Washington could not help but be encouraged by the slow progress of the British retreat. His army was relatively unimpeded by baggage or civilians, while Maxwell and Dickinson provided him with detailed intelligence as they shadowed Clinton’s every move. Although Clinton had more and better-trained troops than Washington did, the British force was strung out haphazardly in a thin column several miles in length. If the Continentals moved quickly enough, they just might be able to draw near to Clinton, isolate his rear guard, and defeat him in detail.
Even moving at a modest pace—Washington, fearing heavy casualties from the heat, did not want to push his army too hard—the Continentals caught up with Clinton within a few short days. By the afternoon of Monday, June 22, the entire American army had reached the Delaware at Coryell’s Ferry; it crossed the river that night, and by the morning of the twenty-third, was encamped at Hopewell, New Jersey. There Washington’s sources informed him of Clinton’s position: after a march of only thirty miles in six days, the head of the British column had just then halted at Crosswicks, New Jersey, a mere seventeen miles south-southeast of Hopewell. The Continentals were within striking distance of the British. With a momentous decision ahead of him, Washington bivouacked his men at Hopewell to rest as he pondered his next move.4
STEUBEN HAD just caught up with the army when it made camp at Hopewell.
After his abortive trip to York, the Baron had returned to Valley Forge to confer with Washington. As he did not have a command in the line, he was free to serve Washington in other ways. So instead of following the army to Coryell’s, he and his staff rode immediately for Philadelphia. There they could observe British movements from the rear, in the event that Clinton doubled back and tried to maneuver around behind the Continentals.
Steuben spent the next four days in Philadelphia impatiently awaiting a summons from Washington. He did his best to enjoy himself, taking up residence on New Street in the city’s German quarter and flirting with the local girls there in his native tongue; he “fancied himself again in his native country,” Duponceau recalled years later. But despite the parties and the gaiety, the city was a depressing sight—Duponceau thought that the British had left it “filthy”—and though Benedict Arnold soon arrived with a regiment of Continentals to restore order, Philadelphia citizens with Patriot sympathies could not be restrained from punishing those who had collaborated with the British during the occupation. On the twenty-third, the Baron left the city in a hurry, arriving at Washington’s camp that evening.
The army was preparing for battle when Steuben rode through the picket line and into the camp at Hopewell. The men were cleaning their muskets and assembling paper cartridges; they were also thinning out their few possessions, for Washington had decreed that they must march light, with no unnecessary baggage, not even tents. After nearly seven months in winter quarters, and with their enemy fleeing before them, they were eager for battle. Their commander in chief, however, had not yet settled on a specific course of action.
On the morning of June 24, a council of war convened at Washington’s headquarters. After briefing the generals on the strength and position of the British forces, Washington proposed a deliberate movement against Clinton with the intention of forcing a battle. Charles Lee responded first. It might be acceptable, he contended, to reinforce Maxwell and Dickinson as they played havoc on Clinton’s flanks, but to do anything more than that would be to risk destruction. Any outright attack would be suicidal. Even if the Continentals equalled the British in numbers, they would never equal them in discipline. Challenging the British to battle would be tantamount to “building them a golden bridge,” freely giving them an easy victory to no good purpose. Instead, Lee proposed, the main army should march to the Hudson Highlands, there to await the arrival of the promised French expeditionary force. The French, being professionals, would at least have a fighting chance against the British.
Lee spoke from experience, and many of his juniors deferred to him even if they did not like him personally. Steuben was one of these men. Lafayette, Greene, and Wayne, however, could not abide Lee’s caution, not when such an unprecedented opportunity presented itself. At no point in the war thus far had the British made themselves so vulnerable. It would be “disgraceful and humiliating to allow the enemy to cross the Jerseys in tranquility,” Lafayette countered. Wayne suggested that a strong force—around twenty-five hundred men—be sent forward to goad the British into a counterattack.
Washington proposed a compromise: that a strong advance guard of fifteen hundred Continentals be sent to reinforce the Jersey troops and militia already nipping at Clinton’s flanks, while the main army followed closely behind to monitor the situation. Like most compromises, it fully satisfied no one. Lee, Lafayette, and Greene agreed to it, albeit for very different reasons; Wayne truculently refused to sign his name to the proposal. Washington himself was not happy with his own compromise, but it was better than doing nothing, and he was not one to overrule the advice of the majority except in the most extraordinary circumstances.
Within hours the situation would change completely. After the council adjourned, Lafayette conferred privately with five of his colleagues, including Wayne, Greene, and Steuben. Together they began to incline toward Wayne’s position. Wayne and Greene wrote individually to Washington to protest the compromise. Lafayette wrote on behalf of Steuben and the French engineer Louis Duportail, who begged the marquis to explain to Washington “how sorry, how distressed they are to see that we were going to loose [sic] an occasion which may be reputed as one of the finest ever offered.”5
Washington did not wait to summon another council. He had already begun to act, rather liberally, on the compromise plan: before the day was out, he had sent more than two thousand Continentals, including six hundred of Dan Morgan’s Virginia riflemen, to reinforce the Jersey troops currently hounding the British. Emboldened by the protests of his more aggressive generals, Washington dispatched another one thousand Continentals the following morning. The American advance guard now numbered nearly five thousand men. Charles Lee, as the senior-most major general, by right deserved to command the force, but as he evinced no interest in what he saw as a doomed enterprise, Washington gave the command to Lafayette. This was no simple reconnaissance. Washington intended to start a fight.
STEUBEN’S BLOOD WAS UP. Doubtless he would have liked to accompany Lafayette to the front, just to be in the thick of the action, but he had not yet come to the point in his career where he expected such an honor. The Baron was still anxious to prove himself; he wanted to be indispensable.
Washington did have use for a man of Steuben’s talents. Although he had many scouts, many eyes and ears, watching the British at every turn, none of them had the Baron’s experience in European warfare. Steuben would finally get the chance to do what he had been trained to do, so many years ago, in Frederick the Great’s royal suite: to collect and analyze intelligence so that his commander could employ his army as the situation warranted.
If Washington were to launch an attack, one vital question needed to be answered: What route would Clinton take to New York City? There were two obvious options. Either he could travel due north from his current position, through Cranbury and thence to the Amboys, approaching New York by land; or, alternatively, he could take a more easterly route, to Sandy Hook, where naval transports could ferry his troops to Staten Island. New York was not far away; if Clinton really pushed his troops along, and if Washington miscalculated the route, the British could evade the Continentals altogether and seek safety in the hilly country of northern New Jersey.
Map of the northern theater of the war, 1778–80
Sometime in the evening of the twenty-fourth, before Lafayette had departed, Steuben—accompanied by Duponceau, Ben Walker, and a small cavalry escort—slipped out of the camp at Hopewell to find the British army.
He did not have to travel very far, for the British column had barely inched along since its arrival at Crosswicks two da
ys before. Clinton’s two divisions had separated, with Cornwallis’s rear guard halting at Allentown on the night of the twenty-fourth, and Hessian general Wilhelm von Knyphausen’s division taking its rest at Imlaystown, just under four miles to the east. Riding all night, Steuben and his party reached the outskirts of Allentown by dawn on the twenty-fifth. From here he reconnoitered both British divisions. At eight o’clock that morning, Knyphausen’s division broke camp and marched north along the road that led north to Freehold. This would seem to indicate that Clinton’s destination was Sandy Hook and not the Amboys. Cornwallis’s division at Allentown, however, had not yet moved, and this was critical. Allentown was at a crossroads, where the road that ran from Crosswicks forked. The right fork went east-northeast through Freehold and toward Sandy Hook; the left fork, due north through Hightstown and Cranbury and to the Amboys.
The Baron rode north, skirting the British, but by noon on the twenty-fifth he still did not know where Cornwallis was headed, or if Cornwallis had moved at all. Three hours later, Steuben had reached Hightstown, nearly eight miles north-northeast of Allentown, where he received the word: Cornwallis’s division was on the march, and had taken the right fork toward Monmouth Courthouse and Freehold. Clinton was bound for Sandy Hook.
Steuben understood the urgency of the situation. Washington, of course, would have to be alerted, but first the commanders of the advance guard must be apprised of Clinton’s movements. With Ben Walker at his side, translating his French into passable English, Steuben dictated a terse note to Brig. Gen. Charles Scott, who commanded a portion of Lafayette’s corps. Scott, a profane Virginian who would later serve as governor of Kentucky, had led his command of 1,440 light troops through Princeton and toward Allentown the previous day, and was anxiously awaiting further word from Steuben. The Baron offered his advice: “I therefore submit to your Judgement whether it would not be best to advance your Corps as far as this place [Hightstown].”6
The waiting and uncertainty were over, at least for the time being. Lafayette could follow Clinton more closely, and Washington could move the main body to Lafayette’s support. That night the various elements of the advance guard rendezvoused at Hightstown, and on the morning of the twenty-sixth they marched by different paths toward Englishtown. Washington brought the eight thousand men of the main army to Cranbury to await further developments.
Clinton paid little heed to Washington’s troop dispositions. He was well aware that he was being followed: the Jersey militia continued to dog him, and Steuben himself had moved so close to Clinton’s forces “as to fire a Pistol at their Horsemen whilst feeding their Horses.” But the British columns moved at a languorous pace, probably more because of the brutal heat than for any other reason. On the morning of the twenty-sixth, Knyphausen’s division had reached the town of Freehold, while the rear guard under Cornwallis had halted at Monmouth Courthouse. And there they stayed. Just after noon on June 27, Steuben rode to a hill less than two miles from Monmouth, from which vantage point he could observe Cornwallis clearly with his spyglass. He reported to Washington in some bewilderment that the British “have some tents pitched & their Horses are at Pasture & [they have] not the least appearance of moving.”7
Washington had already made up his mind to attack. He waited only on the most fortuitous moment to do so: when the head of Knyphausen’s column set off again toward Sandy Hook, but before Cornwallis’s division broke camp. An attack at this point would catch Lord Cornwallis at his most vulnerable, when the rest of Clinton’s army would be slowest to react to an attack from the rear. If Washington acted quickly and decisively, Cornwallis could be defeated, or at least heavily mauled, before Knyphausen came to his relief. Yet the Americans needed all the time the British could spare them, for Washington faced an unforeseen problem: a last-minute change of command.
The problem was in large part Washington’s own doing. He had entrusted the entire advance guard, and therefore the honor of leading the assault, to Lafayette. Maybe the marquis was not Washington’s most brilliant lieutenant, but he was the most eager, and in this situation zeal and daring were more important attributes than tactical proficiency. Charles Lee had disdained to take part in Washington’s plan, but once it was obvious that Washington intended to go through with it, Lee changed his mind. He was not about to let the young Frenchman take the honor that should have been his by right, not if there was any chance of gaining glory by it.
Washington, unfortunately, acceded to Lee’s demand. It may be that his sense of propriety overrode his visceral instincts; perhaps he still hoped that he might win Lee over with such a gesture. For all of Lee’s insubordination and personal contempt, Washington never really snubbed him, and at Valley Forge he had welcomed Lee back from captivity as he would a prodigal son. It would prove to be a grave error.
Transferring the forward command from Lafayette to Lee was Washington’s first fatal mistake. Giving Lee carte blanche to arrange the details of the actual attack was his second, and it came very close to costing him the battle that ensued.
Clinton’s army had not moved since its arrival at Monmouth Courthouse on June 26. Knyphausen’s division had encamped just east of the village, along the road to Middletown and Sandy Hook; Cornwallis’s troops settled down on the high ground west of Monmouth. The troops needed a rest. Despite a recent heavy rain, water was in short supply, with the locals having sabotaged their wells before fleeing the area. Dehydrated soldiers could be pushed only so far before collapsing in such hot weather. The heat, as well as the swarms of biting insects that followed the army, sapped British morale, which was already sagging because the Redcoats were retreating before an inferior enemy.
There were tactical considerations to keep in mind, too. Clinton had an inkling that Washington would force a confrontation, and that in itself was good reason to hold still for a while. If he could entice Washington into a frontal assault there, on the high ground outside Monmouth, then the rebels would be at a terrible disadvantage.
Washington, however, did not oblige him yet. On Saturday afternoon, June 27, Washington rode to Englishtown to confer with Lee. In the presence of Lee’s staff, the commander in chief gave Lee his orders: he was to attack the British rear guard in the morning, as soon as he knew that Clinton was on the move. Washington was no more specific than this, leaving the operational details to Lee’s discretion. It was an unwise decision on Washington’s part, but although Lee had never been a dutiful subordinate, Washington had no reason to doubt his competence or physical courage.
The change of command was a mistake nonetheless. Whether from complacency or willful insubordination, Lee did next to nothing to prepare for the next day’s action. He had not bothered to conduct his own reconnaissance of the enemy’s positions since taking command on Saturday morning; he sent a handful of militia forward to scout the area that evening, but only after Washington had ordered him to do so. And when he met with his officers late Saturday afternoon, Lee told them only to have their troops ready to move by five o’clock the next morning. Lee’s men were not prepared for battle because Lee had not prepared them.
BY SUNDAY MORNING, Steuben was spent. He had been in the saddle for more than three full days with hardly a moment’s rest. The urgency of his errands and the excitement of impending battle invigorated him. But at nearly forty-eight years of age, he was not a young man, and he had his limits. He had been riding through unfamiliar country, often at night, without even the blessing of a luminous moon to help guide his way. Late on Saturday night, the increasingly threatening skies opened up, a torrential downpour pelting his face and soaking his heavy woolen uniform as he blindly groped his way around the British lines. The mission was as dangerous as it was uncomfortable. There was no telling when he might run afoul of a British outpost or a cavalry patrol; without a significant escort to protect him, the danger of death or capture was very real. Still, the Baron kept at his task into the early morning hours of the twenty-eighth. Aching and weary to the bone, he rode aro
und both British divisions, scanning their bivouacs for any sign of movement that might be revealed by the patchy and desultory light of the campfires.
In the early morning hours, his vigilance paid off. At around three o’clock on Sunday, the men of Knyphausen’s division emerged from their improvised brush shelters—like Washington’s men, they were travelling without tents—extinguished their fires, and formed up for the last leg of the march to Middletown. Within an hour they were on the road north, with their baggage train following immediately behind. Clinton’s army was in motion; the moment Washington was waiting for had finally arrived.
Dawn came early that morning, at about half past four, yet it was still quite dark when Steuben sought out Philemon Dickinson to pass him the welcome news. Soon Dickinson’s militia, who also had been watching the British closely, was exchanging fire with elements of Cornwallis’s cavalry before being driven off. The word spread to both Lee and Washington. Washington was elated with the development, and quickly roused his own men so that he could hurry to support Lee.
What happened over the next few hours defies simple reconstruction. Of all the major engagements of the Revolution, Monmouth remains the most imperfectly understood. Because most of the detailed American accounts were entered as testimony in an acrimonious court-martial after the battle, it is difficult for the historian to separate impartial eyewitness accounts from the special pleading that one would expect to find in legal proceedings. Steuben himself wrote a detailed description of the battle several years after the fact, but he was prone to exaggeration when recounting his American exploits for his European friends; hence much of his narrative is demonstrably wrong, and all of it is highly suspect. Fortunately, there is enough common ground in the plethora of after-action reports to allow us to see the broad outlines of the battle of Monmouth, as well as Steuben’s personal role in the action.8
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge Page 16