8

Victory or Death

Lacking the boats he needed to ferry his troops across the Delaware River and continue hounding Washington’s army, on December 14, 1776, William Howe called a halt to the victorious campaign that had begun on Long Island four months earlier, quartering his redcoats and Hessians in a great swathe across New Jersey. The general himself retired to New York, keen to enjoy its pleasures. He no doubt felt that he’d earned them: with Charles Lee captured, Congress fled to Baltimore, and Washington chivvied into Pennsylvania, the revolutionaries’ cause appeared to be teetering on the very brink of collapse. To cap his triumph, Howe had just received the coveted red ribbon of the Order of the Bath from King George III as a reward for trouncing the rebels.

The temptation to push future operations into Pennsylvania and capture Philadelphia now prompted Sir William to drastically revise his projected strategy for 1777. At the end of November, he had envisaged that no fewer than 10,000 of his men would strike north up the Hudson when the new campaign opened, cooperating with a fresh expedition down the river by British forces in Canada. An equal number would attack Boston; that force would advance from a new base at Newport, Rhode Island—which a detachment under Clinton captured on December 8. Allowing 7,000 men to garrison that port and New York, Howe’s plan allocated 8,000 troops to cover New Jersey and pin down Washington by menacing Philadelphia. This scheme involved 35,000 men in all, and Howe had requested a hefty reinforcement of 15,000 to implement it. However, the unexpectedly rapid recovery of New Jersey convinced him to reshuffle his priorities: under a fresh plan, sent to Lord George Germain on December 20, the main offensive was now to be directed against Washington in Pennsylvania. In consequence, the projected drive against New England from Rhode Island was postponed until the reinforcements arrived, while a mere 3,000 men would hover on the Lower Hudson, to screen New Jersey and “facilitate in some degree the approach” of the northern army from Canada.1

To ensure that his army could push swiftly forward across the Delaware River as soon as it froze thick enough to support his men and guns and give the maximum protection to New Jersey’s Loyalists, Howe’s army was spread along a very extensive line of cantonments, stretching from Paulus Hook on the Hudson to the banks of the Delaware River. The chain’s southern end, on the Delaware itself, was tethered to outposts at Bordentown, Burlington, and Trenton. Each settlement was held by brigade-strength detachments of three battalions; save for the Highlanders of the 42nd, all were Hessians. Some twelve miles farther back at Princeton was a strong supporting force of redcoats: five battalions of infantry plus three troops of light dragoons. Farther back still, on the Raritan River, sizable detachments held Hillsborough and Brunswick. Smaller bodies of troops were distributed between another twelve posts running north. Overall command of the occupying forces in New Jersey rested with Howe’s crony, Major General James Grant, who made his headquarters at Brunswick, more than thirty miles from the Delaware.

By any usual rule of military procedure, Grant’s three advanced posts would have been deemed dangerously isolated and exposed. But as intelligence suggested that patriot morale was in a tailspin and Washington’s performance during the summer and autumn had scarcely suggested audacity, there seemed little reason to fear for them. This was certainly the view of Grant, whose recent experiences on Long Island and Manhattan had done nothing to alter the opinions of the rebels he’d notoriously voiced in the House of Commons. Grant’s perspective was shared by the commander at Trenton—the most vulnerable post of all—Colonel Johann Rall. Although advised to construct a redoubt for his artillery, Rall neglected to do so. Trusting to their bayonets alone, his men had already routed the American rebels at White Plains and Fort Washington; should they have the temerity to attack him at Trenton, they would meet the same response.2

Far from dissolving, as Howe and his commanders believed, Washington’s army on the Pennsylvanian side of the Delaware was slowly regaining strength. The indefatigable Major General Sullivan had joined on December 20 with 2,000 of the troops recently commanded by the unfortunate Charles Lee. Another 500 Continentals under Horatio Gates arrived from Ticonderoga, salvaged from Philip Schuyler’s shattered northern army; Gates soon left for Philadelphia, but his men stayed. Among them was a sixteen-year-old fifer, John Greenwood of Boston, later to become Washington’s dentist. As Christmas approached, Washington commanded a respectable force of about 6,000 men fit for duty. With many Continental enlistments due to expire at midnight on December 31, Washington was determined to preempt Howe’s advance on Philadelphia and land a blow of his own while he still had an army to command. Indeed, Washington had been contemplating an “important stroke” against the enemy as early as December 14; a week later, on December 21, Pennsylvania congressman Robert Morris wrote to him hoping that the rumors he had heard of his plans to “cross into the Jerseys” were true.3

Washington’s precise objective was influenced by a series of independent spontaneous risings against the royal forces. Goaded by the rampant and indiscriminate plundering of Howe’s foraging parties, in late December, New Jersey’s inhabitants finally began turning upon their occupiers; rebel militiamen, who had been conspicuous by their absence during Howe’s advance, now mobilized and fought back on the Delaware front. Rall’s exposed brigade at Trenton came under mounting pressure, with constant, niggling harassment leaving his men exhausted and edgy. The strain on the Germans only intensified when bands of Pennsylvanian militia pitched in, mounting raids across the Delaware. Although spurning advice to fortify Trenton, Colonel Rall repeatedly appealed for reinforcements. After he wrote to General Grant three times in one day the Scot replied that there was no cause for alarm. After all, he reasoned, the rebel army in Pennsylvania numbered no more than 8,000 men, and they were shoeless, “almost naked . . . and very ill-supplied with provisions.” Beyond sending this blithe reassurance, Grant did nothing.4

Six miles south of Trenton, at Bordentown, Rall’s sector commander, Colonel Carl von Donop, was also becoming increasingly troubled by another force of New Jersey militia, under Colonel Samuel Griffin. The significance of their activities was emphasized in a message that arrived on December 22, sent by Washington’s adjutant general, Joseph Reed. Just weeks earlier Reed had wounded Washington deeply by criticizing his leadership to Charles Lee, but he now made ample amends. Raised in Trenton and educated at New Jersey College—the future Princeton University—Reed knew the locality intimately. Colonel Griffin’s progress at the head of a spirited militia had created a fine opportunity for action, Reed argued. He suggested that they should either reinforce the aggressive Griffin or mount a separate attack. In his opinion, “the latter bids fairest for producing the greatest and best effects.” Above all, Reed urged, it was necessary to do something, and soon. With the credit of the cause expiring, “even a failure” was preferable to inaction. Surely, the “scattered divided state of the enemy” afforded “a fair opportunity” for an offensive. He added: “Will it not be possible my dear General for your troops or such part of them as can act with advantage to make a diversion or something more at or about Trenton—the greater the alarm, the more likely success will attend the attacks.” There was no time to lose: “Our affairs are hasting fast to ruin if we do not retrieve them by some happy event.”5

As emphasized, in urging an offensive, Reed was recommending a response that Washington was already pondering. If, as seems likely, the customary council of war was summoned to debate the best course of action, no official record survives. Beyond doubt, it was swiftly decided to follow Reed’s advice. On December 23, Washington replied that the “attempt on Trenton” was scheduled for “Christmas day at night,” with the attack to go in “one hour before day” on December 26. The need for secrecy was paramount. “For heaven’s sake keep this to yourself, as the discovery of it may prove fatal to us, our numbers, sorry I am to say, being less than I had any conception of—but necessity, dire necessity will—nay must justify any attempt.” Indeed, Washington told Reed, he now had “ample testimony” of Howe’s intention to push on to Philadelphia immediately the ice in the Delaware River was strong enough. His plan was to strike first while the enemy was distracted by the militia: in conjunction with Colonel Griffin, Reed was ordered to attack as many of their posts as possible, thereby causing maximum confusion.6

By then, Griffin’s militia had already played a crucial role in Washington’s unfolding plan. News of a sizable concentration of rebels at the village of Mount Holly, some twelve miles south of Bordentown, had prompted Donop to march there with his entire command and confront them on December 23. After a brisk skirmish the militia was swiftly dispersed, but events then took an unexpected, and momentous, turn. That arch-professional, Captain Ewald of the jägers, could scarce credit what he witnessed with his own eyes: Donop, “who was extremely devoted to the fair sex, had found in his quarters the exceedingly beautiful young widow of a doctor.” The smitten colonel stayed put for the next three nights, only shifting on the morning of December 26. Instead of being poised with his men at Bordentown—within supporting distance of Trenton—“to the misfortune of Colonel Rall,” Donop was more than a day’s march away at Mount Holly, “detained there by love.”7

On Christmas Eve, as preparations for the attack on Trenton were under way, Washington’s intelligence-gathering operation continued. In New Jersey, Reed liaised with Griffin and his militia, seeking to pinpoint the whereabouts of Donop’s roving command. That same day, Captain Ewald recalled, “a trumpeter arrived in Mount Holly from General Washington,” inviting Donop to exchange prisoners. This, as Ewald soon divined, was no more than “a ruse” to confirm the colonel’s absence from Bordentown.8

Washington meanwhile finalized the details of the Boxing Day assault on Trenton, although once again there is no formal record of any council of war. The senior officers who were on hand for consultation that Christmas Eve provide a cross-section of the army’s unusually diverse leadership. Like Washington himself, Brigadier Generals Adam Stephen and Hugh Mercer had cut their teeth fighting the French and Indians in the Ohio Valley in the 1750s; during that same war, another of his brigadiers, Arthur St. Clair, had been an officer in the Royal American Regiment, soldiering alongside General Wolfe at the famous sieges of Louisbourg and Quebec; before winning acclaim for his courage and leadership at Bunker Hill, John Stark of New Hampshire had already survived many scrapes on New York’s frontier as an officer in the celebrated Rogers’s Rangers, serving with the late Lord Howe and still venerating his memory. Others present with Washington’s army—Major Generals Nathanael Greene and John Sullivan and Colonels John Glover and Henry Knox—had learned their new trade since 1775. Despite their differences in age, experience, and background, all were now veterans and, like their commander, eager to avenge the humiliations of the past summer.

Washington and his officers agreed upon an ambitious, three-pronged attack. The strongest column, consisting of 2,400 Continentals under Washington’s personal command, would cross the Delaware at McConkey’s Ferry about nine miles above Trenton, then surprise the town from the north. That force would split into two divisions, headed by Greene and Sullivan, with each taking different roads. Washington’s old comrade Adam Stephen and his brigade of Virginian Continentals formed the advanced guard; they were to be accompanied by a detachment of artillerymen without cannon, but carrying drag ropes to haul away the enemy’s guns should opportunity offer and tools to spike them if they couldn’t be moved. The succeeding brigades were allocated no fewer than eighteen field-pieces, an exceptionally high ratio of guns to men;9 for a small force, it packed a potentially powerful punch. Washington’s artillery commander, Colonel Knox, was entrusted with directing the embarkation of the men and guns at McConkey’s Ferry, to proceed “as soon as it begins to grow dark.” Once across the Delaware, the detachment would advance in “profound silence” with “no man to quit his ranks on the pain of death.” If all went smoothly, the leading brigades would hit Trenton at 5 a.m. on December 26.10

Meanwhile, a force of about 800 Pennsylvania militia under Brigadier General James Ewing was to cross the Delaware close to Trenton, secure the bridge over Assunpink Creek, which marked the southern limit of the settlement, and occupy its far bank, so blocking any breakout by the garrison in that direction. The third column, consisting of 1,800 Philadelphia Associators and Rhode Island Continentals under Colonel John Cadwalader, who had been appointed brigadier general of militia, was to cross the Delaware farther downstream, at Bristol and attack any Hessians and Highlanders still in the vicinity of Bordentown and Black Horse. If Cadwalader could “do nothing real,” he should “at least create as great a diversion as possible,” Washington implored.11

Despite Washington’s efforts to impose secrecy, Major General Grant received advance intelligence that the rebels were contemplating attacks on both Trenton and Princeton; the spy has never been identified, but whether leaked by accident or design, his or her information must have originated with someone privy to the deliberations of December 22. Still inclined to underestimate the Americans, Grant doubted whether such a bold attempt would actually be made, yet he didn’t question the veracity of the report and therefore urged Rall to be on his guard. Grant’s warning reached Rall on the evening of Christmas Day, by which time two American deserters and a pair of local loyalists had already informed him that Washington’s army was preparing to move: a crossing of the Delaware, targeted at Trenton, looked imminent. But Rall remained unperturbed. Like Grant, he couldn’t credit that the rebels would dare to attack him in strength. And if they did, so much the better: the colonel was confident that his grenadiers and fusiliers, wearied though they were by incessant alarms, would deal with Washington’s rabble as they had done before—with professional discipline and cold steel.12

Washington’s daring plan to strike at Rall hinged upon precise timing. The troops must be ready to cross the Delaware by nightfall, giving them long enough to reach Trenton before dawn. Yet the operation was soon lagging badly behind schedule. Many of the Continentals were weary, poorly clothed, and ill shod, and their advance to the three assembly points adjoining the west bank of the Delaware was painfully slow. The weather, which had been sunny, now worsened with a vengeance. With darkness, drizzle began to fall; it soon thickened into rain, and by late evening, as the men neared the river, they were shuffling into the teeth of a storm loaded with snow, sleet, and hail. That evening, the increasingly severe conditions stymied both of the downriver operations intended to support the main attack under Washington. At their designated crossing point below Trenton, Ewing’s militia met an impassable combination of jumbled ice and swiftly flowing channels that defied attempts to cross either by boat or on foot. Brigadier Cadwalader’s command, which now hoped to target Donop at Mount Holly, encountered equally discouraging obstacles; after moving downriver to Dunks’s Ferry, several hundred men managed to reach the Jersey shore, but the bulk of the brigade and its artillery were unable to follow. Benjamin Rush, who was with Cadwalader, recalled how “great bodies of floating ice rendered the passage of the river impracticable,” forcing them to turn back “in a heavy snow storm in the middle of the night.”13

At McConkey’s Ferry, Washington still had no inkling that everything now depended upon his own column. By midnight on Christmas Day 1776, the crossing finally got under way as the troops embarked aboard a motley assemblage of craft: these included swart, sturdy, and stable flat-bottomed Durham boats, usually used for carrying freight on the Delaware but now packed with shivering soldiers, and ferries capable of transporting and unloading the guns, their ammunition carts, and teams of draught horses. Here, too, the river was a daunting obstacle. Besides the challenges posed by the unrelenting storm, the biting cold, and the intense darkness of the night, the boatmen had to counter a swift current that brought great cakes of ice swirling down the main channel, then find a way through the crusts that buttressed the river’s banks. Plying their oars and setting poles and urged on by the booming commands of the colossal Knox, they succeeded in getting the column across without losing a single man or gun.

It was a remarkable achievement, but, as Washington reported to John Hancock, “the quantity of ice, made that night, impeded the passage of boats so much, that it was three o’clock before the artillery could all be got over, and near four, before the troops took up their line of march.”14 There was now no chance of surprising Trenton under cover of night. But a withdrawal, with the enemy likely to interrupt any reembarkation, was unthinkable. The day before, Dr. Rush had called upon Washington at his headquarters to give assurances of Congress’s continuing support in such trying times and noticed him “play with his pen and ink upon several small pieces of paper.” Rush remembered: “One of them by accident fell upon the floor near my feet. I was struck with the inscription upon it. It was ‘Victory or Death’”: Washington had been writing the “countersign,” or password, to be used by his commanders during the impending attack.15 True to his uncompromising motto, he now “determined to push on at all events.”

Screened by an outlying cordon of sentries, Washington’s detachment prepared to march onward. Two forty-strong advance parties under Captains William Washington—a distant cousin—and John Flahaven moved out first: their task was to establish roadblocks three miles outside Trenton, detaining anyone coming in or out of the town. They were followed by Stephen’s advance guard of Virginians, then the main body. This marched off in one long column, sodden, numbed, and lashed all the while by the continuing storm. In the grim conditions, several dog-tired men fell out. At least two froze to death. The icy weather nearly proved fatal to Washington, who rode along the column, encouraging his troops. As Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick of the Connecticut troops testified, in “passing a slanting, slippery bank,” the hind feet of Washington’s horse slid from under him. He was only preserved by his strength and horsemanship, gripping his mount’s mane and yanking back its head until it recovered balance. Bostwick was equally impressed by the calm advice he heard Washington give to his weary men—“Soldiers keep by your officers. For God’s sake, keep by your officers”—delivered “in a deep and solemn voice.”16

After about five miles, when the column reached the halfway mark at the Birmingham crossroads, it split into its two divisions for the final approach. Greene’s took the upper or Pennington Road to Trenton, Sullivan’s the lower River Road. Each had roughly the same distance to march and were to attack as soon as they had pushed in the enemy’s pickets. Now, as his still-undetected troops neared their objective, Washington was astounded by the unexpected appearance of a band of Virginians heading toward him from the direction of Trenton. On Stephen’s orders, but without Washington’s authorization, these men had crossed the Delaware on Christmas Day on a mission to exact vengeance for a comrade killed in recent skirmishing with the Hessians. That very night, while Washington’s command was converging on McConkey’s Ferry, they had attacked a Hessian picket at Trenton and alarmed the whole garrison. This allegedly caused Washington to round on his old comrade and angrily accuse him of jeopardizing the entire operation. In fact, Stephen’s raid worked to Washington’s advantage, convincing Rall that this was the attack that Major General Grant had warned against and that the immediate danger was over; as Joseph Reed put it, this “truly casual or rather providential” event “baffled his vigilance.”17

At 8 a.m. on December 26, when the men of Greene’s division emerged from sheltering woods and began trotting across a field on the outskirts of Trenton, surprise was still on their side. The Hessian guard post on the Pennington Road spotted them but, with the storm in their faces, had trouble establishing their identity and numbers. After the Americans opened fire, the Hessians waited for them to come closer, gave a volley of their own and then made a disciplined and orderly withdrawal. Washington, who longed to have such professional troops under his own command, noted with admiration: “They behaved very well, keeping up a constant retreating fire from behind houses.”

Remarkably, Sullivan’s division on the lower road launched its attack just three minutes after Greene’s. Both advanced with determination, pushing on at “a quick step.”18 As Washington testified in his report to Hancock, all the hardships of the night did nothing to “abate their ardor” as they closed in on the enemy. Indeed, “each seemed to vie with the other in pressing forward.” Confronted by this sudden onslaught, the Hessians tumbled out of their billets and barracks and began forming up across the town’s two main thoroughfares, King Street and Queen Street. To Washington, who was observing developments from high ground to the north, they seemed bewildered, “undetermined how to act”; despite the enduring legend, they weren’t drunk, just worn out by sleepless nights—and understandably shocked to find hundreds of ragged rebels advancing upon them from out of a swirling snowstorm. When the Hessians wheeled out two guns, the advance party under William Washington rushed forward and captured them. Captain Washington and his young second in command, Lieutenant James Monroe, were severely wounded during the fight; Washington survived to win a reputation as a brave and effective cavalry commander, Monroe to become the fifth president of the United States of America.19

By now, Knox had placed six guns under Captain Thomas Forrest and Alexander Hamilton at the northern heads of both streets, which acted like funnels for round shot and canister, and immediately opened fire on the cramped enemy; crucially, although most of the muskets on both sides were immediately made useless by the wet, the artillery was still able to function.20 When the Hessians sought refuge in side streets they became embroiled in a close-quarters fight with Washington’s Continentals. All the while, snow fell and the storm howled. As Nathanael Greene wrote to his wife, Catherine, the combined violence of man and nature evoked “passions easier conceived than described.”21 On horseback in the midst of his confused, milling men, Colonel Rall tried to regain the initiative by ordering a bayonet charge to punch through the encircling Americans. But Knox’s massed artillery took its toll, forcing Rall to retreat to an apple orchard on the eastern outskirts of the town.

Early in the engagement, several hundred Hessians had withdrawn across the Assunpink Bridge and the creek’s upstream fords—the very openings that Ewing’s aborted column had been sent to seal. Rall’s prospects of saving the rest of his command by following suit were dashed after Sullivan’s men swung round the southern end of Trenton. When Rall fell from his horse, mortally wounded, his men swiftly lost heart. Outgunned and hemmed in on three sides, they lowered their regimental colors and laid down their muskets. In just forty-five minutes, Rall’s three crack regiments had been smashed. Some 500—about a third of the garrison—escaped before Washington’s net drew tight, but of the rest, more than 100 had been killed or wounded and 900 captured. Remarkably, given the confused and congested nature of the fighting, Washington’s troops sustained just a handful of killed and wounded.

Elated by this swift victory, Washington pondered his next move. After all their hardships, capped by the adrenalin rush of combat, his men were mentally and physically exhausted. In addition, many of them were toasting their success in captured rum, an understandable reaction to their ordeal, but one that rendered them unfit for further duty. Above all, Washington’s force was perilously small. As he explained to Hancock, if the supporting columns under Brigadiers Ewing and Cadwalader had been able to cross the Delaware, his combined army could have driven the enemy from all their posts below Trenton. But without them he was outnumbered, while the presence of British troops at nearby Princeton only increased the dangers of dawdling in New Jersey. Momentarily satisfied, Washington therefore “thought it most prudent to return” to Pennsylvania, recrossing the Delaware at McConkey’s Ferry with his haul of prisoners and captured cannon that same evening.

Small in scale, Washington’s raid on Trenton had momentous results. Indeed, it would be difficult to exaggerate its significance, in both the short and long term. As Lord Howe’s personal secretary, Ambrose Serle, predicted in his diary on December 27, “the very unpleasant news” of Trenton would “tend to revive the drooping spirits of the rebels and increase their force.” Days later, Captain Ewald of the jägers noted reports that the rebel army had since swollen to 16,000 men. Ewald didn’t credit them, but they were nonetheless symptomatic of the psychological change wrought, almost overnight, by Washington’s “coup.” He observed: “Since we had thus far underestimated our enemy, from this unhappy day onward we saw everything through a magnifying glass.”22

By following his warrior instincts and attacking the enemy when the first opportunity presented itself, Washington had not only given a timely boost to American morale but gone far to restore his own self-esteem following the defeats and humiliations of the past year. Victory was all the sweeter because it had been won over the fearsome Hessians, who’d played such a prominent role in his darkest hour, the loss of Fort Washington. For all their unbending Prussian-style discipline, bristling mustaches, and tall, brass-fronted caps, even they were not invincible.

Washington’s euphoria was clear in the ungrudging tributes he paid to his men, which provide a striking contrast to the biting criticisms that had peppered his correspondence following the routs at Long Island and Kip’s Bay. Reporting his victory to Hancock on December 27, he wrote that the behavior of officers and men alike reflected the “highest honor upon them.” But it was Washington’s General Orders, issued that same day, which gave the clearest sign of his intense, personal satisfaction:

The General, with the utmost sincerity and affection, thanks the officers and soldiers for their spirited and gallant behavior at Trenton yesterday. It is with inexpressible pleasure that he can declare, that he did not see a single instance of bad behavior in either officers or privates; and that if any fault could be found, it proceeded from a too great eagerness to push forward upon the enemy.23

Having lauded his men, Washington seized the moment to appeal to those whose terms of enlistment were due to expire at the year’s end, urging them to stay on for long enough to maintain the momentum of the counterattack. As they had “begun the glorious work of driving the enemy,” he hoped that they would “not now turn their backs upon them, and leave the business half finished at this important crisis, a crisis, which may, more than probably determine the fate of America.”

Learning that Cadwalader and his Philadelphians had managed to cross the Delaware on December 27, and that other militia units were coalescing in lower New Jersey, Washington decided to capitalize upon the shock waves that news of Trenton had sent through the enemy’s garrisons. On December 30, despite appalling conditions, he crossed the Delaware once more and began concentrating his troops at their old battleground of Trenton. There he followed up his recent General Orders with a far more direct appeal to the men whose enlistments would soon be up.

Although Washington disliked making speeches, he addressed each regiment in person, spiking his patriotic rhetoric with an offer of hard cash: on his own initiative and trusting that Congress would give retrospective approval, he offered a substantial bounty of $10 to any man willing to extend his service for a further six weeks. Washington’s weary, homesick Continentals were not easily swayed. Sergeant Nathaniel Root of the Connecticut troops recalled how the commander in chief opened by highlighting the victory at Trenton and emphasized that “we could now do more for our country than we ever could at any future period; and in the most affectionate manner entreated us to stay.” But when the drums beat for volunteers, the sergeant continued, not a man stepped forward. Undeterred, Washington tried again, dramatically wheeling his horse about and delivering a forceful and heartfelt speech from the saddle: “My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than can be reasonably expected; but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you.” By consenting to stay on for the short spell requested, they would render an unequaled service to their country and to the “cause of liberty.” At this, a few in Sergeant Root’s 20th Continental Regiment stepped forward, followed immediately by almost all who were still fit for duty.24

Including the New Englanders with Cadwalader’s column at Crosswicks who agreed to soldier on and the Virginians whose enlistments continued until February 1778, about 3,000 Continentals remained. Many others had already endured enough, and no amount of fine words from Washington or his officers could keep them from going off. They included young John Greenwood: promised promotion to ensign, he bluntly retorted that he “would not stay to be a colonel.” In his memoirs, Greenwood explained his decision: “I had the itch then so badly that my breeches stuck to my thighs, all the skin being off, and there were hundreds of vermin upon me.” Clutching a tasseled, brass-hilted sword taken from the Hessians at Trenton, Greenwood journeyed home to Boston, ultimately joining a privateer under the celebrated Commodore Manley. As Benjamin Rush had predicted, many other New Englanders succumbed to the lure of the sea and the prospect of rich hauls of prize money, including most of Colonel Glover’s Marblehead Regiment.25

Washington was realistic enough to recognize that for all his appeals to patriotic duty, the cash bounty had been the decisive factor in preserving the kernel of a viable army: reporting to Hancock on New Year’s Day, 1777, he conceded that such an unorthodox advance was inconvenient, but unavoidable. “The troops felt their importance,” he wrote, “and would have their price.” He added: “Indeed, as their aid is so essential and not to be dispensed with, it is to be wondered, they had not estimated it at a higher rate.” No sooner had Washington authorized the emergency payment than he received confirmation that Congress, on December 27, had already approved of his action by granting the extraordinary powers that he’d requested a week earlier. Although Congress avoided the emotive title, several commentators styled him “dictator.” The devoted Nathanael Greene enthused that Washington had been granted “full powers to do and act as he thinks proper, to make such establishments and take such measures as the safety and interest of the states may require.” Although these powers fell short of dictatorial, they were extensive enough: Washington had the right to raise sixteen new regiments of Continental infantry, along with 3,000 cavalrymen and fresh artillery units; significantly, the commander in chief, rather than the individual states, would personally appoint or demote all officers below the rank of brigadier general. He could also requisition supplies and deal with “disaffected” civilians—those loyal to King George—requiring them to swear allegiance to Congress or leave their home states. These powers were to last for a maximum of six months. Acknowledging this “honorable mark of distinction,” Washington assured Hancock that he had no intention of exceeding his military authority and shrugging off “all civil obligations.” On the contrary, as he informed the Executive Committee of Congress, “as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside, when those liberties are firmly established.”26

In his dispatch to Hancock, Washington revealed that he and his generals were “concerting a plan of operations” to be executed as soon as possible and which would hopefully be “attended with some success.” This phrasing suggested another attack to second that already made upon Trenton. Such boldness was all the more remarkable given that Washington’s most reliable intelligence revealed that General Howe in New York had reacted to news of Trenton by authorizing a formidable counterattack, with 5,000–6,000 men already concentrated at Princeton.

In fact, that same day, January 1, 1777, one of Howe’s best officers, Lord Cornwallis, had arrived at the little college town to assume command. Including the reinforcement he had brought with him, his force actually totaled about 8,000 redcoats and Hessians, with twenty-eight guns. Cornwallis had been about to go home on leave to visit his gravely sick wife, Jemima, when Howe suddenly recalled him to stabilize the situation in western New Jersey; he therefore had strong personal as well as professional reasons for eliminating Washington’s army without delay.

For his fresh “plan of operations” Washington could draw upon a strong force of more than 6,500 men, with a very powerful artillery train of forty guns: besides his remaining Continentals, there were another 3,600 militia downriver at Crosswicks and Bordentown under Brigadier Generals Cadwalader and Thomas Mifflin. Late on New Year’s Day, following a council of war, urgent orders were dispatched for them to march their brigades to Trenton without delay, and they came in the following morning.27 Washington’s decision to gather his troops in “an exposed place,” dangerously close to a strong enemy force, was influenced by knowledge that retreat into Pennsylvania would undo much of what had already been achieved, “destroying every dawn of hope which had begun to revive in the breasts of the Jersey militia.”28 In addition, the plan exploited a prime piece of intelligence that Cadwalader had communicated on New Year’s Eve and which Washington and his commanders must have considered during their deliberations next day.

Drawing upon information supplied by a “very intelligent young gentleman” familiar with Princeton, Cadwalader made a detailed map of the vicinity; crucially, this revealed the presence of a little-used farmer’s track, the Saw Mill Road; connecting with the Quaker Bridge Road, it approached Princeton from an undefended direction rather than by the main Post Road to Trenton, a front that the British had fortified with redoubts. The chance to exploit this nugget would depend upon Washington’s ability to fend off the impending blow from Cornwallis. On the morning of January 2, he arrayed most of his troops and guns along the east side of Assunpink Creek, stretching for some three miles from its junction with the Delaware River to cover the fords upstream. It was a formidable position—the very one that Colonel Rall’s many critics believed he should have adopted on the fateful December 26. In addition, an elite detachment of about 1,000 men, including Colonel Hand’s regiment of riflemen, Captain Forrest’s gun battery, and other Continental units, had been pushed far up the Princeton Road to slow the British advance; these troops had already clashed with Hessian jägers and redcoat light infantry on January 1, where the Eight Mile Run stream crossed the highway, defending the “pass” stubbornly until a reinforcement of grenadiers obliged them to fall back.29

As anticipated, Cornwallis began his march to Trenton early next day. He left a 1,500-strong brigade of three infantry regiments and a detachment of dragoons at Princeton to guard his rear, with instructions for two of the battalions to follow on the next day. En route, another 1,500 men were left at Maidenhead, with similar orders to move up later. Cornwallis meanwhile pushed on with his main column of about 5,500 troops. From the start, its progress was hindered by heavy mud that clogged the high road and the fields to either side and, beyond Maidenhead, by the same defending force that had proved so troublesome the previous morning. Backed by musket-armed Continentals and Forrest’s well-served guns, at Shabakunk Run, within three miles of Trenton, Hand’s riflemen forced Cornwallis to deploy his men from column of march into line of battle: a time-consuming business. Although his casualties were light, it took Cornwallis ten long hours to cover as many miles. Another determined stand, supervised by Washington and Greene, was mounted on the outskirts of Trenton before the delaying force finally fell back through the town and across the bridge over Assunpink Creek, covered by artillery on the east bank. By the time Cornwallis arrived with his main body, the light was dwindling fast. As the earl “displayed his column,” arraying his battalions in line, it seemed to Major James Wilkinson that “a crisis in the affairs of the Revolution” had been reached. Rival gun crews now traded fire in a prolonged and “pretty smart cannonade,” and skirmishes flickered in the twilight.30

British and Hessian units probed the creek at the lower ford and bridge but were thwarted by Washington’s massed guns and infantry. Cornwallis summoned a council of war to consider whether to continue operations or postpone them until daylight. Given the risks of a frontal assault upon such a strongly defended position and the difficulties of maneuvering in the darkness to turn Washington’s right flank, Cornwallis opted to give his exhausted men a much-needed rest, then “bag the fox” in the morning.31

While the British settled in for the night, Washington called another council of war, at the headquarters of the Scottish veteran Major General Arthur St. Clair. Although well posted to rebuff a direct attack, the army was vulnerable to a flanking move that would pin it against the Delaware River. A retreat to Philadelphia via Bordentown was likewise risky. Major Wilkinson, who was serving as an aide to St. Clair but did not attend the meeting, was told that Washington, “yielding to his natural propensities,” had been ready to hazard everything on a “general engagement.” St. Clair later claimed that it was he who “had the good fortune to suggest” the bold alternative “of turning the left of the enemy in the night,” and he was “forcibly” supported by his countryman Hugh Mercer. Washington, who may have been contemplating such a move himself, “highly approved it,” and not a single council member dissented.32 Under cover of darkness, the army would give Cornwallis the slip, take the back road to Princeton, and attack the isolated British brigade still waiting there. If all went well, it might be possible to push on and capture the crucial British supply depot at Brunswick. As Washington reported to Hancock, this would avoid the “appearance of a retreat . . . or run the hazard of the whole army being cut off” while also offering a chance to “give some reputation to our arms.”33

Leaving several hundred men as decoys to keep the camp fires burning, shout challenges, wield pickaxes, and generally create the illusion that his lines remained occupied, Washington’s force moved out in silence, the wheels of its cannon muffled in cloth. Like Howe at Long Island, Cornwallis was oblivious to this stealthy withdrawal. Captain Ewald wryly described the dénouement: “We intended to renew the battle at daybreak, but Washington spared us the trouble.” When dawn came they were surprised to discover that “this clever man” was gone. At that very same moment, Ewald continued, “we heard a heavy cannonade in our rear.” Cornwallis’s command turned out and marched off at the “quick step” toward the sound of the guns. But by then Washington had already landed his blow.34

In one long column led by local guides, Washington’s men and guns started moving out from their defensive positions facing Trenton at midnight. Owing to a sharp drop in temperature, the mud that had hampered Cornwallis’s advancing troops was now frozen solid and capable of supporting the weight of artillery. The intense dark of the night helped screen the withdrawal but also contributed to a potentially disastrous episode when a regiment of Pennsylvania militia in the rear panicked and fled after mistaking another American formation for Hessians.35 Their fear infected several other bodies of nervous militia, but the rest of the column pushed on grimly through the early hours of January 3, 1777, the troops often halting to drag cannon over tree stumps.

The going was easier after the column struck the Quaker Bridge Road, and shortly before 7 a.m. they reached Stony Brook, some three miles from Princeton, having already covered about twelve miles. Here, while getting his guns across the stream, Washington reorganized his force for the final assault: as at Trenton, there would be converging divisions, intended to swing wide and encircle the enemy. Such dispersal was risky, and it assumed that the redcoats would obligingly stay put at Princeton. According to Captain Thomas Rodney of Delaware’s Dover Light Infantry Company, Major General Sullivan was “ordered to wheel to the right and flank the town on that side”; another force, of two brigades, played a similar role to the left; on its march it was to demolish the bridge that carried the Post Road over Stony Brook, thereby stopping the British garrison from leaving Princeton by that route or being reinforced from Trenton. A third column, formed of Mercer’s weak brigade of Continentals backed by Cadwalader’s much larger brigade of Philadelphia militia “was to march straight on to Princeton without turning to the right or left.”36 During the halt, Sergeant Joseph White of the Massachusetts Artillery recalled, each man in his company was ordered to drink half a gill from a bucket full of rum mixed with gunpowder. White “took a little” of the potent concoction, reputedly the favored tipple of the pirate Edward Teach, alias “Blackbeard.”37

When the army moved onward the sun was rising, dashing Washington’s hopes of attacking under cover of darkness: that hadn’t stopped him at Trenton, and neither did it now. But Washington’s plan soon unraveled when a column of British infantry was spotted marching south on the main road toward Trenton, in keeping with Cornwallis’s orders for two of the brigade’s three regiments to rejoin him that day. Sighting the main body of Washington’s army, these redcoats swiftly turned “to the right about.”38 The column commander was Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood of the 17th Foot. Sending his wagons back to Princeton, where the 40th Foot remained to guard the stores, and posting the 55th Foot and most of his artillery in a defensive position outside the town, Mawhood boldly advanced the rest of his little force against the rebels that he had seen in the distance across the frosted landscape. He was unaware that Mercer’s column, masked by the undulating terrain, was between him and his objective. Mercer was likewise innocent of Mawhood’s move forward.

Although the British brigade at Princeton numbered about 1,500 men, just a quarter of the size of Washington’s army, the force under Mawhood’s immediate command was far smaller. Besides about 250 of own 17th Foot, he led a motley contingent of mounted and dismounted men of the 16th Light Dragoons, gunners of the Royal Artillery, and drafts and convalescents for other units, including grenadiers, light infantry, and Highlanders: in all, perhaps 650 men with two brass six-pounder cannon. While some 1,100 of Cadwalader’s militia were advancing behind him, Mercer had no more than 350 men and a pair of iron three-pounder cannon in his own denuded spearhead brigade of Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and Marylanders. Despite the heavy overall odds against Mawhood’s redcoats, Washington’s decision to split his own force meant that the British would initially have numbers on their side.39

Passing a farmhouse and barn, Mercer’s men emerged from an orchard to find Mawhood’s regulars arrayed behind a rail fence, just fifty yards off. Sergeant Root recalled kneeling and loading his musket with ball and buckshot—“Yankee peas” in the redcoats’ slang. He and his comrades unleashed a devastating opening volley. Ensign George Inman of the 17th Foot believed that it accounted for most of the 101 rank and file of his battalion killed or wounded during the battle; he was the sole officer on the right wing to escape serious injury, “receiving only a buckshot through my cross belt which just entered the pit of my stomach and made me sick for the moment.”40

Despite their heavy casualties the British gave a volley of their own, clambered over the fence, and immediately charged with the bayonet. Mercer’s men recoiled through the orchard, leaving him unhorsed and surrounded by baying redcoats. When the stubborn Scot refused to surrender, lashing out with his sword, he was clubbed to the ground with a musket butt, bayoneted repeatedly, and left for dead. As the victorious British surged forward, capturing the enemy’s abandoned cannon, the survivors of Mercer’s broken brigade collided with the Philadelphia Associators coming up behind them. Deploying from column into line, the militiamen were thrown into confusion and fell back, too. Crucially, two more American field pieces, under Captain Joseph Moulder, were now unlimbered and brought into action. Manned bravely and efficiently, they stemmed the British advance with blasts of canister.

At this crisis, when the battle’s outcome hung in the balance, Washington spurred up. Sergeant Root remembered that he “appeared in front of the American army, riding toward those of us who were retreating, and exclaimed, ‘Parade with us, my brave fellows! There is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly!’” The sergeant and his comrades rallied, but the militia had been badly shaken and were still disinclined to face the British bayonets. In his attempts to halt their flight Washington “exposed himself very much, but expostulated to no purpose.” It was only after the Philadelphians had retreated another 100 yards that Brigadier Cadwalader managed to steady them. Now, as New England Continentals from the rear of Sullivan’s column turned back to help, the emboldened militia rejoined the firefight, and the lengthening odds against Mawhood’s men began to tell. After making what Washington acknowledged to be “a gallant resistance,” they finally broke and ran for it. The exultant Virginian galloped after them, urging on his own men by shouting: “It’s a fine fox chase, my boys!” Major Wilkinson reported these words at second hand, but, given Washington’s love of the hunt, they sound characteristic enough to be credible. Wilkinson observed: “Such was the impetuosity of the man’s character, when he gave rein to his sensibilities.”41

While some of his scattered soldiers fought their way through to the west, Colonel Mawhood headed north, toward Princeton, accompanied by about twenty men. The very epitome of gentlemanly nonchalance, he trotted across the front of the astonished Americans, with two spaniels frisking about his pony’s hooves.42 During the savage fighting at the orchard, the 55th Foot outside Princeton had been confronted by units from Sullivan’s strong division; heavily outnumbered, it fell back in a series of delaying actions. A group of redcoats prepared to defend the college buildings but soon surrendered after artillery opened up on them with round shot. Having played little part in the action—despite Mawhood’s pointed orders to support him—most of the 55th and 40th retreated to Brunswick; the bloodied survivors of the 17th eventually rallied at Maidenhead.43

Some two-thirds of Mawhood’s brigade, along with its supplies and most of its guns, escaped. Yet without doubt Washington had notched up another stunning victory, albeit one that had come perilously close to defeat. This time, as Washington conceded, the militia had played their part alongside the Continentals; indeed, the Philadelphia Associators had “undergone more fatigue and hardship” than he would have expected at such an “inclement season.” Nathanael Greene, who like Washington, was typically critical of militia, proved far more unstinting in his praise of the Philadelphians: their conduct at Princeton was “brave, firm and manly,” he reported. Although broken, they had rallied and reformed “in the face of grapeshot, and pushed on with a spirit that would do honor to veterans.”44

Reporting the outcome to John Hancock, Washington tallied the enemy’s losses in killed, wounded, and prisoners at 500, with “upwards of one hundred of them left dead” on the ground: only a slight exaggeration. His own casualties were far less numerous—about twenty-five to thirty privates killed, with the wounded yet to be reckoned up—although some “brave and worthy” officers had been lost: besides Mercer (who died of his wounds a week later), they included Colonel John Haslet, the stalwart commander of the old Delaware Continentals, shot through the head.

Thrusting himself into the thick of the fighting, Washington had been lucky to escape a similar fate. Several of his officers and men expressed relief at his survival, mingled with disapproval at his rashness. James Read, a sailor who volunteered for service with the Philadelphia Associators, told his wife that he would never forget the concern he felt for Washington, seeing “him brave all the dangers of the field, and his important life hanging as it were by a single hair with a thousand deaths flying all around him.” Major Samuel Shaw of the artillery observed that, while the army loved Washington “very much,” they had one thing against him: “the little care he takes of himself in any action.” The major added: “His personal bravery, and the desire he has of animating his troops by example, make him fearless of any danger. This, while it makes him appear great, occasions us much uneasiness.” Shaw attributed Washington’s deliverance to the “shield” of “Heaven.”45 Judged by his reaction to the Monongahela and other fights, he may have thanked Providence instead.

Under his original plan, Washington had hoped to push on to Brunswick, on the Raritan River, and deal another devastating blow by destroying Howe’s stores there. But his troops were now exhausted, “many of them having had no rest for two nights and a day.” After once again canvassing his officers, and mindful of the danger of squandering what had been gained by “aiming at too much,” Washington wisely decided to fall back to the north. With a British brigade just five miles off at Maidenhead, more redcoats were soon converging upon Princeton. But Washington’s precaution of demolishing the bridge over Stony Brook delayed their pursuit until he had got clear. By the time Cornwallis’s own force arrived from Trenton that afternoon, the “fox” was long gone, although the evidence of his handiwork was all too apparent. Captain Ewald noted: “We found the entire field of action from Maidenhead on to Princeton and vicinity covered with corpses.” Unaware that Washington and his exhausted men had camped overnight at Rocky Hill, just two hours from Princeton, the anxious Cornwallis immediately marched to Brunswick to safeguard his supply depot. Washington meanwhile retired to the wooded hills of Morristown in northern New Jersey, where Greene had already identified a promising site for the Continental Army to finally march into winter quarters.

The ten day Trenton-Princeton campaign of December 1776 to January 1777 was the highpoint of Washington’s military career. War with Britain would drag on for another six years, during which time Washington faced, and overcame, many other crises. But he never again displayed such control over men and events, and with such momentous consequences. Although Washington’s official and personal correspondence was characteristically restrained, the spectacular success of his whirlwind winter campaign must surely have given immense personal satisfaction. Some hint of this, and also the extent to which the twin victories were complementary, is revealed in Charles Willson Peale’s famous painting George Washington at Princeton, in which the Hessian standards captured at Trenton lie spread at his feet and his subject betrays the hint of a smile. Here, at long last, was a true taste of the military glory that Washington had craved since his youth.

Taken together, the victories at Trenton and Princeton swept away the lingering stigma of the defeats at Long Island and Fort Washington just months before. The decisive and aggressive leadership that underpinned them couldn’t have been more different from the dithering that had led to disaster at New York. In a matter of days, and by following his warrior’s instinct to fight back, George Washington had redeemed his battered reputation, silencing, for the moment at least, those critics who were starting to question his capacity to lead the military struggle against Britain. For congressmen who had just granted Washington his enhanced powers, reaching their decision before news of the first victory at Trenton arrived, here was swift confirmation that they’d acted for the best. Above all, given the nadir of the revolutionary cause at Christmas 1776, Washington’s offensive could not have been better timed. As Nathanael Greene expressed it to Tom Paine from the new camp at Morristown, “The two late actions at Trenton and Princeton have put a very different face upon affairs.” Greene, for whom the campaign had likewise delivered badly needed redemption, told his cousin Christopher that adversity had brought out the best in his revered commander: “His Excellency General Washington never appeared to so much advantage as in the hour of distress,” he wrote.46

Washington’s resilience had indeed been remarkable. During those crucial days, his leadership and generalship were also exemplary, a fact recognized by contemporaries and later commentators alike. In his history of the American war—published in 1780 while it was still being fought—one serving British officer praised Washington as a general “capable of great and daring enterprise.” His night march to Princeton was “conducted in a masterly manner,” deserving a place among “distinguished military achievements”—worthy indeed “of a better cause.” Writing at the height of the Edwardian empire in the early twentieth century, the British Army’s historian, Sir John Fortescue, gave ungrudging praise, acknowledging that “the whole cause of the rebellion in America was saved by Washington’s very bold and skillful action.” More recently, the Howe brothers’ biographer, Ira D. Gruber, agreed that the campaign “had an immediate and decisive influence on the war,” restoring “the spirits of thousands of languishing patriots and damping the rising hopes of loyalists.” Not only had Washington guaranteed the rebellion’s survival, but, after Princeton, “the British government had very little chance of winning the war and retaining its colonies.”47

For the British Army in America, the impact of Princeton was both immediate and long-term. While the high command had sought to minimize the destruction of Rall’s brigade at Trenton, Washington’s subsequent strike could not be dismissed so lightly. It convinced Howe to pull back his outposts from the Delaware River to the Raritan and on a drastically constricted line from Brunswick to Perth Amboy. This not only meant that his army relinquished a rich foraging region, but ensured that any future campaign against Philadelphia via New Jersey must first regain the ground that had been lost. In broader strategic terms, however, Washington’s spectacular double blow did nothing to deflect Howe from his intention to focus on Pennsylvania in 1777. Sir William’s growing obsession with capturing Philadelphia and destroying the main rebel army under Washington reversed the cautious strategy that he had followed in 1776. Crucially for the outcome of the war, Howe’s “fixation” would ensure that cooperation with the scheduled British advance from Canada that spring would become even less of a priority than it already was.48

Having given full rein to his aggressive instincts, and with devastating results, Washington now reverted to defensive mode as he sought time to build his new army. In February he took a farsighted step that was to prove vital to his unending search for manpower. Smallpox had erupted among the troops. According to Sergeant Root, who fell sick himself at Morristown camp, “many of our little army died there of that disease.” Faced with a repetition of the epidemic that had culled the regiments ejected from Canada in 1776, Washington introduced systematic inoculation of all soldiers who’d not yet had smallpox. Not only were the doctors busy at Morristown and Philadelphia, but, to keep his army “as clean as possible of this terrible disorder,” Washington had recommended that every state contributing men to the army should ensure that their recruits were inoculated immediately. The mass operation was kept as secret as possible, with patients inoculated in “divisions” at intervals of five or six days to ensure their phased return to active duty.49

Meanwhile, in their cramped and cheerless billets Howe’s redcoats and Hessians endured a grim and sickly winter. They were soon embroiled in a frustrating and costly guerrilla war as expeditions to gather forage in the surrounding countryside encountered the region’s reinvigorated militia and Continentals from Morristown. Resistance was so stiff that British wagon trains required substantial escorts. For example, on February 23, 1777, a column sent out from Perth Amboy under Colonel Mawhood was accompanied by a battalion of light infantry, another of grenadiers, the entire 3rd Brigade of three regiments, and several artillery pieces. Even this substantial force was roughly handled when it skirmished with Continentals near Woodbridge. In his diary, Lieutenant Peebles of the 42nd reported that the column returned “much fatigued” with the loss of sixty-nine men killed and wounded and another six missing. Peebles’s own grenadier company had been heavily engaged, suffering twenty-six casualties. Visiting his wounded, Peebles considered it a pity to throw away such fine men on “shabby ill managed occasions.” With the Scottish Highlands already scoured of military manpower by intensive recruitment in 1775 and steady emigration to North America during the previous decade, the loss of a veteran grenadier like William McIntosh, who died of his wounds on March 11, was a high price to pay for a few cartloads of hay.50

From Morristown, Washington was well placed to monitor Howe’s movements, whether into Pennsylvania or up the Hudson River. In spring 1777, the direction in which Sir William would strike was hard to predict. In April, a British raid on Danbury, Connecticut, which burned munitions that might have been used to contest the expected advance from Canada, suggested that Howe intended to cooperate with Burgoyne’s northern army. That same episode had given Benedict Arnold another chance to enhance his reputation as one of the bravest officers in the Continental Army. When Arnold’s horse was shot dead, he extricated himself from beneath its carcass and in the face of the enemy coolly retrieved his pistols from their holsters. John Adams was so impressed by an exploit sufficient to make Arnold’s “fortune for life” that he wanted to commemorate it with a medal.51 Washington held an equally high opinion of the famed Connecticut fighting man. Supporting Arnold’s claim for the date of his promotion to major general to be adjusted to give him greater seniority, Washington wrote: “It is universally known, that he has always distinguished himself, as a judicious, brave officer of great activity, enterprise and perseverance.”52

Despite the boldness of his Christmas and New Year offensive, Washington was now coming under criticism for failing to quit his Morristown fastness and make another assault on Howe’s army. Writing to Nathanael Greene, John Adams’s cousin and fellow congressman Samuel Adams suggested that, while “Europe and America seem to be applauding our introduction of the Fabian method,” such classical comparisons were misleading. After all, he continued, Fabius’s foe—the great Carthaginian general Hannibal—was hamstrung by a lack of supplies from his own state; under those circumstances, Fabius was wise to grind his opponent down by “frequent skirmishes.” In contrast to Hannibal, General Howe was kept well provisioned by the Royal Navy and had “the fullest assurances of early reinforcements from Britain.” If Fabius had been in Washington’s place, Adams asked, would he not have sought a decisive result, by destroying Howe’s army at Brunswick? The loyal Greene was quick to set the Bostonian straight. True, there was a difference between the situations of Hannibal and Howe, but it was not so great as to justify Washington “taking a resolution to attack the troops at Brunswick,” particularly as they were fortified, and his own army was inferior in both numbers and discipline.53

Greene’s words echoed the response of a council of war called by Washington on May 2 to consider the advisability of a “general attack upon the enemy in Brunswick and at the neighboring posts”: its unanimous opinion was that the available troops were still too few and inexperienced for such an undertaking. There had been some tentative support for a more limited attack on the enemy post at Bergen, although Major General Adam Stephen’s suggestion that Bonhamtown or Piscataway, east of Brunswick, could be targeted at little risk was summarily dismissed as unviable.54 The stubborn Scot went ahead with his pet plan anyway, using Continentals from his own division. On May 10, they were badly mauled by the 42nd Regiment and a battalion of light infantry and were lucky to get clear. Stephen reported the clash to Washington in very different terms as a “considerable advantage gained over the enemy’s best troops.” It was a “bold enterprise,” he continued, and the British must have lost at least 200 killed and wounded. In a dispatch to John Hancock, the president of Congress, Washington duly reported this “smart skirmish” in which the American troops had “behaved well and obliged the enemy to give way twice.” He was therefore incensed to learn, just hours later, that Stephen had been economical with the truth and promptly fired off a withering reprimand. “Your account of the attempt upon the enemy at Piscataway is favorable, but I am sorry to add, widely different from those I have had from others (officers of distinction), who were of the party,” Washington wrote icily. Indeed, he added, “the disadvantage was on our side, not the enemy’s, who had notice of your coming and was prepared for it, as I expected.”55

For all their shared history of hardships and danger, to Washington his old comrade’s unwarranted bragging was unforgivable. Not only did it flout his own code of restrained, gentlemanly honor, but it turned the Continental Army into a laughing stock, a force that had to invent victories. Its reputation clearly mattered to Washington, and on a very personal level: back in February he’d rebuked Major General William Heath after he staged a half-hearted attempt to capture the British post of Fort Independence, which guarded the route to Manhattan via King’s Bridge. Despite his obvious incapacity to carry out an assault, Heath had warned the garrison to surrender or risk the consequences. Washington could only wish the summons had never been sent, “as I am fearful it will expose us to the ridicule of our enemies.”56

In mid-June, Howe took the offensive himself, leading a powerful force from Brunswick up the Raritan, seeking to lure Washington down from his strong defensive position behind the hills of Middlebrook and into the kind of potentially decisive engagement that he had been ready to risk at New York. But Washington had learned from his mistakes in 1776. With fewer than 8,000 Continentals, he refused to be drawn, instead sending detachments to observe and harass the enemy. After several days of skirmishing, Howe retired, his frustrated troops burning and plundering as they went. Nothing daunted, Sir William soon tried again. When Howe’s redcoats and Hessians began embarking aboard transport ships at Perth Amboy, Washington moved forward to hinder him, deploying Lord Stirling’s brigade to Metuchen and leading the bulk of the army to Quibbletown, farther to the northwest. Howe’s embarkation was merely a ruse, calculated to tempt Washington into the open, and his coat-trailing tactics had apparently worked. On the night of June 26, he quickly disembarked his troops, sending columns against Stirling and Washington. While the wary Washington reacted swiftly enough to evade Howe and retired to Middlebrook unscathed, Stirling’s division was more sluggish, losing about eighty men before disengaging. For Howe, this petty victory was small consolation for the priceless weeks lost in a futile attempt to bring his enemy to battle. Stymied by Washington’s careful defensive strategy—the closest he ever conformed to the classic “Fabian” template—Howe once more embarked his army at Perth Amboy, and this time in earnest. He sailed for Staten Island, relinquishing all of New Jersey to the rebels.

On July 9, Howe’s formidable force of more than 14,000 men began boarding transport ships in New York Harbor; another 7,300 under Henry Clinton remained to garrison New York City. When the flotilla finally sailed two weeks later, its destination remained a mystery to friend and foe alike. In fact, Sir William was heading for Philadelphia; with Washington’s army still intact in New Jersey, and now supported by a vigorous and effective militia, he had decided to reach his objective by sea rather than land.

When Howe’s troops were still embarking, Washington had conjectured that they would strike at Philadelphia by way of the Delaware River. In consequence, he called for accurate and detailed maps of the region, “which is or may be the seat of war,” to be compiled as soon as possible, particularly “as regards the shores of the Delaware where the enemy may probably land and march.”57 However, logic dictated that Howe must surely cooperate with the northern army on the Hudson, a view reinforced when Washington learned that Burgoyne had taken Ticonderoga on July 5. That assumption initially led Washington to preempt such a move by shifting his army north from Middlebrook and Morristown, pushing two divisions across the Hudson at Peekskill and securing a pass, known as the Clove, through the strategically vital Hudson Highlands. They stayed there until July 24, when news that Howe’s fleet had sailed out to sea from Sandy Hook, rather than up the Hudson, required a rethink. Although Washington still had his doubts, as all his commanders agreed that Philadelphia was now Howe’s objective, he changed front once more, marching south to reach Coryell’s Ferry on the Delaware, about thirty miles above Philadelphia, on July 27. Warned by Congress that Howe’s force was hovering off the Capes of Delaware, indicating that an attack on the city was imminent, Washington’s footsore soldiers pushed on to defend it. Within a day of reaching Germantown, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, they received fresh reports that Howe’s fleet had disappeared on July 31. Describing these puzzling and worrying developments to his brother Jack some days later, Washington was clearly perplexed: “We remain here in a very irksome state of suspense,” he confessed. While some now believed that the British had continued south, the majority—including Washington—were “satisfied” that they had “gone to the eastward,” back toward the Hudson. The prospect of further punishing marches in the strength-sapping heat of summer left Washington reluctant to move again until firmer intelligence arrived. Wrapping up his letter to Jack with a P.S. on August 9, by which time there’d been no further news of Howe’s whereabouts, Washington now concluded that he had indeed gone east and was slowly shifting his own forces in that direction.58

Washington’s original hunch that Howe aimed to attack Philadelphia via the Delaware was in fact correct. But after receiving intelligence that Washington was waiting for him upriver at Wilmington, Sir William instead kept sailing south and then turned into Chesapeake Bay to make a landing in Maryland. His army finally disembarked at Head of Elk on August 25, after nearly seven weeks aboard ship. Already delayed by his fruitless maneuvering in New Jersey, this protracted voyage put Howe’s Philadelphia campaign even further behind schedule. Incredibly, Howe remained as far from his objective as he had been when still occupying his New Jersey bridgehead. Crammed into transport ships for weeks, his troops landed in poor shape; the dragoons’ horses suffered so badly that Howe now had precious few cavalry. More worryingly, the summer campaign season was swiftly running out: focused on his own objectives, Howe would have precious little time to cooperate with Burgoyne, even if he wanted to.

By August 22, when Howe’s fleet was reported to be well within Chesapeake Bay, the dire implications for Burgoyne were already clear to Washington. He ordered Major General Israel Putnam, who was watching Clinton above New York, to send the latest information on Howe’s whereabouts to Governor Trumbull of Connecticut, who was to forward it farther to the east. As there was now no danger of Howe heading for New England, Washington hoped that “the whole force of that country” would turn out to “entirely crush” Burgoyne, emulating the example of New Hampshire militia under Brigadier General John Stark, who had already overwhelmed a foraging column of Brunswickers, Loyalists, and Iroquois Indians near Bennington, Vermont, on August 16. As Howe’s objective was now clearly Philadelphia, albeit by “a very strange” route, Washington summoned Major General John Sullivan’s division to bolster his own army for the impending clash.59

With confirmation of Howe’s landing place, Washington pivoted south once more at the head of 11,000 men. Arriving in Philadelphia, he paraded his new army through the city to contest Howe’s advance. Congress was adamant that Washington should defend the Revolution’s capital, and he clearly relished the prospect of a rematch with Sir William. In his General Orders, Washington emphasized that the coming engagement would offer a prime opportunity to both end the war and win renown. By seeking battle, he announced, the enemy put everything at stake: “If they are overthrown, they are utterly undone—the war is at an end.” Just one “bold stroke” would “free the land from rapine, devastations and burnings, and female innocence from brutal lust and violence.” They must take their cue from Stark’s New Hampshire militia, who had fought with the resolution of veterans. Washington’s men should also remember that they constituted their country’s “main army.” In consequence, he added: “The eyes of all America, and of Europe are turned upon us . . . glory waits to crown the brave.”60

Reinforced by local militia to about 14,000 men, Washington decided to confront Howe from behind Brandywine Creek. This offered a strong defensive barrier, snaking amid wooded hills, with the only crossings at readily defensible fords. Washington’s troops were arrayed in detachments over a six-mile front to cover them but were mostly concentrated about Chadds Ford, where the high road to Philadelphia crossed the creek. Despite his recent appeal for decent maps, Washington’s knowledge of the terrain was badly flawed; he was unaware of other fords beyond the far right of his line, and they were left unguarded. Armed with excellent intelligence from local Loyalists, Howe knew about this weakness in Washington’s position and resolved to exploit it with a long flanking march. This recalled the maneuver that had delivered a stunning victory on Long Island; once again, the Americans would be distracted by a “demonstration” to their front, allowing time for the flanking force to get into place. The diversionary attack against Chadds Ford was entrusted to the Hessian Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen with 6,000 men. By about 10 a.m. on September 11, he had pushed Washington’s light troops across the creek and opened fire with his artillery. Some six hours earlier, the 8,000-strong column under Cornwallis, accompanied by Howe, had begun its march upstream to turn Washington’s right.

While artillery batteries exchanged fire across Chadds Ford, Washington received warning of Howe’s march. Yet he failed to react swiftly and decisively to this threat or to exploit the opportunity to overwhelm Knyphausen in Howe’s absence, later explaining to John Hancock that his reports were “uncertain and contradictory.” This was true enough: initial intelligence that “a large body of the enemy” with a formidable train of artillery was marching along the Great Valley Road toward the fords on the right was followed by another dispatch, from Major General Sullivan, maintaining that Major Joseph Spear of the Pennsylvania militia had heard nothing of the enemy “in that quarter” and was “confident” that any reports to the contrary “must be wrong.” Washington allowed himself to be swayed by Spear’s wildly inaccurate information, concluding that the reported flanking move was just a feint, and that Knyphausen was less vulnerable than he seemed.61

With some eighteen miles to cover in the summer heat, it was early afternoon before Howe’s men crossed the Brandywine at Jeffries Ford and began advancing against Washington’s right. By now, the danger was all too clear, and Washington hastily redeployed the divisions of Sullivan, Stirling, and Stephen in a belated attempt to counter it. At about 4 p.m., Howe’s troops engaged them.

The fighting was fierce and confused. One British light infantry officer struggled to describe it in a letter for a friend back home. Indeed, the Battle of Brandywine was nothing like the theatrical performances at London’s Covent Garden or Drury Lane, or the celebrated tapestries of Marlborough’s great victories hanging at Blenheim Palace. Instead, there was “a most infernal fire of cannon and musketry” mingled with the incessant bellowing of orders: “‘Incline to the right! Incline to the left! Halt! Charge!’ etc.” All the while, cannonballs were “plowing up the ground” and the branches of trees cracking overhead, their “leaves falling as in autumn by the grapeshot.”62

For two hours, the three American divisions fought to stem the British onslaught; as the same officer acknowledged, “The misters on both sides showed conduct.” But, as Washington conceded, his dispositions were not “adequate to the force with which the enemy attacked us on our right.”63 Before that flank collapsed, the intensity of the firefight had drawn Washington to the scene from Chadds Ford, with Nathanael Greene and a brigade of his division close behind. As Greene recalled, he arrived to find “the whole of the troops routed and retreating precipitately, and in the most broken and confused manner.” He was ordered to cover the retreat and held off Howe’s weary troops for long enough to prevent “hundreds of our people from falling into the enemy’s hands.”64

Likewise alerted by the sustained, distant gunfire, Knyphausen’s command had meanwhile attacked across Chadds Ford, encountering fierce opposition from Anthony Wayne’s division, but after “a severe conflict” gradually pushed it back. In contrast to the rout at Long Island, these units withdrew steadily, in reasonable order. By preoccupying Howe, Greene’s stand bought time for them, too, giving credence to his later claim that he had saved the army from “ruin.”

Washington had been soundly beaten, suffering more than 1,000 killed, wounded, or captured—double the casualties sustained by Howe’s attacking troops. While Sir William had notched up another notable victory and once again shown himself no contemptible commander when he chose to be, the action had begun too late in the day to permit a chivvying pursuit that might have delivered a more decisive result. In any event, Howe’s army lacked enough cavalry to hound the enemy through the night, and his men were exhausted from their long trek and the hard fight that followed. That evening, as Ensign Inman of the 17th Foot recalled, they were finally able to “sit down and refresh ourselves with some cold pork and grog”—watered rum—“on the ground the enemy had first posted themselves, which we enjoyed much as our march before the battle was better than 18 miles.”65

Washington was not discouraged by the outcome of the Battle of Brandywine. Neither were his men. “Notwithstanding the misfortune of the day,” he informed Hancock, “I am happy to find the troops in good spirits; and I hope another time we shall compensate for the losses now sustained.” During the ensuing fortnight, as he shifted his forces to shield Philadelphia, Washington remained keen to fight Howe. Another major action looked imminent at Warren Tavern, west of the city, but a prolonged rainstorm, which soaked through his men’s shoddy cartridge boxes, obliged Washington to withdraw to a strong defensive position until fresh ammunition could be issued;66 wags dubbed this nonevent “the Battle of the Clouds.” No less eager for a fight, the British soon demonstrated their ability to strike whatever the weather. In the early hours of September 21, a force of redcoats under Major General Charles Grey made a surprise attack on Wayne’s sleeping Pennsylvanian Continentals at Paoli. To avoid any accidental firing that might betray the enterprise, the flints were removed from their muskets. In what one British officer described as a “nocturnal bloody scene,” they used their bayonets to kill or wound more than 300 of Wayne’s men, taking another 100 prisoners. This coup was deplored as a “massacre” by the survivors, although it was a legitimate, if unusually ruthless, act of war; its commander won the acclaim of the British Army and the nickname “No Flint Grey.”67

The following night, after “a variety of perplexing maneuvers,” Howe crossed the Schuylkill River at Fatland and Gordon’s Fords, so taking the lead in the race for Philadelphia. Washington had once again been hampered by lack of reliable intelligence, the heavily Loyalist population “being to a man disaffected” toward the patriots’ cause. The army’s ability to make forced marches was hindered by a dearth of shoes: at least 1,000 men were now barefoot;68 in that respect the new army fared little better than the old one that had left bloody footprints in the snow at Trenton.

On September 26, Howe claimed his prize, marching his army into an undefended Philadelphia. Congress, which had returned from Baltimore after the Trenton-Princeton campaign, now decamped once again, this time to York, Pennsylvania. So long anticipated, Howe’s conquest proved a hollow triumph. Indeed, the capture of the revolutionaries’ capital, and North America’s largest city, did not have the expected impact. Rather than signal the collapse of American morale, it scarcely dented it. Patriots were already buoyed by reports from the upper Hudson, where Burgoyne’s army, which had begun its southward advance from St. John’s in mid-June, while Howe was still seeking a clash with Washington in New Jersey, now faced serious problems. The expedition had begun promisingly enough, when Arthur St. Clair abandoned the pivotal fortress of Ticonderoga rather than risk the loss of his garrison, but the rugged wilderness terrain slowed Burgoyne’s advance to the Hudson River to a snail’s pace. Worse still was the bloody check administered to his foragers at Bennington by Stark’s militia. Despite these ominous developments, Burgoyne pushed on regardless, determined to reach Albany. Near Saratoga, he found his path blocked by a substantial rebel force manning fieldworks on Bemis Heights. Consisting of more than 7,000 militia and Continental troops, including Daniel Morgan’s riflemen loaned from Washington’s own hard-pressed army, the force was commanded by Major General Horatio Gates, who had replaced the listless Philip Schuyler on August 19. When Burgoyne attempted to turn Gates’s left on September 19, he was countered by troops led by Benedict Arnold. After stubborn fighting across the clearing at Freeman’s Farm, the British held the field, gaining a technical victory but suffering heavy casualties and failing to spring Burgoyne’s army from the jaws of the trap into which it had marched.

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 official 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

Washington’s mood was scarcely improved by the seemingly disrespectful stance that Gates now adopted toward him. Instead of reporting his victory directly to Washington, the commander in chief, Gates left it to Congress to convey the news at second hand. As his Northern Department army was a separate force, technically independent of Washington, Gates could claim some justification in writing to Congress first. At the very least, however, this was a breach of etiquette guaranteed to goad a stickler for protocol like Washington; at worst, it suggested that Gates now considered himself Washington’s equal, or even superior. After congratulating Gates on his victory, Washington regretted “that a matter of such magnitude and so interesting to our general operations, should have reached me by report only, or through the channel of letters not bearing that authenticity, which the importance of it required, and which it would have received by a line under your signature, stating the simple fact.”86

This mild rebuke was the first rumble in a storm that would soon reverberate through the Continental Army’s high command, presenting Washington with yet another crisis to surmount. Meanwhile, the continued presence of a powerful British force in Philadelphia was a more pressing concern. As Gates had disposed of the immediate threat within his department, Washington had sent his trusted aide Captain Alexander Hamilton to explain the plight of the main army and to request reinforcements. By now, Washington was contemplating a blow of his own to rival that landed against Burgoyne. It was nothing less than a full-scale assault to “dislodge the enemy from Philadelphia.” In advance of a scheduled council of war he briefed his general officers with a list of questions. When they met on October 29, Washington explained that, while Howe now commanded about 10,000 rank and file fit for duty, their own force numbered about 11,000 exclusive of garrisons; however, some 2,000 militia from Virginia and Maryland would be leaving camp soon when their enlistments expired. Asked whether their present strength and circumstances justified an attack, Washington’s generals were adamant that they did not.87

But the notion of attacking the formidable and well-fortified British force in Philadelphia refused to die. It was revived in late November when Brigadier General Cadwalader, himself a Philadelphian, proposed a detailed plan for ejecting the invaders. Seeking to capitalize upon the absence of hefty British detachments in New Jersey, Cadwalader envisaged a coordinated assault involving divisions attacking both overland and by boat from the Delaware River. Ultimately, Cadwalader’s plan fared no better than Washington’s, yet a minority of generals—the Bavarian veteran Johann de Kalb, Lord Stirling, Anthony Wayne, and Charles Scott—supported his offensive. Their opinions, and those of other senior officers, were presented to Washington in writing and make for revealing reading. While some responses, from John Armstrong and John Paterson, for instance, were brief and forthright rejections of a “hazardous” plan likely to be attended with “fatal consequences,” other officers articulated their opposition in detailed reports that not only grappled with the practicality of the proposal, but sought to demonstrate their extensive knowledge of military affairs. For example, both John Sullivan and Henry Knox cautioned wariness of the redoubts that screened Howe’s army: in the course of his reading—which by the way had not been “inconsiderable”—Major General Sullivan had never come across a single instance where “a chain of redoubts covering the whole front on an army” was successfully assaulted; indeed, those thrown up by Peter the Great of Russia in a single night at Poltava in 1709 had defeated the “best army in the world,” led by the Swedish warrior-king Charles XII, one of the heroes whose busts Washington had hoped to install at Mount Vernon. Drawing upon more recent history to make the same point, Sullivan highlighted the fate of Donop’s Hessians at Red Bank. Knox also mentioned Poltava, reinforcing his argument by referencing the renowned French Army general and military theorist of the 1740s, Marshal Maurice de Saxe, who rated redoubts as “the strongest and most excellent kind of field fortification.”88 Saxe’s Reveries; or Memoirs upon the Art of War, first translated into English in 1757, would have been among the volumes that Knox perused in his Boston bookshop before turning from the theory to the reality of war.

Such reasoned and informed feedback testified to the seriousness with which George Washington’s officers were approaching their task of defending American liberty. Ironically, this keen interest contrasted with the typically casual approach adopted by their professional British counterparts, who, when not fighting the enemy or one another, preferred to amuse themselves with gambling, drinking, and whoring. That December, Captain Ewald noted that the Americans had now “trained a great many excellent officers who very often shame and excel our experienced officers, who consider it sinful to read a book or to think of learning anything during the war.” Rummaging through the enemy’s haversacks, he had often found translations of “the most excellent military books”—for example, “the Instructions of the great Frederick to his generals.” Ewald’s comment was characteristically perceptive: a redcoat ensign who’d read Bland’s Treatise en route to Boston in 1774 and who had suggested that his brother officers might benefit from doing likewise, was mocked mercilessly for his pains: ribbing him as “Humphrey Bland” and “the young general,” they “soon laughed him out of his scheme for reforming the army.”89

While Cadwalader’s proposal was understandably rejected as too risky, Sir William Howe soon emerged from behind his defenses, looking for a fight. Late on the evening of December 4, a powerful British column moved out from Philadelphia to attack the rebels: according to General Grey’s aide-de-camp, Captain André, their encampment extended along a ridge of hills for about three miles to the east of Whitemarsh. After testing both the right and left of Washington’s position, on December 6 Howe sought to repeat the strategy that had yielded results on Long Island and at Brandywine. A “demonstration” by Grey would distract Washington from the “real attack,” to be delivered by a larger force under Sir William’s personal command. But this time the plan failed, with no more than lively skirmishing as American units fell back to their formidable main position, from which Washington wouldn’t budge. By the next day, André noted, “most people thought an attack upon ground of such difficult access would be a very arduous undertaking” and also a fruitless one, as the enemy had secured a viable line of retreat. The army thereupon returned to Philadelphia, the rebels occasionally nipping at its heels.90 As in New Jersey six months earlier, Washington’s selection of a strong defensive position and careful “Fabian” tactics had kept Sir William at arm’s length.

As 1777 drew to a close, and Howe’s well-supplied troops stayed snugly ensconced in Philadelphia, the overriding issue for Washington was to find viable winter quarters for his own cold and tattered army. In his General Orders of December 17, he acknowledged that the site he’d chosen was unlikely to be popular. Withdrawal to the heart of Pennsylvania, already crowded with refugees from Philadelphia, would expose a vast tract of fertile land to the ravages of the enemy, he argued. It was therefore essential for the army to adopt a position where it could not only “prevent distress” and “protect the country” but also enjoy “the most extensive security” from a surprise attack. In such a place they must make the best of things, building huts to keep them warm and dry through the coming winter. Washington was confident that officers and soldiers alike would “resolve to surmount every difficulty” with the same “fortitude and patience” that had sustained them through their last campaign. He pledged to “share in the hardship, and partake of every inconvenience.”91

The location Washington had decided upon was a tiny settlement about eighteen miles northwest of Philadelphia, protected by the Schuylkill River and screening hills: Valley Forge.