George Washington

by Stephen Brumwell

  No less important for patriot morale than developments to the north was the fact that, for all Howe’s best efforts, Washington and his main field army had not only endured but remained a force to be reckoned with. Although enlistments for the new army fell far below the numbers approved by Congress in September 1776, by the following summer the commander in chief and his Continentals, rather than Congress or its capital, had become both the symbol and defender of American liberty: as long as they remained in being, surviving the British Army’s attempts to destroy them, so did their cause. And, as would soon be seen, for all their disappointments and hardships, Washington and his army were still capable of taking the offensive.

  When Howe occupied Philadelphia, he encamped most of his army at the settlement of Germantown, about five miles to the north. The camp was not fortified with redoubts, as that would have suggested weakness; like Rall at Trenton, Howe had no doubt that his veteran regulars could handle any rebel assault. Yet Howe’s deployment proved too tempting for Washington and his generals to resist. A council of war on September 28 voted ten to five against attacking before anticipated reinforcements arrived; but another, on October 3, which benefited from intelligence that Howe had weakened his army with detachments, was unanimous that “a favorable opportunity offered to make an attack upon the troops which were at and near Germantown.”69

  The resulting plan shared elements with the daring assault on Trenton, involving a nighttime approach march by four converging columns to deliver a surprise attack at dawn. In fact, the plan was even bolder than the Trenton operation, as the target was not simply a single Hessian brigade, but a full British army estimated at 9,000 men. Washington’s attack force numbered about 11,000 men; 3,000 were militia, the rest Continentals. The two largest columns, each composed of two divisions plus a flanking brigade of Continentals, were once again commanded by Sullivan and Greene. The first would approach Germantown by the main road, Greene by a more looping route, respectively aimed at the center and right of the British camp. The other two columns, consisting of far weaker forces of militia, had a supporting role: operating out on the flanks, they were to swing round the British rear.

  Marching out on the evening of October 3, all four columns were expected to be in place, and ready to attack, by 2 a.m. on October 4. After a breather to finalize their dispositions, they were to assault the British pickets at exactly 5 a.m., and, like Grey’s men at Paoli, “with charged bayonets without firing.”70 Predictably enough, expectations of clockwork timing proved optimistic. Sullivan’s column, which Washington accompanied, had the most direct route. But his footsore Continentals, who had spent weeks making arduous forced marches, were unable to meet the schedule; it was daybreak before they reached within a mile of Howe’s outposts. Sent on a far longer route, Greene’s column lost a valuable hour after its guide took the wrong road. Despite these problems, when Sullivan’s advance units suddenly emerged from the thick fog that masked the countryside, surprise was achieved. The startled British pickets were forced back, and the heavily outnumbered light infantry behind them obliged to make a fighting withdrawal, contesting every fence and ditch. When Howe rode up to assess the situation, convinced that it was nothing more than a skirmish, he was swiftly disabused as a blast of canister rattled past him. In the confusion of the attack, Sir William’s dog went missing, falling into the hands of the rebels; a dog lover himself, Washington duly returned the hound with his compliments.71

  Despite initial success, crucial momentum was lost when Washington was persuaded to pause and tackle a small force of redcoats—Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Musgrave and about 120 of his 40th Foot—who had barricaded themselves inside the substantial stone-built Chew House. For the gunner Henry Knox, this “castle” was an irresistible target. Rather than isolate and bypass the strongpoint, Washington waited while Knox commenced an ineffective bombardment, and the infantry tried to break in. Musgrave’s band defied all efforts to pry them out, and in the time they bought, Howe’s main force formed itself to face the American attack.

  There were other consequences to the misguided assault on Chew House. Hearing the sound of heavy gunfire to his rear and assuming that Sullivan was in trouble, Anthony Wayne turned his lead division back to help. At much the same time, Greene’s delayed column came up on the left. Without consulting Greene, Major General Adam Stephen shifted his division toward the firing at Chew House. With the dense fog now thickened by clouds of gunsmoke, visibility was worse than ever, down to fifty yards. When Stephen’s men encountered Wayne’s, they opened fire on each other. To Washington it was this, “more than anything else,” that “contributed to the misfortune which ensued.” At that moment, Howe counterattacked, sending Major General James Grant’s brigades against the bewildered Americans. Wayne’s and Stephen’s men soon broke in panicked flight, defying all efforts to rally them; their ammunition dwindling, Sullivan’s also retreated, but steadily. Having entertained “the most flattering hopes of victory,” Washington and his men now saw it snatched away.72

  With each side suffering casualties similar to those sustained in the previous battle—Howe conceding 520 dead and wounded, Washington 650, and 400 more taken prisoner—Germantown was another victory for Howe, yet, once again, one from which he derived little concrete advantage. Washington told Hancock that “the day was rather unfortunate, than injurious.” The troops were “not in the least dispirited” and had gained invaluable combat experience. The British, too, were impressed with their enemy’s audacity and aggression: Captain Peebles of the Black Watch ranked the attack on Germantown as the “most spirited” that the Americans had ever made.73

  Congress agreed with Washington’s own optimistic assessment, unanimously resolving to thank him for his “wise and well concerted attack” and his officers and men “for their brave exertions.” It was even ordered that Washington should receive a commemorative medal.74 Alongside the praise came criticism. Major General Stephen, whose unauthorized advance was credited with triggering the disastrous outburst of “friendly fire,” was widely believed to have been drunk at the time. If the veteran Scot was inclined to tilt the rum jar or whiskey jug, he was not alone. In his journal, British Captain John André noted: “Several, not only of their soldiers, but officers, were intoxicated when they fell into our hands.”75 It was a hard-drinking age. Although Washington contented himself with a modest glass or two of Madeira in good company, such temperance was clearly unusual, particularly among military men: for example, the diary of John Peebles contains frequent references to becoming “fou”—drunk. Brigadier General Lord Stirling was equally fond of a drink, as Benjamin Rush observed, seeking relief in “toddy”—rum mixed with water and sugar; and just weeks after Germantown, Dr. Rush urged John Adams to convince his fellow congressmen to resolve “that if any major or brigadier general shall drink more than one quart of whiskey, or get drunk more than once in 24 hours, he shall be publicly reprimanded at the head of his division or brigade.”76 Whatever his drinking habits, it seems likely that Stephen, who had angered Washington with his rogue scout before Trenton and bogus reports since, was a marked man: a preliminary court of inquiry headed by Nathanael Greene was followed by a full court-martial. Presided over by John Sullivan, it found Stephen guilty of “unofficerlike behavior” and being “frequently intoxicated . . . to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” Washington approved the verdict, and Stephen was dismissed on November 20.77

  While Stephen became the scapegoat for Washington’s exasperating defeat, Colonel Musgrave was hailed as the hero of Howe’s hard-won victory. Visiting the battered and blood-spattered Chew House on the day after the battle, when the bodies of seventy-five Americans were still sprawled beneath its splintered doors and windows, Captain Ewald of the jägers marveled at Musgrave’s stand—and its ramifications: “This example of a single brave and intelligent man, through whom the entire English army was saved, shows what courage and decision in war can do.” Had Howe’s army been defeated,
he added, “all honor truly would have been lost.”78 Ewald was scarcely exaggerating. The destruction of Howe’s army, added to the elimination of Burgoyne’s, would have crippled Britain’s ability and resolve to continue waging the war: instead of denying the fact for a further six years, she must surely have acknowledged American independence far sooner. Long after the loss of America, the defense of Chew House was remembered by the 40th Foot, not least because it wiped away the stain left by its poor performance at Princeton. In 1790, Colonel Musgrave awarded a handsome silver medal to each survivor of the fight, stamped with a depiction of their regiment’s finest hour.79

  After his close shave at Germantown, Howe withdrew all his troops to Philadelphia. They were denied supplies from the surrounding countryside by Washington’s patrols, while American strongpoints on the Delaware River south of the city prevented British provision ships from getting through. An attempt to subdue Fort Mifflin, on Mud Island, was a miserable failure, while Fort Mercer, on the Delaware’s eastern shore at Red Bank, rebuffed a determined but misguided effort to take it by storm on October 22. Nearly 400 Hessians were killed and injured in the assault: their commander, the gallant Colonel Donop, was mortally wounded: he’d courted his last widow. The Americans finally evacuated their river defenses in mid-November, but by then the full cost of Howe’s obsession with Washington and Philadelphia had become all too apparent with the confirmation of Burgoyne’s capitulation at Saratoga.

  Soon after his Pyrrhic victory at Freeman’s Farm, Burgoyne had received a letter from Sir Henry Clinton, promising to support him by attacking the American forts on the Hudson River, guarding the vital Highlands some forty miles above New York City. True to his word, on October 3, Clinton advanced with 3,000 men and was soon making steady progress. The fort at Verplanck’s Point surrendered without a fight two days later, and on October 6, Forts Montgomery and Clinton, north of Peekskill, were both stormed. The next day the British had advanced another five miles up the river to capture the evacuated Fort Constitution. Clinton now detached 2,000 men under Major General John Vaughan to push upriver with supplies for Burgoyne. On October 15, within forty-five miles of Albany, Vaughan’s pilots refused to go farther; the general torched Esopus in his vexation. Worse still, Clinton was now ordered to send reinforcements to Howe’s army, necessitating the recall of the upriver detachment and placing him “under the mortifying necessity of relinquishing the Highlands and all the other passes over the Hudson, to be reoccupied by the rebels whenever they saw proper.”80

  By then the fate of Burgoyne’s army had already been sealed. Spurning the advice of a council of war which urged retreat, Burgoyne decided upon a fresh attempt to break through Gates’s lines. On October 7, this blow was checked at Bemis Heights. Once again General Arnold demonstrated his consummate combat leadership, intervening without authority at a pivotal moment and helping to shatter the British assault. Taking more casualties than he could afford, late on the following evening Burgoyne reluctantly began to withdraw. But he was now too late. With his own ascendant army swollen by incoming militia to twice the size of Burgoyne’s force, Gates blocked his retreat on October 12. Five days later Burgoyne surrendered on Gates’s pledge that his 6,000 men would be sent back to Europe. He had secured such generous terms because Gates remained uncertain of Clinton’s progress to the south and was unaware of his withdrawal. Realizing that Burgoyne’s repatriated troops would free others for service in America, Congress promptly repudiated the terms of the surrender “Convention.”

  Regardless of such wrangling, the fact remained that the Americans had knocked an entire British field army out of the war. Howe was widely blamed for the catastrophe: many rued his lost opportunities to crush the rebellion in 1776; others lamented his failure to cooperate with Burgoyne, with dire consequences that some officers had predicted when the fleet sailed from New York. Others, too, had played their part in the disaster: the ambitious and overconfident Burgoyne, who had refused to turn back when he still could; and Lord George Germain, the mastermind behind British strategy in London, for neglecting to ensure that his American campaigns of 1777 were sufficiently coordinated to complement each other.

  Besides its impact upon American morale, Saratoga had a fundamental effect on opinion in France. Although the government of the young Louis XVI had been negotiating with the American revolutionaries for some time and would surely have entered the war eventually, Burgoyne’s defeat, along with Washington’s strong showing at Germantown, expedited the process. Just months earlier, in August, Washington had doubted whether France would ever do more than “give us a kind of underhand assistance, that is supply us with arms etc. for our money and trade.” France would only enter the conflict if Britain had “spirit and strength to resent” her interference in the quarrel and declared war on the old enemy, he believed.81

  French-supplied munitions had been crucial in maintaining the revolutionary war effort: in 1777, they accounted for 90 percent of the Continental Army’s powder and shot, while five brass cannon captured by Howe’s army at Brandywine were French made. Volunteers from the French Army were also conspicuous among the foreigners who besieged Congress for commissions in the Continental Army, which only complicated Washington’s already chaotic command. They included the nineteen-year-old Marquis de Lafayette, the son of a colonel killed fighting the British at Minden in 1759. Lafayette arrived at Philadelphia in July 1777, just months after a visit to London, where his obliging hosts remained unaware of his ambitions to join the American rebels: he had thoroughly enjoyed the city’s delights, dancing at the house of Germain and meeting General Henry Clinton at the opera. While confessing himself young and inexperienced, to Washington’s consternation Lafayette clearly assumed that the major general’s rank he’d been given by Congress was not merely honorary and that a full Continental Army division would soon be at his disposal; as Washington explained to Congressman Benjamin Harrison, Lafayette had meanwhile agreed to accept a smaller command and had already applied, at the direction of John Hancock, for two aides-de-camp.82

  Many of the foreigners with the revolutionary forces were little more than mercenaries—adventurers hungry for employment, experience, and fast-track promotion. Lafayette was well aware that, by the time of his arrival, Americans were already “disgusted by the conduct” and pretensions of several Frenchmen who had gone before him. But Washington, who took Lafayette into his military “family” as a volunteer aide, swiftly discovered that he was no braggart or charlatan but was motivated by an unswerving belief in the cause. Lafayette was no less impressed by Washington. When he first met “that great man,” he recalled that “the majesty of his figure and his height were unmistakable,” while his welcome was “affable and noble.” The Virginian planter and the French aristocrat soon forged a strong and enduring friendship. For Lafayette, Washington may have helped to fill the void left by the soldier-father he had lost in infancy; yet while the marquis is often cast as a surrogate for the son Washington never had, despite the age difference between them their affectionate, bantering relationship was more fraternal; it recalls the bond between Washington and his half brother Lawrence, with the older man acting as mentor and role model for the younger. Like Washington, Lafayette was both a gentleman and a warrior; when the Frenchmen was shot in the leg at Brandywine, his commander made a point of reporting it to Congress. The marquis was still limping on November 25 when he distinguished himself at Gloucester, New Jersey, in a skirmish with a foraging party led across the Delaware River by Lord Cornwallis. With Washington’s backing, this “little success,” as Lafayette modestly called it, convinced Congress to give him a Continental division. On December 4 he inherited the Virginians of the disgraced Major General Stephen.83

  For all Washington’s skepticism about the intentions of Lafayette’s countrymen across the Atlantic, when news of Burgoyne’s capitulation reached Paris in December 1777, the French government swiftly committed itself to recognizing the United States and entering into an of
ficial alliance. The formal treaties were signed in February 1778, with a declaration of war with Britain following in July.

  Unquestionably, the Franco-American alliance changed the nature—and course—of the American War of Independence. In the sense that Burgoyne’s nemesis stemmed largely from Howe’s fixation upon Washington and Philadelphia, the earlier victories at Trenton and Princeton certainly contributed to this development. Yet Washington’s feelings about the momentous patriot victory at Saratoga were mixed. The contrast with his own defeats at Brandywine and Germantown was galling, his frustration and envy difficult to conceal. After news of Gates’s success over Burgoyne’s troops at Bemis Heights reached Washington’s army on October 15, General Orders announced that thirteen cannon would be fired that afternoon to salute the “Northern Army.” However, while congratulating his own men upon such a “signal victory,” Washington pointedly hoped that it would stimulate the army under “his immediate command” to win laurels of its own. After all, he announced, “this is the Grand American Army; and that of course great things are expected from it. . . . What shame and dishonor will attend us, if we suffer ourselves in every instance to be outdone?”84

  Washington’s concern that his own performance in Pennsylvania might be judged harshly against Gates’s at Saratoga emerged in a letter to his trusted friend Landon Carter, who had known him since he was a callow youngster defending Virginia’s frontier. Seeking to explain their mixed fortunes, Washington contrasted the situation of the two armies. Gates’s northern command had enjoyed support from a spirited force of “upwards of 12,000 militia.” His own situation in Philadelphia couldn’t have been more different: “the disaffection of [a] great part of the inhabitants of this state—the languor of others, and internal distraction of the whole, have been among the great and insuperable difficulties I have met with, and have contributed not a little to my embarrassments this campaign,” he wrote. Washington assured Carter that he did “not mean to complain,” although his anger and bitterness at the disadvantages he’d toiled under were all too evident.85