The Drillmaster of Valley Forge

by Paul Lockhart

  The style of Steuben’s “plate of sauerkraut” was Prussian, but in nearly every other respect it definitely was not. The drill with which most Continental soldiers were already familiar—the British manual of 1764 and books based upon it—was much closer to what Prussian soldiers learned than the Baron’s drill was. In the Seven Years’ War, the army of Frederick the Great had performed remarkably well against incredible odds, and nothing inspires imitation like success. Since the secret to Prussian excellence seemed to come from discipline, it was only natural to assume that drill held the key. The British army was no exception; much of British drill was based on its Prussian counterpart.

  Steuben did not copy the Prussian drill, or even adapt it. Rather, what he did was to incorporate the most important things about the way the Prussians fought—emphasizing firepower and speed of maneuver—and ideas from other tactical manuals into a cogent whole, while stripping it of all unnecessary ephemera, so it could be taught quickly and painlessly to amateur soldiers.

  “I have rejected every thing which tended only to Parade,” he explained to Congress, “and confined myself to what alone appeared to me absolutely necessary.”41 The “manual exercise,” though the least important part of the regulations, clearly showed the Baron’s commonsense approach. A good example is the command “Order…FIRELOCK!”—the simple act of carrying a musket from its upright position at the left shoulder down to the right side, so that the butt of the musket rested on the ground near the right foot. In British and Prussian drill, this command was executed with needless complexity. It took six distinct motions.* Certainly it looked impressive when done correctly and in unison by a whole battalion of crack troops, but was it necessary? Steuben didn’t think it was, and so he reduced the process from six motions to two: one to seize hold of the musket with the right hand, one to carry the musket to the right side and plant it on the ground. No superfluous flourishings of the musket, no pointless movements of the feet. It illustrated one of the primary tenets of Steuben’s gospel: keep it simple. In the Blue Book, form took a backseat to function.

  Infantry battalion deploying from column to line of battle by Guibert’s method, from Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States

  (Philadelphia, 1779).

  The most important elements of that function, though, were to be found farther along in the drill manual. Again, Steuben steadfastly refused to be constrained by the narrow horizons of his Prussian experience. In the Prussian infantry, columns deployed into line, and shifted back into column, through a process of wheeling: individual smaller units, like platoons within a battalion, would wheel ninety degrees in the same direction to form a line from a column, or vice versa. It worked well enough with highly trained troops, but even then it was cumbersome and time-consuming. A brilliant French tactician, the Comte de Guibert, proposed a much improved method in the early 1770s. In Guibert’s system, individual subunits arranged in a column would simply face to the right or left without wheeling, and march obliquely, one behind the other, in order to make the line. The method was far more efficient and faster than wheeling, and more flexible, too (see Figure 2).

  An army trained in Guibert’s method of deployment could also—with relatively little training—change formation during battle as required, and not just into lines or marching columns. It could form assault columns, called “columns closed in mass,” which were broader and shallower than marching columns but deeper than lines of battle, useful for short-range, rapid bayonet charges. Guibert’s system retained the firepower of traditional linear tactics while allowing a tactical flexibility that went beyond the capabilities of the Prussian army at its height. Guibert’s ideas were radical; even the French army rejected them initially, and did not adopt any of them until 1791. Yet in 1779, Steuben adopted these very same ideas for the Continental Army.42

  The remainder of the tactical portion of the Blue Book gave basic instructions for dealing with different kinds of terrain while on the march or in battle: how to pass safely through a narrow defile, how to march across an open plain in the presence of enemy cavalry, and so forth. To experienced commanders, such procedures might not have required explanation, but then, Steuben was not writing for them. His intent was to provide novice commanders with a time-tested set of tactical instructions. By ensuring that all commanders would approach similar problems in the same way, little was left to chance.

  The second part of the Blue Book, the regulations for military conduct, was not quite so pathbreaking but was equally vital. Here Steuben set forth basic procedures for the daily administration of the army: how to conduct a court-martial or inspect troops, what kinds of records all officers should keep, how public property was to be accounted for. Other sections addressed the safety and well-being of the troops. The Baron gave explicit directions on the manner in which regimental camps were to be laid out. He knew from experience that raw troops were lazy in matters of hygiene and sanitation, that untrained men were often inclined to eat inside their tents and to urinate or relieve their bowels immediately outside. This was why infectious diseases like smallpox and measles spread like wildfire through the ranks. That could not be tolerated. Officers and men alike would have to avail themselves of specially constructed “sinks”—pit latrines—for their bodily functions. Livestock would have to be slaughtered in designated butchering areas, and the offal appropriately disposed of some distance from the camp. Every activity had its place, each man his specific duty.

  The improper execution of guard duty was one of the Baron’s pet peeves, and so it received a single large chapter all to itself in the Blue Book. All the details of regimental guards were included: how and where guards should be placed, how passwords and countersigns were to be given, how officers should make their “grand rounds” to test their guards’ vigilance.

  Steuben devoted the last third of his book to a more philosophical purpose: to clarify the duties of all ranks in the army, and to imbue officers with a sense of the nobility of their calling. Despite the fearsome reputation of Prussian officers as brutal martinets, the Baron insisted that the secret to successful leadership was not fear but love. He could never forget the image of his men digging trenches through that churchyard in Breslau on a sweltering June day, the stench oppressing them as they toiled in the foul earth, or the overwhelming sense of concern and responsibility for their welfare that he felt as their lieutenant.

  There was something paternal about Steuben’s vision of officer-ship. The ideal officer was an ideal father, as measured in that era: stern, certain to punish when disobeyed, but patient, protective, and caring toward his “children.” He was not their friend and should never get too close to them, yet neither could he treat them with contempt or arbitrary severity. And he must share in their privations. This is the predominant theme in the final portion of the Blue Book. “The preservation of the soldiers health should be [the] first and greatest care” of regimental commanders. For a captain commanding a company, “His first object should be, to gain the love of his men, by treating them with every possible kindness and humanity.”

  The tome was not as complete as Steuben would have liked—it did not, for example, include brigade or divisional maneuvers—yet it was a remarkable achievement in that its significance went way beyond its intended primary function. It imposed order on an army that had very little order. It introduced the very latest in European tactical thought, some of which would not be tested in Europe until the armies of Revolutionary France swept away the detritus of the ancien régime and ushered in a new era in the history of warfare. And by establishing common procedure and a common professional ethos, it imparted uniformity. It made it possible for the Continental Army to be something other than a collection of small state armies under one command—to be the army of the United States, the only institution that brought together common folk from all of the states to work toward a common purpose.

  Washington was delighted with the final result. He, too, had a
hand in the writing of the book. As Steuben fed him the initial drafts, Washington went over them line by line, and passed them along to Generals Stirling and Arthur St. Clair for comment. The three men disagreed with the Baron only on minor matters of language or on extremely trivial issues. Washington didn’t like the command for aiming muskets—Steuben used “Present!” while his superior much preferred “Take Aim!” Stirling thought the distance between the officers’ tents and the cooking fires in Steuben’s model regimental camp was too short. Stirling and St. Clair were a tad confused by the concept of the oblique marching step. But all agreed that the Blue Book was a superior work, ideally suited to the American army. Washington was eager to see it put to practical use. “You will, I flatter myself, shortly have the satisfaction, so rarely enjoyed by Authors, of seeing your precepts reduced to practice—and I hope your Success will be equal to the merit of your work,” he wrote in final approval to Steuben.43

  The Baron would indeed see his “precepts reduced to practice” very soon, though it could not be said that he would find much satisfaction in it.

  CHAPTER 9

  The True Meaning of Discipline

  [MAY 1779–JULY 1780]

  If I still had the Prussian spirit, such a delay would exhaust my patience, but now I am so used to such negligence that very often I feel disposed to become negligent myself.

  STEUBEN TO BENJAMIN WALKER,

  FEBRUARY 23, 17801

  IT WAS THE VERY END of April 1779 when Steuben reunited with Washington and the army at Middlebrook, New Jersey. The army was just beginning to stir from the lethargy of winter quarters. The winter of 1779 had been one of comparative luxury: the weather had been mild, the supplies more bountiful. For the generals the season had been most notable for the fine living and the number of parties and balls; and nearly every one of the generals’ wives had shared in the revelry. The prevailing mood was one of guarded optimism. The French, it was presumed, would shortly be on their way to American shores. The end of the war couldn’t be too far away.

  The Baron was anxious to return to the army. His prolonged stay in Philadelphia was starting to get to him. He had assumed that since he could talk face-to-face with the Board of War at leisure, the organization of the inspector general’s office would be worked out in no time at all. But it wasn’t, even after General Washington prodded Congress to do something. “The immediate establishment of the Inspectorship on some definitive plan,” he reminded them in early January, “…is a matter of the utmost importance.” Yet Congress did nothing, and Steuben’s hands were tied. “Indeed this Department may be said to be only tolerated,” he complained. “It wants that Authority & support necessary to penetrate into the Abuses.”2

  Congress also dragged its feet when it came to money. Steuben had asked for compensation for his work, and that of his staff, on the Blue Book. The amounts were perfectly reasonable, he thought: $4,000 for himself, $1,000 for Fleury, $600 for Ben Walker, $500 for L’Enfant, and $400 for Duponceau. The Board of War agreed; Congress did not. Steuben’s main worry was for his staff, especially Fleury, who was deep in debt. He could think of only one explanation for Congress’s refusal: there must be a plot to discourage foreign officers and force them to return to Europe. The Baron had heard rumors to this effect, rumors that implicated Silas Deane’s many enemies in Congress…including Henry Laurens.

  Since Steuben had taken up residence in Philadelphia that winter, French and German officers by the score had sought him out, asking for his intercession with Congress and Washington: Could the esteemed Baron get them a commission, obtain for them a transfer to a cavalry regiment, help them win a promotion? He became an unofficial advocate for the expatriates in the Continental Army, and he could not help but sympathize with their sad tales of neglect at the hands of Congress.

  As he stewed over his predicament, the Baron became convinced that Henry Laurens must be behind Congress’s refusal to pay bonuses to his staff. One cool April evening, Laurens invited Steuben to dine with him, and Steuben could not restrain himself from challenging the former president. Just before dinner, he confronted Laurens: Why wouldn’t Congress pay his expenses, as they had promised him at York? Why wouldn’t they help his staff?

  Laurens, who was entertaining several friends besides the Baron that evening, was a bit put off by Steuben’s tone of voice. Patiently, he tried to explain that the Treasury was practically empty, so Congress just couldn’t hand out cash to everyone who felt he deserved it. He advised Steuben to wait, and not to press his demands until the country’s financial affairs were in better order.

  Steuben allowed that he could wait, but his assistants could not. Fleury was so strapped for cash that if Congress did not pay him for his work on the Blue Book, he would have to return to France. “If the case be so, that Colonel Fleury cannot stay with us unless Congress will do something for him…the consequence will be that he must go home,” Laurens responded testily. “I shall be very sorry for it.”

  The Baron, his face darkened and distorted by “Choler & rage,” snarled, “Then I shall go home. I will not stay.”

  Laurens tried to turn the conversation to something less serious, joking with the Baron, but with no effect. Steuben felt betrayed. He remained silent through dinner, and left the table much earlier than he usually did.

  It saddened Laurens to “upbraid a Man with whom I wished to have continued in friendship,” as he later told his son, almost apologetically. “But the times are distempered & the Divide of avarice & ambition are indefatigably improving them to their own advantages.”

  The friendship between Steuben and Henry Laurens ended when the two men parted company that night. Laurens scarcely ever mentioned Steuben’s name again, and Steuben continued to hold Laurens responsible for driving away foreign talent. “Doth yet Mr. H___y L_ ___ns,” he asked Richard Peters several months later, “send back the Officers who have come over here to defend his Country?” He added in a cold, oblique, but unmistakable reference to the Carolina shipping magnate: “I believe that in order to reconcile Heaven to us we should begin by hanging some Merchants who have troubled our affairs in such a manner by their mercantile spirit.”3

  AMONG THE MILITARY HEROES of the Revolution—Washington, Greene, Knox, Wayne, Lafayette—Steuben stands out as more flawed than most. It was not difficult to befriend him. “I was much pleased with the Baron,” said Polly Duane, daughter of New York politician James Duane, upon meeting Steuben for the first time in 1783. “There seems to be so much candor & honesty in his composition.”4 It took, however, a very patient and tolerant soul to sustain a friendship with him over the long haul. Fortunately there were such people in his life. Steuben’s friends saved him repeatedly, not just from his enemies, but also from himself.

  The Baron had neither home nor family to speak of. He had very limited written contact with his parents or his siblings, and he remained a lifelong bachelor. Without a conventional family to lend him emotional support, Steuben learned to assemble a makeshift family as he drifted through life. The friends he made—almost effortlessly—in Europe and in America became his surrogate family. In America, he attracted scores of admirers, men and women drawn to him by his wit and his frank, open manner, and by the way in which he seemed to embody the literary sophistication of the Enlightenment. Relatively few of these admirers, though, got to know the Baron as a man of flesh and blood.

  This was because he let very few people see him that way, for despite his sociability he was actually a very guarded man. Everyone in the army knew Drillmaster Steuben: a showman, loud and brash, who was both sharp-tongued and clownish at the same time, yet dedicated and hardworking. His friends in the high command—Knox, Wayne, Greene, Washington—knew him as a military expert of unparalleled learning, and as a bon vivant who enlivened raucous parties and elegant high-society gatherings alike with his deep, easy laugh. They knew, too, that he could be sensitive and short-tempered, and was prone to grandstanding, but they accepted this. When critiquing t
he first drafts of the Regulations, Arthur St. Clair and Lord Stirling suggested that the inspector general might benefit from incorporating portions of William Galvan’s drill manual into his own. They soon thought better of it. “Whether this could be recommended without hurting the Baron’s delicacy may be a doubt,” they concluded.5

  That delicacy could be very trying to those who became convenient targets for Steuben’s occasional angry outbursts, which were all too often directed at those he trusted most. Richard Peters was such a target on more than one occasion, but he was quick to forgive, just as Steuben was quick to apologize for his misdirected wrath. After a minor disagreement over the printing of the Blue Book, a dispute caused by Steuben’s paper-thin patience, Peters observed:

  I have the strongest Hopes…that Time with its lenient Hand will administer some Drug which will conquer the Irritability of your System. When this happy Day arrives I am clear that the little feverish Flights which have induced you to censure where no Blame was merited will no longer disturb your Rest or hurt the Sensibility of your Friends.6

  No one was more familiar with those “little feverish Flights” than Steuben’s two principal aides, Ben Walker and William (Billy) North. North, a young Massachusetts Yankee who was fluent in French, joined Steuben’s staff sometime in the autumn of 1779. Walker and North stayed by the Baron’s side to the end of his days, sharing his table and managing his finances as best they could. Steuben treated them like sons.