Proceed, Sergeant Lamb Read online

  First he enquired what I knew about the discipline, composition, arms and disposition of the Colonists’ forces, the capacity and spirit of their officers, from experience or hearsay, and the present mood of the militia, the regular troops and the peasantry. He rapidly noted down my answers and, nodding, compared them with entries in a calf-bound ledger which he had by him.

  ‘Did you ever see General Benedict Arnold?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Yes, your Honour,’ I replied, ‘I saw him galloping between the lines in the engagement at Freeman’s Farm—a man without fear. It is a great pity that so judicious and gallant an officer should be major-general in the American service.’

  ‘Entre nous, many Continental Congressmen seem to think the same,’ he laughed. ‘I regret that I am not personally acquainted with him. But I know the young lady to whom he has now given his heart; she is sentimental and good. I wish her joy of him. Her father was most agreeable to me when I was in Philadelphia. On this account I fear that, despite her having the Military Governor for a swain, poor Peggy Shippen will be suspected as a Tory by the jealous Whig ladies there, and pronounced “contraband” at social gatherings. As for the General himself, my intelligencers report him to be living highly beyond his income in that city—a very expensive place, you know. I fear that will get him into more trouble with his enemies. But come, to the matter of your flight. I’ll fetch a map and we may trace out your wanderings together. Here we are now, at five miles south-west from Hopewell, was it not? Where shall we mark the Widow Eder’s hut?’

  We lightly traced out the route in lead pencil on the map, and I marked the block-houses and camps to the best of my ability; also the bridges over the creeks and other matters of military interest. When I told him the name of our guide and described his house, wife and person, he laughed: ‘So he called himself James Sniffen, did he? That was not his name. He borrowed it from a Whig farmer of White Plains—no, I know your man, and could name him if I would. Well, I’ll keep his secret from you since he withheld it himself; and I’ll see that an adequate reward is paid him by my agents, as an encouragement to further works of mercy. He is a very bold man and has done a deal of work for our side.’

  When I had given Major André all the information that I could, he expressed much satisfaction. ‘Now, Sergeant Lamb,’ he said, ‘as a non-commissioned officer of The Ninth, you enjoy a privilege not accorded to private soldiers, which is to choose whether you will sail by the next packet to England, and there be posted to the Details of the Regiment; or whether you will continue to serve in America. I may say that I sincerely hope you will choose the latter course. We have need here of experienced soldiers.’

  When I hesitated a moment before answering, he divined the reason. ‘Let me assure you before you speak, that you will not be sent to any corps in which to serve would be distasteful to you—I know well how greatly regiments vary in quality. No, no, Sergeant Lamb, Sir Henry Clinton, the Commander-in-Chief, has authorized me to offer you your choice of entering in what regiment you please now serving in America.’

  ‘That is easily answered then,’ I said, ‘I shall stay and serve. My choice is the Royal Welch Fusiliers. May I ask a favour, which is that Private Alexander Steel, who came with me, be posted to the same corps, but Private Richard Harlowe to another?’

  ‘I will undertake that,’ he said. ‘And I will inform Colonel Balfour of the Royal Welch that you are a man of energy and education, and will desire him to retain you in your rank. Meanwhile, I thank you for your information and for your loyal decision. Good luck to you!’ He warmly clasped my hand and then summoning his orderly sent me to Colonel Handfield (the present Commissary-General of Ireland) who was appointed to pay the men who escaped from captivity. I was given a bounty of three guineas in addition to the money that, according to the account I gave him, we were out of pocket by bribing our guides. I am inclined to think that much of this bounty that my comrades and I received was the result of Sir Henry’s secret benevolence. Colonel Handfield used the term ‘honourable desertion’ for my quitting the Convention Army. This was the distinction that General Burgoyne himself made, when addressing the House of Parliament, between those soldiers who through every difficulty rejoined His Majesty’s forces, and those who left their regiments for the purpose of settling among the Americans.

  I caught a sight of Sir Henry before we left. He was a low man, stout and full-blooded with a lordly nose and an air of honesty and courage, though his reserve was not easily broken through nor was he so familiar with the troops as General Burgoyne had been.

  We lay that night in the guard-room at Headquarters and the next morning, after viewing the sights of the Town, marched back to King’s Bridge. Sergeant Collins complained much to me of the present expensiveness of New York, but expressed the hope that before long we should be ‘launched on a new campaign that will push the tottering forces of the rebels into the abyss’. He said that he had been engaged that summer against the French in a sea-battle, three companies of the Regiment having volunteered to act as marines under Admiral Richard Howe. He had been in the fifty-gun ship Isis, Captain Raynor, when she engaged with the French seventy-four Caesar, which was so mauled that she put before the wind and sailed for the shelter of Boston harbour. ‘But,’ said he, ‘the chief war hereabouts is not against rebellion—it is against the Treasury of Great Britain. It makes me hot with indignation to witness the scandalous jobbery and peculation that persists here, under the shield of the military Government.’

  I asked him for particulars to support this general indictment. ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘every sight you see has a moral. Observe those cattle being driven to the slaughter-house. Whence do they come, do you suppose?’

  ‘Rebel cattle driven by the Cowboys from Westchester county, or bought by them from the Skinners? Or perhaps sequestered from Whigs on Long Island or Staten Island?’

  ‘I see that you know a thing or two. Well, whatever their origin, at least they have since been taken over by the Commissaries of Cattle at perhaps two guineas a beast, and sold as beef to the Army at two shillings sterling the pound weight, the hides and tallow remaining as the Commissaries’ perquisites. There’s a profit, now! And what do you see yonder? That is King’s College, which was the university of this place, with faculties of Arts and Physic. There are now troops quartered in it. The Barrack-Masters charge an extravagant rent to the Crown for the use of these buildings, as also for churches, Quaker meeting-houses, breweries and the like. Do you suppose that one copper halfpenny is returned to the owners by these jobbers? No, no. And observe the wood smoke issuing from that row of chimneys? That tells a tale too. The same Barrack-Masters fetch the wood from the forests of Long Island or Staten Island; they pay the Tory proprietors fifteen shillings a cord for it, and the Whigs nothing at all. Transport costs them less than nothing; the Treasurer is overcharged for that item. Yet at what price do they sell the fuel? At eighty shillings a cord!’

  I doubted many of these tales as fabrications, but was later convinced of their truth. It was not only the lesser officials who benefited, either. In these years four successive Quartermasters-General of the Army in America retired to England, each reputedly worth not less than a quarter of a million pounds sterling. Two Deputy-Quartermasters-General, however, Archibald Robertson and Henry Bruen, being called upon at New York in 1782 to testify before a Board of General officers (where I happened to be employed as a clerk) to explain the prodigious expenses incurred by their department, insisted that the system of private contracts was preferable to that of direct purchase by the military government. They remarked in evidence: ‘There is no man conversant in business, or that is capable of judging of human nature, who can suppose that a contract held by the public can or will be executed with that economy, care and attention as when the interests of individuals are immediately concerned. Nor could it, almost, be possible for the Head of any department, let his zeal and attention be ever so great, to see that strict justice was done in the purc
hasing of such a variety of articles as the land and water carriage of an army require, especially in this country.’

  Sergeant Collins continued: ‘Nevertheless New York is a pleasant and healthy station, compared with others in America. There are cooling breezes in summer, and a more temperate air in winter. I mean, rather, the part on the North River yonder where the well-to-do live; phoo, the trading part down by the East River stinks in the summer like the sick bay of a transport. September is very pleasant, with the apple-trees bearing fruit and blossom at the same time. But let me tell you: one of the most serious inconveniences is the want of good water, there being but few wells hereabouts. The city is supplied mostly from a spring almost a mile distant; the water is distributed to the people at the reservoir at the head of Queen Street which I will show you. That, and the high price of soap, accounts for prodigious charges for laundering. See here, my latest bill—seven shillings and sixpence for a mere dozen pieces!’ Yes, there are many worse stations than New York in peace-time. We were here in 1773, two years before the troubles. Those were the days. Good beef was then at 3 ½d. a pound, very pretty mutton at the same; chickens at ninepence a couple, instead of the present four shillings for a single small bird. Those cursed Dutch shopkeepers, they are as trickish as Jews! Turtle-meat sevenpence a pound—we never see it now. Pineapples as large as a quart mug, for sixpence each—they are gone too. Still, there’s one advantage in this prodigious rise of prices—the men can’t get drunk so readily. In those days New English kill-devil sold at threepence the pint-measure; and a worse poison for the guts I never drank. In those days King George’s fine statue still proudly rode his horse at Bowling Green; the damned rebels pulled him down and chopped him up and ran the pieces into bullet-moulds. Over forty thousand bullets he was made to yield, to be fired into the breasts of his loyal subjects—oh, the shame of the dogs!’

  At King’s Bridge I reported to Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour, to whose kind attention I must ever feel myself much indebted. The Colonel of the Regiment was General Howe; but naturally he did not command it in the field. Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour provided me with clothing and necessaries that same day and appointed me sergeant at the first vacancy.

  The Twenty-Third, or Royal Welch Fusiliers, were then, as now, one of the proudest regiments in the Service and preserved a number of remarkable customs, most of them recording some glorious episode in history or preserving the titular connexion of the Regiment with Wales—a country, however, of which few of its men or officers were natives. We bore very fine devices on our colours and appointments. In the centre of the Colour the Prince of Wales’ Feathers issuing out of a Coronet, and in three corners, the badges of Edward the Black Prince, namely: the Rising Sun, the Red Dragon and the Three Feathers with the motto Ich Dien. On our grenadier caps were the same Feathers and the White Horse of Hanover with the motto Nec Aspera Terrent—‘Difficulties daunt us not’. The Feathers and the motto Ich Dien were painted upon our drums and bells of arms. Our Colours and appointments also bore the honour ‘MINDEN’. One privileged honour enjoyed by us was that of passing in review preceded by our fine regimental he-goat, with horns gilded and adorned with ringlets of flowers. We valued ourselves much on the ancientness of the custom.

  Martial finery can be an encouragement to formal discipline and clean drill, and I must confess that it did my heart good to be included in a parade of this regiment: it took out of my mouth the taste of drills perfunctorily performed in captivity, with sticks instead of muskets, and the memory of the awkward squads who had been set as guards over us prisoners at Prospect Hill and Rutland.

  In the next few months we had our camp in different parts of Manhattan Island, and once near the village of Harlem, contiguous to which was the remarkable Strait of Hell Gate, always attended with whirlpools and a roaring of the waters. The tremendous eddy was due to the narrowness and crookedness of the passage, where the waves were tossed on a bed of rock extending across it. On one side were sunken rocks named The Hog’s Back, and on the other a point of similar danger, The Devil’s Frying Pan, where the water hissed as if poured upon red-hot iron. In the midst, the whirl of the current caused a vast boiling motion, known as The Pot. This place had been famous for its enormous and excellent lobsters, which in peace-time had sold for only three halfpence a pound; but the tremendous cannonading in the battle of Long Island disturbed them from their retreat and they went away, not to return. More recently Sir James Wallace, pursued by the French fleet, had taken the Experiment, of fifty guns, safely into New York through this perilous passage; to the great astonishment of Admiral Howe. The principal credit, however, rightly went to the negro pilot. At the moment of the greatest danger Sir James gave some orders on the quarterdeck, which in the pilot’s opinion interfered with the duties of his own office. Advancing therefore to Sir James and gently tapping him on the shoulder, this mungo said: ‘Massa, you no speak here!’ Sir James, feeling the full force of the brave fellow’s remonstrance, was silent; and afterwards, in thankful recognition of his extraordinary feat of navigation, settled on him an annuity of £50 for life. The phrase ‘Massa, you no speak here’ became proverbial in the Regiment, and once I had the hardihood to employ it in addressing a young officer, who joined us about this time, when he attempted to interrupt some instruction I was giving my company in the practise of wood-fighting. He accepted the reproof in good part, as became a true gentleman. This second-lieutenant (as they are peculiarly called in the Regiment, rather than ‘ensigns’), young Harry Calvert Esq. is now risen to be Lieutenant-General, and Adjutant-General of the British forces: it was he whose kind condescension lately won me my out-pension of a shilling a day from the Royal Hospital at Chelsea.

  I was able on one or two occasions to visit the New Theatre, opened at John Street in the New Year, where the Surgeon-General to the Forces was manager and the chief parts were taken by officers of the Staff. I delighted especially in the acting of Major André, who spoke his words with great naturalness and feeling; and the performances I attended of Macbeth and Richard III made me ashamed of my self-satisfaction as a stage-player in the Rutland pen. The female parts were taken either by the mistresses of officers or, failing these, by boy-ensigns of the garrison.

  The regimental celebrations of St. David’s Day, which fall on March 1st, were as usual the occasion of much good humour and drunkenness among the Royal Welch Fusiliers. The officers together, and the sergeants together, celebrated it in the customary banquet with set toasts. To every toast that is drunk in either mess, the name of St. David is habitually added, which adds a ludicrous solemnity to proceedings. The first toast is always to ‘His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales—and St. David’, the band playing the melody of The Noble Race of Jenkin while a handsome drum-boy, elegantly dressed and mounted upon the goat, which is richly caparisoned with the Regimental devices, is led thrice around the mess table by the drum-major. It had happened at Boston four years previously that the goat sprang suddenly from the floor, spilling the drum-boy upon the table among the glasses and flagons and, bounding over the heads of some officers, ran off to the barracks. Other toasts, to ‘Toby Purcell’s Spurs3—and St. David’, ‘Jenkin ap Morgan, the first gentleman of Wales—and St. David’, ‘The Ladies—and St. David—God bless ’em!’, ‘The Glorious Roses of Minden—and St. David’, ‘Old Comrades—and St. David’, keep the merriment in progress all night. All officers or sergeants who have not previously performed the service of ‘eating the leek’, in the manner immortalized by Shakespeare’s Fluellen are now obliged to do so in St. David’s honour, standing upon a chair with one foot resting on the table while the drums play a continuous double-flam until the nauseous raw vegetable is wholly consumed—after which they are consoled with a large bumper and acknowledged as honorary Welshmen. This duty I was obliged by my fellow-sergeants to perform; and Colonel Balfour, who had but recently joined the Regiment from the King’s Own, did likewise in the Officers’ Mess. Thus I became a person of triple nationality: Iri
sh by birth, Mohawk Indian and Welsh by initiation and adoption. I hope that I never disgraced any of these three nations in my quality as a warrior!

  Though our service at New York was broken by four warlike expeditions and several forays, the Regiment conducted itself throughout just as if all were ‘peace, parade and St. James’s Park’; I mean, as to the formality and regularity of our behaviour and the exquisite care that each soldier was made to take of his personal appearance. Many hours every day were spent upon the pipe-claying of cross-belts and breeches—which, however, dried far more quickly here than in the humid air of Ireland—upon the shining of shoes, the polishing of buttons and buckles, and, above all, upon the correct adornment of the hair. I recalled how, upon the disembarkation of The Ninth at Three Rivers in Canada, Major Bolton had informed company-officers that the tallow provided for us would now be better daubed upon our shoes, to preserve them from the damps, than upon our hair, to hold the flour with which we powdered it—and that this flour likewise would be of more service to us in the edible form of loaves. Few even of the officers had thereafter attempted to keep themselves spick and span. But the Royal Welch Fusiliers were no rough and ready regiment: the comb, flour-dredge and pomatum box were as prime necessaries with us as cartouche box, powder-flask and ramrod, and no slightest deviation from correct soldierly behaviour in barracks was ever allowed to pass, nor any gross conduct or unsoldier-like lounging in the streets. We were often sneered at for macaronis; but we let that pass as a compliment, for we also took correspondingly greater care of our arms than other regiments. For example, I was very pleased to find that the company-officers, being persons of substance and with a pride in their profession, had at their own charges provided their men with the fine black flints which gentlemen use in their sporting guns. These remained sharp even after fifty discharges, whereas the ordinary Army issue of dull brown pebble was never good for more than fifteen, and often less. What was still more to the point, when we were at Harlem and a part of the Regiment quartered upon a wharf, figures of men as large as life made of thin boards were anchored at a proper distance from the end of the wharf; at these the platoons fired as a practice in marksmanship. Floating objects such as glass bottles, bobbing up and down with the tide, were also pointed out to them as targets, and premiums given to the best shots. No other regiment to my knowledge practised this sort of musketry, the colonels being content merely with simultaneity of the volleys, and letting aim go hang.