5. Part the fifth.
THE LAST SHOT OF THE BATTLE.
“Look forth upon the scene of fight, comrade.”
“The moon is up in the heavens—her beams glimmer on the cold faces of the dead
Over dead carcase and over fallen banner, in the midst of the lawn, arises one fell
and ghastly form, towering in the moonbeams—”
“The form, comrade?”
“It is the form of Death, brooding and chuckling over the carnage of the field; he
shakes his arms of bone aloft, his skeleton hands wave in the moonlight, he holds
HIGH FESTIVAL OVER THE BODIES OF THE DEAD.”
—Mss. of the Revolution.
I.—THE SOLDIER AND HIS BURDEN.
A PAUSE in the din of battle!
The denizens of Mount Airy and Chesnut Hill came crowding to their
doors and windows; the hilly street was occupied by anxious groups of
people, who conversed in low and whispered tones, with hurried gestures
and looks of surprise and fear. Yonder group who stand clustered in the
roadside!
A grey haired man with his ear inclined intently toward Germantown,
his hands outspread, and his trembling form bent with age. The maiden,
fair cheeked, red lipped, and blooming, clad in the peasant costume, the
tight boddice, the linsey skirt, the light 'kerchief thrown over the bosom.
Her ear is also inclined toward Germantown, and her small hands are involuntarily
crossed over her bosom, that heaves and throbs into view.
The matron, calm, self possessed, and placid, little children clinging to
the skirt of her dress, her wifely cap flung carelessly on her head, with
hair slightly touched with grey, while the sleeping babe nestles in her
bosom.
The boy, with the light flaxen hair, the ruddy cheeks, the merry blue
eye! He stands silent and motionless—he also listens!
You stand upon the height of Mount Airy, it is wearing towards noon,
yet gaze around you.
Above the mist is rising. Here and there an occasional sun gleam lights
the rolling clouds of mist, but the atmosphere wears a dull leaden hue, and
the vast horizon a look of solemnity and gloom.
Beneath and around sweep field and plain, buckwheat field, and sombre
woods, luxuriant orchards and fertile vallies, all seen in the intervals of the
white columns of the uprising mist.
The group clustered along the roadside of Mount Airy are still and silent.
Each heart is full, every ear absorbed in the effort of catching the slightest
sound from Germantown.
There is a strange silence upon the air. A moment ago, and far off
shouts broke on the ear, mingled with the thunder of cannon and the
shrieks of musquetry, the earth seemed to tremble, and far around the wide
horizon was agitated by a thousand echoes.
Now the scene is still as midnight. Not a sound, not a shout, not a distant
hurrah. The anxiety of the group upon the hill becomes absorbing
and painful. Looks of wonder at the sudden pause in the battle, flit from
face to face, and then low whispers are heard, and then comes another moment
of fearful suspense.
It is followed by a wild rushing sound to the south, like the shrieks of
the ocean waves, as they fill the hold of the foundering ship, while it sinks
far in the loneliness of the seas.
Then a pause, and again that unknown sound, and then the tramp of ten
thousand footsteps, mingled with a wild and indistinct murmur.—Tramp,
tramp, tramp, the air is filled with the sound, and then distinct voices break
upon the air, and the clatter of arms is borne on the breeze.
The boy turns to his mother, and asks her who has gained the day?
Every heart feels vividly that the battle is now over, that the account of
blood is near its close, that the appeal to the God of battles has been made.
The mother turns her tearful eyes to the south—she cannot answer the
question. The old man, awaking from a reverie, turns suddenly to the
maiden, and clasps her arm with his trembling hands. His lips move, but
his tongue is unable to syllable a sound. His suspense is fearful. He
flings a trembling hand southward, and speaks his question with the gesture
of age.
The battle, the battle, how goes the battle?
And as he makes the gesture, the figure of a soldier is seen rushing from
the mist in the valley below, he comes speeding round the bend of the road,
he ascends the hill, but his steps totter, and he staggers to and fro like a
drunken man.
He bears a burden on his shoulders—is it the plunder of the fight, is it
spoil gathered from the ranks of the dead?
No—no. He bears an aged man on his shoulders, he grasps the aged
form with his trembling arms, and with an unsteady step nears the group
on the hill top.
The old man's grey hairs are waving in the breeze, and his extended
hand grasps a broken bayonet, which he raises on high with a maniac
gesture.
The soldier and the veteran he bears upon his shoulders, are clad in the
blue hunting shirt, torn and tattered and stained with blood, it is true, but
still you can recognize the uniform of the Revolution.
The tottering soldier nears the group, he lays the aged veteran down by
the roadside, and then looks around with a ghastly face and a rolling eye.
There is blood dripping from his attire, his face is begrimed with powder,
and spotted with crimson drops. He glances wildly around, and then
kneeling on the sod he takes the hands of the aged man in his own, and
raises his head upon his knee.
The battle, the battle, how goes the battle?
The group cluster round as they shriek the question.
The young Continental makes no reply, but gazing upon the face of the
dying veteran, wipes the beaded drops of blood from his forehead.
“Comrade,” shrieks the veteran, “raise me on my feet, and wipe the
blood from my eyes. I would see him once again!”
He is raised upon his feet, the blood is wiped from his eyes.
“I see—I see—it is he—it is Washington! Yonder—yonder—I see
his sword—and Antony Wayne,—raise me higher, comrade,—all is getting
dark—I would see—Mad Antony!”
Did you ever see a picture that made your heart throb, and your eyes
grow blind with tears?
Here is one.
The roadside, the group clustered in front of Allen's house, which rises
massive and solemn in the background. The young soldier, all weak and
trembling from loss of blood, raising the grey haired veteran in his arms,
placing his face toward Germantown, while the wrinkled features light up
with a sudden gleam, and waving his broken bayonet before his eyes, he
looks toward the scene of the late fight.
The bystanders, spectators of this scene. The matron gazing anxiously
upon the old man's face, her eyes swimming in tears, the ruddy cheeked
boy holding one hand of the dying veteran, the youthful maiden, all blossom
and innocence, standing slightly apart, with the ancient man in peasant's
attire, gazing vacantly around as he grasps her arm.
“Lift me, comrade—higher, higher— I see him—I see Mad Antony!
Wipe the blood from my eyes, comrade, for it darkens my sight—it is dark,
it is dark!”
And the young soldier held in his arms a lifeless corse. The old veteran
was dead. He had fought his last fight, fired his last shot, shouted the
name of Mad Antony for the last time, and yet his withered hand clenched,
with the tightness of death, the broken bayonet.
The battle, the battle, how goes the battle?
As the thrilling question again rung in his ears, the young Continental
turned to the group, smiled ghastily and then flung his wounded arm to the
south.
“Lost!” he shrieked, and rushed on his way like one bereft of his
senses. He had not gone ten steps, when he bit the dust of the roadside,
and lay extended in the face of day a lifeless corse.
The eyes of the group were now fixed upon the valley below.
II.—HOW THE LEGIONS CAME BACK FROM THE BATTLE.
Tramp, tramp, echoed the sound of hoofs, and then a steed, caparisoned
in battle array, came sweeping up the hill, with his wounded rider hanging
helpless and faint by the saddle-bow.—Then came another steed, speeding
up the hill, with bloodshot eye and quivering nostril, while his rider fell
dying to the earth, shouting his wild hurrah as he fell.
Then came baggage wagons, then bodies of flying troops in continental
attire, turned to the bend of the road in the valley below, and like a flash the
hillside of Mount Airy was all alive with disordered masses of armed men,
rushing onward with hurried steps and broken arms.
Another moment! The whole array of the continental army comes
sweeping round the bend of the road, file after file, rank after rank, and
now, a column breaks into sight.
Alone the whole column, no vision meets the eyes of the group, but the
spectacle of broken arms, tarnished array, men wearied with toil and thirst,
fainting with wounds, and tottering with the loss of blood.
On and on, along the ascent of the hill they rush, some looking hastily
around with their pallid faces stained with blood, some holding their shattered
arms high overhead, others aiding their wounded comrades as they
hurry on in the current of the retreat, while waving in the air, the blue
banner of the continental host, with its array of thirteen stars, droops
heavily from the flagstaff, as its torn folds come sweeping into light.
And from file to file, with a wild movement and a reckless air, rode a tall
and muscular soldier, clad in the uniform of a general officer, his sword
waving aloft, and his voice heard above the hurry and confusion of the
retreat—
“Turn, comrades, turn, and face the Britisher—turn, and the day is ours!”
Mad Anthony cried in vain! The panic had gone like a lightning flash
through the army, and every man hurried on, without a thought, save the
thought of retreat; without a motion, save the escape from the fatal field
of Chew's House.
Then came Pulaski and his veterans, their costumes of white extending
along the road, in glaring relief against the background of blue-shirted continentals;
then came the columns of Sullivan, the division of Greene, and
then huddled together in a confused crowd, came the disordered bands of
the army, who had broken their ranks, and were marching beside the baggage
wains loaded to the very sides with wounded and dying.
It was a sad and ghastly spectacle to see that train of death-cars, rolling
heavily on, with the carcases of the wounded hanging over their sides, with
broken arms and limbs protruding from their confines, with pallid faces upturned
to the sky, while amid the hurry and motion of the retreat, piteous
moans, fierce cries, and convulsive death-shrieks broke terribly on the air.
Yon gallant officer leaning from his steed, yon gallant officer, with the
bared forehead, the disordered dress, the ruffle spotted with blood, the coat
torn by sword thrusts, and dripping with the crimson current flowing from
the heart, while an aid-de-camp riding by his side supports his fainting form
on his steed, urging the noble animal forward in the path of the retreat.
It is the brave General Nash. He has fought his last fight, led his gallant
North Carolinians on to the field for the last time, his heart is fluttering
with the trembling pulsation of death, and his eyes swimming in the dimness
of coming dissolution.
In the rear, casting fierce glances toward Germantown, rides the tall form
of Washington, with Pickering and Hamilton and Marshall, clustering round
their chieftain, while the sound of the retreating legions is heard far in the
distance, along the heights of Chesnut Hill.
Washington reaches the summit of Mount Airy, he beholds his gallant
though unfortunate army sweeping far ahead, he reins his steed for a moment
on the height of the mount, and looks toward the field of Germantown!
One long look toward the scene of the hard fought fight, one quick and
fearful memory of the unburied dead, one half-smothered exclamation of
anguish, and the chieftain's steed springs forward, and thus progresses the
retreat of Germantown.
In the town the scene is wild and varied. The mist has not yet arisen,
the startled inhabitants have not crept from their places of concealment, and
through the village ride scattered bands and regiments of the British army.
Here a party of gaudily-clad German troopers of Walbeck break on your
eye, yonder the solemn and ponderous Hessian in his heavy accoutrements
crosses your path, here a company of plaid-kilted Highlanders came marching
on, with claymore and bagpipe, and yonder, far in the distance sweep
the troopers of Anspack, in their costume of midnight darkness, relieved by
ornaments of gold, with the skull and cross-bones engraven on each sable cap.
III.—CAPTAIN LEE.
In the centre of the village extended a level piece of ground, surrounded
by dwelling houses, stretching from the eastern side of the road, with the
market-house, a massive and picturesque structure, arising on one side,
while the German Reformed Church, with its venerable front and steeple,
arose on the other.
The gallant Captain Lee, of the Partizan Rangers, had penetrated thus
far into the town, in common with many other companies of the army, but
soon all others retreated, and he was left alone in the heart of the British
army, while the continentals were retreating over Mount Airy and Chesnut
Hill.
Lee had pursued a Hanoverian troop as far as the market house, when
he suddenly perceived the red-coated soldiers of Cornwallis breaking from
the gloom of the mist on the south, while a body of troopers came rushing
from the school house lane on one side, and another corps came thundering
from the church lane on the opposite side.
Lee was surrounded. The sable-coated troopers whom he had been pursuing,
now turned on their pursuers, and escape seemed impossible. The
brave Partizan turned to his men. Each swarthy face gleamed with
delight—each sunburnt hand flung aloft the battle-dented sword. The confusion
and havoc of the day had left the Partizan but forty troopers, but
every manly form was marked by wide shoulders, muscular chest, and lofty
bearing, and their uniform of green, their caps of fur, with bucktail plume,
gave a striking and effective appearance to the band.
“Comrades, now for a chase!” shouted Lee, glancing gaily over his men.
“Let us give these scare-crow hirelings a chase! Up the Germantown
road, advance, boys—forward!”
And as they galloped along the Germantown road, riding gallantly four
abreast, in all a warrior's port and pride, the Hanoverians, now two hundred
strong, came thundering in their rear, each dark-coated trooper leaning over
the neck of his steed, with sword upraised, and with fierce battle-shout
echoing from lip to lip.
Only twenty paces lay between the Rangers and their foes. The monotonous
sound of the pattering hoof, the clank of the scabbard against the
soldier's booted leg, the deep, hard breathing of the horses, urged by boot
and spur to their utmost speed, the fierce looks of the Hanoverians, their
bending figures, their dress of deep black, with relief of gold, the ponderous
caps, ornamented with the fearful insignia of skull and cross-bones, the
Rangers sweeping gallantly in front, square and compact in their solid
column, each manly form in costume of green and gold, disclosed in the light,
in all its muscular ability and imposing proportions, as they moved forward
with the same quick impulse, all combined, form a scene of strange and
varying interest, peculiar to those times of Revolutionary peril and bloodshed.
The chase became exciting. The advance company of sable-coated
troopers gained on Lee's gallant band at every step, and at every step they
left their comrades further in the rear.
Lee's men spurred their steeds merrily forward, ringing their boisterous
shouts tauntingly upon the air, while their exasperated foes replied with
curses and execrations.
And all along through the streets of Germantown lay the scene of this
exciting chase, the clatter of the horses' hoofs awake the echoes of the an
cienthouses, bringing the frightened denizens suddenly to the doors and windows,
and the pursuers and pursued began to near the hill of the Mennonist
graveyard, while the peril of Lee became more imminent and apparent.
The Hanoverians were at the horses' heels of the Rangers—they were
gaining upon them at every step; in a moment they would be surrounded
and cut to pieces.
Lee glanced over his shoulder. He saw his danger at a glance; they
were now riding up the hill, the advance company of the enemy were in
his rear, the main division were some hundred yards behind. In a moment
the quick word of command rung from his lips, and at the instant, as the
whole corps attained the summit of the hill, his men wheeled suddenly
round, faced the pursuing enemy, and came thundering upon their ranks like
an earth-riven thunderbolt!
Another moment! and the discomfitted Hanoverians lay scattered and
bleeding along the roadside; here a steed was thrown back upon its
haunches, crushing its rider as it fell; here was a trooper clinging with the
grasp of death to his horse's neck; yonder reared another horse without its
rider, and the ground was littered with the overthrown and wounded
troopers.
They swept over the black-coated troopers like a thunderbolt, and in another
instant the gallant Rangers wheeled about, returning in their charge of
terror with the fleetness of the wind, each man sabreing an enemy as he
rode, and then, with a wild hurrah, they regained the summit of the hill.
Lee drew his trooper's cap from his head, his men did the same, and then,
with their eyes fixed upon the main body of the enemy advancing along the
foot of the hill, the gallant Rangers sent up a wild hurrah of triumph, waving
their caps above their heads, and brandishing their swords.
The enemy returned a yell of execration, but ere they reached the summit
of the hill, Lee's company were some hundred yards ahead, and all
pursuit was vain. The Rangers rode fearlessly forward, and, ere an half-hour
was passed, regained the columns of the retreating army.
IV.—SUNSET UPON THE BATTLE FIELD.
It was sunset upon the field of battle—solemn and quiet sunset. The
rich, golden light fell over the grassy lawn, over the venerable fabric of
Chew's house, and over the trees scattered along the field, turning their
autumnal foliage to quivering gold.
The scene was full of the spirit of desolation, steeped in death, and crimsoned
in blood. The green lawn—with the soil turned up by the cannon
wheels, by the tramp of war steeds, by the rush of the foemen—was all
heaped with ghastly piles of dead, whose cold upturned faces shone with a
terrible lustre in the last beams of the declining sun.
There were senseless carcasses, with the arms rent from the shattered
body, with the eyes scooped from the hollow sockets, with foreheads severed
by the sword thrust, with hair dabbled in blood, with sunken jaws fallen on
the gory chest; there was all the horror, all the bloodshed, all the butchery
of war, without a single gleam of its romance or chivalry.
Here a plaid-kilted Highlander, a dark-coated Hanoverian, were huddled
together in the ghastliness of sudden death; each with that fearful red wound
denting the forehead, each with that same repulsive expression of convulsive
pain, while their unclosed eyes, cold, dead, and lustreless, glared on the blue
heavens with the glassy look of death.
Yonder, at the foot of a giant elm, an old Continental, sunk down in the
grasp of death. His head is sunken on his breast, his white hair all blood-bedabbled,
his blue hunting shirt spotted with clotted drops of purple. The
sunburnt hand extended, grasps the unfailing rifle—the old warrior is merry
even in death, for his lip wears a cold and unmoving smile.
A little farther on a peasant boy bites the sod, with his sunburnt face
half buried in the blood-soddened earth, his rustic attire of linsey tinted by
the last beams of the declining sun; one arm convulsively gathered under
his head, the long brown hair all stiffened with blood, while the other grasps
the well-used fowling piece, with which he rushed to the field, fought bravely,
and died like a hero. The fowling piece is with him in death; the fowling
piece—companion of many a boyish ramble beside the Wissahikon, many
a hunting excursion on the wild and dreamy hills that frown around that
rivulet—is now beside him, but the hand that encloses its stock is colder
than the iron of its rusted tube.
Let us pass over the field, with a soft and solemn footstep, for our path
is yet stamped with the tread of death; the ghosts of the heroes are thronging
in the air.
Chew's house is silent and desolate. The shattered windows, the broken
hall door, the splintered roof, the battered chimneys, and the walls of the
house stained with blood: all are silent, yet terrible proofs of the havoc and
ruin of the fight.
Silence is within Chew's house. No death-shriek, no groan of agony,
no voice shrieking to the uplifted sword to spare and pity, breaks upon the
air. All is still and solemn, and the eye of human vision may not pierce
the gloom of the unknown, and behold the ghosts of the slain crowding before
the throne of God.
The sun is setting over Chew's lawn and house, the soldiers of the
British army have deserted the place, and as the last beams of day quiver
over the field, death—terrible and fearful death—broods over the scene, in
all its ghastiliness and horror.
V.—THE LEGEND OF GENERAL AGNEW AGAIN.
Along the solitary streets of Germantown, as the sun went down, rang
the echo of horses' hoofs, and the form of the rider of a gallant war steed
was seen, disclosed in the last beams of the dying day, as he took his way
along the village road.
The horseman was tall, well-formed, and muscular in proportion; his
hair was slightly touched with the frost of age, and his eye was wild and
wandering in its glance. The compressed lip, the hollow cheek, the flashing
eye, all told a story of powerful, through suppressed emotion, stirring
the warrior's heart to bitter thoughts and gloomy memories.
It was General Agnew, of the British army. He had fought bravely in
the fight of Chew's house, though the presentiment sat heavy on his soul;
he had fought bravely, escaped without a wound, and now was riding alone,
along the solitary street, toward the Mennonist grave-yard.
There was an expression on his commanding face that it would have
chilled your heart to see. It was an expression which stamped his features
with a look of doom and fate, which revealed the inward throbbings of his
soul, as the dark presentiment of the morning, moved over its shadowy
depths.
He may have been thinking of his home, away in the fair valleys of England—of
the blooming daughter, the bright-eyed boy, or the matronly wife—
and then a thought of the terrible wrong involved in the British cause may
have crossed his soul, for the carnage of Chew's lawn had been most fearful,
and it is not well to slay hundreds of living beings like ourselves, for
the shadow of a right.
He reached the point where the road sweeps down the hill, in front of
the grave-yard, and as he rode slowly down the ascent, his attention was
arrested by a singular spectacle.
The head of a man, grey-bearded and white haired, appeared above the
grave-yard wall, and a fierce, malignant eye met the gaze of General Agnew.
It was the strange old man who, in the morning, had asked whether “that
was General Grey?” pointing to the person of Agnew as he spoke, and
being answered, by mistake or design, in the affirmative, fired a rifle at the
officer from the shelter of the wall.
No sooner had the wild face rose above the wall than it suddenly disappeared,
and, scarce noting the circumstance, the General reined his steed for
a moment, on the descent of the hill, and gazed toward the western sky,
where the setting sun was sinking behind a rainbow hued pile of clouds, all
brilliant with a thousand contrasted lights.
The last beams of the sun trembled over the high forehead of General
Agnew, as, with his back turned to the grave-yard wall, he gazed upon the
prospect, and his eye lit up with a sudden brilliancy, when the quick
and piercing report of a rifle broke on the air, and echoed around the
scene.
A small cloud of light blue smoke wound upward from the grave-yard
wall, a ghastly smile overspread the face of Agnew, he looked wildly round
for a single instant, and then fell heavily to the dust of the road-side, a—
lifeless corse.
His gallant steed of ebon darkness of skin, lowered his proud crest, and
thrust his nostrils in his master's face, his large eyes dilating, as he snuffed
the scent of blood upon the air; and at the very moment that same wild
and ghastly face appeared once more above the stones of the grave-yard
wall, and a shriek of triumph, wilder and ghastlier than the face, arose
shrieking above the graves.
That rifle shot, pealing from the grave-yard wall, was the LAST SHOT of
the battle-day of Germantown; and that corse flung along the roadside, with
those cold eyes glaring on the blue sunset sky, with the death-wound near
the heart, was the LAST DEAD MAN of that day of horror.
As the sun went down, the dark horse lowered his head, and with quivering
nostrils, inhaled the last breath of his dying master.
