The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [172]
Within hours, all of Paris had heard the news. Franklin waited at Passy with renewed patience, hoped that word of the astounding American victory would bring a change in the attitude of King Louis. He was not disappointed. Within two days, Gerard came to Passy carrying Vergennes’ message of congratulations. Within a week, the foreign ministry was inviting the American envoys to present another proposal for an alliance, which Franklin sent by the hand of his grandson. In another week, Vergennes met Franklin, Deane, and Lee with the news that the government of France had sent envoys to King Charles of Spain. If Spain agreed to join France in declaring war on England, then both nations would form an official alliance with the United States of America. Franklin’s cautious enthusiasm gave way to a new despair. King Louis, whose lust for high-stakes gambling was legendary, was hedging his bets. Though the cheering for the American victory still rolled through the streets of Paris, at Versailles, the French court would only risk a war if total victory was a safe bet.
27. WASHINGTON
VALLEY FORGE, PENNSYLVANIA, JANUARY 1778
FOR DAYS, THE RHYTHMIC SOUND OF AXES ROLLED OVER THE PLATEAU, the forests below teeming with men who knew only one duty now. They had begun their winter camps by sleeping in the ragged canvas tents, but Washington knew that canvas would shield no one from winter. If the army was to subsist and survive in a winter quarter, they would have to build solid structures. The ground had been chosen with the vast stretches of woods in mind, and no one complained when the tools were handed out. Already the snow had covered the plateau where the cabins would be built, and already sick men were filling the nearby farmhouses, the health of the army decaying. Each day, fewer men were able to answer the call to duty, fewer men made the difficult trek down into the trees, fewer men had the strength to haul the stout logs up to the heights of the camp.
He had begged the congress to secure horses and wagons, and neither had appeared. Washington watched as the men formed their own teams, wrapping themselves in leather harnesses, straining with hard groans as they pulled the cut timbers up the hill. On the plateau itself, men with some training in carpentry guided the others, notching the logs, each cabin rising slowly as the timbers were set upon each other. Stiff red hands worked frozen mud and clay, filling the gaps in the logs, sealing out the cold. As the walls grew higher, the men worked from the inside out, seeking protection from the sharp wind. Washington had hoped they would find some ingenious method of building a roof, something more weatherproof than thatched sticks and muddy grass. But once the doors were built, slabs of split oak, a dozen men could finally huddle inside, protected against the hard freezing wind. The grassy, porous roofs would have to do.
Each cabin had a chimney to vent the choking smoke from a variety of crude hearths. The men who had some experience with brick making or masonry, or some skill with molding clay, could construct an efficient escape for the smoke from their blessed fires. Others relied on wooden chimneys and fireboxes caked thick with mud to make them fireproof.
Inside, the snow and grass beneath their feet was trampled down to wet bare dirt that would become the floor of each cabin. As the cabins filled with men, the wetness of the bare earthen floors rose up to swallow them in a soft cauldron of sickness. Though the fires in the crude hearths would eventually dry the ground, the cold still seeped in, and the troops scoured the countryside for straw, for