by John Jakes
“Queen’s Rangers!” someone cried in fright.
The American officers up and down the line called the count for cocking and poising firelocks. Philip heard Walter Webb yell:
“Hold for the signal—!”
Looking inhumanly tall in their saddles, the Tory Queen’s Rangers thundered between the trees, riding down on the Americans, sabers raised.
Philip watched one jouncing cavalryman’s busby tilt askew so that it touched his right eyebrow.
Sixty yards away now.
Fifty—
Coming at the gallop, dozens of them, hundreds, a surging wave of blue coats and steel—
A man to Philip’s left shrieked in panic, threw down his musket and began to run back toward the ravine. Webb shouted at him but let him go, whirling to concentrate on the cavalrymen. In the distance Philip thought he heard an American drum signal for a retreat.
Or was that thunder again?
Where was General Washington? Why had they been thrust forward like this under the over-all command of a man everyone considered a braggart, a fool, even a coward?
The Ranger horse came on.
Forty yards.
Thirty—
The great chargers rolled their eyes and bared their huge yellowed teeth against their bits. In patches of sunlight, the sabers glared like a spiked wall rolling forward—
Finally—much too late, Philip feared—he heard the command bawled from company to company:
“Fire!”
ii
A wild but all too brief elation had greeted the news of the French alliance.
The agreement between the American commissioners in Paris and the government of King Louis XVI had actually been reached in early January. A treaty stipulated that France would come to the aid of the new country with men and materiel if and when war broke out between Britain and her traditional enemy.
Very few doubted that such a war was inevitable. According to the rumors reaching Valley Forge in the late spring, France actually seemed to be encouraging incidents that would provoke open conflict. A French armada commanded by Admiral Count d’Estaing had already sailed from Toulon with four thousand soldiers aboard. The soldiers were prepared to land on American soil if, by chance, their country and England were at war by the time the ships made a landfall.
Alarmed, the king’s ministers in London had replaced the sluggish, luxury-loving Howe with a new commander in America, Sir Henry Clinton. Upon hearing the news of the French armada, Clinton promptly abandoned the prize of Philadelphia and began its evacuation in mid-June. Washington ordered the march from Valley Forge a few days later, moving the American army into New Jersey, an inferno of summer humidity and sandy roads and sudden storms.
Somewhere ahead of them Clinton zigzagged toward New York with his troops and his precious train of fifteen hundred wagons loaded with supplies and equipment. According to the scouts, Clinton was at present heading northeast, to reach the safety of New York via Sandy Hook. Only General Charles Lee and a few other senior officers were in favor of letting him go unmolested.
But thus far the pursuit had been a fiasco.
Washington pushed on without directly contacting the retreating enemy, listening meantime to the counsels of his various generals, and weighing each opinion. Everyone knew Anthony Wayne’s terse advice:
“Fight, sir.”
Von Steuben had theoretically brought the army to a new, higher pitch of readiness. Yet Washington had finally decided on a compromise. They would engage Clinton’s rear guard only. If that action proved successful, the entire American force could sweep forward.
Regrettably, the general who demanded personal command of the exploratory action was thin, ugly, egotistical Charles Lee, nominally the highest-ranking officer after Washington.
Lee had seen service in Europe. He considered himself much more of a military expert than his superior. There was even talk that he had penned not-so-secret notes to the Congress denouncing Washington as “damnably deficient.” Lee stubbornly maintained that the army to which he’d pledged his service could never win a major engagement against crack British and Hessian units.
Conscious of his rank and its perquisites, he still demanded command of the probing action aimed at Clinton’s retreating troops. Washington reluctantly agreed—
And Lee began not a vigorous chase but a slow, aimless dallying. The men in the field this steaming twenty-eighth of June, 1778, were already aware that while Lee vacillated, Clinton had started his precious baggage train moving again. During the darkest hours of the preceding night, the quarry had begun to widen its margin of distance from the Americans.
Now, along an irregular front near tiny Monmouth Court House, the forward American units braced for what appeared to be a protective counter-stroke from Clinton’s rear. And, as General Wayne had disgustedly noted, no clear-cut instructions had yet been issued by General Lee.
“Order, counter-order, disorder.” Every man, it seemed to Philip, was left to fight as circumstances dictated.
Or flee.
Or die.
iii
The first of the Tory Queen’s Rangers had nearly reached the American line. Philip’s musket bucked against his shoulder, cracking out flame and smoke.
His ball struck an officer’s huge roan in the neck. The animal bellowed as it went down. A fountain of horse blood sopped the officer’s breeches.
Three and four deep, the cavalry charged the line of erupting muskets. Some blue-coated men dropped. Others broke through to hack and chop with their sabers. The area immediately in front of Philip quickly became a melee of downed horses and mountless men, with other Rangers from the rear charging through as best they could.
And now came the frantic business of re-loading—
The officer Philip had unseated dashed to his right, grabbing at the reins of a horse whose rider had been shot. Philip saw this while he fumbled with powder and ball and tried to remember von Steuben’s ten-count. All around him he heard screams, shots, curses, the sickening chunk of sabers striking exposed flesh.
The bloodstained officer gained the saddle, spurred the new mount forward. Sections of the American line began to break, the men scrambling toward the ravine. Philip and Royal Rothman held their places in a clump of shrubbery that afforded them only minimal cover. The smoke, the steam, the uproar of hoofbeats and shrieks and explosions constricted Philip’s world to little more than a few yards of ground—
Just as Philip finished loading, the officer with the blood-reddened trousers tensed in the saddle, ready to leap his new horse straight over their heads in pursuit of the men fleeing to the ravine.
Royal Rothman jumped to his feet, took two short steps to the side, rammed his bayonet into the horse’s belly as it went over. A hoof struck Philip’s ear, drawing blood—
The big cavalry horse wrenched in midair. The Ranger cried out, his blade arcing crazily as horse and man tumbled. Breen was back-stepping and re-loading at the same time. He slipped in a muddy place. The falling officer’s saber, coming down at a chance angle, cut Breen’s neck from the right side.
Breen’s head seemed to loll toward his left shoulder. Blood cascaded over his chest. The officer’s bayoneted horse was down, thrashing, loosing its stinking bowels in its death-agony.
The officer pulled himself from under the fallen horse, staggered to his feet. Philip aimed his musket at the blue-coated back, decided instantly not to waste a shot, leaped over the dying animal with bayonet thrust out ahead.
The officer heard him coming, spun. A bar of steaming June sun lit young, frightened blue eyes. The saber flashed up defensively. Philip dodged under, stabbed his bayonet home and yanked it out.
The Queen’s Ranger spilled forward into the mud. American muskets were crackling and flaming again.
“Have at ’em with bayonets!”
Off to his right Philip recognized Wayne’s voice, very nearly a maniacal shriek. A riderless British horse went by, almost knocking Royal ove
r. The horse tried to check at the edge of the ravine. Philip watched it tumble over—just as he heard other hoofbeats behind him—
More of the Rangers on the attack. He shot shoulder to shoulder with Royal. Their two balls killed one cavalryman, wounded a second. They jumped apart to let the horses race past. The dead Ranger hung head down, his boot caught in his stirrup.
Again Wayne ordered the bayonet charge. This time sections of the American line began to move.
Philip and Royal bent low, stumbling toward the trees. Philip gulped air. God, he was dizzy. The heat was enough to make anyone pass out—
Quickly he glanced up and down the line. What he saw restored his spirits and re-sharpened his senses. The American musket-fire had blunted, then broken the Ranger charge. A few last horsemen were wheeling to head back the way they’d come, retreating wraiths in the forest steam.
A ball whizzed past Philip’s head. He ducked automatically, realized that the infantrymen who had stopped to permit the Ranger companies to charge through had now started a defensive fire.
But the Rangers—superb soldiers—had been beaten!
Philip and Royal converged on a kneeling infantryman who desperately tried to decide which of them to shoot. His face plastered with sweat and sand, Royal took advantage of the hesitation and dispatched the luckless redcoat with one stroke of the bayonet.
When the man fell, Philip glanced at his friend. There was something strange and terrible and old in Royal’s eyes. As he smiled, the sand cracked from his cheeks and dribbled onto his filthy shirt. His teeth had the white look of a skull’s.
Ahead, they heard Wayne’s bellow. Out in front of all the rest, he was leading the bayonet attack. Philip and Royal staggered toward the voice, hunting for redcoats.
But in the steamy, uncertain light they were hard to spot. And now they too were pulling back.
Philip stumbled and sprawled in a pool of water. By the time Royal had helped him to his feet, they both heard a new, readily identifiable sound in the woods:
American drummers beating a familiar cadence.
Anthony Wayne came storming back toward them, shaking a bloodied spontoon:
“Form up in column of fours! Column of fours!”
“General, why are they beating retreat?” Philip shouted. “We’ve got ’em running—”
Wayne stopped long enough to mop his forehead with his sleeve. He was shaking:
“You go tell that to General Lee—you can probably find him having breakfast behind the lines! It appears we nipped Clinton’s tail a little too smartly. A scout came through before we started the charge. He said Clinton’s turning the main body of the army back against us. He’s afraid of losing his wagons. We’re that close—”
Wayne’s index finger and thumb illustrated. His face was still white with fury.
“—consequently, Charlie Lee’s called a retreat!”
He stalked on toward the ravine, screaming:
“Column of fours, goddamn you! Retreat formation!”
Wearily, Philip and Royal began to trot after the retreating general.
Philip’s temples hurt. So did his chest. Sand and tiny insects tormented his exposed skin. He cursed long and loud, finally exclaimed:
“That damn yellow Lee still thinks we can’t hold against the British!”
Astonished, he heard Royal echo his anger with one foul word after another. The boy, it seemed, was no longer a boy—
They loped back past the horse Royal had killed, to rally around two drummers signaling from the other side of McGellaird’s Brook.
iv
They marched while the sun blistered them. They marched on a road half mud, half sand, in a direction Philip presumed to be westward. Back toward English-town; back toward the main body of the army.
They marched along in a column of fours, cursing but keeping step. Every man in the ranks knew how close they’d come to blunting the British counter-thrust and breaking through.
It seemed to Philip that the horror of Breed’s Hill had been repeated with an eerie, subtle variation. This time the American bayonets could have won the day. At least in his limited sector—
Then, once again, the retreat signal. Not to keep them from defeat, but to prevent a victory. Damn!
They tramped along the sandy, hell-hot road, complaining bitterly.
The pullback had been orderly, and without casualties. Von Steuben had taught them that. He had also taught them a great deal they were unable to use, Philip thought in disgust.
Next to him, Royal said, “Do you suppose anyone will go back for Breen’s body?”
Philip grimaced. “How can they? Looks like we’re going to be driven back miles from where we started.”
“Will Captain Webb write Breen’s family?”
Philip shrugged. “Breen never told us his real name. It would take a visit to Andover to find out who he really was.”
“For all his coarseness, he wasn’t a bad sort.”
“No—” Philip ached at the memory of the older man dying from the chance cut of the saber. “No, he really wasn’t, he—”
“Look sharp!” Royal exclaimed. “Horsemen coming!”
A man behind suddenly groaned and pitched sideways, overcome by the heat. Royal jumped to grab him and support him as Philip caught a clatter of hoofs in the shimmering air down the road to the west.
At the head of their company, Captain Webb called for a left-face to the roadside. With fair precision the men executed the movement as von Steuben had taught them, holding their lines in the damp weeds at the shoulder. Royal lowered the fainted man to the ground and fanned him with both hands.
“Bet we got to fight here,” someone said. “Bet the fucking British swungaround the flank and cut off the road—”
For a moment there was more cursing, and consternation until Captain Webb cried:
“Shut up and listen! Hear that cheering? That’s not for the enemy—”
Men craned insect-bitten necks, jostling to see. And suddenly, out of the west, Philip heard it: a massed roar of voices.
The outcry grew louder and louder under the sweltering sky. A wave of sound, it rolled toward them along with a cloud of boiling dust in the center of the road.
A rider emerged from the leading edge of the cloud. Hatless, wearing blue and buff, he galloped his huge white horse in the direction opposite that of the retreat. Toward Monmouth Court House—
Behind Washington an entourage of officers rode full speed. The cheering was unbelievably loud.
The commander-in-chief glanced neither right nor left to acknowledge the bellow that rolled across the countryside as he passed. He paid no attention to the muskets thrust up in the air in rhythm with the huzzahs. Philip had only a momentary glimpse of the tall general’s face before he disappeared beyond the dust streaming out behind the horses. But that glimpse was enough to give Philip pause.
Washington’s profile had looked savagely scarlet. If not with sunburn, then with anger.
Almost stupefied, Royal and Philip gaped at one another. They heard yet another new sound, this time from the east. A different pattern of flams and ruffs—
Tootling fifes joined the drums. And from man to bedraggled man, cries ran along the roadside:
“Counter-march!”
“They say he caught Charlie Lee and blistered him with curses!”
“Called him a damned poltroon—a coward—”
“Lee’s relieved. Washington’s in personal command—”
“No more retreat!”
“All right, form up!” Captain Webb shouted, vainly trying to shove his men back onto the road as the uproar all but drowned him out:
“We’re going back!”
“We’re going back!”
“WE’RE GOING BACK!”
v
Mid-afternoon.
They were in an orchard, behind a hedge that rimmed its eastern perimeter. As far as Philip could tell, they were holding the orchard somewhere near the center of
the American lines. They were south of the Englishtown road, still west of Monmouth Court House—and firing through the shrubbery as the British grenadiers advanced in those splendid, never-wavering formations.
Philip’s hands were beginning to blister from the combined heat of the weather and the musket-metal. Royal was still alongside. Wayne was in over-all command of the orchard position; Philip could see him peering through the barely breathable powder-smoke that drifted from muskets and the cannon booming on their flanks. The entire afternoon had been mind-numbing. Endless shifts of position; charge and counter-charge.
Philip wearily pointed the musket through the hedge and picked off a fur-capped, perspiring grenadier coming toward him in rote step. The grenadier toppled forward, his bayonet stabbing into the ground. The soldier knew he was dying, but he clung to the butt of the Brown Bess to keep himself from falling, as if that in itself could undo the effect of Philip’s shot.
Slowly, the grenadier’s slippery hands gave out. He slumped to his knees, fingers sliding inexorably down the muzzle. Philip blinked twice. When his vision cleared, the grenadier had let go of his musket and lay on his back, unmoving. The upside-down weapon stood beside him in the earth like some obscene parody of a churchyard marker. Other grenadiers with bayonets at the ready marched past the corpse, never glancing down.
Philip wondered how much longer he could survive without water. Just to his rear, an older man flopped in the grass, felled not by a wound but by prostration that purpled his cheeks. The man’s tongue protruded like a frog’s as he compressed his hands against his belly and made retching sounds—
Philip had no energy for thinking of the danger of their situation. No energy to speculate about strategies, or the over-all success or failure of the engagement of the entire American army. Clinton had struck swiftly, throwing unit after unit against them across a broad front. But for Philip, the world had again constricted to a small patch of ground where he crouched behind the hedge, concentrating on the steps of von Steuben’s ten-count drill.
Philip’s flayed hands almost worked independently of his exhausted mind. He loaded, fired, dodged instinctively whenever he heard a ball hiss through the leaves—