 | Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution |  |
IV.—THE GATHERING OF THE HOSTS.
It was the 9th of September.
The moon was up in the blue heavens. Far along the eastern horizon,
lay a wilderness of clouds, piling their forms of huge grandeur up in deep
azure of night.
The forests of Brandywine arose in dim indistinctness into the soft
moonlight. There were deep shadows upon the meadows, and from many
a farmer's home, the light of the hearth-side lamp poured out upon the
night.
It was night among the hills of Brandywine, when there was a strange
sound in the forest, along the hills, and through the meadows, and soon
breaking from the thick shades, there came a multitude of dim and spectral
forms.
Yes, breaking into the light of the moon, there came a strange host of
men, clad in military costume, with bayonets gleaming through the air and
banners waving overhead.
They came with the regular movement of military discipline, band after
band, troop after troop, column after column, breaking in stern silence from
the covert of the woods, but the horses of the cavalry looked jaded and
worn, the footsteps of the infantry were clogged and leaden, while the broad
banners of this strange host, waving so proudly in the air, waved and fluttered
in rags. The bullet and the cannon ball had done their work upon
these battle flags!
And over this strange host, over the long columns of troopers and foot-soldiers—over
the baggage wagons bearing the sick, the wounded, nay, over
the very flags that fluttered into light on every side, there rose one broad
and massive banner, on whose blue folds were pictured thirteen stars.
Need I tell you the name of this host? Look down yonder, along the
valley of the Brandywine, and mark those wasted forms, seared by the
bullet and the sword, clad in rags, with rusted musquets in their hands and
dinted swords by their sides—look there and ask the name of this strange
host!
The question is needless. It is the army of George Washington, for
poverty and freedom in those days, walked hand in hand, over rough roads
and bloody battlefields, while sleek faces and broad clothed Loyalty went
pacing merry measures, in some Royal ball room.
And thus, in silence, in poverty, almost in despair, did the army of
Washington take position on the field of Brandywine, on the night of September
9th, 1777.
And over the banner of the Continental host, sat an omen of despair, a
brooding and ghastly Phantom, perched above the flag of freedom, chuckling
with fiend-like glee, as he pointed to the gloomy Past and then—to the
Unknown future.
On the next day, the Tenth of the Month, the hosts of a well-disciplined
army came breaking from the forests, with the merry peal of fife and drum,
with bugle note and clarion sound, and while the morning sun shone brightly
over their well burnished arms, they proceeded to occupy an open space
of ground, amid the shadow of the woods, at a place called Kennet's Square,
some seven miles westward of Chadd's Ford, where Washington had taken
his position.
How grandly they broke from the woods, with the sunbeams, shining on
the gaudy red coat, the silver laced cap, the forest of nodding plumes. How
proudly their red cross banner waved in the free air, as though not ashamed
of down-trodden Europe, and looked down upon the plains of ravaged
Hindoostan!
Yes, there in the far East, where the Juggernaut of British Power had
rolled over its ten thousand victims, father and son, mother and babe, all
mingled in red massacre?
Who would have thought, that these finely-built men, with their robust
forms, were other than freemen? That their stout hands could strike
another blow than the blow of a free arm, winged by the impulse of a free
thought?
Who, gazing on this gallant host, with its gleaming swords upraised in
the air, its glittering bayonets shining in the light, who would have thought,
that to supply this gallant host, the gaols of England had been ransacked,
her convict ships emptied? That the dull slaves of a German Prince had
been bought, to swell the number of this chivalric band! That these were
the men who had crossed the wide Atlantic—with what object, pray?
To tame these American peasants, who dared syllable the name of freedom.
To whip these rebel-dogs,—such was the courteous epithet, they
applied to Washington and Wayne—back to their original obscurity. To
desolate the fair plains and pleasant vallies of the New World, to stain the
farmer's home with his own blood, shed in defence of his hearthside.
To crush with the hand of hireling power, the Last Hope of man's freedom,
burning on the last shrine of the desolated world!
Who could have imagined that the majestic looking man, who led this
host of hirelings onward, the brave Howe, with his calm face and mild forehead,
was the Master-Assassin of this tyrant band?
Or that the amiable Cornwallis, who rode at his side, was the fit tool for
such a work of Massacre? Or that the brave and chivalric sons of England's
nobility, who commanded the legions of the invading host, that these
men, gay and young and generous, were but the Executioner's of that Hangman's
Warrant, which converted all America into one vast prison of convicted
felons—each mountain peak a scaffold for the brave, each forest oak
a gibbet for the free?
And here, while a day passed, encamped amid the woods of Kennet's
Square, lay the British army, while the Continental host, spreading along
the eastern hills of Brandywine, awaited their approach without a fear. The
day passed, and then the night, and then the morning came—
Yet ere we mingle in the tumult of that battle morn, we will go to the
American camp, and look upon the heroes in the shadows of the twilight
hour.
| Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution | |