lead to inevitable victory.

  Four

  ON THE POSTAL ROAD, TEN MILES SOUTH OF PHILADELPHIA

  MARCH 20, 1781

  Peter Wellsley, dressed not in formal uniform but instead in the brown hunting frock and leather breeches of a Virginia rifleman, had been in the saddle nonstop for over four days, from the battlefield of Guilford to here. As ordered by Greene he traveled in secret, to report only to General Washington; other couriers riding at a somewhat slower pace would carry official word to Congress of events in North Carolina.

  Exhausted, begrimed with mud because of the cold spring rain that had soaked and turned the post road into a quagmire, he was now amazed to learn that somehow word had raced ahead of him of the battle.

  Stopping in a tavern to given his exhausted mount an hour’s rest and himself a quick predawn breakfast, a real meal of roasted mutton and boiled corn, all the tavern was already swarming with those seeking news, all abuzz about the “defeat at Guilford.”

  He wanted to scream with outrage, to announce he had been on that stricken field, and though retreating, Greene had dealt Cornwallis a crippling blow that forever ended him as an offensive force. Cornwallis would have to either fall back on to Wilmington or turn north to try to link up with Benedict Arnold in Virginia if he was to remain an effective fighting force.

  To the tavern generals, whoever held the field at the end of the fight, no matter how much blood was spilled, was the only criterion to judge victory or defeat. He ate his meal in silence, feeling a bit awkward that the importance of his duty had entitled him to actual real shillings and a couple of Dutch thalers as hard currency money to wing him on his way to Washington. He paid for his meal, more than a few turning to gaze at him when the tavern echoed with the sound of real coins clinking. He went out to the stable behind the tavern after silently eating his meal, the stable boy having rubbed down his mount and fed him.

  “Poor horse,” the boy said, “mister you be riding him like you fleeing the devil himself. Perhaps give him a rest.”

  He patted the exhausted animal’s neck affectionately, having traded his previous mount with the hefty price of an additional two pounds for this animal yesterday evening in Baltimore. The trade had been almost honest, though the gait of the animal was discomforting and for the first few miles it had tried to throw him several times so it could flee back to its stable, but then, resigned to its fate, had given good service. It was just a few more miles into Philadelphia where he would quietly trade him at the military postal headquarters and then quickly get out of town for the ride across Jersey before being waylaid by some overbearing officer who would try and force news from him.

  He gave the stable hand a few coppers as thanks for his care and mounted; the animal actually seemed to sigh with disbelief that he would be forced to push on. It was ten miles to Philadelphia and exhaustion for both horse and rider was transcended by duty.

  * * *

  It was well past dawn when he finally reached the outskirts of Philadelphia. A middle-aged man, dressed in a raggedy uniform, one legged and leaning on a crutch, was holding up a bundle of newspapers.

  “News of the defeat at Guilford Court House in Carolina,” he shouted over and over, citizens out early gathering around to buy the paper. Peter reined in, drew out a penny, and handed it over.

  “When did this come in?” Peter asked.

  “Last night, some special courier for Congress and word sent down to the papers to print it up,” the one-legged man replied.

  He wanted to curse. There was no possible way the official dispatches could have arrived ahead of him. It must have been someone else, perhaps even Gates with his own people in the field to undermine Greene and thus win back his position. There was no sense in arguing the point with a half-crippled veteran, and he just shook his head as he scanned the supposed dispatch, saying that Greene had fled the field of battle, leaving the victory to Cornwallis.

  “Who you with?” the veteran asked.

  “First Continental,” Peter lied.

  “My old unit,” the veteran said, “don’t remember seeing you in the ranks.”

  “Must of joined after you. Where’d you lose the leg?”

  “Valley Forge,” and there was bitterness in his voice. “Foot froze, rotted, fell off, and then had to take the leg with it.”

  “Sorry for that.”

  “So now I sell papers and get a quarter of a penny profit for each. Take a good look at me laddie. You’ll be like this in another year or so.”

  Peter hesitated, reached into his haversack, fished out one of the last two thalers and tossed it to the man, who holding the silver coin looked up at him stunned, unable to reply as Peter rode off. It would mean an empty stomach for the last part of his ride, but how could he eat and leave a man like that hungry. At least at Valley Forge, as part of Washington’s personal guard and then von Steuben’s first training company, he had a barn to sleep in and rations better than most.

  His mount was all but stumbling with exhaustion, and frankly he needed at least a few hours out of the saddle before pressing on. Therefore he did not feel any sense of guilt or dereliction of duty as he turned off of Market Street and rather than immediately barter an exchange with the military postal remount officer, who typical of their kind eyed the mount they were expected to replace sharply, and usually traded in kind, he rode on a few blocks up toward what some now called the Independence Hall, then turned onto a side street.

  The last half block he suddenly felt a tightening in his gut. There was part of him that chuckled inwardly with his reaction, going into battle seemed to hold less fear but he pressed on, dismounted, took a deep breath, went up to the door, and knocked. There was no immediate answer. He knocked again and saw a closed curtain in the parlor flutter, the sound of f
ootsteps, and the door opened a crack.

  “Merciful God, Peter Wellsley?”

  He forced a nervous smile.

  “Good morning, Miss Elizabeth.”

  She opened the door wide but stood blocking the way.

  “Peter, pardon my rudeness for being so direct, but after two years, what in hell are you doing here?”

  Elizabeth, so typical of her, and he actually chuckled.

  “Well, for a weary soldier, perhaps beg for a cup of tea and toast?”

  She smiled, gestured him in, closed the door and then to his amazed delight actually threw her arms around his shoulders and hugged him tight.

  “By God, it is good to see an old friend,” she sighed.

  He nervously returned the hug, not wishing to soil her white linen morning dress with a muddy embrace, and then she slipped back from his arms.

  “My Lord, you stink like a dead goat, Peter Wellsley. Not to be too personal but when was the last time you bathed or had a change of clothes?”

  The question shocked him, but after five years of war, so many of the old and proper customs of conversation between the sexes had, indeed, slipped by the wayside. Change of clothes? The hunting frock and breeches had been issued to him before he set out. His now tattered ragged uniform from Washington’s headquarters would only draw unwarranted notice. But he had no idea when the previous owner, a man who died in the hospital after Guilford, had cleaned them. As to bathed? When? Fording that river in January might count.

  “Never mind, Peter, and yes, I think I can find some toast and tea for you,” and she gestured for him to follow her out into the kitchen. As he passed the parlor, once all so ornate, he was shocked. The rich carpet, imported all the way from the land of the Ottomans, was gone, while in the dining room to the other side, the heavy mahogany table, always properly set for the next lavish entertainment, was missing as well. As a boy he had remembered visiting here, the country bumpkin from Trenton visiting with his parents the home of a wealthy distant cousin who had made good in trade, even though some of that trade was in slaves.