TO JUDGE from reports that reached us, the American armies were a most haphazard and disorderly assemblage of men. They could be roused to desperate and courageous action in defence of their homes, but were altogether impatient of discipline. The regimental officers were often the servants, not the masters, of the men; and known for their obsequiousness and easy humour rather than for military qualities; they were also constantly engaged in struggles among themselves as to who should be the highest in office. We all heartily laughed at a report which our informant, an American volunteer in the transport service, swore was true, of a Connecticut captain shaving one of his men, for a fee, on the parade-ground; and how another was cashiered for stealing and selling his men’s blankets, which he did as a revenge for their having insisted that he throw his pay into the common stock! However, one of our people who had served in 1762 upon the Spanish Peninsula told me that this very sort of thing was known in Europe also: at Lisbon a Portuguese officer would supplement his meagre pay with journeyman tailoring and cobbling, and his lady would take in washing – nor was he above asking alms of passers-by as he mounted the guard at the gates of the Royal Palace at Lisbon. Yet at least, our man said, the Portuguese service had never suffered from the spirit of insubordination that reigned in the American. There it was so strong that, as we now know, General Philip Schuyler resigned his command rather than be forced to ‘coax, to wheedle and even to lie to carry on the service’; and that General Montgomery had on more than one occasion informed his officers that unless they would obey his orders he would quit the service and leave them to cut one another’s throats at their pleasure. General Washington himself declared that, had he seen what was before him, no earthly consideration should have wooed him to accept the chief command; for discipline was impossible while men considered themselves the equals of their officers and regarded them no more than a broomstick. These three were all generals in the aristocratic way, and were greatly hindered in their efforts to improve the fighting efficacy of the forces: by two or three humbly born colleagues who had won general’s rank, not because of proved military experience or talent but because of their known inveterate rancour against the British and a talent for ingratiating themselves with members of Congress. General Washington made many enemies in Congress by his too ingenuous plea that gentlemen and men of character should be given the preference in the allotment of commissions.
The length of service fixed by the various provincial Assemblies for their militia varied greatly, but more than a year was never required of them. Volunteers might engage themselves to serve for six months or a year, for six weeks or four weeks, or for as long as it pleased them. A militiamen might buy a substitute and many did so, from the dregs of the population; the American Army contained numbers of ruffians so hired, transported felons and such, to whom the Mosaic allowance of thirty-nine lashes was a contemptible punishment – they would offer, after receiving it, to suffer as much again for the fee of a pint of rum. These regiments were continually fluctuating between camp and farm. A soldier would announce unceremoniously to his captain: ‘See here, Neighbour Hezekiah, my old woman writes to tell me that she has but one nigger and my boy left on the farm, since the hired man was called. She has all the ploughing to do yet for the winter grain, and ten loads of hay to get in. Within ten days she’ll be lying in, and my elder daughter is tarnal sick with fever. I believe now, I must make my way home to Waterbury tomorrow, battle or no battle.’ When he went, he took his firelock and the powder and shot served out to him, and seldom returned. The Connecticut men were the worst offenders in this respect; but the staunch Virginians accused the New Englanders in general of having an ‘ardent desire to be chimney-corner heroes’.
When we British enlist, we know what to expect from a soldier’s life; but with the Americans the motive of Liberty, which spurred a peaceful man to take up arms on an impulse, was often insufficient to nourish him as a soldier. Washington is reported to have written to Congress at this very time that: ‘Men just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life, unaccustomed to the din of arms, and totally unacquainted with every kind of military drill are timid and ready to fly from their own shadows. The sudden change in their manner of living, particularly in their lodging, brings on sickness in many, impatience in all, and such an unconquerable desire of returning to their respective homes that it not only produces shameful deserters among themselves, but infuses the like spirit into others.’
There was a great shortage among them of arms and ammunition, the commissariat service was irregular and often the men went hungry; for Congress had little force of authority and could only request, not compel, the States of the new Union to provide rations for the troops stationed on their soil. Much meat and flour was lost by careless transport; for example, wagoners with a load of pickled pork would broach the casks and let the liquid escape in order to lighten their load, so that the meat would be rotten before it could be issued.
There was great quarrelling and jealousy among regiments sent from different parts of America. The ‘Buckskins’ of the South railed against the ‘scurvy damned Yankees’ of the North, the Yankees against ‘the haughty coxcombical Buckskins’; but these enemies were united in their dislike of the people of the middle provinces, who seemed to them undisguised Tories and rank Britainers. How they fought the war out together to a successful issue is a standing mystery to us all; despite the gross errors and treacheries of our fellow-countrymen in England, and the aid that the French, Dutch and Spanish afterwards provided.
While we were completing our fleet, the Americans at the foot of the lake were attempting to strengthen theirs; though in addition to all the other disagreeables enumerated above, the continuance of the smallpox among them, the increasing sickliness of the season and an utter destitution of all necessaries and comforts made it almost impossible for them to hold their ground. An average of thirty new graves a day were dug daily at Crown Point. Had it not been for the reckless and indomitable spirit of Brigadier-General Benedict Arnold, their commander, they were already vanquished. General Arnold, who had considerable maritime experience from his trading voyages to the West Indies, asked Congress for three hundred shipwrights to be sent at once to help his men construct thirty gondolas and row-galleys, to reinforce the three schooners and the sloop already under his command. The gondolas were a large sort of batteau manned by a crew of forty-five; the row-galleys were keeled and carried a sail, their complement being eighty men, and were both faster and handier than gondolas in open water. He also desired a frigate of thirty-six guns to be constructed, but the carpenters did not appear in the numbers expected. By the end of September, when we were ready with our fleet, the newly constructed American boats numbered only four galleys and eight gondolas. These were, however, not vessels to be despised, being very well-gunned. Their fleet could at any single time bring thirty-two of their eighty-four pieces to bear on any quarter; ours disposed of only forty-two guns in all, if I leave out of computation the radeau Thunderer and our single gondola, both of which proved unmanageable. Our advantage lay in the frigate Inflexible, which was better than any vessel they could boast, and in our crews. For not only had a number of regular naval officers offered themselves for lake service, from the royal squadron that lay at Quebec, but two hundred prime seamen from the transports had come forward too. Arnold’s fleet was manned by landsmen, the three hundred mariners from Marblehead that he expected not arriving until after the engagement.
On October 4th, our little squadron sailed out under the command of Captain Pringle, with General Carleton aboard the schooner Maria, our flagship. That same day my company, with the rest of the light infantry, had orders to draw a week’s rations and move along the western shore of the lake, a screen of Indian scouts protecting us. This we did, and strove to keep abreast of the fleet. The woods were very dense and because of quays and other difficulties we could make no more than a few miles a day before bivouacking at night. General Carleton had expected to find the enemy on the eastern side of the lake, and in consequence we had no hope of witnessing a sea-battle. However, we were lucky enough to come within sight of Valcour Island, some forty miles on our way, at the moment when General Arnold’s fleet, which was sheltering in a small bay within full view of the shore, no more than half a mile from us, was engaged by our ships. Valcour Island was two miles in length and had high cliffs. There were many Indians friendly to us encamped upon it at the time. The Americans lay in a half-moon formation, close together. They were so disposed, we observed, that few vessels could attack them at the same time, and these would be exposed to the fire of the whole fleet. Our ships, driving with a strong north-easterly wind, had overshot the island, before discovering the enemy, and were under the disadvantage of attacking from the leeward.
We were spectators of the whole battle, taking post on the shore, each company digging itself an entrenchment, from behind which it could prevent the Americans from landing, if they were forced ashore by the cannonade of our ships. It was an awful and glorious sight. A little before noon, Arnold’s flagship, the Royal Savage schooner, and four galleys got under way. They ran down with the wind against the Inflexible frigate as she drew slowly under the lee of the island. But the Royal Savage was mishandled and dropped to leeward, coming unsupported under the fire of the Inflexible, which headed our line. Three heavy shot struck her and she ran ashore on the southern point of the island, where a great number of our gunboats came up and silenced her from short range. One of them was sunk. As an Irishman, I was proud to know, watching this fine fight, that the matrosses who served in the gunboats were drafts from the Irish Artillery in Chapelizod. General Arnold abandoned the ship and transferred himself and his flag to the Congress galley; where for want of trained artillery-men he was obliged to point and discharge every gun himself, stepping rapidly from one to the other, like a person touching off fireworks on the King’s birthday.
The Inflexible could not make any headway, because the wind was blowing from the north, but the schooner Carleton, which followed, caught a flaw from the cliffs which fetched her nearly into the middle of the American fleet. There her commander intrepidly anchored with a spring on her cable; which is to say, a rope attached from one side of the stern to the anchor, by hauling on which a broadside could be fired at the foe alternately from starboard and larboard. There she did much execution among the Americans, sinking a gondola, but suffered severely herself. Half of her crew were killed or wounded, her commander was knocked senseless, another officer lost his arm and only Mr Edward Pellew, a lad of nineteen, remained fit for duty. (He was to become Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, now Commander-in-Chief of our Forces in the Mediterranean, and the most famous of all our frigate-captains in the French Wars.) The spring being shot away, the Carleton swung bows on to the enemy and her fire was silenced. Captain Pringle in the Maria signalled to her to retire, but she could not, and two gunboats came to tow her off; her hull had been pierced in many places and she had two foot of water in her hold. Meanwhile the commander of our radeau Thunderer, not being able to come into action, went with a boat’s crew aboard the Royal Savage and turned her guns on the two larger enemy galleys, Congress and Washington, who returned the fire.
The noise of the cannonade was tremendous and was tossed back and forth in echoes across the water between cliffs and woods. Our men held their fire, for the enemy were out of range; but the Indians, who had rushed up on hearing the noise and were dancing about and yelling in their excitement, fired a great number of useless shots across the strait. We also distinguished musket-fire from the cliffs of Valcour where a large number of Indians were congregated. Two enemy boats were now seen making for the Royal Savage in an endeavour to retake her; but in good time our people set her on fire, and before the boarding-party could arrive she was blazing hotly and soon blew up with an awful roar.
There was a lull in the fighting, of which we took advantage to eat our biscuit and dressed meat, and some of us even slept a while. As the afternoon wore on, the breeze changed direction, and to our great satisfaction we saw the Inflexible slowly tacking up the strait, followed by the Maria. By evening she had worked to within point-blank range of the American squadron and with five heavy broadsides silenced the whole line.
It was growing too dark to distinguish friend from foe, and to avoid being rammed or boarded, the Inflexible fell back; the whole squadron thereupon anchored in a line across the strait. The Americans had suffered severely. Two gondolas and the Congress galley had been badly holed, most of the officers had been killed or wounded, and they had blown away nearly all their ammunition. We had orders to keep a strict watch all night lest the Americans attempted to land on our coast; for that seemed their only hope of escape from this predicament. The breeze fell and a thick mist over-spread the lake. We were very cold that night and crowded near our campfires.
When at about eight o’clock in the morning a southerly wind sprang up and the view cleared, we were surprised to find the Americans gone. General Arnold had contrived to bring the whole fleet away safely under cover of the mist and the extreme obscurity of the night. They had stolen out ‘in Indian file’, as it were, through a gap in the British line, with a dark-lantern on the counter of each vessel to guide the one following. The Congress brought up the rear of the column, for Arnold was always a laggard in any retirement. Three months before he had been the very last man to quit Canada in the retreat, riding back for a view of our vanguard and with difficulty escaping capture by our light infantry. For his beaked face, angry eye, and towering ambition the Indians named him ‘Dark Eagle’.
General Carleton was enraged to kind that his prey had escaped, and was in such a haste to take up the pursuit that he sailed off without leaving us orders; so we kept our posts for another day but sent out scouts, north and south. That evening he returned again, believing that the Americans had gone up the lake, after all; but we brought him word from the Indians that the vessels had been seen hiding behind Schuyler’s Island, eight miles down; they were weaker by two gondolas, which could not be patched into sea-worthiness, or lake-worthiness rather, and had been scuttled.
The wind had now turned round and was blowing up the lake. It hindered both the Americans’ retreat to Crown Point and our pursuit. Their remaining six gondolas were slow and delayed the rest of the fleet, so that though they had a start of fifteen miles, from the moment when General Carleton once more turned about, he had a hope of catching them. Our orders were to continue down the lake so soon as daybreak came. We could not move rapidly enough to be present at the coming battle. It took place at noon that day, October 13th, in the lower narrows of the lake, at a place called Split Rock, about twelve miles above Crown Point and thirty from Valcour Island. The wind was now north-east. Here the Maria schooner, with the Inflexible and Carleton close astern, having greatly outdistanced our gunboats and the rest of the fleet, came up with the Americans. Split Rock was a strait between two rocks, just wide enough for our large ships to pass through, and with a very rapid current. The action lasted two hours; we could hear the noise of the cannonade brought down the wind, and mended our pace; though we knew that this was to no purpose.
Our ships were victorious; but General Arnold by fighting a delayed battle contrived to save part of his fleet, which got safely away, viz. two schooners, the sloop, two galleys, and one gondola. But the Washington galley struck early in the action and was taken with a general aboard, General Arnold’s second-in-command; and, as for the Congress galley and the four remaining gondolas, they were lost. By General Arnold’s orders they were pulled to windward where our men could not pursue, except in small boats, then steered into a creek about ten miles from Crown Point, but on the other side of the lake from us, run ashore and set on fire.
As usual, General Arnold was the last man to leave the post of danger. He stayed aboard the Congress until the flames had fairly caught her, whereupon he clambered along the bowsprit and leaped down to the beach. He and his men came safe back through the woods opposite Crown Point, after a skirmish with the Indians; then he saw a great smoke across the water, and learned that the Americans, on hearing the noise of gunfire from up the lake, had at once sent off their sick and baggage from Crown Point, set all the buildings there a-fire, and were now falling back on the fortress of Ticonderoga. So General Arnold went there likewise. Ticonderoga was fifteen miles below Crown Point, and its newly built fortifications were reputedly of great strength: they had been laid out for the Americans by a Polish military engineer who has since become famous on other fields of action – the patriot Thaddeus Kosciusko.
It was three days before we rejoined General Carleton, who had landed at Crown Point, and four more before the main body of our army appeared, transported on a fleet of bateaux. Meanwhile we encamped in a place called Button-Mould Bay, after the abundance of pebbles, thrown up on the shores, of the exact form of a button mould. Where those of wood or horn could not be procured, they would make excellent substitutes. When the Army came ashore we continued towards Ticonderoga, with our light infantry companies to the front as usual, in two columns, one on either side of the lake. Some of our vessels approached within cannon-shot of the enemy works, but the attack was not pressed. General Carleton judged it too late in the year to continue the campaign, even if we could quickly reduce Ticonderoga, which appeared doubtful. The intention had been to push on into the heart of New York State and to take the town of Albany on Hudson’s River, where there was an important arms manufactory. General Carleton foresaw that communications with our base in Canada would be long and difficult, and now that the Americans had their harvest in, great forces of frontiersmen and militiamen from every part of New England would be free to beset us on all sides. It was no light task to march an army, of inferior strength to the enemy, through one hundred miles of tangled forest in the American winter. Old General Phillips, of the Artillery, was for taking a crack at the defences of Ticonderoga, which he swore were easily taken, and wintering there. General Phillips had gained great glory at; the battle of Minden, by galloping his guns ahead to harass the broken French; General Riedesel, who had also been present at this battle, in the service of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, agreed with him now that the enemy redoubts were more pretentious than strong. But General Carleton would not heed. ‘Let us leave the Americans alone,’ he said, ‘and they will destroy themselves more effectively than could we: if the events of the past year have been any indication of their quality as soldiers.’
On the last day of October we were withdrawn up the lake, on batteaux, much to the relief of the Americans.
The colonies were now in the way to lose the war, largely from their common tendency to set the desire of personal irresponsibility before the ideal of national independence. Boston had been abandoned by us, but New York city and the seaward ports of New Jersey occupied by very large forces. General Howe had beaten General Washington’s army in several engagements; and, before the year was out, forced him across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Moreover, we had occupied Rhode Island, one hundred and fifty miles farther up the coast towards Boston, and in the coming year a converging attack was to be made simultaneously on the revolutionaries by three armies – ours from the northward, by way of the lakes; the New York army from the southward, up the valley of Hudson’s River; and another army from the eastward, with Newport, Rhode Island, as its base, marching through Massachusetts. The King very sensibly decided that the tinder and dry fuel of rebellion lay in the Northern provinces. If the conflagration could be stamped out there, it would die out elsewhere for want of nourishment. The South was green wood, slow to catch, and the Middle provinces were damp straw. It was unfortunate, however, and shameful too, that this plan of campaign, which was a Ministerial secret, should have been disclosed to members of the Opposition and published by them in the newspapers, copies of which reached America. The enemy were thus forewarned, many months in advance.
Our return up the lake to Canada was without adventures, and the beauties of Nature that unfolded themselves before us seemed the more fascinating now that for some months at least the hideous spirit of war need not hover between. The autumnal hues of the woods surpassed language, for their variety, and afforded infinitely more satisfaction than when all had been uniformly green. Sunsets and rainbows appeared tumbled among the forests. The gaudy reds and yellows intermingling with the dark green of the pines and the shadows of the rocks, as we threaded our way between the islands, were reflected in the placid blue waters of the lake. At some points the mountains were in a blaze of glory, and yet as Sergeant Fitzpatrick remarked, ‘like the Burning Bush that astonished Moses, they are not consumed’.
I had brought a fishing-line on the campaign and amused myself by baiting a hook with a shred of ration beef and seeing what I could pull up. One morning I had a bite; I struck, and pulled up a singular dark brown fish with horns like a snail and a cat’s visage. As it lay struggling in the bottom of the boat, I observed that it could lift or retract these horns at pleasure. I had the curiosity to touch one of them, to see whether it would draw them completely into its head, but I was punished by a severe numbing sensation, passing right up my arm, which stung so painfully all that day that I was incapacitated for duty. It was explained to me by Lieutenant Sweetenham, who was in our boat, that the horns of this creature, which was called a cat-fish, were naturally charged with the electric fire or principle which the celebrated Dr Franklin first drew down from heaven by a kite-string. Its flesh proved fat and luscious, very much like that of the common eel; the fins were bony and strong.
On November 2nd we disembarked at St John’s again and were marched for two days through the woods till we came to Montreal, the first inland city of the American continent. It was built upon an island thirty miles in length and about twelve in breadth, formed by a divarication of the River St Lawrence, and containing two large mountains. The Ninth were to be quartered upon the Isle of Jesus, which was an island within this island, being about three miles in length and a little less in breadth and contained by two inlets of the river. The Isle of Jesus was cleared of woods and had a church and a number of farmhouses, as well as the barracks put up for our accommodation, and provided us with a very agreeable place of repose after our labours of the summer. The troops were rarely given leave of absence to visit Montreal, but we were one day marched by Lieutenant Kemmis to the top of the higher mountain of the Montreal island in order to enjoy what he described as the most sublime view in all North America.
This was a most fatiguing journey, for there was no regular path to be discovered, and we were in full marching order for the exercise; but even the greatest grumblers of the company confessed, when we gained the summit and had well eaten and drunk of what we brought with us, that the prospect was an ample compensation. A vast coloured sea of woods stretched out before us, through which whirled the huge stream of the St Lawrence. Far below us in the near distance we could descry the city of Montreal in the sunlight. It made a narrow oblong square, on a low ridge parallel with the river, sloping down evenly to the water-front and divided by regular well-formed streets. All the houses, almost, were whitewashed. A high plastered stone wall surrounded the city, consisting of curtains and bastions; and beyond, except on the waterside, were a dry ditch and a sort of glacis surmounted by a parapet loopholed for musketry. These defences were not strong and had been raised by the French long ago as a protection against Indians armed with bows and arrows, rather than a European enemy. The city was so situated, as we could see, that no works could be raised to enable it to stand a regular siege: for it was commanded by many eminences near by. There were numerous elegant houses in the suburbs, but these did not catch the sun so handsomely as those inside the city, which were covered with tin-plates, instead of shingles, for fear of fire. Fires, due to the inhabitants’ attachment to red-hot stoves kept burning all night, had so often destroyed the city that it was now built wholly of stone with sheet-iron shutters to the doors and windows; which gave it, as one walked down the street after dark, the appearance of an assemblage of prisons. We lifted our eyes from the city and looked south-east across the river to the distant hills of Chambly; and beyond them to the Green Mountains of Vermont, about sixty miles away, capped with snow – the residence of our enemies.
Our English-speaking guide bade us beware of serpents, which abounded in these woods, but he confessed that they were frightened off by the regular tramp of marching boots and would not bite unless surprised by the stealthy approach of a single person in moccasins. Only the copperhead snake, he said, was so torpid and sulky that he would not move out of the path though an elephant approached, but would infallibly strike at him as he passed. I may add, however, that no elephant had as yet visited the American continent; nor was one brought there for a show until some years after the Revolution.
This guide discoursed much upon snakes – the rattlesnake, whose skin, when the animal is enraged, exhibits a variety of beautiful tints, and who gains a new rattle to his tail for every year of his noxious life. Later, I saw two or three of them scuttling from me in the woods. This creature is greenish-yellow in colour, as thick as a man’s wrist and about four feet in length. The Indians esteem his flesh as whiter and more delicate than the best fish. His sloughed skin, charred, pulverized, and swallowed with brandy is the best-known specific against rheumatism.
The guide told us a very deplorable story of an American farmer of the Minisink who one day went to mowing with his negroes, but wore boots as a precaution against being stung. Inadvertently he trod on a snake, which immediately attacked his legs, but, as it drew back in order to renew its blow, one of his negroes cut it in two with his scythe. They prosecuted their work all day, and returned home when the sun set. After dinner, the farmer pulled off his boots and went to bed. He was soon after seized with a strange sickness at his stomach. He swelled up and died before a physician could be procured. A few days after his decease his son put on the same boots, and likewise went to the meadow to work. At night he pulled them off, went to bed, and experienced similar sufferings of sickness as took off his father. A little before he expired a doctor came, but, not being able to assign the cause of so singular a disorder, he pronounced both men to have died by witchcraft. Some weeks after, the widow sold all the movables for the benefit of the younger children, and the farm was leased. One of the neighbours who bought the boots, presently put them on, and fell sick, as had happened in the case of the other two. But this man’s wife, being alarmed by what befell the former family, dispatched one of her negroes for an eminent physician who, fortunately having heard of the dreadful affair, divined the cause, and applied medicines which recovered the man. The boots which had been so fatal were then carefully examined, and he found that the two fangs of the snake had been left in the leather, after being wrenched out of their sockets by the strength with which the snake had drawn back its head. The bladders which contained the poison, and several of the small nerves, were still fresh and adhered to the boot. The unfortunate father and son had both been poisoned by wearing these boots, in which action they imperceptibly scratched their legs with the points of the fangs – through the hollow of which some of the astonishing venom was conveyed.
The best specific against rattlesnake bite is the juice of a sort of plan-tain-leaf: it was accidentally discovered by a Virginian negro who desperately rubbed it upon his leg to soothe the agonies of a bite, as he lay by the wayside. The negro not only recovered from the poison, but was emancipated by his master as a reward for this service to humanity.
The same guide told us also of a small, speckled, hissing snake with spots which glow with a variety of colours when he is enraged; at the same time he blows from his mouth a subtile and nauseous wind that if drawn into the mouth of an unwary traveller will infallibly bring on a mortal decline; for there is no remedy against it. He tried our credulity further with an account of the whip-snake which, he said, pursues cattle through wood and meadow, lashing them with his tail, until overcome with the fatigue of the chase they drop exhausted to the ground, where the whip-snake preys upon their flesh. This was perhaps true, but we could not accept his account of the hoop-snake which thrusts the extremity of his tail into a cavity of his mouth, where it catches fast with an arrangement like a pawl and ratchet, and then rolls forward like a boy’s hoop with such extreme velocity that neither man nor beast can hope to escape from his devouring jaws.
There was a silence of a few moments after this tale, which Mad Johnny Maguire took the privilege of breaking, as he was the oldest soldier among us. ‘Oh, what a darling monster that must be, from which nobody has ever escaped alive to give so sensible an account of his habits! But he’s nothing at all compared with the serpents of Killaloo that Saint Patrick drove out of my country when he first came. They banged all: they could wrap their necks about a rifle-gun and squint along the barrel, and both load and fire it with their tails! But the Saint prayed at them, and waved his staff at them, and told them to quit before the Sunday following, and off they went, howling. The proof that I’m not codding you is that not a single specimen of the breed is still to be found on the shores of Ireland. Let us hope, by Jesus God, that they did not take ship to Canada.’