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The doom which Greyslaer had, with military
sternness, predicted, was formally, by a military
court, pronounced upon Bradshawe that very night;
but when the hour of execution arrived on the morrow,
events were at hand which, postponing it for
the present, gave him, in fact, the advantages of an
indefinite reprieval.

Some Continental officers, of a rank superior to
that of the commandant, who arrived at Fort Dayton
during the night, suggested doubts as to the
policy of thus summarily executing martial law
upon the prisoner. In the morning a message arrived
from the beleaguered garrison of Fort Stanwix,
urging the Whig forces to press forward to the
scene of action, and attempt raising the seige at
once, or their succour would come too late to save
their compatriots. All was then bustle and motion.
The greater part of the troops at once hurried forward
to join Herkimer's forces, which had already
taken up their line of march for Oriskany, while a

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detachment was sent down the river to speed on
those who still loitered on the road, to the border.
When this last was about to depart, the opportunity
was deemed a good one of getting rid of Bradshawe,
by sending him to headquarters at Albany, where
his sentence could either be enforced or remitted,
as a higher military authority should decide; and
he was accordingly marched off, strictly guarded by
the detachment.

Of the use that Walter Bradshawe made of this
reprieve to carry into effect his meditated vengeance
against Alida and her lover, we shall see hereafter.
We must now return to other personages of our
story, who have been, perhaps, too long forgotten.

It has been already incidentally mentioned that
Brant and his followers were playing a conspicuous
part in the bold invasion which now threatened to
give the royalists possession of at least two thirds
of the fair province of New-York, if, indeed, they
should not succeed in overrunning the whole.
Brant, who had brought nearly a thousand Iroquois
warriors to the standard of St. Leger, was indeed
the very soul of the expedition; for, if there be a
doubt of his devising the scheme itself, he certainly
planned some of its most important details; and the
zeal with which he executed his share of the undertaking
proved how thoroughly his heart was engaged
in it. The Johnsons, indeed, had come back
to struggle once more for a noble patrimony which
had been wrested from them, and many of their refugee
friends were animated by the hope of recovering
the valuable estates they had forfeited; but
Brant fought to recover the ancient seats of his
people, whose name as a nation was in danger of
being blotted out from the land.

When, therefore, he learned, through his scouts,
that Herkimer was approaching by forced marches

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to break up the encampment of St. Leger, relieve
Fort Stanwix, and repel the advance of the invaders
through the valley of which it was the portal,
he instantly suggested measures for his discomfiture,
and planned that masterly ambuscade which
resulted in the bloody field of Oriskany.

There is, within a few miles of Fort Stanwix, a
deep hollow or ravine which intersects the forest
road by which Herkimer and his brave but undisciplined
army of partisan forces were approaching
to St. Leger's lines. The ravine sweeps toward
the east in a semicircular form, either horn of the
crescent thus formed bearing a northern and southern
direction, and enclosing a level and elevated
piece of ground upon the western side. The bottom
of the ravine was marshy, and the road crossed
it by means of a causeway. This was the spot selected
by Brant for attacking the column of Herkimer;
and hither St. Leger had sent a large force of
royalists to take post with his Indians on the morning
of the fatal sixth of August.

The white troops, consisting of detachments
from Claus's and Butler's Rangers and Johnson's
Greens, with a battalion of Major Watts's Royal
New-Yorkers, disposed themselves in the form of a
semicircle, with a swarm of Red warriors clustering
like bees upon either extremity; and it would seem
as if nothing could save Herkimer's column from
annihilation, should it once push fairly within the
horns of the crescent thus formed. The fortunes
of war, however, turn upon strange incidents; and
in the present instance, the very circumstance which
hurried hundreds of brave men among the patriots
upon their fate, was a cause of preservation to their
comrades.

The veteran General Herkimer, who was a wary
and experienced bush-fighter, aware of the

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character of this ground, had ordered a halt when within a
few hundred yards of the spot where the battle was
ultimately joined; but, irritated by the mutinous
remonstrances of some of his insubordinate followers,
several of whom flatly charged the stout old
general with cowardice, he gave the order to “march
on” while his ranks were yet in confusion; and
eagerly was the order obeyed by the rash gathering
of border yeomanry.

“March on,” shouted the fiery Cox and ill-fated
Eisenlord. “March on,” thundered the Herculean
Gardinier and Samson-like Dillenback, whose puissant
deeds at Oriskany have immortalized their
names in border story. “March on,” echoed the
patriotic Billington and long-regretted Paris, and
many another brave civilian and gallant gentleman,
whom neither rank, nor station, nor want of skill in
arms had prevented from volunteering upon this fatal
field—the first and last they ever saw! “March
on,” shouted the hot-headed De Roos, catching up
the cry as quickly it ran from rank to rank, and
dashing wildly forward, he scarce knew where.

And already the foremost files have descended
into the hollow, and others, pressing from behind,
are pouring in a living tide to meet the opposing
shock below.

The impatience of Brant's warriors does not allow
them to wait until the Whig forces have all descended
into the ravine; but, raising their well-known
war-cry, the Mohawks pour a volley, which nearly
annihilates half of Herkimer's foremost division,
and wholly cuts off the remainder from the support
of their comrades. Uprising then among the bushes,
they spring with tomahawk and javelin upon
the panic-stricken corps, already broken and borne
down by that first onslaught. The Refugees push
forward with their bayonets to share in the

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massacre of their countrymen. But now fresh foes are
rushing upon them in turn. Headstrong and impetuous
themselves, or urged on by the fiery masses
that press upon them from behind, they descend like
an avalanche from the plain above, and fill that little
vale with carnage and destruction; now swooping
down to be dispersed in death, and now bearing
with them a resistless force that hurls hundreds
who oppose it into eternity.

The leaders of both parties soon began to see that
this indiscriminate melee could result in no positive
advantage to either, while involving the destruction
of both; and, in a momentary pause of the conflict,
the voices of Herkimer's officers and of the opposing
leaders were simultaneously heard calling upon
their men to betake themselves to the bushes and
form anew under their cover. And now the fight is
somewhat changed in its character. Major Greyslaer,
seeing the causeway partially cleared of its
struggling combatants, rallies a compact band of
well-disciplined followers, and charges the thickets
in advance. But the throng through which he
cleaves a passage closes instantly behind him, and,
with the loss of half his men, he is obliged to cut
his way back to his comrades, where the chieftain
Teondetha, with his Oneida rifles, covers the shattered
band till Greyslaer can take new order.

The Whig yeomanry, in the mean time, had for
the most part taken post behind the adjacent trees,
where each man, as from a citadel of his own, made
war upon the enemy by keeping up an incessant
firing. But Brant, whose Indians were chiefly galled
by these sharpshooters, gave his orders, and the
Mohawks, wherever they saw the flash of a rifle,
would rush up, and, with lance or tomahawk, despatch
the marksman before he could gain time to
reload. Balt, whose unerring rifle had already

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made many a foeman bite the dust, had ensconced
himself behind a shattered oak, a little in advance
of a thicket of birch and juniper, from which Christian
Lansingh, with others of Greyslaer's followers,
kept up a steady fire, and thus covered Balt's position.
The worthy hunter absolutely foamed with
rage when he saw several of his acquaintance, who
were less protected than himself, thus falling singly
beneath the murderous tomahawks of Brant's people;
but his anger received a new turn when he
beheld Greyslaer breaking his cover and rushing
with clubbed rifle after one of the retreating Mohawks,
who had despatched an unfortunate militiaman
within a few paces of him.

“Goody Lordy!” he exclaimed, “the boy's mad!
He'll spoil the breaching or bend the bar'l of the best
rifle in the county. Tormented lightning! though,
how he's buried the brass into him.”

Greyslaer, as Balt spoke, drove the angular metal
with which the stock of the weapon was shod
deep into the brain of the flying savage, while Balt
himself, in the same moment, brought down a javelin
man who was flying to the assistance of the
other.

“Aha! ain't that the caper on't, you pisen copperhead!
Down, major, down,” shouted the woodsman,
as his quick ear caught the click of a dozen
triggers in the opposite thicket; and Max, obedient
to the word, threw himself upon his face, while the
fire of a whole platoon of Tory rangers, that was
instantly answered by a volley from his own men,
passed harmlessly over him.

The dropping shots now became less frequent,
for the borderers on either side were so well protected
by the woodland cover, that, thought the
clothes of many were riddled with bullets, yet the
grazing of an elbow or some slight flesh-wound in

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the leg was all the execution done by those who
were as practised in avoiding exposure to the aim
of an enemy, as in availing themselves with unerring
quickness of each chance of planting a bullet.

General Herkimer, who had already seen Greyslaer's
spirited effort to cut his way through the enemy
with a handful of men, deemed this the fitting
time to execute the movement upon a larger scale.
The fatal causeway was again thronged by the patriots
in the instant they heard the voice of their
leader exhorting his troops to force the passage in
which their bravest had already fallen. But, even
before they could form, and in the moment that
those closing ranks exposed themselves, a murderous
fire was poured in upon them on every side;
every tree and bush seemed to branch out with
flame.

Thrice, with desperate valour, did Herkimer cross
the causeway and charge the thronged hillside in
front; and thrice the files who rushed into the
places of the fallen were mowed down by the deadly
rifles from the thickets, or beaten back by the
cloud of spears and tomahawks that instantly thickened
in the path before them. In the third charge
the veteran fell, a musket-ball, which killed his
horse, having shattered his knee while passing
through the body of the charger.

But the fall of their general, instead of disheartening,
seems only to nerve his brave followers with
new determination of spirit, as, placed on his saddle
beneath a tree, the stout old soldier still essays
to order the battle. His manly tones, heard even
above the din of the conflict, give system and efficacy
to the brave endeavour of his broken ranks.
The tree against which he leans becomes a central
point round which they rally, fighting now, not for
conquest—hardly for self-preservation—but only in

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stubborn resistance of their fate. And now, as the
enemy, impatient of this long opposition, concentre
round them, they form in circles, and receive in
silence the furious charge of their hostile countrymen.
Bayonet crosses bayonet, or the clubbed rifle
batters the opposing gunstock as they fight hand to
hand and foot to foot. Again and again do the
royalists recoil from the wall of iron hearts against
which they have hurled themselves. But, though
the living rampart yields not, it begins to crumble
with these successive shocks; the ranks of the patriots
grow thinner around their wounded general,
where brave men strew the ground like leaves when
the autumn is serest.

The Indian allies upon either side have, in the
mean time, suspended their firing. In vain does
the voice of Brant encourage his Mohawks to strike
a blow which shall at once decide this fearful crisis.
In vain does the gallant shout of Teondetha cheer
on the Oneidas to rescue his friends from the destruction
that hedges them in. Not an Indian will
move in that green-wood. The warriors of the forest
upon both sides have paused to watch this terrible
death-struggle between white men of the same
country and language. They have already ceased
to fire upon each other; and now, gazing together
upon the well-matched contest of those who involved
them in this family quarrel, they will not raise
an arm to strike for either party.

A storm, a terrific midsummer tempest, such as
often marks the sudden vicissitudes of our climate,
was the Heaven-directed interposition which stayed
the slaughter of that battle-field. The breath of
the thunder-gust swept the rain in sheets of foam
through the forest, and the hail burst down in torrents
upon those warring bands, whose arms now

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flashed only as they glinted back the lightning's
glare.

There is a pause, then, in the bloody fight of Oriskany;
but the battle, which seemed but now nearly
ended in the overthrow of the patriots, is soon to be
resumed under different auspices. The royalists
have withdrawn for the moment to a spot where a
heavier forest-growth affords them some protection
from the elements. The republicans have conveyed
their wounded general to an adjacent knoll, from
which, exposed as it is to the fire of the enemy, he
insists upon ordering the battle when it shall be resumed;
and here, in the heat of the onslaught
which succeeded, the sturdy old border chief was
observed, with great deliberation, to take his flint
and tinder-box from his pocket, light his pipe, and
smoke with perfect composure. The veteran bush-fighter,
who missed many an officer around him,
grieved not the less for more than one favourite
rifle-shot who had perished among his private soldiers;
and, in order to counteract the mode of warfare
adopted by Brant, when, in the early part of
the battle, the Indian spears and tomahawks made
such dreadful havoc among the scattered riflemen,
Herkimer commanded his sharpshooters to station
themselves in pairs behind a single tree, and one
always to reserve his fire till the Indians should
rush up to despatch his comrade when loading.

In the mean time, while the different dispositions
for attack and defence were thus making by their
leaders, the rude soldiers on either side, hundreds
of whom were mutually acquainted, exchanged
many a bitter jeer with each other, while ever and
anon, as some taunting cry would rise among the
young warriors of Brant's party, it was echoed by
the opposing Oneidas with a fierce whoop of

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defiance, that would pierce wildly amid the peltings of
the storm.

An hour elapsed before an abatement of the tempest
allowed the work of death to commence anew.
A movement on the part of the royalists by Major
Watts's battalion, first drew the fire of the patriots;
and then the Mohawks, cheered on by the terrible
war-whoop of Brant, and uttering yell on yell to intimidate
their foes, commenced the onslaught, tomahawk
in hand. But the cool execution done by the
marksmen whom Herkimer had so wisely planted
to sustain each other, made them quickly recoil;
and the Oneidas, eagerly pressing forward from the
republican side, drove them back upon a large body
of Butler's Rangers. Many of this corps had been
so severely handled by Greyslaer's men in the first
part of the battle, that they had fallen back to take
care of their wounded. But Bradshawe's company,
which had suffered least, was now in advance.
These fierce men brooked no control from the young
subaltern who was now nominally their commander.
Headed by the terrible Valtmeyer, whose
clothes were smeared with the gore from a dozen
scalps which dangled at his waist, they broke their
ranks, rushed singly upon the Oneidas, who had intruded
into their lair, and, driving them back among
their friends, became the next moment themselves
mixed up in wild melée with partisans of the other
side. This onslaught served as a signal for a rival
corps in another part of the field; and Claus's Rangers
broke their cover to battle with their foemen
hand to hand.

This corps of refugee royalists consisted of men
enlisted chiefly from the very neighbourhood where
they were now fighting. They had come back to
their former homes, bearing with them the hot
thirst of vengeance against their former friends and

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neighbours; and when they heard the triumphant
shout of the Whigs at a momentary recoil of their
friends, and perhaps recognised the voices of some
who had aided in driving them from their country,
their impatience could not be restrained; they rushed
forward with a fiendish yell of hatred and ferocity,
while the patriots, instead of awaiting the charge,
in obedience to the commands of their officer, sprang
like chafed tigers from their covert, and met them
in the midst. Bayonets and clubbed muskets made
the first shock fatal to many; but these were quickly
thrown aside as the parties came in grappling
contact, drawing their knives and throttling each
other, stabbing, and literally dying in each other's
embrace.[7]

And thus, for five long hours, raged this ruthless
conflict. All military order had been lost in the
moment when the wild bush-fighters first broke
their cover and rushed forward to decide the battle
hand to hand. Men fought with the fury of demons;
or if, by chance, a squad or party of five or six
found themselves acting together, these would
quickly form rush forward, and, charging into the
thickest of the fight, soon be lost amid the crowd of
combatants. At one moment the tomahawk of
some fierce Red warrior would crash among the
bayonets and spears of whites and Indians as he
hewed his way to rescue some comrade that was
beset by clustering foes; at another, the shattering
of shafts and clashing of steel would be heard where
a sturdy pioneer, with his back to a tree, stood,
axe in hand, cleaving down a soldier at every blow,
or matching the cherished tool of his craft with the
ponderous mace of some brawny savage. Now
the groans of the dying, mixed with imprecations
deep and foul, rose harshly above the din of the

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battle, and now te dismal howl or exulting yell of
the red Indian was mocked by a thousand demoniac
voices, screeching wild through the forest, as if the
very fiends of hell were let loose in that black
ravine.

The turmoil of the elements has long since subsided.
The sky is clear and serene above. Happily,
the forest glooms interpose a veil between its
meek, holy eye, and this dance of devilish passions
upon the earth.

eaf153v2.n7

[7] Stone, Campbell, Morris.

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