The rest of the British force closed in on the barns, forcing their way in, and the killing began in earnest.
A few of the Americans were alert enough to effect an escape, melting into the safety of the nearby woods. Most were not so lucky. Some were bayonetted as they slept, others as they searched clumsily for their weapons; some fought back with pistols or sabres but were quickly overcome. A great many of the Continentals, seeing the hopelessness of their predicament, surrendered. Some were granted quarter, while others were coldly taken outside and bayonetted anyway.
It was all over in a matter of minutes. Grey’s men withdrew at daybreak, prisoners in tow, leaving the Blauvelt family to bury the dead and tend to the wounded left behind.
The Baylor Massacre, as the event came to be known, had no significant impact on British or American strategy—only about fifteen dragoons were killed outright—but, still, the “Butchery” appeared monstrous to many contemporaries, a sign of British barbarism. American leaders denounced the British officers for making no effort to restrain the bloodlust of their men.27
The Baron de Steuben was troubled by the incident, but not for the same reasons. The clash at Overkill was upsetting to him because it could have been prevented so easily. The real tragedy at the heart of the bloodshed was not the inhumanity of the attackers, but the carelessness of the Continentals, “the consequence of a bad discipline,” Steuben observed to Henry Laurens. “The service of the guards, piquets & patrolls is totally neglected in our Army. Our Cavalry is without a Chief, without an Officer acquainted with the service—Brave, it is true, but bravery never made an Officer.”28
Laurens thought Steuben’s analysis cold. How could poor Baylor bear the responsibility when it was the British who had violated all the rules of civilized warfare? Yet the Baron had hit the nail on the head. Baylor had been criminally negligent—of his duty to the army, to the Cause, and above all to the men entrusted to his care. Steuben had been urging all along that the army pay greater attention to guard and outpost duty. He had been ignored, and Overkill demonstrated the tragic results that could ensue.
“I have acquitted what I owed to myself, as Well as to all the Military,” he had told Laurens, apparently washing his hands of any responsibility for whatever fate might befall the Continental Army now that he had been so brusquely rebuffed by his fellow generals. Yet the truth was that the Baron cared about the army much more than his hurt pride would allow him to let on. He accepted, grudgingly, that he could not command troops in battle, and once he took this fact to heart, he became eminently useful. In the coming year, he would make his greatest, most enduring contribution to the Cause.
What Steuben realized at this moment, as he gave up on his dreams of battlefield glory, was that Congress, Washington, and the army brass did set great value on his counsel—so long as that counsel was not coupled with demands for augmented powers. And while this was personally disappointing, it was also liberating in a way. Since he was no longer angling for a more prominent role, he could offer his advice directly, without tact or restraint. The rebels needed this kind of guidance. Blunt advice, after all, is generally good advice.
Both Washington and Henry Laurens solicited the Baron’s strategic insights—and he gave them, no matter how bleak the prognosis. And with French intervention temporarily out of the question, there was little good to say about the state of the war effort. His reflections on the condition of the army, written for Laurens at the beginning of October 1778, “would shock a feeble mind.”
Lord Cornwallis is [in New Jersey] with perhaps Six thousand Men, & Lord Stirling with Three Brigades, I shall not say how strong for fear of afflicting you. But pray, is that number Sufficient to oppose the forces of the Enemy? You will say that they will be joined by the state Militia. But is that the same Militia America could boast of when she had yet no Enlisted Troops? Do they retain the same spirit which animated them at that Time?…Do not suffer yourself to be dazzled by the Accounts of the Strength of our Regiments and Brigades, at least a third part of them are unable to suffer the fatigues of a march, in this season when Nights begin to grow cold & damp & that for want of Cloaths, Even of Shoes or Stockings…. I think it my duty not to suffer you to be ignorant of the true state of our Army. And now Examine the Land forces of our Enemies in this Country…and then tell me if you dont think our Case somewhat hazardous?
What made the army’s sad state even more depressing was that it stemmed from a deep-seated cause: the tendency of Americans, especially those who disdained a standing army, to eschew long-range planning and count instead on the occasional miracle.
How long will America suffer her Welfare to depend on the good or ill success of a day? Is it not certain that a greater loss will arise from the plundering of the Jersies, than it would have Cost to Keep the Regiments complete after the plan in Congress?…An Army too numerous, I own, is Expensive, but the Contrary Extreme is dangerous. It was, I think, in 1776, that Genl Washington had the glory to keep the field at the Head of an Army of 1800 Men; I wish he mayn’t have that glory again. Had a proper number of Soldiers been Raised, the War would probably at this time be at an End. Withal, Sir, if our Regiments are not completed, and put on an Equal footing, it is absolutely unnecessary to think of any Arrangement, Either in the Administration or Manœuvres, or Even of any Order or Uniformity in our Army.29
Washington asked Steuben for his opinions on the army’s strategic options in light of the French withdrawal, and once again the Baron held nothing back. His written reply to the general-in-chief was a piece worthy of a great operational planner. Because the army was both pitifully small and in poor condition, Steuben pointed out, there were no options. The British, he argued, were likely to either attack Boston or to remain passively in New York. Either way, they had the advantage. Clinton was no fool; he knew exactly how weak the Americans were. If the British attacked Boston, they could do so with impunity, for they had enough troops to do it while still retaining a respectable garrison in New York. What could Washington do if this happened? Nothing. Any force he might detach to defend Boston would so deplete the main army that the Hudson Highlands would be vulnerable, and no matter how many men Washington sent to Boston, it would not be enough to save the city. The Continental Army was in no condition to do anything but sit tight for the winter and hope for the best.30
All the reforms in the world, Steuben had told both Washington and Congress, would not save the army or the country. Victory would require a substantial and lasting commitment in manpower, and that responsibility lay solely with Congress and the States. Steuben could do nothing about that. What he could do, within the few and limited parameters approved by both Congress and the generals, was to instill discipline, broadly defined. Discipline, as Steuben—and most European soldier-philosophers—saw it, was the universal application of rules and procedures that came from following a common code of conduct. The Continental Army had no such code. The incident at Overkill stood as bloody proof.
Despite his jeremiads, the Baron had not yet given up. The best thing he could do in his present situation, as he told Henry Laurens, was to “put on a cheerful face” and hope that Congress would eventually see the necessity of enlarging the army. In the meantime, he had to define discipline, and that entailed creating that missing military code.
Washington agreed. He had known all along how badly the army needed a set of official regulations. So with the general-in-chief’s blessing, Steuben set out again for Philadelphia, on November 13, 1778, to spend the winter working out the details.31
THE TIME WAS RIGHT. The Baron was not really needed at camp, even for drill. He had trained a competent group of subordinates, the sub-inspectors and the brigade inspectors, at Valley Forge. He could even spare Ternant, who was dispatched to spread Steuben’s gospel to Gen. Benjamin Lincoln’s badly organized Southern Army. Nor was there much possibility of action in the Northeast. Once D’Estaing removed his fleet from Boston Harbor in early November, choosing to spend t
he winter months in the West Indies instead, the campaign of 1778 came to an abrupt if anticlimatic end.
From his personal staff, Steuben assembled a team to help him draft the new regulations. Fleury knew the details of French military practice as well as anyone in the Continental service; Duponceau could translate, and Walker was conversant in American military terminology; L’Enfant, a skilled draftsman, could fashion the plates and figures necessary for a drill manual. Together, they entered Philadelphia at the end of November and set up cozy quarters at the Peters’ Belmont. This in itself was a great attraction for the Baron. Here he would have the comforts of family life as well as direct access to the Board of War.32
Steuben was driven, and he wrote almost without letup from the time he set foot in Philadelphia until he departed the city in late April 1779. His mind, and his quill, moved much faster than the slow pace dictated by the translating and editing process. He had no intention of merely copying the Prussian military regulations. He admired the Prussian system, and overall believed it to be the best in all of Europe, but he also recognized that the center of military thought was not Prussia but France. The composition of new regulations would involve picking and choosing the best elements from the Prussian and French systems, and then adapting them to American conditions—and this required juggling a dizzying quantity of details and ephemera. Working from memory, Fleury’s advice, and the few military texts he had at hand, he composed scores of short essays, written on a variety of topics, for his own use: on the proper formation of infantry units, on tactics, on the duties of officers in European armies, on the administration of entire military establishments.33
The five men worked at a furious pace. Walker and Duponceau, as translators and scribes, took up most of the drudge work, but Steuben and Fleury were no less busy. They frequently labored into the wee hours, sketching maneuvers in pencil and comparing notes by candlelight. There was little time for them to partake of Philadelphia’s social scene. Steuben was content to take the occasional dinner with his hosts, to chat with Richard Peters about politics, and to play with little Ralph. Until the final chapters of the regulations were complete, in late March 1779, however, Steuben and his team did not take a single significant break, allowing little to interrupt or distract them.
There were unavoidable disruptions nonetheless. Steuben still had a score to settle with an old enemy: Charles Lee. Through his few remaining adherents in the army, Lee had spread the rumor that Steuben was a fake. Even Francy was taken in by the talk. “It is pretended that [Steuben] is nothing less than a great soldier, [yet] people really mock the Order he carries, which is regarded in Germany as worthless,” Francy reported to Beaumarchais in early November 1778. Other Prussians in the Continental service claimed never to have heard of Steuben while in the army of Old Fritz. The Baron, Francy admitted, “infinitely embarrasses me.”34
The dangerous thing about Lee’s gossip was that it contained more than a kernel of truth, but it was meanspirited and unnecessary, intended only to sabotage the Baron’s high standing in the army. Francy soon recognized this and repented. The damage, however, was already done. Des Epiniers, whose admiration for Steuben had bordered on hero worship, quit the inspector’s staff, only telling Francy that he “would have nothing to do with the Baron.” Steuben had done his best to ignore Lee up to this point, but he could do so no longer. At the time he left camp for Philadelphia, already there were whispers that the Baron would seek satisfaction in the way that any honorable gentleman would: by duel.
So when Lee made his next negative remark about him, Steuben was ready to pounce. Lee was in the process of appealing the sentence of his court-martial, refuting much of the written testimony, including Steuben’s. He argued that Steuben had not been near enough to the action to judge Lee’s conduct, and referred to the Prussian as a “very distant Spectator.” It was a minor criticism, but it did impugn Steuben’s honor, and the Baron was not inclined to be very forgiving. “Were I now in my own Country, where my reputation is long ago Established, I should have put myself about your Epigrams, and would have despised them,” he shot back at Lee. “But here I am a Stranger. You have offended me. I desire you will give me satisfaction. You will chuse the place, time and Arms.” It was not the first time Lee had been challenged to a duel, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. He was a brave soldier, but a coward and a bully in his personal life, and he backed down in great humility. He apologized profusely, assuring the aggrieved Baron that he had no intention of slighting him. Fortunately that was enough to satisfy Steuben.35
Steuben had challengers of his own, but over matters not of honor but of imitation. A young French lieutenant, William Galvan, was also writing a tactical manual. Coincidentally, he was working in Philadelphia at the same time as Steuben, but without making any effort to consult the Baron. Galvan submitted his text to Washington, unsolicited, hoping to impress the general. He did not get very far. For all of the trouble that Steuben had caused him, Washington was very protective of his inspector, and saw in Galvan’s manuscript a direct affront to Steuben. “I do not perceive any utility that could be derived from encouraging the competition you seem to desire between you and the Gentleman who has already been appointed to superintend the instruction of the army,” Washington wrote Galvan. “The specimens he has given of his zeal and knowlege entitle him to my confidence.”36
Another foreigner, one Baron Knoblauch, also tried to cash in on Steuben’s work. After Steuben had already finished, Knoblauch petitioned Congress for recognition, claiming that he deserved some credit for having lent his Prussian military texts to the inspector! Indeed, he would have written his own regulations if only he “had been Master of the English Language or could have had the steady assistance of a good Translator.”37 Congress ignored him.
Steuben’s biggest headache was one largely of his own making: the emptiness of his wallet. Money problems had haunted him since the day he left the Prussian army; one gets the impression from his correspondence that he thought of little else. As a major general, his monthly pay was $166.67 in Continental scrip, which, thanks to rampant inflation, was worth no more than around $20 in gold. Maybe there wasn’t much purchasing power in that salary, but then, Steuben did not have to pay for his meals—he received fifteen rations per day on account of his rank, while the members of his staff drew between three and five rations daily. Together, they could feed themselves quite well, and often they dined at the Peters’ table anyway.
But the Baron was no good at managing his money. He was not greedy, for he spent lavishly on his friends and frequently lent huge sums to help his junior staff members when they were down on their luck. Yet money flowed through his hands like water. His taste for expensive clothes did not help. One time he purchased eight plumes and twelve cockades—hat ornaments, in other words, hardly necessities—from a Philadelphia tailor for the princely sum of $2,200, more than thirteen times his monthly pay! It was fortunate that he had such a good friend in Richard Peters. Peters lobbied Congress on his behalf, making the perverse claim that Steuben—who “appears to be frugal and moderate in his expences”—could not be expected to support himself on the money he could draw from his (imaginary) European incomes. At Peters’s urging, Congress granted Steuben an additional $84 per month to cover his expenses as inspector.38
None of these matters was a serious interruption of the Baron’s grand work. He had set an ambitious schedule for himself and his staff, for he wanted to have the regulations finished, approved, printed, and ready for distribution to the army in time for training in the spring. He wasn’t too far off. The first half of the regulations was finished in February 1779. He submitted the second and more substantial half, the regulations for military conduct and administration, to Washington on March 5. Three weeks later, having addressed Washington’s concerns and revised the text, the Baron tendered the completed manuscript to Congress for final approval. Congress gave the book its imprimatur, and Steuben its thanks, on March 29, 17
79, ordering that the regulations be printed immediately. After four long years of fighting the British, the Continental Army finally had a standardized military code.39
STEUBEN’S MAGNUM OPUS bore the inelegant title Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, but in common parlance it soon acquired another name, derived from the color of the pasteboard covers used for the 1779 edition: the Blue Book. The production standards were perhaps a bit crude, but the contents were pure gold. Many military manuals had been published in the colonies prior to the war, or during the early years. Timothy Pickering, Washington’s adjutant general and one of Steuben’s allies on the Board of War, had himself written one of the best. But none of them could compare with Steuben’s in depth, concision, or originality. In a mere 150 pages of text and plates, the Baron had created one of the most significant and enduring documents in American military history.
The Blue Book’s many chapters form three distinct and very different parts: a drill manual for the infantry, a set of official regulations for the use of the entire army, and a treatise on the conduct of officers and enlisted men. The drill manual is the most famous part, the portion of the Blue Book most commonly associated with the Baron’s name. For its time and genre, it was uncommonly straightforward, easily grasped by officers with the most rudimentary literary skills.
The soldiers at Valley Forge commonly referred to Steuben’s tactical lessons as “the Prussian exercise”—not that they had any way of knowing that the drill they were learning was Prussian, but they knew that the Baron was, and so it was an easy assumption to make. Steuben, offhandedly and partly tongue in cheek, labelled his “discipline” in the same fashion. “My good republicans wanted everything in the English style; our great and good allies everything according to the French fashion,” he told a former Prussian comrade after the war. “And when I presented a plate of sauerkraut à la prussienne, they all came together to throw it out of the window. Nevertheless, by the force of proving by God-dam that my cookery was the best, I overcame the prejudices of the former; but the second liked me as little in the forests of America as they did on the plains of Rossbach.”40
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge Page 20