XX.—FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE.
It was a calm and lovely day in summer—the time was morning, and
the place the valley of the Birmingham meeting house. The place was
calm and lovely as on the battle morn, but forty-seven long years had past
since that day of terror, and yet the bye roads the hills and the plains, were
all alive with people clad in their holiday costume. A long procession
wound with banners and with the gleam of arms, around the base of Osborne's
Hill, while in their front the object of every eye, there rolled a
close carriage, drawn by six magnificent steeds, and environed by civic soldiers
who rent the air with shouts, and flung wreaths of flowers and laurel
beneath the horses' hoofs.
Slowly and with peals of solemn music—the summer sun above, shining
serenely from a cloudless sky—the carriage wound along the ascent of the
Hill and in a few moments, while valley and plain below were black with
people, the elegantly caparisoned steeds were reined in on the broad summit
of that battle-mount.
There was a pause for a moment, and then an aged man, a veteran tremulous
with the burden of seventy years, and grim with scars—clad in the
costume of the Revolution, approached and opened the carriage door.
The crowd formed a silent circle around the scene.
A man of some sixty years, tall in stature, magnificent in his bearing,
stepped from the carriage, his form clad in a plain dress of blue, his uncovered
brow glowing in the sun, with the grey hairs streaming to the
breeze.
He stepped on the sod with the bearing of a man formed to win the hearts
of men; he advanced with the manner of one of nature's Kings. For a
moment he stood uncovered on the brow of the hill, with the sun shining
on his noble brow, while his clear blue eye lighted up, as with the memories
of forty-seven years.
And then from plain, from hill, from valley, from the lips of ten thousand
freemen arose one shout—the thunder of a Peoples' gratitude—loud, prolonged
and deafening. The soldiers waved their swords on high—they
raised their caps in the air—and again, and again, the shout went up to the
clear heavens.—In that chorus of joy, only a word was intelligible, a word
that bubbled from the overflowing fountains of ten thousand hearts:
“La Fayette!”
The Stranger was observed to tremble with a strange emotion. He who
had fought undaunted in the battle of that valley forty-seven years ago,
trembled like a child. The Hero of Two Revolutions, the Boy of Brandywine,
the Prisoner of Olmutz, who flung his broad lands and princely revenues
in the lap of freedom, now bowed his head, leaned upon the shoulder
of the veteran and veiled his eyes from the light.
When he raised his face again, there were tears in his eyes.
So beautiful that country bloomed before him, so darkly on his memory
rushed the condition of blighted France! The land of his birth trodden
under the hoofs of the invader, the Bourbon-Idiot on her Throne, the Napoleon
of her love, dead in his island-gaol of St. Helena. And here an
Exile—almost a homeless Wanderer—stood the Man of Two Revolutions,
gazing upon the battle plain, which forty-seven years before had been
crowded by British legions, but now bloomed only with the blessings of
peace, the smile of an all-paternal God!
The contrast between the Land of Washington and the Land of Napoleon,
was too much for La Fayette.
He gazed upon the hills crowned with woodlands, the farms blooming
with cultivation and dotted with Homes upon the level plains, green as with
the freshness of spring, the wide landscape glowing in the sun, the very
Garden of the Lord—he gazed—he thought of—France. The tears
streamed freely down his cheeks.
Then his blue eye surveyed the Quaker temple, rising on its far-off hill,
surrounded by its grassy mounds. As on the battle-day it looked so with
its grey walls and rude roof and narrow windows it now arose, the trees
around it, quivering their tops in the morning light.
Again the shout of that dense crowd thundered on the air, Welcome, welcome
the friend of Washington, La Fayette!
But it fell unheeded on his ear. His soul was with the Past. There
forty-seven years before, he had seen Washington in all his chivalric manhood;
there Pulaski in his white array and battle-worn face, thundering on,
in his hurricane charge; there Sullivan and Wayne and Greene, with all
the heroes doing deeds that started into history ere the day was gone; he
had seen, known them all, and loved the Chief of all.
And now—
He stretched forth his arms, and clasped the veteran of the Revolution to
his heart.
“They're all gone, now—” were the earnest words that bubbled from
his full heart: “All comrade, but you! Of all the chivalry of Brandywine
that forty-seven years ago, blazed along these hills, what now remains?”
Then as the vision of his blighted France, rushed once again upon his
soul, he murmured incoherently, “My God! My God! Happy country
—happy People!”
There on the summit of the Battle-Hill he leaned his arm upon his
brother veteran, not trusting his tongue with further speech. His heart
was too full for words. As he stood overwhelmed by his emotions, the
shout of the people was heard once more—
“Welcome the Champion of Freedom in two Worlds, the hero of Brandywine
and friend of Washington, welcome La Fayette!”
