When Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge on the cold, dreary afternoon of February 23, he did so with panache. This was only fitting. For the corpulent Prussian nobleman’s journey to the United States, like the man himself, had been as colorful as it was circuitous.
George Washington was not certain what to expect when he rode out of camp that afternoon to greet Steuben and his cortege as they emerged from the soft fronds of fading daylight that dappled the road from York. Twenty years earlier the Virginia planter had ordered from London a series of busts depicting history’s renowned military figures, including the likenesses of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Friedrich II of Prussia—Frederick the Great. Now, a protégé of the exalted Hohenzollern warrior-king himself was arriving. The man whom Washington encountered was a plump officer ensconced in a grandiose sleigh adorned with 24 jingle bells and pulled by a team of well-muscled, coal-dark Percheron horses stepping in sync, as if dancing a ponderous waltz. Steuben, as cheerful as Pickwick’s precursor, had imported the horses from western France to enhance his entrance. As he introduced himself to Washington he stroked an Italian greyhound curled by his side. Azor was the dog’s name.
It is not recorded what the American commander in chief made of his visitor’s fur-trimmed silk robe, black beaver bicorne cocked in the French style, and double-holstered belt holding two enormous horse pistols. However, one teenage Continental private would, years later, remember the Prussian entering Valley Forge as the very “personification of Mars.” For Steuben’s part, Washington’s towering personal bodyguard must have reminded him of the handpicked grenadiers known as the “Potsdam Giants” with whom King Frederick routinely surrounded himself.
Washington had, of course, been briefed on Steuben’s background. Some of what he had been told was even true. Steuben was indeed the grandson of one of Germany’s most prominent theologians and the son of a career military engineer in Frederick’s renowned army, then the most advanced and efficient force on the European continent. His childhood had been a nomadic blur as he, his mother, and his siblings followed their father from station to station across what today constitutes Poland, western Russia, and the Baltic States. At Breslau, on the banks of the Oder, Steuben, reared as a Calvinist, was granted the rare opportunity to study under Jesuit priests. And at the age of 14 he began his military apprenticeship by accompanying his father to Bohemia, where the elder Steuben directed the Prussian engineers executing the siege of Prague during the Second Silesian War. As decreed by Prussian law, at 17 Steuben formally enlisted in the army. Eschewing his father’s “technical” branch of engineering, he opted instead for a career in the more glamorous infantry.
After a decade as a peacetime soldier, including five years living with the common enlisted men as an officer in training, Steuben received his first taste of fire in 1756 when Prussia allied with England upon the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War. He saw action on the Austrian frontier, where he was seriously wounded. Upon his recovery he volunteered for a command post in Frederick’s light infantry battalion, a new unit which the king was standing up to conduct reconnaissance and lightning raids. Both his superb war record and his family connections—Frederick the Great’s father, Friedrich Wilhelm I, was one of Steuben’s four godfathers—led to an appointment on Frederick’s staff. During this time he attended the Prussian king’s personal classes on the art of war. Despite being dwarfed by its neighbors, Prussia was eighteenth-century Europe’s great military success story—an army with a country, as the saying went, and not the other way around. And its king was already a mythic figure, an atheist as famous for his religious tolerance and Enlightenment values as for his martial prowess.
Frederick was also an admirer of Washington, and had followed the events of the American Revolution with interest. He described the engagements at Trenton and Princeton as among the most brilliant surprise attacks in the annals of warfare, and his unprecedented respect and fondness for commoners—epitomized by the soldiers of the Continental Army—influenced the young Steuben. As did Frederick’s homophile fetishes. The king’s summer palace in Potsdam included a “Friendship Temple” where the homoerotic attachments of Greek antiquity were celebrated. It was there that Frederick’s younger and more openly homosexual brother, Prince Henry, took a particular interest in the ruggedly handsome—and inordinately lucky—young Lt. Steuben.
Incredibly enough, Steuben’s good fortune reached its apex when he was captured by Russian forces in 1761 and marched off to Saint Petersburg as a prisoner of war. As a child, he had lived for a time in the canal-crossed city and picked up the rudiments of the Russian language. It was the nature of the age to treat captive officers more as guests than as prisoners, and Steuben used his rough facility with the Cyrillic alphabet to cultivate a friendship with a Russian nobleman who, a year later, ascended to the czar’s throne as Peter III. Despite allying with France and Austria in their war against Prussia and England, Peter had an undisguised admiration for all things Prussian, and he idolized King Frederick. Aware of this, Steuben suggested that the czar employ him as a go-between to initiate a separate peace between the two rulers. The idea could not have come at a more opportune time; Prussia was surrounded by much larger armies, and even its martial exceptionalism could not forestall its otherwise inevitable collapse. With the signing of the peace treaty between Prussia and Russia, the former was spared and Steuben was hailed as a hero in Berlin and promoted to captain. And then his inherent good luck turned.
With the Seven Years’ War drawing to a close, Steuben and 12 other officers were invited to attend a special school for strategic warfare initiated by King Frederick with an eye toward grooming a new generation of generals. There he ran afoul of one of Frederick’s favorite senior officers. Nothing in the annals records precisely why or how Steuben’s star fell, although anonymous rumors of liaisons with teenage boys soon spread. Homosexuality may have been tolerated if not encouraged at Frederick’s court, but pederasty overstepped the bonds. After being demoted to a backwater post on the far edge of the kingdom, Steuben was dismissed from the army altogether. That begat over a decade of wandering in Europe, forsaking his country’s Blut und Boden to solicit the French, the English, the Spanish, and even his old archfoes the Austrians for an army posting. But Europe was at peace, and opportunities for freelance mercenaries were scarce. To survive he returned home and drifted from court to court among the scores of Germany’s quasi-independent territorial states, seeking employment from a succession of princes, dukes, and margraves.
Finally, the ruler of the small principality of Hohenzollern-Hechingen engaged him as a court chamberlain and bestowed upon him the title Freiherr, or baron. By June 1777, however, the 47-year-old Steuben was again on the move, and this time his peregrinations took him to Paris. There the French foreign minister de Vergennes and the playwright turned arms dealer Beaumarchais somewhat enigmatically helped him to wangle an audience with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane.I
Conversing with Steuben in French—the Prussian spoke no English—over the course of several meetings, a wary Franklin only reluctantly came to recognize that his country’s interests dovetailed with those of this seasoned soldier seeking adventure across the sea. What differentiated Steuben from the hordes of foreign officers clamoring for service in North America was his background. Of all the armies of Europe, only Prussia’s had vested in its officer corps the duty to personally instruct and tend to the physical and emotional welfare of the rank and file, a task invariably left to noncommissioned officers in other countries. Frederick led by example, and expected his officers to do the same. Such was his solidarity with his officers that he wore the same plain blue uniform and unadorned regimental jacket as they did while leading enlisted men in the unending tactical drills that characterized his army’s Spartan efficiency. It was not unusual to see the king timing with a stopwatch the number of shots his infantrymen fired per minute or personally demonstrating the correct formation of a line of battle. For a regal general and his officers to muddy their uniforms teaching technique to troops of the line was unheard of. Except in Prussia.
Unaware of the gossip dogging Steuben, Franklin and Deane slowly warmed to the Prussian with the receding hairline, ample nose, and budding second chin. They were no less intrigued by his stint at Frederick’s war college than by his description of spending five years in the ranks before obtaining his lieutenant’s commission. That this included sharing the hardships and perils of the enlisted men he would one day command was a not inconsiderable skill to possess in a Continental Army lacking a history of expertise in military logistics and training. Moreover, aside from his military service, Steuben’s curriculum vitae also included his turn as an amateur diplomat—while a prisoner of war, no less. The Americans also recognized that Steuben’s broad intellectual interest in ancient Greek and Roman history, the arts, and literature would stand him well with the sophisticated Continental officers whom he would need to convince that he was not just another freebooting foreigner. Even the most famous character, Don Quixote, of his favorite writer Cervantes could be seen as a metaphor for the American Revolution. There was, however, a complication. It was clear to all who met him, particularly fellow military men, that Steuben possessed the qualities and credentials of a Renaissance soldier. But Franklin and Deane wrestled with the notion of recommending to Washington and Congress an officer who, for all his laurels, had never advanced past the rank of captain.
Thus, with the assistance of de Vergennes and Beaumarchais, the two Americans set out to tweak Steuben’s résumé. His captain’s bars were miraculously replaced by the three stars of a lieutenant general, and his brief interludes at Frederick’s court were extended to two decades at the great warrior’s side as both an aide-de-camp and the Prussian army’s quartermaster general. His character now came recommended not only by King Frederick, but by a flock of respected European dignitaries including de Vergennes and his counterpart at the French Ministry of War, Comte Saint-Germain. Moreover, Franklin wrote that it was neither fame nor fortune that was driving Steuben to the shores of the United States, but a burning “Zeal for our good Cause.” In their letters of introduction he and Deane hinted that Steuben had turned down several lucrative military posts in Prussia in order to fight under Washington. Further, that he had not simply retired to his vast estates in southwestern Germany—invented out of whole cloth by Deane—exhibited his revolutionary ardor. As a final hedge against anyone’s requiring documentation of Steuben’s credentials, they intimated that he had been in such haste to reach America that he had inadvertently left all his papers behind in his home country.
Summoning Steuben to Passy for one final meeting, Franklin stressed that he would be undertaking his overseas enterprise strictly as a volunteer, with no promise of rank. Should his services prove useful, perhaps after the war he would be rewarded with a land grant in the American wilderness. But even this was not guaranteed. One can imagine the two pear-shaped personages conversing in French in Franklin’s pretty little garden cottage, their faces set in speculative half smiles at the irony of concocting tall tales for the now repackaged Comte de Steuben to buff the bona fides he most certainly already possessed.
In late September 1777 Steuben boarded a merchantman in the port city of Marseille allegedly bound for the French Caribbean. Its cargo manifest listed wine, sulfur, and vegetables. In reality, it was transporting to New England thousands of small arms, hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, and dozens of mortars and cannons. With money borrowed from Beaumarchais, Steuben had purchased his Percherons and—unfamiliar with the color of Continental uniforms—outfitted his entourage in dazzling scarlet jackets and black bicornes sporting plumes and cockades. The horses and stylish retinue would serve as a sign of “Gen.” Steuben’s importance, and the entourage included his tall, lanky 17-year-old military secretary Pierre Étienne du Ponceau, rumored to be Steuben’s lover and the only member of the party who spoke English. Also traveling with the baron were his personal French chef, his African servants, and his chief aide-de-camp, the former French army lieutenant Louis de Pontière.
When Steuben and his company stepped onto the pier at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the first day of December they were momentarily mistaken for Redcoats and surrounded by gun-wielding patriots. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, they journeyed on to Boston, where Steuben was extravagantly entertained by the likes of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Steuben had written to Washington from Portsmouth, enclosing Franklin’s and Deane’s letters of introduction and ostentatiously reiterating his intention to serve only as an unpaid volunteer. The object of his “greatest ambition,” he wrote, “is to render your country all the services in my power and to deserve the title of a citizen of America by fighting for the cause of your liberty.” A cautious if cordial Washington redirected Steuben’s application to the Continental Congress, and before long the Prussian was in York to formally introduce himself and press his case.
The congressional delegates were well aware of Washington’s disdain for most of the foreigners who had landed in America seeking battlefield honors. Steuben’s circumstances differed in one major aspect that immediately ingratiated him with the cost-conscious delegates—he was willing to fight without pay. He had but two requests—that Congress recall several disaffected French officers whom he had befriended in Boston and who planned on returning to France; and that du Ponceau and de Pontière be awarded honorary captains’ commissions.II He also asked that when the British were finally defeated and American independence was gained, if Congress deemed his sacrifice worthy, it would compensate him with retroactive pay and a pension.
Within days the delegates voted nearly unanimously to accept Steuben’s offer of service as well as his nominal conditions. In the interest of military protocol—and in a delicate irony that no congressman could have been aware of—he was also assigned the rank of volunteer captain. Henry Laurens was so taken with the Prussian’s spirit of cooperation and formidable je ne sais quoi that he personally provided Steuben with effusive letters of introduction to his son John as well as to Washington. Over the course of their conversations the elder Laurens was also candid about the squalid conditions at Valley Forge, which may have influenced Steuben’s decision to tarry in York for nearly two weeks before setting off for the winter camp.
Despite his foppish appearance, Steuben was warmly greeted at Washington’s headquarters, particularly by John Laurens. The two had a conversation in French long into Steuben’s first night at camp, the beginning of a series of deep discourses between the young American and the worldly soldier of fortune. Laurens was so impressed that he wrote to his father that after but a few brief interactions he already considered Steuben “a man profound in the Science of war, and well disposed to render his best services to the United States.” Young Laurens pressed Steuben to look past the horrendous conditions at Valley Forge, which, he said, masked the innate discipline that the Continentals had demonstrated throughout the fall campaign. Even amid the deprivations of the February food crisis, he added, morale among the Continentals who had not deserted had barely slackened. “Our men [remain] the best crude materials for Soldiers I believe in the world,” he wrote. He also noted that Steuben “seems to understand what our Soldiers are capable of.”
John Laurens had reasons for his optimism. He had watched the emaciated and half-naked soldiers engage in such frivolities as sleigh races, snowball fights, and ice-skating competitions even during the most disastrous weeks at Valley Forge. He had also no doubt heard of, if not contributed to, the collection of 50 pounds a group of Virginia officers had raised for a widowed Pennsylvania camp follower who had tended to American prisoners in Philadelphia. Did this reflect the behavior of a beaten army? In the same correspondence with his father he cited the patience that the winter soldiers had shown in the face of desolation, and concluded with an upbeat assessment. “With a little more discipline,” he wrote, “we should drive the haughty Briton to his ships.”
Establishing discipline would be Steuben’s primary hurdle, a task for which he was well suited. For perhaps the first time, there was an experienced officer at hand who could instill a dedicated professionalism in the Continental Army. Neither Prussian nor American soldiers simply sprang from the earth fully formed, and Steuben’s years developing the clockwork efficiency of an unremarkable group of German peasants and serfs had enabled him to provide the leadership the average American soldier required. The would-be drillmaster would take on the task of molding the raw material the colonies had provided to George Washington into effectives with a distinctly martial enthusiasm. But first he found himself attending to more quotidian details.
Steuben spent his initial weeks at Valley Forge on an informal inspection tour during which he personally interviewed scores of officers and soldiers in their huts. Most were shocked when the eminent foreigner crossed their dingy thresholds to inquire about their rations, their arms, their sanitary habits. Steuben was equally astonished. His first report detailed a list of shortcomings including rusty muskets and ammunition tins, a dearth of bayonets, and—incredible to a former officer serving under Frederick the Great—both officers and enlisted men standing guard duty “in a sort of dressing gown made of old blankets or woolen bed covers.” The camp’s overall squalor offended not only his European sensibilities but his Teutonic sense of order. Particularly distasteful was the haphazard disposition of the open latrine trenches that snaked through the cantonment with no thought to their placement. Though officers had been instructed to ensure that all enlisted men used these “vaults” for bowel movements, this was more easily ordered than carried out, particularly under cover of darkness. Some men never even left their huts to urinate. In their ignorance of or indifference to personal hygiene, Steuben wondered, did the American soldiers not realize that the “foul airs” that enveloped the encampment were a virtual invitation to the diseases spreading among the soldiery?
In one of his first memorandums that John Laurens passed on to Washington, the Prussian suggested filling in the existing trenches and replacing them with new privies dug on a downhill slope at the far end of the camp from the cooking facilities. These vaults, he added, should be filled with dirt and new ones dug after every four days. He also worked with the French engineers on improving the breastworks, and laid out plans for a familiar arrangement of company and regimental rows and lanes to crisscross the plateau, a standard morale-boosting procedure in European armies. These hands-on instructions alone distinguished him from the more theoretical military maunderings the Americans were accustomed to receiving from foreign “experts.” Steuben had not been in camp four full days before the young Laurens was touting him for the office of inspector general. This in spite of the fact that at the time Thomas Conway still technically held the post and Steuben had mastered only one word of English—“Goddamn.”
“We want some kind of general tutoring in this way so much,” Laurens wrote, “[Steuben] will not give us the perfect instructions, absolutely speaking, but the best which we are in a position to receive.”
John Laurens was closer to the mark than he knew. For as February 1778 unwound, Washington recalled all his foraging parties in order to ready his army for war. Any supplies too unwieldy to be hauled back to Valley Forge were ordered burned lest they fall into enemy hands, and all boats remaining on the New Jersey banks of the Delaware were to be sailed or portaged north to Trenton. Just below that city the river dropped off the rocky Piedmont Plateau and into New Jersey’s sandier coastal plain. With the ice floes soon to melt, this geological fault line, aptly named the Trenton Falls, created a natural barrier to British ships attempting to ride the strong flood tides upriver. With that, the commander in chief had taken every defensive precaution he could. It was now time to concentrate on turning the 8,000 troops who remained at Valley Forge into a force diligent enough to avoid the previous autumn’s mistakes.
Since the engagement at Germantown, Washington had reluctantly accepted the resignations of nearly 300 officers. This left a void not only in the Continental Army’s leadership, but in its training regimen. In that sense, Steuben’s arrival proved a godsend. One of Washington’s treasured books was Frederick the Great’s Instructions to His Generals, a detailed army manual admired the world over. If the baron could replicate on the Valley Forge parade grounds even a semblance of the guidance sprung from the plains of Mecklenburg, there was hope for a successful spring campaign.
Like Washington, Steuben was also prone to taking the long view. Sensing the martial stirrings invigorating the Potts House and reverberating through camp, he plunged into his new duties determined to prove his worth, as well as to set the stage for his transformation from a volunteer captain into a salaried general officer. As he wrote to an old friend in Prussia, he could envision but two paths beckoning to him in the coming fighting season—one led to hell, the other to the head of a regiment.
I. There were rumors, never substantiated, that Steuben had made a side agreement with the French to secretly provide intelligence on the Continentals in exchange for a commission in the French army upon his return to Europe.
II. Among the French officers Steuben met in Boston was the 23-year-old engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who 13 years later was selected to design the city plan for Washington, D.C.