Two Crowns for America, Page 22

  “Oh, quite,” Andrew said. “May I think on it for a few days? I would not like to overexpose the Professor. It may be that a more informal association would be more appropriate than actual participation. In the meantime, please be assured of the support of the Chevalier Andrew Wallace.”

  Franklin looked at him for a long moment, then slowly nodded.

  “I sense that additional factors are at work here that you may not share at this time,” Franklin said. “I am not offended,” he added, holding up a hand. “Under the circumstances, I shall be quite happy with the assistance of Chevalier Wallace. And if the Professor can also lend his good counsel at a later time, so much the better.”

  Tossing off the last of his port, he got to his feet. “But I’ve kept you long enough, and I must be about further errands—the first of which is to drop by John Dunlap’s printing shop and see how the typesetting progresses. I shall let you know when I have further word regarding the committee’s plans. Meanwhile, if the bells can be ignored, I expect you would be glad of some sleep.”

  When he had gone, and Arabella had locked the door behind him, she came to sit on the edge of the bed beside Andrew.

  “What will you do now?” she asked. “Can you summon up the Master’s overshadowing at will?”

  “No, he must anticipate the time when it is needed, and I must be ready to facilitate it,” Andrew said. “But I do have his instructions on this general subject—and Franklin seemed willing enough to accept the Professor’s assistance at a later date.”

  “Saint-Germain has already worked out the symbols for the Seal?” she asked incredulously.

  “No, nothing that specific,” he replied with a smile. “But he suggests the general forms. The shield will be simple enough—based on the new flag you have been crafting so diligently, with its starry field and its red and white stripes. But there are a number of more esoteric symbols to be considered, such as the All-Seeing Eye of Providence and the Radiant Triangle. The Master suggests several mottoes as well. I shall pass these on to Franklin and allow him to introduce them as and when appropriate. Then we shall see what falls on fertile soil.”

  Arabella smiled, reaching out to stroke his cheek lightly.

  “Enough of this,” she whispered. “You’re tired. You should sleep.”

  “With all those bells?” he retorted.

  “With all those bells,” she agreed. “Sleep now, Beaupère.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Justin likewise had succumbed to sleep, after being released by Saint-Germain. He remembered little of the later part of the session, for at the height of Andrew’s harangue in Congress, the Master had laid a hand atop Justin’s wrist and bade him close his eyes.

  What followed had not been like sleep at all—rather, a faint, drawing sensation between his eyes that dizzied him and left him drained. Of what further transpired in the mirror, he had no idea; only that, when he regained his senses, slumped in his chair and with a crick in his neck, Saint-Germain was covering the mirror with its black silk drape, faintly smiling. He looked tired but satisfied and promised to convey details of the completed Work in the morning.

  He was as good as his word. In the days that followed Justin availed himself of Saint-Germain’s briefing on the successful ratification of the declaration and learned more of his Master Plan for the now United Colonies. By mid-July, he was starting back for Boston with new instructions for Andrew, Simon, and the prince. He also, to his surprise, bore a letter for Dr. Benjamin Franklin.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, the American Declaration of Independence was being promulgated throughout the thirteen colonies, to almost universal acclamation and joy. On July 9, as Howe’s army continued to mass on Staten Island and the expected Hessians began to arrive, the Convention of New York formally adopted the declaration at White Plains.

  Early that evening Washington paraded his regiments for a reading of the declaration and informed them in accompanying orders that the true liberty of the new union now would depend “(under God) solely on the success of our arms.” Three huzzahs greeted the reading; and later that night local Sons of Liberty marched on the Bowling Green to pull down and behead the huge, gilded equestrian statue of George III—an act of riotous high spirits deplored by Washington, but he benefited in the end, for most of its lead was taken to Connecticut, where it was melted down and molded into more than forty thousand bullets.

  He would need them. In early July, joining Howe’s army encamped on Staten Island, another British fleet arrived in New York, followed by thirty transports and men-of-war just come from attacking Charleston, South Carolina, though Generals Lee and Moultrie had repulsed them there. Very shortly Generals Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis joined Howe from the south.

  From this position of strength, and with another fleet still to come, Howe felt justified in making one final attempt to negotiate a possible reconciliation—for neither he nor his brother the admiral were personally enthusiastic about fighting the colonies. Concurrent with their military brief to deal with the American rebellion, the Howes had been empowered to inquire regarding the causes of the colonists’ complaints and to act as peace commissioners—though they possessed no authority to offer any terms. Nor did they truly understand what was at stake, as was confirmed by their very approach to the intended parley.

  On July 14, in pelting rain, Admiral Howe sent out a barge from his flagship, under a flag of truce. Royal Navy lieutenant Philip Brown told the Americans who met him in the center of the harbor that he had a letter from Howe to Washington.

  The Americans withdrew to confer and shortly returned with General Knox and Washington’s adjutant, Joseph Reed, who asked how the letter was addressed. Brown courteously informed him that it was from Lord Howe to Mr. Washington—to which Reed stiffly replied that they had no such person in the American Army. When Brown showed them the letter, clearly addressed to “George Washington, Esq., New York,” Reed declared that he could not accept the letter unless it was inscribed to General Washington, which title all the world had known “since the transactions of last summer.”

  Brown went back with the letter, and the Howes conferred. On the sixteenth another attempt was made to deliver a letter to “Mr. Washington” and was again refused. The next day came a query whether “His Excellency General Washington” would be willing to receive General Howe’s adjutant general. Washington consented, and a meeting was set for July 20 at noon.

  The meeting was held at General Knox’s headquarters, with Washington’s personal guard drawn up before the house and all due military courtesy observed. Lieutenant Colonel James Patterson was the soul of courtesy, his every phrase punctuated with “May it please Your Excellency” and “If Your Excellency so pleases.” But the heart of his message was as Washington had expected. The Howes had no authority to settle anything, and the Americans did not believe they were doing anything wrong but were only defending their rights. This left little to discuss.

  “Has Your Excellency no particular comments with which you would please to honor me to Lord and General Howe?” Patterson asked incredulously.

  “Nothing, sir, but my particular compliments to both,” Washington replied.

  Diplomacy having thus failed, the Howes now prepared to set the British military machine into full motion. A further twenty-eight transports and more warships arrived on August 12, bringing Howe’s command to more than thirty-two thousand professional soldiers, well armed and well equipped. Ten days later a horrified Washington watched through his glass in awe as boatload after boatload of Redcoats and Hessians were ferried across to Long Island, disgorging a sea of scarlet tunics and bearskins and brass-fronted caps.

  Expecting that the main attack would fall on Manhattan, and that the British Navy would attempt to land additional troops north of the city, Washington sent only eight thousand troops to reinforce Long Island. In the illness of Nathaniel Greene, who would have commanded the Long Island troops, John Sullivan was sent out to deal
with the situation and was captured, along with General Stirling. The following day Israel Putnam found himself fooled by a diversionary British foray against the American right wing while Howe outflanked him on the left with his main force.

  Many of the Continental troops performed superbly, but they were simply overwhelmed and outclassed by the British and Hessians. Washington brought in reinforcements and prepared to resist a British assault, but on seeing Howe’s preparations for siege operations, he soon realized that the position in the Brooklyn Heights was untenable. The night of August 28 found the Americans huddled in the flooded trenches of Brooklyn Heights, short of food and ammunition, with the East River at their backs, a vastly superior force before them, and Washington and several of his ablest generals in the trap with them.

  That Washington was able to extricate himself from this situation was no small miracle, though he was to prove repeatedly during the war that he was at his best when his back was against a wall. Calling on the resources of two Massachusetts regiments largely made up of Marblehead sailors and fishermen, he assembled a flotilla of small boats and, under cover of darkness and fog on the night of August 29, managed to evacuate between ten and twelve thousand men to the New York side of the river, from under the very noses of the British. His only losses: five heavy cannons that became mired in the mud and three stragglers who had remained behind to plunder. Reporting the escape to Congress the day after, he apologized for the delay in informing them and noted that for six days “I had hardly been off my horse and had never closed my eyes.”

  New York clearly was lost. General Greene and others of his command staff urged Washington to burn the city before withdrawing, to prevent establishment of a permanent British base, but Congress forbade it. On learning that Howe meant to winter in New York, Washington again consulted with his generals and made the decision to begin the evacuation as soon as possible. To assist in their planning, he sent a young captain named Nathan Hale behind the lines to Long Island to spy out further details of Howe’s troop positions.

  Justin caught up with the American command staff while the evacuation plans were still taking shape, having arrived in Philadelphia a few days before. Discovering that Andrew and Arabella had set out for Cambridge earlier in September, he came directly to Harlem to deliver Simon’s new instructions from Saint-Germain. The letter for Andrew was sent on to Cambridge by post rider, and another, intended for the prince, was locked away in a strongbox, for Simon had had no word from him for some months and knew his position must be precarious. With luck it might be possible to smuggle the correspondence to him during the winter, when military activity was negligible; it certainly could not be gotten to him while an evacuation was in progress.

  Meanwhile, the Americans were to be given no opportunity for a leisurely withdrawal. By September 21, as the evacuation was just getting under way, the British attacked again at Kips Bay. Under cover fire of eighty guns from British ships along the East River, the impending landing of seemingly uncountable flatboats loaded with Redcoat and Hessian infantry so demoralized the defending militiamen that they threw down their muskets and fled.

  Washington was furious, and with several aides galloped the four miles from the Heights to the landing site in disbelief. The men were retreating in blind panic, convinced that even the sound of the British guns would blow them to pieces. Ordering them to stand and fight, the General and his aides drew their swords and charged into their midst, but to no avail.

  “Take the walls! Stand and fight!” Washington shouted, indicating fences behind which they might still make a stand.

  But his exhortations fell on deaf ears. Though a few tried to do as the General directed, most continued to surge up the Post Road, their flight hampering an orderly retreat. Washington swung at them in rage with his riding crop, finally throwing down his hat in sheer anguish and crying, “Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?”

  Meanwhile, not eighty yards away, the British were advancing at the run, and the Commander in Chief seemed not to recognize his danger, perhaps not even to care.

  “General, we must withdraw!” Simon shouted, catching the eye of one of Washington’s other aides and kneeing his horse closer. “General, come away now!”

  But Washington seemed stupefied at the defection of his troops, blind with rage and frustration, and briefly railed at Simon and the other aide when they seized his bridle and led him to safety. As the Americans were gradually forced to withdraw to Harlem Heights, British troops marched down Broadway virtually unopposed. Later that night Simon remonstrated with the General for taking such risks.

  “I beg you not to place yourself in such danger, General! What if you had been taken or killed? You must take more care!”

  But Washington’s mind was still focused on New York—and on the fire by then consuming the city, of which he wrote to Congress, “Providence, or some good honest fellow, has done more for us than we were disposed to do for ourselves.”

  It was never determined who was responsible for the blaze, which broke out in some wooden warehouses along the East River and destroyed some five hundred houses—about a quarter of the city’s dwellings—but the British apprehended at least one good honest fellow who was to pay a terrible price for other work carried out in Washington’s behalf, that night when New York burned. Washington did not learn of the cost until several days later, when Simon ushered a haggard, unshaven, and exhausted Prince Lucien into the upstairs room commandeered as an office by the Commander in Chief. The prince wore civilian attire somewhat the worse for wear and appeared not to have slept for some time. Both he and Simon wore somber expressions.

  “General, Dr. Saint-John has just come from behind the British lines,” Simon said quietly. “I fear he brings distressing news.”

  “Sit down, please, Doctor,” Washington said, noting the prince’s condition and laying his pen aside. “Pray, be plain in your reporting.”

  The prince inclined his head in bone-weary acquiescence. “The gist of the news is this, General. Nathan Hale is taken and has been hanged without trial. I witnessed the execution and have spent the past three days making my own escape.”

  “Hale taken?” Washington repeated dumbly. “And executed?”

  “That is the usual fate of spies, sir,” the prince replied, “though the doing of it went beyond the usual coldness. He was captured the night of the twenty-first and executed the following morning, allowed no Bible or benefit of clergy. He had all but completed his sketches of the British troop positions and had the incriminating papers on his person. There was no question of his fate, and nothing I could do to save him. As it is, I dare not go back.”

  “Hale dead,” Washington murmured, still reeling with the shock. “And I sent him to his death.”

  “He knew the risk,” the prince retorted, then added, more gently, “You must not blame yourself. He did not blame you. He was a brave soldier, and a true son of liberty. Would you hear his last words?”

  Washington nodded numbly.

  “He said that it was the duty of every good soldier to obey any order from his Commander in Chief. He said it with pride, and he bade the men around him to be ready for death in whatever shape it might appear. Then he said, ‘I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.’ If many display his courage and devotion, I think you need not fear for the final outcome of this war, General—though many more will fall before all is resolved. The price will be dear.”

  “Well do I know that,” Washington whispered. “All too well do I know.”

  Official word of Hale’s fate did not come for several days, by which time Washington had succeeded in withdrawing the remainder of his troops from New York and had even inflicted a minor setback on the British at Harlem Heights. By then the prince had studied his instructions from Saint-Germain, acquainted himself with Washington’s general intentions through the approaching winter, and decided that his best course of action now lay in returning to France, for Congress wa
s preparing to send a delegation to join Silas Deane in Paris. Deane had been sent in April, as an agent of two secret committees of Congress, to buy guns and equipment for the Continental Army—all on credit. Now Franklin and Arthur Lee were to join him, with Franklin as senior American negotiator. Their mission: to secure additional credit and to present a proposed treaty of alliance to the French government.

  “I know most of the men with whom they must deal,” the prince told Simon the night before he was to leave. “It may be that I can ease certain introductions, open certain doors. I have useful financial contacts as well. If I may, I should like to take Justin with me.”

  “But he has only just returned,” Simon began as Justin looked at the prince in surprise. “I had hoped to have the services of my aide for a few weeks, at least—perhaps even through the winter.”

  “He is an American who speaks fluent French, in addition to his many other talents,” the prince said with a smile. “For what I have in mind, he will be able to do us far better service in France. Believe me, I have the Master’s own word in this regard.”

  “Very well,” Simon said, though a trifle dubiously. “And what happens here in the meantime?”

  “You must continue to safeguard the General,” the prince replied, “and to guide him toward his high destiny. For now it is a deadly game of cat and mouse, with many cats who, happily for us, are somewhat complacent. Cats also do not like snow—and winter will soon be upon us. Let us hope that the mouse continues to be exceedingly clever and agile, and that he does not underestimate the cats.”

  He and Justin left the next day, heading south for a ship out of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Washington’s scarce-gained success at Harlem Heights was to become the pattern for many a future military encounter: to harry the British without any hope of actually winning, because of the sheer superiority of British numbers, but to tie up British forces with uncertainty. Though Howe never had fewer than twenty-seven thousand troops under his command, once the fleets arrived, he remained wary of advancing too strongly against the Americans, forever imagining hordes of American troops ready to fall upon his army. Perhaps with this in mind, both he and his brother, the admiral, began to talk of reconciliation again and let it be known that they desired to negotiate a peace.