Читать книгу Blood of Tyrants - Logan Beirne - Страница 27

9

American Fortitude

In August 1775, mere days after Washington’s hostile exchange with General Gage, the Americans ambushed the British transport ship HMS Hope as it sailed up the Delaware River.¹ The outnumbered British quickly surrendered, and the Americans captured a British officer named Major Christopher French. Approximately fifty years old, described as “small of stature” and having coarse, stern features, he was imprisoned in Hartford, Connecticut.² While there was little indication of serious mistreatment, the prissy Major French began complaining to Washington about the “Incivility or Contempt” with which he was treated by the townspeople.³ They mocked and insulted him, leaving him outraged that such rabble should dare speak to a British officer in such a manner.

Like a disgruntled customer who sends a note to the corporate office about an unpleasant cashier, French dashed off several angry letters to Washington, who diligently replied to each. At first the general responded cordially, pledging that “suitable Provision shall be made for you and your Companions, and shew you every civility.”⁴ But as the war dragged on and the British continued to abuse their captives, his tone shifted.

Referring to the mistreatment of Americans by the British, Washington curtly told French, “I should illy support my Country’s Honor, and my own Character, if I did not shew a proper Sense of their sufferings, by making the condition of the Ministerial Officers, in some Degree, dependant on theirs.”⁵ Major French escaped before Washington educated him in the sufferings of American prisoners, but the commander’s thinly veiled threats conveyed his emerging belief that abusing British prisoners was justified.

In December 1775, over seven months after the outbreak of war, Congress finally passed a resolution concerning prisoner treatment. However, it was largely at odds with Washington’s declared stance. As he held the British forces in Boston, the Continental Congress resolved

That such as are taken be treated as prisoners of war, but with humanity, and allowed the same rations as the troops in the service of the Continent; that the officers being in pay should supply themselves with cloaths, their bills to be taken therefor, that the soldiers be furnished as they now are.⁶

With this edict, Congress sought to take the high road and elevate the nation’s conduct above less-noble struggles of the past.

As a matter of principle, Washington agreed. He was morally opposed to mistreatment, in theory, and had initially preferred to “err on the side of mercy than that of strict Justice.”⁷ Experience taught him, however, that the high standard he sought was not practical, and that harsh measures might be necessary to save American lives. Just weeks after Congress’s decree that prisoners be treated humanely, Washington again threatened to abuse a British captive.⁸ This time, he needed to protect a captured national hero.

Washington was enraged by reports that the British had abused the popular American patriot Colonel Ethan Allen. Allen was a flamboyant farmer-turned-statesman-turned-land-speculator best known as the charismatic leader of a “merry band” of militiamen called the Green Mountain Boys.⁹ Allen was born into a relatively prosperous farming family in the sparsely populated hills of northwestern Connecticut. But farm life was not enough for this fiery character. Like many ambitious youth at the time, he journeyed to the frontier to find his fortune and eventually made his way to the wilderness of Vermont. Not yet a state, it was a hotly disputed area over which New York landowners attempted to assert control while the squatters living there sought independent statehood. The “wild west” of New England, this region was dominated by a rambunctious lot. Allen fit right in.

With a long face, narrow-set eyes, big nose, and bushy brown hair, Allen matured into a loud man with a penchant for taking the law into his own hands. Married to an uneducated and rigidly religious woman who did not care for her husband’s debaucherous streak, he faced constant criticism at home.¹⁰ This made Allen rather eager to escape the house.

He escaped to the local taverns and town hall, where he became not only a connoisseur of cheap rum but also a raucous figure in the community. Standing over six feet tall, he was impossible to ignore as he shouted and his large face grew ruddy with passion. With his incendiary oratory, Allen had a knack for whipping his audiences into action. He soon emerged as the grandiloquent leader of the frontiersmen seeking to forcefully secure their Vermont land claims against wealthy New Yorkers. Many of these Green Mountain Boys, including Allen himself, had outstanding arrest warrants in New York for beating anyone who challenged their claims. Enjoying a good fight almost as much as a good drink, this guerilla force readily followed Allen into battle time and again.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, the unhappily married thirty-seven-year-old Allen was ready to leap into the center of the struggle. Even though most of the action was in Massachusetts, Allen led the unruly Green Mountain Boys into the backwater of upstate New York to take part in America’s first offensive of the war. Their target was the formidable, granite-walled Fort Ticonderoga. Known as the “Gibraltar of North America,” this imposing British fortress secured the waterway connecting Canada to New York. Overlooking Lake Champlain, Ticonderoga was in a heavily wooded and largely uninhabited area, then just beginning to enjoy the effects of spring’s slow march northward.

Allen’s men set out on a midnight raid on a rain-soaked May night in 1775, under orders to seize the boats of wealthy British merchants so that the American forces might use them as ferries across the lake.¹¹ Stumbling upon “choice liquors” in a Loyalist’s cellar, however, the Vermonters took to drinking instead.¹² At three o’clock in the morning, they decided to make do with just the single boat they had secured to ferry as many men as possible before they lost the cover of darkness.

After two trips across the choppy, cold water, only ninety men were in place. Two-thirds of the American troops were still stranded on the other side of the lake, but Allen decided to attack before daybreak anyway. His force a less-than-optimal mixture of drunk and hung over, the brazen Allen and his dysfunctional militia charged the fort.

Luckily for Allen, the British had only one sentry on duty, and he was helping himself to an unauthorized catnap. Taken by complete surprise, the undermanned fort put up little resistance, as the half-naked British soldiers did not even have time to put on their pants, let alone ready their muskets.¹³ In a stunning blow to the British, the fort fell to the Americans, thereby thwarting Britain’s plan to invade through Montreal. Perhaps more importantly, the Americans acquired the gunpowder and artillery that Washington needed to rain hell on the British in Boston. Washington was rather pleased.

Drunk with confidence—and booze—after this triumph, Allen began lobbying Congress to expand the war, writing, “I will lay my life on it, that with fifteen hundred men, and a proper artillery, I will take Montreal.”¹⁴ Eager to spread the Revolution to the French Canadians, Congress agreed to a daring invasion of Canada. Washington, though not technically authorized by Congress to do so, was so enthusiastic about the plan that he sent up his own separate brigade.¹⁵

As usual, Allen was among the first to charge to the front lines of the fight. Patience not being one of his virtues, he led approximately one hundred men in a foolhardy attack on Montreal ahead of the main American force.¹⁶ Outnumbered two to one, his rogue team fought ferociously but was quickly defeated and Allen was captured. Now wise to the plans for a larger assault, the British repelled the American invasion of Canada. Allen was trapped.

British Brigadier Prescott ordered that Allen be tightly shackled and chained within the dark hull of a prison ship moored in Montreal’s harbor. Prescott was an odious character, whose large, almost serpentine eyes were suited to his oppressive disposition. He became known for his “many acts of petty tyranny,” and Allen felt the brunt of his wrath.¹⁷

Rather than languish in defeat in his dank wooden prison, however, Allen was defiant, much to his dour captor’s vexation. Choosing to “behave in a daring, soldier-like manner, that [he] might exhibit a good sample of American fortitude,” the colorful Allen challenged each of his guards to a manly fistfight as they passed by.¹⁸ While not one of them accepted his challenge, Prescott found Allen’s bravado infuriating and ordered that he be treated “with much severity.”¹⁹

The British beat Allen, deprived him of adequate water and rations, and repeatedly threatened him with hanging.²⁰ For weeks he was held almost naked, wearing little more than the heavy iron chains that cut his wrists and weighed him to the ground.²¹ “I have suffered every thing short of death,” he reported.²² The large man withered as his health deteriorated. But the plucky Allen survived. Unsure of what to do with this defiant troublemaker, the British shipped him off to England, where he was imprisoned in a dark old castle in Cornwall.²³ Like an exhibit at the zoo, he slept in hay infested with vermin as locals bribed guards for a peek at the giant who had taken Ticonderoga.

Everyone expected that Allen would be swiftly hanged. But when word reached Washington that Allen was “thrown into Irons and suffers all the Hardships inflicted upon common Felons,” the commander was incensed, to put it mildly.²⁴ He felt bound by his strong sense of honor to employ all means necessary to protect Allen. And Washington was prepared to go to great lengths to save an American life.