Victory at Yorktown: A Novel Read Free

almost obsessive, but such a base betrayal could not help but wound him to the core, with thoughts of it filling nearly every waking moment.
    “Benedict Arnold,” he whispered under his breath, paused and then added “damn your soul, damn your soul.”
    These were was words he so rarely used. He rarely felt such even toward those whom he saw as his mortal foes, men such as the British Howe, who did attempt to fight an honorable war. Even the now pathetic Hessians, who when they first arrived here had shown such haughty arrogance and brutal treatment to his captured wounded, but now were terrified of their own shadows for fear of falling into the hands of a Rebel, who might remember the slaughter on battlefields past and slowly take revenge.
    But Benedict Arnold? Here was a man he had clasped to his heart like few others. This was the man he had met back in those first heady days of 1775, detailing him off to try to capture Quebec and bring a fourteenth colony into their cause. Arnold had set off, leading six hundred gallant men, through the autumn storms of Maine and the freezing cold of a Canadian winter, nearly dying in the assault on Quebec with a bullet in his leg. He was captured and finally exchanged, but eager for more action.
    Arnold had fought the British in their campaign of 1776 down Lake Champlain to a standstill. Fought them throughout 1777, while saddled, thanks to the politics of Congress, with the self-serving Gates as his superior. At the climactic moment of the struggle around Saratoga, Arnold, who technically was under arrest for having dared to argue with Gates, and stricken with illness, had risen from his bed when word came that the battle, typical of Gate’s actions, was turning in the wrong direction. He mounted his horse and dashed to the front. Then in a mad display of bravado, he had charged straight at the British lines, screaming for any and all with courage to follow him in. He had rallied the men, led them to a smashing victory, only to be wounded at the supreme moment in the leg, the ball striking nearly at the same spot as his wound at Quebec.
    He had saved the battle and created victory. That victory had swayed France into the fight. It had saved the Revolution, for at nearly that exact same moment Washington’s own army was being hammered to pieces by Howe and forced to abandon the national capital of Philadelphia. The news of Saratoga arrived in France before word of his own defeats, and had given Benjamin Franklin the argument to bring France into the war. Arnold, in that one gallant moment, had saved the Revolution.
    Tragically, it was Gates who had galloped south from Saratoga to parade before Congress, aggrandizing unto himself the glory of Saratoga while Arnold languished for weeks, arguing with his doctors, refusing to let them hack his leg off. He had survived, kept the leg, but needed months, more like a year or more, to slowly recover. He was no longer fit for command in the field when Philadelphia was taken back from the British. As Washington looked out across the Hudson he remembered that moment all so well, the joy of recalling Arnold to some form of duty and without hesitation slotting his friend into that strife-torn capital as its military commander. Given the politics of Congress, he knew he could trust Arnold in all things, unlike Gates, and made it clear that if a bullet or disease should end his own command, his nomination for commander in chief would either be Greene or Arnold. He firmly believed, that given another six months to a year for Arnold to recover fully, he would be ready to again take the field and create yet more victories.
    With the British all but driven from New Jersey in 1778, and the theater of war shifting to the Hudson Valley, leaving Arnold in the rear, it most likely had begun. He had heard rumors about the young woman Margaret “Peggy” Shippen. One of his more effective and gallant spies in that captured city, a brave lass believed by most