The fourth member of the little entourage would become the most vital member of the Baron’s military family. Pierre-Étienne Duponceau was a fixture in Beaumarchais’s Left Bank household and the playwright’s unofficial student. A dreamy-eyed, nearsighted, and hopelessly scholarly boy of seventeen, Duponceau was possessed of an insatiable academic curiosity. For all that, he was tougher than he appeared at first glance, with his pale complexion and tall, lanky frame, exaggerated by adolescent awkwardness. He had a gift for languages—during the long sea voyage to America, he sketched out his ideas for a “universal language and alphabet,” presaging Esperanto by more than a century—and in this regard he was particularly useful to Steuben, for he was fluent in English. After the Revolution, he would settle down to a legal career in Philadelphia, become a leading light in Franklin’s American Philosophical Society, and earn a name for himself as a pioneering linguist and student of Native American tongues.3
Much less is known about the two remaining members of the Baron’s group. Steuben had a young German manservant, one Carl Vogel, who was so unremarkable that even Duponceau’s detailed diary scarcely mentions the man. And then there was Azor, the Baron’s dog, who stayed at his master’s side from Paris until after the end of the War for Independence. By all accounts, Azor was a large dog with a gargantuan appetite; Duponceau described him as an “Italian greyhound.”* Steuben loved and indulged Azor without reservation. A few years later, while he and one of his aides traveled by coach down a muddy New York road, Azor—who had been trotting alongside—took advantage of a pause in the journey to leap through the coach’s open window and right onto the laps of the two men. The Baron and his aide were wearing brand-new uniforms that Steuben had just purchased at great expense only a couple of days before. Azor’s huge paws tracked clods of mud all over the Baron’s immaculate white breeches as he nestled himself in the man’s lap. Steuben was fussy about his appearance, but he just couldn’t bring himself to be angry with his dog. Instead, he laughingly tugged on Azor’s ears and called him a “damned rascal.”4
The Baron and his impromptu staff set out from Paris on September 5, 1777. The journey, which lasted nineteen days, took the party southward along the valley of the Rhône to their destination, the ancient Mediterranean port of Marseilles. Their French benefactors made a halfhearted attempt to shroud Steuben’s progress in secrecy, but to no avail. The Baron had purchased new uniforms for his staff—including fine black hats in the French bicorn style, replete with plumes and cockades—but not knowing the colors of American uniforms, he ordered coats made of brilliant scarlet cloth with blue facings. They were just too obvious to escape detection, and British agents in France were not fooled. Still, to obscure the purpose of his trip, the Baron assumed a pseudonym. He would be the Monsieur de Franck, agent of Roderigue Hortalez et Cie., bearing dispatches for the governor of French Martinique.
Waiting for them at Marseilles was the ship-rigged merchantman Flamand, bound for the West Indies with a cargo of wine, miscellaneous vegetables, and sulphur. But, like Steuben’s assumed name, this was a guise. In reality, Flamand was the French naval frigate L’Heureux, 360 tons, carrying a formidable battery of twenty-eight guns and a huge cargo of contraband: muskets and carbines by the thousands, several dozen cannons and mortars, and hundreds of barrels of gunpowder.
On Friday, September 26, 1777, Flamand’s crew cast off the mooring lines and made sail, the frigate passing between the two ancient forts that stood watch over the harbor entrance and into the open waters of the Mediterranean beyond. The Baron de Steuben was on his way to America.5
EVEN IN THE LAST QUARTER of the eighteenth century, when transatlantic travel was almost routine, it took a hardy soul to brave the passage from Europe to North America. Steuben’s two-month passage was treacherous and very uncomfortable, and not without its moments of sheer terror. Flamand weathered two major storms during the crossing; there were also three fires aboard ship, always a potential horror, but even more so when the ship was practically packed to the gun-whales with explosives. There was the danger, too, of interception by a British warship off the American coast. Despite the falsified papers and the ship’s reported destination, it would have been difficult to disguise the massive quantity of ordnance stockpiled in Flamand’s hold. A run-in with a British ship of the line could have resulted in a very ugly incident.
But Flamand managed to evade these perils. Steuben himself seemed to be wholly unconcerned by the prospects. His mind focused on what lay ahead, and regardless of his trepidation at his uncertain prospects in America, his spirits were more buoyant than they had been in a very long time. Duponceau’s boyish enthusiasm helped. He undertook to give voice lessons to the ship’s captain, Pierre Landais of the French Royal Navy. Landais had determination but little talent, and his off-key caterwauling kept everyone amused—everyone, that is, except Azor, who took offense at Landais’s vocal endeavors and howled piteously whenever the captain took it in his head to sing.6
The Baron did not need diversion to occupy his time. He was on his way to a country and a people he knew absolutely nothing about, so for much of the voyage he tried to learn what he could. He studied intently the few books on America he had been able to scrape together before sailing from Marseilles, principally the Abbé Raynal’s popular treatise on European settlements in the Americas. He also interviewed Captain Landais at length, for Landais had accompanied the explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville on his celebrated circumnavigation of the globe in 1766–69. When Steuben found the time, he tried to pick up a few words of spoken English from Duponceau, and with his secretary’s help he composed a personal memoir chronicling his life in Europe.7
The ship’s lookouts finally sighted the rocky New England coastline at the very end of November. The ship dropped anchor in the calm seas just off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Monday, December 1, 1777. The day was unseasonably warm and sunny, adding to the usual sense of euphoria that came at the end of a long and arduous voyage. A landing party—including Duponceau, who sprang nimbly into the party’s longboat as it cleared Flamand’s davits—determined that the town was not in British hands, though the people they met ashore were initially a bit confused by Duponceau’s red coat. Portsmouth’s most prominent citizen, the merchant and former congressional delegate John Langdon, accompanied the group back to Flamand, and then escorted Steuben, his staff, and Landais to the town.
They were treated to a hero’s welcome. Throngs of citizens came out to stare, gape-mouthed, at the oddly dressed Prussian and his French companions, and many of the locals followed the procession to John Langdon’s opulent residence when the well-to-do merchant invited the foreigners to dine with him. “All the inhabitants of the place crowded together as if to look at a rhinoceros,” an amused Steuben reported to his old friend Daniel Marianus Frank.8
At Langdon’s dinner table, the Baron learned in detail of the progress of the rebellion thus far, and the news was encouraging. Although Philadelphia had fallen to the British, in upstate New York a truly grand thing had transpired. Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates and the Northern Army had defeated Maj. Gen. John Burgoyne in twin battles near Saratoga, capturing an entire British field army intact and throwing British strategy into disarray. Surely France would act now, and then victory would not be far off. The war, at any rate, was not yet over. Steuben could still make his mark.
After a stay of ten uneventful days in Portsmouth, Steuben and his party set out for Boston by carriage, where they arrived two days later. Newspapers across New England had already spread the word that a great Prussian hero had arrived on their shores, so as at Portsmouth the local elite turned out in force to meet their odd but distinguished visitor. The Baron made a favorable impression on the Bostonians. Boston had seen its share of foreigners and noblemen, but Steuben was different: not French and Catholic, but German and Protestant, an important distinction in a town of Boston’s Puritan heritage. Unlike many of the French officers who had passed through recently, Steube
n was down to earth, affable, and gregarious. And he and his companions were just so novel. “Only fancy to yourself,” Duponceau recalled, “an old German Baron, with a large brilliant star on his breast, three French aides-de-camp and a large, spoiled Italian dog, [and] none of all that company could speak a word of English.”9
Steuben was jobless and living on borrowed funds, but Boston’s welcome did wonders for his deflated ego. He did not have to seek out John Hancock, as Langdon had suggested, for Hancock sought him out and fêted him as an honored guest. The former president of Congress hosted at least one dinner party in Steuben’s honor, attended by all the luminaries of Boston Patriot society. Steuben bonded instantly with crusty Sam Adams, the two chatting amiably over military affairs and European politics. Adams, who liked neither Washington nor the idea of a professional army, was moved to write to Horatio Gates and his friends in Congress about this “Gentleman of great Merit.”10
Duponceau had a grand time in Boston. As the only member of the Baron’s staff who could speak English well, he could flirt with the local girls while Ponthière and Des Epiniers could do little more than point and grunt. In his enthusiasm, he committed a social gaffe or two—at John Hancock’s house one evening he made the great mistake of addressing Sam Adams as “Mr. John Adams,” earning a gruff rebuke from the offended Adams—but this failed to discourage his high spirits.11
To Steuben, on the other hand, life in Boston quickly became tiresome and exasperating. He had been led to expect that he would be taken care of, but he was very much on his own. The Baron had been in America for less than a month and already he was in debt, “having brought no money with him,” as he complained, awkwardly and in the third person, to John Hancock, “upon the positive Assurance…that he should be supplied with every thing.” No one offered him a place to stay, or even helped him to find lodgings. The town was too expensive for his tastes; the people of Boston were, in his view, tightfisted and unfriendly. He and his staff took up residence in two cramped rooms in a boarding house owned by one Mrs. Downe. The cost of firewood to heat the rooms amounted to some sixty dollars over three weeks, and the final bill for lodging there was far higher than the Baron was prepared to pay. It included additional charges for Azor and for the “trouble” the party had caused to their long-suffering hostess. Duponceau thought the charges were quite fair—the dog “ate as much as anyone of us”—yet they enraged Steuben, who threw his hands to his head and repeatedly exclaimed, “Der Teufel!” (“The devil!”), as he perused the itemized bill.12
The Baron confided his disappointment to William Gordon, a local pastor and friend of Samuel Adams. He believed that he “had been by some means neglected so as not to meet with the civilities that might justly be expected,” Gordon noted, and “felt strongly the disappointment of the expectations he had formed of the manners of the people in this quarter.”13
Steuben blamed his predicament on the leadership of the town, who were “almost as lackadaisical as certain people at Versailles,” he wrote in disgust to Beaumarchais. “I still do not understand what they did to get where they are today.” But he also worried about the attitude of Congress and of General Washington. Steuben had written to them from Portsmouth and still had not heard a word, welcoming or otherwise. His sense of dejection worsened when he and Francy encountered a handful of younger French officers who had been sent to America a year before by Beaumarchais and Deane. They had not received even the slightest encouragement from Congress. Humiliated and penniless, they awaited the first ship that could take them back to France. Steuben commiserated with them, and tried to persuade them to stay, but deep down he took their situation as an ill omen. If Congress was so bullheaded as to let these talented professionals go, then what kind of treatment could he expect?14
Had the Baron exercised a little more forbearance, though, he would have found some encouragement. Congress and George Washington had already replied to Steuben’s letters from Portsmouth. Both were delighted to hear of his arrival, and in fact Congress was prepared to pay all of his expenses.
But the news did not reach Boston fast enough. Having heard nothing, and with his funds and his patience tapped out after five weeks in town, Steuben prepared to proceed directly to the seat of government in York, Pennsylvania. John Hancock and the state of Connecticut forwarded him some cash to defray further travel expenses. After purchasing fresh horses, a wagon, some supplies, and new blue-and-buff uniforms for his assistants, the Baron set out from Boston on the morning of January 14, 1778. Ahead of him lay a four-hundred-mile trip in the dead of winter.
DURING THE COURSE of the Revolutionary War, the cause of American independence would endure more dark times than happy ones. The winter of 1777–78 was no exception, and though there were worse winters in many regards, that of ’77–78 probably deserves the epithet “gloomy” more than any other. It was not just the uncertainty of the hoped-for French alliance, nor the disagreeable weather, nor the desperate shortage of willing manpower to fill the dwindling ranks of the army. The thing that infused the season with despair was the conflict within—not that between Patriot and Tory, but among those who should have been united, the rebel leadership itself. The Revolution appeared to be tearing itself apart from the inside.
Because of Washington’s almost miraculous victories at Trenton and Princeton, the previous year had commenced with a healthy measure of hope. But the British were not about the allow the rebels any respite, and so they would take to the field again in 1777 with a vengeance. Lord William Howe, commanding the main British force in New York, would move on Philadelphia, wresting that symbol of rebellion out of Patriot hands. Meanwhile, a three-pronged invasion of New York State would, if successful, amputate New England from the rest of the colonies. The latter enterprise proved to be a spectacular failure. Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates—sometimes unkindly called “Granny” for his matronly appearance and fussy demeanor—stopped the southward advance of General Burgoyne’s army at Freeman’s Farm, and then thoroughly trounced Burgoyne at Bemis Heights, two separate actions collectively called the Battle of Saratoga. To add to this shame, a makeshift band of New England militia forces ambushed a portion of Burgoyne’s army at Bennington, near the present-day border of New York and Vermont. The victories were almost as reinvigorating as Trenton and Princeton had been, and more valuable in some ways, for they provided Vergennes with proof that the war was winnable and therefore deserving of French support.
Not far south, things were going much worse for George Washington. In June 1777, Howe launched his assault on Philadelphia after British transports carried his army from New York by sea and up the Chesapeake Bay. Disembarking at Head of Elk, Maryland, the British moved north by land to menace the capital. As Howe had predicted, Washington would not give up the city without a fight. The two armies clashed on the Brandywine Creek, near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on September 11. The Continentals fought bravely but were overwhelmed by superior numbers. With Washington’s army bruised and bleeding, Howe was free to march directly on Philadelphia, and on September 26 the British took possession of the town. Congress fled, first to Lancaster, then to York, where they would remain until the following summer.
Washington refused to give up just yet. Barely a week after the British paraded in triumph on Philadelphia’s streets, he hatched a plan to drive Howe out. On October 4, at Germantown, just a few miles north of Philadelphia, the Continentals tried to envelop and crush the outnumbered British garrison. Washington’s men fought well, and at first had the advantage of surprise, but the Redcoats quickly recovered, and ultimately the Americans were driven off in defeat.
The disappointing outcome of the Philadelphia campaign of 1777 somewhat dampened the jubilation over Saratoga, but the defeat’s significance went well beyond its impact on American morale. Brandywine and Germantown spoke volumes about the martial qualities of the Continental Army. The men fought like demons at both battles; they had a tenacity and spirit that even their opponents acknowledged. But they
lacked the ability to maneuver and change formation quickly, and the restraint that would allow them to deliver devastating volleys of musketry at close range against an advancing enemy. Nor were they comfortable with the use of the bayonet, and in eighteenth-century warfare that weapon still have a very real tactical value. The Continentals wanted, in short, the training that would permit them to fight the British in the conventional European fashion.
Brandywine and Germantown did not destroy the morale of the common soldiers in the ranks. But in the upper echelons of command, at Washington’s headquarters and in the halls of Congress, the defeats around Philadelphia had a toxic effect. That campaign, coupled with the humiliating loss of the capital city, emboldened Washington’s critics. A growing chorus of voices, secretive but unmistakable, questioned his leadership abilities and his commitment to the cause of independence. In the closing months of 1777, the general became convinced that there was a plot afoot to seek his downfall and replacement. He was right.
From the very first day that Washington assumed command of the army in 1775, he had had his detractors. Other, more experienced, soldiers, such as Horatio Gates and Charles Lee, felt themselves far more qualified to lead. Washington’s elevation to supreme command especially rankled Lee. A professional soldier who had held a commission in the British army and a generalship in the Polish army, Lee had genuinely expected to be offered the position that was given to Washington. Lee served under Washington anyway, as a major general in command of a full division, but he never attempted to hide his disdain for his superior. At times, particularly during the unfortunate New York campaign of 1776, Lee’s contempt manifested itself in conduct that bordered on outright insubordination.
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge Page 6