Authors: Bernard Cornwell
It had been cocked and loaded and Moore had never noticed.
The ball took the rebel under the chin, it seared up through his mouth and out through his skull, lifting his hat into the air. The shock wave of the ball, compressed by the skull, drove an eye from its socket. Blood misted, blurring red in fine droplets as the rebel, dead in an instant, fell forward onto his knees. The cutlass dropped and the man’s dead arms wrapped themselves round Moore’s waist and then slid slowly down to his feet. Moore, aghast, noticed that the pigtail was dripping blood.
“For God’s sake, young Moore, you want to win this bloody war single-handed?” Major Dunlop greeted the young lieutenant. Dunlop’s men had fired a company volley from the trees to Moore’s left, and that sudden volley had served to drive the momentarily outnumbered marines back to the trees.
Moore could not speak. A musket-ball plucked at the tails of his coat. He was gazing down at the dead rebel whose head was a mess of blood, red-wet hair, and scraps of bone.
“Come on, lad,” Dunlop took Moore’s elbow, “let’s get the devil out of here.”
The company retreated, taking Moore’s surviving men with them. They withdrew along the lower ground beside the harbor as the American marines captured the three naval cannon abandoned on Dyce’s Head. The rebel battery was firing from Cross Island, relentlessly thumping round shot into Captain Mowat’s ships. The crest of the bluff was thick with rebels and the redcoats had no place to go now except the unfinished Fort George.
And Captain John Welch was dead.
It took time to fetch the militia from the trees, but gradually they were formed into a line. It was a rough line stretching clear across the high ground with the marines on its right, the Indians on the left, and the flags at its center. Paul Revere’s men, Lovell’s reserve, were in three ranks behind the two flags, one the proud starred stripes of the United States and the other the pine-tree banner of the Massachusetts Militia.
“What a magnificent morning’s work,” Lovell greeted Peleg Wadsworth.
“I congratulate you, sir.”
“I thank you, Wadsworth, I thank you! But on to victory now?”
“On to victory, sir,” Wadsworth said. He decided he would not tell Lovell about Captain Welch’s death, not till the battle was over and the victory gained.
“God has granted us the victory!” the Reverend Jonathan Murray announced. He had joined Lovell on the heights and, besides his brace of pistols, carried a Bible. He lifted the book high. “God promises us ‘I will scatter them as with an east wind!’”
“Amen,” Lovell said. Israel Trask played his fife behind the marines, while three drummer boys and two more fifers played the “Rogue’s March” beside the two flags. Lovell’s heart swelled with pride. He drew his sword, looked towards the enemy, and pointed the blade forward. “On to victory!”
A half mile away, inside the fort, General McLean watched the rebels form at the tree line. He had seen Major Dunlop’s men climb to the battery on Dyce’s Head and, with the help of a telescope, he had seen that young Moore and his men had been rescued. Those redcoats were now coming back to the fort through the low ground beside the harbor, while the remaining picquets that had guarded the neck were all inside Fort George, where McLean’s troops stood in three ranks behind the western rampart. Their job now was to defend that low wall with volley fire. McLean, watching the rebel line thicken, still believed he was faced by thousands, not hundreds, of enemy infantry, and now more rebels appeared to the north, showing at the trees above the neck. So he would be attacked from two sides? He glanced at the harbor and saw, to his surprise, that the enemy ships had made no aggressive move, but why should they? The fort was going to fall without their assistance. McLean limped up onto the unfinished western rampart. “Captain Fielding!”
“Sir?” The English artillery commander hurried to join McLean.
“We’ll give them a few shots, I think?”
“Wait till they advance, sir?” Fielding suggested.
“I think we might treat them now, Captain,” McLean said.
“They’re too far for grape or case, sir.”
“Then give them round shot,” McLean said. He spoke wearily. He knew what must happen now. The rebels would advance and such was the length of their line that they must inevitably wrap around three sides of his unfinished fort. They would take some casualties at the abatis, which was well within the effective range of the grape shot that Captain Mowat had sent ashore, but Fielding’s few guns could do only limited damage and the rebels would surely surge on to assault the low walls. Then there would be chaos, panic, and bayonets. His men would stand, of that McLean was sure, but they would stand and die.
So the battle was lost. Yet honor alone dictated that he showed some resistance before he surrendered the fort. No one would blame him for its loss, not when he was so outnumbered, but he would be universally despised if he yielded without showing some defiance, and so McLean had determined on his course of action. He would fire round shot and keep firing as the rebels began their advance, and then, before they came into range of Captain Fielding’s more lethal case and grape shot, he would haul the flag down. It was sad, he thought, but surrender would save his men from massacre.
McLean walked to the flagpole in the southwestern bastion. He had asked his aides to place a table beside the tall staff, but his slight limp and his crippled right arm made the effort of climbing onto the table difficult. “Need a hand, sir?” Sergeant Lawrence asked.
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
“You want to see how well our guns can cut down rebels, sir?” the sergeant asked happily after he had helped McLean onto the table.
“Oh, I know you lads can defend us,” McLean lied. He stood on the table and wondered why no bagpipers had come with the two regiments. He smiled that so strange a thought should have occurred to him at such a moment. “I do miss the pipes,” he said.
“Bagpipes, sir?” Lawrence asked.
“Indeed! The music of war.”
“Give me a good English band any day, sir.”
McLean smiled. His undignified perch on the table gave him an excellent view of the ground over which the rebels must advance. He reached into a pocket of his red coat and took out a folded penknife. “Sergeant, would you be so kind as to open that?”
“Going to stick a rebel, General?” Lawrence asked as he extracted the blade. “I reckon your sword will do more damage.”
McLean took the knife back. The hand of his injured right arm was too weak to loosen the halliard holding the flag and so he held the short blade in his left hand ready to cut the line when the moment came.
Captain Fielding came to the bastion where he insisted on laying the twelve-pounder cannon himself. “What’s the charge?” he asked Lawrence.
“Quarter charge, sir,” Lawrence said, “three pounds.”
Fielding nodded and made some calculations in his head. The gun was cold, which meant the shot would lose some power, so he elevated the barrel just a trifle, then used the trail spike to aim the gun at a knot of men standing close to the rebels’ bright flags. Satisfied that his aim and elevation were good, he stepped back and nodded to Sergeant Lawrence. “Carry on, Sergeant,” he said.
Lawrence primed the gun, ordered the crew to cover their ears and step aside, then touched flame to the portfire. The gun roared, smoke smothered the bastion, and the round shot flew.
It flew above the abatis and over the shattered stumps, and it began to lose height as the ground rose to meet it. To Peleg Wadsworth, standing to Lovell’s left, the ball appeared as a lead-gray streak in the sky. It was a flicker of gray, a pencil stroke against the sudden white-gray of powder smoke that obscured the fort, and then the streak vanished and the ball struck. It hit a militiaman in the chest, shattering ribs, blood, and flesh in an explosion of butchery, and plunged on, flicking blood behind its passage, to rip a man in the groin, more blood and meat in the air, and then the ball struck the ground, bounced, and decapitated one of Revere’s gunners before vanishing noisily into the woods behind.
Solomon Lovell was standing just two paces away from the first man struck by the round shot. A splinter of rib hit the general on the shoulder and a stringy splat of bloody flesh spattered wetly across his face, and just then HMS
North
, which lay closest to the fort, fired its broadside at the marines who were on the right of Lovell’s lines, and the thunder of the sloop’s gunfire filled the Majabigwaduce sky as Captain Fielding’s second gun fired. That second ball hit a tree stump just in front of Colonel McCobb’s men and struck with such violence that the stump was half-uprooted as it shattered into scraps that drove into McCobb’s front rank. A man screamed in pain.
Sergeant Lawrence’s crew, drilled and practiced, had swabbed and reloaded the first gun, which they now levered back to the low embrasure so Lawrence could fire it a second time. The ball struck the ground just paces from Lovell and bounced harmlessly overhead, though not before it drove a shower of soil at the general’s staff.
The man whose groin had been pulped by the first shot was still alive, but his belly was eviscerated and his guts coiled on the ground and he breathed in short, desperate spasms. Lovell, transfixed, watched appalled as a pulse of blood, obscenely thick, spilled out of the man’s gutted trunk. The wounded man was making a pathetic noise and Lieutenant-Colonel Revere, whose uniform had been spattered by blood, was white-faced, staring wide-eyed, unmoving. Wadsworth noted the pine needles sticking to the loops of intestine on the ground. The man somehow brought up his head and looked beseechingly at Wadsworth, and Wadsworth involuntarily moved towards him, wondering what in God’s name he could do or say when, with another surge of blood from his ruined guts, the man’s head fell back.
“Oh dear God,” Lovell said to no one.
“God rest his soul,” the Reverend Jonathan Murray said, his voice unusually strained.
Wadsworth looked into the dead man’s face. No movement there except for a fly crawling on an unshaven cheek. Behind Wadsworth a man vomited. He turned to stare at the fort where the cannon smoke lingered. “We should advance, sir,” he said to Lovell, and was surprised that he had spoken at all, let alone sounded so detached. Lovell seemed not to have heard him. “We should advance, sir!” Wadsworth said in a louder voice.
Solomon Lovell was gazing at the fort where another billow of smoke jetted from an unfinished bastion. The ball flew to the general’s left, crashing into a tree behind the militia. “Colonel Revere?” Lovell asked, still looking at the fort.
“General?” Revere acknowledged.
“Can your artillery reduce the fort?”
“It can,” Revere said, though without any of his usual confidence. “It can,” he said again, unable to take his eyes from the bloody mess on the ground.
“Then we shall give your guns that chance,” Lovell said. “The men will shelter in the trees.”
“But now’s the moment to advance and’” Wadsworth began a protest.
“I can’t attack into those guns!” Lovell interrupted shrilly. He blinked, surprised by his own tone of voice. “I can’t,” he began again, then seemed to forget what he wanted to say. “We shall reduce their walls with artillery,” he said decisively, then frowned as another British gun hammered a ball up the ridge. “The enemy might counterattack,” he went on with a note of panic, “so we must be ready to repel them. Into the trees!” He turned and waved his sword at the thick woods. “Take the men into the trees!” he shouted at the militia officers. “Dig defenses! Here, at the tree line. I want earthworks.” He paused, watching his men retreat, then led his staff into the cover of the high wood.
Brigadier-General McLean watched in astonishment as his enemy vanished. Was it a trick? One moment there had been hundreds of men forming into ranks, then suddenly they had all retreated into the trees. He watched and waited, but as time passed he realized that the rebels really had gone into the woods and were showing no sign of renewing their attack. He let out a long breath, took his hand from the flag’s halliard, and pushed the open penknife back into his pocket. “Colonel Campbell!” he called, “stand down three companies! Form them into work parties to heighten the ramparts!”
“Yes, sir!” Campbell called back.
Fort George would live a few hours yet.
From Brigadier-General Lovell’s despatch to Jeremiah Powell, President of the Council Board of the State of Massachusetts Bay, dated July 28th, 1779:
This morning I have made my landing good on the S.W. Head of the Peninsula which is one hundred feet high and almost perpendicular very thickly covered with Brush and trees, the men ascended the Precipice with alacrity and after a very smart conflict we put them to rout, they left in the Woods a number killed and wounded and we took a few Prisoners our loss is about thirty kill’d and wounded, we are with in 100 Rod of the Enemey’s main fort on a Commanding peice of Ground, and hope soon to have the Satisfaction of informing you of the Capturing the whole Army, you will please to excuse my not being more particular, as you may Judge my situation.
Am Sir your most Obedient Humble Servant
From Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell’s Journal. Wednesday July 28th, 1779:
When I returned to the Shore it struck me with admiration to see what a Precipice we had ascended, not being able to take so scrutinous a view of it in time of Battle, it is at least where we landed three hundred feet high, and almost perpendicular and the men were obliged to pull themselves up by the twigs and trees. I don’t think such a landing has been made since Wolfe.
From the letter of Colonel John Brewer to David Perham, written in 1779 and published in the
Bangor Daily Whig and Courier
, August 13th, 1846:
The General
[McLean]
he received me very politely, and said . . . “I was in no situation to defend myself, I only meant to give them one or two guns, so as not to be called a coward, and then have struck my colors, which I stood for some time to do, as I did not want to throw away the lives of my men for nothing.”