11 The Battle

I was awakened in the morning by the shoving of Old Put’s cold nose, which said as plain as speech, “Rise, my master, and prepare for the enemy.” Most of the other men were up, and the camp cooks had breakfast ready, bread, meat, and coffee. I threw off my blanket and began to eat with the others.

It was the misty region between night and day. The scouts told us that the British would soon be at hand, and by the time the breakfast had been despatched the rim of the sun appeared in the east, and the day was coming. Then the General formed the line of battle, and each of us took his appointed place.

On the first rise of the slope stood the South Carolina and Georgia militia, the raw troops, in a line about a sixth of a mile long, under the command of the iron-nerved Pickens. They were expected to give way before the charge of the enemy, but Pickens was ordered to hold them in line until they could deliver at least two volleys with the precision in firing which all these farmer boys possessed. Then they were to retire behind the veteran regulars under Howard, who were on the second slope, one hundred and fifty yards in their rear. An equal distance behind the second rise sat we cavalrymen on our horses, commanded to pull on our reins and wait the moment upon which the fate of the combat should turn.

Thus stood our little army, expecting the rush of the battle which, as I have said, was to be one of the most important and decisive of our war. I stroked Old Put’s neck and bade him be cool, but he was as calm as I and needed no such encouragement. The man on my left, Bob Chester, a Pennsylvanian, suddenly whispered:

“Don’t you hear that faint rumbling noise, Phil? That’s the hoof-beats of cavalry.”

“Silence there!” called the Colonel.

No one spoke again; but, bending my ear forward, I could hear the far drum of the horses’ hoofs, and I knew that the English army was coming. Old Put raised his head and snuffed the air. A red gleam appeared upon the horizon and broadened rapidly. A thrill and a deep murmur ran the length and breadth of our army.

“Oh, if those militiamen will only stand until the General bids them retire!” groaned the Colonel.

That he believed they would not I knew, since it is a hard thing for new men to stand the rush of a seasoned army superior in numbers and equipment.

The sun was just swinging clear of the earth, and betokened a brilliant morning, yet it was cold with the raw damp that often creeps into a South Carolina winter, and I for one wished that the men could see a little more of the day and loosen their muscles a little better before they fought.

The whole British army now appeared in the plain, cavalry, infantry, and field-pieces, in a great red square. I could plainly see the officers giving their orders, and I knew that the attack would come in a few minutes.

“Eleven hundred of them and no raw troops,” said Colonel Washington. “We know that exactly from our scouts. I think our cavalry will have something to do to-day.”

One officer, in the gayest of uniforms, I took to be the barbarian Tarleton, the British leader whom we hated most of all, for, with all his soldierly qualities, he was a barbarian, as most of his brother British officers themselves say.

I wanted to see the faces of those farmer boys down there on the slope who were to receive the first and fiercest rush of the enemy and to check it. I knew that many of them were white to the eyes, but their backs were towards me, and I could not see.

“They don’t appear to move,” whispered Chester. “Their line looks as firm as if it were made of iron.”

“Like untempered iron, I guess,” I replied—“break like glass at the first shot.”

A bugle sounded in the front of the British squares, and its notes, loud and mellow, came to us, but from our ranks rose only the heavy breathing and the shuffling of men and horses.

The trumpet-call was followed by a cheer from more than a thousand throats, and then the British rushed upon us. The brass field-pieces on their flanks opened with the thunder that betokens the artillery, and mingled with their roar were the rattle of the small arms, the throb of the drums, and the clamorous hoof-beats of their numerous cavalry.

The face of their red line blazed with fire, their red uniforms glowing through it like a bloody gleam, while the polished bayonets shone in front.

“They are firing too soon and coming too fast,” said Colonel Washington. “By God! look at those militiamen! They are standing like the Massachusetts farmers at Bunker Hill!”

It was so. The raw line of plough-boys never wavered. It bent nowhere, and was still as straight and strong as an iron bar. The plough-boys knelt down, and, as the British cheer rose and the red line flaming in front swept nearer, up went the long-barrelled border rifles. I fancied that I could hear Pickens’s command to fire, but I did not, and then all the rifles in a line a sixth of a mile long were fired so close together that the discharge was like the explosion of the greatest cannon in all the world.

The smoke rose in a thick black cloud, which a moment later floated a dozen feet above the earth and revealed the British squares shattered and stopped, the ground in front of them red with the fallen, the officers shouting and reforming their lines, while our own plough-lads, still as firm as the bills, were reloading their rifles with swift and steady hands.

We cavalrymen raised a great shout of approval, which the regulars on the rise in front of us took up and repeated. A second volley was all that we had asked from the militiamen, and it was sure now. Even as our cheer was echoing it was delivered with all the coolness and deadly precision of the first. Again the British squares reeled and stopped, but they were veterans, led by the fiery Tarleton, and they came on a third time, only to meet the third of those deadly volleys, which swept down their front lines and blocked the way with their own dead and dying.

“The battle is won already,” shouted Colonel Washington, “and it’s the farmer boys of South Carolina and Georgia who have won it!”

Never did veteran troops show more gallantry and tenacity than those same farmer boys on that day. Two volleys were all that were asked of them, yet not merely once or twice, but many times, they poured in their deadly fire at close range, again and again hurling back the British veterans, who doubled them in number and were supported by artillery and many cavalry, while we old soldiers in the two lines behind stood silent, not a gun or a sabre raised, and watched their valor.

They retired at last, not broken, but in perfect order, and at the command of Pickens, that we who stood behind them might have the chance to do our part of the day’s work.

The smoke hung low in clouds and half hid both armies, British and American. A brilliant sun above pierced through it in places and gleamed on clumps of men, some fallen, some still fighting. Shrieks and groans strove for a place with the curses and shouts.

Again rose the British cheer from the throats of all those who stood, for, the militiamen retiring before them, they thought it was a battle won, and they charged with fresh courage and vigor, pouring forward in a red avalanche. But the regulars, the steady old Continentals, who now confronted them, received them with another volley, and more infantrymen fell down in the withered grass, more riderless horses galloped away.

The battle rolled a step nearer to us, but we cavalrymen, who formed the third line, were still silent and sat with tight reins, while directly in our front rose a huge bank of flame and smoke in which friend and enemy struggled and fought. Even Old Put, with his iron nerves, fretted and pulled on the reins.

The long line of the British overlapped the Continentals, whom they outnumbered three to one, and the General, whose gigantic figure I could see through the haze of smoke, ordered them to retreat lest they should be flanked.

Again the British cheer boomed out when they saw the regulars giving ground, for now they were sure that victory was theirs, though more hardly won than they had thought. But the retreat of the regulars was only a feint, and to give time for the militiamen behind them to come again into action. General Morgan galloped towards us, waving his sword to Washington, and every one of us knew that our moment had come.

“Forward!” was the single command of our leader, and the reins and the sabres swung free as we swept in a semicircle around the line of our friends and then at the enemy. At the same moment the regulars, ceasing to yield, charged the astonished foe and poured in a volley at close range, while the militiamen threw themselves in a solid mass upon the British flank.

We of the cavalry were but eighty strong, with fifty more mounted volunteers behind us under Major McCall, but we were a compact body of strong horses and strong horsemen, with shortened rifles and flashing sabres, and we were driven straight at the heart of the enemy like the cold edge of a chisel.

We slashed into the British, already reeling from the shock of the Continentals and the militiamen, and they crumpled up before us like dry paper before a fire. Our rifles were emptied, and the sabres were doing the silent but more deadly work. Amid all the wild din of the shouting and the musketry and the blur of the smoke and the flame I knew little that I was doing except hack, hack, and I was glad of it. I could hear steel gritting on bone, and the smell of leather and smoke and blood arose, but the smoke was still in my eyes, and I could only see enough to strike and keep on striking. We horsemen, one hundred and thirty strong, were still a solid, compact body, a long gleaming line like a sword-blade thrust through the marrow of the enemy. We cut our way directly to the heart of the English army, and their broken squares were falling asunder as our line of steel lashed and tore. The red army reeled about over the slope like a man who has lost power over his limbs. I struck at a trooper on my left, but he disappeared, and a second trooper on my right raised his sabre to cut me down. I had no time to fend off the blow, and in one swift instant I expected to take my place with the fallen, but a long, muscular brown neck shot out, two rows of powerful white teeth inclosed the man’s sword-arm, and he screamed aloud in pain and fright.

“Do you surrender?” I cried.

“Yes, yes, for God’s sake, take him off!” he shouted. “I can fight a man, but not a man and a wild devil of a horse at the same time!”

“Let him go,” I said to Old Put, and, the horse unclasping his teeth, the man gave up his sword.

The smoke was lifting and clearing away somewhat, and the fire of the rifles declined from a steady crackle to jets and spurts. A dozen of the militiamen seized one of the brass field-pieces of the British, and Howard’s Continentals already held the other. Everywhere cries of “I surrender! I surrender! Quarter! quarter!” arose from the British horse and foot, who were throwing down their arms to receive from us that quarter which we willingly gave, but which the bloody Tarleton had so often denied to our men.

I could scarce believe what I saw. The whole British army seemed to be killed, wounded, or taken. The muskets and bayonets, the swords and pistols, rattled as they threw them upon the ground. Whole companies surrendered bodily. An officer, his gay uniform splashed with mud and blood, dashed past me, lashing his horse at every jump. It was Tarleton himself, and behind him came Washington, pursuing with all his vigor and lunging at the fleeing English leader with a bayonet fastened at a rifle’s end. He returned after awhile without Tarleton, but there was blood on his bayonet. Tarleton, though wounded in the shoulder, escaped through the superior speed of his horse, to be taken with Cornwallis and the others at Yorktown.

The General raised his sword and cried to us to stop firing and striking, for the field was won and the battle over, and he spoke truly. Far away showed the red backs of some of the English fleeing at the full speed of their horses, but they were only a few, and almost their entire army lay upon the field, dead and wounded, or stood there our prisoners. The defeat that so many of us feared had proved to be the most brilliant little victory in our history, a masterpiece of tactics and valor, the decisive beginning of the great campaign which won us back the Southern colonies, one of the costliest of all her battles to England. I have told you how it was, just as the histories, both English and American, tell it to you. All honor and glory to the gallant plough-boys of South Carolina and Georgia, who received the first shock of the British army and broke it so bravely! Of the eleven hundred British veterans who attacked us only two hundred escaped from the field, and we took all their cannon, baggage, ammunition, and small arms, even of those who escaped, for they threw them away in their flight. The killed, wounded, and taken just equalled the numbers of our entire army, and we had only twelve men dead.

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