Part 7

As soon as the spring weather allowed, the revolutionists renewed their efforts to put the metropolis in a condition of defence. The approaches to the harbor were entirely closed by the sinking of additional barges and scows laden with stones. Torpedoes were thickly planted outside these obstructions, so as to make any attempt to remove them as dangerous as possible. Relying upon the inability of the attacking squadron to pass these obstacles and enter the harbor, the revolutionists imitated the tactics of Admiral Seymour at Boston, and removed most of the guns from the forts below the city to the earthworks and intrenchments they had thrown up to the northward and eastward of it.

The allies lay encamped along the Connecticut shore of the Sound, mostly between Bridgeport and Greenwich. From New Rochelle to Yonkers the revolutionists erected a chain of strong works, stretching entirely across the peninsula whose point is occupied by New York city. Three separate lines of intrenchments were constructed, each one of which was capable of being defended after everything in front of it was in the possession of the enemy. Detached forts and redoubts were thrown up on every elevation or commanding point.

On the Brooklyn side the defences were less elaborate, but still strong. It was evident that the possession of Brooklyn by the allies would render New York untenable; but the revolutionists felt confident that they could transport troops faster from the forts above New York to the Brooklyn side than the allies could be moved across the Sound to attack from Long Island. They had the inner and shorter circle on which to move. Besides, a defeat of the allies, if they should be defeated, on the island would be vastly more disastrous to them than a repulse from the works on the mainland. It was not likely that General von Blücken would take such an unnecessary risk. In fact, the revolutionists were right. He intended from the outset to make his attack on New York from the northward.

During the winter the British troops in Boston pushed their way out into the interior, especially developing their strength towards the southwest, in the direction of the camp of the allies. Early in March they took possession of Providence,--still a fair and beautiful city, despite the havoc and ruin which the rule of the lawless hordes of the revolution had wrought in it. The revolutionists who were driven out of the city joined those at Worcester and Springfield, and by the middle of March regained the main force in New York by way of Albany and the eastern shore of the Hudson. This left the whole of lower New England practically in the undisputed possession of the allies. They speedily repaired the railway lines leading from Boston towards New York, and thus secured ready communication between the main army and several other important ports and depots of supplies besides New London, at which most of the army’s material had hitherto been landed.

XV.

THE ALLIES ATTACK NEW YORK.

Early in May the outposts of the opposing forces were face to face, and occasional skirmishes had already taken place. The two armies were nearly evenly matched in point of numbers. The allies counted up five hundred and twenty-two thousand men on shore, besides a naval force of about thirty thousand, in one hundred and twenty-two ships of war belonging to one grade or another. Only thirty-five of these vessels were iron-clad, but all carried effective armaments. In addition, the Sound was filled with an innumerable fleet of transports, tugs, and similar craft, acting as tenders on the larger ships.

With the force which had been withdrawn from New England, the revolutionists mustered in New York and Brooklyn about five hundred and fifty thousand men. Whatever reinforcements they received after the first of May were cantoned in Jersey City and Hoboken, to watch the movements of the loyalists up the river at Newburg. It was possible that they might move down the west shore and cut off communication with the South and West, as the allies had already cut off communication to the North and East; and this was to be prevented at all hazards.

On the third of May, the allies carried by assault and at the point of the bayonet a detached earthwork, known as Fort Schwab, which commanded the village of New Rochelle. It was an isolated work, and most of the garrison escaped behind the cover of their lines to the rear. But they did not have time to spike their guns; and during the entire night these pieces continued a harassing fire upon them. The morning of the fourth, attack was resumed along the whole line. All that day the contest raged with inconceivable fury. Again and again were the allies repulsed; again and again were they pushed forward. Their sledge-hammer blows were repeated first at one point, then at another, with persistent and terrible iteration. Twice, after actually capturing the outer line of defences, they were driven back into the open field. They returned to the charge the third time, and nightfall found them in possession of an entire division of this line. The revolutionists, though not trained soldiers, saw that they would be unable to hold the remaining portions, and under cover of the night withdrew to the next line of defence. Though they had suffered a technical defeat, they felt in no way disheartened over the result of the day. They had held the allies in check and had inflicted losses which they knew from the number of their own dead must have been terrible. They still retained possession of a double line of intrenchments stronger than the one which had been taken. They anticipated a delay of some days, if not weeks, before another attempt was made.

That very night, while the revolutionists were sleeping, General von Blücken despatched a force of fifty thousand men across the Sound to Long Island. They landed in silence, and without discovery approached the revolutionary lines so closely that at daybreak they were able to surprise a small earthwork and carry it by mere rush of numbers, without the firing of a single shot. But the surprise was short-lived. The revolutionists sprang to their arms and fought bravely as soon as the allied advance reached their next defence. The alarm was sounded, and assistance from other parts of the Brooklyn lines was despatched to the support of the overmastered socialists. Reinforcements were hurried across the river from New York. The fight surged back and forth, and the roar of conflict which reached New York was as loud and as menacing as that of the preceding day’s battle near New Rochelle had been.

The attack on that side was wholly suspended during this action. The scouts and outposts of the revolutionists reported that transports were to be seen moving in great numbers across the Sound to the Long Island shore, loaded with troops and returning empty. The revolutionary generals hastily decided that Von Blücken must have changed his original intention, owing to the resistance he had met with above the city, and that he was moving on what they felt to be their weakest point, Brooklyn. They must defend that city at all hazards. Over two hundred thousand men were withdrawn from the works to the northward of New York and hurried across to the aid of the Brooklyn garrison.

Not till it was too late did the revolutionists discover that they had been made the victims of a mere feint,--one of the simplest tricks of war, though in this case shrewdly managed. It was true that the transports which were kept plying across the narrow waters of the Sound did, for an hour after daybreak, carry considerable reinforcements to the allied forces which were engaged in the attack on the Brooklyn intrenchments; but this was continued only until General von Blücken felt sure that he had enough men on Long Island completely to engross the enemy’s attention. During all the rest of the morning the transports, which seemed to be full of men on their southward passage and empty on their return, were really bringing back to the mainland more troops than they carried over. Each one, on its southward trip, was manned on the side towards the revolutionists’ lines with dummy figures, among whom a few men moved about to give them the appearance of life. On their return these figures were hidden below the bulwarks, and the wounded, after whom the transports were really sent, were taken below decks where they could not be seen. Several complete regiments, whose services were found to be unnecessary for the success of the feint, were brought back hidden in the same way, and rejoined their divisions before the northern forts.

About the middle of the afternoon the allies drew back from Brooklyn towards Great Neck, and the revolutionists recovered all the ground which had been wrested from them in the first surprise. But their assailants showed no signs of leaving the island, and were kept constantly marching and countermarching so as to produce the conviction that they were in greater numbers than was the fact. This belief, corroborated by the reports of the outposts north of the city as to the immense number of men who had been transported across the Sound, was still further strengthened in the minds of the revolutionists by a fierce attack which a small brigade made on them from the side towards Coney Island during the night. A regiment of German hussars actually dashed upon a camp of over ten thousand men on the extreme southern wing, sabred their way through it, and carried off several prisoners. The boldness of the affair convinced the revolutionists that a strong force had arrived on that side of them, ready to attack them there next morning while the army resting at Great Neck renewed the fight from the northward. The officers at the New York defences reported that only an occasional gun had been fired from the works of the allies there during the day, and that a sham attack had been made on a bastion about the centre of the line, but that very few men were to be seen.

All but about one hundred and fifty thousand of the revolutionary forces were sent to the Brooklyn side; and it was determined to take advantage of the earliest dawn to turn the tables on the foreigners by surprising them, without giving them the opportunity to repeat their tactics of the day before.

A greater surprise than anything they meditated awaited the revolutionists. General von Blücken had been busily, though secretly, at work all that day and night gathering forces at a point just above Mount Vernon and near the centre of the opposing line. Before midnight he had massed there more men than were behind the whole extent of the works in front of him. A show of activity and watchfulness was kept up in the allied camp on Long Island; but before daybreak all the troops sent there to join in the feint had been withdrawn again, except a couple of flying horse-batteries and a single squadron of cavalry, which were ordered to retire whenever attacked and keep out of range,--as they could easily do, owing to the almost total lack of cavalry among the revolutionists with which to pursue them. When the besieged “surprised” the besiegers’ camp, at daybreak the next morning, they found only empty tents and smouldering watch-fires which had been burning untended for several hours.

They were allowed scant time to reflect upon the probable meaning of this trick. Before they had really discovered what had happened, from the allied parallels beyond New Rochelle a single gun boomed forth in the clear morning air. It was Von Blücken’s signal for a general attack. A thousand cannon mouths answered its summons, and told the revolutionists on Long Island that deadly work was beginning for their friends in the weakened intrenchments above the city. They strove with desperate speed to return in time to be of assistance; but they were not able.

This attack was no feint. In overwhelming numbers the allies poured over the earthworks which confronted them. Redoubt after redoubt, breastwork after breastwork, fort after fort was carried at the point of the bayonet. The resistance made was desperate, and the retreat sullen and slow. But the attenuated line of defenders at no moment was able to stop or even delay the advance of the solid masses of men which were hurled against it, first at one point, then at another. The carnage was frightful. Whole regiments on both sides were literally swept out of existence. But not for an instant did the attacking columns waver. On and on they pressed: now charging with a rush like an avalanche upon some fortification in which a more than usually stubborn resistance was being offered them; now moving in compact and splendid order along the routes which, long before he had ordered the assault, had been marked down for them to follow by the brilliant strategist commanding them.

It was not yet noon when Von Blücken, coming up from the rear, found the enemy in flight from a redoubt near the centre of their last line of defence, and the flag of his own Fatherland waving above it. Riding to the fort, he ordered its guns to be instantly turned in either direction upon the works which still held out. The revolutionist forces from Brooklyn, hurrying pell-mell through the city, on their arrival at the front found the allies in full possession of a half-dozen portions of the last line of works, with guns already mounted in them which commanded the city itself. Nowhere was a tenable position left in their hands. Had the allies been desirous of doing so, they could at once have entered the city. There was no power which could prevent them from taking possession in the morning. It was seen that the city must be evacuated.

All night the ferry-boats, which offered the only means of escape to westward and southward, were kept hurrying back and forth between the city and the New Jersey shore, loaded with the retreat. Slowly the rear-guard of the revolutionists drew backward down the city as the troops below crossed the river. In almost every block from which they retreated they left “infernal machines” of more or less elaborate construction, calculated to explode after a set time and destroy everything about them, or to burst into flames after the same interval and fire the buildings in which they were placed. Some fires were set directly by impatient hands, and it was not long after midnight that the allied sentries reported the city in flames.

General Wood, who had charge of the army during the night, was notified, and rode forward to an eminence from which he could see the city, by this time casting a brilliant light upon its own destruction. He saw that the fire was confined, thus far, to the upper portion, while the lower streets were still dark, and evidently held by the revolutionists. He surmised at once that they were retreating to Jersey City. Reports from the river bank soon verified this belief.

But what were they going to do with the city? Were they simply burning the upper portion, so as to oppose a real wall of fire to the allied advance, till they could safely complete their retreat? Or were they determined to destroy the entire city rather than have it fall into the allies’ possession? If any attempt should be made to save it from destruction by sending soldiers to extinguish the flames already raging, was it not likely that they would run great risk of being destroyed by scores and hundreds in the explosion of the “infernal machines,” which were the favorite weapons of the revolutionists, and which they had no doubt scattered thickly along the route the troops would have to take?

General Wood sat on his horse for some moments, watching the flames. Turning at last to a staff officer beside him, he remarked: “They are going to destroy behind them all of the place that will burn. I doubt if our men will find much shelter left them.”

“The fire might possibly be checked if we should go at it now,” responded the officer.

General Wood replied with abrupt decision: “That has been an Irish city for forty years. It has been worse than Dublin. It has been more dangerous to England than all Ireland itself, because it has been beyond our reach. For the last dozen or twenty years it has been the rottenest centre of socialism in the whole world. I would not risk the life of a single honest and decent soldier to save the whole Sodom from utter destruction!”

All night the sentries on picket duty along the allied lines watched the flames extending and the light growing in intensity. Occasional explosions from the midst of burning areas showed that General Wood had been correct in his suspicion that deadly mines lay in wait for any who might try to extinguish the conflagration. At daybreak he reported the condition of affairs to General von Blücken. The commander approved his action, but ordered several of the smaller vessels to reconnoitre immediately the Hell-Gate passage of the East River and report if that route was practicable for transports or war-ships.

Admiral Seymour had anticipated the need of this knowledge the moment the burning and abandonment of the city was reported to him, and at the earliest dawn three small vessels--two of them tugs and one a light-armored cruiser--had pushed through the Gate and descended safely as far as Blackwell’s Island. Their report was brought to General von Blücken by Admiral Seymour in person, shortly after seven o’clock in the morning. A force of seventy-five thousand men was instantly ordered to embark and to proceed down the river to the Battery. If that was deserted, they were to push across the Hudson and attempt a landing on the New Jersey shore. Before the transports started, about twenty-five of the lighter-armored and swifter of the fighting vessels in the fleet steamed in advance down the narrow East River to clear the way and draw the fire of any of the enemy who might still linger in their retreat. At the same time a slow and cautious advance was made by the army from the North directly upon the burning city.

It was soon found that the entire upper half of the town was in hopeless ruins. But as morning approached, the retreat had become more of a flight, and less time had been left the hurrying revolutionists to devote to destruction. All through the lower half of the city buildings were found on fire, but there had been no such universal incendiarism as had caused the obliteration of every structure above Central Park. No apparatus for putting out fires had been left in working order in the city; but by the demolition of surrounding buildings the allies succeeded in confining these detached conflagrations to narrow limits, within which they eventually burned themselves out.

The revolutionists made no stop at Jersey City on their retreat. They knew that in a very short time it would be under the guns of the allied fleet. They had been compelled to abandon all their artillery except a few batteries of field-pieces, and could make no reply that would be felt within the iron sides of the armored vessels. Picking up the detachments which had been left along the west shore to watch the loyalists at Newburg, they pushed on towards Philadelphia.

Though driven out of New York, they were by no means conquered. They felt that they had been beaten by strategy and trick. In open fight they still had confidence in their ability to hold the invaders in check, if not signally to defeat them. The moment the news reached Washington that New York had fallen, O’Halloran, Wagner, and Liest despatched orders to every socialist and Irish organization in the North and West, calling for their last available men. The three themselves hurried northward to meet the retiring army, reaching Philadelphia at the same time that its advance-guard arrived. Most of the troops had been compelled to march on foot across New Jersey, owing to the failure of railroad transport; and it was not till the fourteenth of May that the last brigades arrived.

In this emergency, and by consent of the other two members of the “Directory,” O’Halloran, who showed by far the most endurance and courage of all, was given supreme military command. He found that he was still in control of a formidable army. It had lost by death and desertions about a hundred and fifty thousand men since the allies landed. But the detachments which had been collected from the cities on the shore of the Hudson opposite New York, the detail which had been met at Philadelphia, the forces which had been brought from Washington and Baltimore, and the reinforcements which had already arrived from points to the westward, had more than made good these losses. O’Halloran found that he could oppose to the invaders as numerous an army as had met them before New York, while he assumed that they would be unable to replace the men whom they had lost.

In a measure, this was true; yet General von Blücken had repaired his losses much more fully than O’Halloran suspected. During the attack on New York of the fourth of May he had sent to Boston for twenty thousand men from the British garrison there. The day that New York fell, eighteen thousand more were called to his force, leaving only about five thousand to hold Boston, and as many more along the line of communication southward. But the retreat of the revolutionists had made this force ample. Meanwhile several troop-ships had arrived, bringing reinforcements from Europe.

Two days after he had taken possession of New York, Brooklyn, and the New Jersey cities, General von Blücken found his strength so far recruited that he was able to push forward in pursuit of the retiring foe. At the same time a portion of the fleet, with a considerable force of marines, was sent to make a demonstration against Washington, and if the city was found undefended, to seize it. Another smaller detachment was ordered up the Chesapeake to try Baltimore.

XVI.

THE FINAL STRUGGLE.

The contending forces were too large to admit of rapid movement on either side; but the better discipline and greater attention to detail on the part of the allies gave them an advantage in the race, and they slowly but surely gained on the revolutionists. The latter were falling back, with the evident intention of resting behind the defences of Washington, when the advancing troops of the allies began to press upon their rear. By a strange fatality, this encounter took place near the town of Gettysburg; and it was on that historic field, which saw the most decisive struggle of the civil war, that the last battle of 1888 was also fought.

It was the 11th of June when the two armies found themselves once more face to face. For the whole of the preceding day and evening impassioned socialistic and Irish agitators had been passing around the revolutionary camp, inciting their hearers to wilder and fiercer fanaticism. So successful had they been that even the camp followers who had fled in panic out of New York to escape the allied guns, became clamorous for an opportunity to meet their victors once more in open fight.

Early the following morning (June 12, 1888) the battle opened. For two days the desperate fight raged around the little town; and the two “Round Tops,” whose summits were the objects of constant attack by one party or the other, once more shed rivulets of blood down their steep and rocky sides. The allies were by far the better armed and the better disciplined; but the revolutionists fought literally “to the death.” They introduced a new and terrible element into civilized warfare by refusing to give quarter to their prisoners. The allied soldiers soon learned of this barbarism, and, despite the attempts of their officers to restrain them, retaliated in kind. Their rage became as furious as the fanaticism of their opponents.