Strange Stories from History for Young People Part 5

A twig bent down, a few stones strung along a path, or any other of a hundred small signs, served to tell every patriot when and where to meet his friends. A man riding about, breaking a twig here and there, or making some other sign of the kind, could call together a large force at a chosen spot within a few hours. The men brought out in this way would fall suddenly upon some stray British force that was off its guard, and utterly destroy it. The British would at once send a strong body of troops to punish the daring patriots, but the redcoat leader would look in vain for anybody to punish. The patriots could scatter and hide as quickly as they could come together.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTIN PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE ON THE DUTY OF FIGHTING.]

Finding that they could not destroy these patriot companies, the British and Tories took their revenge on women and children. They burned the houses of the patriots, carried off their crops, and killed their cattle, so as to starve their families; but the women were as brave us the men, and from first to last not one of them ever wished her husband or son to give up the fight.

If the patriots could not conquer the British, they at least kept them in a hornets' nest. If they could not drive them out of South Carolina, they could keep them there, which was nearly as good a thing to do, because every soldier that Cornwallis had to keep in the South would have been sent to some other part of the country to fight the Americans if the Carolinians had let the British alone.

In this way small bands of resolute men kept Cornwallis busy, and held the state for the American cause, until General Greene went south and took command. Greene was one of the greatest of the American generals, and after a long campaign he drove the British out of the state. But if it had not been for the partisans the South would have been lost long before he could be spared to go there; and if the partisans had not kept a British army busy there, it might have gone very hard with the Americans in the rest of the country.

When we rejoice in the freedom of our country we ought not to forget how much we owe the partisans, and especially such men as Justice Gaston and the Rev. William Martin, who first set the partisans at their work. It would have been much easier and pleasanter for them to remain quiet under British rule; and they had nothing to gain for themselves, but everything to lose, by the course they took. Gaston knew that his home would be burned for what he did, and the eloquent old Scotch preacher knew that he would be put into a prison-pen for preaching war sermons to his people; but they were not men to flinch. They cared more for their country than for themselves, and it was precisely that kind of men throughout the land, from New England to Georgia, who won liberty for us by seven years of hard fighting and terrible suffering.

THE CHARGE OF THE HOUNDS.

AN INCIDENT OF THE CREEK WAR.

A terrible bit of news was carried from mouth to mouth through the region that is now Alabama at the beginning of September, 1813. The country was at that time in the midst of the second war with Great Britain, and for a long time British agents had been trying to persuade the Creeks--a powerful nation of half-civilized but very warlike Indians who lived in Alabama--to join in the war and destroy the white settlements in the Southwest.

For some time the Creeks hesitated, and it was uncertain what they would do. But during the summer of 1813 they broke out in hostility, and on the 30th of August their great leader, Weatherford, or the Red Eagle, as they called him, stormed Fort Mims, the strongest fort in the Southwest.

He took the fort by surprise, with a thousand warriors behind him, and, after five hours of terrible fighting, destroyed it, killing about five hundred men, women, and children.

This was the news that startled the settlers in the region where the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers come together. It was certain, after such a ma.s.sacre as that, that the Indians meant to destroy the settlements, and kill all the white people without mercy.

In order to protect themselves and their families the settlers built rude forts by setting pieces of timber endwise in the ground, and the people hurried to these places for safety. Leaving their homes to be burned, their crops to be destroyed, and their cattle to be killed or carried off by the Indians, the settlers hastily got together what food they could, and took their families into the nearest forts.

One of the smallest of these stockade forts was called Sinquefield. It stood in what is now Clarke County, Alabama, and, as that region was very thinly settled, there were not enough men to make a strong force for the defence of the fort. But the brave farmers and hunters thought they could hold the place, and so they took their families thither as quickly as they could.

Two families, numbering seventeen persons, found it was not easy to go to Sinquefield on the 2d of September, and so, as they were pretty sure that there were no Indians in their neighborhood as yet, they made up their minds to stay one more night at a house a few miles from the fort.

That night they were attacked, and all but five of them were killed.

Those who got away carried the news of what had happened to the fort, and a party was sent out to bring in the bodies.

The next day all the people in Fort Sinquefield went out to bury their dead friends in a valley at some little distance from the fort, and, strange as it seems, they took no arms with them. Believing that there were no Indians near the place, they left the gates of the fortress open, and went out in a body without their guns.

As a matter of fact there was a large body of Indians not only very near them, but actually looking at them all the time. The celebrated Prophet Francis was in command, and in his sly way he had crept as near the fort as possible to look for a good chance to attack it. Making his men lie down and crawl like snakes, he had reached a point only a few hundred yards from the stockade without alarming the people, and now, while they stood around the graves of their friends without arms to defend themselves with, a host of their savage enemies lay looking at them from the gra.s.s and bushes on the hill.

As soon as he saw that the right moment had come, Francis sprang up with a savage war-cry, and at the head of his warriors made a dash at the gates. He had seen that the men outside were unarmed, and his plan was to get to the gates before they could reach them, and thus get all the people of the place at his mercy in an open field and without arms to fight with.

The fort people were quick to see what his purpose was, and the men hurried forward with all their might, hoping to reach the fort before the savages could get there. By running at the top of their speed they did this, and closed the gates in time to keep the Indians out. But, to their horror, they then saw that their wives and children were shut out too. Unable to run so fast as the men had done, the women and children had fallen behind, and now the Indians were between them and the gates!

Seeing that he had missed his chance of getting possession of the fort, Francis turned upon the women and children with savage delight in the thought of butchering these helpless creatures in the sight of their husbands, fathers, and brothers.

It was a moment of terror. There were not half enough white men in the fort to master so large a force of Indians, and if there had been it was easy to see that by the time they could get their rifles and go to the rescue it would be too late.

At that moment the hero of this bit of history came upon the scene. This was a young man named Isaac Haden. He was a notable huntsman, who kept a famous pack of hounds--fierce brutes, thoroughly trained to run down and seize any live thing that their master chose to chase. This young man had been out in search of stray cattle, and just at the moment when matters were at their worst he rode up to the fort, followed by his sixty dogs.

Isaac Haden had a cool head and a very daring spirit. He was in the habit of taking in a situation at a glance, deciding quickly what was to be done, and then doing it at any risk that might be necessary. As soon as he saw how the women and children were placed, he cried out to his dogs, and, at the head of the bellowing pack, charged upon the flank of the Indians. The dogs did their work with a spirit equal to their master's. For each to seize a red warrior and drag him to earth was the work of a moment, and the whole body of savages was soon in confusion.

For a time they had all they could do to defend themselves against the unlooked-for a.s.sault of the fierce animals, and before they could beat off the dogs the men of the fort came out and joined in the attack, so that the women and children had time to make their way inside the gates, only one of them, a Mrs. Phillips, having been killed.

The men, of course, had to follow the women closely, as they were much too weak in numbers to risk a battle outside. If they had done so the Indians would have overcome them quickly, and then the fort and everybody in it would have been at their mercy, so the settlers hurried into the fort as soon as the women were safe.

But the hero who had saved the people by his quickness and courage was left outside, and not only so, but the savages were between him and the fort. He had charged entirely through the war party, and was now beyond their line, alone, and with no chance of help from any quarter.

His hope of saving himself was very small indeed; but he had saved all those helpless women and little children, and he was a brave enough fellow to die willingly for such a purpose as that if he must. But brave men do not give up easily, and young Haden did not mean to die without a last effort to save himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "JUST AT THE MOMENT WHEN MATTERS WERE AT THEIR WORST, HE RODE UP."]

Blowing a loud blast upon his hunting-horn to call his remaining dogs around him, he drew his pistols--one in each hand--and plunged spurs into his horse's flanks. In spite of the numbers against him he broke through the ma.s.s of savages, but the gallant horse that bore him fell dead as he cleared the Indian ranks. Haden had fired both his pistols, and had no time to load them again. He was practically unarmed now, and the distance he still had to go before reaching the gates was considerable. His chance of escape seemed smaller than ever, but he quickly sprang from the saddle, and ran with all his might, hotly pursued, and under a terrific fire from the rifles of the savages. The gate was held a little way open for him to pa.s.s, and when he entered the fort his nearest pursuers were so close at his heels that there was barely time for the men to shut the gate in their faces.

Strangely enough, the brave young fellow was not hurt in any way. Five bullets had pa.s.sed through his clothes, but his skin was not broken.

THE STORY OF A WINTER CAMPAIGN.

Nearly all the countries in Europe were making war upon France in 1795.

The French people had set up a republic, and all the kingdoms round about were trying to make them submit to a king again. This had been going on for several years, and sometimes it looked as though the French would be beaten, in spite of their brave struggles to keep their enemies back and manage their own affairs in their own way.

At one time everything went against the French. Their armies were worn out with fighting, their supply of guns had run short, they had no powder, and their money matters were in so bad a state that it seemed hardly possible for France to hold out any longer. In the meantime England, Austria, Spain, Holland, Piedmont, and Prussia, besides many of the small German states, had joined together to fight France, and their armies were on every side of her.

A country in such a state as that, with so many powerful enemies on every side, might well have given up; but the French are a brave people, and they were fighting for their liberties. Instead of giving up in despair, they set to work with all their might to carry on the war.

The first thing to be done was to raise new armies, and so they called for men, and the men came forward in great numbers from every part of the country. In a little while they had more men to make soldiers of than had ever before been brought together in France. But this was only a beginning. The men were not yet trained soldiers, and even if they had been, they had no guns and no powder; no clothing was to be had, and there was very little food for them to eat. Still the French did not despair.

Knowing that there would not be time enough to train the new men, they put some of their old soldiers in each regiment of new ones, so that the new men might learn from the veterans how to march and how to fight.

In the meantime they had set up armories, and were making guns as fast as they could. Their greatest trouble was about powder. They had chemists who knew how to make it, but they had no nitre to make it of, and did not know at first how to get any. At last one of their chemists said that there was some nitre--from a few ounces to a pound or two--in the earth of every cellar floor; and that if all the nitre in all the cellar floors of France could be collected, it would be enough to make plenty of powder.

But how to get this nitre was a question. The cellar floors must be dug up, the earth must be washed, and the water must be carefully pa.s.sed through a course of chemical treatment in order to get the nitre, free from earth and from all other things with which it was mixed. It would take many days for a chemist to extract the nitre from the earth of a singly cellar, and then he would get only a pound or two of it at most.

It did not seem likely that much could be done in this way, but all the people were anxious to help, and so the cry went up from every part of the country, "Send us chemists to teach us how, and we will do the work and get the nitre ourselves." This was quickly done. All the chemists were set at work teaching the people how to get a little nitre out of a great deal of earth, and then every family went to work. In a little while the nitre began to come in to the powder-factories. Each family sent its little parcel of the precious salt as a free gift to the country. Some of them were so proud and glad of the chance to help that they dressed their little packages of nitre in ribbons of the national colors, and wrote patriotic words upon them. Each little parcel held only a few ounces, or at most a pound or two, of the white salt; but the parcels came in by tens of thousands, and in a few weeks there were hundreds of tons of nitre at the powder-mills.

As soon as there was powder enough the new armies began to press their enemies, and, during the summer and fall of 1794, they steadily drove them back. When they met their foes in battle they nearly always forced them to give way. They charged upon forts and took them at the point of the bayonet; cities and towns everywhere fell into their hands, and by the time that winter set in they were so used to winning battles that nothing seemed too hard for them to undertake.

But the French soldiers were in a very bad condition to stand the cold of winter. One great army, under General Pichegru, which had driven the English and Dutch far into the Netherlands, was really almost naked. The shoes of the soldiers were worn out, and so they had to wrap their feet in wisps of straw to keep them from freezing. Many of the men had not clothing enough to cover their nakedness, and, for decency's sake, had to plait straw into mats which they wore around their shoulders like blankets. They had no tents to sleep in, but, nearly naked as they were, had to lie down in the snow or on the hard frozen ground, and sleep as well as they could in the bitter winter weather.

There never was an army more in need of a good rest in winter-quarters, and as two great rivers lay in front of them, it seemed impossible to do anything more until spring. The English and Dutch were already safely housed for the winter, feeling perfectly sure that the French could not cross the rivers or march in any direction until the beginning of the next summer.

The French generals, therefore, put their men into the best quarters they could get for them, and the poor, half-naked, barefooted soldiers were glad to think that their work for that year was done.

Day by day the weather grew colder. The ground was frozen hard, and ice began running in the rivers. After a little while the floating ice became so thick that the rivers were choked with it. When Christmas came the stream nearest the French was frozen over, and three days later the ice was so hard that the surface of the river was as firm as the solid ground.

Then came an order from General Pichegru to shoulder arms and march. In the bitterest weather of that terrible winter the barefooted, half-clad French soldiers left their huts, and marched against their foes.

Crossing the first river on the ice, they fell upon the surprised Dutch and utterly routed them. About the same time they made a dash at the strong fortified posts along the river, and captured them.