nations of military rank in familiar conversation, and habitually spoke of "Mr. Wolfe," "Mr. Howe," and "my Lord Cornwallis." He fondly hankered after the lost popularity which he had once enjoyed in the Royal army. He reluctantly began to perceive, (a conviction which, strange to say, was only gradually borne in upon him,) that, when he crossed over into the American camp, he had irretrievably forfeited the goodwill of gentlemen who still bore his Majesty's commission. He had made

his choice, and he could not have it both ways; but he never could prevail upon himself to acquiesce frankly in that inexorable fact. While acting the part of an enemy to Great Britain, he more or less consciously played to the British public; and his eagerness to renew friendly relations with British officers at length conducted him up to, and over, the brink of actual treason to America.1 If he had had Arnold's sinister courage, and his power of concentrated, sustained, and passionate resentment, he would probably have taken a step similar to that which resulted in Arnold's ruin. Lee was saved by his poorer, rather than by his finer, qualities from the destiny which otherwise might have befallen him. The catastrophe that terminated his career was humiliating and crushing; but he was spared from the less tolerable fate of a detected traitor, who had escaped to live out the fag-end of his life in exile. A fine writer has remarked that into the story of Arnold there enters the element of awe and pity which is an essential part of real tragedy; but that the story of Lee, from the first act to the last, is little more than a vulgar melodrama.2

1 Fiske's American Revolution; chapters vii. and x. Tyler's Literary History; note at the end of chapter xviii. Wharton's Diplomatic Correspondence; Vol. II., pages 68 to 70, in the note; and also section xi. of the introduction to the work.

2 The American Revolution, by John Fiske, chapter xiv. In August 1778 Lee was tried for disobeying orders in not attacking the enemy at Monmouth Court House, and was found guilty. That was the last of him as a soldier or a public man. His conviction, on such a charge, must have excited a movement of sympathy in the breast of Lord George Germaine. "It would have been impossible," (Mr. Fiske writes,) "for a man of strong military instincts to have relaxed his clutch upon an enemy in the field, as

PT. II.-VOL. II.

E

That was the man on whom, during three critical weeks, the safety of America depended. At no period of his career did he act, or write, more entirely in character. On the twenty-first of November Washington directed General Heath to occupy the passes on the road to Albany with the whole of his division, and called upon Lee at once to rejoin the main army with all his Continental battalions. It was an order that brooked no delay, and admitted no doubt whatsoever as to the meaning; but Lee preferred to construe it in a sense which favoured the views of his own personal ambition. He informed one of his correspondents that he had been summoned southwards across the Hudson, but that he regarded the message as dictated by "absolute insanity;" and he desired Heath to detach two thousand of his troops, and send them, with a Brigadier General, to the assistance of Washington. Heath courteously represented that it was impossible for him to neglect the Commander-in-Chief's specific instructions, a copy of which he enclosed for Lee's inspection; and Lee thereupon, piqued and baffled, fell to arguing the point in harsh and overbearing terms. "I perceive, Sir," he wrote, "that you have formed an opinion to yourself that, should General Washington remove to the Straits of Magellan, the instructions he left with you on a particular occasion have invested you with a command independent of any other superiors. I, of course, command on this side the water. For the future, I must and will be obeyed." In thus addressing Heath he mistook his man. Eighteen months previously that brave and modest veteran had willingly handed over the chief command to Washington, in the persuasion that it was more honourable to obey, than to out-rank, a greater soldier than himself; and the answers which he now sent to Lee's bullying requisitions were by no

Lee did at the battle of Monmouth. If Arnold had been there that day, with his head never so full of treason, an irresistible impulse would doubtless have led him to attack the enemy tooth and nail; and the treason would have waited till the morrow."

ence.

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means wanting in the natural eloquence which springs from good sense and right feeling. And so, having come off second-best on paper, Lee determined to try what could be effected by the magic of his bodily presOn the thirtieth of November, — a full week after the date on which he ought by rights to have reported himself at Washington's head-quarters, — he appeared at Peekskill; announced to General Heath his intention of carrying off two New England regiments; and commanded that they should be got ready for the march. Heath peremptorily forbade his Deputy Adjutant General to take any action in the matter; and then, turning towards Lee, he expressed himself in language that there was no mistaking. "Sir," he said, "if you issue orders here which will break those positive ones which I have received, I pray you to do it completely yourself, and not draw me, or any of my family, in as partners in the guilt." Those old-fashioned words went straight to the mark. Lee stepped into the piazza, and observed to an officer that General Heath was in the right; and early next morning he withdrew his demand for the two regiments, and betook himself back to his own camp at White Plains.1

From that camp, save and except for the purpose of inciting a colleague to disobedience, Charles Lee had no present intention of stirring. In a letter to

the American Adjutant General he adduced certain strategical arguments in defence of his refusal to move southwards; although, as he candidly admitted, the weight of those arguments was perhaps overbalanced

1 Heath's conduct received complete approbation in a letter written from Newark, on the twenty-fifth of November, by Colonel Harrison, aide-de-camp and secretary of Washington. "In respect to the troops intended to come to this quarter, his Excellency never meant that they should be from your division. He has wrote General Lee since so fully and explicitly that any misapprehensions he may have been under at first must be now done away. He will most probably have reached Peek's Kill before now with his division, and be pushing to join us." If such was the expectation which prevailed among the Head-quarters Staff, they had still something to learn on the subject of General Lee.

by the consideration that his own presence with the main army would do something to supplement Washington's inefficiency. "To confess the truth," he wrote, "I really think our Chief will do better with me than without me." Lee had no substantial excuse for his inaction. If he had punctually and expeditiously advanced along the route which Washington had minutely indicated to him, he would have encountered no difficulty whatsoever. The distance between White Plains and Newark was almost exactly the same as that which was covered in twenty-six hours by General Craufurd and the Light Division, when they marched to the support of Sir Arthur Wellesley at Talavera. But the obstacles which prevented Lee from going whither duty called him were moral, and not material, within him, and not in front of him. To his immense satisfaction he found himself invested with a separate command; and he was fully determined that that command should be independent, until in the order of events it became supreme. Washington, and half his forces, had already been defeated; and America would best be served by keeping from him the other half of an army which he was totally incapable of directing. That was Lee's diagnosis of the military situation; and he was at small pains to conceal his opinions and projects. He openly asserted, even before hearers whom such expressions affected with contemptuous disgust, that General Washington was not fit to order about a sergeant's guard, and that the Continental Troops, under such leadership, could not hope to withstand the British Grenadiers and Light Infantry. The day, according to Lee's anticipations, was close at hand when Washington's incompetency would be universally acknowledged; and on that day he himself was prepared to step forward and save the country. National gratitude would then be the reward of that prescient general who, at the risk of his own reputation, had preserved a body of fine troops, intact and in good heart, from the rout 1 Washington to Lee; Newark, November 24, 1776.

and demoralisation which must inevitably overtake the rest of the American forces. A similar thought, justly or unjustly, was believed to have governed Bazaine's course of policy in the Franco-German war of 1870; and all France united to stigmatise that Marshal as a traitor. In November 1776 Lee already recognised, with serene complacency, the light in which his own conduct was liable to be regarded. "There are times,' he wrote, "when we must commit treason against the laws of the State; and the present crisis demands this brave, virtuous, kind of treason."1

In the meanwhile he could not deny himself the luxury of addressing the civil authorities throughout the States as if he was Commander-in-Chief already. He inundated America with his imperious advice, and his unsparing and most offensive criticism. He wrote to the authorities of Massachusetts recommending that the stores should be evacuated from the magazines at Boston, as the city was in danger of an attack by the enemy's fleet. He informed them that the officers of their provincial regiments were lacking in spirit, integrity, and public virtue; and that, if the men ran away in action, it was on account of the example set them by their superiors. He warned the Governor of Rhode Island that no confidence could be placed in New England generals. The highest trusts, (he complained,) were committed to those least qualified to exercise them; although it was an axiom in warfare that "theory joined to practice, or a heaven-born genius," constituted the only title for a command in the field.

1 It is instructive to compare Lee's military action in December 1776 with a letter which, not long before, he had taken upon himself to send to Congress. "For Heaven's sake rouse yourselves! For Heaven's sake let ten thousand men be immediately stationed somewhere about Trenton! In my opinion the whole depends upon it." That was written early in October, when the armies were manoeuvring on the other side of the Hudson, and when there was not a British regiment within eighty miles of Trenton. Two months afterwards, when Trenton and Philadelphia itself were in imminent risk of capture, the author of this exhortation contrived, as far as in him lay, that no reinforcements whatever should reach the seat of danger,