The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [62]
Lee was by birth an Englishman, had served in the British army, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. When the French and Indian War concluded, so too did the need for a great many British officers, and Lee lost his command. Always one to seek adventure, Lee found it by traveling to Poland and so impressed the Polish king that he was promoted to major general in the Polish army. After his return to England, Lee’s outspoken criticism of King George made life somewhat dangerous for him, and he followed up his words with actions, sailing to America. Though sentiment still favored Washington as the commander, many in the army and in the congress believed that Charles Lee was the finest military mind in the American cause. Now, Lee was back where so many claimed he could be put to the best use.
With Howe bringing his army back into New York, Washington could only guess where the British would move next. As long as Washington kept his troops out of harm’s way and focused on a strong defense, Howe would not likely seek any direct assault. But the British could not be expected to sit quietly for long, and so Washington divided his army into four parts, each charged with the protection of a vital route out of New York. Lee would remain around White Plains with the largest force, nearly seven thousand men, guarding against any land assault toward New England. General William Heath would command three thousand men at the Hudson River Highlands, an easily defended position about thirty miles above Manhattan, in the event the British navy attempted a strong push upriver. Washington himself would bring two thousand men southward into New Jersey, guarding against the rumored invasion of that state, which would provide Howe an open road to Philadelphia. The last position was the one already manned by the troops still in Manhattan, the seemingly impregnable fortress of Fort Washington. Immediately across the Hudson, on the New Jersey side, the army had constructed another fort, which Washington ordered to be named Fort Lee, in honor of the return of the general. The two forts faced each other across the wide river, were manned by nearly four thousand troops, and were both under the command of Nathanael Greene.
GREENE REMAINED MOSTLY ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE RIVER, WOULD travel across to Fort Washington for meetings with the senior officers there. The only activity around the fort was the further construction of redoubts and earthworks along the high cliffs and rocky highlands of northern Manhattan Island, in a widening arc around the fort itself. The work was in the hands of Fort Washington’s senior officer, Colonel Robert Magaw, a crusty Pennsylvanian, who brought a homespun sense of discipline to his command. Magaw had come from the rugged wilderness near Carlisle, but his background was not military at all. His crudeness masked his formal education, and he was what many referred to as a country lawyer.
The work around Fort Washington was an attempt to make a strong position much stronger, the cliffs, deep ravines, and swampy bottomlands providing a formidable barrier to any assault. Greene had observed some of the work himself, dirt piled on rock, stout branches sharpened and wedged into tight crevasses, the work performed by men whose energy was boosted by their confidence in the strength of their position.
It was midday, and he was returning to Fort Lee, full of the same confidence he had seen in Magaw and his men. As the small boat slid across the slow current, he could see British warships far to the south, anchored in line out from the city itself, an unnecessary wall of strength against the foolishness of any move Washington’s men might make down the Hudson.
The boat moved in slow lurches, the oarsmen practiced, efficient, and Greene stared at the distant row of tall masts, thought of Howe, the great assembly of British power.