Somewhere about eleven o’clock, rumor had it that the British were on the move. Wayne believed that the enemy would attack his right flank, and immediately ordered Colonel Humpton, his second in command, to wheel his line and move off by the road leading to the White Horse Tavern. Meanwhile, General Gray, in command of three British regiments and some dragoons with Tory guides, approached Paoli. The British were ordered to withhold their fire and to depend altogether on the bayonet. At midnight, two hours before the time fixed for his own advance on Howe’s force, Wayne learned that his pickets had been surprised.
Colonel Humpton had not obeyed, nor did he do so until the third order reached him. The artillery moved without loss or injury, but the remainder of the army was in confusion, and, when charged by the British, the affair became almost a rout. An English officer who was present at the attack afterward wrote:
“It was a dreadful scene of havoc. The Americans were easily distinguished by the light of the camp fires as they fell into line, thus offering Gray’s men an advantage. The charge was furious, and all Wayne’s efforts to rally his men were useless. They were driven through the woods two miles, and nearly a hundred and seventy men were killed.”
With those about him, inspired as they were with fear of the bayonet, and confused by the darkness, Hadley Morris ran blindly through the woods to escape the death which followed him. The awful sabre-like bayonets of the British muskets he did escape; but a half-spent ball imbedded itself in the flesh of his leg above the knee and brought him at last to earth. The others streamed by and left him. He feared he would be captured and perhaps sent to the prison hulks in New York Bay; but both pursued and pursuer passed him by, and he was saved in the darkness.
He could not travel with the ball in his leg, and so he lay down again under some bushes, and, despite the wound and his fright, dropped off into slumber, and slept just as soundly as he would had war and bloodshed been farthest from his thoughts.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
—Edward Everett.