 | Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution |  |
3. Part the Third.
CHEW'S HOUSE.
'Tis wet with the gore of the massacred dead;
Now raise the sword in the cause most holy—
And while the whispers of ghosts break on your ear,
Oh! strike without mercy, or pity, or fear;
Oh! strike for the massacred dead of Paoli!
Revolutionary Song.
I.—THE FORLORN HOPE.
And while the mist gathered thicker and darker above, while the lurid
columns of battle smoke waved like a banner overhead, while all around
was dim and indistinct,—all objects rendered larger and swelled to gigantic
sound of charging legions, and the blaze of musquetry flashing from the
windows of Chew's house, gave a terrible light to the theatre of death.
Again, like a vast curtain, the mist uprose,—again were seen armed men
brandishing swords aloft, or presenting fixed bayonets, or holding the sure
rifle in their unfailing grasp, or yet again waving torches on high, all rushing
madly forward, still in regular columns, file after file, squadron after squadron—a
fierce array of battle and of death.
It was a sight worth a score of peaceful years to see! The dark and
heavy pall of battle smoke overhead, mingled with curling wreaths of snow-white
mist—the curtain of this theatre of death—the mansion of dark, grey
stone, rising massive and ponderous from the lawn, each peak and corner,
each buttress and each angle, shown clearly by the light of the musquet
flash—the green lawn spreading away from the house—the stage of the
dread theatre—crowded by bands of advancing men, with arms glittering in
the fearful light, with fierce faces stamped with looks of vengeance, sweeping
forward with one steady step, their eyes fixed upon the fatal honse;
while over their heads, and among their ranks, swept and fell the leaden
bullets of their foes, hissing through the air with the sound of serpents, or
pattering on the sod like a hailstorm of death.
And while a single brigade, with which was Washington and Sullivan
and Wayne, swept onward toward the house, the other troops of the central
division, extending east and west along the fields, were forced to remain
inactive spectators of this scene of death, while each man vainly endeavored
to pierce the gloom of the mist and smoke, and observe the course of the
darkening fight.
Some thirty yards of green lawn now lay between the forlorn hope of
the advancing Americans and Chew's house; all became suddenly still and
hushed, and the continentals could hear their own foot tramp breaking upon
the air with a deadened sound, as they swept onward toward the mansion.
A moment of terrible stillness, and then a moment of bloodshed and horror!
Like the crash of thunderbolts meeting in the zenith from distant
points of the heavens, the sound of musquetry broke over the lawn, and
from every window of Chew's house, from the hall door, and from behind
the chimneys on the roof, rolled the dense columns of musquet smoke;
while on every side, overhead, around, and beneath, the musquet flash of
the British glared like earth-riven lightning in the faces of the Americans,
and then the mist and smoke came down like a pall, and for a moment all
was dark as midnight.
A wild yell broke along the American line, and then the voice of Wayne
rung out through the darkness and the gloom—“Sweep forward under the
cover of the smoke—sweep forward and storm the house!”
They came rushing on, the gallant band of rangers, bearing torches in
their hands—they came rushing on, and their path lay over the mangled
wounds and death, and at their backs advanced with measured step the firm
columns of the continental army, while the air was heavy with the shriek
of wounded men, and burdened with cries of agony.
On they swept, trampling over the face of the dead in the darkness and
gloom, and then the terrible words of command rung out upon the air—
“Advance and fire—advance and storm the house!”
A volley of sheeted flame arose from the bosom of the fog along the
lawn, the thunder of the American musquetry broke upon the air, and the
balls were heard pattering against the walls of the house, and tearing splinters
from the roof.
Another moment, and the pall of mist and battle smoke is swept aside,
revealing a scene that a thousand words might not describe—a scene whose
hurry, and motion, and glare, and horror, the pencil of the artist might in
vain essay to picture.
There were glittering bayonets thrust from the windows of the house,—
there were fierce faces, with stout forms robed in crimson attire, thrust from
every casement,—there were bold men waving torches on high, rushing
around the house; here a party were piling up combustible brush-wood;
there a gallant band were affixing their scaling ladder to a second story
window, yonder another band were thundering away at the hall door, with
musquet and battle axe; while along the whole sweep of the wide lawn
poured the fire of the continental host, with a flash like lightning, yet with
uncertain and ineffectual aim.
The hand of the soldier with the hand gathered near the combustible pile
under a window—the hand of the soldier was extended with the blazing
torch, he was about to fire the heap of faggots, when his shattered arm fell
to his side, and a dead comrade came toppling over his chest.
A soldier near the hall door had been foremost among that gallant band,
the barricades were torn away, all obstructions well nigh cleared, and he
raised his battle axe to hew the door in fragments, when the axe fell with a
clanging sound upon the threshold stone, and his comrades caught his falling
body in their arms, while his severed jaw hung loosely on his breast.
The party who rushed forward in the endeavor to scale the window!
The ladder was fixed—across the trench dug around Chew's house it was
fixed—the hands of two sturdy continentals held it firm, and a file of desperate
men, headed by a stalwart backwoodsman, in rough blue shirt and
fur cap, with buck-tail plume, began the ascent of death.
The foot of the backwoodsman touched the second round of the scaling
ladder, when he sprang wildly in the air, over the heads of his comrades,
and fell dead in the narrow trench, with a death shriek that rang in the ears
of all who heard it for life. A musquet ball had penetrated his skull, and
the red torrent was already streaming over his forehead, and along his
swarthy features.
The Americans again rushed forward to the house, but it was like rushing
into the embrace of death; again they scaled the windows, again were
they driven back, while the dead bodies of their comrades littered the trench;
again they strode boldly up to the hall door, and again did soldier after
soldier crimson the threshold-stone with his blood.
II.—THE HORSEMAN AND HIS MESSAGE.
And while the battle swelled fiercest, and the flame flashing from the
windows of Chew's house was answered by the volley of the continental
brigade, two sounds came sweeping along the air, one from the south, and
the other from the northwest. They were the sounds of marching men—
the tread of hurrying legions.
On the summit of a gentle knoll, surrounded by the officers of his staff,
Washington had watched the progress of the fight around Chew's mansion,
not more than two hundred yards distant.
With his calm and impenetrable face, wearing an unmoved expression,
he had seen the continentals disappear in the folds of the fog, he had seen
file after file marching on their way of death, he had heard the roar of contest,
the shrieks of the wounded and the yells of the dying had startled his
ear, but not a muscle of his countenance moved, not a feature trembled.
But when those mingling sounds of marching men came pealing on his
ear, he inclined slightly to one side of his steed and then to the other, as if
in the effort to catch the slightest sound, his lips were fixedly compressed
and his eye flashed and flashed again, until it seemed turning to a thing of
living flame.
The sounds grew near, and nearer! A horseman approached from the
direction of Germantown, his steed was well nigh exhausted and the rider
swayed heavily to and fro in the saddle. The horse came thundering up
the knoll, and a man with a ghastly face, spotted with blood, leaned from
the saddle and shrieked forth, as he panted for breath—
“General—they are in motion—they are marching through Germantown
—Kniphausen, Agnew, and Grey, they will be on you in a moment, and—
Cornwallis—Cornwallis is sweeping from Philadelphia.”
The word had not passed his lips, when he fell from his steed a ghastly
corpse.
Another messenger stood by the side of Washington—his steed was also
exhausted, and his face was covered with dust, but not with blood. He
panted for breath as he shrieked forth an exclamation of joy:—
“Greene is marching from the northwest—attracted by the fire in this
quarter, he has deviated from his path, and will be with you in a moment?”
And as he spoke, the forms of a vast body of men began to more, dim
and indistinctly, from the folds of the fog on the northwest, and then the
glare of crimson was seen appearing from the bosom of the mist on the
vision of Washington and his men.
III.—THE BRITISH GENERAL.
Turn we for a moment to Germantown.
The first glimpse of day, flung a grey and solemn light over the tenements
of Germantown, when the sound of distant thunder, aroused the startled
inhabitants from their beds, and sent them hurriedly into the street. There
they crowded in small groups, each one asking his neighbor for the explanation
of this sudden alarm, and every man inclining his ear to the north,
listening intently to those faint yet terrible sounds, thundering along the
northern horizon.
The crowded moments of that eventful morn, wore slowly on. Ere the
day was yet light, the streets of Germantown were all in motion, crowds
of anxious men were hurrying hither and thither, mothers stood on the rustic
porch, gathering their babes in a closer embrace, and old men, risen in haste
from their beds, clasped their withered hands and lifted their eyes to heaven
in muttered prayer, as their ears were startled by the sounds of omen pealing
from the north.
The British leaders were yet asleep; the soldiers of the camp, it is true,
had risen hastily from their couches, and along the entire line of the British
encampment, ran a vague, yet terrible rumor of coming battle and of sudden
death; yet the generals in command slept soundly in their beds, visited, it
may be, with pleasant dreams of massacred rebels, fancy pictures of the
night of Paoli, mingled with a graphic sketch of the head of Washington
adorning one of the gates of London, while the grim visage of mad Anthony
Wayne figured on another.
The footstep of a booted soldier rang along the village street, near the
market-house, in the centre of the village, and presently a tall grenadier
strode up the stone steps of an ancient mansion, spoke a hurried word to
the sentinel at the door, and then hastily entered the house. In a moment
he stood beside the couch of General Grey, he roused him with a rude
shake of his vigorous hands, and the startled `Britisher' sprang up as hastily
from his bed as though he had been dreaming a dream of the terrible night
of Paoli.
“Your Excellency—the Rebels are upon us!” cried the grenadier—
“they have driven in our outposts, they surround us on every side—”
“We must fight it out—away to Kniphausen—away to Agnew—”
“They are already in the field, and the men are about advancing to
Chew's House.”
But a moment elapsed, and the British general with his attire hung hastily
over his person, rode to the head of his command, and while Kniphausen,
gay with the laurels of Brandywine, rode from rank to rank, speaking
forward over the fields and along the solitary street of Germantown towards
Chew's House.
The brilliant front of the British extended in a flashing array of crimson,
over the fields, along the street; and through the wreaths of mist on every
side shone the glitter of bayonets, on every hand was heard the terrible
tramp of 16,000 men sweeping onward, toward the field of battle, their
swords eager for American blood.
As the column under command of General Agnew swept through the
village street, every man noted the strange silence that seemed to have
come down upon the village like a spell. The houses were all carefully
closed, as though they had not been inhabited for years, the windows were
barricaded; the earthquake tramp of the vast body of soldiers was the
only sound that disturbed the silence of the town.
Not a single inhabitant was seen. Some had fled wildly to the fields,
others had hastened with the strange and fearful curiosity of our nature to
the very verge of the battle of Chew's House, and in the cellars of the
houses gathered many a wild and affrighted group, mothers holding their
little children to their breasts, old men whose eyes were vacant with enfeebled
intellect, asking wildly the cause of all this alarm, while many a fair-cheeked
maiden turned pale with horror, as the thunder of the cannon seemed
to shake the very earth.
IV.—THE LEGEND OF GENERAL AGNEW.
A singular legend is told in relation to General Agnew. Tradition states,
that on the eventful morn, as he led the troops onward through the town, a
singular change was noted in his appearance. His cheeks were pale as
death, his compressed lip trembled with a nervous movement, and his eyes
glared hither and thither with a strange wild glance.
He turned to the aid-de-camp at his side, and said with a ghastly smile,
that this day's work would be his last on earth, that this battle-field would
be the last he should fight, that it became him to look well at the gallant
array of war, and share in the thickest of the fight, for in war and in fight
should his hand this day strike its last and dying blow.
And tradition states that as his column neared the Mennonist grave-yard,[2]
a man of strange and wild aspect, clad in the skins of wild beasts,
with scarred face and unshaven beard, came leaping over the grave-yard
wall, and asked a soldier of the British column, with an idiotic smile whether
that gallant officer, riding at the head of the men, was the brave General
Grey, who had so nobly routed the rebels at Paoli?
The soldier replied with a peevish oath that yonder officer was General
Grey, and he pointed to General Agnew as he spoke.
The strange man said never a word, but smiled with a satisfied look and
sprang over the grave-yard wall, and as he sprang, a bullet whistled past the
ear of General Agnew, and a thin column of blue smoke wound upward
from the grave-yard wall.
The General turned and smiled. His officers would have searched the
grave-yard for the author of the shot, but a sound broke on their ears from
the road above, and presently the clatter of hoofs and the clamor of swords
came thundering through the mist.
V.—THE CONTEST IN THE VILLAGE STREET.
And in a moment the voice of Sullivan was heard—“Charge—upon the
`Britishers'—charge them home!”
And the steeds of the American cavalry came thundering on, sweeping
down the hill with one wild movement, rushing into the very centre of the
enemy's column, each trooper unhorsing his man, while a thousand fierce
shouts mingled in chorus, and the infantry advanced with fixed bayonets,
speeding steadily onward until they had driven back their foes with
the force of their solid charge.
And along that solitary street of Germantown swelled the din and terror
of battle, there grappled with the fierce grasp of vengeance and of death the
columns of contending foemen, there rode the troopers of the opposite
armies, their swords mingling, their horses meeting breast to breast in the
shock of this fierce tournament; there shrieked the wounded and dying,
while above the heads of the combatants waved the white folds of mist,
mingled with the murky battle smoke.
Sullivan charged bravely, Wayne came nobly to his rescue, Pulaski
scattered confusion into the ranks of the enemy, and the Americans had
been masters of the field were it not for a fresh disaster at Chew's House,
combined with the mistakes of the various bodies of the Continentals, who
were unable to discern friend from foe in the density of the fog.
VI.—CHEW'S HOUSE AGAIN.
Meanwhile the contest thickened around Chew's house; the division of
Greene, united with the central body of the American army, were engaged
with the left wing of the British army, under Kniphausen, Grant, and Grey,
while Sullivan led forward into the town, a portion of the advance column
of his division.
Tradition has brought down to our times a fearful account of the carnage
and bloodshed of the fight, around Chew's house at this moment, when the
British army to the south, and the Americans to the north, advanced in the
terrible charge, under the cover of the mist and gloom.
It was like fighting in the dark. The Americans advanced column after
bayonets, while the fire of the backwoodsmen rattled a death-hail over the
field; but it was all in vain! That gloomy mist hung over their heads,
concealing their foes from sight, or investing the forms of their friends with
a doubtful gloom, that caused them to be mistaken for British; in the
fierce mellé; all was dim, undefined and indistinct.
VII.—THE ADVENTURE OF WASHINGTON.
It was at this moment that a strange resolution came over the mind of
Washington. All around him was mist and gloom, he saw his men disappear
within the fog, toward Chew's house, but he knew not whether their
charge met with defeat or victory. He heard the tread of hurrying
legions, the thunder of the cannon, the rattle of the musquetry broke on his
ear, mingled with the shrieks of the wounded and the groans of the dying.
The terrible panorama of a battle field, passed vividly before his eyes,
but still he knew not the cause of the impregnability of Chew's house.
He determined to advance toward the house, and examine its position in
person.
He turned to the officers of his staff—“Follow me who will!” he cried,
and in a moment, his steed of iron grey was careering over the sod, littered
with ghastly corses, while the air overhead was alive with the music of bullets,
and earth beneath was flung against the war steed's flanks by the cannon
ball.
Followed by Hamilton, by Pickering, by Marshall, and by Lee, of the
gallant legion, Washington rode forward, and speeding between the fires of
the opposing armies, approached the house.
At every step, a dead man with a livid face turned upward; little pools
of blood crimsoning the lawn, torn fragments of attire scattered over the
sod; on every side hurrying bodies of the foemen, while terrible and unremitting,
the fire flashing from the windows of Chew's House, flung a lurid
glare over the battle-field.
Washington dashed over the lawn; he approached the house, and every
man of his train held his breath. Bullets were whistling over their heads,
cannon balls playing round their horses' feet, yet their leader kept on his
way of terror. A single glance at the house, with its vollies of flame flashing
from every window, and he turned to the north to regain the American
lines, but the fog and smoke gathered round him, and he found his horse
entangled amid the enclosures of the cattle-pen to the north of the mansion.
“Leap your horses—” cried Washington to the brave men around him
—“Leap your horses and save yourselves!”
And in a moment, amid the mist and gloom his officers leaped the northern
enclosure of the cattle-pen, and rode forward to the American line,
scarcely able to discover their path in the dense gloom that gathered around
that Washington was not among their band. He had not leaped the fence
of the cattle-pen; with the feeling of a true warrior, he was afraid of injuring
his gallant steed, by this leap in the dark.
While the officers of the staff were speeding to the American line, Washington
turned his steed to the south, he determined to re-pass the house,
strike to the north-east, and then facing the fires of both armies, regain the
Continental lines.
He rose proudly in the stirrups, he placed his hand gently on the neck
of his steed, he glanced proudly around him, and then the noble horse
sprang forward with a sudden leap, and the mist rising for a moment disclosed
the form of Washington, to the vision of the opposing armies.
| Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution | |