In continuing his ride, the General went to Greenwich, a village situated at that time a mile and a half out of the city, but now in the very heart of it, where the German troops in English pay were stationed. Of all the mistakes made by England in that war—and they were many—the hiring of mercenaries to fight the Americans was perhaps the greatest. It irritated many loyal men into rebellion, and gave a union and cohesion to the disloyal, such as they never otherwise would have gained. Nor were the mercenaries very valuable as soldiers; they were discontented and quarrelsome; and to their want of vigilance was the irreparable disaster of Trenton wholly due. Even to this day, the Americans talk most bitterly of their being hired by the English to shoot down their own flesh and blood; and there can be no doubt that more soreness was due to this circumstance, than to any other connected with the war. Apart, however, from the general question, there was no Commanding officer whose management of the foreign troops displayed so much tact, as General Pattison. Whether it were on duty, or on such occasions as the celebrated ball given by him on the King's Birthday in 1780, which he opened with the wife of the German Baron who commanded at Greenwich, his courtesy and tact were always exerted to cement differences, or allay grievances.
Returning homewards from Greenwich, the General rode through a great many burnt streets, burnt by incendiaries the night after the English occupied New York, and at a fire which took place later;—past not a few churches which had been converted into prisons, riding-schools, and hospitals, for at times the sickness in the city was very great;—past Vauxhall, where Sir Peter Warren lived; past the house in Hanover Square where Prince William stayed, when sent out by the King in compliment to his American subjects; and past the dwelling of that most princely of dinner-givers, honest Admiral Walton. As he rode along, he passed printed anathemas on the walls against privateering, and notices of 20 guineas reward from the Government, and 10 guineas additional from the insurance offices, for the discovery of any man who should have seduced a soldier on board a privateer. There were no less than 5000 New Yorkers engaged during the war in this lawless occupation. It was certainly adding insult to injury, after the sleepless nights they sometimes caused to the General, but the owners of a very fast privateer had actually the impertinence to name their ship after him.
On his way home he rode into the Ordnance Yard, where a few words of comfort had to be spoken to the men whose wages were so disproportionate to those of ordinary civil labourers, that not merely were they discontented, but they could hardly live at all. Ordinary labourers in the city got 5s. a day, and skilled artisans could earn as much as 12s. and 15s.; but in the Ordnance Yard the average wage was only 3s. a day and a ration, and in vain had the General urged on the Board of Ordnance to sanction some approximation to the wages of the other labourers in New York. While men could be got with ease near the Tower of London for 3s. a day, the Board of Ordnance might as well have been expected to pay more in America, as their clerks to learn geography.
The General having now returned to Broadway, let two or three instances be mentioned, in which he prominently figured during his command at New York, before closing this chapter.
The first shall be the only instance in which the General ever showed any symptom of insubordination. He forgot the soldier in the gunner. On the last day of May, 1779, he accompanied Sir Henry Clinton, the Commander-in-Chief, to within 3 miles of Stony Point on the Hudson; and as Artillery became necessary in carrying out the proposed attack, General Pattison was ordered to take command of the troops. During the night—a dark, moonless night—the Artillery for the service was got up, and the batteries completed by five o'clock in the morning, notwithstanding great difficulties, arising from a bad landing-place and a very steep precipice. Orders were then given to commence firing on the enemy's works, and, notwithstanding the great distance, the fire was soon seen to have been effectual. Sir Henry Clinton therefore sent instructions to the General to cease firing, but the General's blood was up. The range had been got to an inch and he hungered to go on; so instead of ceasing fire, he sent back an earnest request to be allowed a few more rounds. Very soon, however, a white flag was seen; and in a few minutes it was known that the whole rebel force had surrendered.
The next sketch may be said to show the culminating point of the General's career as Commandant of New York. The winter of 1779 was the hardest, it is believed, ever recorded in that city. The water was frozen between New York and Staten Island, and guns were carried over on sleighs. It was an anxious time. The insular advantages of New York disappeared before this unexpected high-road of ice; the Jerseys were swarming with Washington's troops; and as nearly the whole of the regular forces had gone from New York to Charlestown on special service, the General dreaded an attack which he might be unable to resist. Notwithstanding the croaking of many advisers, he called out, and resolved to arm, the inhabitants, to test the sincerity of their professions of loyalty, and to ascertain whether his rule in the city had been a successful one. To those who assured him that it was a rash measure, he answered that he felt confident that the number of doubtful characters was but trifling, and as those few would be blended in the ranks with the many who could be relied on, they would be less capable of doing mischief under arms, than if "left to lurk in their dwellings."
And the event proved that he was right. In a few hours he had 4300 loyal volunteers between 17 and 60 years of age, armed at their own expense, until arms could no longer be bought, when they received them from the King's stores; he had merchants of the city standing sentry on his own house; and so fired were the naval officers by his energy, that they landed all the sailors they could spare, and put them under his orders. In return, the General courteously named a new battery which he was building, the Royal Naval Battery, and gave it to the sailors to man. And the result was that the city remained unmolested.
The anxiety the General suffered during the winter of 1779 aggravated a complaint from which he had been suffering for some time, which he describes in his diary as "a stubborn disease which no medicine can allay," and he began to feel that rest and change were necessary. So he applied for, and obtained, leave of absence to go home for the benefit of the Bath waters; but so reluctant was he to leave his post that it was late in the autumn of 1780, before he actually sailed. During the few months immediately preceding his departure his correspondence is a mixture of explanations to the authorities at home of the reasons for his return, and entreaties to his officers to write to him at Bath, and keep him posted in all the news of the war. During the three years of his command he had got everything into such admirable order, that its transfer to his successor was simpler than could have been expected from its complicated and extensive nature. He received a perfect ovation on his departure, both from the civil and military part of the population; and the dear old man had hardly sat down in Bath, before he wrote off to all his old friends of the 4th Battalion.
In all that General Pattison did—whether on duty or not—he was essentially conscientious and hard-working. And these are the two qualities which rule the world. George Macdonald—in his lecture on Milton—said that on rising from a study of the poet's works, he felt that he had been gazing on one who was, in every noble sense of the word, a man. And the student of General Pattison's letters and orders feels also, in quitting the dusty tomes and faded letters, that he has been conversing with a true, a noble man.
A brief notice of his death will suitably close this chapter. He lived to be a very old man. Twice he was appointed Commandant of Woolwich, a command less onerous than that which he held in America, but still a prize to which every Artillery officer looks forward. At last on a March morning in the year 1805, that stubborn disease which indeed no medicine can allay, that old, old disease, death, stole into Hill Street, Berkeley Square, and touched on the shoulder, in his 82nd year, the gallant old soldier, a chapter in whose life has just been alluded to.