The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles Page 33

  Walker cleared his throat.

  “Men, the general has instructed me to say that he is personally going to undertake your training. That he, ah—”

  Walker licked his lips, hesitated, almost winced as von Steuben stared him down.

  “He, ah, finds conditions in this camp—ah—appalling. He is equally shocked to discover there is, ah, no standardized set of procedures for marching and handling weapons.”

  Walker glanced at the general for further instruction. Von Steuben let fly with more French.

  “He says he has noticed a difference between American troops and those of Europe, in that European soldiers will follow orders without question but—ah—Americans seem to want to know why first. So he will try to explain the reason for each maneuver as we go along.”

  Several surprised exclamations and even some applause greeted the announcement. Whatever his pretensions, Philip thought, the German had assessed the temperament of the soldiers correctly. Some of Philip’s reservations began to fade. He rather liked the hard, capable look of the middle-aged officer—ostentatious Order of Fidelity and all.

  “Now the first thing the general wants to see you do is he drill for loading and firing your muskets. On the count of one—”

  In haphazard fashion, Philip and the others went through the drill’s twenty steps, Captain Walker counting each one. By the time the young New Yorker had called “Fifteen!” von Steuben was scarlet. The conclusion of the drill, muskets at the shoulder in position to shoot, produced another torrent of French.

  “The general wishes me to inform you that in his opinion, that is—ah—the most slovenly and time-consuming drill he has ever seen—”

  Still more French.

  “—in any part of the globe—”

  And more.

  “—in his entire life.”

  Von Steuben uttered a few guttural barks just to make sure the point got across.

  “The general is going to introduce you to a new drill for the same procedure. A drill which will shortly be available in written form for you to study. The general’s drill requires only ten counts—”

  Suddenly there wasn’t a whisper in the ranks. Walker had caught their full, attention at last.

  “—the idea being to save time so more shots may be discharged at the enemy in the same interval.”

  Walker bent down to pick up the musket lying at his feet.

  “I will now demonstrate the drill, following the general’s instructions.”

  Walker’s face showed that he disliked the assignment intensely. Actually handling weapons during training was considered beneath the dignity of any officer.

  Von Steuben noticed Walker’s expression. He swore, cropped his horse to a standstill, leaped to the ground and waddled to his translator. He snatched the musket from the astonished captain’s hands.

  Then von Steuben jerked at the strap of the cartridge box Walker had picked up, slung the strap over his own shoulder, settled the box on his hip and stalked out in front of the hundred men.

  He presented the musket for viewing by the soldiers, shouted, “Ein” and immediately brought the firelock to half cock.

  Philip saw jaws drop and eyes go wide. The demonstration was absolutely unbelievable. A high-ranking officer off his horse? Handling a musket personally—?

  “Zwei!”

  With thick but somehow swift fingers, von Steuben took out a cartridge, bit off the end of the paper and covered the opening with his thumb.

  “Drei!”

  He primed the pan.

  When the entire ten counts were finished, von Steuben had armed the musket and brought it to his shoulder in half the time the normal drill required.

  The stocky man stumped forward, eyes darting in search of a pupil. Bad luck brought Breen to his attention. Von Steuben literally jerked Breen out in front of the others, slammed the musket into his hands, flung the cartridge box strap over the confused victim’s head and bawled:

  “Ein!”

  Breen managed to remember the first step—half-cocking the piece—but when von Steuben shouted the count of two, he grew fuddled. Turning red again, the German thrust his face up near Breen’s and screamed, “Zwei, goddamn, zwei!”

  Breen lost his grip on the musket. It fell to the ground. Apoplectic, von Steuben shoved Breen back into line and pulled out another man, a Marylander. He managed to get to five before von Steuben dismissed him with an even more torrential outpouring of French and German profanities. Some of the former—anatomically colorful—Philip could translate, with considerable amusement.

  The baron proceeded to go through the entire drill three more times before dragging another man forward. Fortunately, the Virginian completed the count with a minimum of error. The German beamed—and so did most of his trainees, letting the smiles drain away the built-up tension.

  While the February wind grew stronger, bringing a few snowflakes down, the hundred soldiers repeated the drill together ten times. Then ten more. And ten more after that. Von Steuben waddled briskly up and down the ranks, correcting the slant of a muzzle here, the grip of a ramrod there, occasionally slapping a student on the back but more often cursing.

  Finally, around ten o’clock, the baron remounted his horse. Walker ordered the hundred to prepare to repeat the drill one last time, while von Steuben called the count.

  By then Philip had fairly well gotten the hang of it. He was amazed at how the drill did pare the time required for the vital operation. But the unison drill was still uncoordinated. By the time Walker had reached six, von Steuben was screaming and pointing at poor performers:

  “Nein, nein!” Another storm of profanity, concluding with a thunderous, “Viens, Valkair, mon ami! Sacre! Goddamn die gaucheries of dese imbeciles! Je ne puis plus!” Growing almost incoherent, he shrieked, “You curse dem, Valkair—you!”

  He wheeled his horse and went pounding away across the parade field, Azor streaking behind him through the slanting snow. Captain Walker once more cleared his throat.

  “Ah—you men realize—I have orders—”

  “Ah, go ahead and get it over with!” someone yelled. There was laughter at the captain’s expense.

  Flushing, Walker cursed and condemned the soldiers in a monotonous voice for the better part of two minutes.

  Relieved when it was over, he said, “All right, let’s resume the drill. One—!”

  Philip observed von Steuben resting his horse at the far edge of the field. Before long the baron was lured back by his own interest in the proceedings. By noon, alternately swearing and complimenting in his strange pidgin mixture of French, German and very occasional English, he had the entire hundred going through the drill with reasonable precision.

  Philip noticed something else as they ran through the final counts—shoulder firelock; poise and cock firelock; take aim and fire. The weariness and despair on the faces in the snow-covered ranks seemed to have been replaced by something else. Something he too was experiencing. It gave him the first glimmer of hope for this conglomeration of unruly men nominally called an army.

  He saw shoulders a little straighter. Fatigued, reddened eyes a little more alert. Hands blue-tinged with cold moving with a little more speed and deftness—

  There in the February snow he saw—and felt—the stirring of pride.

  vi

  On their way back to their hut after the remarkable morning, the trio of Massachusetts men discussed the bizarre drillmaster.

  “I think maybe the man has a touch of genius,” Philip said.

  “Fucking maniac,” was Breen’s contribution.

  Royal Rothman said, “I think he’s both. I like him.”

  vii

  So did the rank and file of the army, as it turned out. Except with those officers such as Gil, who considered the baron’s methods both unorthodox and degrading, von Steuben was soon the most popular commander in the camp after Washington.

  The German ignored the jealous jibes and rumors circulated about him,
and kept working. As the winter wore on, leavened at last by a growing trickle of supply wagons that brought in foodstuffs and clothing, the baron’s original hundred taught new contingents of a hundred. Those hundreds taught hundreds more. By early March, Philip and even Breen had become busy and proficient instructors of all of von Steuben’s lessons:

  The new musket drill.

  The new cadences that smoothed the execution of flanking and counter-marching by masses of troops on the move.

  The new marching formation—four abreast, instead of the traditional single or double file. This, the baron had explained, would allow the regiments to enter or retreat from a battle zone in an orderly way, as well as faster. Another obvious innovation, yet quite astonishing when it was suddenly introduced into an army that had never thought of it before.

  The German also insisted that bayonet drill be taught—and demanded every soldier have one. Philip could imagine how that order alone increased business at George Lumden’s forge back in Connecticut.

  Uniforms began to look a little sharper. Although few had been completely replaced, the men took to maintaining them more carefully, sewing and patching them instead of letting them simply fall to pieces. When wagonloads of soap became available, the men washed their clothes as well as themselves. It struck Philip that had von Steuben not arrived when he did, the next engagement of the army might have brought total anarchy—wholesale refusal to fight. Now there was actually talk of wanting to face Howe’s soldiers; of wanting to discover how well the new techniques worked in battle.

  Henry Knox expressed it when Philip encountered him one day in March:

  “I thought no one could create a military force out of this rabble. But I do believe that strutting, egotistical German’s done it.”

  The long, dark night of the winter seemed to be ending. The calendar ran on toward spring. Only one grave concern still infected Philip’s waking thoughts and haunted his sleep.

  He still hadn’t received a single reply to his letters to Anne.

  viii

  At a special evening muster in the company street, Captain Webb read the message sent to all the troops from the gray fieldstone house near the Schuylkill:

  “Headquarters, Valley Forge. The commander-in-chief takes this occasion to return his warmest thanks to the virtuous officers and soldiers of this army for that persevering fidelity and zeal which they have uniformly manifested in all their conduct. Their fortitude not only under their common hardships incident to a military life, but also under the additional sufferings to which the peculiar situation of these states has exposed them, clearly proves them men worthy of the enviable privilege of contending for the rights of human nature and the freedom and independence of their country—”

  Philip noticed Breen wearing a smug smile. And the older man joined with all the others in a round of cheers when Webb concluded.

  Tramping along to the sutler’s after the formation broke up, Philip said to his messmates:

  “I don’t think it makes a damn bit of difference what they say about his losses in the field. If we win the war and the general had ambition to be king of this country, he could ask and it would be done.”

  No one disagreed.

  ix

  Attendance at divine worship every Sunday was, supposedly, mandatory. But skimpy crowds in the log chapel usually testified to the lax enforcement of the commanding general’s order. The last Sunday in March was an exception. The eleven o’clock service was to be held on the parade field because a bigger than usual crowd was expected—without duress.

  The predictions proved correct, solely because of the identity of the preacher. Even Breen went along to listen.

  The morning, although gray, wasn’t excessively chilly. Philip and Breen found places in the huge crowd of seated men—two or three thousand at least, Philip guessed. In front of the gathering, regimental drummers had stacked their drums into a three-tier platform, on top of which boards had been laid.

  The regular chaplains presided over the hymns and prayers. But the men were clearly waiting for the sermon, to be presented by one of Washington’s most loyal and hard-driving officers, General Peter Muhlenberg, the Pennsylvania-born commander of the Virginia line.

  When Muhlenberg mounted the drum platform with a Bible in one hand, a wave of surprised comment raced through the crowd. The general wasn’t wearing his uniform today. Instead, he wore the somber black robes of his former calling.

  There was hardly a man at Valley Forge who didn’t know a bit of Muhlenberg’s story: his training at a theological school in Europe—which he found too dull; his military service with the dragoons in one of the German provinces; and—this part was told most often—the Sunday morning in January of ’76.

  Ordained at last and tending to a small parish flock in the Blue Ridge, Muhlenberg had mounted his pulpit while his congregation thundered Ein Feste Burg. As the hymn faded away, he flung off his black robes to reveal a colonel’s uniform. Then he launched into a blistering sermon directed principally at one sinner—King George III. That was his last official message to his congregation before leading the Eighth Virginia off to war.

  A powerful, commanding figure against the gray sky, General Muhlenberg leafed through the front of his Bible. The tactic had its effect; the last talk quieted—though Breen still whispered questions:

  “What kind o’ preacher did you say he is, Philip?”

  “Lutheran. It’s a German denomination, mostly,”

  “Well, I hope he’s good, ’cause I don’t usually hang around this sort o’ function—why, look yonder! What’s he doin’ here? His church don’t meet on Sunday.”

  Philip peered past the men seated nearby, saw Royal Rothman lingering at the very back of the crowd, darting glances every which way, as though anticipating some kind of trouble. Philip smiled, shrugged:

  “I suppose he wants to hear the general as much as we do. No law says he can’t.”

  The sermon of the preacher-turned-soldier was very much worth hearing. Philip soon realized Muhlenberg had chosen his text with care. It came from the twenty-third chapter of Exodus, and was perfectly fitted to the mood of the troops—especially their growing sense of becoming an army worthy of the name.

  Muhlenberg first read his text:

  “Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not. For he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him—”

  Then, skillfully, Muhlenberg began to weave military propaganda into his theology. He likened the Lord’s angel to an army commander whose every order must be executed without question. Discipline and obedience—whether he who followed was a lowly private or one of the Children of Israel—would surely bring the desired rewards. Muhlenberg saved the biblical version of those rewards for the end, rolling them out from the drum pulpit to his rapt, wide-eyed audience:

  “But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites—

  “And I will cut them off!”

  It required only a moment’s mental translation for the men to understand the real names of the enemy: the light infantry; the grenadiers; the Hessians. The sermon’s conclusion brought the soldiers jumping to their feet to applaud, embarrassing Muhlenberg and provoking the other chaplains to what amounted to glares of envy. No one ever applauded their sermons.

  Breen admitted to being “a mite excited” by the message, and confessed he’d never quite considered obeying a superior to be as vital as Muhlenberg claimed.

  But the sermon had still left him thirsty. Even though it was Sunday, he announced with a wink, there were ways—

  Losing track of the older man in the crowd, Philip made a point to catch
up with Royal Rothman:

  “Didn’t expect to see you, Royal. How did you like the general?”

  “He’s every bit as fine a preacher as I’ve heard. Though I must say, Philip, I was startled by the concept that General Washington—or Captain Webb—could be considered as important in the scheme of things as an angel.”

  “Still, it was pretty stirring stuff.”

  Royal nodded with a shy smile. “By the way—I’ve been meaning to say something to you. About an idea I’ve had for several weeks now. This printing house we’ve talked about—where you’re going to publish a deluxe edition of Mr. Paine’s Crisis papers—” He hesitated. “You haven’t forgotten—?”

  “No, Royal. Seeing my family again is the first thing I want when this war’s over. My own business is the second.”

  “Good! Where do you plan to set it up?”

  “In Boston.”

  “I mean where in Boston?”

  The extremely serious tone of the question checked Philip’s impulse to chuckle. “Why, I don’t know, Royal. I hadn’t thought that far. At the start, I’ll have to rent space—”

  “That’s my idea. Rothman’s is the second largest chandler’s in the whole town. My father always has extra loft room. I’m sure you could strike a good bargain for renting some of it. My father’s conscious of the value of a penny, but he’s fair, and—” Royal almost blushed. “—I’ve even taken the liberty of writing him about you and your plans. I think he’d do anything for you, after—”

  “After what?”

  “I must confess I described how you and Lucas helped out when Adams was baiting me.”

  A vivid memory of Mayo Adams dying in the ditch after Brandywine stained Philip’s thoughts a moment, destroying the high excitement and good feeling the sermon had produced. He forced the ugly recollections away, said: