Mayflower

Wickford. Someone must stop these men from torching the fort.
    The orders to destroy the fort had just come from the general himself. Church pleaded with the soldiers to desist from firing the wigwams until he had a chance to speak with Winslow. With the assistance of at least one of his men, Church hobbled out of the fort to the low hill where the general surveyed the action from the saddle of his horse.
    Winslow listened to Church’s impassioned appeal and, after conferring with some of the officers gathered around him, decided that the proposal had much merit. The army would do as Church had suggested and move into the fort for the night. Winslow had begun to ride toward the fort, when Captain Moseley suddenly appeared from the edge of the swamp and asked “[W]hither he was going.”
    Winslow replied that he was about to enter the fort. Moseley grabbed the reins of the general’s horse and exclaimed, “His life was worth a hundred of theirs, and he should not expose himself.” Winslow said that “Mr. Church had informed him that the fort was taken…[and] that it was most practicable for him, and his army to shelter themselves in the fort.”
    â€œChurch lies!” Moseley thundered. The fort was not yet secure. If the general moved another inch, he would shoot his horse out from under him.
    Had Church not been injured, he might have countered Moseley’s insubordination with a threat of his own, but as it was he was barely conscious from loss of blood. It was then that a doctor in the group joined the fray, insisting that Church’s proposal would “kill more men than the enemy had killed, for by tomorrow the wounded men will be so stiff that there will be no moving them.” Noticing that Church had a serious wound of his own, the doctor threatened to deny him medical attention if the general decided to follow his aide’s advice, claiming Church “should bleed to death like a dog before they would endeavor to stench his blood.”
    It was almost laughably ironic. Throughout the weeks and months of the first phase of the war, the English had been obsessed with building forts. Now that they had a perfectly serviceable and well-stocked fort at their disposal, all they wanted to do was destroy it. The difference, of course, was that this was a Native-built structure. For Indian haters like Moseley, the idea of sleeping in a wigwam and eating the Indians’ food was abhorrent. It was far better to consume this wretched fortress in purifying fire than spend a single night living like the heathen enemy.
    There was also a more justifiable fear of ambush. They had sixteen miles to cover before they reached the safety of the Smith garrison in Wickford. An Indian captive claimed that in addition to the Narragansett warriors who had survived the attack, there were another 1,500 waiting just a mile and a half away. If they did not leave immediately, before the Narragansetts had the chance to regroup, their battered and exhausted soldiers would be virtually defenseless against a well-executed Native ambush. Best to depart while the enemy was still reeling from the attack.
    The Plymouth governor might have been named commander of this army, but Massachusetts-Bay was apparently in charge. Winslow once again reversed himself, and the fort, along with all its provisions and perhaps hundreds of Native women, children, and elderly, was consigned to the fire. Contemporary accounts of the battle focus on the bravery of the English officers and soldiers but make little mention of the slaughter that followed the taking of the fort. It must have been a horrendous and terrifying scene as Narragansett women and children screamed and cried amid the gunshots and the flames. Thirty-eight years before, Narragansett warriors had been sickened by the burning of the Pequot fort at Mystic, Connecticut. On this day, December 19, 1675, Pequot warriors were there to watch the Narragansetts meet a similar fate. The English later claimed that the Pequots and Mohegans had been faithless allies that day, firing their muskets up into the air rather than at the enemy. One can hardly blame them, if the claim was true.
    Sometime after five o’clock, the order was given to begin the long march to Wickford. According to one account, the flames rising up from the burning fort lit the army’s way for as many as three miles through the wilderness.
    It was the worst night of the soldiers’