Sergeant Lamb's America

  Opposite the city of Boston and separated from it by the Charles River, which was about the breadth of the Thames at London Bridge, another peninsula of much the same size as Boston’s jutted towards it, and was similarly joined to the main land by a narrow neck. Charlestown lay at one corner of the flat head of this other peninsula, which was formed mainly of a steep ridge, Charlestown Heights, whose two humps were known as Bunker’s Hill and Breed’s Pasture; of which Bunker’s Hill was both the loftier and the farther from Boston. General Gage, observing that Charlestown Heights commanded the whole of Boston, decided on the precaution of occupying Bunker’s Hill. He was, however, forestalled by the revolutionaries, who had spies everywhere. Learning of his intention, they decided to seize the hill and fortify it themselves: to show their power and provoke the British to a battle in conditions favouring defence rather than attack.

  On the night of June 16th 1775, then, a detachment of some twelve hundred Massachusetts militia crossed Charlestown Neck with entrenching tools and set hastily to work under the orders of an engineer. Because of some mistake it was the lesser hill, Breed’s Pasture, close to Charlestown, that they pitched upon; which was a less defensible position and did not offer so ready an escape over the Neck. Here they worked with such diligence and silence that before dawn they had nearly completed a strong redoubt, mounting ten cannon, and a six-foot high entrenchment which extended one hundred paces to their left, facing Boston.

  When discovered by the British troops at about five o’clock the redoubt was plied with an incessant cannonade from the line-of-battle ships and floating batteries in the river, besides the cannon that could carry across from Boston, three-quarters of a mile distant. Most of the Americans soon ran, including all the gunners, who took four guns off with them, crying that this was murder and that they had been betrayed. However, about five hundred of them coolly continued their work, which they completed about noon; for because of the steep elevation the damage done by our cannonade was not so severe as was predicted.

  Meanwhile General Gage as Commander-in-Chief called his major-generals together for a council of war. General Sir Henry Clinton, supported by Generals Sir William Howe and John Burgoyne, proposed (very correctly) sending round a picked force of Grenadiers, supported by artillery, to make a landing on the neck of the Charlestown peninsula, which was not two hundred paces wide, and so cut off the retreat of the Americans. This might well have been done without loss. We held command of the water, which was navigable to shallow craft on either side of the Neck, and the Americans encamped on the Neck were in no posture to stand an attack with bayonets. Those on the peninsula must then have chosen between starvation or surrender.

  But General Gage opposed this plan. He resolved instead to land a considerable force at Moulton’s Point (the right-hand corner of the peninsula, as you look across from Boston) and drive the rebels off the heights by force of arms. He could not resist giving the troops the chance for which they had been so long clamouring: which was to come to grips with the enemy and give them a good drubbing. Boston had lately been a cramped and miserable station, a by-word for high prices and low fever. All longed for a sortie. ‘Once let us get into the back country,’ cried General Burgoyne, ‘and we’ll soon find elbow-room!’

  Two thousand five hundred troops were therefore landed at Moulton’s Point under the command of Major-General Sir William Howe. At three o’clock in the afternoon the advance began, one division deploying against the enemy’s left, intending to turn it and seize Bunker’s Hill in the rear; another making a frontal attack against the Redoubt on Breed’s Pasture.

  The day was exceedingly hot, the grass stood knee-high. Yet the men, dressed in their heavy greatcoats, were burdened, besides their rifles and ammunition, with blankets, heavy full packs and three days’ provisions a man – the whole weighing above 100 pounds; Mr Commissary Stedman, the historian, rates it at 125 pounds. They advanced very slowly, the ground being broken by a succession of high fences; and the ridge, though at its highest point it rose no more than one hundred and ten feet above the river, seemed to them like Snowdon or the Pyrenees.

  The Americans had now been greatly reinforced and, before the close of the battle, numbered more than three thousand men. Of these a thousand from New Hampshire and Connecticut, good men, went to line a long fence, of stone below and rails above, which protected their left. This barricade lay ‘refused’ – that is, somewhat behind the line of the entrenchment – and along lower ground. They had stuffed the interstices with grass, and the front was protected by another rail fence of the zigzag or Virginian sort. The advance was not supported by artillery as strongly as it should have been; for at least four reasons. In the first place, the guns that fired grape, that most horrific shot, were mired in a soft patch. In the second, the shot in the side boxes of our six-pounders were, by an error, twelve-pound balls. In the third, the Chief of Artillery, Colonel Cleaveland, was not with the batteries, being absent at a Latin lesson, which is to say that he was spending his morning in company with pretty Miss Lovell, daughter of the master of the Latin School. In the fourth, General Gage had failed to arrange with Admiral Samuel Graves, with whom he was not on the most cordial terms, to cover his advance on the right. Gun-boats of light draught or the Symmetry transport, which mounted several eighteen-pounder guns, might have raked the enemy position from end to end.

  The battle was joined near simultaneously along the whole half-mile of the position, but our men were allowed to fire their volley too soon – the Americans not yet even showing their hats above the entrenchments, except for a few look-out men and officers. General Putnam, who was mounted and seemed to be in effective command of the American forces – though there was no hierarchy of rank as yet in this disorderly army – galloped from point to point and swore to shoot any man who fired before the enemy came within point-blank range. The Americans feared and obeyed this violent man, who, by the bye, claimed to have killed and scalped a number of Frenchmen in the previous war. Guided by him, the Massachusetts officers ran very boldly along the parapet, kicking up their men’s muskets.

  When at length the American volley was permitted, the execution done was terrible. Not only was the general fire well aimed – ‘Aim at the waist-belt’ was their cry – but they had marksmen armed with rifle-guns whose sole charge it was to pick off the royal officers, conspicuous in the bright sun by the glittering gorgets at their throats. The attack was broken all along the line, the front ranks withering away; the remainder, finding themselves leaderless, retired out of range, re-formed and again advanced against the enemy, the companies being now generally commanded by sergeants. The oldest officers and soldiers engaged, among them some who had fought at Minden and other great battles of the Seven Years’ War, declared it was the hottest service they had ever seen. The enemy were employing slugs and buckshot in their firelocks, and the wounds that ensued were the despair of our surgeons.

  The second attack failed, as the first had done, though personally led by General Howe. It was he who had taken the forlorn-hope up the Heights of Abraham on the glorious day that General Wolfe captured Quebec from the French and made Canada ours. He soon found himself standing alone, before the rail-fence, the whole of his staff of twelve officers having been either killed or wounded, though he was unhurt. He was a tall, large, swarthy man, somewhat of a voluptuary; and very German in appearance, being descended, like Lord North, from George I and a German mistress, though she was a different one from Lord North’s grand-dam. His coolness and officer-like behaviour on this occasion cannot be too much applauded. He went over to the troops who had been flung back from the Redoubt and ordered them to unbuckle their packs and remove their greatcoats, together with all other impediments to action. ‘The third try is lucky, my brave boys,’ he is reported to have said, ‘and this time we’ll take the bayonet to ’em only.’ If he said this, it was a long speech for him: for he was almost as silent a man as his brother Admiral Sir Richard Howe, whom the sailors called ?
??Black Dick’. He kept his self-possession so wonderfully that when a certain general officer, meeting him later upon the field of battle, made a teasing remark about the costliness of ‘this new sort of light infantry tactics’ he only grinned in reply.

  The British batteries in Boston, and the ships’ guns, now punished Charlestown with red-hot balls and carcasses (or incendiary shells), for enemy musket-fire from the houses and the meeting-house steeple had been galling our left. Soon five hundred wooden houses were in one great blaze. The smoke and cinders blew into our soldiers’ eyes, already sore with the sweat pouring from their brows, and made them swear loudly; yet they answered General Howe’s summons with a cheer and, for the third time, advanced intrepidly against the Redoubt. This time the Americans, who were pretty short of ammunition and lacked bayonets, would not face the assault, though outnumbering our people by two to one. With their trousers rolled high above their naked feet and ankles, they scrambled out of the trenches. The majority of them got safe back across the Neck, which was now swept by the ships’ fire, but many were caught. The Grenadier company of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, with which in after years I had the honour to serve, had the post of honour on this occasion, and lost every man but five of its three-and-thirty: nevertheless these five managed to make good an oath of vengeance sworn after the first attack against a certain sharp-shooter. He stood upon a cask placed on the banquette of the Redoubt, three feet above his fellows, and was known to have wounded their company officer, Captain Blakeny, and accounted for three subaltern officers besides. He was perfect at a hundred paces and was kept constantly nourished with loaded rifles by his comrades. This champion maintained his fire to the last; but the Grenadiers, when they came up with him, and he fought with his rifle-butt, drove their bayonets through his vitals again and again. It was said that three of our officers were in the first assault shot in the back by men behind. This was not deliberately done, the men’s loyalty being beyond question: it was, I believe, due to crowding and overlapping at the corner of the Redoubt.

  So exhausted were the troops, and their losses so calamitous, that General Howe did not pursue the enemy over Charlestown Neck and on to their headquarters to Cambridge. He contented himself with occupying Bunker’s Hill and fortifying it. The Americans thereupon fortified Prospect Hill, at a little distance beyond the Neck (a place with which I was two years later to form a long and miserable acquaintance), and gave our people to understand that they were prepared to sell this eminence at the same price as the last. Our casualties were nearly one thousand men, and ninety-two officers, among these Major Pitcairne, who fell with four balls in his body, the last one fired by a negro soldier. The Americans lost something more than four hundred killed and wounded, and five guns out of the six that remained.

  The general comment among the men was that we had taken the bull by the horns, but would have been better advised to sneak round behind, as mastiffs do in bull-baiting, and fasten upon a softer part. It was also commonly agreed that it had been a mere libel on common sense to take post at Boston of all places in the whole continent, unless in overwhelming strength; for the city was commanded all round – a mere target or Man of the Almanack, with the points of the swords directed at every feature. It was not many weeks before the rebels also seized and fortified Dorchester Heights to the southward, and so served us notice to quit.

  There were innumerable other complaints of blunders committed by our generals: for example, that General Gage had permitted all his cabinet papers, Ministers’ letters, etc., and private correspondence with Loyalists to be stolen out of a large closet, or wardrobe up one pair of stairs on the landing at Government House; and that his wife was a prime treasoner, in secret communication with the enemy, to whom she disclosed all his military plans and dispositions. It was also urged that we should have lost no time in purchasing the American generals. I have heard Captain Montrésor, an American Loyalist and at this time Chief Engineer in America, declare that even General Israel Putnam could to his certain knowledge have been bought for one dollar a day, or eight shillings New York currency. He added that the following generals could have been obtained at a still more modest expense, viz. Lasher, the New York shoemaker; Heard, the Woodbridge tavern-keeper; Pribble, also a tavern-keeper from Canterbury in England; Seth Pomeroy, the gunsmith, and the other Putnam, namely Rufus, a carpenter of Connecticut. This Captain Montrésor was a bitter man, with a burden of grievances against fate and the British Government: he was six times wounded and six times lost his baggage in twenty-four American campaigns, yet was refused the rank corresponding with his important and extensive command; a restless ball was roaming in his body, resisting excision; he suffered from a hydrocele, a fistula, and a nervous spasm; the revolutionaries had burned to the ground his house and his out-houses, barns, and offices on Montrésor’s Island, afterwards Talbot Island, eight miles from New York, for which he could obtain no restitution – and all these troubles were not one-half of his tale of woe. I expect that a modest allowance for exaggeration must therefore be made in his assessment of the venality of these Americans. He hated them so prodigiously for being tradesmen, rebels, and generals all together. I think that he had a grudge against Israel Putnam who had served with him at Niagara in 1764 in the Indian War. Yet he was one of the best-informed men and clearest speakers upon the situation in America to whom I ever had the privilege to listen. I later served under his son, a courageous officer of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and heard many praises in many quarters of the old Captain and his wife: they kept open table in New York throughout the Revolution, when provisions were excessively dear, and converted their large mansion into a hospital for wounded Officers. The whole family was ruined by the war.

  Chapter X

  I CONCLUDED a previous chapter with an account of how I terminated my peace-time service in Ireland at the Cove of Cork, early in April 1776: by embarking for Quebec with the Ninth Regiment in which I was then a non-commissioned officer. The reason why ourselves and five other regiments of the Line, of which we were the eldest, were being sent to Canada was that news had reached England of a dangerous attempt on the part of the Americans to seize Canada, which was only lightly held by us. The enemy were under the command of Benedict Arnold, of Connecticut, an enterprising militia colonel, and Brigadier-General Montgomery, an Irishman who had formerly held the King’s commission. It was commonly feared that our expedition of relief might not reach Quebec in time to prevent an insurrection of the French inhabitants, who numbered about five thousand, or the surrender of the small garrison for some other reason. How strange a war it already appeared! General Montgomery had, twenty years before, played the hero beside Sir William Howe and Sir James Wolfe during the famous capture of Quebec from the French.

  It is important to distinguish the motives which prompted this invasion. The Americans’ ostensible motive, which was to free the Canadians from British tyranny, must be taken at a heavy discount. A few dozen malcontents in Montreal and elsewhere may have been stirred by the appeal to revolt made by the American Congress of 1776; but in general the Canadians, who were all French, found themselves pretty well off under British rule. They rightly suspected the American offers of help in ‘knocking off their chains’ as too effusive to be disinterested. The fact was that the Americans wished to secure Canada mainly for reasons of strategy. They feared a British attack by land upon New England, and they wished to deny us naval bases in the St Lawrence River. There were, besides, powerful Red Indian tribes resident in Canada, which then extended through the central part of what is now New York State, and behind the western boundaries of the other colonies, as far south as the great Mississippi River. These the British might persuade to light the flame of war along the whole inland frontier from New England to Virginia. If the Americans could strike suddenly and victoriously at the Canadian posts and prove that the British were not invincible, they might perhaps swing the Indians across to their own side. However, the more immediate object of their invasion was th
e capture of military stores from our arsenals at Montreal, St John’s, Quebec, and other places, of which they stood in great need.

  In England, no news had been received from Quebec for some months, owing to the freezing of the St Lawrence River, which cut our communications by sea. The last dispatches that had come were sent in the Adamant frigate, together with a few prisoners, on November 12th of the previous year. These told how Colonel Arnold’s men had burst into Canada by the back door, that is to say by way of the Kennebec and Chaudière rivers, and, after a march of incredible hardship and exertions over unmapped country were now within a mile of Quebec. Moreover, General Montgomery’s column was knocking at the front door, having moved up by the more familiar route of the Lakes George and Champlain; and the important posts of St John’s and Chambly, with their garrisons, had already fallen to him. Montreal, a city of twelve thousand inhabitants, the largest on the whole American continent, was to be abandoned to this second column for want of troops to defend it; so that in all Canada no place of importance but only Quebec remained in our hands.

  It seemed evident that, soon as we disembarked upon the farther shore of the ocean, we would find ourselves hotly engaged with the American colonists, whose fighting abilities the news of Lexington and Bunker’s Hill had warned us not to underrate. It was therefore with indescribable emotions that early in the morning of April 8th I stood on the deck of the Friendship transport and eyed my native country, as we prepared to leave the harbour. It was bitterly cold for that time of year, though the sun was shining brightly, for a strong north-easterly wind blew. The exit to the cove was by means of a somewhat narrow strait. On the right hand stood the fortifications and the solidly built barracks which we had just quitted; the green hills beyond, spotted with white flocks of sheep, looked delightful as a background to the intervening blue waters. I leaned over the rail, gazing at them, and wondered when, if ever, I should look on them again. There was a certain luxuriousness in my melancholy, which almost drew tears from me, as it did from many of my messmates who were exceedingly drunk. In the Swallow transport, which lay a cable’s length from us, the military band of The Ninth was playing a lively air, and similar strains proceeded from several other ships of the three hundred which composed our convoy. Two fine frigates were to escort us: we could make out their top-sails at the head of the line.