The King’s Salt - Softcover

More, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1490786988 ISBN 13: 9781490786988

Verlag: Trafford, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Its 1778, and the American Revolutionary War is three years old. In this fourth book of the award-winning Smithyman Saga, Sir Thomas Smithyman and his friends still consider themselves honor-bound to remain loyal. They continue their bitter civil war against former friends, neighbours and family for four more years, trying to regain their homes and land in what has become New York State. But Thomas and friends, his wife Nancy and their children, along with his stepmother, the fierce Mohawk Princess Laura Silverbirch and her war chief brother, Matthew, lose everything to the triumphant Patriots. Now refugees, they must fight betrayal by a thankless government, despair, hunger and isolation to reconstruct their lives and create a new place for themselves and their children in the northern wilderness.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David More is the award-winning author of the historical fiction series Smithyman Saga. He has been honoured with the 2007 Independent Publisher Silver Medal for Regional Historical Fiction IPPY Award, the 2007 IPPY Bronze Award for Historical Fiction, and the 2009 IPPY Bronze Award for Historical Fiction. His PhD in Colonial Canadian History allows him to tie his love of history and writing together so he can share his passions with others and make Canadian history accessible. When he's not writing or researching, David enjoys sailing and spending time with his wife, Donna, in their Portsmouth Village home.

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The King's Salt

By David More

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2018 David More
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-8698-8

Contents

Foreword, ix, 
Dedication, xi, 
Acknowledgements, xiii, 
Chapter 1 A Preview of Disaster; The Last Battle, August 178, 21, 
Chapter 2 Liverpool, Nova Scotia, 1777, 21, 
Chapter 3 Mohawk Encampment, Fort Niagara, Spring 1778, 32, 
Chapter 4 Butler's Rangers Encampment, Fort Niagara, Spring 1778, 42, 
Chapter 5 Death and Lies Along the Mohawk, Spring 1778, 47, 
Chapter 6 The War Comes to Wyoming Valley, 1778, 53, 
Chapter 7 Sullivan's Campaign of Terror, Iroquoia, 1779, 67, 
Chapter 8 Rendezvous on Carleton Island November 1779, 80, 
Chapter 9 To Salty Sint Eustatius, November/December 1779, 89, 
Chapter 10 Diadem A-Hunting, December 1779, 98, 
Chapter 11 Burning the Valleys May-November 1780, 109, 
Chapter 12 The Burgeoning of Carleton Island December 1781, 135, 
Chapter 13 The Grand Tour Comes to Detroit, Autumn 1782, 148, 
Chapter 14 A Dreadful Peace, 1783, 163, 
Chapter 15 The Beaver Club, Montreal, Winter 1783, 177, 
Chapter 16 Starting Over, 1784, 180, 
Chapter 17 Adieu to Lake Ontario, November 1784, 192, 
Chapter 18 Planting Hate at Smithyman Hall Mohawk River Valley, August 1785, 198, 
Chapter 19 Rotten Fruit from the King July 1786, 207, 
Chapter 20 The Starving Time, 1788, 215, 
Chapter 21 The Ruskin Patent, March 1788, 224, 
Chapter 22 Snarlington A-building, 1789, 231, 
Chapter 23 Cruel Fortune, 1790-91, 243, 
Chapter 24 'We Claim by Conquest' – Wabash River, Ohio Territory November 1791, 253, 
Chapter 25 Brotherly Warnings, Grand River December 1792, 263, 
Chapter 26 Port and Cigars, Chateau St-Louis, Quebec City, 1793, 277, 
Chapter 27 Rumors, Lies, New Rules – Kingston, Upper Canada 1794-5, 285, 
Chapter 28 The White Sickness Kingston, 1795, 291, 
Chapter 29 Where is Home? Decision Made, 1796, 300, 
Chapter 30 The Western Tour – Promises and Serpents 1797, 307, 
Chapter 31 Revenge Moves North New Corinth, New York, 1797-8, 316, 
Chapter 32 The Captive and the Truth Snarlington, 1798, 328, 

CHAPTER 1

A Preview of Disaster; The Last Battle, August 1782

"The men who fought in the Battle of Blue Licks were as well qualified from experience to face the Indians as any body of men that were ever collected."

Captain Robert Patterson, Fayette County Militia

"... burn't 3 Houses which was part of the Fort but the Wind being contrary prevented it having the desired effect, kill'd upwards of 300 Hogs, 150 head of Cattle, and a number of Sheep, took a number of Horses, pull'd up and destroyed their Potatoes, cut down a great deal of their Corn, burn't their Hemp and did other considerable damage ..."

Report by Captain William Caldwell, Butler's Rangers, Commander of British and Allied forces at the Battle of Blue Licks

Brigadier-General Sir Thomas Smithyman knew that the relentless, candle-melting Montreal summer was the very least of his worries – his soldiers were not going to freeze to death from lack of firewood, for instance – and there was almost nothing he could do about it, in any case. But the accumulating weight of it, day after endless day, was making him incapable of rational thought – as shatterbrain'd as any village idiot! Salty sweat irritated him, running down his face to sting his eyes and into the corners of his mouth. If he didn't mop it off regularly, the drops threatened to splotch and ruin his correspondence to the Governor. The invasive heat had besieged the town in a dome so hot that he now half-expected to see people dying from the yellow fever in the streets, as if it were Cartagena or Jamaica. It had bullied its way to occupy the front of his mind and now sometimes seemed to be the only thing that mattered. Even the damp, bone-penetrating cold of London during the previous winter had not affected him as badly as this.

Alone in his office, he hated to admit that he was feeling sorry for himself. It felt too much like admitting failure. 1782 was the seventh year of the American war. It had not gone well, especially for those who had remained loyal American subjects of His Britannic Majesty, George III.

"Holy old bald-headed monkeys!" he blasphemed out loud. Sighing in exasperation, for the third time this morning he tossed aside a badly cut quill for his orderly to remove.

Apparently the Army cannot even find me a clerk competent enough to cut a decent pen! Johannes knew how to do this properly. Why in God's Holy Name did I ever let him go off to bloody, damned Fort Niagara?

He did not pick up a fourth pen, but sat, lost in thought and sweating.

In spite of his best efforts, Sir Thomas could not keep his mind from wandering into daydreams about his childhood, growing up half-wild in the freewheeling atmosphere of his father's vast estate on the northwest frontier of British New York. Forced reluctantly into exile to avoid arrest and imprisonment as a Tory, at the age of thirty-four he was now feeling careworn, and often found his thoughts straying back to better days. Some of his fondest memories, apart from a couple of long-lost loves, included racing his imported horses at father's always-riotous "games days" or in the annual Albany fairs. The tormenting thought often intruded that some ignorant Continental Army officer, perhaps even Appelbaum himself, was now abusing his beloved chestnut, Scimitar. Those had been wonderful days – a vanished Eden – even if it was just the thrill of poring over newly arrived copies of the Racing Calendar. It never mattered that they were outdated by as much as a year before reaching Smithyman Hall. This Monday morning, August 19, Sir Thomas continued to make feeble and largely unsuccessful attempts to push such sweet memories aside. He wondered for the thousandth time if his present existence was a comeuppance for his previous happiness.

The repetitive mental cruelty of British Army paperwork certainly constituted a form of Sisyphean punishment. But Sir Thomas's suffering was compounded, on this and most recent mornings, by a variety of additional burdens, including the heat. Montreal often saw late summer heat waves, but this one had been unbroken even by a long-hoped-for thunderstorm. They had just sweltered through another airless and, for Thomas and many others, sleepless Sunday night, followed by the third cloudless Monday morning in a row. The sky remained stubbornly veiled in a thick, watery, grey haze.

More abstract than the weather, but even more oppressive for American Loyalists like Sir Thomas and his wife, Nancy, the Revolutionary War was winding down to its dismal, final curtain. They both easily endured simple physical hardship and deprivation, having done so many times since the outbreak of fighting so long ago. That was inconsequential. Forced inactivity, though – especially in the face of impending catastrophe – felt like the creeping paralysis of a living death. It made them both frantic. Sir Thomas was commander of the volunteer regiment he had financed on credit since '76 – two battalions raised from his former tenants and friends – and he yearned with all his heart to get back into some kind of action to help him forget the terrible course of history. But, blow coming upon major blow, recent news had pitilessly lashed the Smithymans.

Cornwallis had surrendered his army at Yorktown the previous...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Trafford
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1490786988
• ISBN 13: 9781490786988
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 378
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland