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CHARLES LEE
h
 Rivergate Regionals

Rivergate Regionals is a collection of books published by Rutgers University

Press focusing on New Jersey and the surrounding area. Since its founding in
1936, Rutgers University Press has been devoted to serving the people of New
Jersey, and this collection solidifies that tradition. The books in the Rivergate
Regionals Collection explore history, politics, nature and the environment,
recreation, sports, health and medicine, and the arts. By incorporating the
collection within the larger Rutgers University Press editorial program, the
Rivergate Regionals Collection enhances our commitment to publishing
the best books about our great state and the surrounding region.
 CHARLES LEE
h
Self Before Country

Dominick Mazzagetti

rutgers university press

new brunswick, new jersey, and london
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mazzagetti, Dominick A.
Charles Lee : self before country / Dominick Mazzagetti.
pages cm. — (Rivergate regionals)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8135–6237–7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–6238–4
(e-book)
1. Lee, Charles, 1731–1782. 2. Generals—United States—Biography. 3. United
States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Biography. 4. United States—History—
Revolution, 1775–1783—Campaigns. I. Title.
E207.L47M39 2013
355.0092—dc23
[B]
2013000421
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Copyright © 2013 by Dominick Mazzagetti
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, elec-
tronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without writ-
ten permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset
Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as
defined by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
For my Father
 CONTENTS

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii

1 The Fateful Choice 1

2 Lee’s “American Expedition” 10
3 Lee’s European Experience 25
4 Personality and Political Philosophy 38
5 A “Love Affair” with America 62
6 Foreign Officers in Service to America 79
7 America’s Soldier 99
8 Rejoining Washington 120
9 Captivity, Betrayal, Exchange 139
10 Monmouth 153
11 Court-Martial 179
12 Bitterness, Despair, and Death 192
Epilogue: A Man Without a Country 208

Appendix A James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own

Times (1816): The Capture of Charles Lee 213
Appendix B “Mr. Lee’s Plan—March 29, 1777” 217
Appendix C Washington and Lee’s Battlefield
Confrontation 221
Appendix D Shades of Monmouth 225
Notes 229
Bibliography 253
Index 261

vii
 PREFACE

In Greek mythology, references to the goddess Athena often identify her as

“Pallas Athena,” in recognition of her victory over the Titan Pallas in Zeus’s
battle for supremacy over the Titans. According to the tale, Athena stripped
the skin from the dead Pallas and used it as a shield in the continuing fight.
Images of Pallas Athena thereafter were displayed as talismatic guardians or
shields, particularly the wooden image that stood before the walls of Troy,
known as the “Palladium,” which was believed to have been thrown down
from the heavens by Zeus. Only after this statue was captured by Odysseus
and Diomedes were the walls of Troy breached. In the eighteenth century,
several British newspaper editors used the term to refer to Major General
Charles Lee, especially after he was seized by British grenadiers at Basking
Ridge, New Jersey, in 1776. This use of the word implied that Charles Lee rep-
resented a champion for a just cause and, perhaps, suggested that the capture
of Charles Lee, who had taken up the cause of the thirteen American colonies
in the fight against the strongest nation in the world, would signal a favorable
outcome for Great Britain.
Charles Lee accepted this characterization. We know this because he refers
to himself late in his life as the “American Palladium.” This self-reference also
reveals his singular personal trait, an ego that knew no bounds and counte-
nanced no rivals. Even though few contemporaries in Europe shared Lee’s
own opinion of his merits, the Americans who met him after his arrival in
New York City in 1773 accepted his personal history without question. As a
result, Lee reached heights that might otherwise have been improbable, only
to fall just as quickly from those heights. History has not been kind to Charles
Lee, and for good reasons.
Lee was a man with “a waywardness of temper, a rashness of resolution, a
license of speech, an eager ambition, and an eccentricity of manners,” according

ix
x preface

to biographer Jared Sparks. All of Lee’s early biographers felt the need to
acknowledge his irascible nature before discussing his virtues and contribu-
tions to the American Revolution. The unfavorable court-martial verdict
after the Battle of Monmouth in 1778 and Lee’s tirades thereafter also made it
difficult for these writers to praise Lee too loudly. Lee vilified George
Washington in the years between his court-martial and his death in 1782.
Washington loomed large on the American scene when Edward Langworthy
wrote Lee’s first biography in 1787, so much so that an effort to print Lee’s
papers in 1785 had received a cool reception. This effort would have to wait
almost one hundred years and be completed under an even more damning
view of Lee’s life. Langworthy advanced the theory that Lee came to New York
City in 1773 imbued with the essence of the American cause and ready to add
his military experience in the fight. Lee’s second biographer, Sir Henry
Bunbury, provided a favorable view of his father’s cousin, but added little to
the facts of Lee’s life not already covered by Langworthy. Indeed, some of the
commentary must be viewed with suspicion, such as the baronet’s discussion
of Lee’s capture at Basking Ridge in 1776: “[I]n his anxiety to procure intelli-
gence he went out in person with a small reconnoitering party [and on] his
return towards his camp, he halted for refreshment at a farm-house, and he
was there surprised by Colonel Harcourt.” A decade later, Jared Sparks added
a workmanlike biography of Charles Lee as part of his Library of American
Biography (1846). For the most part, the narrative remained the same.
The history surrounding Charles Lee changed dramatically in 1858. In that
year, George Moore, librarian of the New-York Historical Society, delivered a
lecture before the society that was printed as The Treason of Charles Lee. The
lecture and book followed the discovery of a manuscript in Lee’s hand, writ-
ten eighty-one years earlier, “Mr. Lee’s Plan,” a detailed strategy for the defeat
of the American colonies. Apparently, Lee had authored the plan and deliv-
ered it to the British during his captivity in New York City in 1777. Everything
written after 1858 has had to contend with Moore’s treatise and his vitupera-
tive assessment of Charles Lee as a man who deliberately betrayed the
American cause. In the one hundred years that followed, only John Fiske
attempted to deal with the enigma that was Charles Lee. He wrote a short and
reasoned biography in 1902 that synthesized the previous works and dealt just
briefly with Lee’s newly acknowledged betrayal.
Modern biographies offer alternative views and explanations in an attempt
to rehabilitate Charles Lee. Samuel White Patterson’s 1958 biography, Knight
Errant of Liberty: The Triumph and Tragedy of General Charles Lee, tries
vainly to emphasize Lee’s brilliance and courage and to explain away his
shortcomings and failures. As a result, this work adds little to the historical
preface xi

record. John Alden’s thorough biography in 1951 does a fine job of describing
Lee’s life and retelling his story, but Alden, like Patterson, refused to accept
some of the truth about Lee. Add to these works Theodore Thayer’s 1976 dis-
cussion of the Battle of Monmouth, The Making of a Scapegoat: Washington
and Lee at Monmouth, which argues that Lee saved the day on June 28, 1778,
preventing the loss of the entire Continental Army and the war in what was a
foolish attempt by Washington to find a telling victory. I knew Professor
Thayer as a student at Rutgers University in the late 1960s. He shared an
office—the former living room of a brownstone on a side street in Newark,
New Jersey—with Hubert G. Schmidt, another American history professor
whom I assisted for four years as a work-study student. Professor Thayer
could have been working on his book at the time, but I had no knowledge of
Charles Lee then and could not have known that I would so disagree with his
thesis so many years later.
All of the research on Charles Lee today begins with The Lee Papers, a
four-volume collection of Lee’s letters and writings compiled from 1871
to 1874 by the New-York Historical Society. Although not the entirety of
Lee’s letters, it contains a vast number collated from the originals, which were
last known to be in the hands of William Goddard of Maryland in the early
1800s and have since been lost. Most of Lee’s quotations in this volume
come directly from this work. Lee’s extensive references, Latin quotations,
and colorful prose resonate throughout each volume as thoroughly as his
self-conceit.
Charles Lee deserves a full modern review of his contributions to the
American Revolution and his fall from grace. Did he sail to New York City in
1773 to personally assist the Americans in their struggle for liberty against the
tyranny of George III? I do not think so. Although an outspoken critic of
the Crown and an early supporter of American causes, it appears more likely
that Charles Lee stumbled into the American cause in 1773 at the tail end of
his meaningless travels throughout Europe and quickly realized that it could
serve his ambition and ego. Unfortunately, he lacked the moral strength
necessary for a commitment to any cause other than his own, or to any
person who did not share his opinion of his own worth. Charles Lee deserves
credit for his contributions to the American cause, both politically and
militarily, but he served it for only a brief time and for only so long as his
vanity allowed him.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work started many years ago, with my curiosity about the name of a
town on the Palisades of New Jersey, Fort Lee. This curiosity blossomed into
a full-fledged preoccupation with its namesake, Charles Lee, and his extraor-
dinary life. My research and writing would have remained a hobby except for
the good fortune to have time to pursue it further and for the assistance of
many diligent librarians, including those at Rutgers University, Princeton
University, the New Jersey State Library, the New York Historical Society,
and the Clements Library, University of Michigan. The project moved from a
personal manuscript to a possible book owing to the willingness of Marlie
Wasserman of Rutgers University Press to talk to a new author/historian,
review his work, and offer encouragement. That encouragement eventually
led to an offer to publish. The accuracy and evenness of the final draft reflects
the assistance of copy editor Beth Gianfanga.

xiii
CHARLES LEE
h
Major General Charles Lee, etching and engraving by Alexander Hay Ritchie after
B. Rushbrooke, 1840–1895.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Charles Allen Munn, 1924, 24.90.387.
Reproduced with permission from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
 chapter 1

h
The Fateful Choice

George Washington’s physical presence alone gave him the aura of com-
mand. At six feet two inches tall, he towered over many of the other delegates
in Philadelphia, just as he had at the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg,
Virginia. He stood erect and carried himself with confidence. John Adams,
who dominated the debates in and outside of the chamber in which the
Continental Congress was meeting, stood at only five feet seven inches tall.
He discovered early in his work that Washington did not need to dominate
the debates to gain the respect of his peers. Sure knowledge on those subjects
he chose to discuss, quiet determination in his dedication to the cause, and
a bearing that demanded attention served Washington’s purpose.
No one appeared surprised, then, when Washington arrived in Philadelphia
in full military uniform for the crucial deliberations in June 1775. The Boston
men threatening the British troops garrisoned in their city needed a leader.
Even Artemas Ward, the churchwarden who served that role for the Boston
rebels, knew that someone with more military knowledge and leadership
skills needed to relieve him soon from the difficult command he now held.
Men on both sides lay dead. The “army” of rebels faced thousands of British
regulars, with guns pointed nervously at one another in close quarters. The
delegates arguing in Philadelphia would need another thirteen months to
make the philosophical break with Great Britain. Military decisions would
not wait that long. If the Continental Congress was to get the time it needed
to bring itself to the breaking point, it had to appoint a commander in chief
immediately to hold the British Army at bay. Washington knew that he was
the leading contender for the position, and he would not let the moment slip
past him for lack of boldness. His uniformed presence in the hall said so.
John Adams rose in the chamber. As always, he had shrewdly calculated
the politics of his choice. He knew the strengths and weaknesses of each of

1
2 charles lee: self before country

the men who could be commander in chief. He also knew the importance
of making the right choice. One man would hold command over an
army of American colonials representing a weak and bickering authority.
This would be the most fateful choice for this Congress. Adams glanced
at John Hancock, presiding at the head of the assembled delegates.
Hancock—of Massachusetts—saw himself as the man to lead those Boston
rebels. And there were others. But Adams could see only one man, and he
held the floor for that man.
George Washington.

The Alternatives
The selection of George Washington in June 1775 as commander in chief of
the American forces may appear today as the only logical choice. Washington
had the military skills, he commanded the respect of the men he worked with,
and he had demonstrated his zeal for the American cause over the past ten
years of political strife. In John Adams’s political calculations, Washington
offered one more advantage. He was a southerner acceptable to the New
England firebrands who were driving the political resistance into a military
contest. Washington’s appointment would broaden the fight and help solid-
ify the fragile association of the colonies with representatives in Philadelphia.
In fact, the choices available to the delegates were few. Not many men identi-
fied with the revolutionary cause had command military experience. And
aside from the broad political considerations paramount to John Adams, who
struggled to keep the colonies united, the commander needed practical politi-
cal abilities to deal with the Continental Congress, the men seeking places in
the military command, and the farmers and merchants on the front lines.
Washington presented an intimidating choice, and his unanimous selec-
tion by the Continental Congress chills discussion. He had served in the mil-
itary; he was a member of the landed gentry who came to the cause of liberty
early and remained strong in its defense; he appeared to have the personal
virtues that would enhance military leadership. But, in fact, the clarity of the
choice has become clouded by Washington’s place in American history. Only
with difficulty can we ignore the gift he bestowed on the country at the end of
the Revolutionary War by walking away from the army that had followed him
for eight years. And few can overlook the adoration of the vast majority of
his countrymen for his public service or the decades of historians rushing to his
praises after 1797. This personal grandeur casts a shadow over all the other
officers who served in the Continental Army and also on the few men who
presented themselves as alternatives to Washington in 1775.
the fateful choice 3

The Continental Congress appointed George Washington commander in

chief on June 15, 1775. The next day, the Congress officially informed Washington
of his appointment and recorded his remarks on accepting the office:
Mr. President,
Tho’ I am truly sensible of the high Honour done me, in this
Appointment, yet I feel great distress, from a consciousness that my abili-
ties and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and impor-
tant Trust: However, as the Congress desire it, I will enter upon the
momentous duty, and exert every power I possess in their service, and for
support of the glorious cause. I beg they will accept my most cordial thanks
for this distinguished testimony of their approbation.
But, lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavourable to my repu-
tation, I beg it may be remembered, by every Gentleman in the room, that
I, this day, declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to
the Command I am honored with.
As to pay, Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress, that, as no pecuniary
consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this arduous
employment, at the expence of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not
wish to make any proffit from it. I will keep an exact Account of my
expences. Those, I doubt not, they will discharge, and that is all I desire.
On June 17, Congress appointed two major generals, specifically ranked in
order: Artemas Ward and Charles Lee. Horatio Gates was named adjutant
general with the rank of brigadier. Several days later, Congress appointed two
additional major generals, Philip Schuyler and Israel Putnam.
John Adams suggested later that John Hancock harbored pretensions as
the first in command. But Hancock’s claim appears to have been purely per-
sonal political ambition. Political considerations may have placed him in the
running for the top post, but his lack of military experience precluded any
consideration for a field command, and he never received one.1
The man in command of the Americans at Boston was Artemas Ward.
Like Washington, Ward traced his military experience back to the French and
Indian War. As a major, he marched several companies of Massachusetts
militia to Lake George in northern New York in the summer of 1758 to assist
Major General James Abercromby. Despite superior numbers, the campaign
proved a disaster for the British. Nevertheless, Ward carried himself well
throughout the campaign and rose to colonel of the Middlesex and Worcester
County Regiments shortly after his return to Massachusetts. The rigors of the
campaign, however, impacted his health from that time forward, so much so
that he was thought of as being much older than his forty-eight years in 1775.
The Bostonians, and others, saw Ward as a formidable commander. He had
4 charles lee: self before country

worked actively with the revolutionary conventions in the colony in the years
leading up to the colonists’ siege of Boston, and in October 1774, he was
named by the Massachusetts Committee of Safety as one of three generals, the
second in command to Jedediah Preble (sixty-seven years old), to defy the
British Army. Ward was a deeply religious man, a judge, well groomed and
stern. Even among the Massachusetts candidates, Ward may not have had the
most extensive military experience, but like Washington, he had demon-
strated a political ability that persuaded his contemporaries that he could deal
with the many other issues confronting a commander.
John Adams claimed that Ward had the “greatest number” of votes in the
Congress for commander in chief, but subsequent events proved that the
choice of Washington to replace Ward was a wise one. Artemas Ward could
not have survived the test. The life of an active soldier proved too much for
his fragile constitution, and he tendered his resignation as first major general
of the American forces as soon as the British evacuated Boston. Old infirmi-
ties hampered his movement. At first, Washington asked him to oversee the
fortification of Boston, which he did. In short order, however, Washington
forwarded Ward’s resignation to Congress, and it was accepted in May 1777.
Although not the man to command the Continental Army, Ward offered a
life of service to the United States until his death in 1800, with stints in the
Continental Congress and the United States Congress.
In the months after Ward’s departure, however, events in the field
led many to doubt Washington’s selection and to seek another, more capa-
ble, general to lead the Continental Army. Years would pass in the field
before Washington could rest easy as commander in chief. Even today, few
consider Washington a military genius, and most agree that he was not
the best American commander in the field. Detractors have suggested that
Washington survived the war by a unique combination of luck and British
blundering; that he was blessed by the ignorance and incompetence of
British politicians and generals; that he may have been the chief beneficiary
of the political needs of France, Spain, and Holland to check the influence
of Great Britain in Europe and the Americas; that freedom in the British
colonies in North America may have been an inevitable outcome at the end
of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, Washington emerged from his com-
mand successful. He survived devastating military defeats, several political
intrigues among his officers, second-guessing by members of Congress, mil-
itary blunders, and personal risk taking. By 1781, after the surrender of the
British forces at Yorktown, the delegates who served in the Continental
Congress in June 1775 could take satisfaction with the choice they had made
six years earlier.
the fateful choice 5

The question, perhaps, should not be whether George Washington justi-

fied his selection, but whether the delegates in Philadelphia in June 1775 could or
should have selected someone else, given the information and the choices avail-
able at the time. It is this question that calls for an examination of the life of the
third-ranking man appointed by the Continental Congress in June: Charles Lee.

The Case for Charles Lee

Of the viable alternatives to George Washington, Charles Lee presented the
strongest credentials in 1775. Politics may have placed Ward above him in
rank, but most observers at the time understood that Lee, not Ward, was the
best alternative to Washington. A fair assessment of this choice, however, has
also been made difficult by subsequent events. Lee has fallen by the wayside in
American history. Like many other generals in the Continental Army, he ran
afoul of George Washington during his service and continued to battle the
aura of Washington thereafter. Lee’s actions at the Battle of Monmouth in
1778 were bitterly debated by officers and politicians alike, and his court-
martial after that battle led to his early departure from the army and the war.
Many observers in 1778, especially those who did not like the rise of
Washington’s personal and political stature, thought Lee had been railroaded
by the Monmouth court-martial. Lee himself could not remain silent. He
directly challenged Washington at that point in Washington’s military career
when Washington was growing in strength as a commander and a leader.
Lee’s intemperate approach brought on much of the opprobrium he received.
Even friends found it difficult to abide his relentless public attacks on
Washington and his demand for vindication. Dissipated financially and phys-
ically, Lee died an inglorious death alone at the age of fifty-one in 1782, before
the war ended. Many of those who served with him or were caught up in the
fury of his view of events were content to leave the controversy behind with
his death. In subsequent years, few rose to remember him or defend his name
while Washington was alive. Many years after his death, historians discovered
even more about his life and actions during the war that made it easier to pass
over his service to the Continental Army.
All of the controversy that became Charles Lee after June 28, 1778, how-
ever, did not cloud the thinking of those faced with the choice of commander
in chief in June 1775. The reputation that preceded Lee at that moment in
history was decidedly different from the one assigned to him since. Lee
demanded attention in 1775 and received it from every corner. His military
exploits were well known. He had fought and was wounded on American soil
in the French and Indian War. Like Artemas Ward, he suffered Abercromby’s
6 charles lee: self before country

defeat at Fort Carillon in 1758, leaving the field with a chest wound. He had
led a daring raid on Spanish forces in Portugal in 1762 and was honored by
the king of Portugal as a major general for his complete success. He had
advised the king of Poland on military matters. His political bravura—or
foolishness—was even more immediately evident. He challenged his own
king, George III, in the press while still in the king’s military service. He
answered Loyalists in America who called the fight for the rights of man
unnecessary. He corresponded with the leading thinkers in England and the
colonies. He traveled throughout the colonies, north and south, from 1773 to
1775, talking with political leaders, urging them on in opposition to the king,
assuring them they could win a fight, and reviewing defenses.
Charles Lee’s personal history added even more color. As a lieutenant in
1755, he married a Seneca woman, the daughter of a chief, and become a mem-
ber of the tribe. He escaped assassination at the hands of a disgruntled subor-
dinate. He defied certain death crossing the frozen Carpathian Mountains
after traveling with the Russian cavalry on a trek to Constantinople. He killed
a man in a duel of honor in Italy and had to flee the country to avoid arrest.
Charles Lee returned to North America in 1773 a well-known critic of King
George III and his government. The newspapers covered his movements from
the first day, and within weeks of his arrival, he took up the colonists’ cause in
the press and in extensive conversations throughout the colonies. He did not
discourage anyone from suggesting him as the one man with the demonstrated
skills necessary to lead American farmers and merchants against British regu-
lars. Indeed, Lee was his own best press agent. He made the rounds of the
Revolutionary leaders, including particularly Washington and John Adams,
and he appeared in Philadelphia during the sessions of both the First and
Second Continental Congresses. He was mentioned often in Philadelphia as a
dinner guest of Benjamin Rush, Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, and others.
Charles Lee possessed a gift. Influential men were drawn to him. He had
traveled extensively in Europe, spoke several languages, and had the apparent
confidence of kings. He was a unique acquaintance for many provincials,
including the leaders of the rebellion. Some today might call Lee’s gift
“charm,” but Lee was anything but a charming person. He was opinionated,
often unkempt, and was always accompanied by his dogs. He was not
grounded with family. His only close relative was a spinster sister still in
England. He came from a family that held stature in England, but he was not
a man of unlimited means. He did not entertain lavishly, if at all. And yet he
could call upon influential men to listen to him and respond to his needs.
The answer may lie in the combination of his colorful history and his
ability as a correspondent. His letters demand attention. Interspersed with
the fateful choice 7

the stilted language of the day are brilliant passages on the rights of man,
literary and historical allusions, and wit.2 If his conversations mirrored his
writing, the mystery of his allure can be understood. Lee did not command
respect by quiet grace. On the contrary, he did not hold back and would have
been exciting company for the patriots in the backwater of America yearning
for freedom.
By June 1775, Charles Lee considered himself the leading contender for
commander in chief of the American forces. Many of his friends did as well.
No lesser position would do him the honor he deserved. He considered
George Washington with the polite respect that most British officers gave to
officers of colonials. Charles Lee and George Washington were the same age,
and both had served in the French and Indian War. But Washington’s service
was with the provincial forces of Virginia. Lee had served as a junior officer,
but with the British regulars, having spent his life in the military from the age
of eleven, when his father had enlisted him in his regiment. In Lee’s mind,
as in others in the colonies in 1775, the choice was not difficult.
Men on both sides of the Atlantic could also picture Lee at the front of the
army defying King George. In December 1774, Lee wrote to Edmund Burke,
the English politician and orator, continuing a correspondence on the state of
American affairs. He assures Burke that the colonists will stand firm, that the
British military is ill-informed and ill-prepared for the fight ahead, and that
“the first estated gentlemen and the poorest planters . . . are determined to
sacrifice everything, their property, their wives, children and blood, rather
than cede a tittle of what they conceive to be their rights.”3 More telling,
however, is that Lee brings up the subject of his own ambitions in America
and his qualifications for the military command soon to be awarded, in a
half-hearted effort denying his claim:
I shall now trouble you with a few words respecting myself. I find it inserted
in a paragraph of an English paper, that a certain officer (meaning me) had
been busy in dissuading the people of Boston from submitting to the acts.
It is giving me great importance to suppose that I have influence sufficient
to urge or restrain so vast a community, in affairs of the dearest moment.
The same paragraph adds, that I had offered to put myself at their head;
but I hope it will not be believed that I was capable of so much temerity
and vanity. To think myself qualified for the most important charge that
ever was committed to mortal man, is the last stage of presumption.
Nor do I think the Americans would, or ought to confide in a man (let his
qualifications be ever so great) who has no property amongst them. It is
true I most devoutly wish them success in the glorious struggle; that I have
expressed both in writing and viva voce: but my errand to Boston was mere
8 charles lee: self before country

curiosity, to see a people in so singular circumstances; and I had likewise an

ambition of being acquainted with some of their leading men;—with them
only I associated during my stay at Boston. Our ingenious gentlemen in the
camp, therefore, very naturally concluded my design was to put myself at
their head.4

Lee’s less than modest denial notwithstanding, he moved almost immediately

after revealing his one deficiency—the lack of landed property—to cure it.
He made arrangements in 1775 to purchase an estate in Virginia and become
a man of property in America.
John Adams, who rose at the Continental Congress to propose George
Washington, agreed with Lee that his qualifications were “ever so great.”
Adams considered Lee the most astute military man in the Americas. Years
later, in a comment in his Autobiography (that reveals his own vanity) Adams
declared that by studying the art of war to better perform his duties as a mem-
ber of Congress, he was inferior only to Charles Lee in military knowledge
among all of the generals in the field for the Americans.5 But Adams under-
stood that appearances and political considerations shared equal position
with military skills in the choice of a commander in chief.
George Washington received the honor of commander in chief. Although
he may not have been thought to have the broadest military experience or
skill, he was born in North America and could help unite the disparate
colonies. Artemas Ward received the second position in honor of his current
service under fire and, perhaps, in recognition that he would not be in the
fight for long. Lee had to satisfy himself with being the third in command,
behind Washington and Ward. Lee’s vanity could not remain checked for
long, however, and his true thoughts came out in an appeal to General John
Thomas, just months later. Thomas had threatened to quit the service
because of the insult that he perceived in the ranking that he had been
assigned within the military command. Lee used his pen to convince him
otherwise, arguing that Thomas was not the only officer slighted by the
Continental Congress and that such affronts needed to be suffered for
the greater good: “I am quite of the same opinion, but is this a time Sir,
when the liberties of your country, the fate of posterity, the rights of mankind
are at stake, to indulge our resentments for any ill treatment we may have
received as individuals?” Here, early in the conflict, Lee reveals his ire at being
placed third in command:

I have myself, Sir, full as great, perhaps greater reason to complain than
yourself. I have passed through the highest ranks, in some of the most
respectable services in Europe. According to the modern etiquette notions
the fateful choice 9

of a soldier’s honor and delicacy, I ought to consider at least the preferment

given to General Ward over me as the highest indignity, but I thought it my
duty as a citizen and asserter of liberty, to waive every consideration. On
this principle, although a Major General of five years standing, and not a
native of America, I consented to serve under General Ward, because I was
taught to think that the concession would be grateful to his countrymen,
and flatter myself that the concession has done me credit in the eye of the
world; and can You, Sir, born in this very country, which a band of banditti
ministerial assassins are now attempting utterly to destroy with sword, fire
and famine, abandon the defense of her, because you have been personally
ill used? 6

Most telling, of course, is the phrase “I ought to consider at least the

preferment given to General Ward over me as the highest indignity.” Only
Washington ranked above Lee and Ward. Several months later, on Ward’s
retirement, Lee described Ward’s preferment with more rancor: “Did I not
consent to serve under an old church-warden, of whom you had conceived a
most extravagant and ridiculous opinion? Your eyes were at length opened,
and deacon Ward returned to his proper occupation.” 7
Indeed, much would happen in the coming months, and Lee knew that his
time could still come.
 chapter 2

h
Lee’s “American
Expedition”

Great Britain’s on again, off again war with France heated up in 1753 when
the French in North America moved into the Ohio River Valley and began
constructing forts. This disputed territory separated the French settlers in
Canada and the British settlers in the colonies. The extending French military
presence unnerved not only the British settlers on the adjacent frontiers in
Pennsylvania and Virginia, but throughout the colonies. Fighting erupted
almost immediately between French and British colonials, even though the
two European governments preferred to posture for some time. Once Great
Britain declared war in 1756, land and sea forces were engaged in Europe and
the West Indies as well as the North American frontier.

The French and Indian War

In Europe, this period of warfare is known as the Seven Years’ War; in North
America, it is known as the French and Indian War. The North American
theater mixed colorful locations, native warriors on both sides, and many acts
of savagery. The decisive political and military battles in this conflict were
fought in Europe, however, and the North American fighting contributed
little to the outcome of the war. The impact of the peace in North America
was dramatic, nevertheless. The 1763 Treaty of Paris confirmed the French
loss of all its North American territory east of the Mississippi River, excepting
only New Orleans, and secured British control of its West Indies islands.
Britain gained unrestricted navigation rights on the Mississippi River,
Montreal and Quebec, the fort at Duquesne (Pittsburgh), and control of the
Ohio Valley. This shift in the North American political and military landscape
had a profound effect on the British colonists and the future of the British
colonies. At the start of the hostilities, the British subjects in North America

10
lee’s “american expedition” 11

harbored no thoughts of independence. Quite to the contrary, the farmers

and merchants building societies in the American colonies depended on
their government in London to provide men and munitions for protection
from French incursions and Indian raids. The developing economy of the
thirteen colonies also depended on trade with Great Britain and the sea power
that enabled and protected that trade. The ports of Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Charleston brought necessities to those in the cities as well
as those on the frontier and provided a market for the exported goods that
paid for those necessities.
Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, the British settlers
experienced alternating periods of calm and distress. A foreign power main-
tained troops to the north and west and, even though the colonists lived
thousands of miles and weeks by sea from London, the political and military
tensions in the Old World could easily shatter the complacency of these
British citizens. They especially felt the pressure and repercussions when
these tensions escalated to open warfare. Early in the century, Great Britain
tangled with France from 1702 to 1713 in Queen Anne’s War (also known as
the War of Spanish Succession). The Peace of Utrecht after Queen Anne’s
War led to thirty years of peace for the colonists, but in midcentury, King
George’s War (1744–1748), and the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), renewed
hostilities.
During this period, it did not take much to frighten the settlers. Especially
disturbing was the idea that the French were encouraging Indians to take to
the warpath. Tales of scalping and other savage deeds spread through the
colonies with the wind. Newspapers circulating in the colonies in the 1750s
detailed these horrors and warned of more atrocities if action was not taken to
stop the French and the Indians. Security on the frontier was a main concern
to settlers scattered over thousands of miles from Massachusetts to Georgia.
Even those close to the coastal seaports knew that security on the frontier
helped to support their livelihoods. British regulars provided that security.
For many historians, the French and Indian War, and the results of its out-
come, led directly to the American Revolution twenty years later. The defeat
of the French and the gain of Canada as a British province secured the north-
ern border of the thirteen colonies, providing more than ten years without
fear of French soldiers nearby or French encouragement of Indian uprisings.
Great Britain saw an opportunity to reduce its forces stationed in the colonies,
and the garrisoning of British regulars in American cities disappeared along
with the reliance on them for protection. From the end of hostilities in 1763,
the colonies developed without significant interference from the French, the
Indians, or the British. Roads improved, newspapers flourished, correspondence
12 charles lee: self before country

became more regular, and goods moved easily within the colonies and across
the Atlantic Ocean. The British regulars, whose constant presence was once a
welcome sight, were now just an occasional nuisance.
Another by-product of the last of these conflicts was the development of a
military capacity within the colonies. Between 1754 and 1763, thousands of
“provincials” fought alongside the 24,000 regulars the British government
sent to North America. Every one of the thirteen colonies was required by
the Crown to send a unit of militia to assist in the fight. Some of the colonies
most impacted by the French—New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and
New Jersey—sent several units. Militia units fought in every major battle,
sometimes performing better than the regulars, who were unfamiliar with the
frontier. Many of the men who would rise for independence in 1776 served in
the provincial units, including George Washington, Artemas Ward, Israel
Putnam, Henry Laurens, and Hugh Mercer. The British ministry and some
British officers may have valued these units as little more than fodder for the
fight, but many men and many units served with distinction and courage.
And British opinion may be less important than the impact that raising and
employing these units had on the colonists themselves. For many, this exer-
cise demonstrated the ability of the settlers to stand with the regulars in a
fight, and for many more it demonstrated that the settlers had the ability to
stand on their own if need be.
Perhaps the most important outcome of the French and Indian War was
the creation of an American consciousness. The fear on the frontier produced
calls throughout the colonies for organization and unity. Benjamin Franklin’s
woodcut “Join or Die” showed a snake cut up into pieces, each labeled as one
of the several colonies. This drawing and others like it appeared in many of
the newspapers that were growing in circulation as hostilities commenced.
George Washington’s accounts, as a young militia colonel, of the intentions
of the French and the fighting on the Virginia frontier, including the loss of
Fort Necessity in 1754, captivated readers of colonial newspapers. Calls went
out for meetings and congresses among the colonies to discuss and organize
a united resistance. French victories at Fort Oswego, Fort William Henry, and
Monongahela in 1755, where colonials were present and fighting, continued to
alarm the population.
The French and Indian War, created in part by the fears of the English
colonists on the North American frontier, became a defining moment for the
British North American colonists. The fight gave them self-confidence and
encouraged a unity that previously did not exist; the outcome gave them
a sustained period of prosperity and limited interference from the mother
country. The French and Indian War also brought to the forefront young
lee’s “american expedition” 13

men who would find their destinies in the war to come twenty years later for
political independence. These young men served together to defeat the
French. In the Revolutionary War, they would serve on both sides. One of
those men was Charles Lee.

Life among the Mohawks

Charles Lee first saw North America in 1755 at the age of twenty-four, as a
captain in the Forty-fourth Foot. This regiment was called from its garrison in
Ireland and joined General Edward Braddock’s force in an expedition against
Fort Duquesne. For Lee, the fighting in America provided adventure. Far from
the serenity of life in the English countryside and relieved of the boredom of
Irish garrison duty, a young Lee saw landscapes, people, and life-threatening
action he could have scarcely imagined. He gloried in his American experi-
ence, and he left North America six years later imbued with self-confidence
and an incisive appreciation of what these colonies meant to England.
Lee shared the experience of the French and Indian War with the colonists
and joined in the growth of self-confidence that developed in the colonies
at its conclusion. Nevertheless, he viewed his sojourn in America from a
different perspective—politically, his was an English worldview. He saw
the Crown’s North American possessions as a valuable asset to be carefully
guarded and nurtured to provide full benefits to the British Empire. Lee
served with the British regulars, and his view of the military engagements
reflected the bias of the British forces. The Indians he met were allies of the
British and treated as such. He marveled at these colorful figures and became
intimate with them. Lee’s personal perspective was just that—personal. Once
he gained his footing, he set about to utilize his experience in North America
to forward his standing with persons of influence who could advance him in
the army. Charles soaked it all in with the energy of a young man eager to
make his way in the world. The majesty of the land he traversed awed him; the
movements of men and materiel, interposed with the dangers of combat,
enlightened him, confirmed his personal courage; the curiosities of the native
peoples fascinated him; the chance to move up within the military as a gen-
eral officer captivated him. Charles Lee took note of every aspect of North
America save one: the colonials who peopled the cities, the villages, the farms,
and the frontiers. Lee simply failed to see them.
Lee faced the immediacy of life and death as a British regular who charged
fortified positions, but not the pressures of living year to year with foreign
troops within reach of a farmstead; he witnessed and understood the savagery
of Indians on the warpath, but not the day-to-day fear that families living on
14 charles lee: self before country

the frontier had to contend with; he could observe the movement of troops
and the fatal consequences of tactical errors on the field of battle, but it does
not appear that he observed or understood the struggle of the colonists to
organize a united resistance; he served side by side with units of provincials,
but failed to notice their contributions to the war effort or to care about their
passion for the fight.
Lee had been associated with the Forty-fourth Foot Regiment from the
age of eleven, when his father, John Lee, added Charles to the muster. John
Lee at about that time had become colonel of the regiment, and it was not
uncommon for young sons to be added to the rolls in this manner to guide
them to a future military career. In preparation for that career, young Charles
was sent to the Continent to receive an education. He spoke French fluently
and learned enough Spanish, Italian, and German to be competent in those
languages throughout his life. In private schools he read the classics and
developed a quick wit and a sharp tongue. He enjoyed politics and political
thinking and became a follower of the rising political philosophy of the time
that emphasized the rights of man and freedom from hereditary kings.
Returning to England, Charles Lee purchased a lieutenancy in the Forty-
fourth Foot, and the military became his life. In eighteenth-century Great
Britain, social stature and political favor were the clearest routes to military
rank. Lee’s family, especially through the Bunburys on his mother’s side, had
sufficient standing to expect that Charles would rise in the service. His
mother’s father was Sir Henry Bunbury of Stanney in Cheshire; her uncle, Sir
Thomas Hanmer, had served as speaker of the House of Commons. Charles
was one of three sons and the only one to reach maturity. He maintained a
correspondence with his sister, Sidney, and members and friends of his
extended family for his entire life, and it is from these letters that we can see
Lee travel the world and take up his political and military contests.1
This correspondence starts with Lee’s American adventures in the French
and Indian War, and from the first, Charles Lee establishes himself as a master
storyteller. The letters exhibit self-confidence, a delight in commentary,
a flair for hyperbole, and an ingrained disdain for authority. These traits
characterize Lee’s letters to the very end of his life, whether writing to his
sister, his peers, or his superiors. A reader of the early correspondence has to
ask whether at least some of the stories result from a young man’s need to
embellish his exploits. Is Charles Lee simply trying to shock or entertain his
sister? The lore of Lee’s early life comes straight out of these letters. The stories
border on the fantastic, but their essentials have been corroborated by third-
party accounts. If they are true, even in part, Charles Lee’s first American expe-
riences provided a colorful beginning to his military and personal life.
lee’s “american expedition” 15

Lee’s regiment arrived in Virginia in 1754 and participated in an ill-fated

campaign under General Edward Braddock that demonstrated the lack of
understanding that British commanders had for the style of fighting that
would prove successful on the American frontier. General Braddock marched
the Forty-fourth (Lee’s unit) and the Forty-eighth Regiments through the
woods from Frederick, Maryland, toward his objective, the French Fort
Duquesne at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers.
Braddock had accepted on his staff a young, but well-respected, colonial
officer, George Washington, who was familiar with the territory and several
Native Americans—Mingo warriors, along with the “Half King” Scarouady.
But the campaign proceeded as a typical European assault. The British regu-
lars crossed the Monongahela River and began their approach to the fort in
tight units. (British officers crossing the river with their units included
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gage and Captain Horatio Gates, both of whom
would become prominent players in the American Revolution, albeit on
opposite sides.) A body of French and Indians hidden in the woods well
beyond the fort ambushed the regulars and proceeded to decimate their well-
formed ranks with fire from elevated positions behind trees and brush. The
result was a devastating defeat for the British as they scrambled back across
the river. Braddock died shortly thereafter of wounds from the battle, leaving
Washington effectively in command. Lee’s Forty-fourth Regiment eventually
retreated to Philadelphia, moved to New York City, and then went into
winter quarters in upstate New York.2
Lee’s first letter from North America is a missive to his sister, Sidney, from
“Schenectada (New York)” in June 1756.3 It is not clear if Lee crossed the
Monongahela with his unit, but his letter duly describes the terror that con-
fronted the men who did: “There is one horrid circumstance attending this sort
of service which is, that if you, happen to be left disabled in the Field, the high-
est blessing that you can wish for is, that some friends will immediately Knock
you on the head, for it is great odds that you suffer some terrible lingering
death from these savages; such I’m afraid was the fate of our poor wounded
friends at the Monongahela; but the Indians may indeed be excus’d more
than the French, for they are bred up in these bloody notions.” Lee then weaves
these horrors of war with a travelogue and personal delicacies for his sister:

It is an uncomfortable situation enough we are in here; we cannot stir out

to take a walk unless we are twenty together in number well arm’d, for the
French and Indians are continually skulking about us, and carry off every
day a great many scalps—the place itself is very pleasant (not from any
Society) but from the finess of the Situation and the delightful sky, which
16 charles lee: self before country

must put ev’ry thing animate into spirits, indeed there is a magnificence
and greatness through the immense extent (which we have seen of this
Continent) not equal’d in any part of Europe; our Rivers and Lakes (even
the greatest) are to these rivulets and brooks; indeed Nature in every Article
seems to be in great here, what on your side of the Waters, she is in small.
Some of the Towns are very good; Philadelphia is charming, and really very
sociable people; the women there are extremely pretty and most passion-
ately fond of red coats, which is for us a most fortunate piece of absurdity.4

All of this is prologue for a detailed description of the “Mohocks” and Lee’s
acceptance into their “Councils.”
Apparently sometime after his arrival in North America, Lee made the
acquaintance of William Johnson, the British Indian agent; accompanied
Johnson in conferences with the Six Nations, which included the Mohawks
and the Senecas; and so became deeply acquainted with these tribes. Johnson
played an important role in the French and Indian War as both an interme-
diary with the Six Nations and as a commander of British forces. One of Lee’s
biographers suggests that Lee assisted in the recruiting of Native Americans
into the Forty-fourth Regiment to restore its depleted ranks.5 In any event,
Lee had the chance to live “a great deal among” these natives and spoke of
them glowingly. They were “hospitable, friendly, and civil to an immense
degree”; they “infinitely surpass the French” in “good breeding”; “in their
persons they are generally tall, slender and delicate shapes” and carry them-
selves with “an ease and gracefulness in their walk and air which is not to be
met with elsewhere.”
Lee provides Sidney with a surprisingly close description of the physical
features of the “Mohocks”: their “Complexion is deep olive, their eyes and
teeth very fine, but their skins are most inexpressibly soft and silky.” The
“men are in general handsomer than their women, but I have seen some of
them very pretty.” He had been “adopted by the Mohocks into the Tribe of
the bear under the name of Ounewaterika, which signifies boiling water, or
one whose spirits are never asleep, by which I am entitled to a Seat and the
privilege of Smoking a pipe in their Councils.” All of this came about, appar-
ently, owing to his marriage to a chieftain’s daughter: “My Wife is daughter to
the famous White Thunder who is Belt of Wampum to the Senekas which is
in fact their Lord Treasurer. She is a very great beauty and is more like your
friend Mrs. Griffith than anybody I know. I shall say nothing of her accom-
plishments for you must be certain that a Woman of her fashion cannot be
without many.” One has to wonder at the reaction of Lee’s spinster sister,
Sidney Lee, reading this letter in her native Chester, North Wales, from where
lee’s “american expedition” 17

she barely wandered during her life. Lee expects that she will question his
veracity, if not his judgment, and twice in this long letter gives “my word and
honour” that his accounts are, in fact, truthful. Whatever her reaction,
Charles Lee never mentioned this “very great beauty” to Sidney again.6 It
must have been through his association with William Johnson that Lee
attained such an intimate relationship with the Indians supporting the
British. Johnson is reputed to have bedded numerous Native American
women during his lifetime and fathered more than a few children by these
women.7 And, apparently, Lee was not the only British officer to take an
Indian wife.
This tale was immediately followed by another. Apparently a young brave
named Joseph, to show his devotion to Lee, surprised him with a “handsome
present,” a scalp obtained specifically for the purpose of the gift: “[H]e lay
skulking for two or three days before he had an opportunity of knocking on
the head a French Sergeant, and taking off his scalp, with which he hurried
away to me and presented it to me elegantly dress’d up with ribbons.” Again,
Lee acknowledges that Sidney may wonder at the truth of such a tale: “You
may think that I am endeavouring to make my letter Romantic but I give you
my word and honour that it is every syllable facts.”8
Stories of personal danger continued. In late 1758, he sent a short letter to
Sidney describing an attempt on his life by “a little Cowardly Surgeon” in
the camp whom Lee had “thrashed” for spreading a “stupid libel” about him.
The vignette of this encounter still remains fresh in it details to the reader:
“. . . the scoundrel had not the spirit to resent [the thrashing] properly, but
waited for me on a road which he knew I was to pass, seiz’d my horse by the
bridle, presented a pistol at my heart, (so close that the muzzle almost touc’d
me) and fir’d. My horse fortunately at that instant started to the right, which
sav’d me; but the shock was very violent, and the contusion very great, exactly
under my heart; He wou’d have dispatched me with a second pistol, but Capt.
Dunbar (who was with me) struck it out of his hand.”9 Lee completes the
story more than a full year later.10 He was convinced to allow “the little
Villain” to make a public apology in order to avoid the court-martial that
would have broken him, but Lee soon regretted his kindness. It seems that the
whole affair was the work of Major John Beckwith, also in the Forty-fourth
Regiment, a “Yorkshire man” and “petty Caligula,” who hated Lee and his
friends and put the surgeon up to the assassination, even to the point of
supplying the pistols. Lee vows to run this major out of the regiment or,
failing to do so, to himself resign once the campaign against the French ends.
Lee took the time to drink in the wonders of North America as he traveled
from place to place and passed accounts of their beauty on to his correspondents.
18 charles lee: self before country

In an early letter he talks about “blue and yellow Nightingales, Mockingbirds

and spotted squirrels,” which he describes as “the most beautiful creatures in
the world,”11 and in another he tells Sidney of the “Deer, Bear, Turkeys,
Raccoons” that can be found in this country along with salmon in the Niagara
River. Niagara Falls is “the most stupendous Cataract in the known World,”
and he despairs that even if he had “a throat of Brass & a thousand tongues”
he could not adequately describe it. Lee sums up his view of the wilderness by
saying that “it is such a Paradise & such an acquisition to our Nation, that I
wou’d not sacrifice it to redeem the dominions of any one Electoral Prince in
Germany from the hands of the Enemy.”12

First Action
Captain Charles Lee of the Forty-fourth Regiment of the His Majesty’s
Grenadiers most likely saw his first action at Monongahela in 1755. As men-
tioned above, he refers to the horrors of the battle in a letter to his sister, but
he does not mention whether he came under fire. Two-thirds of the 2,200
British regulars engaged were killed or wounded in this fight on the road to
Fort Duquesne.
We next hear from Lee after the siege of Fort Carillon in July 1758 under
Major General James Abercromby. Lee was one of 9,000 regulars and 6,000
provincials amassed outside of this rustic military outpost near the border of
New York and the Canadian provinces. The fort sits on a plateau at the west-
ern edge of Lake Champlain and northern outlet of Lake George. It was built
by the French in the 1750s and stood as their southernmost military presence
in the British New World. As a garrison, a storehouse for artillery, and a loca-
tion that commanded the northern end of an inland waterway to the ocean,
Fort Carillon (renamed “Fort Ticonderoga” by the British in 1759) became a
prime military objective for every army operating in New York from its con-
struction through the end of the Revolutionary War. The French currently
had control of the fort, with only 3,200 French, Indians, and Canadians under
the command of the Marquis de Montcalm.
Notwithstanding the superiority of his numbers, Abercromby bungled the
attack by not learning the lay of the land and not bringing his artillery into the
fight in a meaningful way. He sent wave after wave of his precious regulars
against heavily defended barricades in an attempt to take the fort at the point
of a bayonet. The provincials were held back in support of the regulars on
either side under the cover of the trees. The regulars rushed from the trees
only to be cut down by the French as they became entangled in the thicket
and the fallen trees in front of the barricades. Late in the fight the provincials
lee’s “american expedition” 19

joined in support of the regulars, but the French could not be moved from
their defenses. Abercromby finally stopped the offensive as the daylight began
to wane. The slaughter was tremendous: more than 1,900 men killed and
wounded, including a full 25 percent of the regulars. Lee took a bullet in the
chest that shattered two ribs. That night Abercromby ordered the troops to
their boats and rushed back to the encampment at the south end of Lake
George where the campaign began.13
Among the provincials backing up the British regulars at Fort Carillon was
Major Artemas Ward, with four companies of Massachusetts militiamen, the
same man who would be ranked above Charles Lee by the Continental
Congress seventeen years later in June 1775. Ward witnessed this disaster
along with Lee. Although Ward was not wounded in the fighting, his exer-
tions in this campaign took a physical toll that plagued him for years there-
after and eventually led to his early resignation from the Continental Army.14
Charles Lee recuperated from his wound in Albany. He wrote as soon as he
could to his sister, Sidney, to assure her of his recovery, because he surmised
that she had heard of his wounds through earlier letters home from others.
He passed over his injury quickly, however, to get to a more urgent point, the
incompetence of General Abercromby: “As to a detail of our affairs, or rather
the blunders of this damn’d beastly poltroon (who to the scourge and dis-
honour of the Nation, is unhappily at the head of our Army, an instrument of
divine vengeance to bring about national losses and national dishonour) I
refer you to the Narrative here inclos’d, a coppy of which I desire you will
transmit to Coll. Armiger. I shall not be asham’d should it be communicated
to others, as I think silence or even patience is some disgrace to a man who
has been an eye witness to such superlative blundering, pusillanimity, and
infamy.”15 He goes on to describe General Abercromby as “our Booby in
Chief” and relates that the Indians refuse to fight under his command
because he is “an old Squah.” The Indians have told Abercromby that “he
should wear a petticoat, go home and make sugar, and not by pretending to a
task which he was not equal to, blunder so many braver men than himself into
destruction.”
Lee’s “Narrative” provides a colorful and readable story of the assault,
beginning with the landing of the troops and an early skirmish with “French
Scouts” in the woods leading to the fort. Lee effusively praises Lord George
Howe, the eldest of the three brothers who all served in North America as
part of the British military. Howe served as second in command of the
British troops, and Lee poetically mourns Howe’s death in the skirmish.
According to Lee, Howe had created the conditions for a successful assault on
the barricades and made the troops on the field understand the superiority of
20 charles lee: self before country

the British position. The troops were ready for the victory that was then
denied them by the incompetence of Abercromby:

What a glorious Situation was this! In short everything had so charming an

aspect, that without being much elated I shou’d have look’d upon any man
as a desponding bastard who could entertain a doubt of our success; little
did we dream that it was still in the power of one blunderer to render all
these favorable promising circumstances abortive, but our noble Leader
soon convinc’d us that there can be no situation so disadvantageous, no
success & victory so certain, altho’ it is absolutely in your hand & only waits
until you grasp it, but that a miscarriage may be brought about by the
incapacity of a single person. I really did not think that so great a share of
stupidity and absurdity could be in the possession of any man. Fortune
and the pusillanimity of the French had cram’d victory into his mouth,
but he contrived to spit it out again.

As Lee continues, his blood runs higher and his pen hotter. He further con-
demns Abercromby and, even in this more public statement of the affair, can-
not avoid brutal sarcasm and personal assault. Abercromby’s foolish mistake
to not utilize cannon from an eminence that gave the British command of the
field drove Lee to distraction: “[B]ut notwithstanding some of our Cannon
was brought up & in readiness, this never was thought of, which (one wou’d
imagine must have occurr’d to any blockhead who was not absolutely so far
sunk in Idiotism as to be oblig’d to wear a bib and bells. So far, his behaviour
cou’d only be call’d stupid, ridiculous and absurd; but the subsequent part
was dishonorable and infamous, & had some strong symptoms of cowardice.”
Lee refers in this last comment to the precipitous British retreat and aban-
donment of the field. He accuses Abercromby of being the first to leave the
field: “He threw himself into one of the first boats, row’d off, and was almost
the earliest Messenger of the Public loss and his own infamy.” Even counting
their heavy losses, the British still outnumbered the French two to one.
Lee was not alone in his praise for the fallen Lord Howe or his condemna-
tion of General Abercromby. Both contemporary and historical consensus
confirm his conclusions. But this first instance of Lee’s willingness to publicly
attack his superior officer is telling in its ferocity. Lee balances his criticism of
General Abercromby by his profuse praise for Lord Howe, but we will see that
Lee’s lifelong habit is to save most of his praise for dead superiors. And it
appears that Lee did not limit his criticism to firsthand encounters. In an
undated letter, perhaps written before the defeat at Fort Carillon, Lee railed
against the loss of Fort William Henry in August 1757. He admitted that
although “almost on the spot” he has “very imperfect Ideas of the causes of
lee’s “american expedition” 21

this misfortune.” This did not prevent him, however, from dredging up every
malicious rumor about the commanding officers circulating at the time
and referring to “Coll. Monroe” as a “very worthy gentlewoman” who was
“terribly afflicted with a paraletic disorder of which She is since dead.”16
Lee suggested that “it wou’d be much better to make a present at once
of all of our possession in America to the French” than to continue to rely on
blunderers whose incompetence is glossed over.
Lee returned to the Forty-fourth Foot in time to participate in the siege of
Niagara. He provided a brief description of this victory to Sidney and noted
that “I myself escap’d unhurt, but two musket balls at the same instant grazed
my hair.”17 In a detailed description of the siege for his uncle, Sir William
Bunbury, Lee failed to mention his close encounter with death this second
time but did not fail to comment on the actions of his commanding officers.
The British artillery was “trifling & bad,” and the engineers “(as usual) exe-
crably ignorant.” Lee reported that Brigadier General John Prideaux and his
second in command, were “both worthy and brave men,” but unfortunately
were killed in the action. The next in line was Sir William Johnson, the British
Indian superintendent, who Lee reported as a “very good and valuable man,
but utterly a stranger to military affairs.”
Nevertheless, 2,000 British regulars and 1,000 “Indians of the Six Nations”
(including the Senecas, “wavering and irresolute, ready to desert us on the
first prospect of unsuccess”) reduced the fort’s garrison of 620 despite
the appearance of 1,000 French and Indian reinforcements. Over nineteen days,
the British dug trenches closer and closer to the fort, but the French did not
surrender until their reinforcements attempted but were unable to break
through the British lines. After the battle, Lee reported, the British had to
restrain the “Mohocks and Oneida from sacrificing” the French officers, even
though it would have been “justice for they had a few hours before surpris’d
a party of our Light Infantry, cut off their heads & arms, and fix’d them upon
poles.”
Lee understood the strategic value of Fort Niagara and the military and
economic impact of this victory: “[T]his important Fort of Niagara . . . is to
the English Nation a most glorious and solidly advantageous acquisition,
by its strength most formidable, & by its situation absolute Empress of the
Inland parts of North America, commanding the two great Lakes, Erie,
Ontario; the River Ohio, all the upper nations of Indians, and consequently
engrossing the whole Fur trade, cutting off communication between Canada &
Misasipi, & thus defeating their favourite and long projected scheme of
forming a chain round our Colonies, so as in time to have justled us into
the Sea.”18 The victory led quickly to an adventure of three months for Lee.
22 charles lee: self before country

Along with one other officer and fourteen men, Charles Lee was sent to
follow the remnants of the French Army that eluded the British after the
surrender of Fort Niagara. He seems to have reveled in the chance to see so
much country: “[W]e had the satisfaction of being the first English who ever
cross’d the vast Lake of Erie; we pass’d through the French Forts of Presq’
Isle and Vinango descended down the Rivers of Buffalo and Ohio and in 14
days arriv’d safe (tho’ naked & almost starv’d) at Fort Duquesne; . . . from
Fort Duquesne, I took a little jaunt of 700 miles to Gen. Amherst at
Crown Point, from thence another of five hundred and fifty to Oswego, and
from Oswego another trifling of 600 to this place [Philadelphia] where I am
now recruiting.”19 This delightful travelogue served as the opening of a
long letter to sister Sidney and a response to her “heavy accusations” that he
had not written to her regularly. He discussed friends and relatives, the
attempt on his life by a subordinate (described above), and gifts he was
preparing to send her, including “a pair of fine shoes,” a “Child’s cradle, in
case of marriage,” and a few furs. He ends with this odd couplet: “My mother
you must assure of my Most dutifull respects and Mr Mather—send me
Thucidides.”

An American Expedition
Charles Lee’s “American Expedition” from 1754 to 1761 had a profound effect
on him and the later direction of his life. He had the opportunity to see much
of the British New World, more than most of the colonists in North America.
He traveled through the wilderness to Fort Duquesne, fought at Monongahela,
passed through the seaport cities of New York and Philadelphia, traveled to
Nova Scotia, was wounded near the Canadian border at Fort Carillon, partic-
ipated in the siege of Niagara, crossed Lake Erie into the Ohio Valley, and
witnessed the fall of Montreal.
The North American landscape, the natives, and the wildlife clearly
impressed him, and he described each in detail in the several surviving letters
from those early years. His commentary on the native peoples captured both
their savagery and their gentility, and his intimate experience of their culture
would have been lost on many of the settlers who feared even the friendliest
Indians. He came to understand the vastness of the continent, its abundance,
and its importance to the British Empire. It may be that his letters reflect the
exuberance of his youth and the passion of being, literally, in the trenches for
the fight on the North American continent, but Lee had already visited
Europe and had some basis on which to make adequate comparisons. The
New World offered wonders.
lee’s “american expedition” 23

Charles Lee’s “American Expedition” also introduced him to the realities

of war.20 Acquaintance with military life from an early age and garrison duty
in Ireland probably did not prepare Lee for the hardships of camp life in a
wilderness, the rigors of forced marches through dense forests, the drudgery
of trenching, or the terror of enemy fire in the assault on fortified barricades.
Lee learned the life of a soldier in North America and witnessed firsthand how
battles should and should not be waged to obtain victory. He was not one to
defer to the opinion of superiors on how to proceed, but despite his tendency
to second-guess all opinions other than his own, he surely learned valuable
lessons on the field. He exhibited courage, suffered a serious battle wound,
and returned to the front for more.
It appears, however, that Charles Lee failed to take away one important
lesson from his “American Expedition”—an understanding of the people liv-
ing in British North America. One would think that interspersed among the
descriptions of the rivers, the lakes, and the natural wonders, weaved into the
narratives about the culture of the natives, and sprinkled among the colors of
the wildlife, a reader would find in Lee’s letters some words about the farmers,
the villagers, the city people, the tradesmen, the frontiersmen, and the arti-
sans who were about the business of civilizing this wilderness. There are none.
Other than the pretty women in Philadelphia who were “most passionately
fond of red coats,” Americans are absent from his observation and his letters.
Only about a dozen letters survive from Lee during this time, some long
narratives and some short notes, and it can be argued that Lee just did not get
around to describing the people building the societies he visited. Does this
excuse the complete lack of description of the people that his regiment was
sent to North America to protect from the French? He fought alongside
provincials; he lived in their cities and passed through their towns. He takes
time to describe the colorful natives, providing details on their customs and
their persons. It may be that Lee did not have enough contact with these
people to include observations in his letters. He was a British officer assigned
to a military unit and was perhaps too busy, or discouraged from, close con-
tact with the local population. At least one story associated with Charles Lee
during this time, however, suggests otherwise. Lee’s wounds from the Battle
of Fort Carillon took some time to heal, and he spent several months at a
farmhouse outside of Albany being nursed back to health by a “Madame
Schuyler.” As the story goes, this same woman suffered depredations by Lee’s
men foraging for food and supplies when they had passed through her prop-
erty earlier in the year.21 If indeed this story is true, should not “Madame
Schuyler” merit mention? Alas, like all other colonials, she did not find her
way into Lee’s writings.
24 charles lee: self before country

Lee made sure that his sister understood the threat of scalping that fol-
lowed British soldiers on the frontiers of North America, but he never dis-
cussed the fears of scalping that pervaded the psyche of settlers living on those
frontiers. Would those people have agreed with Lee’s observation that the
Indians possessed a “gentillity” and were “hospitable and friendly”? British
citizens living in North America at the time, especially those making a living
in the seaport towns, might agree with Lee’s observations about the impact of
the capture of Fort Niagara for the fur trade and the economy of Great
Britain, but certainly they were much more concerned with the impact the
fort had on the security of the villages at or near the frontiers when it was in
the hands of the French. And surely, the Americans would, as Lee, despair in
the defeats of the British forces and hail their victories, but the colonists
would be quick to add words of praise for the thousands of locals who filled
the ranks of the provincial forces for the role they played in those losses and
victories. The result is a blind spot in Charles Lee’s “American Expedition.”
Lee also at this time was developing his concepts of political thought,
which would lead him to extol the rights of man and rail against the tyranny
of corrupt governments over the next twenty years. So, too, the leading
political thinkers living in North American would undertake such a strong
belief in the rights of man that they would call eventually for the overthrow of
the government of King George III in the colonies. But in the 1750s, the
colonists were not thinking about human rights. On the contrary, they were
struggling with the process of building governmental organizations. They
recognized the need for the unification of the colonies and called for
conventions and correspondent societies that are the budding examples of a
government to rule territory and men. If Charles Lee saw this movement,
he did not recognize it, or, if he did recognize it, he did not chronicle it—
perhaps because he did not understand the need for it.
 chapter 3

h
Lee’s European
Experience

Charles Lee did not linger on the memories of his “American Expedition.” He
left North America sometime in 1760, no doubt with the hope and expecta-
tion that he could secure advancement in the British military. His uncle,
Sir William Bunbury, suggested in a 1759 letter that the prospect existed:
“We wish you to come again amongst your friends, and probably some
change might be procured as well as advance on this side of the water if you
desire it.”1 Filled with a knowledge of North America and tested as a soldier in
the field, Charles Lee returned home with expectations.

Return to England
For all young officers in the British service, advancement depended on
connections with the king and his councilors, and this was especially so in 1761,
as the war in North America, Europe, and India was winding down. Great
Britain had defeated France and Spain militarily and was in the process of
negotiating terms for peace. The prospect of several years of relative peace
ahead had government ministers already anticipating the financial savings
that would come by dismantling some of the military apparatus and curtail-
ing some of its forces. Advancement in the ranks of a dwindling military force
would depend even more on the favor of the king. The optimism of Lee’s
uncle two years earlier at the height of the war would need to be tempered. In
such an atmosphere, patience and tact were virtues to be rewarded. Lee found
himself among many young officers vying for position, getting promises from
the right politicians but not much more.
Charles Lee began this test of patience and tact with modest, not over-
whelming, political clout. He was the only surviving son of Isabella Bunbury
Lee and John Lee of Dernall, a baronet from Stanney, both in the County of

25
26 charles lee: self before country

Cheshire in North Wales. His father had served as a captain of dragoons and
as a lieutenant colonel of grenadiers but died in 1750, before Lee’s departure
for North America to fight in the French and Indian War. Colonel John Lee,
albeit a military man of distinction, was not of noble parentage, and his early
death caused young Charles to look to his mother’s family, the Bunburys of
Cheshire, for support. Their station was comfortable, but their status was not
such that royal prerogative would come easily. In addition, the Bunburys
were Tories, the political party out of favor and out of power in Great Britain
for most of the 1750s and 1760s.
Charles Lee was not a Tory. Despite his mother’s family connections, he
developed a personal belief in the principles expressed by Whig thinkers and
politicians in England and their counterparts on the Continent. The Whigs
called for fewer royal prerogatives and greater rights for the individual citizen.
The Whig philosophers of the time embraced the emerging political concepts
of the Enlightenment—the “rights of man,” the tyranny of hereditary kings,
and societies as compacts between the governed and their rulers. The writings
of Voltaire and John Locke struck a chord with the Whigs but received cold
reception among Tories. Whig ministers formed all of the governments
under King George II, during his reign from 1727 to 1760. In the rising dis-
putes with the colonies, the Whigs sympathized with the Americans and
sought a tolerant policy that would acknowledge their grievances and encour-
age their feelings for England. So it would seem that Lee was properly aligned
until timing betrayed him. The British political scene shifted just as he was
returning to England from North America. George III succeeded his grand-
father on the throne in 1760, and shortly thereafter the Whigs lost power for
several years. A Tory, and the first Scottish prime minister, John Stuart, the
third Earl of Bute, took office in May 1762. Lord Bute inherited the responsi-
bility to negotiate the Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years’ War. Another
obstacle to Lee, apparently, was John Ligonier, the French-born British
commander in chief during the Seven Years’ War. Ligonier, for reasons not
readily apparent today, was antagonistic to Lee. Friends and relatives hoped
that the old man (he was eighty in 1760) would step down or die so that Lee
could advance.2
Compounding his poor timing were Lee’s personal quirks. Patience and
tact were not among his virtues. As with his opinions on matters military,
Charles Lee did not shy away from expressing political views at any time in
his life, and it may have been criticisms of Ligonier’s friends that created that
stumbling block. As Lee’s temper mixed with his politics, he resorted to
polemics against individuals rather than reasoned arguments for a just cause.
He attacked anyone and anybody who opposed him or his political views.
lee’s european experience 27

Lee was a volatile mixture of pride and inflated self-worth, a man who needed
to let the world know his value. He expressed this arrogance in speech with a
sharp tongue and in letters with a blistering pen. As we have seen, his intem-
perance with a fellow soldier in New York led to an attempt on his life, and
over the course of the next twenty years, he fought several duels (and nar-
rowly escaped the pacing for others) to answer for his uncensored remarks.
His attacks on superiors received the most attention, but Lee lashed out at
equals and subordinates as well. A close reading of his letters demonstrates
that he could not pass up an opportunity to criticize anyone who disagreed
with his opinions, failed to provide him his perceived due, or stood in his
way, even when he recognized or should have recognized the ill effects of
his remarks.
On his return to England, Lee’s targets shifted from incompetent military
commanders to politicians, the same people whose support he needed if he
was to get the advancement he was seeking. Lee fancied himself an expert on
American affairs as a result of his military service during the French and
Indian War and injected himself into the public debate on American issues
on at least two occasions between 1760 and 1764. Naturally, he sided with the
Whig thinkers who saw the policies of the government as bungling and
heavy-handed, and when his opinions made it to print, Lee, assuredly, was
thrilled. The government’s ministers, on the other hand, were not. Surely,
their friends and informants must also have heard Lee verbally expressing
his opinions in the London taverns and public houses.
One of the issues that aroused Lee was the fate of Canada. In 1762, diplo-
mats were hammering out the details of the peace with France and Spain.
In its final form, the Treaty of Paris would cover possessions of the several
powers in North America, the Caribbean, South America, India, and even the
Philippines. The issue most pertinent to the America colonies, of course, was
possession of Canada. The treaty granted Britain sole possession of Canada.
But the fate of Canada was not a foregone conclusion when Lee arrived
back in England, despite the military successes in North America. European
territorial issues dominated the negotiations, and the fate of India, as well as
the islands in the West Indies, with their advantageous positions for trade,
competed with the need to provide security on the North American conti-
nent. Lee, who had witnessed the fall of Montreal, felt strongly that Canada
should belong to Great Britain and not be ceded in the negotiations for other
territories.
Contemporaries referred to a pamphlet that Lee authored at about this
time offering his views on the subject, notably ones that may not have been
shared by the ministers in power. While no definitive writing can be traced
28 charles lee: self before country

directly to Lee, a pamphlet published in 1761 titled “The Importance of

Canada Considered in Two Letters to a Noble Lord” is often referred to as this
effort. Significantly, the letters are written in counterpoint, a style favored by
Lee, wherein he starts with an assertion by an opponent and demonstrates its
absurdity. This first letter examines the claim “that the simple possession of
Canada with the westward of the great lakes can be of no consequence to France.”
The writer sees it differently. If France retains any portion of Canada, the
security of Britain and its colonies will be at risk: “He [who will only cast his
eye on the map of that country] will there see that whoever possesses the
dominion of Lake Ontario and the pass at Niagara, must engross the whole
furr trade.” Not only that, the Indians will play one side against the other if
both Britain and France remain in this territory. Supplied by the French, the
Indians can move swiftly with little equipment, will subsist off of the land,
and cross the rivers with ease. The forts on the south of Lakes Ontario and
Erie (Oswego, Niagara, Presque Isle, the Ohio and La Beuf Rivers) will be
vulnerable, and once they fall, “the French will re-establish themselves firmly
in the dominion of the lakes, pour daily fresh troops into Canada, and
by strengthening and populating the communication betwixt the River
St. Laurence and Mississippi surround our colonies, which must end in our
total expulsion from America.”
The writer goes further in a second letter. The hatred of the Indians for the
English is so great, he lectures, that the Indians will join together to drive
the English out of Canada, forming a “general confederacy betwixt the
Ohion Indians and the upper Five Nations.” Others that would join include
the Hurons, Wyandots, “Puttawatamies,” “Uttawas,” “Chippewawas,” and
“Messasagas.” The writer’s prediction appeared to be on the verge of coming
to pass in April 1762, when Chief Pontiac built a coalition of Ottawas,
Chippewas, Hurons, Potawatomi, and other Lake tribes and attacked numer-
ous forts in the Ohio Valley. The French may have been neutered by the con-
clusion of the war, but the Indians were not completely subdued. Pontiac
arose as a strong native leader who understood that the expanding territorial
demands of the settlers would not abate and who also believed that the Native
Americans could defeat the settlers and their armies if they banded together.
Pontiac himself held siege to Detroit. The impact on the settlers, who had
hoped that the war had resolved this threat, was matched by the dismay of the
British government, then in the process of concluding its treaty with France.
Neither country wanted to revive the North American hostilities.
Charles Lee’s first biographer, writing in 1792, suggests that Lee took the
opportunity in London to let the government know how important he
thought the resolution of this affair was to the Americans and, therefore, to
lee’s european experience 29

Great Britain.3 Whether the historian is referring to the two letters referenced
above from 1761 or to later letters is unclear, but the impact remains the same.
Another biographer dismisses one letter attributed to Lee because it was
written in 1759, but ascribes another as “more probable,” in part because
the style—“a severe and pungent philippic”—sounds more like Lee.4 Lee
could not hold his pen or his tongue even if his views could be detrimental to
his efforts for military advancement. Did he expect that his diatribes would go
unnoticed? No, indeed! The point was to catch the attention of the govern-
ment’s ministers so as to set England’s policies right. Lee was also touting the
benefits of establishing British settlements on the Ohio and Illinois Rivers
at this time, a proposal not without merit but diametrically opposite to the
desires of the king’s ministers, who prohibited settlements beyond the
Alleghenies.5
His opinions were noted among supporters of the American cause as
well. At the time, Lee may not have realized that his Whig philosophies and
his strong opinions on the value of North America to the British Empire
would be seen by some in England and North America as support for the
developing political movement toward independence. Like most Whigs, Lee
saw Americans as British subjects entitled to the rights of British subjects but
not as citizens of a sovereign and independent nation. As he observed in his
letters from the American frontier, the lands captured and controlled by
British forces added to the luster and glory of the empire. Most Whig politi-
cians at the time (and throughout the years of the American Revolution)
criticized the British government’s handling of the American crisis and called
for acceding to reasonable demands, but would not concede independence
for the colonies. Tories perhaps understood that the political movement
in North America would necessarily lead to independence if concessions
were made.
At least one man in London at the time understood that the difficulties
between the colonies and the mother country would not quickly fade and that
America needed to develop supporters. Benjamin Franklin was in London for
much of the 1750s and 1760s as an agent for Pennsylvania. He took notice
of Lee’s writings and included Lee in a dinner party in March 1768 at his
London quarters, along with others whom Franklin saw as friends of
America.6 Horatio Gates, another British officer seeking promotion without
too much success, and Benjamin Rush, a Pennsylvanian studying medicine at
Edinburgh, were also at the gathering. Both of these men would serve
the American cause along with Charles Lee. Gates returned to America,
settled in Virginia, and joined the Continental Army as soon as hostilities
began. Rush would serve in the Continental Congress and as a surgeon
30 charles lee: self before country

general during the war. Both Gates and Rush remembered and befriended
Lee when he arrived in America in 1773. Franklin understood well the task he
assigned himself in 1768.7
Charles Lee may have relished the attention, but he did not think of him-
self as an American and may not have yet understood where the agitation in
America would lead. Gates left England in 1772 to make his future in Virginia
as an American landowner. Rush had every intention of returning home
upon completion of his studies to begin his medical practice. It is possible
that Lee’s views as a British military officer and nationalist were challenged
and changed by the conversation in Franklin’s London quarters. Thereafter,
Lee continued to speak in favor of the American cause, and his voice grew
louder as the revolutionary fervor grew. But his actions tell a different story.
Lee left London shortly after the dinner party for the courts and resorts of
Europe, not the frontier of Virginia as Gates did, and not for the provincial
city life of Philadelphia as did Rush. It would take Lee another five years of
traveling purposelessly in Europe before he would see how his political ideas
could intersect with the political and military needs of America. Perhaps
Benjamin Franklin could foresee this intersection of political expediency in
1768; Charles Lee needed time to understand that his future could be tied to
the call for American independence.

Petitioning the King

When Lee returned to England in 1760, he did not rush home to visit his
mother and sister. His relationship with his mother was cool, at best. His sur-
viving correspondence does not include a single letter to her, even though he
maintained a continuous albeit sporadic correspondence with his sister.
Letters to Sidney, up until their mother’s death in 1766, always included a curt
remembrance to “my Mother” along with a list of other relatives and friends.
After his mother’s death, Lee would confide in Sidney that his relationship
with their mother was not a warm one: “I have this instant rec’d yours with
the melancholy account of my Mothers death; had it happen’d some years
before, I shou’d not have been so shocked as I now really find myself; so
I confess that in the latter part of her life my affection for her was much
stronger than in the former.”8
Some historians suggest that Isabella Lee was not easy to love. Perhaps
Charles had inherited his acerbic wit and sharp tongue from his mother and
had often felt the sting of both. The issue may also have centered on money.
Charles Lee knew, and was not afraid to mention during her lifetime, that his
mother’s death would provide him financial freedom.9 His mother was not
lee’s european experience 31

without resources, and upon her death Charles would inherit her estate as the
surviving son. In the interim he was without a steady income and had to rely
on his own resources, perhaps not much more than his officer’s salary, to
sustain himself. Lee enjoyed the good life—trips to resorts, escapes to
country estates, the theater—and the lack of a sufficient income to pursue
these pleasures disturbed him. Throughout his lifetime, he demonstrated a
concern with finances, almost to a public fault. He saw himself in a light that
required status. Status required financial freedom.
So Lee threw himself into activities that would achieve personal and finan-
cial advancement, calling on friends and relatives to make connections that
would lead to the king’s preference. He intended to rely on his knowledge of
America as an introduction and assistance in these efforts. In one of his first
letters to Sidney after his return, Lee reports from London that “some of my
friends here have promis’d to procure me” an audience with “Mr. Pitt,” a
Whig who eventually rose to prime minister as the Earl of Chatham in 1766.
Lee continues: “I am inclin’d to flatter myself that it may be of service to me
as I can inform him of many circumstances in regard to some parts of
N. America which he may perhaps be glad to hear and which he can alone
have from me.”10 Whether this introduction took place or not, it was just the
beginning of Lee’s London networking.
On February 18, 1761, Lee presented a petition to King George III and
expected Lord Bute, a Tory, to “speak in my favor.”11 Lord Bute would
become prime minister in 1762. Lee expected an answer to his petition
quickly, but in July he was still waiting, relying now on his friend Lord Thanet
to get an answer from or through “Mr. Townsend,” the secretary of war
under Lord Bute. When the answer still did not come, one of these lords
approached the king in Lee’s behalf, and the king “promis’d to promote me
the first vacancy.” Could Lee ask for more than this, a promise from the lips
of the regent himself? He did not think so at the time: “Is not this friendship?
By my soul I think so; and in the reflection of the Friendship of such men con-
sists the greatest happiness of my life.”12 This royal promise may have been
the ultimate undoing of Charles Lee, because it was never fulfilled to his
satisfaction.
Perhaps Lee (and the king) understood the king’s promise to be fulfilled in
May 1762 when Lee received a temporary commission as a lieutenant colonel
in the 103rd Regiment and was sent to Portugal. The government had sent
Brigadier General John Burgoyne to help the Portuguese turn back an inva-
sion by the Spanish that threatened the existence of the kingdom. Although
this engagement did not last long, it gave Charles Lee the opportunity to
demonstrate personal courage and military prowess. In October, the Spanish
32 charles lee: self before country

forces left a small detachment close to the British rear near the Moorish
castle of Vila Velha. Burgoyne sent Lee on a daring nighttime raid to eradicate
this threat. Lee led 250 grenadiers and 50 light horsemen across the Tagus
River and through mountain passes and fell on the unsuspecting Spaniards
from behind after midnight. The action proved a complete surprise and
complete success. Lee was right in the midst of the fight, leading the charge
fought mostly with bayonets. The Spanish lost a substantial number of men,
their magazines, and a brigadier general. Lee’s troops suffered few casualties
and walked away with booty as well.
Lee’s service in this engagement contributed to its success and did not go
unnoticed by the British military or the Portuguese. Unfortunately, Lee’s sur-
viving correspondence contains a three-year gap, from July 1761 to July 1764,
that hides his own perceptions and his feelings on his return to England as an
honorary major general in the Portuguese service. Even if Lee understood
his preferment as a colonel when he left for the Portuguese theater in 1762
as fulfillment of the king’s promise, he may have returned with a different
point of view. Whatever his feelings in 1762, Lee clearly saw himself further
up the ladder after his return from Portugal, a decorated hero praised by the
Portuguese king and recommended for advancement by the commander of
the Portuguese forces, Count La Lippe.

To Poland
One would expect that Colonel Charles Lee, on his return from Portugal in
1763 with recommendations in hand and an honorary title in the Portuguese
Service, would soon find himself moving up in the ranks of the British mili-
tary. It did not happen. Instead, in November 1763, he was placed on half pay
as a colonel, a military officer not presently needed, who could only wait to
heed the call of his majesty, if the call would come. He had left England for the
military theater in Portugal, newly commissioned a lieutenant colonel, with
the promise of the king to spur him on. He served bravely and honorably
yet came home to find the doors shut to advancement. How did it happen
that Lee, not without family and political connections, returning home
triumphant from his tour of duty on the Continent, found himself without
possibilities in England?
Lee could not avoid politics, and he could not hold his tongue even when
discussing family and business matters. As we have seen, on at least two occa-
sions, he publicly raised his voice to lecture the British government on its
American policy. The king and his ministers did not appreciate critics. If Lee,
perhaps, did not understand the connection between keeping his criticisms to
lee’s european experience 33

himself and his advancement in the army, that connection was not lost on the
king, his ministers, and his generals. One biographer suggests that a letter
published at about this time that can be attributed to Lee “attacked the
military character of General Townshend and Lord George Sackville on such
tender points, and with such polished keenness of sarcasm, as to render it
impossible that he should be forgiven by the friends of those officers, or their
supporters in the government.”13 This could explain the failure of Lee to
move up. No royal preferment came Lee’s way in 1763 and 1764.
One might think that the more experienced men pressing Lee’s cause at
court would have advised him to temper his views, or at least to stay out of
print with his criticisms of the government. Apparently they did, but to no
avail. One correspondent, several years later, alludes to Lee’s inability to
measure his remarks:

I should have been heartily glad to have heard, my dear Colonel, that
His Majesty’s recommendation had been more successful in procuring
you an establishment equal to your merits and wishes, but am not at all
surprised that you find the door shut against you by the person who has
such unbounded Credit, as you have ever too freely indulged a liberty of
declaiming, which many infamous & invidious people have not failed to
inform him of. The Principle on which you thus openly speak your mind is
honest and patriotic, but not politic & as it will not succeed in changing
men or times, common prudence should teach us to hold our tongues
rather than to risque our fortunes without any prospect of advantage to
ourselves or neighbors. Excuse this scrap of advice, my dear Colonel, &
place it to the vent of a heart entirely devoted to your Interest.14

Relatives and friends might at first overlook or tolerate errors in judgment

in an ambitious young man, especially one who could recount experiences
and sights that most of them could only imagine. But the failure of that
young man to listen to those friends and relatives explain the realities of
politics after many months and setbacks must have been difficult for them.
Continuing to make the case for advancement for Charles Lee in the court of
King George III in 1764 must have been an arduous task.
It is not surprising then that Lee took his leave from England in disgust at
his failure to achieve the rank that he saw as deserved and necessary for him
to continue his state in life. His relatives and friends, privately, may not have
been disappointed when Lee announced his intention to seek employment
with the court of King Stanislaus in Poland. Indeed, the suggestion to pursue
this post may have come from some of these people, and they may have felt
considerable relief on his departure. We have only a fragment of a letter to
34 charles lee: self before country

describe Lee’s state of mind in December 1764 as he is about to depart for

Poland. Lee writes to his cousin, Sir Charles Bunbury:

My present scheme is this, to go into the Polish service, to which I am so

strongly recommended that I can scarcely fail. What can I do better? I see
no chance of being provided for at home; my income is miserably scanty;
my inclinations greater than those who are ignorant of my circumstances
suppose. It is wretchedness itself not to be able to herd with the class of men
we have been accustomed to from our infancy; it is dishonest to strain
above our faculties, and it is mortifying to avail ourselves of shifts which I
have found necessary. My resolutions are therefore to live in any part of the
world where I can find respectable employment, at least ’till my mother’s
death.15

Considering Lee’s difficulty in containing his ego during peacetime, the swift
shift of his fortunes in 1763 and 1764 must have severely impacted him. His
view of his king, his country, and his future changed. In July 1761, he pro-
claimed that the friendship of the king was the “greatest happiness of my life.”
In December 1764, after risking his life on the battlefield, he left his country in
disgust and some apparent despair. His comments on the king thereafter fail
to reflect any shred of the respect and admiration he expressed in 1761.
The gap in Lee’s surviving correspondence during this period, however,
denies us the opportunity to see this transition through his eyes.16
Lee spent the better part of the eight years from 1765 to 1773 on the
European continent. He returned to England for an extended stay between
December 1766 and December 1768 that included some time at French and
English seacoast resorts. He then went back to Poland and traveled through-
out Europe. He returned to England only once again, in 1771, before his
departure for America in late 1773. He understood that his quest for appro-
priate advancement in the British military had run into serious difficulties,
especially by the end of 1768, and his efforts after this point were limited.
During these eight years, Lee’s mother died, his political views hardened, he
grew increasingly uneasy about his future, and his connection with Great
Britain frayed. Lee undertook a search for an identity and a purpose that led
him to an American destiny.
It was not unusual in the second half of the eighteenth century for a
military man, especially an officer without a purpose in his own country,
to look elsewhere for suitable employment. Indeed, the outbreak of the
American war in 1776 occasioned a flood of foreign officers seeking commis-
sions to fight on the side of the rebels. Nor was it unusual for a gentleman
with a comfortable income to vamp around the civilized world looking for
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 Mordtmann oli suudellut häntä ja sanonut, että Venni oli
ainoastaan hänen; ja Venni itse, mitä oli hän tehnyt? ja mitä tekisi?

Eihän hän voinut elää yksinään kaikessa tässä —; minkä tai kenen
valitsisi? Mikä tapahtuva oli, sen täytyi tapahtua — ja sitten?

Hän istuutui iltahämärässä sohvaan, kiellettyänsä palvelustytön

laskemasta ketään sisälle, ei edes Mordtmannia. Hän oli tuntenut
olevansa epätoivoon joutumaisillaan ja alkoi äkisti pelätä järkeänsä.
Nyt tahtoi hän kokea tehdä tiliä itsensä kanssa nähdäkseen missä
asemassa oli.

Mutta siitä tuli ikävä suoritus, ja Venni-rouvaa hirvitti oma

asemansa.

Olihan hän, näet, vaipunut syvälle valheeseen ja epäselvyyteen

kaikilla tahoilla. Hän, joka niin rohkeasti ja mistään huolimatta oli
esiytynyt tässä elämässä, koskaan itse valehtelematta tai sallimatta
muiden valehdella, jos se hänestä riippui; hän, joka oli luullut ja
väittänyt että se, joka rehellisesti tahtoo pysyä totuudessa ja
kunniallisena, vahingoittumatta voi vaeltaa läpi elämiin, vaikka se
onkin täpötäynnä valhetta ja pelkuruutta, hän oli nyt itse siihen
vaipunut. Missä niistä suhteista, jotka lujimmin pitivät häntä
sidottuna, oli hän tällä hetkellä täysin todellinen? Hän ryhtyi niihin
yhteen erällään ja alkoi Abrahamista.

Mihin oli hänen poikansa joutunut? Tämä oli ollut niin lähellä
häntä, että Venni oli voinut havaita joka pienenkin liikutuksen hänen
sielussaan, seurata ja ymmärtää pienimmänkin ajatuksen tai
epäilyksen, joka hapuili eteenpäin hänen nuorissa aivoissaan.

Missä tämä nyt oli? Mitä tiesi nyt äiti pojastaan?

 Se ei hyödyttänyt mitään, että hän sanoi: he ovat ryöstäneet
hänet minulta, sillä juuri sen olisi hänen pitänyt estää, hänen olisi
pitänyt vartioida poikaa, pysyttää hän totuuden kirkkaassa,
puhtaassa ilmassa, eikä antaa myöden, väistyä ja väsyä
jokapäiväisessä taistelussa.

Senhän lupauksen oli hän tuhansia kertoja itselleen tehnyt

kantaissaan Abrahamia käsivarsillaan, kun tämä oli pieni; ja nyt, kun
poika oli kasvanut niin isoksi, että äidin lupauksien täyttäminen oli
hänelle tarpeen, voiko äiti nyt astua hänen luoksensa ja sanoa: tässä
olen — tässä olen, minä, sinun uskollinen äitisi.

Voisiko poika luottaa häneen, kuten ennen?

"Ei", sanoi Venni-rouva ääneensä, ja kaikki kajahti väestä tyhjässä

huoneessa niin surulliselta, "ei, sitä hän ei voi."

Sekä koulujutussa että myöhemmin ripilläkäymiskysymyksessä oli

Venni antanut myöden, heittänyt periaatteensa, pettänyt itsensä ja
ainaiseksi kadottanut poikansa luottamuksen. Koskaan ennen ei
tämä ollut nähnyt hänen horjuvan kuin juuri näissä kahdessa
asiassa, jotka hänelle, pojalle, tulivat tärkeimmiksi. Ja millaiset syyt
olivat sitten voittaneet hänet? Herra Jumala, kuinka kurjilta ne nyt
näyttivät hänestä tuohon suureen päämaaliin verraten: hänen
velvollisuuteensa pysyttää poikaa todellisena.

Jokin muu kuin nuo syyt olivat varastaneet hänen voimansa, ja se

oli Mordtmann; hänen tähtensä ja seurustellessaan hänen kanssaan
oli äiti hyljännyt — hyljännyt? ei, pettänyt poikansa.

Nyt rupesi hän tilintekoon Mordtmannista ja tarkasti suhdettansa

tähän, ja se näytti hänestä tällä hetkellä niin epäpuhtaalta, niin
vähäarvoiselta.

Hän otti rakkautensa ja koetteli sen lujuutta kysymällä itseltään,

oliko valmis uhraamaan talonsa, asemansa, miehensä, poikansa,
hyvän nimensä — ja lisätessään kuormaansa katseli hän tuskallisena
rakkauttansa; ja vihdoin tuli hän siihen loppupäätökseen, että oli
liian vanha.

Hän oli liian vanha mielestään kestämään tällaista mistään

välittämätöntä rakkautta, joka on miellyttävä kuni autuus ja
pakoittava kuni velvollisuus. Hän tunsi liian hyvin elämän antaakseen
minkään harhakuvan hurmata itseään; ja hän oli liian tunnollinen ja
uskollinen velvollisuuksilleen ollakseen muitten vaatimuksista
huolimatta.

Hän piti paljon Mordtmannista, sen hän tunsi. Ajoittain voi hän
oikein hurmaantua ajatellessaan olevansa tämän, ajatellessaan
elämää miehen kanssa, joka oli niin samanmielinen kuin hänkin, niin
vapaa ennakkoluuloista, rohkea ja jalo kaikissa suhteissa.

Kun hän sitten ryhtyi miettimään elämää sellaisena, jommoiseksi

se täst'edes muodostuisi oikean miehensä seurassa, kauhistui hän
kaikkea tätä, valhetta; ja silloin kävi se hänelle niin ilettäväksi, että
ainoa keino, joka voi pelastaa mikä hänelle oli suurimmasta arvosta,
oli murtaa koko liitto terveellisine, raastavine suruineen ja sitten
alkaa uutta elämää — tulkoon se millaiseksi tahansa — Mordtmannin
kanssa.

Mutta eihän hän voinut mennä Mordtmannin, luo sellaisessa tilassa

kuin hän nyt oli.
 Hetkeksi unohti hän kaiken surunsa, haikeasti surkutellessaan tätä
lasta, jonka äiti ei odottanut sitä kaipuulla ja rakkaudella, ja jota ei
kukaan sanoisi tervetulleeksi, kun se tuli.

Hän ei ollut äiti, josta lapselle voi olla hyötyä, ei vaimo miehelle, ei
luotettava ystävä, ei mitään kellekään; eikö ollut parasta että jättäisi
koko maailman?

Kuolema ei ollut hänestä raskas; monasti oli hänen mielessään

ollut ajatus vapaaehtoisesti jättää elämä, eikä hän luullut
puuttuvansa rohkeutta, kun vaan päätös kerran oli tehty.

Hän oli hymyillyt mahtavuudelle, jolla tavallisesti puhutaan sen

pelkuruudesta, joka katsoo parhaaksi itse avata oven, mikä johtaa
pois elämästä; niin lähellä häntä oli, näet, tuo ajatus, että hän tiesi
tarvittavan rohkeutta, erittäinkin rohkeutta päättämiseen.

Pyörteen väsyttämänä, johon ajatukset olivat hänet työntäneet,

vaipui hän hiljaiseen, raskasmieliseen mietiskelyyn: eikö hän tekisi
paraiten muita ja itseänsä kohtaan tunnustamalla tulleensa tappiolle
ja voitettuna lähtemällä täältä, sen sijaan että eläisi edelleen
valheesta ja tähteistä ilman sitä, minkä puolesta oli taistellut ja
minkä oli pettänyt: ilman täyttä, selvää totuutta sanoissa ja töissä?

Mutta hänhän ei ollutkaan yksin. Pienen hienotukkaisen lapsen

kuva seurasi häntä; oliko oikein ottaa toista olentoa mukanaan?
sammuttaa kynttilä, ennenkuin se syttyi?

Uudet epäilykset, uudet tuskat, uudet kysymykset vaivasivat

häntä; miksikä ei ollut mitään, ketään, joka olisi auttanut häntä?
 Vihdoinkin — kello kävi yhdeksättä — tuli hänen miehensä, jota ei
ollut varronnut, mutta jonka tiesi tulevan siihen aikaan.

Nyt hän astui eteisen poikki, pani pois sauvansa: puhuisiko rouva
hänen kanssaan. Olihan se hänen miehensä; puoli tuosta hengestä,
jonka oli aikonut sammuttaa, oli hänen. Professori tarttui avaimeen
ja astui sisään.

"Onko täällä ketään?" kysyi hän.

"Minä täällä olen", vastasi rouva sohvasta.

"Oletko yksin?"

Äänessä oli jotakin, joka pakoitti rouvan nousemaan; hän ei

vastannut sanaakaan, vaan kiirehti sytyttämään kattolamppua;
hänen kätensä vapisi, jotta lasi helisi kupukkaa vasten.

"Mitä sinulla on mielessä, Venni?"

"Eikö pikemmin sinulla ole jotakin mielessäsi?" kysyi tämä

ynseästi, sillä hänen miehensä kävi levotonna ympäri — ilkeä,
onnettomuutta ennustava hymyily huulilla?

"Onhan, minulla on vähä mielessä — ei paljo, mutta vähä, josta

tahtoisin puhua kanssasi. Mutta, Herran nimessä, miltähän oikein
näytätkään, Venni?"

Tämän pisti päähän olla olevinaan ymmärtämättä, että toinen

tarkoitti hänen itkusta ja surusta muuttuneita kasvojaan ja käytti
tilaisuutta saadakseen sanoa sen: "Miltä näytän? Luulin sinun
tietävän sen?"
 "Tietävän sen? Tietävän? Minkä?"

"Etkö siis ole ymmärtänyt?"

Äkkiä kokosi professori ajatuksensa, tarttui päähänsä ja katseli

häntä tarkasti terävillä lääkärinsilmillään, kääntyi pois ja tuli takaisin
mutisten jotakin.

"Mitä sanot, Karsten?"

"Minä? Sanon vaan: katso, katso!" vastasi hän kalpeana.

"Pelkään, ett'ei kummallakaan meistä ole oikeata sydämenlaatua

pienokaisparkaa kohtaan."

"Mitä pienokaisparkaa kohtaan?"

"Lastamme kohtaan, Karsten! Meidän pientä lapsiparkaamme

kohtaan."

"Meidän?" vastasi professori sama ilkeä hymyily kasvoilla ja

kääntyi silmänräpäykseksi vaimoonsa päin.

Venni katsoi sekunnin ajan hänen muuttuneihin kasvoihinsa

ymmärtämättä. Professori kääntyi ovea päin mennäkseen taas ulos.

"Karsten!" huudahti rouva äkkiä syöksähtäen ylös, "Karsten, mitä

sanoit?"

Tämä kääntyi ovella; koko mies oli muuttunut; hänen harmaat

hiuksensa olivat pystyssä, hampaat uhkasivat ja silmät olivat eläimen
silmäin kaltaiset, joka äkisti runnoo rikki häkkinsä; käreällä, kumealla
äänellä sanoi hän vaimolleen suoraan vasten silmiä: "Minä en usko
sinua."
 Venni syöksyi hänen perässään kiljahtaen ja kohotetuin käsin;
mutta hän oli jo ulkona porstuasta, ja rouva heitti seuraamisen;
eihän hän kumminkaan voinut lyödä miestään lattiaan, ja sitä hän
halusi.

Silmänräpäyksen seisoi hän vapisten, sitten hän oikaisi itsensä

pystyyn, meni ulos ja antoi palvelustytöille tiedon ett'ei professori
varmaankaan tulisi kotio illalliselle; itse läksi hän ulos ottaen portin-
avaimen mukanaan; kenenkään ei tarvinnut valvoa ja odottaa häntä.

Abraham oli korttia lyömässä Brochin luona; Venni olisi kyllä

kernaasti tahtonut tavata hänet, mutta oli ehkä parasta niin, jott'ei
alkaisi horjua päätöksessään. Hän pukeutui nahkakappaan nosti
päähineen päähänsä ja läksi kadulle.

Venni-rouva meni suoraa tietä Mordtmannin luo; välit kaupungissa

eivät olleet pitkät, ja mennessään ei hän miettinyt muuta kuin, että
nyt oli eroitettu, varsin eroitettu miehestään; hän meni nyt
Mordtmannin luo kertomaan kaikki; siten tulisi vihdoinkin selvyys ja
totuus hänen elämäänsä, kuten ennenkin; onnellisuutta hän ei
suuresti odottanut.

Hän ei milloinkaan ollut käynyt Mordtmannin luona, mutta tiesi

missä hänen kadunpuoliset ikkunansa olivat; huoneet olivat valaistut.
Talo oli kuin useimmat kaupungissa: portti avoinna, eteinen
sulkematta: hän meni suoraan Mordtmannin ovelle, naputti ja astui
sisään.

Mikael Mordtmann seisoi keskellä lattiaa, hattu päässä,

päällystakki yllä ja äsken sytytetty sikari suussa, vääntämäisillään
lampun-sydäntä alas mennäkseen klubiin.
 Huoneessa tuntui heikko lämpimän ruuan haju sekaantuneena
hyvän sikarin ensimäisistä savuista lähtevään hienoon lemuun.

"Hyvää iltaa, Mordtmann!" lausui hän, surullisesti tälle hymyillen;

"nyt tulen luoksenne. Odottakaa vaan vähän, kunnes ehdin malttaa
mieleni".

Mordtmann änkytti eikä voinut saada sanaakaan suustaan, laski

pois sikarin ja riisui päällystakkinsa.

Nämä päivät olivat jähdyttäneet hänen verensä; professorin

onnettomuutta ennustava katsanto oli saattanut hänet miettimään,
että tämä historia oli varsin liian vakainen. Rouva Vennikin varmaan
oli liian vakava, liian raskasmielinen kestämään suhdetta sellaista
kuin hän ajatteli.

Venni tuli sisälle hänen huoneeseensa, istui sohvaan ja sanoi:

"Tässä nyt tulen!" Mitä, Herran nimessä! oli Mordtmannin tehtävä?
Mitä kieltä käyttäisi? Millä helkkarin tavalla tämän selvittäisi?

Kaunis hän oli, Venni-rouva! Oikein ihana istuessaan tuossa

sohvassa kalpeana ja vaatteet hieman epäjärjestyksessä; mutta mitä
se auttoi — tällä kummallisella, juhlallisella tavalla!

Mordtmann kaasi lasin viiniä hänelle.

"Rakas Venni-rouva, mikä nyt on? Onko jokin onnettomuus

tapahtunut?"

"Ei" — vastasi Venni ja hymyili taas hänelle. "Se ehkä on Teistä

vielä jotain onnellistakin, koska se ihan äkkiarvaamatta täyttää
toivomuksenne."
 "Kertokaa! Kertokaa!" huusi toinen innokkaasti äänellä, jonka piti
merkitsemän ihastusta.

Venni ei huomannut mitään, kerrottavaansa ja tätä hetkeä kun

ajatteli, jolloin vapautti itsensä miehestään, solmiakseen uuden
yhteyden toisen kanssa.

Hän alkoi sen tähden tyynesti, kuten olisi tahtonut pyytää toista
rauhoittumaan — siitä tulisi pitkä ja vakava kertomus.

"Niin, rakas Mordtmann, minä olen eronnut miehestäni ja tullut

Teidän luoksenne; mutta ensin on jotakin muuta —"

"Mitä sanotte? Olette eronneet — minä en ymmärrä —;" hän näki

äkkiä koko pikku-kaupungin asukasten seisovan päällään: professori
Löfdalin rouva karannut miehensä luota majoittuakseen yöksi hänen
nuorenmiehen-asuntoonsa!

Venni-rouva vavahti hieman pikaisesti häneen katsahtaessaan ja

sanoi ikään kuin koetteeksi:

"Se on: minun ja mieheni välillä oli kiivas kohtaus; ja siitä syystä
tulin tänne pyytämään Teiltä hyvää neuvoa."

"Ah, rakas rouva, minä tahdon tehdä puolestanne kaikki, mitä

voin; alussa oikein pelätitte minut; mutta olihan sentään hyvin
varomattomasti Teiltä tulla tähän aikaan päivää." Hän istuutui Vennin
viereen sohvaan.

Mutta Venni-rouvan kasvot kävivät ihan jäykiksi ja suun ympärille

ilmestyi ryppyjä, joita ei siinä koskaan ennen ollut näkynyt. Hänellä,
joka itse aina puhui totta, oli tarkka korva kaikelle, mikä oli tyhjää
lorua ja johon ei voinut luottaa; tällä hetkellä käsitti hän täydellisesti
ja perinpohjaisesti Mordtmannin.

Ja syy siihen, ettei hän sitä ennen ollut tehnyt, oli se, että hänen
versoova lempensä oli tehnyt hiidet luottavaksi ja sokeaksi; ja sitä
paitsi oli Mordtmann, erittäinkin heidän viimeksi toisensa
kohdatessaan, ollut niin todellisen kiihkeästi rakastunut.

Mutta nyt kun Venni ensi epäilyksessään asetti tuon pienen paulan
hänen eteensä, ilmaisi tämä heti itsensä. Hänen äänensä osoitti niin
suurta huojennusta, kun kuuli, ettei asia ollut sen tärkeämpää laatua
— ainoastaan kiivas kohtaus miehen kanssa, että Venni-rouvalle heti
selveni, olevansa heittäymäisillään väärälle henkilölle,
menemäisillään pelkuruudesta ja teeskentelystä suoraan mitä
valheellisimpaan valheeseen.

Hän nousi ylös ja katsoi Mordtmannia silmiin. Tämä nousi

myöskin, hapuili sanoja, taisteli voimainsa takaa näitä silmäyksiä
vastaan, jotka vastustamattomasti tunkivat hänen lävitsensä.

Pari sekuntia kesti hän sitä, mutta sitten täytyi hänen katsahtaa
poispäin. Kun hän uudelleen loi silmänsä Venniin, kävivät hänen
kasvonsa kovin kalpeiksi, ja hän piti käsiänsä ylhäällä ikään kuin olisi
pelännyt jonkin putoavan päällensä ja musertavan hänet.

Mutta silloin oli Venni-rouva selvillä hänen suhteensa, kurotti

kätensä juuri kuin tarttuakseen pöydällä olevaan viinilasiin; tässä
silmänräpäyksessä alkoi hän pelätä pyörtyvänsä täällä — täällä
Mordtmannin luona! — mutta vastusti sitä kaikin voimin, pysyi
pystyssä ja läksi.
 Hän oli hiljaisia, ihmisistä tyhjiä katuja myöden tullut niin pitkälle,
ett'ei enää ollut kaasulyhtyjä; sen havaitsi hän vasta kun kompastui
eikä enää voinut nähdä tietä.

Pitkin syrjää oli asetettu suuria kiviä, ja syvällä alaalla kuuli hän
laineiden loiskahtelevan vasten rantakiviä ja taas loristen vetäyvän
takaisin, imein ja nytkien sitkeitä meriruohoja.

Valo kaupungissa lähetti pieniä säteitä häntä kohden lahden ylitse;

mutta hän kääntyi pois niistä, istui kivelle ja katseli pimeätä.

"Pikku Abbe-rukka! Pikku Abbe-rukka!" kertoi Venni puoli-

ääneensä. Abraham oli viimeinen, jolle sanoi jäähyväiset, hän oli
ainoa, johon oli kiinnitetty, sillä suhde Mordtmanniin oli lopussa,
tykkänään lopussa.

Venni-rouva häpesi; hän tunsi alentuneensa ja tahraantuneensa

sen kautta, että oli antanut tämän miehen houkutella itsensä niin
pitkälle. Ei ainoastaan hänen rakkauttansa ollut tämä vetänyt likaan,
vaan kaikki hänen periaatteensa, hänen rakkaimmat ja rohkeimmat
ajatuksensa oli hän tehnyt Vennille vastenmielisiksi; Venni-rouva ei
enää voinut luottaa mihinkään tai kenenkään tämän jälkeen — ei
edes itseensä.

Kun hän nyt läksi miehensä luota, teki hän sen omantunnon
soimauksia tuntematta. Kaikki, mikä heidän yhdessä eläissään oli
pysyttänyt professorin arvossa Vennin silmissä, oli hänen viimeinen
solvauksensa hävittänyt; häneltä oli päässyt esiin raakuus, juuri
sellainen hävytön miehellisyys, jota Venni-rouva vihasi, ja jonka hän
tähän asti keinokkaasti oli ymmärtänyt salata tältä.

Ei, hänen luokseen ei Venni tahtonut palata!

 Pienokais-rukka, jonka veisi mukanaan, ei myöskään tehnyt häntä
levottomaksi; sillä nyt oli hänestä varmaa ja selvää, että tekisi hyvän
työn — viimeisen, johon oli tilaisuudessa — sammuttamalla kynttilän,
ennenkuin se oli sytytetty, estämällä tuon pienokaisen
mahdollisuudesta saada elon arveluttavan lahjan.

Suuressa yksinäisyydessään, elämän partaalla, jonka tunsi

olevansa pakotettu jättämään, tuli tuo ajatus hänelle äidin-riemun
haamotukseksi, ikäänkuin olisi hän kantanut itkevää pienokaistansa
käsivarsillaan ja vienyt sen mukanaan siunattuun uneen.

Mutta Abraham! hänen lapsensa? Oliko hän siis niin tykkänään

turmeltunut ett'ei millään tavalla voisi saada tätä takaisin?

Moneen monituiseen kertaan laski hän tämän tehtävän uudelleen,

ja joka kerta kun se hänen mielestään oli selville tulemallaan,
ilmaantui jokin vaikeus ja kumosi häneltä kaikki.

Ei, ei, hän ei voinut olla pojalleen hyödyksi elämällä kauemmin

sellaista elämää, jommoiseksi se tästä lähtein oli tuleva — ihan
mahdotonta!

Sitä vastoin voi hän ajatella, muistonsa ehkä joskus pojan

myöhempänä elinaikana voivan tulla tälle tueksi tai avuksi hyvityksen
saamisessa, jos Abrahamille joskus — sitä toivoi hän — selvenisi,
että juuri hänen äitinsä oli kokenut pitää häntä raittiina ja todellisena
ja että muut — olivat myrkyttäneet hänen nuoruutensa ja tehneet
hänet pelkuriksi ja epäluotettavaksi.

Venni-rouvan pää ei enää kyennyt enempään; ainoastaan yhden

asian suhteen oli hän täysin selvillä, nimittäin päätöksen suhteen.
Tuosta tuskallisesta tilinteosta olivat hänen ajatuksensa väsyneet ja
alkoivat tylsistyä; hän huomasi sen itse ja meni lähimmän lyhdyn
luoksi katsoakseen kelloaan. Se näytti jo kaksitoista.

Venni-rouva oli koko ajan ollut selvillä siitä, mitenkä panisi

päätöksensä täytäntöön, ja miettinyt jälkeensä jääviä.

Hän verhoutui kaapuunsa ja katsoi vuonon ylitse valaistua

kaupunkia päin. Antaen nuoruutensa, ilonsa, onnensa ja kaikki, mikä
hänen elämässään oli ollut valoisaa, vaeltaa silmäinsä edestä
puoliselkeissä piirteissä valitsi hän sitten taas pimeyden, väsyneenä,
mutta lujana ja horjumatta.

Sen jälkeen läksi hän nopein askelin takaisin kaupunkiin ja suoraan

kotionsa.
XII.

Professori herätti hämmästystä klubissa jäämällä sinne totia juomaan

vielä kello kymmenen jälkeen.

Hän oli, näet, muuten yhtä täsmällinen kuin kellonkoneisto: pelasi

klubissa joka perjantai-ilta, mutta läksi kaikkina muina päivinä kotio
täsmälleen kello yhdeksältä. Ihan tavallisuudesta poikkeavaa oli
nähdä hänen, kuten tänäin, tiistaina syövän illallisensa klubissa ja
pelaavan querriä muutamain nuorempain herrain kanssa.

Hän nauroi itsekin sille ja oli hyvin ilomielinen.

Mutta kotio tultuaan, kello yhdentoista vaiheilla, kävi hän hyvin

hämilleen, kun ei löytänyt vaimoansa vuoteelta.

Hän oli laskenut tämän nukkuvan tai olevan nukkuvinaan, kun tuli
kotio niin myöhään; eikä hän mistään hinnasta tahtonut keskustella
tänä iltana, kun asia oli niin uusi ja hän itse niin kiihottunut.

Hän ajatteli missä Venni mahdollisesti olisi. Monta ystävää ei

Venni-rouvalla ollut, mutta olipa sentäänkin kolme, neljä perhettä,
joiden kanssa he niin ystävällisesti seurustelivat, että hän illalla voi
pistäytyä tervehtimään olematta kutsuttu ja ennen siitä
ilmoittamattaan. Mutta puoli yksitoista oli myöhäinen aika palata
sellaiselta käynniltä.

Hänen mieleensä ei alusta alkaen juolahtanut, että mitään hätää

olisi. Hän katsoi, oliko Venni ottanut toisen portin-avaimen
mukaansa, ja kun se oli poissa, otti hän omansa lukosta, jotta rouva
pääsisi sisälle.

Olkoon missä olikin, kyllä hän kotio saatettaisiin, sen professori

tiesi, eikä niin hyvin tunnetulle naiselle, kuin professori Löfdalin
rouva oli, muutenkaan ollut millään tavoin vaarallista olla ulkona
myöhäänkin illalla.

Hän riisui siis nopeasti vaatteensa ja kävi levolle, jotta voisi olla
nukkuvinaan rouvan kotiin tullessa. Hänestä oli hyvin tärkeätä, että
tuo keskustelu, jonka tiesi välttämättömästi syntyvän, jäisi
seuraavaan päivään.

Illalla oli se professorin mielestä mahdoton: se vaan synnyttäisi

enemmän kiivautta ja toraa. Mutta aamulla olisi kaikki supistunutta
ja vähimmän-arvoista; mitä polttavimpia kysymyksiä voisi vakavasti
keskustella ihan kuin pikku-asioita viileässä aamu-ilmassa.

Professori Löfdalilla oli täydellinen tieto siitä, että oli hypännyt

hulluun kirnuun ja mitä syvimmästi loukannut vaimoansa. Tarkka
mies kun oli, hävetti häntä, että oli ilmaissut mielialan, jonka salassa
pitämisen oli katsonut kunniaksensa.

Vaimoansa häpesi hän melkein vähemmin, koska itse tiesi, ett'ei

ollut lausunut noita sanoja toden perästä, ja koska hän oli niin ihan
varma siitä, että Venni vähänkin miettimällä pian huomaisi niiden
vaan tarkoituksetta päässeen häneltä ensi harmissa, sillä kieltämättä
oli tuo perheen lisääntyminen kirottu juttu.

Nyt oli hän niin monen vuoden kuluessa tottunut ajattelemaan

vaan yhtä ainoata poikaa. Sekä itse köyhiä hoitaissaan että
tilastollisista tutkimuksistaan oli hän nähnyt paljo surullisia
seurauksia lasten paljoudesta. Hän oli itse puhunut ja kirjoittanut
paljon ja ankarasti sitä vastaan.

Eikö nyt naurettavaisuuden varjo lankeisi hänen päällensä, kun

hän viiden-, kuudentoista vuoden kuluttua vanhoilla päivillään alkoi
tehdä vastoin omaa teoriiaansa? Kuinka monta ilkkusanaa, hymyilyä,
viittausta ja läpikuultavaa ilkeyttä hän sentään saisi niellä!

Ja sen lisäksi kaikki mullistukset talossa, kaikki vaivat ja ikävät,

joita nuorena ja kun ovat uutta helposti sietää, mutta jotka
vaikuttavat häiriötä ja kääntävät talon ylös-alasin, kun on päästy
oikein kuntoon!

Tämä kaikki oli äkkiä johtunut hänen mieleensä, yhtynyt tuohon

kiihottuneeseen mielialaan, joka hänessä jonkin ajan oli kytenyt, ja
lopuksi riistänyt jalansijan tuolta maltilliselta, hienolta mieheltä sekä
saanut hänet lausumaan sanat, jotka tavallaan ilmaisivat hänen
salaisuutensa, vaikk'et hän todella ensinkään tarkoittanut mitä sanoi,
kuten Venni-rouva oli sen ymmärtänyt.

Mutta seuraavana päivänä voi kaikki näyttää toiselta. Itse asian

suhteen ei ollut mitään tehtävää, ja Karsten Löfdal oli juuri oikea
mies ottamaan vastaan, mitä ei välttää voinut, kaikella mahdollisella
arvoisuudella. Hän oli myös valmis pyytämään anteeksi ja antamaan
vaimolleen kaikenmoista hyvitystä, mutta tyyneydellä, puoliksi
leikillä, mahtavuudella — seuraavana päivänä.
 Hän sammutti kynttilän; parasta oli sentään nukkua oikein. Mutta
se ei tahtonut onnistua häneltä, hän ei voinut nukkua.

Päin vastoin tuli hän tavattoman virkuseksi, jännitetyksi,

lämpimäksi ja hermostuneeksi, makasi kuunnellen pienintäkin ääntä,
ja hänestä, tuntui kuin olisi kovin paljo ääntä ja haihtuvia askeleita
kuulunut tuona hiljaisena yönä, joka verhosi unen vienossa olevan
kaupungin.

Ja tuska syntyi pimeässä, kasvoi kasvamistaan ja läheni yhä

nopeammin, yhä, raskaampana ja musertavampana joka viiden
minuutin perästä, jolloin hän luuli neljänneksen kuluneen ja veti
tulitikulla valkean.

Missä Venni oleskeli? Pian kaksitoista! Nyt täytyi asiain olla

hullusti!

Heidän viimeisen keskustelunsa, Vennin huudon, kun hän pakeni,

koska pelkäsi jatkaa keskustelua — kaikki muisti hän nyt selvästi. Ja
Venni, joka oli niin kiivas ja mistään huolimaton —.

Ah noita kiihottuneita luonteita! Hän tunsi ne hyvin; mitä eivät ne

voi keksiä? Missä oli hänen vaimonsa tällä hetkellä? Hänen silmistään
huimasi; kuljeskeliko Venni yksin yön pimeydessä tai uiskenteliko
hän jo vuonon jyrkkien kallioiden välissä?

Hän nousi istumaan vuoteellansa ja sytytti kynttilän. Hän puheli

rauhoittavasti itselleen, ikäänkuin kuumetautia sairastavalle, mutta
siitä ei ollut apua.

Vihdoin kuuli hän kaivatun tulevan portista sisään.

 Heti sammutti hän kynttilän, laskeutui makaamaan, puhkui
pitkäänsä ja säännöllisesti, kuten olisi kauan nukkunut. Hän tunsi
mielensä äärettömän keveäksi ja hymyili pelolleen.

Venni-rouva tuli sisään, sytytti kynttilän ja riisui leninkinsä,

samassa tarkasti pitäen miestään silmällä; tämä nukkui rauhallisena
ja huoletonna.

Hiljaa ja varovasti, jotta ei ainoakaan avain kalissut, tarttui hän

miehensä avainkimppuun, otti kynttilän mukanaan ja meni ulos
makuuhuoneesta.

Professori huomasi hänen menevän taas ulos, mutta ei sitä sen

enempää ajatellut. Nyt oli Venni tullut kotio, professorin suru oli
lauhtunut, seuraavana päivänä asia kyllä järjestettäisiin. Ja kun hän
nyt rauhoittuneena ja mielenliikutuksesta väsyneenä makasi ja oli
nukkuvinansa, nukkui hän todella ja lepäsi huolettomana ja
levollisena kaksi, kolme tuntia.

Mutta kun hän aamuyöstä heräsi ja tunsi vaimonsa vuoteen olevan

tyhjän ja kylmän, syöksähti hän taas tuskissaan ylös, sytytti kynttilän
ja katseli ympärillensä. Kaikki oli hiljaista; kello oli yli kolmen; hän ei
nähnyt muuta jälkeä vaimostaan kuin leningin, jonka tämä oli
riisunut yltään.

Karsten Löfdal tunsi sydämensä taukoavan sykkimästä ja hänelle

selveni, että nyt oli kuitenkin jotakin hullutusta tekeillä. Hän hillitsi
itsensä, varustautuen kaikella mielentyyneydellä, joka oli hänen
luonteessaan ja jota elämä ja hänen toimensa olivat vahvistaneet ja
kehittäneet.
 Kun professorin oli onnistunut pukeutua, otti hän kynttilän
mukaansa mennäkseen vaimoaan etsimään.

Huoneiden läpi näki hän valonsäteen tunkeutuvan

työhuoneestaan; ovi oli raollansa. Hänen täytyi seisahtua vähäsen,
mutta sitten astui hän nuo muutamat askeleet ovea päin; hän tiesi
nyt, mitä saisi nähdä.

Kuitenkin täytyi hänen pitää ovesta kiinni ja kynttilänjalka oli

putoamaisillaan hänen kädestään.

Kankeana, professorin isoon nojatuoliin vaipuneena lepäsi Venni-

rouvan ruumis. Kynttilä pöydällä oli melkein loppuun palanut;
vainajan kädestä, jonka hän viimeisessä silmänräpäyksessä oli
ojentanut pöydälle, oli yksi professorin pienistä pulloista, jonka tämä
heti tunsi, pudonnut lattialle.

Löfdal laski kynttilän pois kädestään ja aikoi heittäytyä syleilemään

häntä. Mutta äkkiä pisti hänen päähänsä eräs ajatus, tehden hänet
lujaksi ja kylmäksi: oli mietittävä, mitä nyt oli tehtävä, mitä vielä voi
salata; nyt kysyttiin miehuutta.

Ja taaskin hillitsi hän surunsa tottumuksen vahvistamalla

mielenmaltillaan, piti hetkisen kuvastinta hänen suunsa edessä,
vaikka kyllä voi arvata kuolon heti seuranneen, koska pullo oli tyhjä.
Tämän pani hän takaisin kaappiin ja etsi kynttilällä sen tulppaa
lattialta.

Sitten hän lukitsi lääkekaappinsa ja pisti avaimen taskuunsa.

Kasvot poispäin käännettyinä kumartui hän ruumiin ylitse, nosti

sen ylös ja kantoi huoneiden lävitse vuoteelle.
 Sen jälkeen kynttilät makuuhuoneeseen noudettuansa ja vielä
kerran ympärilleen katseltuansa, meni hän yläkerrokseen ja herätti
palvelystytöt. Yksi juoksi heti kadun poikki noutamaan piirilääkäri
Bentzeniä: rouva oli kipeä, kovin kipeä, elämä ja kuolema oli
kysymyksessä. Mutta kukaan ei saanut herättää Abrahamia.
Yksinään jäätyään, toi professori vielä jotakin lääkekaapistaan.

"Kaikki on myöhäistä, rakas ystävä, tässä ei enää ole mitään

tehtävää — sydänhalvaus — ihan yht'äkkiä", lausui professori,
kohdatessaan Bentzenin eteisessä.

"Ystävä-rukka!" vastasi Bentzen puristaen toisen kättä, "tulinko

liian myöhään auttaakseni sinua?"

"Et suinkaan! Minä itse myöhästyin hieman. Katsoppas, minä

makasin nukkuneena; hän pani maata jälkeen minun, ja niin hiljaa ja
äkkiä tapahtui tuo hänen viisuissaan, että hän jo oli tunnotonna ja
kuoleman kourissa, kun heräsin:"

Professori Löfdal puhui jännityksellä ja juurta jaksain kuni

murhamies, joka tahtoo näyttää ujostelemattomalta.

"Olet antanut hänelle myskiä?" kysyi tohtori Bentzen vähän

hämillään, kumartuen ruumiin ylitse.

"Niin olen, mitä muuta voin tehdä?" vastasi professori ja teki

käsillään toivottomuutta osoittavan liikkeen.

"Epätoivoissani ja yksin kun olin — juuri ennen kuin tulit —

sieppasin mitä saatavissa oli. Mutta hän oli epäilemättä jo kuollut,
kun kaasin sitä hänen suuhunsa. Olen aina pelännyt Vennin sydäntä,
mutta että sen piti tapahtua näin — —"
 Bentzen laski kätensä hänen olallensa, lausuen: "Ole mies, Löfdal!
Me kaksi olemme nähneet niin paljo tällaista, että meidän tulee
osoittaa voimaa, kun se kohtaa itseämme. Näen myöskin sinun
voivan hillitä itsesi, ja tiedäthän sitäpaitsi, Jumalan kiitos ja kunnia,
mistä olet löytävä parhaan ja pysyvimmän lohdutuksen."

Piirilääkäri Bentzen keksi aina muutamia jumalisia käännekohtia

sellaisissa tilaisuuksissa, vaikka hänen suunsa jokapäiväisessä
elämässä voi olla täynnä kiroussanoja ja arveluttavia kertomuksia.

Kun hän oli mennyt matkaansa, portti suljettu, pahin kohta salattu
ja asema pelastettu, vaipui Karsten Löfdal mietteisiin; hän sulkeusi
huoneeseen kuolleen kanssa, heittäytyi hänen vuoteensa ääreen ja
vaikeroitsi.

Niin oli se päättynyt, hänen avioelämänsä. Se oli ollut hänelle pitkä

taistelu, jossa hän aina oli joutunut tappiolle — niin tälläkin kertaa.

Hän oli taistellut voittaakseen vaimonsa muulla tavoin kuin

rakastuneena. Vennin piti oppia pitämään häntä arvossa joka
suhteessa, silläkin tavoin, että tunnustaisi hänen mielipiteensä
elämästä oikeiksi ja taipuisi sen mukaan.

Karsten Löfdalin turhamaisuus oli hänen luonteensa; kaikki oli ollut

avulijasna vahvistamaan sitä; ainoastaan hänen vaimonsa ei
tahtonut taipua.

Ja sitä myöden kuin he yhdessä eläissään oppivat tuntemaan

toisiansa, havaitsi professori toiveiden Vennin taipumisesta ja
ihmettelystä vähenemistään vähenevän, ja sitä innokkaammaksi tuli
hänen voittamishalunsa.
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