General Howe planned for four simultaneous attacks. The assault was a series of complicated battles, some at the distance of two and a half miles from the fort, and some within cannon shot of its walls. Washington witnessed one of those awful conflicts, where the Hessians rushed like fiends over the ramparts of a battery, and bayoneted the young Americans begging for life. It is said that his sympathies were so moved by the demoniac scene, that he wept with the tenderness of a child.[138]
The redoubts were captured and the retreating troops so crowded the fort, that the men could scarcely move about. The British could throw in a shower of shells and balls, which would cause awful carnage. A capitulation could not be avoided.
Washington stood upon a neighboring eminence, and saw the American flag fall and the British flag rise in its place. The loss was a severe one. Washington had recommended, not ordered, that the fort should be evacuated, and the men and stores removed to a place of safety.[139] But some of his more sanguine generals were confident that they could hold the place. Deep as was his grief, he did not reproach them. The impetuous General Lee wrote to Washington; “Oh, General, why would you be overpersuaded by men of inferior judgment to your own? It was a cursed affair.”
Colonel Tilghman wrote on the 17th to Robert R. Livingston, of New York: “We were in a fair way of finishing the campaign with credit to ourselves and I think to the disgrace of Mr. Howe. And had the general followed his own opinion, the garrison would have been withdrawn immediately upon the enemy’s falling down from Dobbs Ferry.”
The captives, amounting, according to General Howe’s returns, to two thousand eight hundred and eighteen, were marched off, at midnight, to the awful prison hulks of New York, where they endured sufferings which must forever redound to the disgrace of the British government.
CHAPTER X.
The Vicissitudes of War.
Crossing the Hudson—The retreat—Views of the British—Strange conduct of Lee—His capture—Crossing the Delaware—Battle of Trenton—Heroic march upon Princeton—Discomfiture of the British—Increasing renown of Washington—Barbarism of the British—Foreign Volunteers—Movements of the fleet—Lafayette—Movements of Burgoyne—The murder of Jane McCrea—Battle of Fort Schuyler—Starks’ Victory at Bennington—Battle of the Brandywine—Its effects.
Washington removed the most of his army across the Hudson, a little below Stony Point, that he might seek refuge for them among the Highlands. General Heath was entrusted with the command. As the troops crossed the river, three of the British men-of-war were seen a few miles below, at anchor in Haverstraw Bay. Fort Lee, on the Jersey shore, was now useless, and was promptly abandoned. On the 20th the British army crossed the river in two hundred boats. It is remarkable that their fears were such that they took the precaution of crossing, as it were by stealth, in a dark and rainy night.
A corps of six thousand men under Cornwallis, was marshaled about six miles above the fort, under the towering Palisades. The troops, retreating from Fort Lee, about three thousand in number, were at Hackensack, without tents or baggage, and exceedingly disheartened. Still the British were in great strength on the east of the Hudson. They could concentrate their forces and make a resistless raid into New England, or, with their solid battalions march upon Philadelphia and the opulent towns in that region. It soon became evident that the British were aiming at Philadelphia. Washington endeavored to concentrate as many as possible of his suffering troops at Brunswick. It makes one blush with indignation to remember that a loud clamor was raised against Washington for his continual retreat.