So far it had been a very hard winter.1 The troops were desperately short of both food and fuel; rebel privateers, using the shallow coast inlets into which the bigger British ships could not pursue them, were attacking forage and supply vessels. Urgently Howe warned the Colonial Office in London to route all single vessels bound for Boston via Halifax to enable them to make the last dangerous leg of the journey in groups under the escort of Graves’ frigates.
Worse, a big supply convoy from Britain did not arrive. “Presumably,” Howe wrote gloomily, “northerly winds have forced them far from the coast.” Because of the dearth of fuel, he gave orders for some of the wharves to be taken up “which must be our only source if fresh supplies do not arrive. . . .”
The troops, underfed and freezing in their barracks, embarked on a rampage of plundering. The military authorities tried to stop them with repressive measures; the general orders warned the soldiers that the executioner would attend the provost marshal on his rounds and “hang upon the spot the first man he should detect in the fact without waiting for further proof by trial.”
No summary execution is recorded, but the punishments for plundering became increasingly harsh. “Robberies and housebreaking,” Howe was soon to write to London, “have got to such a height in this town that some examples had to be made.”
And they were. On January 3 a court-martial sentenced two men to death and ordered a woman, Isabella McMahon, to be given 100 lashes on the bare back at the cart’s tail in different sections of the town. Women, like anyone else who traveled with the army, were subject to its discipline.
The same court sentenced seven men to severe floggings. Among them was Isabella’s husband who was condemned to 1,000 lashes.
For flogging, soldiers were bound to a whipping post of crossed halberds. Because 1,000 lashes would probably kill a man, the sentence was usually spread over four sessions of 250 strokes at weekly intervals, administered by the drummers, each man wielding the cat-o’-nine-tails twenty-five times. At the end of the flogging, buckets of salt water were sloshed over the bleeding lacerations to guard against infection.
The punishments were savage, deliberately so, because most officers believed fear was the only way to control the rough raw material that formed the army. They may have been right. The progressive John Burgoyne tried to lead his troops without corporal punishment, but once his army faced crisis he was forced to become just as harsh as other commanders, as, indeed, was Washington, for all the rebel scoffing at the British as “bloody-backs.”
Many of the generals, however, understood fully the weapon they were handling. Howe’s letters to London reveal a clear sympathy for the men under sentence of punishment, especially the young soldiers. Commanders in chief could order the execution of court-martial sentences of death, but only the King could reprieve. On many occasions, Howe pleaded for the royal mercy for his condemned men; often, too, he exercised his authority to reduce flogging sentences.
That January mercy was not very evident. Every week, often several times, the army was forced to watch floggings that reached such a pitch that on one occasion a drummer flung his cat-o’-ninetails to the ground and refused to continue the punishment. He was arrested but freed the next day.
Yet despite the brutal sentences, the plundering continued as it always would, though in Boston it was greatly provoked by the shortages.
In an independent attempt to alleviate conditions in the port by deterring the rebel privateers, Admiral Samuel Graves sent a ship up to the seaport town of Falmouth, and burned it. Only with great difficulty did Howe who, as military commander in chief, had no control over the navy, persuade him not to repeat the operation elsewhere: This was hardly the way to impress the loyal Americans Howe was trying to rally to the cause of the King. It was the final operation of the belligerent admiral. He was soon replaced by Admiral Molyneux Shuldham. Certainly, the burning of Falmouth had not worked as a deterrent; the raids of the privateers went right on.
Howe’s one consolation was that the besiegers were also suffering from severe shortage. “I am informed,” he had reported home hopefully the previous month, “that the troops [rebels] are in great want of clothing and much dissatisfied on other accounts. Their agreement to serve will expire for the most part by the last of December.”
The army of rebels was indeed in trouble, as was always the case at the turn of the year when service agreements ended. That year the problems were more marked, for the new revolutionaries found discipline hard to accept. When the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had reorganized the militia, which formed the early skeleton of the Continental Army, it had set up a system under which the men elected their own officers. This was very democratic and conformed with the principles of liberty that were being aired so freely, but it did not result in a very high standard of soldiering. Also, Congress’s early attempts to set up supply systems were completely inadequate.
While Howe was trying to survive the winter and curb the plundering of his men, George Washington was still attempting to carve some kind of order out of the chaos of his new army. Forty-three years old, tall and elegant, Washington had now been commander in chief of the rebels for eight months since arriving at Cambridge in May just after the Battle of Bunker Hill.
John Adams’ proposal that he should be appointed had been unopposed in Congress, mainly because his military background was clearly outstanding. Like most of the senior men in the rebel army, Washington had fought with the British, displaying a spectacular ability for leadership in the French and Indian War. At only twenty-three, he had been appointed commander of Virginia’s forces to repel the attacks by the Indians who were then sweeping across the border of the province every few weeks. By the time of the Revolution, Washington was not only the South’s most famous soldier, but also, through his own inheritance and his marriage to a wealthy widow, one of Virginia’s biggest landowners with a keen interest in the province’s politics.
He was a natural choice as a delegate to Congress as he was for political as well as military reasons for the post of commander in chief. Samuel Adams and the New England delegates, who had sparked off the rebellion and who were therefore suspect in some quarters as extremists, favored the appointment of a Southerner in the cause of colonial unity.
To the British commanders, Washington was a bit of an enigma. As a rebel he merited little respect, but unlike Carleton in his dealings with Montgomery at Quebec, they negotiated with him on the assumption that he was a gentleman who observed the same rules of war that they did. Gage and Howe corresponded with him regularly—usually on the twin issues of treatment of prisoners and unacceptable fighting practices (both accused the other of using musket balls with nails driven through them), and their letters were phrased with elaborate courtesy marked by a kind of unspoken regret that a man of Washington’s caliber could have allied himself with an illegal movement led by such riffraff as Samuel Adams. And they distrusted him with good reason on the running negotiations on prisoner exchanges, for obviously he considered every British soldier held a far greater loss to the British army than were the untrained Americans in Howe’s custody to the rebel force.
Through that winter, despite the rebel problems, Howe knew that Washington was actively planning attack. From New York Governor Tryon warned Howe that there was a scheme under discussion to kidnap him and hold him as hostage. Other plans included many kinds of new secret weapons—some futuristic—for use against British ships. Yet throughout those hard months, though he had kept Bunker Hill on his north fully manned, Howe had left the Dorchester peninsula, only just across the narrow strip of water to the south of Boston, completely unprotected.
This omission is hard to explain. On the hills of Dorchester the rebels could repeat exactly the operation they had started on Bunker Hill. They could set up cannon and make Boston untenable. The American army was better equipped with guns than it had been in June, better generaled and, though Washington was facing enormous difficulties, far better organized.2
Some of the reason for Howe’s neglect of this obvious precaution may have been rooted in his character. He was an interesting, complex man, an intelligent and shrewd military tactician; as he had proved at Bunker Hill and on other battlefields, he had great courage and determination in action, and his men and most of his officers held him in high respect. But he was withdrawn and taciturn. He could be very difficult to deal with, as Clinton, who was prickly himself, often experienced. Despite this, he enjoyed social life. He gambled at faro until late at night and had a blond mistress, the wife of Joshua Loring, who on the strength of his wife’s relationship with the general was appointed commissary of prisons, a post that through graft provided ample financial pickings.
Howe’s great basic fault was a strange apathy that seemed to cloud his judgment. Very often he was slow to go to battle. Sometimes this was due to the fact that he was waiting for men or supplies, but he seemed to have an instinctive tendency to delay aggressive campaigning. There was a weariness about him, as though the slightest effort required strength of will. His dispatches dealing with the postponement of attack through lack of stores or equipment carry little of the impatience that would have nagged many other commanders. On the contrary, there is almost a sense of relief. For “Billie” Howe, there was always time.
In February the British general was informed by his agents that the Americans were making preparations to fortify Dorchester. But he still did not take the hint. He sent over a raiding party which burned some vacant houses and captured some rebel sentries but took no further action.
On the night of March 2 Washington’s battery of heavy guns at Roxbury opened up on Boston. The British cannon responded. All night long the cannonballs were whistling in both directions. The following night the rebel barrage started again.
The bombardment, as Howe soon discovered, was a diversion to focus British attention. But at ten o’clock that Sunday night somebody noticed at last that there was activity across the water to the south. Brigadier General Smith, promoted from lieutenant colonel since he had led the British to Concord, was informed that the Americans “were at work on Dorchester Heights.” Incredibly, history repeated itself. Howe apparently refused to be hurried from his game of faro or Mrs. Loring. It is hard to believe that after the savaging he had endured at Bunker Hill he could have happily left the matter until the morning. But that is what he did.
The next day he viewed fortifications on the heights far more elaborate than those the Americans had erected on Bunker Hill. Astonished, he commented: “The rebels have done more in one night than my whole army could have done in months.”
Howe ordered his cannon to open fire, but the forts were too high for the guns to elevate adequately. The admiral warned him that once Washington brought up his artillery, the British ships would be hopelessly exposed; the fleet would have to vacate its anchorage.
Howe ordered a night attack by a force of more than 2,000 men. During the day the soldiers were shipped down to Castle William since it was a better springboard from which to launch the assault, but that evening a violent storm blew up making the crossing impractical. In any event, Howe’s heart was not in it. Plans had already been agreed to evacuate Boston and take New York.
At seven o’clock that night a council of war was in session in Province House. Lord Percy, according to engineer Archibald Robertson, advised strongly against persisting with an attack that was likely to be expensive in casualties and could at best result only in controlling a position they were about to abandon.
“Those have been my own sentiments from the first,” said Howe with a sigh, “but I thought the honour of the troops was concerned.”
It seemed a pretty poor reason for a possible replay of the slaughter of Bunker Hill, and so it evidently appeared to the men sitting at that council table. For the next morning the evacuation was ordered. The transports were brought up to the wharves, and the loading of equipment and stores was begun.
Boston became a town of turmoil. The Tories, who would have been fiercely persecuted if they had fallen into the hands of the rebels, were packing to leave with the troops. Wagons, piled high with stores, jammed the streets on their way to the wharves.
The Boston selectmen approached Howe with entreaties not to burn the town, and he agreed, provided Washington did not attack. So they sent an urgent message to the rebel commander, who, suspiciously, would agree to nothing—though, in fact, he made no move.
On the morning of March 16 the British fleet of nearly 100 ships carrying more than 10,000 people, including 1,100 Tories, sailed from Massachusetts Bay and set course for the British naval base at Halifax.
It was the last movement in the British defense against the initial onslaught of the Revolution. But as Howe’s ships were sailing north for Nova Scotia, plans in London were far advanced for a massive new offensive to stamp out the revolt. The decisions following the shock news of Bunker Hill were now being transformed into action by an administration machine not equipped for such major ventures.
Troops were being recruited and trained. Arrangements had been completed to hire mercenaries from the mini-states of Germany, to be known, though not all were from Hesse, as Hessians.
In fact, no less than three campaigns, all to be launched more or less concurrently in the late spring, were being prepared: (1) 9,000 soldiers for Carleton—if, in fact, he still held Quebec—to drive the rebels out of Canada and to assault from Lake Champlain down the Hudson; (2) 25,000 men to join Howe for an attack from the sea on New York to annihilate Washington and the new American army; and (3) a small force of 2,500 troops to sail to the South to form a nucleus of an army of Loyalists from Virginia and the Carolinas. This should have left in the autumn but had been delayed by the overburdened supply departments.
It was against the supply departments, the graft-ridden, dilatory bureaucracy of Whitehall, that Lord George Germain, desperately anxious to retrieve a reputation tarnished at the Battle of Minden, was battling with determined vigor. The new armies, by far the largest force Britain had ever sent overseas, needed tents, kettles, uniforms, blankets, food, muskets, cannon, ammunition, wagons. An enormous fleet of hundreds of transports and warships would have to be ready by the spring.
Germain knew that the only hope of the fleet’s sailing anywhere near the required time lay in the pressure he could apply in the name of the King. And he applied it with enormous energy—demanding in pert, cold notes to know the situation regarding schedules and delays and completion dates, always undertoned with the implied threat that he would refer the matter to the King.
Even the Prime Minister was not beyond Germain’s insistent probing. Two days before Christmas the appalling news of the rebel sweep through Canada and the siege of Quebec was placed on the Colonial Secretary’s desk. Immediately he stalked to the Admiralty to demand relief ships, but everyone had gone home for Christmas except Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser, whose authority was limited. Promptly Germain hurried the admiral to 10 Downing Street, where Lord North was just about to drive in his coach to his country house at Bushey, and insisted that the Premier should wait and deal with the emergency. Reluctantly, North agreed, and the three men hammered out the plans for the relief of Carleton.
No ships could get through until the early spring, but Germain knew that unless the machinery was put in motion immediately, they would not be there then—and the garrison only had food enough to last until mid-May.
The dictatorial methods of this haughty aristocrat were often criticized—and with reason, for later he tried impractically to apply them across 3,500 miles of ocean—but without them on this occasion it is highly doubtful if the three relief vessels would have sailed in time. As it was, on March 11, while the fleet carrying Carleton’s main reinforcement was still forming, the little squadron of three fighting ships, carrying 200 soldiers, headed out into the Atlantic on course for the St. Lawrence.