“If they can open a line of escape,” Peter continued, “before we can shift our main forces across the river, if they abandon all heavy equipment and just take what each man can carry, thousands could escape, bring low our efforts here, and ravage the countryside in a bloody and senseless slaughter.”
Washington realized the young man could be right.
“What leads you to this conclusion?”
“Five long years of war in my home state of New Jersey,” Peter replied calmly, and no one offered a sarcasm or rebuff after their celebration of but moments before. He had presented them with a scenario that just might be true, and could lead to the deaths of thousands, perhaps even a denial of ultimate victory and a vicious degeneration of their war that could then drag on for additional years.
“Your suggestion.”
“Shifting of at least the militia in reserve to that front. They might not be able to stand against a well-coordinated assault by heavy infantry, but I doubt it would be coordinated. Once free of a trap they most likely would break apart. In that department, sir, as I witnessed repeatedly, militia can, indeed, be most efficient, and remorseless, and most certainly deadly.
“They would then buy the time for our main line troops of the Continental line to shift across the river, contain the breakthrough, and drive it back into the river.”
No one spoke for a moment.
“I wholeheartedly concur, sir,” Morgan finally said, breaking the troubled silence.
Washington extended his hand as if almost in salute to Peter.
“I concur as well, Colonel Wellsley, and humbly thank you for this caution. It is wisely suggested. I hereby authorize you to pass the order, which I shall draw up immediately, to our militia units to transfer to the north bank of the river to reinforce our position behind the lines, forming a cordon to block or at least slow any attempted breakout. You are brevetted to command of those forces until the ending of this siege.”
Peter stood up, bowing low, saying nothing in reply.
“Alexander,” Washington said, pushing aside the plates and bottle of brandy set before him, “help me to draw those orders up immediately.”
* * *
Allen crossed over the entrenchments the hour before dawn, picked Hessian skirmishers and light infantry, all of them volunteers, moving in open line through the predawn day. The Hessian riflemen insisted upon wearing their uniforms. They knew the odds, this was not their war after all, and if captured or dropped wounded, they wanted the rights of any infantryman of the line, to fair capture and fair and honorable treatment. Tarleton, to his disgust, had, at the last moment, just simply said he would lead the main breakout rather than accompany Allen. They knew the gambit was far more desperate. After two bitter years in the Carolinas, and for some nasty atrocities all the way back to Paoli, their chances of surviving capture were problematic at best, if even one Rebel on the other side remembered and now sought vengeance. As the siege line had drawn closer, within taunting range, threats had been shouted across that honorable surrender would be offered to any man of the main infantry line, but if any of the bastards involved in the murder of the pregnant mother and child were found, orders or not, their suffering, after being handed over to some of the Indians with their army, would drag out for days. They were so terrified, most of them lads swept up from the gutters of English, Scottish, and Irish cities and pressed into service, free of any guilt, except for the few, that the risk Allen offered them seemed the only alternative left.
The plan discussed with Cornwallis was straightforward enough. To don the uniforms of Virginia militia or civilian clothes, breakthrough a weak spot he had observed in their lines, and head for open country beyond. According to the plan to which Tarleton had simply nodded agreement, and that van Dorn realized now, that that officer, expecting his rank to preserve his own hide, would only make the vaguest of motions to follow up on, Allen would break through, secure good ground behind the enemy lines, and signal back that he had secured a breakthrough point. Tarleton was then to attack with all his forces while Allen struck back into the rear of the enemy to sow confusion and alarm. Once a breach had been secured, the rest of the army would cross the river and proceed up and away from Yorktown.
It was a mad hope for somehow that was all but “fey” as the Irish in the ranks called it when first he briefed them, but at least it was something. He reassured them that he had done such operations in New Jersey a dozen times before, and just walked away scot-free.
Even as Jamie begged to come, he had ordered the lad to stay behind, and was now horrified to find him loyally following as they crept through the predawn darkness. It was too late to hiss and order him to fall back and follow orders.
A Hessian in front of him did the hard deed he himself always shied away from. Surprising the forward sentry, who was actually asleep, the Hessian slipped into his position, knife drawn, and cut the old man’s throat, hand over his victim’s mouth. Then, almost gently, laid the body down, and to Allen’s surprise actually muttered a prayer and made the sign of the cross before pushing forward and up over the main entrenchment line.
As he had learned at Paoli, he ordered the seventy-five men with him to advance with loaded muskets but pans empty, and to do their task with bayonet and knife only. They gained the revetment and stormed over it, but some of the Continentals holding this line, not caught completely off guard, opened fire. There was a vicious minute of close infighting before they had cleared the trench for a span of a hundred yards.
They could only hold it for minutes, the alarm already being sounded. He had a hooded lantern with him, unmasked it, held it up while standing atop the battlement, and waved it back and forth.
There was no response; no follow-up wave of dragoons to open their hold.
There was a moment of hesitation on his part. Had that bastard Tarleton just ignored Cornwallis’s orders, decided all was lost anyhow, and was now turning coward and not following through as agreed?
“We fall back, ya?”
It was one of the Hessians, a man he recognized from years before and had befriended after the fight at Princeton.
Surely Cornwallis must be watching this operation and would eventually order Tarleton to push straight in regardless. They had a breach; had cracked their surprisingly weakly held lines wide open on this other shore of the harbor. If they pulled back now, this effort was, indeed, lost.
“Press forward,” he snarled. “The woods over there,” and he pointed to a farmer’s woodlot two hundred yards to the American rear. “We hole up there if need be. We can play hell with them. You riflemen, harass their rear until Cornwallis finally does something, damn it.”
Those still with him followed as Allen sprinted for the woods. In all the confusion they had triggered, and an adroit lie on his part to a nervous sentry, who stopped him for a moment, that the enemy had broken through and he was ordered to fall back and hold the woods. Most of his band gained the temporary safety of the stand of chestnuts and oak. Three quarters of the woodlot had been harvested for the building of the entrenchments, but there were still several dozen acres standing, cut through the middle with a deep ravine where hopefully they could hide until the follow-up attack came to their rescue.
The dawn was rising; it was chaos along the line as swarms of Continentals came in from either flank to close off the breach. It was as if a vast iron door was closing behind him.
Tarleton had betrayed him, he would not follow through.
He ordered his men to withdraw deeper into the woods and down into the ravine. Those wearing Continental uniforms were to form a cordon at the edge of the forest and divert any inquiries. If they could hide thus throughout the day, once darkness fell they would strike back to the river, strip down, and try to swim back to safety.
The ruse held for nearly half a day. He actually managed to doze off after a sleepless night of planning and worry. The dream was a lovely one. The war was over, he was returning home, to his parents’ house.
Strangely—though it did not seem strange in the dream—his youngest brother, dead after the battle literally fought on his doorstep, was there to greet him with open arms, his parents weeping with joy. The greatest of joys awaited him within the doorway. Elizabeth, beaming with absolute ecstasy, leaping into his arms, smothering him with kisses, as she had during their one night together. He was so overjoyed tears flowed, and tears were flowing as he opened his eyes, and it was young Jamie kneeling over him and shaking Allen awake.
“Sir! Sir! Something’s going wrong.”
He sat up, Jamie pointing back toward the enemy line.
He followed Jamie back to the edge of the woodlot. All was clear to see. A heavy line of infantry was drawing up, bayonets fixed, someone before them, pointing toward the woods, and an officer drawing saber and pointing in their direction.
“Sorry, sir, guess I didn’t sound right.”
It was one of the men he had posted as a cordon around where the rest of them were hiding with orders to these guards to be taciturn but blunt, that “secret supplies” were concealed in the woods and not to be disturbed until nightfall when they would finally be moved forward into the main line. Far too many of these men, straight from their homelands, could barely sound like a proper Yankee, but if pressed they were to say they were from Massachusetts and thus perhaps throw off any inquiries from Virginia militia.
“I was flustered and blurted out Liverpool when he asked me what town I was from,” the frightened youth said. “He didn’t say nothing, sir, but then took off at a run saying there weren’t no town named such in that whole damn Yankee state.”
The Continentals, several companies strong, were deploying out to cover the entire width of the woodlot, bayonets fixed.
Allen looked at his now thoroughly frightened command.
“There’s nothing left for it, lads,” he hissed. “God bless you, and run for it.”
He grabbed Jamie by the shoulder, turned, and started to run. Light infantry men wearing Continental uniforms began to tear them off, hoping that if caught in just breeches and shirt they might be shown mercy. Hessians, having wisely insisted upon full uniforms, just began to stand up, but then taking their much beloved rifles and smashing the stocks against trees, shattering their weapons before tossing them aside and stepping out of the woods with cries of “Kamerad! Nicht schiessen!”
For those who had followed his suggestion of civilian garb, there was nothing now but panicked flight.
“Stay with me, Jamie, we’ve always talked our way out of this before!”
Bolting out of the north side of the woods he set off at a full run, and for the next three hours actually did manage to dodge his way a couple of miles toward the rear. He mimicked an angry farmer, his old routine of having brought up a couple of jugs of good liquor to sell and been cheated by those damn regulars, pulling a bottle of rum out of his haversack and offering it as proof and a bribe. Shorn of that trick, he was an angry father with his son, looking for his trollop wife who had taken off with an officer. He even had Jamie strike him a blow that had broken his nose to make the ruse look more convincing, now whining about being beaten up for his efforts to fetch his wayward wife back. Some militia who had stopped him let Allen pass with mockery and disdain. A final effort was to first try and talk his way past two sentries, and there seemed to be a swarm of them about the countryside, that he had been in the fighting, chasing down some lobsterbacks who had tried to cut their way through, had his nose broken and his son was now helping him home to his wife and five children, who he wished he had never left.
Jamie had worked his way around the one sentry, and knocked him cold with a single blow from behind, and to his horror, Allen had been forced to knife the other one. He prayed not fatally, but the man had sat up howling with pain as they ran off. The hue and cry was now following them, like a pack of blood-hungry hounds, that they had two lobsterback spies on the run.
They had run another half mile northward, and he was sickened to see one of the men who had followed them the night before had somehow managed to make his way ahead of them. He was dangling from the end of a rope at a farm-lane crossroads. His death had not been sharp and clean. They had hoisted him up to strangle slowly, and the men who had done it were standing about, admiring their work, their victim’s face contorted with agony from his final death struggle, as he slowly kicked out his life, and with every jerk the rope had tightened a bit more to strangle him.
One of the killers spotted them, shouted, and the pursuit was on again.
Jamie was beginning to flag, gasping for breath, begging for a halt, but he would not leave him behind for the obviously bloodthirsty militia, half dragging him along as they dodged around a farmstead that had somehow been spared from burning. The bay was visible, just several hundred yards away.
“One more sprint, Jamie, then into the water, swim out into the middle of the bay, and we’re safe.”
“But I can’t swim, sir.”
“I’ll hold you up, lad,” he cried in desperation.
Then he saw them: mounted regulars, cutting down along the edge of the bay ahead of him. He stared in disbelief. He could always recognize Peter who still rode as clumsily as ever.
Looking back to the farmstead and its barn, still intact, he pushed Jamie into it. There was a hay loft. Perhaps, dear God, show mercy at least to the lad, perhaps they will think we ran past it, not so stupid as to seek refuge within.
“Oh, God in heaven,” Peter sighed, watching with disbelief as Allen, pushing someone ahead of him, staggered into the barn. Surely he would not be so foolish as to be caught this way.
The alarm had been up since dawn that a group of several hundred of the enemy had broken through the main line, as he had predicted, and then disappeared. The militia units under his nominal command had all but gone to pieces with excitement and the chase, running about, damn near shooting him at one point when they declared his Jersey accent sounded English to them. He had finally dismounted, displayed all his dispatches and orders, and was actually dragged before their colonel. His captors were clearly disappointed they would miss out on the hanging, when the colonel finally conceded that Peter was who he claimed to be.
It had delayed him nearly two hours and for a few minutes he actually thought they would string him up, one hell of a way to end his career in the army. Terrifying as well, when he did pass some of their handiwork, a man dangling at a crossroads, the object of jeering from half a dozen militia who had just finished him off. He could only pray the man had been an enemy, trying to slip past in civilian garb, thus, at least, nominally deserving of his fate. He had scattered the executioners with vehement curses and cut the body down, haunted as he did so that the way Major Andre died, at least, had some dignity to it, even mourning from those forced by the necessities of war to perform such a grisly task, rather than this leering mob.
He had finally acquired a guard of mounted dragoons to ride with him. An offering from Morgan, who had been searching for him most of the day, with the express orders to stay with him and guard him, fearing the fate he had almost faced with men on his own side if he rode about on his own with his strange Jersey accent, and for which, after his near brush with a hanging and seeing the dangling corpse, he was, indeed, grateful.
“My God, it is Allen,” Peter sighed, as he rode up to the barn and dismounted, followed by his guard detail, short muskets or pistols drawn.
From the opposite direction a swarm of militia was closing in.
“Stay out here,” Peter ordered, looking back at his escorts.
“Sir. He is a damn lobsterback out of uniform,” one of them snapped in angry reply, “and General Washington’s orders were clear to us. If we fail to bring you back safely, he’ll personally flog the lot of us.”
“Then face the damn flogging, but you are ordered to stay here. Tell him those were my orders.”
His cold gaze stilled further protest. “Fine, sir, it’s your neck, and only our backs.”
“Keep those damn militia back.”
Drawing his pistol and cocking it, he stepped into the cool darkness of a barn that was rich with the scents that conjured so many memories of childhood, of cows and sheep, and fresh mown hay, and apples newly harvested. Memories of many a childhood lark on an autumn afternoon with his friends, the three van Dorn brothers, and how the eldest always protected and stood up for him if the younger tried to tease or pick on him while they snuck into a farmer’s barn to filch some fresh milk or a slice of smoked ham before wandering on in their childhood games of war, and Indians, and knights, and dreams of future glory.
He paused for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. The lower floor of the barn was empty. Cattle, pigs, and sheep having been driven off long ago to feed the hungry maw of war, whether English or Continental, French or Hessian, no longer mattered.
He prayed silently that his wily friend had simply dodged in here as a ruse, had somehow slipped past the militia. They were already on the other side of the building shouting protests as his escort ordered them to stand back and away, crying it was they who had cornered the damn Tories, and it was time for another hanging.
With pistol raised he cautiously slipped through the lower floor of the barn, looking into each empty stall, and then his gaze shifted upward to the hay loft.
Merciful God, surely not there, not there, not so amateur a move now. Surely he had figured out some other way to escape this trap.
He was tempted to turn away yet again, to just step outside, say no one hid within, but he could hear the arguing on the other side of the thin walls. Someone was declaring that he was a captain of militia and if the regulars didn’t have the guts to search the barn properly, they sure as hell would, and string the bastards up after what they had done to that poor woman down in Williamsburg.
Heart pounding, Peter cautiously climbed the ladder to the upper floor and stepped out onto it. A mound of hay was all that was up there, actually pathetic looking, a final effort of some poor farmer to at least bring in a little something for beasts that no longer existed after both armies had foraged through his land. As always, the price of war for those caught in its grasp, no matter which side they were on.
Victory at Yorktown: A Novel Page 31