The Fate of the Day

In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 <New York Times <bestselling author of <The British Are Coming, <George Washington&rsquo;s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat.

The first twenty-one months of the American Revolution&mdash;which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton&mdash;was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had escaped annihilation by the world&rsquo;s most formidable fighting force.

Two years into the war, George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king&rsquo;s task is now far more complicated: fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans.

Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the Revolution. Stationed in Paris, Benjamin Franklin woos the French; in Pennsylvania, George Washington pleads with Congress to deliver the money, men, and materiel he needs to continue the fight. In New York, General William Howe, the commander of the greatest army the British have ever sent overseas, plans a new campaign against the Americans&mdash;even as he is no longer certain that he can win this searing, bloody war. The months and years that follow bring epic battles at Brandywine, Saratoga, and Charleston, as well as a winter of misery at Valley Forge, and yet more appeals for sacrifice by every American committed to the struggle for freedom.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution, Atkinson&rsquo;s brilliant account of the lethal struggle between the Americans and the British offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a fresh perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on each of its citizens....

Autorentext

Rick Atkinson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight narrative histories about five American wars, including The Long Gray Line, the Liberation Trilogy (An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light), and The British Are Coming, the first volume of the Revolution Trilogy. He has won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes for history and journalism.

Klappentext

Subtitle in pre-publication: War for America, Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780.

Zusammenfassung
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the bestselling author of The British Are Coming, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat.

“This is great history . . . compulsively readable . . . There is no better writer of narrative history than the Pulitzer Prize–winning Atkinson.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

The first twenty-one months of the American Revolution—which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton—was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had barely escaped annihilation by the world’s most formidable fighting force.

Two years into the war, George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king’s task is now far more complicated: fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans.

Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the Revolution. Stationed in Paris, Benjamin Franklin woos the French; in Pennsylvania, George Washington pleads with Congress to deliver the money, men, and materiel he needs to continue the fight. In New York, General William Howe, the commander of the greatest army the British have ever sent overseas, plans a new campaign against the Americans—even as he is no longer certain that he can win this searing, bloody war. The months and years that follow bring epic battles at Brandywine, Saratoga, Monmouth, and Charleston, a winter of misery at Valley Forge, and yet more appeals for sacrifice by every American committed to the struggle for freedom.

Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution, Atkinson’s brilliant account of the lethal conflict between the Americans and the British offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a new perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on its citizens.

Leseprobe
1.

The March of Annihilation

Fort Ticonderoga, New York, July–August 1777

A rattle of drums at four a.m. on July 1, 1777, roused the British encampment at Crown Point, on the western lip of Lake Champlain. Soldiers stumbled from their tents, shrugged on their uniform coats, and gobbled down a cold breakfast with the indifference of men who expected no better. For the past fortnight the invasion force of eight thousand troops had sailed and rowed south for a hundred miles, from the Richelieu River in Quebec to within fifteen miles of the American stronghold at Fort Ticonderoga. Through mischance and rebel defiance, many of these same redcoats had failed to capture the fortress eight months earlier, despite standing at the gates. Now the prize again lay within grasp, and this time they intended to win through. “We are to contend for the king and the constitution of Great Britain, to vindicate law and to relieve the oppressed,” orders issued the previous evening proclaimed. “This army must not retreat.”

By five a.m., the sun had crested the great shoulders of the Green Mountains to the east, gilding the craggy Adirondacks in the west. Platoon after platoon scuffed down to the shoreline to clamber aboard gunboats, longboats, and six-oared, flat-bottomed bateaux. Shouted orders carried across the lake, along with the creak of capstans and oarlocks. Soon the first vessels pulled away from the anchorage, to assemble mid-lake in battle formation. Army musicians caught the moment and struck up martial airs. “The music and drums of the different regiments were continually playing,” a Royal Artillery lieutenant wrote, “and contributed to make the scene and passage extremely pleasant.”

More than a hundred birch-bark canoes led the flotilla. Each carried twenty to thirty warriors, mostly Iroquois sporting nose rings, slitted earlobes, and feathers in tufted topknots, their eyelids and cheeks daubed with vermilion paint. Some wore knife sheaths made from lynx skins and, a British officer recorded, an “arse clout, or covering for the privities.”

Arrayed across the mile-wide lake behind the Indian vanguard came the main battle force, “the most complete and splendid regatta you can possibly conceive,” a witness reported: the three-masted frigate Royal George, built by shipwrights in Canada during the winter and carrying 26 guns, and smaller vessels named Inflexible, Carleton, Maria, and Royal Convert, as well as 44 gunboats, 23 longboats, 26 cutters, 260 bateaux, and a wallowing ninety-one-foot radeau, or raft, the Thunderer, ferrying barreled gunpowder and heavy cannons intended to blast Ticonderoga’s walls to rubble. A brig, a gundalow, and a sloop—Washington, Jersey, and Lee—had been captured in October from the rebel general turned commodore Benedict Arnold, whose gallant, forlorn rearguard fight in these ver…