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.
