The Crossing Read Free Page B

After a brief testing of the defenses, he embarked his army in the warships and sailed up the Sound to Westchester. Now he was behind the Americans, and their defense of Manhattan Island became meaningless.
    The Americans had built a strong fort on the high ridge of northern Manhattan, facing the Hudson River, and they had named it Fort Washington, in honor of their commander in chief. The Americans now moved there, while Washington himself rode into Westchester to meet the British landing party. At the Battle of White Plains, in October, the Continental troops once again failed to halt the British advance.
    Washington crossed over to New Jersey, hoping they could hold Fort Washington in Manhattan. But again, the British refused to march head on into an American trap, and they brought up to Fort Washington a great concentration of heavy cannon. Then, for hours, they poured artillery fire into the earthworks until they were leveled. When the cannon smoke cleared, the American defenders saw a column of Scottish Highlanders, advancing behind their skirling pipes with bayonets fixed, and on either side of them, the dreaded Hessians. The Hessians were led by Colonel Rahl, a fearless officer whom we will meet again. He was recognized, and his name added to the general terror.
    In a sense, Fort Washington collapsed under its own pervading fear. The Americans holding the outer earthworks expected an attack on the fairly level landward side. But Colonel Rahl had led his Hessians up the steep, brush-covered rocks that dropped down to the Hudson River on the west side of the fort. When they appeared at the earthworks with naked bayonets, the Americans abandoned their positions and fled to the main redoubt for protection. Suddenly, the central redoubt was a mass of panic-stricken soldiers who had neither the wit nor the desire to turn and face the enemy and fight.
    Hundreds of other Americans broke out of the fort, leaped past the earthworks and tumbled head over heels down the rocky slope to the Hudson. Some managed to cross the river and join the American army on the other side, but those were only a handful. Most of those who escaped hid in the thickets on the Manhattan shore, north to the Isham Heights, where a great and magnificent forest of tulip trees surrounded an old Indian village, a shelter as lonely and untouched as one could find. They hid in this forest and subsequently made their way north and homeward, deserting, as so many others were doing.
    But by far the majority of the garrison of Fort Washington were taken captive, over two thousand unwounded men in all. A dozen others were injured. And while tremendous tales were contrived later concerning the gallantry of the men who defended the fort, the bitter truth is that it was given away, with only twelve men killed among the defenders.
    Across the Hudson River, on the Palisades, General Washington and his brigadiers watched as the enemy flag was raised through the clouds of smoke that lay over the fort. What thoughts crossed his mind then, we will never know. But certainly he must have reflected ruefully that the first place ever named in his honor had made a speedy transition. Possibly, he also felt that it might well be the last. And he might have thought to himself that it was high time he stopped taking the advice of others, for he wrote to his brother Augustine:
    â€œThis is a most unfortunate affair, and has given me great mortification; as we have lost not only two thousand men that were there, but a good deal of artillery and some of the best arms we had. And what adds to my mortification is that this post, after the last ships went past it, was held contrary to my wishes and opinion …”
    Such was the chaos of the moment that Washington actually did not have the full figure of the loss. Sir William Howe, the British commander, ordered a count, and the total was 2,818 men and officers. By midnight, the count was finished, and the poor, damned men were