e's soldiers had been merged into the American
people. It may well be, indeed, that descendants of his beaten men have
played an important part in building up the United States. The irony of
history is unconquerable.

CHAPTER VII. WASHINGTON AND HIS COMRADES AT VALLEY FORGE

Washington had met defeat in every considerable battle at which he was
personally present. His first appearance in military history, in
the Ohio campaign against the French, twenty-two years before the
Revolution, was marked by a defeat, the surrender of Fort Necessity.
Again in the next year, when he fought to relieve the disaster to
Braddock's army, defeat was his portion. Defeat had pursued him in
the battles of the Revolution--before New York, at the Brandywine, at
Germantown. The campaign against Canada, which he himself planned, had
failed. He had lost New York and Philadelphia. But, like William III of
England, who in his long struggle with France hardly won a battle
and yet forced Louis XIV to accept his terms of peace, Washington, by
suddenness in reprisal, by skill in resource when his plans seemed
to have been shattered, grew on the hard rock of defeat the flower of
victory.

There was never a time when Washington was not trusted by men of real
military insight or by the masses of the people. But a general who does
not win victories in the field is open to attack. By the winter of 1777
when Washington, with his army reduced and needy, was at Valley Forge
keeping watch on Howe in Philadelphia, John Adams and others were
talking of the sin of idolatry in the worship of Washington, of its
flavor of the accursed spirit of monarchy, and of the punishment which
"the God of Heaven and Earth" must inflict for such perversity. Adams
was all against a Fabian policy and wanted to settle issues forever by a
short and strenuous war. The idol, it was being whispered, proved after
all to have feet of clay. One general, and only one, had to his credit
a really great victory--Gates, to whom Burgoyne had surrendered at
Saratoga, and there was a movement to replace Washington by this
laureled victor.

General Conway, an Irish soldier of fortune, was one of the most
troublesome in this plot. He had served in the campaign about
Philadelphia but had been blocked in his extravagant demands for
promotion; so he turned for redress to Gates, the star in the north. A
malignant campaign followed in detraction of Washington. He had, it was
said, worn out his