Victory at Yorktown: A Novel (2 page)

We extend our deepest thanks to Pete Wolverton and Tom Dunne for their partnership and support of this book. Anne Bensson is tremendous asset, as are the copyeditor, Bob Berkel, the proofreader, Ted O’Keefe, and the production editor, David Stanford Burr.

We hope that you find this third work of our trilogy about Washington and the Revolution to be as engaging as so many have said the first two were. We part from this series with one final thought. All along, from the first day we started, and in fact, far back to earliest childhood, we both knew how the story ends. We win at Trenton, we endure Valley Forge, and we achieve triumph at Yorktown. General George Washington will become President George Washington, indeed, “first in the hearts of his countrymen.” In a sense, it was therefore easy to tell his story.

Consider it from his perspective. Like all of us, we know not what tomorrow will bring, be it fulfillment of hopes and dreams, or a darkness filled with tragedy and loss. Consider the moral, the spiritual strength of George Washington the man. On the freezing stormy night before Trenton, or the long grueling march to Yorktown, not sure if it was a final futile gesture. Consider the strength within his soul. Regardless of inner turmoil and potential doubt, he knew that as a leader who all turned to for hope and inspiration, he must indeed lead and offer inspiration. He did his duty admirably well and thus created the nation we have today. We owe him all, as a general, as a leader, and as a man. Let us work together to insure the legacy he gave us is passed, unsullied unto generations of Americans yet to be born. That is our duty to them; it is our duty as well to that most remarkable of men, George Washington.

Part One

MAJOR ANDRE, UPSTATE NEW YORK,

SEPTEMBER 30–OCTOBER 1, 1780

Prologue

HEADQUARTERS OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY

NEAR WEST POINT ON THE HUDSON, NEW YORK

SEPTEMBER 30, 1780

8:00
P.M.

Darkness blanketed the Hudson River Valley, the glow of hundreds of campfires reflecting off the low scudding clouds, passing in the wake of this afternoon’s rain. He left the window open to admit the fresh evening breeze even though if Martha were here, she would slam it shut, cautioning him about the danger of chills and fever borne on such a breeze.

It was a strange silly notion. As a young man he had spent years out on the edge of the frontier, either campaigning in the last war or surveying after the conflict had ended. He would go for months at time with only a bit of canvas over his head, but once back in the house where Martha held sway and even on the most sweltering of nights, she held religiously to the belief that night air coming in through an open window was dangerous. Of course he indulged her, there were some things, even though he was commander in chief of all American forces in the field, he nevertheless deferred to his wife and usually did so gladly.

He wished for her presence this evening with a deep longing. Whenever presented with what he felt was not a military question but instead a moral decision, it was her advice he always turned to. The decision he had just made, the paper he was about to sign was, indeed, a military decision, that was and would always be how he defined it, and yet it was, as well, a moral question forced upon him by this never-ending war.

General George Washington stood up, stretching, his towering six foot two height nearly brushing the low beams overhead. Opening the door to his office he stepped out, the guards flanking it snapping to attention. Alexander Hamilton, busy at work in his office across the hallway with the door open, looked up, ready to be summoned. Washington shook his head and gestured for him to remain at ease, then headed for the front door, opened it, and stepped out into the night, the guards posted outside coming to attention as well.

Hands characteristically clasped behind his back he started into the night. He had barely taken a dozen paces and then heard footsteps trailing behind him. A bit annoyed, Washington turned to see Hamilton racing to catch up, half a dozen guards following.

“Alexander,” he sighed, “I’m just going for a walk.”

“Sir, after the events of the last week, I must insist that a guard accompany you at all times. One cannot be too cautious.”

It was obvious Hamilton was filled with concern for his wellbeing, at times too much so, but he knew the young man to be right. After the events of the last week …

“All right then, Colonel Hamilton,” he sighed and looked at his guard detail, “but no need to hem me in, young sir. Indulge me by just following along at a decent interval.”

The men encamped near his headquarters, having finished their evening meal of salt pork and whatever they could forage on the sly or barter for from nearby farms, were settling down for the night. He did not enter the encampment area, that would simply trigger all the usual calls to attention, rousting men out, with nervous young officers trying to put on a show of having their men properly attired and lined up to present arms. When serving with the British during Braddock’s disastrous campaign back at the start of the French and Indian War, he had endured such foolery often enough. British main line infantry were used to such, as part of the ordinary annoyances of life, but volunteers, especially militia, detested it all after the first few times, and saw it as yet another bloody officer lording it over them and disturbing the one time of day they could call their own and relax.

He took a wooded path instead, his usual evening stroll, down to a knoll that looked out over the magnificent Hudson. He knew that following this routine had set off Hamilton, who softly ordered a couple of the guards to angle off into the woods to either side, run ahead, and act as flankers, in case someone, be it assassin, ambusher, or even British agents intent upon snatching him as a prisoner, might lay in wait.

Two weeks ago he viewed such as bordering on insanity, but no longer.

A man he had trusted as a brother, a man of whom he had more than once said should replace him in command if he fell in battle, had, indeed, betrayed him.

Benedict Arnold.

He had been unable to dwell on little else these last two weeks, it was almost obsessive, but such a base betrayal could not help but wound him to the core, with thoughts of it filling nearly every waking moment.

“Benedict Arnold,” he whispered under his breath, paused and then added “damn your soul, damn your soul.”

These were was words he so rarely used. He rarely felt such even toward those whom he saw as his mortal foes, men such as the British Howe, who did attempt to fight an honorable war. Even the now pathetic Hessians, who when they first arrived here had shown such haughty arrogance and brutal treatment to his captured wounded, but now were terrified of their own shadows for fear of falling into the hands of a Rebel, who might remember the slaughter on battlefields past and slowly take revenge.

But Benedict Arnold? Here was a man he had clasped to his heart like few others. This was the man he had met back in those first heady days of 1775, detailing him off to try to capture Quebec and bring a fourteenth colony into their cause. Arnold had set off, leading six hundred gallant men, through the autumn storms of Maine and the freezing cold of a Canadian winter, nearly dying in the assault on Quebec with a bullet in his leg. He was captured and finally exchanged, but eager for more action.

Arnold had fought the British in their campaign of 1776 down Lake Champlain to a standstill. Fought them throughout 1777, while saddled, thanks to the politics of Congress, with the self-serving Gates as his superior. At the climactic moment of the struggle around Saratoga, Arnold, who technically was under arrest for having dared to argue with Gates, and stricken with illness, had risen from his bed when word came that the battle, typical of Gate’s actions, was turning in the wrong direction. He mounted his horse and dashed to the front. Then in a mad display of bravado, he had charged straight at the British lines, screaming for any and all with courage to follow him in. He had rallied the men, led them to a smashing victory, only to be wounded at the supreme moment in the leg, the ball striking nearly at the same spot as his wound at Quebec.

He had saved the battle and created victory. That victory had swayed France into the fight. It had saved the Revolution, for at nearly that exact same moment Washington’s own army was being hammered to pieces by Howe and forced to abandon the national capital of Philadelphia. The news of Saratoga arrived in France before word of his own defeats, and had given Benjamin Franklin the argument to bring France into the war. Arnold, in that one gallant moment, had saved the Revolution.

Tragically, it was Gates who had galloped south from Saratoga to parade before Congress, aggrandizing unto himself the glory of Saratoga while Arnold languished for weeks, arguing with his doctors, refusing to let them hack his leg off. He had survived, kept the leg, but needed months, more like a year or more, to slowly recover. He was no longer fit for command in the field when Philadelphia was taken back from the British. As Washington looked out across the Hudson he remembered that moment all so well, the joy of recalling Arnold to some form of duty and without hesitation slotting his friend into that strife-torn capital as its military commander. Given the politics of Congress, he knew he could trust Arnold in all things, unlike Gates, and made it clear that if a bullet or disease should end his own command, his nomination for commander in chief would either be Greene or Arnold. He firmly believed, that given another six months to a year for Arnold to recover fully, he would be ready to again take the field and create yet more victories.

With the British all but driven from New Jersey in 1778, and the theater of war shifting to the Hudson Valley, leaving Arnold in the rear, it most likely had begun. He had heard rumors about the young woman Margaret “Peggy” Shippen. One of his more effective and gallant spies in that captured city, a brave lass believed by most to have Tory leanings, had been able to use her friendship with Peggy to smuggle out information regarding British plans. Especially the crucial news that they were preparing to abandon Philadelphia, thus giving him the lead for the long anticipated confrontation that climaxed at Monmouth Court House.

While the British occupied Philadelphia during the winter of 1777, this “Miss” Shippen, at seventeen, had an affair with a well-placed Major Andre, but after the British abandoned the capital in 1778, her attention, if not her loyalties, suddenly shifted to the new military governor, Benedict Arnold. As a gentleman he never communicated to Arnold his concerns about who he had chosen to fall in love with and had even sent along a silver tea set as a present from Martha and himself when they were wed in 1779. To his growing concern, the spy had passed along warnings that she believed that “Miss Peggy” was still in touch with her alleged lover, Andre.

Arnold, a brilliant battlefield commander, was no political general. He was besotted with a girl less than half his age, and soon ran afoul of the politics of Congress in the city he was meant to govern in time of war. Repeated charges of financial chicanery were brought against Arnold, but never proven. He languished in frustration, like a fighting bear locked in a gilded cage, openly took to drink, and finally begged for a transfer that Washington had readily granted his old friend as commander of the garrison and fortifications at West Point.