The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

sir,” he said, nodding towards the militiamen who had refused to attack. Most of those laggards were now walking towards the battery, chivvied by their officers

“But they are soldiers!” Wadsworth said bitterly. “We all are!”

“They want to get back to their farms and families,” Dennis said.

“Then how do we take the fort?” Wadsworth asked.

“They have to be inspired, sir,” Dennis said.

“Inspired!” Wadsworth laughed, though not with any amusement.

“They’ll follow you, sir.”

“Like they did tonight?”

“Next time you’ll give them a speech, sir,” Dennis said, and Wadsworth felt his former pupil’s gentle childing. Dennis was right, he thought. He should have given them a rousing encouragement, he should have reminded the militia why they fought, but then a strange ripping noise interrupted his regrets and he turned to see an Indian crouching by a corpse. The dead marine had been stripped of his red coat, now he was being scalped. The Indian had cut the skin across the crown and was tearing it loose by the hair. The man sensed Wadsworth’s gaze and turned, his eyes and teeth bright in the moonlight. Four other corpses had already been scalped. Marines were searching among the billets, discovering tobacco and food. The militiamen just watched. Colonel McCobb was haranguing the three hundred men, telling them they should have behaved better. A marine knocked the top from one of two huge hogsheads that stood at the back of the emplacement and Wadsworth wondered what they contained, then was diverted by a dog barking fiercely from the battery’s southern edge. A sailor tried to calm the dog, but it snapped at him and a marine casually shot the animal. Another marine laughed.

That was the last gunfire of the night. Mist thickened on the harbor. James Fletcher returned to the captured battery just before dawn to say that General Lovell wanted Wadsworth back on the heights. “Is he going to send the guns?” Wadsworth asked.

“I think he wants you to arrange that, sir.”

Meaning Lovell wanted Wadsworth to deal with Lieutenant-Colonel Revere. The sailors had already gone back to their ships and Captain Carnes had been instructed to return with his marines as soon as possible, but Wadsworth was unhappy leaving the militia to guard the captured battery and Carnes agreed that a dozen marines should stay under Lieutenant Dennis’s command. “I’ll leave a good sergeant with young Dennis,” Carnes said.

“He needs that?”

“We all need that, sir,” Carnes said, and shouted at Sergeant Sykes to pick a dozen good men.

Colonel McCobb was officially in charge of the battery. “You might start by throwing up a rampart,” Wadsworth suggested to him. The existing semicircular rampart looked towards the harbor entrance and Wadsworth wanted an earthwork that faced the fort. “I’ll be bringing the guns as soon as I can,” he said.

“I’ll be waiting, sir,” McCobb promised.

Three hundred men now guarded the captured battery that could be used to destroy the ships. Then Lovell might attack the fort. And then the British would be gone.

Brigadier McLean appeared in a nightcap. He was in uniform and had a gray greatcoat, but had been given no time to dress his hair and so wore the red cap with its long blue tassel. He stood on Fort George’s southwestern bastion and stared down at the low ground where the Half Moon emplacement was mostly hidden by the cornfield. “I think we’re wasting our cannon-fire,” he told Fielding, who himself had been woken by the sudden eruption of firing.

“Cease fire!” Fielding called.

An alert gunner sergeant had seen the rebels attacking down the open slope from Dyce’s Head and had opened fire. “Give the man an extra ration of rum,” McLean said, “and my thanks.”

The gunners had done well, McLean thought, yet their efforts had not saved the Half Moon Battery. The Royal Marines and gunners evicted from the emplacement were straggling into the fort and telling their tale of rebels swarming over the ramparts. They claimed there had been hundreds of attackers, and the defenders had numbered just fifty. “Tea,” McLean said.

“Tea?” Fielding asked.

“They should brew some tea,” McLean gestured at the defeated men.

Hundreds? He wondered. Maybe two hundred. The sentries on Fort George’s ramparts had been given a clear view of the attackers, and the most reliable men reckoned they had seen two or three hundred rebels, many of whom had not pressed home the attack. Now a growing fog was obscuring all the lower ground.

“You sent for me, sir?” Captain Iain Campbell, one of the 74th’s best officers, now joined the brigadier on the rampart.

“Good morning, Campbell.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“Only it’s not a good morning,” McLean said. “Our enemy has shown initiative.”

“I heard, sir.” Iain Campbell had dressed hurriedly and one of his coat buttons was undone.

“Have you ever captured an enemy earthwork, Campbell?”

“No, sir.”

“Unless your men are very well-disciplined it leads to disorganization,” McLean said, “which leads me to believe that our enemy are rather disorganized right now.”

“Yes, sir,” the highlander said, smiling as he understood what the brigadier insinuated.

“And Captain Mowat won’t like it if the enemy holds the Half Moon Battery, he won’t like it at all.”

“And we must help the Royal Navy, sir,” Campbell said, still smiling.

“Indeed we must, it is our God-given duty. So take your good lads down there, Captain,” McLean said, “and shoo the rogues away, will you?”

Fifty marines had been surprised and driven from the Half Moon Battery so McLean would send fifty Scotsmen to take it back.

McLean went to have his hair dressed.

Excerpt of a letter from Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell to Jeremiah Powell, President of the Council Board of the State of Massachusetts Bay, August 1st, 1779:. . . that with the Troops that now constitute my Army it is not practicable to gain a Conquest by a storm and not probable without length of time to reduce them by a regular siege. To Effect the First I must request a few regular disciplined troops and Five Hundred hand Grenades . . . at least four Mortars of Nine Inches or as near as your Ordnance will admit with an ample supply of Fire Shells.

Excerpt of a letter from the Board of War to the Council Board of Massachusetts, August 3rd, 1779:The Board of War would represent to your Honors that by the great expence incurred by the Penobscot expedition they are so draind of Money that they are under the greatest embarrasments in the execution of the Common business of the Office, and are now calld upon for the payment of ?100,000 due to persons for provision sent upon that expedition. The present scarcity of bread in the publick magazines both state and continental is alarming and may be attended with fatal consequences. . . .

Excerpt of a letter from Samuel Savage, President of the Board of War, Boston, to Major-General Nathaniel Gates, August 3rd, 1779:Reports say that our Forces at penobscot have, after a most vigorous resistance, obliged the Enemy to surrender themselves both Naval and Land Forces, Prisoners of War, and that this glorious event took place on Saturday last.

Chapter Ten

The sun had not risen when Peleg Wadsworth roused Lieutenant-Colonel Revere, who, publicly ordered to sleep ashore, had erected the tents captured on Cross Island and made them his new quarters. They were the only