Historic Fredericksburg Part 9

In September, 1774, the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. The war cloud was lowering, it broke, and when the Revolution swept the country, Mercer was elected Colonel of the Third Virginia Regiment.

An approbation of the choice of Mercer was prepared by the county committee, which set forth the importance of the appointment and was an acknowledgment of his public spirit and willingness to sacrifice his life.

Colonel Mercer with his men and fifes and drums marched away from his home, bidding good-bye to his wife (Isabella Gordon), whom he never saw again.

There is an interesting story of Mercer at Williamsburg. Among the troops which were sent there at that time, was a Company of riflemen from beyond the mountains, commanded by a Captain Gibson. A reckless and violent opposition to military restraint had gained for this corps the name of "Gibson's Lambs." After a short time in camp, a mutiny arose among them, causing much excitement in the army, and alarming the inhabitants of the city. Free from all restraint, they roamed through the camp, threatening with instant death any officer who would presume to exercise any authority over them.

[Sidenote: _Mercer Quells a Mutiny_]

At the height of the mutiny an officer was dispatched with the alarming tidings to the quarters of Colonel Mercer. The citizens of the town vainly implored him not to risk his life in this infuriated mob.

Reckless of personal safety, he instantly repaired to the barracks of the mutinous band and directing a general parade of the troops, he ordered Gibson's company to be drawn up as offenders and violators of the law, and to be disarmed in his presence.

The ringleaders were placed under a strong guard and in the presence of the whole army he addressed the offenders in an eloquent manner, impressing on them their duties as citizens and soldiers, and the certainty of death if they continued to remain in that mutinous spirit equally disgraceful to them and hazardous to the sacred interests they had marched to defend. Disorder was instantly checked and the whole company was ever afterward as efficient in deportment as any troop in the army.

On June 5, 1776, Mercer was made Brigadier-General in the Continental Army. It was Mercer who suggested to Was.h.i.+ngton the crossing of the Delaware. Major Armstrong, Mercer's Aide-de-Camp, who was present at a council of officers, and who was with Mercer on that fateful night, is authority for this statement.

We, somehow, see the army of the colonists poorly clad, many of them barefoot, without tents, with few blankets, and badly fed. In front of them is Cornwallis, with his glittering hosts, and we can almost hear the boast of General Howe, that Philadelphia would fall when the Delaware froze. He did not know Was.h.i.+ngton; and Mercer's daring was not reckoned with. We wonder if ever a Christmas night was so filled with history as that on which Was.h.i.+ngton, with the intrepid Mercer at his side, pus.h.i.+ng through that blinding storm of snow and fighting his way through the floating ice, crossed the Deleware with the rallying cry of "victory or death," and executed the brilliant move which won for him the Battle of Trenton.

Near Princeton, Was.h.i.+ngton's army was hemmed in by Cornwallis in front and the Delaware in the rear. After a consultation at Mercer's headquarters it was determined to withdraw the Continental forces from the front of the enemy near Trenton, and attack the detachment then at Princeton. The pickets of the two armies were within two hundred yards of each other. In order to deceive the enemy, campfires were left burning on Was.h.i.+ngton's front line and thus deceived, the enemy slept.

[Sidenote: _Death on The Battlefield_]

A woman guided the Continental army on that night march. A detachment of two hundred men, under Mercer, was sent to seize a bridge at Worth's Mill.

The night had been dreary; the morning was severely cold. Mercer's presence was revealed at daybreak. General Mahood counter-marched his regiment and crossed the bridge at Worth's Mill before Mercer could reach it. The British troops charged. The Colonials were driven back. General Mercer dismounted and tried vainly to rally his men. While he was doing this, he was attacked by a group of British troops, who, with the b.u.t.ts of muskets, beat him down and demanded that he surrender. He refused. He was then bayoneted and left for dead on the battlefield. Stabbed in seven different places, he did not expire until January 12, 1777.

Was.h.i.+ngton finally won the Battle of Princeton, but Mercer was a part of the price he paid. The battles of Trenton and Princeton were the most brilliant victories in the War of the Revolution.

At Fredericksburg a monument perpetuates Mercer's fame. At the funeral in Philadelphia 30,000 people were present, and there his remains rest in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

The St. Andrew's Society, which he joined in 1757, erected a monument to his memory and in the historical painting of the Battle of Princeton, by Peale Mercer is given a prominent place. The states of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia and New Jersey have, by an act of Legislature, named a county "Mercer," and on October 1, 1897, a bronze tablet to his memory was unveiled at Princeton, N. J. We have not the s.p.a.ce to relate all of his ill.u.s.trious life, but somewhere there is a poem, the last lines of which voice the sentiment of his countrymen.

"But he, himself, is canonized, If saintly deeds such fame can give; As long as liberty is prized, Hugh Mercer's name shall surely live."

SIR LEWIS LITTLEPAGE

In the possession of a well-known man of Richmond, Va., is a large gold key.

It is vastly different from the keys one sees these days, and inquiry develops that it was once the property of one of the most picturesque characters in America--a man who began his life in the cornfields of Hanover County, Va., in 1753, and was swept by the wave of circ.u.mstance into the palace of a King.

The atmosphere of old William and Mary College, where Lewis Littlepage was graduated, after the death of his father, gave a mysteriously romantic note to the beckoning song of adventure, which finally became a definite urge, when the youth, after residing in Fredericksburg, listened to the advice of his guardian, Benjamin Lewis, of Spotsylvania County, who placed him with John Jay, the American Minister at Madrid.

Six months later, Jay, in a letter to Benjamin Lewis, said of the seventeen-year-old lad:

"I am much pleased with your nephew, Lewis Littlepage, whom I regard as a man of undoubted genius, and a person of unusual culture."

And a few months after this we discover that the well-known traveler, Mr.

Elekiah Watson, has an entry in his diary which reads:

"At Nantes I became acquainted with Lewis Littlepage, and although he is but eighteen years of age, I believe him to be the most remarkable character of the age. I esteem him a prodigy of genius."

[Sidenote: _The Poet Takes The Sword_]

In Madrid, Littlepage got into financial straits, owing to the fact that his allowance did not reach him, and the next glimpse we get of him is through the smoke of battle at Fort Mahon, where in 1781, as a member of the force under the Duke de Crillion, he was painfully wounded while charging the Turks.

In 1872, en route to Madrid to join Mr. Jay, he heard that de Crillion was preparing to storm Gibraltar, and, believing himself in honor bound to follow the fortunes of his chief, he wrote Mr. Jay that he must turn again to arms.

From that day forward he was a soldier, a diplomat, a courtier--the elected friend of Kings and Princes.

He aided in storming Gibraltar and left his s.h.i.+p only when it had burned to the water's edge. He was highly recommended to the King for his gallantry, and went back to Paris with de Crillion to become a brilliant figure at court and in the salons.

Europe knew him, but America refused him even a small commission, though Kings wrote to our Congress in his behalf.

He met Lafayette at Gibraltar; in fact, accompanied him to Spain. Then, after considerable travel in European countries, he again encountered Prince Na.s.sau, who was his brother at arms in de Crillion's forces, became his aide-de-camp and, together they found happiness in travel. They sought the bright lights of gay capitals and followed mysterious moon tracks on the Danube river.

[Sidenote: _When Poland's Star Flamed_]

At the Diet of Grodno, in 1784, where he went with Na.s.sau, he met Stanislaus Augustus, King of Poland. He captivated the King; and in a brilliant ball room, Stanislaus offered him a permanent service at his court.

Within a year he was chamberlain and secretary to the cabinet of His Majesty, and for years he was practically the ruler of the empire.

In 1787, at Kiva, he made a treaty with Catherine, Empress of Russia, and became her intimate friend.

He was a special and secret envoy from Poland to the sessions of the grand quadruple alliance in France. Later we see him leading a division of the army of Prince Potempkin across the snow-clad steppes of Russia, and a few months after, he was marching at the head of the Prince's army through the wild reaches of Tartary. Again, under Prince Na.s.sau, we find him commanding a fleet against the Turks at Oczacon.

Shortly after, he was a special high commissioner to Madrid. His mission completed, he was ordered to return to Russia for the revolution of 1791, and now he served as aide-de-camp and Major-General.

In 1794, when the Polish patriot, Kosciusco, headed a revolution, Littlepage answered his summons and fought through to the storming of Prague.

Stanislaus held him the greatest of his generals and his aides and when the King was captured by the Russians, Littlepage, tired of the broils of European politics, came home to America.

[Sidenote: _Ah, But he Had His Memories_]

When Littlepage was first in Poland, the place was gay and laughter-loving. An atmosphere of high culture and literary achievements made a satisfactory entourage for the ill-fated people. He lived happily there and loved a princess of North Poland. There were starlight meetings and woodland strolls, vows of faith and the pain of renunciation, when for diplomatic reasons she was forced to endure another alliance.

Littlepage's reputation and splendid appearance; her beauty and the love they bore each other and, finally, her death, made a background of red romance, against which he is silhouetted in one's memory.

That Lewis Littlepage was a poet of no mean ability was a fact too well known to be disputed. The last verse of a poem written by him and inspired by the death of the woman he loved reads:

"Over there, where you bide--past the sunset's gold glory, With eyes that are s.h.i.+ning, and red lips apart, Are you waiting to tell me the wonderful story, That death cannot part us--White Rose of my Heart."

It is said that Littlepage had more honors and decorations showered upon him than any other American in history.

Go to the old Masonic cemetery in Fredericksburg, and in a far corner, where the wild vines and the hardy gra.s.s struggle for mastery, you may see a legend inscribed upon a large flat stone: This is the tomb of Lewis Littlepage. For the mult.i.tude, it is simply an unpleasant finale to the life of a well known man.

To the imaginative, it starts a train of thought--a play of fancy. One sees the rise of the star of Poland. Gay youths and maids pa.s.s and repa.s.s to the sound of music and laughter. The clank of a sword sounds above the measured foot fall on a polished floor. A soldier pa.s.ses in all the bravery of uniform. It is General Littlepage silently going to an audience with the King. The ma.s.sive doors open without a challenge, for as a pa.s.sport to the palace, on the uniform of this soldier glitters a large gold key--the gift of Stanislaus.

Suddenly the scene changes. Amid the surging hosts and in the thick of the b.l.o.o.d.y clash at Prague, when the anguish of uncertainty was crumbling the courage of a kingdom, a man is seen, riding with reckless abandon. Tearing through the lines and holding aloft the tattered standard of Poland, comes Littlepage of Virginia. With the rallying cry of his adopted land, he gathers up his troops and gloriously defends the flag he loves. Our eyes again stray to the legend on the tomb: Disillusionment!