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.
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