The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [258]
“You know better than I. But Clinton’s inaction may be the best hope we have. Without the French, I do not see how the congress can provide for another campaign. There is no pay for your men, new recruits will be difficult to find.”
It was the same story, every new year bringing the same fears. Washington knew that the commissions of nearly four thousand of his regular troops would expire by late spring.
“Then I will continue to hope, Robert. Perhaps General Clinton is content to remain in New York. Perhaps he awaits reinforcements of his own, feels he is too weakened to begin a new campaign. We know from several reliable scouts that he has shipped out a great many men to the southern islands.”
“Then you are not naÏve after all. You have learned your enemy well, George. It is the mark of a good commander.”
AS THE SPRING GAVE WAY TO SUMMER, THE BRITISH EMERGED FROM the city only to continue their small raids on supply depots and farms. Clinton made one serious push up the Hudson, capturing the valuable outpost at Stony Point. It was good strategy, a possible foothold they could use for a much larger campaign upriver toward Washington’s main fortification at West Point. But Clinton was careless, and left the newly captured prize undermanned. Washington responded with a quick strike by troops led by Anthony Wayne, and within days, Stony Point was back in Washington’s hands. But Stony Point was too weak a position for either army to defend, and Wayne was forced to withdraw, the British occupying the place yet again.
The tit-for-tat confrontations continued in several quarters, from the coast of New England to Virginia, and Washington became more and more confident that Clinton had no intention of mounting a major campaign. He could only assume that the British had as much need of a respite as the Americans. Regardless of what strategy Clinton might be planning for the future, for the present, the British were giving the Americans an enormous gift of time.
While the Hudson was the focus of much of the skirmishing, there was one brief and sharp action farther south, a swampy spit of land called Paulus Hook, which lay along the New Jersey coast opposite southern Manhattan. The British had grown careless again, the outpost manned by five hundred troops who guarded their sandy entrenchments, disregarding any threat from Washington’s troops. In the darkness, a handpicked force of three hundred light horsemen burst into the British lines and captured a third of their men, escaping as rapidly as they had come, with a loss of only five American casualties. It was a blow to British pride more than any great strategic victory, but it brought a new officer to Washington’s attention. The light cavalry had been commanded by a Virginian, a man whose family Washington knew well. While the young major had shown a talent for horsemanship, the cavalry had yet to prove itself as effective as their British counterparts. But after Paulus Hook, Washington realized that cavalry could be useful indeed, especially if they were led by effective officers, good men like this Virginian, the young major they now called “Light-Horse Harry” Lee.
42. FRANKLIN
PARIS, SUMMER 1779
HE HAD BEGUN THE DAY AS EVERY DAY BEFORE, CONSULTING HIS calendar. The pages were typically a mass of scribbles, and it made no difference if the writing was his or Temple’s. The appointments would flow out into the margins of each page, row upon row of names and titles. Each name was accompanied by a time of day, a mild joke now. It was generous of the French to try to appease the American need for punctuality, but Franklin had come to understand that no one would ever arrive at his designated time.
This morning he had followed his usual routine, settled heavily into his soft chair with his cup of coffee, thumbing his way through the calendar to the current day. The result was a glorious discovery. Two pages had been adhered together by some long misplaced morsel of food. The hidden page, now blessedly blank, was for today