10
Into the Fray
The Trenches
Yorktown, Virginia
September 1781
Alex made his way slowly up the ranks of men, nodding at this one, shaking hands with that. The setting sun was behind him, bathing his men’s faces in golden tones, but every time he stepped close to one of them his shadow would cast the man into darkness. Alex did his best not to think of that as an omen.
“You wanted stories to tell your sons, Enright,” he said to one. “We’ll give him a good story tonight, I promise!”
“Private Carson! Are you really eating soup at a time like this? Let’s hope it’s not leaking out a bullet hole a few hours hence!”
“No, Corporal Fromm, we will not be taking British scalps as trophies of war. Feel free to pilfer a new pair of boots, though. Those look about as solid as cheesecloth!”
The men—his men—looked at him with sardonic yet resolute expressions, the forced jocularity of soldiers pretending they weren’t frightened of the death that might very well be awaiting them in the next hour or two. Their faces were streaked with mud, which Alex had jokingly told them not to wash off. “A paler bunch of boys I never saw! Two weeks in the sun and you still have cheeks like fish bellies! A little mud’ll help to hide you from British eyes once the moon is up!”
Like his soldiers, Alex struck a carefree, even comical tone. Unlike them, however, there was no pretense in his façade. Though he knew the action he was about to undertake was extremely dangerous, and that some of his men, and quite possibly himself, would be killed, he felt no fear. He had promised Eliza he would return to her side, and he meant to keep his promise. As far away as he was from her, she was ever in his thoughts and in his heart.
True, he had sought a command because it would help his reputation and further his career, especially if he chose to pursue politics as more than hobby or a purely intellectual pastime. What he hadn’t been able to admit, even to himself, was that he craved the battlefield, the chance to put his life on the line for something he believed in, and, yes, to take the lives of people who opposed those values.
When he had served under General Washington at Monmouth, he plunged into the fray like an enlisted infantryman rather than take advantage of an officer’s prerogative to give orders from afar. In this, he followed Washington’s example, but he continued to fight even after the enemy had been routed, risking death time and again as he hunted down fleeing soldiers, until, at last, his horse was shot from him and he narrowly avoided being crushed by the collapsing animal.
He could feel that same battle-lust growing in him now. A few hours ago, he and his soldiers had completed digging the forward trench of the American position—a backbreaking task that took four hundred–plus soldiers the entire day. Alex’s unit was comprised of men who understood the engineering needed to fight a battle: sappers who could cut a path through forest and brush with speed, and miners who knew the craft needed to dig a well-made trench.
It was impossible to know what the British troops were up to behind the twenty-foot walls of their palisade, but no cannon balls had come flying over the spiked timber poles of their fort walls as yet. Alex had grabbed a shovel and worked with the rest of his men, in part to inspire camaraderie (he could not use the word without grimacing at the memory of Lafayette’s attempt to wrest his command from him), in part because he could not bear the idleness of waiting.
The work was exhausting but his mind had continued to race about chaotically, and as soon as the trench was completed, he led his men in a macabre dance just outside the range of British rifle fire to taunt the enemy with their accomplishment. Drummers beat their skins and pipers blew shrill scales through their reeds, as bone-weary soldiers danced their way into fatigue and out the other side.
He needed to get their minds off the coming action, and off death itself. For ten minutes, they cavorted as though at a barn dance, laughing, jigging, and whooping like, yes, lunatics escaped from an asylum, and though they may well have then looked like the most undisciplined bunch of soldiers ever to don a uniform, now were they calm where before they had been jittery. They sat in little groups of threes and fours, chewing on jerky or hardtack and sharing flasks with brotherly solidarity, their eyes alert even as their limbs were relaxed. They looked ready to charge forward at a moment’s notice.
Afterward, when Alex had jumped back into the ditch, he found a scowling Laurens waiting for him. Laurens’s presence wasn’t a surprise. Alex had requested that his friend be assigned to his unit as one of his three battalion leaders. Laurens had been delayed in his arrival, though, and this was the first Alex had seen him all day.
“Laurens!” he exclaimed. He extended his hand, but his friend ignored it.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Laurens demanded.
Alex pulled up short. He stood up straight and squared his unbuttoned jacket on his shoulders as best he could. “Excuse me, Colonel Laurens?” he said in the most imperious voice he could summon in his breathless state. “Have you something to ask me?”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Laurens repeated, before throwing in a sneering “Sir.”
Laurens’s eyes flickered to the men who were jumping down from their dancing into the trench, and Alex knew just what he meant. “You refer to the current bacchanal?”
“Assuredly so. Dancing like coyotes whose fur is on fire in full view of the enemy.”
“I assure you that my men were well out of reach of the British, and should they have fired their cannon we would have—”
“Hang the British!” Laurens interrupted him. “Do you want to be stripped of your command before you’ve even taken the field?”
Alex’s eyes went wide. For the first time, he realized just how foolish his actions must have looked to an outsider. Yet he knew, too, that it had been the right thing to do. His men were tired and, though they would never admit it, frightened as well. To storm a twenty-foot palisade with nothing but bayonets, axes, and ladders was as risky a venture as war provided, and some of his men would surely die.
Laurens leaned in close now. His face had softened, as if he had read the thoughts that had raced through Alex’s head. “Listen to me, sir,” he said. “I have served in the infantry, and I have led it as well. I know the emotions that are coursing through your men right now. This is a momentous night. If we are victorious here, we may well establish unequivocally the freedom and independence of these thirteen states—not colonies but states—and the nation they comprise. But to accomplish that, your men need the brilliant and composed Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, not the fierce, fearless, but, dare I say, sometimes foolhardy boy who has made his own way in the world since he was barely into his teens.”
Part of Alex heard the wisdom in his friend’s words, but part of him was still angry at being called out—and for doing the right thing, no less, regardless of the optics. “I can’t help but note that that boy has done rather well for himself,” Alex said now, but in a softer tone.
“Indeed, he has: by channeling his anger and energy into mature pursuits, and putting childish fancies behind him.” Laurens lowered his voice, but it only increased in intensity. “It is not just these men who need you, Colonel, nor even your country. You have a wife now. You have a future.”
Alex allowed an image of Eliza to fill his mind. Eliza in all her beauty and strength and intelligence, shaking her head at his over-exuberance, and he knew Laurens was right. He stood silently for a long moment, letting his friend’s sage words sink in. At length, Laurens stepped back and snapped a smart salute.
“Colonel Laurens, sir!” he barked in a grade-A military voice. “Reporting for duty, sir!”
Alex saluted back, yet still couldn’t help himself. He grabbed a nearby shovel and tossed it to his friend. “I believe the latrines have yet to be completed, Colonel. See to that, will you?”
A wry grin split Laurens’s face. “And to think I gave you a horse,” he said, then slung the shovel over his shoulder and marched away.
NOW, SOME THREE hours after Laurens had reined him in, Alex’s manic energy was gone, and in its place was a calmer resolve. He was still eager to engage with the enemy, but he knew he would not rush in foolishly or make any rash decisions. War required blood, yes, but cold blood, not hot. He shook his hands and joked with his men, and knew that when the signal came he would organize them into serried ranks and lead them decisively into hellfire. They would fight as soldiers, not barbarians, and if they secured victory they would do so as men, not animals.
As American citizens, he said to himself, not subjects of a distant crown.
He came at last to the end of the ranks and ducked into the small command tent that had been established there. Inside waited Laurens and Major Nicholas Fish, with whom Alex had served many times under Washington’s command, and a third man whom he never formally met, though he had seen him in the company of Lafayette.
“Major Gimat,” he said, extending his hand before the Frenchman could greet him.
“Colonel Hamilton!” Gimat barked, jumping to his feet. “Major Gimat, reporting for duty!” His English was as impeccable as his uniform, though both were tinted French.
He saluted Alex and then, seeing that Alex’s hand remained extended, shook it firmly.
“I trust there are no hard feelings about yesterday’s shake-up,” Alex said in a quieter tone, so that only the Frenchman could hear him.
Gimat allowed himself a smile. “What shake-up, sir? I didn’t hear of any shake-up.”
“Good man,” Alex said. “Now then,” he said, turning to include Laurens and Fish. “I want to make sure we’re versed on tonight’s plan of action. General Rochambeau’s sentries are observing the British position. When they see the guard being relieved, they will dispatch runners to alert us. We will have approximately five minutes to prepare the men for the charge, at which point our cannon will unleash a fusillade into the sky. The bombs are for illumination rather than attack. The sappers and miners will dig the last yards forward and then clear two breaches into the enemy pikes. The remaining soldiers will give them exactly four minutes to accomplish their task, then follow after. Once we clear the pikes, we will proceed directly to the palisade. Four ladder teams will scale the wall and lay down protective fire for two advance teams, who will cut through the palisade with axes. And then, well”—he brandished his bayonet-tipped rifle—“we fight.”
He turned to Major Fish. He was three years younger than Alex, a rangy, powerful man with a thin, sharp nose and lively eyes. He had fought for the revolutionary cause since his teenage years in the Sons of Liberty, an organization that dated back to before the Declaration of Independence, and whose daring raids helped spur a cowed populace to throw off their overseas oppressor. As pure a patriot couldn’t be found in the all the soldiers on this side of the British line.
“Major Fish,” Alex said, “it falls to your sappers to lead us onto the field. Are they ready?”
Fish nodded curtly. “Their saws are as sharp as razors and their chains coiled tighter than an angry viper. You have provided us four minutes to take down the enemy’s pikes, but I predict we will have them shredded in two. Their axes will knock the enemy’s timber walls to the ground like a nor’easter snapping the masts off a hapless whaler.”
“I have no doubt that they will. Colonel Laurens, Major Gimat, your men know this is to be a battle fought primarily with blades, not bullets. There will be no time for reloading in such close quarters.”
“Nearly all my men have been equipped with bayonets, sir,” Laurens replied in a military tone that betrayed no hint of the friends’ intimacy. “Those who haven’t are well armed with sabers.”
“My men are similarly equipped, sir,” Gimat followed. “They are aware that we outnumber the enemy and that we can swarm them into submission. I have told them to fight as fiercely as if this were French soil they were defending. If the British have any sense, they will surrender once we take the palisade down, and most of their boys will live to book journeys back to British soil, where they can return to their potato farming.”
“I believe it is the Irish who grow the potatoes, Major,” Laurens said with a bit of a laugh.
“You say potato, I say pomme de terre,” Gimat said. “In either case, I am sure it will be only a few years before the British come traipsing on our side of the Channel, and I will once again have the honor of planting redcoats in the ground. Like potatoes,” he couldn’t help adding.
“One war at a time, Major,” Alex said wryly. “Well then. It seems we are ready. Now all we do is wait.”
Gimat produced a small silver flask from his jacket. “Perhaps a drink to seal our union. I have grown rather fond of your American whiskey. It tastes like sin and burns like pepper, but it ‘gets the job done,’ as they say, with remarkable alacrity.”
“I can think of no more fitting occasion,” Alex said, taking the flask and pulling a slug of fiery liquid into his mouth, then handing it back to Gimat. Gimat passed it to Laurens, and then to Fish, before drinking himself.
Gimat had just finished screwing the lid back on the flask and stowing it when heavy footsteps were heard outside the tent flap. The sentry asked for the password, and a breathless voice answered, “Rochambeau!” A moment later the flap was pulled aside and a young soldier entered.
“The redcoats are pulling their guards off the wall,” he panted, not even bothering to locate the commanding officer. “The cannon will be fired momentarily.”
Alex nodded at him. “Gentlemen,” he said. “To war.”
He shook Fish’s and Gimat’s hands as they headed out of the tent. Laurens grabbed his friend in a bear hug, kissed both of Alex’s cheeks, then departed into the night.
Alone in the tent, Alex pulled the latest letter from Eliza from his pocket, one he had committed to memory so that reading it was redundant.
My dearest,
On July 5, Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler II entered this world in the presence of myself and Angelica. She is a bright-eyed, strong girl whom we have already christened Kitty, which was the name by which Mama says she was known in her youth. (Tho’ I have a hard time imagining anyone having the temerity to refer to Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler I as “Kitty”!) To compound the day’s joys, Angelica informed me that she and Mr. Church are expecting a child of their own! Oh, Alex, it is happening! The war is ending and a new generation is being born! The first generation to grow up as Americans! It is a privilege almost too great to contemplate. Oh, my darling, I cannot wait till you are here again—till we make our home wherever we make it, in Albany or Boston or New York or Philadelphia! Hurry back to me, and let us lead this nation into the future!
Your loving wife,
Eliza
And they say I am the eloquent one, Alex thought as he wiped at his eyes, which had grown curiously moist.
“Must be the dust,” he said wryly, though no one was there to hear him. He folded the letter quickly and put it away in his pocket; the words within it had stirred his soul and spurred him forward—he grabbed his bayoneted rifle and an axe leaning against a tent pole and ran outside, ready for battle.
A quick glance showed him that Laurens, Gimat, and Fish had taken their positions at the heads of their respective battalions. Their men were arranged in line on one knee, like so many sprinters at their marks.
“On my command!” he called out.
No one answered him, yet there was a palpable sense of attention—of leather creaking and sabers rattling in their sheaths.
A moment later, the first cannon barked its explosive BOOM! and a whistling tore through the night.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
One after another, the cannons fired. By the time the fifth went off, the first shell was exploding high in the sky. A flash, as of long, slow, branched lightning, turned night to day, exposing four hundred grim, determined faces.
“Sappers forward!” Alex yelled.
Fish’s faint voice answered him, even as the flash flickered out. “Sappers forward!”
Twenty men sprang up as the second shell exploded, puncturing the darkness with another brilliant flash of light. The next several minutes were an eerie spectacle, as darkness fell only to be ripped away again and again. With each flash of light, the sappers seemed to have surged ahead like hungry swarming locusts, breaking into two groups and advancing toward the long line of angled pikes, or abatis, that formed the first line of British defense. Hop, hop, hop, hop: Every flash brought the two mobs five feet closer to the thicket of sharply pointed trunks and limbs. Then, as the last shell exploded, Fish’s men were upon them, their axes and saws glinting in the final flickering light.
Ribbons of smoke drifted down from the sky, lighter than the renewed darkness, and a smell of burned gunpowder wafted through the air. From across the wide no-man’s-land could be heard a bugle on the far side of the palisade.
“We are under attack!” Alex was just able to hear a British voice call. “The rebels are coming!”
We are rebels no longer, Alex thought. We are Americans.
He pulled his watch from its pocket and glanced at it in the glow of a shaded lantern. Some two minutes had elapsed since Fish’s men had charged forward. He thought of the major’s boast that his team would have breached the pikes in that time, and almost considered ordering the charge ahead of schedule. Each minute saved would give the British that much less time to prepare their defenses.
Calm yourself, Colonel, he told himself in his best approximation of Laurens’s voice.
The subsequent two minutes were the longest of his life. As the clock ticked its final seconds, he raised his axe high above his head. Again, the sense of tensing bodies and focused attention rippled across the arrayed men. His watch ticked past the 120-second mark.
“Charge!” he screamed, then turned and ran toward the enemy’s walls.
The next minutes were a blur. Alex had a vision of himself as from the British palisade, racing forward with his hatchet held above him. Behind him he heard a great roar as nearly four hundred soldiers let out a blood-curdling cry and surged after him. The thud of their boots—even Corporal Fromm’s worn-out ones—shook the ground beneath his feet. Rather than throw him off balance, though, they propelled him forward like a swimmer on a wave being hurtled toward shore.
In the ghostly light of the partial moon, a shadowy wall appeared in front of him. In three more steps, he could see it clearly enough to tell that it was the British abatis. The enemy soldiers had cut thousands of branches and slim trunks from nearby forests and orchards, leaving the twigs and leaves attached at one end but sharpening the thicker part into evil-looking points. The branches were netted together and weighed down with rocks so that a spike-fronted wall nearly five feet tall faced the advancing soldiers. Anyone who ran headlong into them would be impaled in a dozen different places. Anyone who stopped to pull the wall apart faced being picked off by enemy rifles.
But Major Fish’s sappers had done their work. A pale void opened up in the prickly wall, no more than five feet wide, but large enough so that three men could run through abreast. The confluence was still dangerous, but safer than attempting to try to scale the timber wall piecemeal.
The enemy will concentrate their fire on the breaches, Alex thought.
As if an answer, Alex heard the familiar pop of a rifle from about a hundred feet away, and one of the sappers fell to the ground. Alex didn’t pause to see if the man were dead or capable of being saved. Helping one man risked losing a dozen, a hundred others. He leapt the body of his fallen compatriot and continued to race forward, joined now by the sappers, who had dropped their saws and pulled out axes. Together with the horde of soldiers behind them, they ran toward the next obstacle, the twenty-foot-tall wall of the palisade itself. The palisade was made of the tree trunks from which the pikes had been sheared. Some were a foot thick and more, tightly bound together with hempen rope and smeared with pitch besides, to make them all but unclimbable.
This was the most dangerous part of the mission. The only way into the British fort was through the palisade. Literally. With axes. It would take at least ten minutes to cut through the walls, during which every American soldier would be a sitting target for British soldiers firing down from the walls. Men would die. There was no getting around it. But there was no other way.
Alex reached the wall first, his axe still shaking over his head. He glanced up the wall and saw a pale face looking down at him over the long snout of a rifle. He threw himself to the side as a cloud of smoke burst from the rifle and heard the whizz of a musket ball fly past his ear even before he heard the report of the weapon. He rolled on the ground but was up immediately, shaking his axe at the face above him, knowing it would be half a minute and more before the man could reload his gun. He drove the axe into the timber wall of the fort, biting a chunk of wood from it and leaving a pale cut behind, then waved the axe at the soldier above him.
“The next cut is in your skull, you British blackguard!”
It was all theater, of course, both to frighten the enemy and rouse his own men. Having struck the symbolic first blow, he handed off his axe to the first Continental soldier who came within reach.
“Sappers, get those ladders in place!” he called to four teams of men, each of whom carried a twenty-five-foot ladder. The purpose of the ladders wasn’t to get the men into the fort, just to apply extra pressure on the British defenders, and draw their fire. The sappers leaned the ladders against the walls and fearlessly began scaling them. As expected, the British concentrated their guns on the ladders, lest the sappers take the upper tier of the wall and all but assure that the Continental forces would break through.
“Rear line, fall in!” Alex called. “Take out those defenders! Protect our boys on the wall!”
A predetermined group of twenty men fell to a knee behind the advancing soldiers and trained their rifles on the top of the palisade. They fired in rounds, five men shooting, then reloading while the next five fired and the next and the next, keeping a steady round of bullets flying at the wall. It was unlikely that they would hit the British soldiers, who were protected behind the spike top of the palisade, but their fire kept the enemy jumping about, making it harder for them to take aim at the sappers scaling the ladders.
At the same time, nearly fifty Continental soldiers armed with axes began hacking at the base of the walls. There were so many blades flashing in the moonlight that it seemed as if a swarm of fireflies had appeared out of thin air. The rain of repetitive blows against the timber walls sounded like a flock of maniacal woodpeckers. Wood chips flew through the air like sawdust. It seemed like the trunks would collapse in seconds. But wood is wood, and not even bloodlust can make it disappear. The blades continued to flash, but the wood held. There was nothing to do but wait until the wall fell.
On the near ladder, the first sapper reached the top of the wall. His rifle was at his shoulder in an instant, and he fired. Then, with the agility of a monkey, he swung about to the underside of the ladder and swung himself to the ground, allowing the next soldier to charge for the top.
At the next ladder over, however, things didn’t go so smoothly. The sapper reached the top of the wall, but before he could bring his weapon to bear, a shot ran out and he fell backward off the rungs. One of his feet caught the soldier behind him, nearly knocking him from the ladder. Only when he saw the tattered sole of the falling soldier’s boot did Alex recognize him. Corporal Fromm.
But there wasn’t time to mourn. Alex dropped to one knee and aimed his rifle at the top of the wall. He found the sniper who had taken out Corporal Fromm, who was frantically reloading his weapon. He took aim and squeezed the trigger. The soldier twitched, not like he’d been hit by a bullet, but as though a bee had stung his shoulder. Then his rifle fell from his hands and he slumped forward over the spiked top of the fence.
There was no more time to gloat than to mourn. Alex reloaded as quickly as he could, emptying his rifle, pouring in more powder, packing it, then dropping a ball in place. He didn’t really expect to get another chance to fire his weapon, though.
He checked the axemen’s progress. They’d concentrated their effort on three different areas. As their tools struck the wood, the tree trunks rattled. Gaps were opening up between them, exposing the light of the enemy’s fire behind.
He heard a voice in his ear.
“Won’t be long now.”
He turned to see a familiar face beside him.
“Laurens!” he said with warmth. “I am so happy you made it through.”
“The British are scared,” Laurens answered. “They’re barely trying to defend the line.”
“Do you think they’ll try to run when we break through?”
“I think there’s a good chance.”
“That is unacceptable,” Alex said, as though he were sending back a burned slice of pie at an inn. “General Washington wants them defeated but captured, not regrouped farther inland.” He paused to consider. “Our best intelligence suggests there are no more than one hundred twenty men holding the redoubt. I want you take your battalion and circle around the rear of the fort. If the British soldiers try to run, let them know there is no escape. Exercise prudence. We want prisoners, not a slaughter. I will lead the charge here with Fish’s and Gimat’s battalions.”
“You will have no more than two hundred men. That’s a numerical advantage, but not a guaranteed victory. Are you sure?”
“The enemy will not have time to count our numbers. They have seen what’s on the field, and will expect all of us coming through the breaches here. Fear will do the work for us.”
In the dim light, he could see pride in his friend’s eyes. Laurens stepped back and saluted. “I won’t let you down, sir,” he said, and disappeared into the crowd.
As soon as he was gone, Alex headed toward the closest breach. He found Major Gimat there and ordered him to assemble his men for the assault. He ran to the next breach, dodging the bodies of fallen Continental soldiers—and the occasional redcoat shot from the wall—in a macabre game of hopscotch. The sappers on the ladders had secured their positions at the top of the wall, however, making it all but impossible for the British soldiers to take potshots, so at least the carnage had stopped.
He made it to the next breach and found Major Fish, gave him the same order. Even as he spoke, there was a splintering sound and a voice called mockingly, “Timber!”
Alex looked up to see one of the trunks twist and fall to the ground as his sappers ran out of the way. The gap weakened the whole line. Within seconds, two more trunks had fallen, then a fourth and a fifth. A six-foot gap stood in the wall now.
Gimat reappeared. “The men are ready, sir.”
“Very good, Major. I will lead the charge myself.”
Gimat blinked, but that was the only reaction he showed. “As you wish, sir.”
He moved back, and Alex stepped to the front of the line.
He turned to the sea of pale faces. “Gentlemen,” he said. “We do this not for glory but for America.” He held his bayoneted rifle above his head. “Charge!”