This portrait of tranquility of the falls of the Schuylkill River, five miles from Philadelphia, belies the fact that the area was to endure repeated conflicts between the British and American armies before and during the Valley Forge encampment.

Though King George III ruled Great Britain and its territories for six decades, he is essentially remembered as the monarch who lost the war for American independence.

Charles Willson Peale’s iconic portrait of Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, who at 20 was a fearless major general in the Continental Army and who joked that he had been christened in honor of every saint who could protect him in battle.

Dubbed “that bastard son of a Scottish peddler” by John Adams, the 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton chafed for a battlefield command during the winter of 1777–78, but he was too indispensable as General George Washington’s chief aide-de-camp.

John Laurens of South Carolina, son of the president of the Continental Congress and an idealistic aide to Washington, formed with Hamilton and Lafayette a troika of young men as completely devoted to the American cause for independence as they were to its commander in chief.

General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, a native Pennsylvanian and one of Washington’s most trusted homegrown commanders, led his troops in every major engagement of the Pennsylvania campaign, including the ill-fated Paoli Massacre.

Reviled in London for their failure to put down the American rebellion, the British brothers General William Howe and Admiral Richard Howe are lampooned in this political cartoon as conspiring with the Devil to enrich themselves by prolonging the war.

Though many of the American troops lacked the skills and training of their British counterparts, for much of the Battle of Brandywine Creek on September 11, 1777, they repelled one British attack after another before being forced to withdraw.

“Treat him as you would my own son,” Washington instructed the army surgeon who tended to Lafayette after he was wounded during the Battle of Brandywine Creek.

The British-born American General Charles Lee spent the winter of 1777–78 as a prisoner of war, only to be exchanged in time to lead the Continental Army to the brink of disaster at the Battle of Monmouth Court House.

Henry Laurens, president of the Continental Congress during the Valley Forge encampment, became a staunch ally of Washington’s, aided by the fierce loyalty his son John had for the commander in chief.

The American General William Alexander—known as Lord Stirling because of his ancestral claims to Scottish nobility—was one of Washington’s most courageous and loyal officers.

Nearly 200 sleeping Americans were bayonetted to death on the night of September 20, 1777, in what came to be known as the Paoli Massacre.

Still recovering from wounds suffered during his heroic actions at the Battle of Saratoga, General Benedict Arnold was placed in charge of Philadelphia after the British evacuated the city in June 1778.

The Virginia frontiersman Colonel Daniel Morgan led a rifle regiment of sharpshooters whose backwoods guerilla tactics struck fear into their British opponents.

Serving as second in command to both General William Howe and, later, General Henry Clinton, Lord Charles Cornwallis led the reinforcements who helped turn the tide at the Battle of Germantown.

Though Col. John Laurens was lauded for his bravery during the attack on the “Chew House” during the Battle of Germantown, the action proved a major and costly mistake.

Brigadier General Louis Duportail, who traveled from France to join the American cause, was the chief designer of the Valley Forge defenses; he and his team were appointed as the original U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Before appropriating the Potts House at Valley Forge for his headquarters, Washington directed the Revolutionary War from this campaign tent. With the Continental Congress in exile and disarray, the canvas pavilion served as the de facto capital of the United States.

Contrary to popular belief, the winter of 1777–78 was not the coldest one of the Revolutionary War. The conditions, however, may have been the most harsh, exacerbated as they were by the near-complete dearth of food and clothing.

Many scholars contend that this scene of Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge in February 1778 never actually occurred, yet it does represent the genuine anguish the commander in chief felt over the suffering of his troops.

Considered Washington’s favorite general and chosen personally by the commander in chief to succeed him should Washington fall on the battlefield, Rhode Island’s Nathanael Greene reluctantly volunteered to take on the additional duties of quartermaster general in order to scour the countryside for provisions to feed the starving troops.

Charles Gravier, the Comte de Vergennes, served as King Louis XVI’s foreign minister and worked closely with Benjamin Franklin in negotiating the Franco-American alliance that brought France into the war on the side of the Americans.

This depiction of Benjamin Franklin being received at the court of Louis XVI reflects not only the French veneration of him for his scientific achievements, but his lifelong appeal to the fairer sex. Both qualities helped him, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee negotiate an alliance with France.

Thomas Paine compared the Continental troops to an “army of beavers” in their zeal to construct the simple log huts that would provide some semblance of suffocating shelter during the Valley Forge encampment.

This house, owned by the Potts family of Valley Forge, served as the cramped headquarters and living quarters for Gen. Washington and his sprawling staff during that fateful winter.

During the British occupation of Philadelphia over the winter of 1777–78, the intelligence officer Captain John André romanced the beautiful American socialite Peggy Shippen, the future wife of Benedict Arnold.

A contemporary portrait of Peggy Shippen, daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia loyalist, drawn by Capt. André. Her marriage to Benedict Arnold would lead to his treason against the American cause.

The American general Horatio Gates, fresh from his astounding victory at the Battle of Saratoga, proceeded to scheme with a small circle of fellow officers—including General Thomas Conway and certain members of Congress—to replace Washington as commander in chief, in what came to be known as the “Conway Cabal.”

Washington had little use for most of the foreign soldiers of fortune who flocked to America’s shores seeking battlefield glory. The exceptions, from his immediate left, were Johann de Kalb, Baron von Steuben, Casimir Pulaski, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and the Marquis de Lafayette, soldiers who fought—and in the case of de Kalb and Pulaski, died—for the cause of American independence.

The American Revolution witnessed the first military use of a submarine, a one-man craft dubbed the Turtle by its American inventor, David Bushnell. While arming the submersible vehicle, Bushnell coined the term “torpedo.”

With the ever-loyal Marquis de Lafayette at his side, Gen. Washington visits the troops soon after a January 1778 snowstorm.

During the Valley Forge encampment Gen. Washington sent out hundreds of letters, many of them written by Alexander Hamilton, to officers, lawmakers, family, and others, providing details on the conduct of the war. Over the winter of 1777–78, Washington essentially was the personification of the government of the United States.

The arrival of Martha Washington at Valley Forge in February 1778 revived the flagging spirits of her husband and, by extension, those of his troops.

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben may have arrived at Valley Forge in February with a falsified résumé, yet he was credited by Washington with almost single-handedly transforming the Continental Army into a professional and powerful fighting force.

Despite a language barrier that forced Baron von Steuben to rely on translators to relay his curses-filled instructions, the Prussian’s incessant drilling lessons quickly took hold.

When Gen. William Howe was recalled to England, it was Sir Henry Clinton who reluctantly took command of all British forces in North America and oversaw the near disastrous retreat from Philadelphia to New York.

A former Boston bookseller and one of George Washington’s closest confidants, the autodidact General Henry Knox led the nascent Continental Army’s artillery corps that so devastated the British at the Battle of Monmouth Court House.

At a critical moment during the Battle of Monmouth Court House in June 1778, Gen. Washington galloped along the front lines, demanding of his troops, “Will you fight?” They answered his call with a renewed strength.