Howe’s aide von Muenchhausen verified that this preferred method was indeed employed against Lord Stirling’s men at the Brandywine when he observed that the grenadiers “fired a volley, and then ran furiously at the rebels with fixed bayonets.” A British grenadier officer who history has yet to identify confirmed the intense action and the use of cold steel to drive away the Americans. “At the battle of Brandywine,” he penned in a letter home that winter, “we had the most dreadful fire for one hour I ever saw. I heard nothing equal to it all last war in Germany. At last we gave the rebels the bayonet, which soon dispersed them.” The conclusion scribbled in the diary of Joseph Clark, a member of Stephen’s staff, agreed with the anonymous British officer’s observation: “The Fireing while the action lasted was the warmest I believe that has been in America since the War began.”11

Once the final attack was underway, it did not take long for the British to close the distance and bring on the final act of the Birmingham Hill drama. The momentum of the advancing 1st Light Infantry Battalion, together with the 2nd Grenadier Battalion, carried them up the slope and into Brig. Gen. Thomas Conway’s brigade of Stirling’s division. About the same time, the 1st Grenadier Battalion lapped around the flank of the New Jersey Brigade on Stirling’s left.

It was about this time in the battle that Major General Lafayette reached this part of the line. As he later explained, “as [a] volunteer, [I] had always accompanied the general [Washington]. The left wing [opposite Chads’s Ford] remaining in a state of tranquility, and the right wing appearing fated to receive all the heavy blows, he obtained permission to join Sullivan.” His arrival, thought Lafayette, “seemed to inspirit the troops.” The Chevalier Dubuysson, who accompanied Lafayette, vividly recalled the fighting. “The English left attacked very rapidly and in good order, and threw back every American until they met,” wrote Dubuysson in reference to the overall attack that would wrest control of Birmingham Hill from the Continentals. “Only the divisions of … Stirling and Conway [Stephen] held out for any length of time.” The French aide continued, recalling how “The Marquis de Lafayette joined the latter [Conway’s brigade], where there were some Frenchmen. He dismounted and did his utmost to make the men charge with fixed bayonets.” The Frenchmen [Lafayette and his several aides] personally grabbed bayonets and locked them onto the ends of American muskets, after which, continued Chevalier Dubuysson, Lafayette “pushed them in the back to make them charge.” But it was no use, continued the French eyewitness, for “the Americans are not suited for this type of combat, and never wanted to take it up.”12