Part 15 (1/2)
[Sidenote: One swallow does not make a summer]
Up to this moment, considering the amount of work done and the extent of country traversed, the loss of the British had been very small. They began to speak contemptuously of their antagonists, and the officers amused themselves by laying wagers as to the precise number of days it would take them to reach Albany. In commenting on the failure to occupy Mount Defiance, Burgoyne made a general statement on the strength of a single instance,--which is the besetting sin of human reasoning. ”It convinces me,” said he, ”that the Americans have no men of military science.” Yet General Howe at Boston, in neglecting to occupy Dorchester Heights, had made just the same blunder, and with less excuse; for no one had ever doubted that batteries might be placed there by somebody.
[Sidenote: The king's glee]
[Sidenote: Wrath of John Adams]
[Sidenote: Gates chiefly to blame]
In England the fall of Ticonderoga was greeted with exultation, as the death-blow to the American cause. Horace Walpole tells how the king rushed into the queen's apartment, clapping his hands and shouting, ”I have beat them! I have beat all the Americans!” People began to discuss the best method of reestablis.h.i.+ng the royal governments in the ”colonies.” In America there was general consternation. St. Clair was greeted with a storm of abuse. John Adams, then president of the Board of War, wrote, in the first white heat of indignation, ”We shall never be able to defend a post till we shoot a general!” Schuyler, too, as commander of the department, was ignorantly and wildly blamed, and his political enemies seized upon the occasion to circulate fresh stories to his discredit. A court-martial in the following year vindicated St.
Clair's prudence in giving up an untenable position and saving his army from capture. The verdict was just, but there is no doubt that the failure to fortify Mount Defiance was a grave error of judgment, for which the historian may fairly apportion the blame between St. Clair and Gates. It was Gates who had been in command of Ticonderoga in the autumn of 1776, when an attack by Carleton was expected, and his attention had been called to this weak point by Colonel Trumbull, whom he laughed to scorn. Gates had again been in command from March to June. St. Clair had taken command about three weeks before Burgoyne's approach; he had seriously considered the question of fortifying Mount Defiance, but had not been sufficiently prompt. In no case could any blame attach to Schuyler. Gates was more at fault than any one else, but he did not happen to be at hand when the catastrophe occurred, and accordingly people did not a.s.sociate him with it. On the contrary, amid the general wrath, the loss of the northern citadel was alleged as a reason for superseding Schuyler by Gates; for if he had been there, it was thought that the disaster would have been prevented.
[Portrait: W Turnbull]
[Sidenote: Burgoyne's difficulties begin]
The irony of events, however, alike ignoring American consternation and British glee, showed that the capture of Ticonderoga was not to help the invaders in the least. On the contrary, it straightway became a burden, for it detained an eighth part of Burgoyne's force in garrison at a time when he could ill spare it. Indeed, alarming as his swift advance had seemed at first, Burgoyne's serious difficulties were now just beginning, and the harder he laboured to surmount them the more completely did he work himself into a position from which it was impossible either to advance or to recede. On the 10th of July his whole army had reached Skenesborough (now Whitehall), at the head of Lake Champlain. From this point to Fort Edward, where the American army was encamped, the distance was twenty miles as the crow flies; but Schuyler had been industriously at work with those humble weapons the axe and the crowbar, which in warfare sometimes prove mightier than the sword. The roads, bad enough at their best, were obstructed every few yards by huge trunks of fallen trees, that lay with their boughs interwoven. Wherever the little streams could serve as aids to the march, they were choked up with stumps and stones; wherever they served as obstacles which needed to be crossed, the bridges were broken down.
The country was such an intricate labyrinth of creeks and swamps that more than forty bridges had to be rebuilt in the course of the march.
Under these circ.u.mstances, Burgoyne's advance must be regarded as a marvel of celerity. He accomplished a mile a day, and reached Fort Edward on the 30th of July.
[Sidenote: Schuyler wisely evacuates Fort Edward]
[Sidenote: Enemies gathering in Burgoyne's rear]
In the mean time Schuyler had crossed the Hudson, and slowly fallen back to Stillwater. For this retrograde movement fresh blame was visited upon him by the general public, which at all times is apt to suppose that a war should mainly consist of b.l.o.o.d.y battles, and which can seldom be made to understand the strategic value of a retreat. The facts of the case were also misunderstood. Fort Edward was supposed to be an impregnable stronghold, whereas it was really commanded by highlands.
The Marquis de Chastellux, who visited it somewhat later, declared that it could be taken at any time by 500 men with four siege-guns. Now for fighting purposes an open field is much better than an untenable fortress. If Schuyler had stayed in Fort Edward, he would probably have been forced to surrender; and his wisdom in retreating is further shown by the fact that every moment of delay counted in his favour. The militia of New York and New England were already beating to arms. Some of those yeomen who were with the army were allowed to go home for the harvest; but the loss was more than made good by the numerous levies which, at Schuyler's suggestion and by Was.h.i.+ngton's orders, were collecting under General Lincoln in Vermont, for the purpose of threatening Burgoyne in the rear. The people whose territory was invaded grew daily more troublesome to the enemy. Burgoyne had supposed that it would be necessary only to show himself at the head of an army, when the people would rush by hundreds to offer support or seek protection. He now found that the people withdrew from his line of advance, driving their cattle before them, and seeking shelter, when possible, within the lines of the American army. In his reliance upon the aid of New York loyalists, he was utterly disappointed; very few Tories joined him, and these could offer neither sound advice nor personal influence wherewith to help him. When the yeomanry collected by hundreds, it was only to vex him and r.e.t.a.r.d his progress.
[Sidenote: Use of Indian auxiliaries]
[Sidenote: Burgoyne's address to the chiefs]
Even had the loyalist feeling on the Vermont frontier of New York been far stronger than it really was, Burgoyne had done much to alienate or stifle it by his ill-advised employment of Indian auxiliaries. For this blunder the responsibility rests mainly with Lord North and Lord George Germain. Burgoyne had little choice in the matter except to carry out his instructions. Being a humane man, and sharing, perhaps, in that view of the ”n.o.ble savage” which was fas.h.i.+onable in Europe in the eighteenth century, he fancied he could prevail upon his tawny allies to forego their cherished pastime of murdering and scalping. When, at the beginning of the campaign, he was joined by a party of Wyandots and Ottawas, under command of that same redoubtable Charles de Langlade who, twenty-two years before, had achieved the ruin of Braddock, he explained his policy to them in an elaborate speech, full of such sentimental phrases as the Indian mind was supposed to delight in. The slaughter of aged men, of women and children and unresisting prisoners, was absolutely prohibited; and ”on no account, or pretense, or subtlety, or prevarication,” were scalps to be taken from wounded or dying men. An order more likely to prove efficient was one which provided a reward for every savage who should bring his prisoners to camp in safety. To these injunctions, which must have inspired them with pitying contempt, the chiefs laconically replied that they had ”sharpened their hatchets upon their affections,” and were ready to follow their ”great white father.”
[Portrait: LORD NORTH]
[Sidenote: It is ridiculed by Burke]
The employment of Indian auxiliaries was indignantly denounced by the opposition in Parliament, and when the news of this speech of Burgoyne's reached England it was angrily ridiculed by Burke, who took a sounder view of the natural instincts of the red man. ”Suppose,” said Burke, ”that there was a riot on Tower Hill. What would the keeper of his majesty's lions do? Would he not fling open the dens of the wild beasts, and then address them thus? 'My gentle lions, my humane bears, my tender-hearted hyenas, go forth! But I exhort you, as you are Christians and members of civilized society, to take care not to hurt any man, woman, or child.'” The House of Commons was convulsed over this grotesque picture; and Lord North, to whom it seemed irresistibly funny to hear an absent man thus denounced for measures which he himself had originated, sat choking with laughter, while tears rolled down his great fat cheeks.
[Sidenote: The story of Jane McCrea]
It soon turned out, however, to be no laughing matter. The cruelties inflicted indiscriminately upon patriots and loyalists soon served to madden the yeomanry, and array against the invaders whatever wavering sentiment had hitherto remained in the country. One sad incident in particular has been treasured up in the memory of the people, and celebrated in song and story. Jenny McCrea, the beautiful daughter of a Scotch clergyman of Paulus Hook, was at Fort Edward, visiting her friend Mrs. McNeil, who was a loyalist and a cousin of General Fraser. On the morning of July 27th, a marauding party of Indians burst into the house, and carried away the two ladies. They were soon pursued by some American soldiers, who exchanged a few shots with them. In the confusion which ensued the party was scattered, and Mrs. McNeil was taken alone into the camp of the approaching British army. Next day a savage of gigantic stature, a famous sachem, known as the Wyandot Panther, came into the camp with a scalp which Mrs. McNeil at once recognized as Jenny's, from the silky black tresses, more than a yard in length. A search was made, and the body of the poor girl was found hard by a spring in the forest, pierced with three bullet wounds. How she came to her cruel death was never known. The Panther plausibly declared that she had been accidentally shot during the scuffle with the soldiers, but his veracity was open to question, and the few facts that were known left ample room for conjecture. The popular imagination soon framed its story with a romantic completeness that thrust aside even these few facts. Miss McCrea was betrothed to David Jones, a loyalist who was serving as lieutenant in Burgoyne's army. In the legend which immediately sprang up, Mr. Jones was said to have sent a party of Indians, with a letter to his betrothed, entreating her to come to him within the British lines that they might be married. For bringing her to him in safety the Indians were to receive a barrel of rum. When she had entrusted herself to their care, and the party had proceeded as far as the spring, where the savages stopped to drink, a dispute arose as to who was to have the custody of the barrel of rum, and many high words ensued, until one of the party settled the question offhand by slaying the lady with his tomahawk. It would be hard to find a more interesting example of the mushroom-like growth and obstinate vitality of a romantic legend. The story seems to have had nothing in common with the observed facts, except the existence of the two lovers and the Indians and a spring in the forest.[12] Yet it took possession of the popular mind almost immediately after the event, and it has ever since been repeated, with endless variations in detail, by American historians. Mr. Jones himself--who lived, a broken-hearted man, for half a century after the tragedy--was never weary of pointing out its falsehood and absurdity; but all his testimony, together with that of Mrs. McNeil and other witnesses, to the facts that really happened was powerless to shake the hold upon the popular fancy which the legend had instantly gained. Such an instance, occurring in a community of shrewd and well-educated people, affords a suggestive commentary upon the origin and growth of popular tales in earlier and more ignorant ages.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ALLIES--PAR n.o.bILE FRATRUM[13]]
[Sidenote: The Indians desert Burgoyne]
But in whatever way poor Jenny may have come to her death, there can be no doubt as to the mischief which it swiftly wrought for the invading army. In the first place, it led to the desertion of all the Indian allies. Burgoyne was a man of quick and tender sympathy, and the fate of this sweet young lady shocked him as it shocked the American people. He would have had the Panther promptly hanged, but that his guilt was not clearly proved, and many of the officers argued that the execution of a famous and popular sachem would enrage all the other Indians, and might endanger the lives of many of the soldiers. The Panther's life was accordingly spared, but Burgoyne made it a rule that henceforth no party of Indians should be allowed to go marauding save under the lead of some British officer, who might watch and restrain them. When this rule was put in force, the tawny savages grunted and growled for two or three days, and then, with hoa.r.s.e yells and hoots, all the five hundred broke loose from the camp, and scampered off to the Adirondack wilderness.
From a military point of view, the loss was small, save in so far as it deprived the army of valuable scouts and guides. But the thirst for vengeance which was aroused among the yeomanry of northern New York, of Vermont, and of western Ma.s.sachusetts, was a much more serious matter.