OBEYING OUR officers’ orders, we piled up our arms in a meadow, near the confluence of Fishkill Creek and Hudson’s River, and emptied out our cartouche-cases. It was found that not fifteen rounds a man remained to us. A great stench arose in this meadow from the decaying bodies of horses that lay about it. They had been allured there, from the deep ravine where we kept them within the camp, by the scent of rich grass – the enemy shot the poor beasts down as soon as they began grazing. There were soldiers who now wept at being parted from the muskets that they had carried so long and cared for so well, and that seemed almost a part of themselves; and I own that for days I missed the familiar weight of my piece upon my shoulder, and felt in a manner naked without it. No American troops were present at this melancholy scene, General Gates having confined all to camp except a few companies of riflemen who lined the fringes of the forest as a precaution against any treachery on our part. Lieutenant-Colonel Hill preserved the colours of The Ninth by taking them off the staves and sewing them in the lining of a mattress. He eventually was able to present them to His Majesty at St James’s Palace, who rewarded his faithful services with the appointment of aide-de-camp to himself and the full rank of colonel.
That same day, October 17th, we were marched off in the direction of Boston. We passed through the long ranks of our enemies, who had spent the whole morning scrubbing and cleaning their persons and firelocks in order to make the best appearance possible. There were fourteen thousand of them in the parade and some thousands more posted in reserve. The men were in general taller, thinner, and more sinewy than ours. Our veterans remarked that they would have liked these rebels better had they shown that command of mind which should dignify an army when victorious in the field; for it seemed to them that the features and tones even of the American regular troops betrayed an improper exultation. Lieutenant Anburey of The Fourteenth, in his published account of these transactions, has written: ‘As we passed the American enemy, throughout the whole of them I did not observe the least disrespect, or even a taunting look, but all was mute astonishment and pity.’ Neither I, nor such of my surviving comrades as I have consulted, can account for the discrepancy between what we saw and what the Lieutenant saw, unless by the suggestion that we were of a more jaundiced and irritable temper than he: for pity there was none, but either sour looks or good-humoured sallies at our expense, to which we did not care to reply. The truth is, we had been so scribbled against, by their newspaper writers and pamphleteers, as base mercenaries and British scum, and so preached against by their ministers, who represented us in Biblical imagery as mere monsters – with swords for tongues, claws for hands, hoofs for feet, and our mouths dripping with the blood of children and virgins – that few Americans could cast out this strong prejudice from their minds. Add to this, that we could hardly expect from peasants, fighting in defence of their homes, the same courtesies as passed, for instance, between our armies and the French, when professionally opposed in battle upon the neutral soil of Germany or the Low Countries.
The American regular or ‘Continental’ troops wore buff and blue uniform with stout knapsacks, and carried muskets, twenty thousand of which had been secretly bought from our enemies the French by an American emissary in Paris; the riflemen were conformedly dressed in linen hunting shirts and legging; the militia were clad, according to their own parochial fancy, in coats of military cut but of many different stuffs, colours, and facings – their firelocks also showing much diversity of quality and pattern. Besides these troops there also were numerous companies of well-whiskered rustics in workaday dress, many of whom carried immensely long guns of the sort used for duck-shooting, but some only pitchforks or knives bound to poles to serve as pikes. It was the monstrous many-coloured, fleecy wigs affected by the elder men that caused us most amazement and recalled the times of Good Queen Anne, when men wore haystacks upon their heads.
The Americans certainly had proved very smart in repairing their deficiencies of warlike material. We had at first thought that they would have to yield for want of gunpowder: for the quantities that they won by capture, or by sale from the Spanish, French, and Dutch were wholly insufficient to their needs. But a simple countryman had approached the Massachusetts Assembly with a specimen of his own manufacture of gunpowder, from the salt-petre contained in rotten stable-refuse, and undertook to show them how more could be made in eight months than the province had money to pay for. His process was adopted. Flour-mills, which were very numerous in New England, were thereupon converted into mills for gunpowder, and of this product there was soon a superfluity. The Americans also were very short of lead for bullets and ran into their moulds clock-weights, waterspouts, cisterns, leaden ornaments from house-fronts, statuary, and printers’ founts of type, and were reduced at times to pewter spoons and dishes. Paper for cartridges, neither too thin nor too thick, was hard to come by, and the Continentals were supplied on one occasion with a whole edition of a German Bible printed in Philadelphia. The leaves of vestry-books were also much used in New England for this purpose. In one respect, we learned, the smartness of the Yankees recoiled upon them. For the French muskets supplied being insufficient to the needs of the whole American army, the militia were sometimes served out with trade-muskets, showy and defective, that had been manufactured for sale to the simple fur-getting Indian, or to the African chiefs of the Guinea Coast who took them in exchange for slaves. They frequently burst at the first discharge and proved fatal to the soldiers who bore them. Most of the muskets used against us were manufactured by country blacksmiths in imitation of the Tower musket, but not to a single standard, so that if a part were damaged the piece would be useless until a new part could be forged to match.
When the head of our column arrived opposite the enemy’s general headquarters, General Burgoyne in plumed hat and a rich new uniform delivered up his sword with a flourish to General Gates, wearing a plain blue frock, cocked hat, and spectacles, who received it courteously and returned it to him. The other officers were likewise permitted to retain their swords and fusils. Major Skene, by the bye, wrote himself down humbly as ‘a poor follower of the British Army’. During these proceedings their musicians played the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle’, which had now become their national paean, a favourite of favourites, and used alike among them as the lover’s spell, the nurse’s lullaby, and the soldier’s marching song. The word ‘Yankee’ signifies ‘coward’ in the Cherokee Indian tongue, but from being used as a term of reproach it had become a word of glory to all New Englanders. The verses of the tune were exceedingly frivolous.
During the delay of some minutes caused by the compliments exchanged between the Generals, I found myself halted opposite some Massachusetts troops: I believe they were a Captain Morean’s company. Among these I recognized James Melville, or Mellon, who had been prisoner at Quebec. I asked him: ‘Fighting again? Did you not give your parole?’
He grinned and replied: ‘They gave me a paper to sign. But I owe King George nothing. A forced promise, I’ll swear, is no promise.’ He then asked his officer for permission to break ranks and give me a drink from his flask: which was refused, as the orders were very strict against this. Yet he tossed the flask to me, I drank rum from it and was about to toss it back when he cried to me that I might keep it in return for my former benefits to himself; which I did, gladly.
We now retraced our steps once more along the road to Stillwater, which was a gloomy enough stage on our two hundred mile journey; encamping on the hill over the ravine where we had abandoned our tents and our wounded. The tents were gone, but the hospital was still crowded with our sick, who were receiving considerate treatment. To my joy I found Terry Reeves sitting at the door on an upturned keg, nearly recovered from a bullet wound in the foot; he did not wish to be parted from us again and hobbled forward with the company the next day. We were shocked to discover on a visit to General Fraser’s grave that some rough Americans had added to their former disrespect of his obsequies by exhuming the corpse. Their excuse was that they thought that we had concealed guns in the grave, and muskets in the coffin. It was certainly their custom to credit us with a ‘smartness’ altogether foreign to our British nature; but more likely the hope of these frontiersmen was to find, in the pockets of the General’s uniform, a watch, or money, or some article of value that had been overlooked by the mourners in the anxiety and solemnity of that evening’s work.
We crossed Hudson’s River by General Gates’s bridge of boats at Stillwater; the township was very well named from the sudden calming of the turbulent stream opposite it. The American army passed us, marching down to Albany against General Clinton’s small army – which, however, soon retired upon hearing news of our disaster.
That morning a thanksgiving sermon had been preached before the American army. The Chaplain fully set forth to his hearers that the Almighty had done more for them than they had done for themselves. He preached from Joel ii. 26: ‘But I will remove far off from you the Northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face towards the East Sea, and his hinder part towards the Utmost Sea; and his stink shall come up, and his ill-savour shall come up, because he has done great things.’ Great things our Northern army had indeed accomplished in the way of battle, and none could deny it; that General Howe had not come to our assistance with his twenty thousand men, or that General Clinton’s force had marched too late, was no fault of ours. Now we were, in the words of the text, being driven into a land barren and desolate, with our face towards the East Sea; and as for our stink and ill-savour, the inhabitants of the country soon made it plain to us how grossly their nostrils were offended.
Saratoga was distant from Boston some two hundred miles. From the outset of our march we experienced much hardship, sleeping in barns and being given but scanty provisions. The way before and about us presented an uncheering appearance, mountainous and uncultivated, with no pleasing scenery to amuse the eye. I was now able to congratulate myself on my prescience in burdening myself with the Congress bills, which passed current in these parts. I still retained one thousand dollars of them. The remaining four thousand I had given to the surgeon of the hospital to purchase comforts for the poor fellows under his charge; which gift, I believe, saved many of their lives. Of what was left I kept one hundred dollars for my own use and divided up the remainder among the men of my company: I regarded it as plunder and to be put into the common stock. We therefore fared better than most of the army so long as this money lasted. New England rum, which we purchased at Bennington, the first place of pleasant appearance that we arrived at, kept us alive through the very cold nights of our passage over the Green Mountains. Many soldiers paid for their drams by selling their cartouche-cases, which seemed unnecessary luggage now that our muskets were taken from us. The mountain roads were almost impassable to our wagons, and when we were half over, a heavy fall of snow occurred, which caused several men to die of cold. A soldier’s wife bore a child under the lee of a baggage cart that cruel night, and both survived.
The Americans were very glad to sell our people Continental paper in exchange for ‘hard money’, as they termed gold and silver. At Bennington, in Vermont State, they offered nine paper dollars for each golden guinea, thus halving the professed value of the paper, and when we had crossed the Green Mountains and arrived at Hatfield and Hadley in Massachusetts, on the Connecticut River, we could get eighteen. The price of guineas grew still better, the nearer we came to Boston, and by the time we had passed through the back country of Massachusetts and approached the sea-board, we came to realize how low was the confidence of the more sagacious Americans in the ability of Congress to redeem these paper promises. For at Worcester, two or three days’ march from our destination, we could get as much as thirty-five dollars for a guinea. As the war continued, the value of a paper dollar declined to less than one penny, and at last the entire issue, having served its purpose of raising the wind, was silently repudiated. But what appeared strange to us was that though the Americans depreciated Congress money in this way, by offering to sell it to us at so great a discount, yet always, whenever they sold any article at a price in paper dollars and we paid in hard money, they made no allowance for the difference in exchange; but for the honour of their country reckoned a paper dollar the equal of a silver one. We were the Egyptians, as it were, whom these Children of Israel – who, by the bye, bore Biblical names almost to a man – spoiled of our silver and gold.
In this march we were able to make many comparisons between the appearance and manner of life of the inhabitants and what we recalled of the Canadians and our own people at home. First, let me say, that though the wants of the country owing to the war were already very great, from its reliance upon England for stuffs and manufactured goods of quality, the inhabitants appeared well-fed and cheerful, and immeasurably better provided with the conveniences of life than the country people of Ireland. The women were dressed in bright and well-fitting clothing and had a remarkably independent air. Every place through which we passed was now raising two or three companies of troops to join General Washington’s army, so that on the industry of these women depended the life of the countryside, and well they knew it.
I must observe here that no town that we came to had a settled or finished look, nor can it have been solely a fault of the war that life was here universally lived as if it were a doubtful campaign against the forces of Nature; with no opportunity to enjoy the fruits of victory, but a constant impulse to engage in new battles. Accidents that in our own country would serve to drive a man half mad seemed here to produce little alarm or agitation. Nothing was either splendid or beggarly, and when a man was knocked down, he speedily picked himself up again in a manner impossible on our Continent. The labourer was everywhere content with a house of rough logs, unwhitewashed, unpainted, and not always boarded even on the inside. All around this habitation was, in general, as barren as the sea-beach, without flower-beds, paths, or lawns, but only heaps of cast rubbish and refuse; and if there was a cultivated plot called a garden, they used the plough to it, not the spade. Especially there were never any forest trees left standing for shade or adornment in the neighbourhood of a dwelling: Americans detested trees as much as our farmers detest weeds or stones. From the face of the country being everywhere overspread with forest the eyes of the people became weary of it: so that I have read of Americans landing on barren parts of the north-west coast of Ireland and expressing the greatest surprise at the ‘improved state’ of the country, so clear of trees! I never but once during all my seven years in America saw a well-laid out and completed estate, and that was General Schuyler’s at Saratoga that we had been obliged to devastate. What contributed to the untidy and hasty effect of North American negligence was the stumps of trees left standing where virgin forest had given way to the plough. They were not grubbed up but allowed to rot slowly, while the plough avoided them with crooked furrows. They stood up two or three feet at the natural height of an axe-stroke; since a man could cut many more trees in a day in this style than if he levelled the stumps with the ground. Hedges were lacking, being held to rob the soil; and instead everywhere ran rough fences of various construction, which were more convenient than charming.
This want of attention to the amenities of life had been hereditary from the first settlers. Land and timber were cheap, labour dear, and a man would be held a fool who spent his time beautifying his home and its environs, when he might be planting an orchard of fruit-trees or clearing a few acres of forest to make into a maize-field. It may be recorded here that the only American who was ever known to grub up the stumps of his trees at once was their General Stirling, who called himself Lord Stirling. He had come to England, before the war, to pray for the revival in his favour of the extinct Stirling peerage, but the House of Lords disallowed his claim and forbade him under pain of public disgrace to assume the title. When the Americans popularly conceded it to him, he showed his gratitude by a sincere and steady devotion to their cause. He was most adhesive to the dignity of his rank, and the removal of the tree stumps was in keeping with these punctilious traits of his character.
The cattle hereabouts were numerous and extraordinarily large; and so were the hogs, which they fattened upon maize. Maize, or Indian corn, was the only grain to which the climate was favourable; for wheat was inclined to the blight, barley grew dry in the ear before maturity – so that ale was a rare delicacy in America – and oats yielded more straw than grain. But Maize throve exceedingly and was the staple for both man and beast.
These Americans were so little gregarious that a rural township never consisted, as in Canada or anywhere in Europe, of a social collection of houses, inns, and places of religion surrounded by the fields and orchards of the inhabitants: we seldom saw more than a dozen houses together and the rest were here, there, and everywhere. It was as if each family wished to assert its independence of neighbours and form a village consisting of its own house and barns. When a son married, he would seldom be content, I was told, if he could not remove with his wife to a distance of two hundred miles away or more, and clear new land with his own axe.
I must say that America was certainly no Lubberland, or Land of Cockaigne, where the streets are paved with half-peck loaves, the houses roofed with pancakes, and where the fowls fly about ready roasted, with knife and fork plunged in their backs, crying, ‘Sweet, sweet, come eat me!’ It was the land of hard work and steady habits.
The women were brisk and handsome and kept their youthful looks some years longer than ours at home, though their hair turned grey sooner. For some reason, the climate did not appear to encourage wrinkles, and old men and women had a ruddy, smooth look which would contrast very cheerfully with the crumpled parchment faces of our own parents and grandparents. Their teeth, however, were very bad and their breaths sour, which some attributed to their hasty manner of eating and to immoderate fondness for molasses – which they consumed at every meal, even with greasy pork. Another cause may have been the great severity of the winter which kept them short, for months together, of green vegetables and salads and also encouraged them to profuse tippling of spirits. New England speech seemed to proceed rather through the nose than the mouth, yet was not unpleasing in effect, if the person discoursing was one of sensibility; and was so clearly articulated that, where a number of people were talking together in a crowd, an American voice, though not raised, could be distinctly heard cutting through the confused babble of the rest, with hardly a syllable lost.
New Englanders were, then as now, generally esteemed the most inquisitive people in the world. They greatly lacked for entertainment in the country and made up for this with gossip and with minding the business of other people. No stranger who arrived, however greatly fatigued, at an inn but was pestered by the company and by each newcomer who dropped in, to reveal his name, destination, origin, family condition, trade, intentions, and political colour. This provided good sport, for the stranger was always suspected of misleading his interrogators, who would try to trick him into contradictions. If he proved sulky, hospitability would dry up, and if he asked questions in return he would get more grins than answers. It can be conceived, then, what interest the passage of our army excited, especially when it was learned that among our officers were no fewer than six members of Parliament and a number of peers. Lieutenant M’Neil of our regiment was annoyed at the giggles and ironical curtsies of a row of very handsome young women who came out to see us at Worcester; and when a small queer great-grandmother in a tall hat, standing a little beyond them, raised her hands to Heaven and stared at us with astonishment, he turned to her tartly: ‘So, Mother Goose,’ he said, ‘must you too come wandering out to see the lions?’ She replied archly: ‘Lions, lions! I declare now I had mistook you for lambs.’
We were sorry for young Lieutenant Lord Napier. He was much troubled by the curiosity of the women at the house where he was lodged, who imagined that a Lord must be something more than man and kept peeping in at doors and windows, in the hope of seeing a creature with angel’s wings or a devil’s hoof and tail, or I know not what else. At last four of them, pushing boldly into the room inquired: ‘We hear you have got a Lord among you. Pray now, which may he be?’ Then they looked sternly at Lieutenant Kemmis, as if to say: ‘Dare to deceive us and it will be the worse for you.’
Unfortunately for Lord Napier, he was fresh from a tumble in the mud, and had not yet got his clothes sufficiently dried to allow the dirt to be brushed off; one side of his face was bemired, too. But Lieutenant Kemmis, knowing that there would be no peace until these women were satisfied, pointed to his Lordship and cried out in the resonant tones of a herald-at-arms: ‘Ladies, there you behold the form and person of the Right Honourable Francis Napier, of His Majesty’s Thirty-first Regiment of Foot, Baron of Merchiston in the Kingdom of Scotland, Baronet of Nova Scotia, Hereditary Lord Almoner to the Akhoond of Swat, Grand Squire of Gotham, Lord of a hundred inferior lordships in the Land of Cockaigne, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Liliburlero, and much besides which I have forgot. Gaze on him, ladies, for you will never look upon his like again.’ They gazed very attentively at his Lordship, who blushed beneath his mud. At length one of them exclaimed: ‘Well, if that be a Lord, I never desire to see any other Lord than the Lord Jehovah.’ Nevertheless, a number of other women came in to see the show, for which privilege they had paid entrance-money to the landlord.
The last stage of our march was from Weston to Prospect Hill, near Cambridge, which lies six miles from Boston. Exceedingly heavy rain fell, but our people bore up very well and sang choruses as we approached the end of our travels, to proclaim that our spirit was undaunted. The most sanguine among us did not imagine that we would have less than two or three weeks of waiting before the transports appeared which would take us home to Britain; but it was argued that the cost of keeping so many men in fuel and provisions would prompt the people of Massachusetts, whose Court had passed resolutions for procuring suitable accommodation for our army, to be rid of us as speedily as possible – or so soon at least as we were no longer able to pay for our subsistence in coin.
Meanwhile we determined to make the best of our lot, which was, to be short, deplorable. We were put that evening, drenched to the skin, into the temporary barracks that had been erected for the shelter of the revolutionary troops during the siege of Boston. These had since been dismantled and allowed to fall into utter decay. In a number of cases thirty or forty persons, men, women, and children, were indiscriminately crowded together in one small, miserable open hut. Our provisions and fuel were on short allowance, our bedding was a scanty amount of straw, and we had no furniture of any sort but our own camp-kettles, and these General Burgoyne had with difficulty saved for us from the enemy, who wished to seize them as legitimate plunder.
How mercifully is the future hidden from the eyes of man! Had it been revealed to us by an Angel that our army, by Congress’s profligate repudiation of the Convention, was to remain in captivity for five miserable years, I believe the great mass of us would have run mad, falling upon our guards with our bare hands in a desperate attempt to wrest back our freedom.
In what manner I myself, after having been closely confined for a twelve-month, succeeded in escaping to the British Army in New York, and there took up arms once more against the Americans; and travelled, before the war was over, through another eight states of the American Union, Northern, Southern, and Middle, is a separate story from this. For I then changed my title from ‘Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth’ to ‘Sergeant Lamb of The Twenty-third, or Royal Welch Fusiliers’. Yet into that account Kate Harlowe must again enter (whom now I thought altogether lost to me) and several comrades of The Ninth, who also escaped, and Mrs Jane Crumer, and even that unaccountable personage, the mock-priest John Martin. But, for the present, I have told enough. I have, it will be observed, endeavoured to demark the right line of duty and behaviour which the soldier in the ranks ought invariably to pursue. I may have lost my aim, but even in its failure I trust that my motive will be thought laudable.