“At the French lines on Prospect Hill”

In 2019 Ric Detwiller published an excellent article at the Journal of the American Revolution about a Frenchman recruited as a provincial engineer early in the siege of Boston.

Though “Monsieur Dubuque” (Jean-Baptiste du Buq?) lasted only a short time before defecting to the British, he left behind a fortification near Prospect Hill labeled “French Redoubt” on Henry Pelham’s map of the siege, as shown in this posting.

In a comment to the Detwiller article, Les Haskell added a pertinent entry from the diary of his relative, Caleb Haskell, on 26 July 1775:

This morning our regiment was ordered out of the great Fort [on Prospect Hill] to man the French lines — where we are for the future to repair in an alarm. A grenadier, belonging to the enemy’s side when on sentry, quitted his post, came over to us and delivered himself a prisoner to our guards.

In addition, the Massachusetts archives has a return of Capt. Edward Crafts’s artillery company dated 12 Oct 1775 from the “French lines.”

While preparing yesterday’s talk on the Convention Army, the prisoners of war held at Prospect and Winter Hills in 1777–78, I spotted how the label “French lines” lasted past the siege of Boston.

In 1894 the Maine Historical Society published the “Military Journal of Col. Ichabod Goodwin,” an orderly book for a militia contingent detailed to help guard those prisoners. That document shows that the three main positions where the Continental forces posted guards included “french lines.”

The editor of this volume guessed that term “probably refers to Hessians, no French troops having been present.”

However, the German-speaking prisoners (actually Brunswickers) were housed on Winter Hill. Pelham’s map locates the “French Redoubt” much closer to Prospect Hill. And the transcript of the early 1778 inquiry into Col. David Henley’s treatment of the British prisoners shows Col. Jacob Gerrish speaking of “the guard at the French lines on Prospect Hill.”

Thus, nearly three years after “Monsieur Dubuque” slipped away from his job with the Americans, military men in New England still referred to the fortifications he oversaw as the “French lines.”

Slinging “King Hancock” Back and Forth

Of all the people in Revolutionary America I’ve found saying, “King Hancock,” so far only one used the phrase at all proudly. Boston 1775 reader Richard Doctorow quoted that item in a comment a while back.

The 15 Jan 1778 Independent Chronicle and other newspapers printed an anecdote about an eight-year-old American fifer taken prisoner during a raid on Long Island. To a British officer he proudly identified himself as “one of King Hancock’s men.”

Was that unnamed boy using a term common among American soldiers? Or was he, too, speaking sarcastically, spitting a term used by British officers back at them? Did this boy even exist? Even if he didn’t, it would be significant that a Patriot newspaper wanted people to believe he did.

In contrast, it’s easier to find stories of people loyal to the Crown using the phrase “King Hancock” in insults to the American cause. For example, in 1778, the American military tried Col. David Henley, at his request, for how he had attacked some of the British prisoners of war in the “Convention Army” at Cambridge. For more on that conflict, see Don Hagist’s recounting.

One witness in Henley’s court martial, Cpl. John Buchanan of the British army, testified:

After [Pvt. Samuel] Reeves was returned to the guard-room, and the other prisoners dismissed, Reeves said to me, “This is a poor pass I am come to, to be taken out of the guard-house and stabbed, and my king and country damned—damn King Hancock and the Congress.”

Buchanan acknowledged that Col. Henley might have heard this remark and become even angrier at Reeves.

Because by that time most Americans had become republicans and disdained having a king of any kind. Which meant “King Hancock” became purely an insult.

COMING UP: “King Hancock” in verse later in the war.