by Jack Kelly
Eleven
Fight as Well as Brag
1777
“He will never make a scholar,” young Anthony Wayne’s schoolmaster wrote to his father. “He may perhaps make a soldier, he has already distracted the brains of two-thirds of the boys under my charge, by rehearsals of battles, sieges, etc.”1 It was the late 1750s and Wayne’s playmates were reenacting the clashes of the French and Indian War then raging in the hinterlands.
Now, on the morning of September 11, 1777, a month after the patriots’ Bennington victory, the thirty-two-year-old Wayne was a soldier in earnest, a general hungry for the glory he had dreamed of as a boy. With a thick body and assertive black eyebrows, he stood sweating in the late-summer heat along the Brandywine Creek, a small river about twenty miles west of Philadelphia and only a short distance from the scene of his pretend skirmishes. The massed army of British general William Howe was marching toward his position. Now he would face musket balls and bayonets instead of clots of dirt and wooden swords, death and horrific wounds instead of mock charges and bloody noses.
* * *
The peace that followed the French and Indian War had dried up career opportunities for a military-minded youth like Wayne, so he learned the trade of surveyor. The Waynes had prospered for three generations in the agricultural enclave a day’s ride from Philadelphia. Anthony married Mary Penrose, known as Polly, and had a daughter and a son with her. He ably managed the family farm and tanning business. During the run-up to the Revolution, he plunged into Whig politics, winning a seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He eagerly read the military classics, drilled militia, and dreamed of martial fame.
When war came, Colonel Wayne recruited a regiment and found himself working on the defense of New York City. Henry Lee later noted that Wayne “had a constitutional attachment to the sword.”2 Wayne and his men were soon ordered to join the corps that General Sullivan was taking north to support the faltering invasion of Canada. Wayne acquitted himself in battle, but found little glory in the long retreat that followed.
He ended up at Fort Ticonderoga, his men weak, tattered, and disease-ridden. Yet the Pennsylvanian was an optimist. “Our country can absorb much & still rise,” he declared.3 He and his troops manned the fort during the summer of 1776, while Benedict Arnold furiously constructed the fleet that would protect them on Lake Champlain. After Arnold ended the threat, Horatio Gates left Wayne in charge of the fort. Commanding a sick, undersupplied garrison in a freezing wilderness far from the action was onerous duty. Wayne’s only consolation was that Congress raised him to brigadier general that winter.
In May 1777, Washington called Wayne back to help organize militia units near his Chester County home. It was the first time he had seen his wife, children, and mother in a year and a half. Wayne’s relationship with Polly, at first affectionate, had grown cold. Long separation and Wayne’s admitted “fondness for ladies’ society” contributed to the estrangement. Flirtatious as he was with women not his wife, Wayne’s real love was war itself.
The patriots spent much of the summer waiting to see what General Howe would do. The British commander remained entrenched in New York City, leaving George Washington in “a State of constant perplexity.” In the middle of July, Howe loaded sixteen thousand troops, heavy guns, and horses onto the ships of his brother’s fleet and headed out to sea. The Americans scratched their heads and laid bets on where he was headed. On August 22, word arrived at Washington’s New Jersey headquarters that the British fleet was sailing up Chesapeake Bay and would soon land sixty miles southwest of Philadelphia, threatening the capital. Washington put his army into motion.
The commander in chief choreographed a grand parade through Philadelphia to buck up the morale of local patriots. Anthony Wayne, who rode at the head of his brigade of Pennsylvania Continentals, reveled in the display. Some of his troops referred to him as Dandy Wayne. He was, an observer noted, “somewhat addicted to the vaunting style.” He readily admitted the predilection. “I have an insuperable bias in favor of an elegant uniform and a soldierly appearance,” he wrote to Washington. But Wayne was no popinjay. He could, it was said, “fight as well as brag.” Washington noted that Wayne was “more active and enterprising than judicious and cautious.”4
The ardent Wayne had suggested to his Excellency a plan to send out troops, including Wayne’s men, to strike the British hard on both flanks. He modestly admitted that the tactic was not his own—Caesar had used it against the Gauls. Washington decided to adopt a more conservative, defensive stance.
Wayne waited along the Brandywine early on that hot morning, listening to American riflemen sniping at the advancing British. The firing grew closer. Given the position of honor opposite Chadd’s Ford, Wayne had posted his Continentals on a rise that looked down on the waist-deep water. They stood in the center of the American position, ready to take the brunt of the enemy advance.
A red sun squinted through fog, promising a day of oppressive heat. The men fidgeted in bowel-loosening anticipation. Eager to fight, Wayne could only wait. Soon, forces led by Hessian general Wihelm von Knyphausen pushed the skirmishers back and approached the creek directly opposite Wayne’s position. General Knox’s cannon sang hosannas. The Germans blasted back with their own field guns. Wayne’s men kept up a rattling of musket fire. The enemy advanced no further.
Then a rumor: Scouts sent out by General Sullivan on the American right had spotted a large body of enemy troops moving northwest, left to right, along the river. Thousands of men, the reports said. Sixteen heavy guns. Generals Howe and Cornwallis, conspicuous in gold braid, at the head of the column.
Washington and his aides were mystified by “the very magnitude of the blunder.” For the British to divide their army directly in front of an enemy force was unorthodox and dangerous. It invited the Americans to fall upon and defeat one part of the force, then turn their attention to the other. That was just what Washington decided to do.
Wayne was thrilled. He was about to enact the type of soul-stirring head-on charge that had excited him since boyhood. Washington ordered his entire division across the creek.
But no. Another scouting mission had detected no movement on the opposite bank. The first move was likely a feint. Washington would not be fooled—he called off the attack. Wayne’s troops resumed their defensive positions and continued to trade shots with Knyphausen’s Hessians.
At two in the afternoon, a farmer showed up at the American headquarters with urgent news. He had seen two British brigades and the dust of a larger force approaching the Americans on their side of the Brandywine. Further investigation made the truth snap into clarity.
In a close replay of the battle on Long Island, General Howe had again outthought and outmaneuvered both Sullivan and Washington. Just as British general Grant had toyed with Lord Stirling at the beginning of that battle, Knyphausen had been “amusing” Wayne at the ford. Howe had marched seven thousand men twelve miles up the Brandywine and come over at a ford that Sullivan had left unguarded. Washington had missed a chance by recalling Wayne’s men. Howe had gambled on the American commander’s cautious indecision.
The British host now attacked the hasty lines manned by the brigades of Lord Stirling and Adam Stephen. Sullivan’s own men came up late. The roar of the enemy’s heavy field guns was heard in Philadelphia, twenty-five miles away.
General Greene’s troops, who had been standing behind the line as a reserve, rushed to the scene of the main fighting, covering the four miles in forty-five minutes. Wayne’s men waited nervously on the riverbank, ready to handle the Hessians even as they listened to fierce musketry explode to their rear.
All over the field, the fighting was “almost Muzzle to Muzzle,” as “small arms roared like the rolling of a drum.” A Pennsylvania militiaman reported that “bombshells and shot fell around me like hail, cutting down my comrades on every side, and tearing off the li
mbs of trees like a whirlwind.”5 The Americans began to give way before the merciless attack.
“Our way was over the dead and dying,” a retreating American soldier reported, “and I saw many bodies crushed to pieces beneath the wagons, and we were spattered with blood.” A private described the battle as “Cannons Roaring muskets Cracking Drums Beating Bumbs Flying all Round, men a dying.”6
In front of Wayne’s troops, a hammering artillery duel filled the field with smoke. The Hessians took advantage of the thick haze to come pouring across the Brandywine. Wayne saw glory leak away. His men fought well in a losing cause. Like the rest of the army, they were forced back. They had to relinquish their field guns as the enemy overran them. The Americans backpedaled toward Philadelphia, having lost more than a thousand men.
* * *
Derogatory rumors about Washington’s qualities as commander began to circulate just as they had a year earlier when Howe drove him from New York. The grumbling was justified. Washington had shown that he could organize and sustain an army, but on the battlefield he seemed an inept tactician. Even Nathanael Greene was reported to have commented, “The General does want decision. For my part, I decide in a moment.”7
Through “a variety of perplexing Manoevres” over the next couple of weeks, Howe kept the American army off balance and continued to threaten Philadelphia. The American troops, “nearly without shoes or winter clothes and often without food,” marched 140 miles in eleven days.8 One British feint sent the members of Congress fleeing the city in the middle of the night.
Anthony Wayne’s game performance along the Brandywine impressed Washington, who sent him out with a 1,500-man brigade to keep an eye on Howe’s army. Intimate with the terrain, Wayne posted his men in a hidden camp only four miles from the British. He advised Washington, “For God’s sake, Push on as fast as possible.” Washington declined the invitation to launch a full-scale battle. He sent Wayne more ammunition but warned him to “take care of Ambuscades.”9 Wayne planned an attack on the British rear guard for the morning of September 21. He failed to take care of ambuscades.
While Wayne’s men huddled in makeshift huts or gathered around campfires near the Paoli Tavern, a British force, alerted by local loyalists, was marching toward them through the darkness. British general Charles Grey gave orders for the soldiers of his battalion to unload their muskets or remove the flints. They were to rely on their bayonets rather than risk shooting their comrades in the dark.
At midnight they came stampeding into the American camp and attacked the men they could see silhouetted against the fires. Wayne galloped among the tents to alert his men, but British soldiers were able to mingle with his troops before they could form a line or run. The violence became ugly. The British drove the points of their bayonets into human flesh and slashed opponents with swords. An officer described it as a “dreadful scene of Havock.”10
Wayne was able to muster his troops and save his field guns as he organized a hasty retreat. Civilians found fifty-three bodies on the battlefield in the morning and buried the fallen in a common grave.
“No-Flint” Grey acquired a reputation as a butcher. Stories of the merciless bayoneting of men trying to surrender gained wide currency. But giving quarter in the heat of battle was always discretionary, and the wholesale slaughter of prisoners was belied by the fact that Grey led away seventy of Wayne’s men as captives. Yet the battle lived in history as the “Paoli Massacre.”
Wayne would be acquitted with “highest honor” by a court-martial investigating his conduct in the battle. But the misadventure remained for him a keen embarrassment, one he was determined to avenge.
* * *
Howe feinted an attack on Washington, then marched into Philadelphia unopposed on September 26. He stationed some of his men in the city and encamped most in the northern suburb of Germantown, a row of one hundred houses and shops along the north-south road out of town. Washington gathered his army about twenty miles north of this village, hoping to pull off a repeat of the raid on Trenton. He wanted to hit Howe one more time before cold weather brought an end to the campaign.
Although Wayne and his wife had drifted apart emotionally, he and Polly continued to correspond. “Every Artery beats in unison,” he wrote to her as he prepared for the attack, “and I feel unusual Ardour.”11
The night of October 3, the Continental Army marched sixteen miles along four separate roads to carry out Washington’s typically complicated battle plan. Around eight in the morning, the troops under Wayne and Sullivan ran into the popping fire of British pickets. The enemy gave way. Wayne led forward his panting, cheering men. The sight of retreating redcoats thrilled them. For the first time in the war, an entire British army was fleeing before an American attack. For more than a mile, Wayne’s Continentals drove the enemy. Sullivan’s brigade pushed ahead on the other side of the road.
Wayne’s men had not forgotten the Paoli battle and “took Ample Vengeance for the Night’s work,” Wayne later wrote to his wife. “The Rage and fury of the Soldiers, were not to be Restrained.” 12
Then fog, smoke, confusion, lack of ammunition, tangled communications, and friendly fire combined to cancel the victory. Suddenly, it was the Americans who were retreating.
Critical mistakes let the chance slip. Some British infantrymen had taken refuge in the stone house of Benjamin Chew on the north end of Germantown. Henry Knox, ill served on this occasion by his voluminous military reading, remembered that a commander should never leave a castle manned in his rear. The pointless fighting around the Chew house delayed the reserves needed for the actual battle up front.
General Adam Stephen, marching with Greene’s division, heard the commotion at the Chew House and veered off without orders. Coming on Wayne’s brigade in “thickest fog known in the memory of man,” his troops opened fire on their own men. The clash broke the cohesion of both groups and accelerated the retreat. Stephen was blamed for the debacle and cashiered, although he was not, as accused, drunk during the battle. His military career had begun fighting beside Washington at Jumonville Glen. It ended at Germantown.
“A windmill attack was made upon a house,” Wayne later stated, referring to the futile assault that wasted time at the Chew mansion. “Confusion ensued and we ran away from the arms of victory open to receive us.”13
Yet for all their mistakes, the Americans remained upbeat. The thrill of watching the best army in Europe run before them in a pitched battle softened the regret of having to “leave the ground to a conquered foe.”
Thomas Paine, who breakfasted with Washington the day after the battle, correctly observed that the Americans could only acquire the art of war “by practice and by degrees.” They could “feel themselves more important,” he said, as they trudged into winter quarters.14
The Continentals had not pulled off another Trenton, but Washington’s audacious plan had come breathtakingly close to succeeding. His soldiers, Washington reported to Congress, had “gained what all young troops gain by being in actions.”15 They were learning.
Twelve
Something More at Stake
1777
Facing increasing dangers as he edged southward, British general John Burgoyne would have preferred General Howe to have come up the Hudson to bring him aid rather than travel south to attack Philadelphia. But the flamboyant Burgoyne remained confident of reaching Albany. “Britons never retreat,” he told his men.1 He still thought of his army as an irresistible force.
Horatio Gates hardly gave the impression of an immovable object. His receding chin, thin gray hair, and spectacles suggested a counting house clerk rather than a military hero. But following the fall of Ticonderoga, Congress had had enough of General Philip Schuyler. They wanted a man who could inspire militia and who knew how to fight. They gave Gates, the former British major, his long-sought independent command.
Under
Schuyler, the American troops had fallen back all the way to the juncture of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, barely ten miles north of Albany. Gates arrived there on August 19. He scorned advice from a disappointed Schuyler, who wrote, “I have done all that could be done . . . it is left to you, General, to reap the fruits of my labors.”2 In fact, neither general had played a role in the serious check that John Stark’s men had delivered Burgoyne’s forces at Bennington three days earlier.
The new commander sent Schuyler to Albany to attend to the army’s supply problems. In camp, Gates found troops who had endured nothing but defeat and backward movement. His arrival, a soldier said, “raised us, as if by magic. We began to hope and then to act.”3
More help came. Daniel Morgan, released from captivity, had rejoined the army in January 1777, and Congress had promoted him to colonel. Washington, impressed with Morgan’s grit, wanted him to lead an entire regiment of mobile fighters. His men would dress in hunting shirts, carry rifles, and intimidate their enemies by “screaming and yelling as the Indians do.” Residents of northern New York wanted these hardy soldiers in particular to help neutralize the scourge of Burgoyne’s Indians. “Oh for some Virginia rifle-men!” cried a citizen of Albany. Washington hurried Morgan north. “I know of no Corps so likely to check their progress,” he wrote to Morgan, “as the one you Command. I have great dependence on you, your Officers and Men.”4
Another, more problematic, fighter came to Gates’s aid as well. During the summer, Benedict Arnold had rushed westward to help stop a second arm of the enemy invasion force. British general Barry St. Leger had brought a force of regulars, loyalists, and Indians down the Mohawk Valley from Lake Ontario to reinforce Burgoyne. A bloody battle with local militiamen at Oriskany and a ruse cooked up by Arnold had prompted the Indians to depart and forced St. Leger’s retreat.
Gates quickly ordered Arnold to rejoin the main army. The two had worked together the year before, but even then Gates had recognized “the warmth of General Arnold’s temper.” Now Arnold was on edge because Congressional politicians had refused to make him a major general in the February round of promotions, during which they had also passed over John Stark. Although they got around to raising Arnold in May, seniority left him suffocated under less experienced officers. He had gone so far as to tender his resignation, then suspended the action to attend to the current crisis. Arnold’s friendship with Schuyler made Gates wary. Arnold found himself welcomed at headquarters “with the greatest coolness” and quickly took offense. His prickly, presumptuous personality rubbed his commander the wrong way. Trouble was brewing.