His Majesty, George lll, The Patriotic King. America started it's war with "Britains ministers of Parliament" to 'restore' the Patriotic King George lll. George wouldn't hear of it. The objective became independence

Informed of the British capitulation at Yorktown, George III caustically prophesized that George Washington would emerge as dictator within six months. Even the most avid patriots committed to debunking the memory of America's last monarch conveniently omit this comment from their histories. Yet it is an important clue in the mysterious story often couched in melodramatic yarn in romance, seduction and betrayal.

The Benedict Arnold legend is one clouded by the mystique of American romanticism as a tale of seduction, lies and betrayal. What if I told you, there was another story, hidden by an American penchant to see the founders of the republic as demigods, yet with a flavor of sex and seduction just as potent? And what if I told you that George III knew the answer intuitively?

F. Van Wych Brooks a chronicler of that era in historical fiction forewarned his readers stepped in the myths that the American people of that era were human beings.

Two names from the annals of the U.S. Army remain shrouded in murky U.S. Army politics which George III predicted Revolution would augur: George Armstrong Patton and Benedict Arnold. Both rest in permanent exile, one to lie for eternity with his armored division in France and the other among strangers in Britain. Yet General Arnold with his charactic flair, ordered his tombstone struck with the enigmatic legend, "The Real American." Deeply religious Patton awaits rebirth in the next cycle.

Military Government

"In a merry mood, you turn the tables on yourself."
- Thomas Paine

General Benedict Arnold
Victory at Saratoga
In the autumn of 1777, General Arnold relieved Fort Schuyler defended by according to legend women who cut their hair short to stand on the battlements. Arnold sent a half witted Dutch Tory to warn the British and Indian force of Arnold's approach with as many men as leaves on the trees. At Saratoga Arnold attacked the British contrary to orders forcing a surrender. Prior to the attack Arnold assigned Morgan's rifles the task of assasinating General Fraser, the only capable officer in Burgoyne's command.

In the spring of 1778, the British quietly crept away from Philadelphia with the American Army nipping at their heels. Taken after several costly battles, Philadelphia was too far inland to be protected by the Royal Navy. The hero of the moment was not General Washington, but Benedict Arnold. Lauded in triumph, regaled in tales and admired by the soldiers, Arnold was honored with election as New York's first governor under its newly enacted constitution of 1777 and with nomination for the post of Governor of the recaptured capital. And nothing less was appropriate for the wounded hero of Saratoga and Ft. Schuyler (Stanwix), two of the three prongs of the British invasion of New York.

In the spring of 1945, George Armstrong Patton's armored legions were recalled from their advanced positions deep in Czechoslovakia to Bavaria where Patton would sit as military governor. Like Arnold, Patton was a bold warrior who took the opportunities present by the tactical situation, regardless of orders. "The President has his time table and so do I," Patton boasted. Armored units, Patton led, had sewn the red-blue-yellow unit patches over their hearts, rather than their sleeves as a sign of personal loyalty. Unusually candid for a General, whose retirement papers had not been approved, Patton lacked much of a following in the political circles of the liberal New Deal.

Arnold would suffer similar difficulties in his new position as Military Governor. In office, Arnold proved to be little of a diplomat. Intemperate with the congressional politicians, Arnold attempted to out do the regal splendor of the brief British military Occupation. Where Arnold failed in Independence Hall, he succeeded with Peggy Shippen, known to have been wooed during the occupation by the dashing Major John Andre.

Patton as military governor of Bavania likewise failed to maintain good rapport with liberal new dealers. Most of his proposals: recreating the German Army and restoring the German government prophesized what was to come. However, at the moment, the tide of Russian-American friendship which deeply religious Patton instinctively distrusted was too strong. Winston Churchill?s IRON CURTAIN speech would occur in the future.

Both military governors were fated to be removed for political reasons. Patton was sent to head a "paper division" which was compiling the history of World War II. There Patton supervised or was watched by liberal intellectuals compiling a history of World War II. Arnold smarting from a stinging reprimand, asked for and received appointment as garrison commander at West Point.

The Plot

"Can bedlam in concert with Lucifer form a more mad and devilish request."
- - Thomas Paine

It is here in the Arnold legacy that the story line assumes a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Legend makes an American Eve out of Arnold's young wife, Peggy Shippen, a seductress who encourages her husband first to sell secrets to the British then to sell West Point itself. The legend makes Peggy and her family into rabid Tories anxious to bring back the King. Yet her uncle was the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army and her father remained neutral in politics. As a merchant America's largest city Philadelphia, Peggy's father intended to survive a change of governments; a connection to an important military hero, even one known to be a loud mouth, could insure that.

The Continental Line
Arnold vs Washington
Sweet Jenny McCrae! The picture American have of the War as a hit and run free for all is very incorrect. Washington persisted in attempting to mold the main branch of the Continental Army into one capable of facing British regulars and beating them in European style conflict. Washington engaged Stuben as the principal drillmaster. Stuben's complaint: Americans needed not only to be shown "how" but told "why" as well. Arnold's genius was adapting tactics to the terrain and to the tactical situation and to the capabilities of his Army. A major part of the First Battle of Freeman's Farm was fought in the tree tops. Throughout the war Washington's objective was to confront the British in a major battle and defeat them. The opportunity came when Corwallis started the invasion of Virginia.

To all but the most rabid Tory, of which the Shippens were not, the royalist cause was irretrievably lost by 1780. It is reflected in Cornwall's dispatches from his victories in the South, in the report of the Carlisle commission which offered to adjust every grievance, except absolute independence, in America's favor, in Thomas Paine's Crisis Papers: they come we go, they leave; we return. The British could only hold onto what the royal navy could resupply. Anything too far from the coast quickly fell after the main body of the British Army pulled out.

"Why would a Continental Army Major General want to defect?" Major Andre the British spy-master asked the CIC General Henry Clinton.

The Setauket Gang

"There is something in the passion of a whig that is absent from the cold calculation of a tory."
- Thomas Paine

The answer is born of sex, connivance and seduction, but doesn?t involve Peggy Arnold.

There is a bend in the road in the old village of Setauket on Long Island where taverns once flourished and bar wenches plied their trade amongst the post riders carrying messages between the British Army headquarters in Newtown (now Astoria) and Royal Navy headquarters in Riverhead. In Tory dominated Long Island, redcoats were heroes. What was the worry? At the midway point, Washington's intelligence network was the busiest. Washington?s chief of intelligence, Major Andre's counterpart, Colonel `Tench'Talmadge, from a ring of bar maids loyal to the cause, could know more about Imperial forces than they knew themselves. Andre on the British side was aware of leaks and disinformation in communications. He would pay with his life for failing to find the source.

At the moment, 1780 the Continental Army was at the zenith of its glory. Fresh from victories at Monmouth, the rabble in arms contained the British Army in New York City along a front stretching from Rhode Island to New Jersey. Comment was made in Parliament on the increasing sophistication of American strategies and tactics. Yet the French commander compte de Rochambeau would write his government of a concern that the American Army would dissolve.

The French Army commander may have agreed with George III's hint that a power struggle had been developing between Arnold and Washington. Who else among Washington's Generals other than Benedict Arnold could challenge Washington for leadership of the new American Republic? General George Clinton's feats in repelling the third prong of the invasion of New York in 1777 might assume epic proportions as a battle rarely fought in the American Army of any era virtually to the last man and last drop of blood. Yet the heroic defense of Fort Montgomery went unnoticed. Horatio `Granny' Gates was as despised by the man as Arnold was admired. Lafayette and Stuben were foreigners. Sullivan and Greene represented religious minorities. Wayne, Lincoln, Knox and Putnam had no political ambitions or inclinations. Morgan, the voice of secretive Teamster brotherhood, though popular with the men, wanted to retire due to physical ailments.

If the American intelligence generated the idea, Arnold swallowed the bait. Arnold took the money and started to divulge plans.

Former Soviet KGB agents who turned to the pen call the Patton auto accident a classic American political assassination: there was only one target; bystanders not involved were unharmed. Yet who did General Patton have to fear?

One can eliminate all the European interests. The English? The Patton family long adhered to the Anglophilic tradition. The French? Patton had let French army units re-take Paris, contrary to orders. The Germans? Patton anticipated German restoration. The Russians? The Russian communists found his candor a refreshing break from liberal idealism they encountered or were formed to endure with polite forbearance. Any threat Patton posed to them was removed by his recall to the states. Like General Arnold, Patton had to fear his friends more than his enemies.

Patton would have no treasonous communion with a foreign power. A truly unique American, Patton did not live for money. He had enjoyed the Second World War so much he returned his pay checks to the treasury.

Arnold began to sell plans to the British. What plans were given Arnold to sell? Washington had phony plans to attach the British well entrenched in New York City. As Arnold met with Andre, Washington was already moving the French Army to Newburgh to watch West Point for the moment and to prepare to move south against marauding Cornwallis as they would do a year later.

Military Justice

"We conquer by a drawn game."
- Thomas Paine

Arnold in full uniform of a Continental Army Major General fled abroad a British warship as Washington approached, while Andre rambling in mufti through the New York Highlands on foot was captured by cowboys, partisans of the American cause.

Now ranking general of the Continental Army, Nathaniel `The Fighting Quaker' Greene was sounded out in private aside by British counterparts on the dilemma. "The Army," Greene forewarned, "will want blood." Whose blood did they want?

Much of the rest of the Arnold story is over shadowed by the heroism of John Andre at his court-martial and execution. Chaffing under instructions to convict Andre and sentence him to death, the court-martial panel unanimously returned a verdict recommending mercy. Washington was unmoved. Andre strode to the gallows and pulled the noose tight against his own neck.

John Andre
The Court Martial of Major Andre
Against the advice of almost the entire officer corps, George Washington set the case of Major John Andre to a court martial panel which met in the loft of the church at West Point under instructions to render a guilty verdict and condemn to death. Washington denied Andre the right to counsel in violation of the American Articles of War. Andre defended his actions. The Law of War prohibits espionage out of uniform. Andre had entered American lines in uniform and had changed to civilian attire at the bidding of General Arnold, the American commander. A spy in uniform even one operating clandestinely must be treated as a prisoner of war. Washington did not truly offer an explanation for his actions. The message may have been that the cost of peace was full independence.

The American Eve and her consort slip from view. Peggy Arnold, the temptress of legend, was packed off to join her estwhile hero in New York City. She was never questioned about her role in Arnold's treason, a remarkable lapse in Washington's effective security service.

Lest you think of this as an example of 18th century gallantry, this was a war fought without gentility in which women `manned' the cannons at Monmouth and defended the ramparts at Fort Schuyler. Washington himself had presented a Captain's cloak to a woman of genteel birth who has used more than charm to obtain secrets from the British in occupied Philadelphia. A principal complaint of the British was that they had to fight everybody.

Peggy Arnold may have truly missed her moment. If, as George III believed, the revolution had to devour Arnold, then the "IF" of history is not what "if Benedict Arnold had not been enticed," but how would American history have been written if Peggy Arnold had disowned her husband, protected her innocence, and demanded to remain on the American side. The American Revolution was so divisive an event, that such a request would not have been without precedent.

If Patton should have feared his friends, who among them should he have feared? I depart from right-wing conspiracy theorists who reading Patton?s religious poetry in secret, lay the blame on the Truman administration. The liberal new dealers did not see Patton as a political threat. In the demobilization, Patton would shortly join the ranks of the displaced veterans boozing it up in Veterans halls and scribbling their memoirs. The political world requires more finesse than Patton was capable of. More polished Dwight Eisenhower was likely to take center stage in the political arena.

Arnold in Virginia

"I have done many things I did not think myself capable of."
--Thomas Paine

The American Army made boastful threats against Arnold?s life, but made no serious attempts to carry out the vow to "cut off his leg for a Christian burial and hang the rest of him from the nearest tree." Sent to Virginia to assist Cornwallis, Arnold was returned to New York when Cornwallis found Arnold to have succeded to command by death of General Phelps. Escaping the trap laid for Cornwallis, Arnold sailed away to lead one of the raids across Long Island sound.

Battle of Yorktown
Did the world turn upside down?
American historians and forklorists say that the British Army Band played a Scottish tune, the World Turned Upside Down: famous for all its famulous IFs

If pigs could fly,
if horses rode men,
if the world turned upside down

Though the instrument of surrender prohibited the playing American tunes, I doubt seriously that even the British would have dared play the American propaganda song Wheelin' Jenny, popular in the American ranks. More likely, good sense was employed and The Ministral Boy played.

In the terms of surrender, Cornwallis foresaw an eventual reconcilliation between tory and patriot. Specifically disallowing Cornwallis' proposal of an article exempting from prosecution Americans who had joined the British Army, Washington allowed Arnold and other tories to disappear into ignominy, without comment.

George III reading the terms of surrender predicted a dictatorship of Washington within six months.

The Legacy

"Englishmen travel for knowledge and will return wiser than they came."

- - Thomas Paine

George III's offer to abdicate was withdrawn on popular demand. He reigned as one of Britain's most loved monarchs through long periods of war with Republican and Napoleonic France. To the Americans George III expressed regret for having lost their support by failing to become in the name of constitutionality an unconstitutional monarch.

His counterpart George Washington was offered an opportunity to rule as dictator as George III predicted. Washington refused and resigned from the Army ceremonially returning his sword to Congress. George III expressed surprise.

John Andre has long been regarded the model officer in captivity in both British and American armies. His deportment shaped the American Code of Conduct. Virtually all the procedures invoked in the court martial which led to his execution were declared "fundamentally unfair" in 1945.

His counter part Colonel Tench Tallmadge left no written record of his clandestine services to the American cause. However, Tallmadge's agents in the Setauket gang were swept up in a belated tightening of British counter intelligence. Sent to the prison ships, the women succumbed to disease. Their names were not memorialized on the Soldiers and Sailor's monument in Brooklyn and their contribution to the American cause left unrecognized. It still raises ire in Long Island to say that a lonely group of bar wenches were the rebels sole support in Long Island during the American war. Whenever the story of American espionage is told on Long Island, "men" and "merchants" stand in their place.

General Henry Clinton retired to collect his journals on the American war. They were classified as a British state secret until 1965.

His counter part General George Clinton became governor of New York, a founding member of the Democratic (-Republican) party and later Vice President. Arnold, despite his election, is not recognized on the roll of New York governors. Though the epic battle of Fort Montgomery is a tale unstrummed, Clinton is remembered for signing the New York Bill of Rights in a dramatic ceremony in a dissenting church and for advocating a Federal Bill of Rights.

Lord Cornwallis served in India and later in Ireland as viceroy.

His counter part, General Greene died not long after the war. His other counter part General Lafayette returned to France to support the creation of a constitutional monarchy only to suffer disappointment first by King Louis, then by the Revolutionaries and finally by the American government he helped create. He returned to America in 1824 to the cheering crowds which eluded him in his homeland.

General Cornwallis negotiated the terms of the surrender agreement at Yorktown but did not participate in the surrender. The task disagreeable fell to General Charles O'Hara who received many crown honors for that service.

O'Hara's counter part General John Sullivan conducted the last major military operation of the war in the north: the total destruction of the Iroquois nation, which had remained faithful to the crown. For political reasons, never spoken of, only Sullivan's Irishers could be trusted to carry the vengeful mission with complete ruthlessness. Sullivan left an account stating that orders were obeyed with grim faces. After the attack on the Iroquois, Sullivan resigned from the Army and faded into obscurity. Only one America would emerge from the war. The Iroquois country was annexed to New York State by Governor George Clinton.

First comes the revolution then the civil war. In America the civil strife that followed the revolution is sugar coated under the euphanism "The Critical Period." While there were some desperate moments when in Washington's words `a touch of a feather' might have led to dictatorship, eventually the civil disorders settled down and a second constitution was enacted in 1787 creating a government remarkable for its similarities to that which Americans had rebelled against. Even the most radical of the democrats Thomas Paine heralded the accomplishment as "the best mankind could have devised."

Washington ruled as President, not dictator, with a detachment from politics and deference to the legislature, worthy of a British monarch. The task of shaping the office into a powerful political position fell to his successors. Upon his death, John Adams, his successor, announced, "Now we are truly on our own."

The American Army never carried out its threat against General Arnold. They did erect a statute to his boot on the battlefield at Saratoga with the legend `from your brothers.' A dishonorable discharge is still called `getting the boot.' It did however promote General Washington three times after his death.

General Arnold left America never to return. After joining the displaced Torries in St. John's, Arnold eventually settled in London, England. His tombstone reads the warning "The Real American."

The Boot Statue
The Army's Most Brillant General
The American Army was blessed with two brilliant generals: Arnold and Morgan. Neither rated high with the politicans, but both were held in high esteem by the men. Who is at fault for Arnold's treason? Arnold gave a more perceptive answer than any historian ever credited him with.

Not content with an impressive family lineage, General Patton fancied himself an ancient warrior reborn. In fairness to Patton's unorthodox twist on Christianity, if in the transmigration of souls, Arnold became reborn as Patton, then the later life showed considerable advancement over the earlier. Gone was the narrow self-serving clutchiness characteristically American. One wonders if, in the next cycle, the good general will work on the other noxious American trait: the big mouth on his way to destiny.

But then who killed General Patton? If you haven't figured that answer, George III would smile at you.