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- 2026-01-30T20:48:05.591Z
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- 6726
- text
- no other avengement was at hand, he would hurl on his foes such howling
tempests of anathema as fairly to shock them into retreat. Prompted by
somewhat similar motives, both on shipboard and in England, he would
often make the most vociferous allusions to Ticonderoga, and the part
he played in its capture, well knowing, that of all American names,
Ticonderoga was, at that period, by far the most famous and galling to
Englishmen.
Parlor-men, dancing-masters, the graduates of the Albe Bellgarde, may
shrug their laced shoulders at the boisterousness of Allen in England.
True, he stood upon no punctilios with his jailers; for where modest
gentlemanhood is all on one side, it is a losing affair; as if my Lord
Chesterfield should take off his hat, and smile, and bow, to a mad
bull, in hopes of a reciprocation of politeness. When among wild
beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast. Neither is it unlikely
that this was the view taken by Allen. For, besides the exasperating
tendency to self-assertion which such treatment as his must have bred
on a man like him, his experience must have taught him, that by
assuming the part of a jocular, reckless, and even braggart barbarian,
he would better sustain himself against bullying turnkeys than by
submissive quietude. Nor should it be forgotten, that besides the petty
details of personal malice, the enemy violated every international
usage of right and decency, in treating a distinguished prisoner of war
as if he had been a Botany-Bay convict. If, at the present day, in any
similar case between the same States, the repetition of such outrages
would be more than unlikely, it is only because it is among nations as
among individuals: imputed indigence provokes oppression and scorn; but
that same indigence being risen to opulence, receives a politic
consideration even from its former insulters.
As the event proved, in the course Allen pursued, he was right.
Because, though at first nothing was talked of by his captors, and
nothing anticipated by himself, but his ignominious execution, or at
the least, prolonged and squalid incarceration, nevertheless, these
threats and prospects evaporated, and by his facetious scorn for scorn,
under the extremest sufferings, he finally wrung repentant usage from
his foes; and in the end, being liberated from his irons, and walking
the quarter-deck where before he had been thrust into the hold, was
carried back to America, and in due time, at New York, honorably
included in a regular exchange of prisoners.
It was not without strange interest that Israel had been an eye-witness
of the scenes on the Castle Green. Neither was this interest abated by
the painful necessity of concealing, for the present, from his brave
countryman and fellow-mountaineer, the fact of a friend being nigh.
When at last the throng was dismissed, walking towards the town with
the rest, he heard that there were some forty or more Americans,
privates, confined on the cliff. Upon this, inventing a pretence, he
turned back, loitering around the walls for any chance glimpse of the
captives. Presently, while looking up at a grated embrasure in the
tower, he started at a voice from it familiarly hailing him:
“Potter, is that you? In God’s name how came you here?”
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