14
OFF CAPE HENRY, VIRGINIA, August 12, 1777

Could smell the land,” wrote Engineering Captain John Montresor in his journal,¹ “the fragrance of the pines in particular at 6:30 this morning. The ships of war hoisted their colors, supposed for seeing the land. . . . A small flock of sand larks passed. . . . At 5:00 p.m. could observe the land from the deck. . . .”

It was a welcome sight, for it had been a terrible voyage. Three weeks ago the fleet had weighed anchor at Sandy Hook, its assembly point just outside New York Harbor, on a journey that under normal conditions should have taken seven or eight days. Repeatedly they had been lashed by summer storms. Masts had been struck by lightning, sails ripped. Collisions had been a daily occurrence between the 266 heaving vessels whose masters knew how easily they could lose the convoy and fall victim to the rebel privateers.

Then came the calms—sultry, windless days with temperatures way up in the eighties followed by breathless nights—and progress had stopped completely. By the twelfth, food and water were becoming scarce, especially for the horses, which suffered acutely from rough weather because they could not vomit. For five days, when the water was calm enough, the masters of the animal transports had been sending boats about the fleet trying to collect forage; daily carcasses of dead horses had been thrown overboard.

And as they sailed up the 200-mile-long Chesapeake Bay with rebels on the banks, there would still be at least another week before they could obtain fresh provisions.

Originally, when Howe first proposed to Germain that he should drive for Philadelphia, he had planned to march through Jersey. Throughout June, he had tried to maneuver the rebel army into a position for attack and almost succeeded. But although Washington shifted his ground to contest the road to Pennsylvania, he never completely relinquished the relative safety of the Jersey heights.

With the Continental Army poised to raid his extended lines of communications, Howe had to abandon the plan to go by land, and by the end of July he was withdrawing his combat troops from Jersey and embarking them on the ships moored off Staten Island in New York Harbor.

He delayed his departure only until his reinforcements, which he regarded as completely inadequate, and Clinton had arrived from Europe. Clinton, dubbed Sir Henry during his stay in London in an effort to soothe his ever-ruffled feelings, was to command in New York in his absence. Then, on July 22, the Eagle with the two Howe brothers aboard passed through the Narrows to head out to sea with the fleet waiting anchored at Sandy Hook.

In going by sea Howe was taking a risk, for it put him out of touch with Washington’s movements. With Ticonderoga taken and Burgoyne advancing, there was always a slim chance that the rebel commander might leave Philadelphia undefended and march north, and that would demand a very fast response. Clearly the general should get back onto land as soon as possible.

From a fairly early stage, control of the Chesapeake had been central to Howe’s planning; this would enable him to cut off the rebel army from the southern provinces that provided so much of its supplies. In fact, his prisoner General Lee, who, still facing the threat of execution as a deserter, was desperately playing with both sides, had urged that the waterway was the key to ending the revolt.

But the Delaware was nearer than the Chesapeake, thus requiring less time out of touch at sea, and the landing points on its banks were closer to the target city. So on July 30 the fleet sailed into Delaware Bay, where it was greeted by the saluting guns of the Roebuck, the British frigate on station.

In conference on board the Eagle, Sir Charles Hammond, the Roebuck’s captain, warned the Howes of the difficulties of taking the fleet up the river: underwater obstructions, shoals, waiting fire ships, guns on the banks. Possibly more important was his news that the rebel army had crossed the Delaware and was waiting at Wilmington. Now no matter where the British landed on the river, they could not break Washington’s communications with the south. So the fleet went about and made for its original destination—and appalling weather conditions that were to cause it great havoc.

Early in the morning of August 16 the fleet started up Chesapeake Bay, anchoring during the ebb tide and going on again under the flood. The weather was still excessively hot, “the pitch,” as Montresor recorded, “melting off the seams of the vessel.” During the three days it had taken them to tack up into the bay, they had heard the signal guns, and on the evening of the fourteenth, “a large smoke made on the shore,” carrying the news of their arrival to the rebel commander.

By the eighteenth, they were past the wide mouth of the Potowmack (Potomac) River, where a lone galley suddenly ran up the striped rebel flag and opened fire before it was chased off by a frigate, and heading for the Hooper Islands where fires were signaling their approach. The weather was wildly erratic, raging thundery squalls, which made navigation difficult in confined waters of variable depth, suddenly replacing calm.

Three days later, they had reached Annapolis; as the Eagle passed, two gun batteries ran up the rebel colors, but wasted no ammunition on so massive a target as the hundreds of ships that were passing within gunshot.

On the night of the twenty-second in pouring rain they anchored off Turkey Point between the mouths of the Elk and Susquehanna rivers where the channel narrowed. For two days, under the guns of an armed schooner, the fleet longboats sounded the Elk. Then, early on Sunday morning, two frigates sailed up the shallow river ahead of the transports, their bottoms cutting a channel in the soft mud. By nine thirty, covered by the two warships, the flatboats had started landing troops opposite Cecil Courthouse a few miles upstream.

For once Howe was in a hurry; Wilmington—and the rebel army—was not far away. Washington had avoided a major battle in Jersey but, so reasoned the British general, would now be forced to defend Philadelphia.

By September 8 Howe’s preparations were completed for the advance on Philadelphia—and for what he hoped would be the final battle of the Revolution. The rebel army was waiting on his direct route to the city, carefully posted on the west of the Brandywine Creek between the two Delaware river towns of Wilmington and Newport.

All the British intelligence indicated that Washington planned to make a stand there, but Howe was an artful strategist and did not choose to comply with what Washington had in mind.

The next morning, two hours before daylight, the army was on the move, marching in the usual two columns, one on the road with the cannon and the wagons and one in the country. It swung north through Newark into the Society Hills, camping eventually at Kennett Square on the highway from Nottingham to Philadelphia.

Washington responded, as he had to if he was to avoid being outflanked, by marching north to counter the British movement. He crossed the Brandywine Creek, which flowed south through western Pennsylvania into the Delaware at Wilmington, and established a two-and-a-half-mile line on the steep hills parallel with the water. From there he could dominate most of the fords through the stream where the British were likely to attempt a crossing in their drive for Philadelphia. But he put his main concentration at Chadd’s Ford, on the main road to the city from Howe’s camp.

Meanwhile, at Kennett Square Howe studied the reports of the rebel positions. He planned an assault scheme that was almost identical with the tactics he had employed so successfully in the Battle of Long Island: a large feint at the front to concentrate the enemy’s attention while the troops for the main attack took a roundabout route to a position in the rear.

Von Knyphausen would advance in force along the Philadelphia road to Chadd’s Ford—as Washington appeared to expect—where he would set up his guns, open fire, position his troops for the assault but wait for the sound of gunfire to the north before ordering the attack.

By then, if the plan were successful, a division of 7,000 men led by Cornwallis and accompanied by Howe himself would have marched north, crossed the Brandywine high upstream of the rebel line, then turned south on a road that led behind the hills on which Washington’s troops were now posted. The two attacks, from front and rear, would then be launched simultaneously.

It was typical of Howe strategy, but it had worked before. And astonishingly it would work again.

At first, thick fog lay in the valley, and Von Knyphausen’s men, marching through the cold dank air along the seven-mile stretch of road from Kennett Square to Chadd’s Ford, could see only a few ranks ahead. But as the sun rose, the mist began to clear, lying in patches on the steep timbered hills that framed the highway.

At the head of the column and spread out on the flanks on either side of the road, an advance party of fifteen dragoons walked their horses, their eyes scanning the slopes for any movements that might indicate rebel gunmen. Behind them marched the Queen’s Rangers, a Loyalist unit of carefully selected men, trained for special operations, and a new corps of riflemen each armed with a new weapon that loaded at the breach. Captain Patrick Ferguson, their commander, who had invented the gun, astonished senior officers at Woolwich to whom he demonstrated it by firing at six rounds a minute—twice the normal firing rate. Now it was about to be tested in action.

Following the mobile forward units came the long column of infantry that made up most of Von Knyphausen’s force of 5,000—the British brigades in scarlet, the Hessians in blue—marching easily ahead of the cavalry and the artillery train, the smaller guns drawn by six horses, the heavier guns by bigger teams. Farther back up the road ambled the provision and baggage wagons and the cattle, protected on the flanks and at the rear by a strong rear guard of Scottish Highlanders.

An hour earlier, at 4 a.m., Cornwallis’ division had started out along the same road. It contained many more combat troops than Von Knyphausen’s column, including the storming units, the light infantry and the grenadiers, but it was unencumbered by baggage wagons or cattle. Speed was essential. The men had a long way to go, at least 17 miles before they went into action—provided Howe’s circuiting plan worked without discovery.

As the long ranks of soldiers marched through the moist darkness, the jaegers, some on horses, some on foot, moved on ahead and, two miles toward Chadd’s Ford, led the column off the Philadelphia highway onto the Great Valley Road, which ran parallel with the Brandy wine.

The first shots broke the quiet of the early morning as Von Knyphausen’s column approached Welch’s Tavern, about three miles down the road from Kennett Square. The rebel marksmen, about 300, according to the general’s formal report, were shooting from the cover of a wood on a hill behind the tavern; the rangers and the riflemen raced past the tavern, breaking off the road into the wood.

There were not enough rebels thrown forward to make much of a stand, and they retreated as soon as they were attacked, holding ground, firing for a few minutes, then relinquishing it.

Von Knyphausen, watching the skirmishing in and out of the trees on the hillsides ahead, did not even halt the column—at least, not for several miles until it neared the Brandy wine when he had to, for the rebels had pushed troops in strength across the creek to challenge him.

They had chosen their position well. Near the creek, the narrow valley, which had so far contained the road in a defile, opened up into a fairly wide stretch of flat swampland surrounded by wooded hills before it joined the meadows that bordered the Brandy wine. The swamp was central to the rebels’ defense position, for it would keep Von Knyphausen’s men from spreading out, forcing them to stay bunched on the road, easy targets for concentrated fire from troops posted all around.

As soon as the advance guard met the first burst of heavy shooting from the woods and the hills on the far side, Von Knyphausen halted the column and gave his orders quickly. The rangers charged up through the trees on the left to drive off the nearest enemy units covering the approach to the swamp.

Meanwhile, aides were galloping back along the road with instructions for the infantry columns to wheel off the highway onto the hills on both sides of the valley. Four guns were moved out from the artillery train and hauled up onto high ground on the right.

The approach to the marsh was cleared quickly. Now Von Knyphausen had to get his men across it under lethal attack.

His four guns opened up, plastering the far hills with solid shot and grape. Then Ferguson and his riflemen raced across the swamp through a blaze of shooting and made for cover at the foot of the hills on the right. Highly vulnerable, being so few, forced back by the pressure of the rebel firing to the edge of the marsh, they desperately searched for a new position they could hold temporarily until Von Knyphausen could reinforce them. They found it in a house.

As they opened up from the windows with their fast-firing rifles, Von Knyphausen sent a corps of support troops across the marsh to back them—100 Hessians, who took up positions near the house. Then the rangers went over, running into the woods on the hill on the left under orders to attack fast with the bayonet.

Gradually, in this way, Von Knyphausen got more and more: men across the swamp, and as he built up his attack forces, who were pushing up the hills on both sides, using bayonets when they could, the concentration of fire on the road was eased.

Rebel reinforcements came across the creek to support the men who were constantly giving ground, but now that the road over the swamp was safer, Von Knyphausen was able to send up his brigades in strength, as well as his artillery. By nine o’clock the rebels were being forced down through the woods onto the meadows that lay beside the Brandywine. A rebel battery of four cannon and a howitzer set up just the other side of Chadd’s Ford was pounding metal onto the lower levels of the hill to cover the American retreat.

By now Colonel Samuel Cleaveland, who was commanding the artillery, had brought up his cannon onto the hills that overlooked the creek; the guns were firing continuously, crashing grape into the ranks of the rebels in the meadows as they dropped back toward the water. By half past ten the last of the American units had been driven across the ford, and the rebel commanders must have thought the assault through the creek imminent. The British and Hessian light troops were forming near the banks, Cleaveland’s horse teams were rushing guns to new positions chosen to cover the crossing, but the general gave no orders to advance.

The mist had disappeared, and the sun was now burning down from a cloudless sky. Von Knyphausen’s soldiers, sweating as always in their thick uniforms, could see the left wing of the main rebel line far up on a high hill on the other side of the Brandywine: long ranks of men stretching north along the parallel of the stream.

The hours went by slowly. Every now and then the general ordered a feint; the cannon would open up furiously for a few minutes, but the cannonades were followed by no infantry. Once both sides were rocked by an enormous explosion as one of the rebel ammunition wagons blew up. Soon after two o’clock it became obvious to the general that the enemy knew why he had I delayed his attack. “Great movements were observed in the enemy’s position on the opposite side of the creek,” he reported.

Not long before this sudden spate of activity, Cornwallis’ column some 12 miles to the north was splashing through Jefferies’ Ford on the east branch of the Brandy wine. They had been on the march for ten hours, but the movement had been brilliantly successful. It was now too late for Washington to use the creek as an obstacle.

Soon after they had passed through the ford, the jaegers in the vanguard turned off onto a road that led through the village of Sconnelstown. All morning they had been marching north. Now they were advancing south, in the opposite direction, on a country lane that led to Chester and on beyond it to Philadelphia. The column had become extended and ragged on the march, and at Sconnelstown the forward troops were halted to allow the rest to catch up. Then they all moved off again upward through thick woodland and into open country at the top of Osborne’s Hill.

They were behind the rebel lines—two miles from Washington’s extreme northern outposts and only four miles from Chadd’s Ford, where the moment they opened up with the cannon, Von Knyphausen would order his men through the creek.

Across the valley that lay before them—a patchwork of farmland, orchards, plow and pasture—they could see the hamlet of Birmingham, dominated by a meetinghouse. Rebel troops were forming on the hill near it, and Howe must have been tempted to order an immediate attack before they had time to prepare themselves for the impact. But his men had been on the move since four in the morning; they were tired and hungry, hardly the ideal condition in which to mount an attack, and he gave orders for them to break ranks and rest.

It was probably wise of Howe to let his men relax, even though it meant losing some initiative and giving Washington time to reorganize his defense. As the British commander watched, rebel troops were gathering on the hill opposite, and guns were being brought up into position. But Howe was never a general to act precipitately. He liked to prepare his battles carefully, to advance in controlled order with his cannon properly placed, and situated as he was to attack simultaneously on two fronts, he had an enormous advantage. The only thing he lacked as usual was time. There were not many hours until darkness, but as usual this did not seem to worry him.

Not until an hour after the column had marched through the woods onto the summit of Osborne’s Hill were his troops formed in battle order. By then the rebels, whom Howe estimated in his report at 10,000, had formed on the opposite hill in a position that Montresor described “as remarkably strong, having a large body advanced, small bodies still further advanced and their rear covered by a wood wherein their main body was posted.” There were woods, too, on their flanks. Sitting on his horse watching the enemy movements, Cornwallis was overheard to say: “The damn rebels form well.”

Howe’s troops were ranged waiting in three well-spaced columns—the jaegers and the light infantry on the left, the grenadiers in the center and the guards² on the right. The cannon were already set up on the hill, their crews waiting for the orders to put down the barrage ahead of the advancing men.

It was to be a set-piece battle, the kind the British often fought in Europe. There were no fortifications, no redoubts for the rebel marksmen to use as cover, as they had at Bunker Hill or even at Long Island. It was to be man against man—or, rather, rank against rank—the type of conflict in which rigid drill discipline inevitably paid off.

The bands struck up; the order to advance was given. To the thumping of the drums, the three thick, long columns marched steadily and unhurriedly down the hill toward their enemy.

At the foot of the hill was a lane the British would have to cross before they could move up toward the waiting rebel ranks. As they approached, a sudden burst of shooting came from an orchard on the left, but it did nothing to check the movement of the three marching columns. The jaegers, who were nearest, moved forward fast, crossed the lane and leaped onto the bank at the far side. Resting their rifles on the rail fence at the side of the orchard, they opened fire.

On the hill behind them, the gunners began firing shot over the heads of the advancing troops. The British crossed the lane, then deployed in long ranks. With bayonets lowered, they moved steadily up the incline toward the rebels and broke into a run.

The Americans were much better drilled to withstand attack than they had been at the Battle of Long Island, but they were still ill equipped to stand up to trained, precision bayoneting by veteran troops. Repeatedly they fired at the long lines of approaching British. Two cannon were shooting continuously, bursting flying metal at the nearing rows of scarlet.

Gaps appeared in the ranks and were promptly filled. There was no return shooting, except on the left, where the light infantry were slowed by a plowed field; neither the grenadiers in the center nor the guards on the right stopped to raise their muskets to their shoulders. They just charged on until the moment of bayonet impact—the moment for which their whole fighting technique was designed: thrust, twist, withdraw; thrust, twist, withdraw.

At Chadd’s Ford, Von Knyphausen heard the cannonfire on Osborne’s Hill and ordered the assault. Cleaveland’s guns opened up firing as fast as they could reload to cover the crossing, and the assault units splashed through the shallow water of the ford, rushing the rebels’ four-gun battery that had claimed many casualties during the morning.

They were storming an enemy who knew they were under strong attack in the rear, who could hear the ominous booming of distant artillery as well as sharp, deafening thunder crashes of the cannon across the stream. The rebels had moved forward in strength to support their gun positions and were shooting all the time as the British and Hessian support troops ran through the ford. For more than an hour under the onslaught of British and Hessian charges the rebels retained their form as they retreated gradually onto the heights. Then they realized that their front at Birmingham had given way. From the village of Dilworth, behind the hill on which Washington had ordered the stand against Howe and Cornwallis, groups of retreating Americans were hurrying in disorder toward Chester on the Philadelphia road.

The rebel commander had anticipated the possibility of retreat and posted men in force in a defile under General Nathanael Greene to hold the road to the south of Dilworth at the main line of retreat from Birmingham. He was no longer trying to win a battle but to save his army; this with great skill he did. For a while, in fact, for just too long, Cornwallis’ pursuing soldiers were checked.

The defense on the other front against Von Knyphausen’s force ended abruptly. Cornwallis’ right wing had become entangled in a dense wood near the Brandy wine, but at last they broke through to find themselves on the flank of the rebels still fighting stubbornly in the dusk against Von Knyphausen’s troops. It was the climax. The Americans were unable to sustain attack from two directions and, like the others, gave way into retreat.

The end of the Battle of Brandy wine, like the beginning, was a repeat of Long Island. Washington’s force was shattered on every front. The totally disorganized rebel troops fled toward Chester; only the darkness saved them from annihilation or capture.

“The enemy’s army escaped a total overthrow,” Howe reported to Germain, “that must have been the consequence of an hour’s more daylight.”

Once again Howe’s unhurried attitude had preserved Washington’s army. As always, Howe’s battlefield decisions left the impression he felt he could complete the operation tomorrow.

However, as they had at Long Island, the rebels displayed an astonishing resilience. The very next day, routed though they had been, they were on the march from Chester as an army. Presumably Washington wanted to get his men away from the immediate danger of a followup attack and give them a chance to recover.

He crossed the Schuylkill River and for a few days camped at Germantown just north of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Howe sent Cornwallis forward to Chester, detached a small force to occupy Wilmington and, with the rest of his army, marched north toward Valley Forge.

It was a game of tactics. Washington needed to station himself so that he could challenge a British advance on Philadelphia; at the same time he had to keep from being driven into the fork on which the city was sited, between the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers. Howe, on the other hand, was determined to get his army across the Schuylkill to the north to achieve that situation.

For a week the two armies feinted and parried as Washington kept changing his position, crossing and recrossing the Schuylkill, so that he retained sufficient maneuverability to dart south to protect the city or north to check a flanking movement.

Then on September 22, Howe outwitted him. The British were near Valley Forge; the rebels on the east of the Schuylkill. Suddenly, Howe marched north in the direction of the American magazines at Reading, and Washington quickly moved north, too, on the other side of the river to counter him. As Howe had hoped, he overreacted and went too far. That night after darkness the British turned about and made a quick movement south. In the moonlight, before the rebels had time to challenge them, Howe’s soldiers crossed the Schuylkill by two fords.

Now that Howe was between the Continental Army and Philadelphia, there was nothing Washington could do for the time being to save the city, which Congress had evacuated four days earlier to its usual retreat position at Lancaster.

At ten o’clock on September 26 British troops led by Lord Cornwallis marched through the streets of Philadelphia “amidst the acclamation,” according to Montresor, “of some thousands of inhabitants.” It was the home of many Quakers, who were strongly Loyalist. In taking possession of the biggest city in America, Howe had achieved at least part of his objective. He had not yet inflicted the essential final defeat on Washington and his army, but he had captured the nearest place the rebels had to a capital. As soon as the navy controlled the Delaware, he would be well positioned for further operations—for subduing New Jersey and Maryland and Delaware and Virginia. As he had always intended, he could act against the rebel supply lines from the south.

On the sunny day that Cornwallis rode past Philadelphia’s City Hall, where the provincial delegates had voted in favor of so many rebellious resolutions against their King, Burgoyne was still camped by the Hudson, waiting for news of a movement of troops up the river from New York. But his situation had undergone a drastic change.

For a start, he was no longer in supply communication with Canada, meaning he would have to reach Albany before his food stocks were exhausted. And his army, which in July had been twice as large as the rebels who opposed him, was now greatly outnumbered by a force of 11,000 men.