University of Virginia Library

4. Part the Fourth.
THE FALL OF THE BANNER OF THE STARS.

—Mss. Revolution

I.—WASHINGTON IN DANGER.

The form of the Chieftain rose through the smoke and gloom of battle,
in all its magnificence of proportion, and majesty of bearing, as speeding
between two opposing fires—his proud glance surveying the battle-field—he
retraced his path of death, and rode toward the American army.

He was now in front of Chew's House, he was passing through the very
sweep of the fires, belching from every window; the bullets whistled
around him; on every hand was confusion, and darkness, made more
fearful by the glare of musquetry, and the lightning flash of cannon.

He is now in front of Chew's House! Another moment and the Man
of the Army may fall from his steed riddled by a thousand bullets, a single
moment and his corse may be added to the heaps of dead piled along the

lawn in all the ghastliness of death; another moment and the Continentals
may be without a leader, the British without their most determined foe.

His form is enrapt in mist, he is lost to sight, he again emerges into
light, he passes the house and sweeps away toward the Continental army.

He passes the house, and as he speeds onward toward the American
lines, a proud gleam lights up his eye, and a prouder smile wreaths his determined
lips. “The American army is yet safe, they are in the path to
victory—” he exclaims, as he rejoins the officers of his staff, within the
American lines—“Had I but intelligence of Armstrong in the West—of
Smallwood and Forman in the East, with one bold effort, we might carry
the field!”

But no intelligence of Smallwood or Forman came—Armstrong's movements
were all unknown—Stephens, who flanked the right wing of Greene,
was not heard from, nor could any one give information concerning his
position.

And as the battle draws to a crisis around Chew's house, as the British
and Americans are disputing the possession of the lawn now flooded with
blood, let me for a moment turn aside from the path of regular history, and
notice some of the legends of the battle field, brought down to our times by
the hoary survivors of the Revolution.

II.—THE UNKNOWN FORM.

Let us survey Chew's house in the midst of the fight.

It is the centre of a whirpool of flame.

Above is the mist, spreading its death shroud over the field. Now it is
darkened into a pall by the battle smoke, and now a vivid cannon flash lays
bare the awful theatre.

Still in the centre you may see Chew's house, still from every window
flashes the blaze of musquetry, and all around it columns of jet black smoke
curl slowly upward, their forms clearly defined against the shroud of white
mist.

It is a terrible thing to stand in the shadows of the daybreak hour, by the
bedside of a dying father, and watch that ashy face, rendered more ghastly
by the rays of a lurid taper—it is a terrible thing to clasp the hand of a sister,
and feel it grow cold, and colder, until it stiffens to ice in your grasp—
a fearful thing to gather the wife, dearest and most beloved of all, to your
breast, and learn the fatal truth, that the heart is pulseless, the bosom clay,
the eyes fixed and glassy.—

Yes, Death in any shape, in the times of Peace by the fireside, and in
the Home, is a fearful thing, talk of it as you will.

And in the hour when Riot howls through the streets of a wide city, its
ten thousand faces crimsoned by the glare of a burning church, Death looks
not only horrible but grotesque. For those dead men laid stiffly along the

streets, their cold faces turned to scarlet by the same glare that reveals the
cross of the tottering temple, have been murdered by their—brothers.
Like wild beasts, hunted and torn by the hounds, they have yielded up their
lives, the warm blood of their hearts mingling with the filth of the gutter.

This indeed is horrible, but Death in the Battle, who shall dare paint its
pictures?

What pencil snatched from the hands of a Devil, shall delineate its colors
of blood?

Look upon Chew's house and behold it!

There—under the cover of the mist, thirty thousand men are hurrying to
and fro, shooting and stabbing and murdering as they go! Look! The
lawn is canopied by one vast undulating sheet of flame!

Hark! To the terrible tramp of the horses' hoofs, as they crash on over
heaps of dead.

Here, you behold long columns of blue uniformed soldiers; there dense
masses of scarlet. Hark! Yes, listen and hear the horrid howl of
slaughter, the bubbling groan of death, the low toned pitiful note of pain.
Pain? What manner of pain? Why, the pain of arms torn off at the
shoulder, limbs hacked into pieces by chain shot, eyes darkened forever.

Not much poetry in this, you say. No. Nothing but truth—truth that
rises from the depths of a bloody well.

From those heaps of dying and dead, I beseech you select only one corse,
and gaze upon it in silence—Is he dead? The young man yonder with the
pale face, the curling black hair, the dark eyes wide open, glaring upon that
shroud above—is he dead?

Even if he is dead, stay, O, stay yon wild horse that comes rushing on
without a rider; do not let him trample that young face, with his red hoofs.

For it may be that the swimming eyes of a sister have looked upon that
face—perchance some fair girl, beloved of the heart, has kissed those red
lips—do not let the riderless steed come on; do not let him trample into
the sod that face, which has been wet with a Mother's tears!

And yet this face is only one among a thousand, which now pave the battle
field, crushed by the footsteps of the hurrying soldiers, trampled by the
horses' hoofs.

And while the battle swelled fiercest, while the armies traversed that
green lawn in the hurry of contest, along the blood stained sward, with
calm manner and even step, strode an unknown form, passing over the
field, amid smoke and mist and gloom, while the wounded fell shrieking at
his feet, and the faces of the dead met his gaze on every side.

It was the form of an aged man, with grey hairs streaming over his
shoulders, an aged man with a mild yet fearless countenance, with a tall
and muscular figure, clad neither in the glaring dress of the `Britisher,' or the
hunting shirt of the Continental, but in the plain attire of drab cloth, the

simple coat, vest with wide lappels, small clothes and stockings, that mark
the believers of the Quaker faith.

He was a Friend. Who he was, or what was his name, whence he
came, or whither he went, no one could tell, and tradition still remains
silent.

But along that field, he was seen gliding amid the heat and glare of battle.
Did the wounded soldier shriek for a cup of water? It was his hand
that brought it from the well, on the verge of Chew's wall. Extended
along the sward, with their ghastly faces quivering with the spasmodic throe
of insupportable pain, the dying raised themselves piteously on their trembling
hands, and in broken tones asked for relief, or in the wildness of delirium
spoke of their far off homes, whispered a message to their wives or
little ones, or besought the blessing of their grey haired sires.

It was the Quaker, the unknown and mysterious Friend, who was seen
unarmed save with the Faith of God, undefended save by the Armour of
Heaven, kneeling on the sod, whispering words of comfort to the dying, and
pointing with his uplifted hand to a home beyond the skies, where battle
nor wrong nor death ever came.

Around Chew's house and over the lawn he sped on his message of
mercy. There was fear and terror around him, the earth beneath his measured
footsteps quivered, and the air was heavy with death, but he trembled
not, nor qualied, nor turned back from his errand of mercy.

Now seen in the thickest of the fight, the soldiers rushing on their paths
of blood, started back as they beheld his mild and peaceful figure. Some
deemed him a thing of air, some thought they beheld a spirit, not one offered
to molest or harm the Messenger of Peace.

It was a sight worth all the ages of controversial Divinity to see—this
plain Quaker going forth with the faith of that Saviour, whose name has
ever been most foully blasphemed by those who called themselves his
friends, going forth with the faith of Jesus in his heart, speaking comfort to
the dying, binding up the gashes of the wounded, or yet again striding
boldly into the fight and rescuing with his own unarmed hands the prostrate
soldier from the attack of his maddened foe.

Blessings on his name, the humble Quaker, for this deed which sanctifies
humanity, and makes us dream of men of mortal mould raised to the majesty
of Gods. His name is not written down, his history is all unknown, but
when the books of the unknown world are bared to the eyes of a
congregated universe, then will that name shine brighter and lighter with a
holier gleam, than the name of any Controversial Divine or loud-mouthed
hireling, that ever disgraced Christianity or blasphemed the name of Jesus.

Ah, methinks, even amid the carnage of Germantown, I see the face of
the Redeemer, bending from the battle-mist, and smiling upon the peaceful
Quaker, as he never smiled upon learned priest or mitred prelate.

III.—THE REVEL OF DEATH.

Within Chew's house this was the scene:

Every room crowded with soldiers in their glaring crimson attire, the old
hall thronged by armed men, all stained with blood and begrimed with battle
smoke, the stair-way trembling beneath the tread of soldiers bearing ammunition
to the upper rooms, while every board of the floor, every step of the
stair-case bore its ghastly burden of dying and dead. The air was pestilent
with the smell of powder, the walls trembled with the shock of battle; thick
volumes of smoke rolling from the lower rooms, wound through the doors,
into the old hall, and up the stairway, enveloping all objects in a pall of
gloom, that now shifted aside, and again came down upon the forms of the
British soldiers like dark night.

Let us ascend the stairway. Tread carefully, or your foot will trample
on the face of that dead soldier; ascend the staircase with a cautious step,
or you will lose your way in the battle smoke.

The house trembles to its foundation, one volley of musquetry after
another breaks on your ear, and all around is noise and confusion; nothing
seen but armed men hurrying to and fro, nothing heard but the thunder of
the fight.

We gain the top of the stairway—we have mounted over the piles of
dead—we pass along the entry—we enter the room on the right, facing toward
the lawn.

A scene of startling interest opens to our sight. At each window are
arranged files of men, who, with faces all blood stained and begrimed, are
sending their musquet shots along the lawn; at each window the floor is
stained with a pool of blood, and the bodies of the dead are dragged away
by the strong hands of their comrades, who fill their places almost as soon
as they receive their death wound. The walls are rent by cannon balls,
and torn by bullets, and the very air seems ringing with the carnival shouts
of old Death, rejoicing in the midst of demons.

Near a window in this room clustered a gallant band of British officers,
who gave the word to the men, directed the dead to be taken from the floor,
or gazed out upon the lawn in the endeavor to pierce the gloom of the
contest.

Some were young and handsome officers, others were veterans who had
mowed their way through many a fight, and all were begrimed with the
blood and smoke of battle. Their gaudy coats were rent, the epaulette was
torn from one shoulder by the bullet, the plume from the helm of another,
and a third fell in his comrades' arms, as he received the ball in his heart.

While they stood gazing from the window, a singular incident occurred.

A young officer, standing in the midst of his comrades, felt something
drop from the ceiling, and trickle down his cheek.

The fight was fierce and bloody in the attic overhead. They could hear
the cannon balls tearing shingles from the roof—they could hear the low,
deep groans of the dying.

Another drop fell from the ceiling—another and another.

“It is blood!” cried his comrades, and a laugh went round the group.

Drop after drop fell from the ceiling; and in a moment a thin liquid
stream came trickling down, and pattered upon the blood-stained floor.

The young officer reached forth his hand, he held it extended beneath the
falling stream: he applied it to his lips.

“Not blood, but wine!” he shouted. “Good old Madeira wine!”

The group gathered round the young officer in wonder. It was wine—
good old wine—that was dripping from the ceiling. In a few moments the
young officer, rushing through the gloom and confusion of the stairway, had
ransacked the attic, and discovered under the eaves of the roof, between the
rafters and the floor, some three dozen bottles of old Madeira wine, placed
there for safe-keeping some score of years before the battle. These bottles
were soon drawn from their resting-place, and the eyes of the group in the
room below were presently astonished by the vision of the ancient bottles,
all hung with cobwebs, their sealed corks covered with dust.

In a moment the necks were struck off some half-dozen bottles, and while
the fire poured from the window along the lawn, while cries and shrieks,
and groans, broke on the air; while the smoke came rolling in the window,
now in folds of midnight blackness, and now turned to lurid red by the
glare of cannon; while the terror and gloom of battle arose around them,
the group of officers poured the wine in an ancient goblet, discovered in a
closet of the mansion,—they filled it brimming full with wine, and drank a
royal health to the good King George!

They drank and drank again, until their eyes sparkled, and their lips
grew wild with loyal words, and their thirst for blood—the blood of the
rebels—was excited to madness. Again and again were the soldiers shot
down at the window, again were their places filled, and once more the goblet
went round from lip to lip, and the old wine was poured forth like water,
in healths to the good King George!

And as they drank, one by one, the soldiers were swept away from the
windows, until at the last the officers stood exposed to the blaze of the
American fire, flashing from the green lawn.

“Health to King George—Death to the rebels!”

The shout arose from the lips of a grey-haired veteran, and he fell to the
floor, a mangled corse. The arm that raised the goblet was shattered at
the elbow by one musket ball, as another penetrated his brain.

The goblet was seized by another hand, and the revel grew loud and
wild. The sparkling wine was poured forth like water, healths were drank,
hurrahs were shouted, and—another officer measured his length on the floor.
He had received his ball of death.

There was something of ludicrous horror in the scene.

Those sounds of revel and bacchanalian uproar, breaking on the air, amid
the intervals—the short and terrible intervals of battle—those faces flushed
by wine, and agitated by all the madness of the moment, turned from one
side to another, every lip wearing a ghastly smile, every eye glaring from
its socket, while every voice echoed the drunken shout and the fierce
hurrah.

Another officer fell wounded, and another, and yet another. The young
officer who had first discovered the wine alone remained.

Even in this moment of horror, we cannot turn our eyes away, from his
young countenance, with its hazel eyes and thickly clustered hair!

He glanced round upon his wounded and dying comrades, he looked
vacantly in the faces of the dead, he gazed upon the terror and confusion
of the scene, and then he seized the goblet, filled it brimming-full with wine,
and raised it to his lips.

His lip touched the edge of the goblet, his face was reflected in the
quivering wavelets of the wine, his eyes rolled wildly to and fro, and then
a musket shot pealed through the window. The officer glared around with
a maddened glance, and then the warm blood, spouting from the wound
between his eyebrows, fell drop by drop into the goblet, and mingled with
the wavelets of the ruby wine.

And then there was a wild shout; a heavy body toppled to the floor;
and the young soldier with a curse on his lips went drunken to his God.

Let us for a moment notice the movements of the divisions of Washington's
army, and then return to the principal battle ground at Chew's house.

The movements of the divisions of Smallwood and Forman are, to this
day, enveloped in mystery. They came in view of the enemy, but the
density of the mist, prevented them from effectually engaging with the
British.

Armstrong came marching down the Manatawny road, until the quiet
Wissahikon dawned on the eyes of his men; but after this moment, his
march is also wrapt in mystery.—Some reports state that he actually
engaged with the Hessian division of the enemy, others state that the alarm
of the American retreating from Chew's house reached his ear, as the vanguard
of his command entered Germantown, near the market-house, and
commenced firing upon the chasseurs who flanked the left wing of the
British army.

However this may be, yet tradition has brought down to our times a terrible
legend connected with the retreat of Armstrong's division. The
theatre of this legend was the quiet Wissahikon, and this is the story of
ancient tradition.

IV.—THE WISSAHIKON.

It is a poem of everlasting beauty—a dream of magnificence—the
world-hidden, wood-embowered Wissahikon. Its pure waters break forever
in ripples of silver around the base of colossal rocks, or sweep murmuringly
on, over beds of pebbled flints, or spread into calm and mirror-like
lakes, with shores of verdure, surmounted by green hills, rolling away
in waves of forest trees, or spreading quietly in the fierce light of the summer
sun, with the tired cattle grouped beneath the lofty oaks.

It is a poem of beauty—where the breeze mourns its anthem through the
tall pines; where the silver waters send up their voices of joy; where
calmness, and quiet, and intense solitude awe the soul, and fill the heart
with bright thoughts and golden dreams, woven in the luxury of the summer
hour.

From the moment your eyes first drink in the gladness of its waters, as
they pour into the Schuylkill, seven miles from Philadelphia, until you behold
it winding its thread of silver along the meadows of Whitemarsh, many
miles above, it is all beauty, all dream, all magnificence.

It breaks on your eye, pouring into the Schuylkill, a calm lake, with an
ancient and picturesque mill[3] in the foreground. A calm lake, buried in
the depths of towering steeps, that rise almost perpendicularly on either
side, casting a shadow of gloom over the water, while every steep is green
with brushwood, every rocky cleft magnificent with the towering oak, the
sombre pine, or the leafy chesnut.

This glen is passed; then you behold hilly shores, sloping away to the
south in pleasant undulations, while on the north arise frowning steeps.
Then your mind is awed by tremendous hills on either side, creating one
immense solitude; rugged steeps—all precipice and perpendicular rock—
covered and crowded with giant pines, and then calm and rippleless lakes,
shadowy glens, deep ravines and twilight dells of strange and dreamy
beauty.

There is, in sooth, a stamp of strange and dreamy beauty impressed
upon every ripple of the Wissahikon, every grassy bank extending greenly
along its waters, on every forest-tree towering beside its shores.

On the calm summer's day, when the sun is declining in the west, you
may look from the height of some grey, rugged steep, down upon the depths
of the world-hidden waters. Wild legends wander across your fancy as
you gaze; every scene around you seems but the fitting location for a wild
and dreamy tradition, every rock bears its old time story, every nook of the
wild wood has its tale of the ancient days. The waters, deep, calm, and
well-like, buried amidst overhanging hills, have a strange and mysterious

clearness. The long shadows of the hills, broken by golden belts of sunshine,
clothe the waters in sable and gold, in glitter and in shadow. All
around is quiet and still; silence seems to have assumed a positive existence
amid these vallies of romance and of dreams.

It was along the borders of this quiet stream, that an ancient fabric arose,
towering through the verdure of the trees, with its tottering chimneys
enveloped in folds of mist. The walls were severed by many a fissure, the
windows were crumbling to decay; the halls of the ancient mansion were
silent as the tomb.

It was wearing toward noon, when a body of soldiers, wearing the blue
hunting-shirt and fur cap with bucktail plume, came rushing from the woods
on the opposite side of the rivulet, came rushing through the waters of the
lonely stream, and hurried with hasty steps toward the deserted house.

In a moment they had entered its tottering doorway, and disappeared
within its aged walls. Another instant, and a body of soldiers broke from
the woods on the opposite side of the stream, clad in the Hessian costume,
with ponderous bearskin caps, heavy accroutements, and massive muskets.

They crossed the stream, and rushed into the house in pursuit of the
flying continentals. They searched the rooms on the first floor; they hurried
along the tottering timbers, but not a single Continental was to be seen.
They ascended the crumbling stairway with loud shouts and boisterous
oaths, and reached the rooms of the second story. Every door was flung
hastily aside, every closet was broken open, the boards were even torn from
the floor, every nook was searched, every corner ransacked, and yet no
vision of a blue shirted backwoodsman, met the eye of the eager Hessians.

All was silent as death.

Their own footfalls were returned in a thousand echoes, their own shouts
alone disturbed the silence of the house, but no sound or sight, could be obtained
of the fleeing Continentals. Every room was now searched, save
the garret, and the Hessians, some twenty men, able bodied and stout, were
about rushing up the stairway of the attic in pursuit of the ten Continental
soldiers, when the attention of one of their number was arrested by a singular
spectacle.

The Hessian soldier beheld through a crumbling window frame, the
figure of a woman, standing on the height of an abrupt steep, overhanging
the opposite side of the stream. She waved her hands to the soldier,
shouted and waved her hands again. He heeded her not, but rushed up the
stairway after his companions.

The shout of that unknown woman was the warning of death.

While the Hessians were busily engaged in searching the attic, while
their shouts and execrations awoke the echoes of the roof, while they were
thrusting sword and bayonet into the dark corners of the apartment, that
shout of the woman on the rock, arose, echoing over the stream again and
again.

The Hessians rushed to the window, they suddenly remembered that
they had neglected to search the cellar, and looking far below, they beheld
thin wreaths of light blue smoke, winding upward from the cellar window.

A fearful suspicion crept over the minds of the soldiers.

They rushed from the attic, in a moment they might reach the lower
floor and escape. With that feeling of unimaginable terror creeping round
each heart and paling every face, they rushed tremblingly on, they gained
the second floor, their footsteps already resounded along the stairway when
the boards trembled beneath their feet, a horrid combination of sounds assailed
their ears, aud the walls rocked to and fro like a frantic bacchanal.

Another moment! And along that green wood rang a fearful sound,
louder and more terrible than thunder, shaking the very rocks with an earth-quake
motion, while the fragments of the ancient fabric arose blackening
into the heavens, mingled with human bodies torn and scattered into innumerable
pieces, and the air was filled with a dense smoke, that hung over
the forest, in one thick and blackening pall.

In a few moments the scene was clear, but the ancient house had disappeared
as if by magic, while the shouts of the Continental soldiers were
heard in the woods, far beyond the scene.

The house had been used by the British as a temporary depot of powder.
When the American Continentals rushed into the cellar, they beheld the
kegs standing in one corner, they piled up combustible matter in its vicinity
and then made their escape from the house by a subterranean passage
known only to themselves. They emerged into open air some hundred
yards beyond, and beheld the result of this signal vengeance on their foes.

V.—THE CRISIS OF THE FIGHT.

Again we return to the field of Chew's House.

Washington determined to make one last and desperate effort. The
Corps de Reserve under Stirling, and Maxwell, and Nash, came thundering
along the field; each sword unsheathed, every bayonet firm; every man
eager and ready for the encounter.

It was now near nine o'clock in the morning.—The enemy still retained
Chew's house. The division under Greene, the main body commanded
by Wayne, by Sullivan and Conway, composed the American force engaged
in actual contest.—To this force was now added the Corps de Reserve,
under Lord Stirling, Generals Maxwell and Nash.

The British force, under command of General Howe, who had arrived
on the field soon after the onslaught at Chew's House, were led to battle by
Kniphausen, Agnew, Grant, and Grey, who now rode from troop to troop,
from rank to rank, hurrying the men around toward the main point of the flight.

There was a pause in the horror of the battle.

The Americans rested on their arms, the troopers reined in their steeds

in sight of Chew's House, and amid the bodies of the dead. The Continental
ranks were terribly thinned by the desolating fire from the house;
every file was diminished, and in some instances, whole companies were
swept away.

The British were fresh in vigor, and ably armed and equipped. They
impatiently rushed forward, eager to steep their arms in American blood.

And amid the folds of mist and battle-smoke—while the whole field resembled
some fearful phantasmagoria of fancy, with its shadowy figures flitting
to and fro, while the echo of the cannon, the rattle of the musquetry,
and the shrieks of the wounded yet rung on the soldiers' ears—they eagerly
awaited the signal for the re-commencement of the fight.

The signal rang along the lines! In an instant the cannons opened their
fire on Chew's house, the troopers came thundering on in their hurricane
charge. All around were charging legions, armed bodies of men hurrying
toward the house, heaps of the wounded strown over the sod. That terrible
cry which had for three long hours gone shrieking up to heaven from
that lawn, now rose above the tumult of battle—the quick piercing cry of
the strong man, smitten suddenly down by his death-wound.

The American soldiers fought like men who fight for everything that man
needs for sustenance, or holds dear in honor, or sacred in religion. Step by
step the veteran continentals drove the Britishers over the field, trampling
down the faces of their dead comrades in the action; step by step were
they driven back in their turn, musquets were clubbed in the madness of the
strife, and the cry for “quarter,” fell on deafened ears.

Then it was that the chieftains of the American host displayed acts of
superhuman courage!

In the thickest of the fight, where swords flashed most vivedly, where
death-groans shrieked most terribly upon the air, where the steeds of contending
squadrons rushed madly against each other in the wild encounter of
the charge, there might you see mad Anthony Wayne; his imposing form
towering over the heads of the combatants, his eye blazing with excitement,
and his sword, all red with blood, rising and falling like a mighty hammer
in the hands of a giant blacksmith.

How gallantly the warrior-drover rides! Mounted on his gallant war-steed,
he comes once more to battle, his sword gleaming like a meteor,
around his head. On and on, without fear, without a thought save his country's
honor and the vengeance of Paoli—on and on he rides, and as he
speeds, his shout rings out clear and lustily upon the air—

“On, comrades, on—and Remember Paoli!”

“Forwarts, brudern, forwarts!”

Ha! The gallant Pulaski! How like a king he rides at the head of his
iron band, how firmly he sits in his stirrups, how gallantly he beckons his
men onward, how like a sunbeam playing on glittering ice, his sword flits to
and fro, along the darkened air!

Like one solid battle-bolt, his gallant band speed onward, carrying terror
and confusion into the very centre of Kniphausen's columns, leaving a line
of dead men in their rear, and driving the discomfitted Hessians before them,
while the well-known battle-shout of Pulaski halloos these war-hounds on
to the slaughter—

“Forwarts—brüdern—forwarts!”

And there he rides, known to all the men as their commander, seen by
every eye in the interval of the battle-smoke, hailed by a thousand voices
—Washington!

Hark! How the cheer of his deep-toned voice swells through the confusion
of battle!

A calm and mild-faced man, leading on a column of Continentals, rides
up to his side, and is pushing forward into the terror of the mist-hidden
meleé, when the voice of Washington rings in his ear—

“Greene—why is Stephens not here? Why does he delay his division?”

“General, we have no intelligence of his movements. He has not yet
appeared upon the field—”

Washington's lip quivered. A world seemed pent up in his heart, and
for once in his entire life, his agitation was visible and apparent.

He raised his clenched hand on high, and as Napoleon cursed Grouchy
at Waterloo, in after times, so Washington at Germantown cursed Stephens,
from his very heart of hearts. The glittering game of battle was being
played around him. Stephens alone was wanting to strike terror into the
ranks of the enemy around Chew's house, the crisis had come—and Stephens
was not there, one of the most important divisions of the army was
powerless.

And now the gallant Stirling, the brave Nash, and the laurelled Maxwell,
came riding on, at the head of the corps de reserve, every man with his
sword and bayonet, yet unstained with blood, eager to join the current of the
fight.

Nash—the brave General of the North Carolina Division, was rushing
into the midst of the meleé with his men, leading them on to deeds of courage
and renown, when he received his death-wound, and fell insensible in
the arms of one of his aids-de-camp.

The mist gathering thicker and denser over the battle field, caused a terrible
mistake on the part of the American divisions. They charged against
their own friends, shot down their own comrades, and even bayonetted the
very soldiers who had shared their mess, ere they discovered the fatal mistake.
The mist and battle-smoke rendered all objects dim and indistinct—
the event of this battle will show, that it was no vain fancy of the author,
which induced him to name this mist of Germantown—the Shroud of
Death. It proved a shroud of death, in good sooth, for hundreds who laid
down their lives on the sod of the battle field.

The gallant Colonel Matthews, at the head of a Virginia regiment, penetrated
into the centre of the town, driving the British before him at pleasure,
and after this glorious effort, he was returning to the American lines with
some three hundred prisoners, when he encountered a body of troops in the
mist, whom he supposed to be Continentals. He rode unfearingly into their
midst, and found himself a prisoner in the heart of the British army! The
mist had foiled his gallant effort; his prisoners were recaptured, himself and
his men were captives to the fortune of war.

VI.—“RETREAT.”

Now it was that Washington beheld his soldiers shrink and give way on
every side! On every hand they began to waver, from line to line, from
column to column ran terrible rumors of the approach of Cornwallis, with
a reinforcement of grenadiers; the American soldiers were struck with despair.

They had fought while there was hope, they had paved their way to victory
with heaps of dead, they had fought against superior discipline, superior
force, superior fortune, but the mist that overhung the battle field, blasted all
their hopes, and along the American columns rang one word, that struck
like a knell of death on the heart of Washington—“retreat”—“RETREAT!”

It was all in vain that the American chieftain threw himself in the way
of the retreating ranks and besought them to stand firm—for the sake of
their honor, for the sake of their country, for the sake of their God.

It was all in vain! In vain was it that Pulaski threw his troopers in the
path chosen by the fugitives; in vain did he wave his sword on high, and
beseech them in his broken dialect, with a flushed cheek and a maddening
eye, implore them to turn and face the well-nigh conquered foe! It was in
vain!

In vain did Mad Anthony Wayne, the hero of Pennsylvania, ride from
rank to rank, and with his towering form raised to its full height, hold his
hand aloft, and in the familiar tones of brotherly intimacy, beckon the soldiers
once again to the field of battle.

All was in vain!

And while Chew's house still belched forth its fires of death, while all
through Germantown were marching men, hot-foot from Philadelphia, while
over the fatal lawn rushed hurried bands of the Continentals, seeking for
their comrades among the dead, Washington gazed to the north and beheld
the columns of Continentals, their array all thinned and scattered, their numbers
diminished, taking their way along the northern road, calmly it is true,
and in remarkable order, but still in the order of a retreat, though the enemy
showed no disposition to annoy or pursue them.

And while his heart swelled to bursting, and his lip was pressed between
his teeth in anguish, Washington bowed his head to the mane of his gallant
“grey” and veiled his face in his hands, and then his muscular chest throbbed
as though a tempest were pent up within its confines.

In a moment ne raised his face. All was calm and immoveable, all
traces of emotion had passed away from the stern and commanding features,
like the waves rolling from the rock.

He whispered a few brief words to his aids-de-camp, and then raising his
form proudly in the stirrups, he rode along the Continental columns, while
with a confused and half-suppressed murmuring sound, the Retreat of Germantown commenced.