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
encouragement to his soldiers in his broken dialect, the British army moved
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.
