Stephenson M. Patriot Battles. How the War of Independence Was Fought

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the philadelphia campaign 269

England (perhaps less satisfactory from Howe’s point of view). On 23

July 1777 the vast armada of 267 ships (the largest fleet ever to sail in

North American waters) set sail from Sandy Hook.

The opposing commanders shared the same fear: that the other

would go north. On 12 July Washington had confidently predicted,

“His designs I think are most unquestionably against the Highlands.”

And later, “There is the strongest reason to believe that the North River

[the Hudson] is their object.” It seemed obvious to Washington that

Howe would go to support Burgoyne, and he was “puzzled . . . being

unable to account upon any plausible Plan . . . Why he should go to the

southward rather than cooperate with Mr Burgoyne.”

As late as 21

August Washington remained convinced that Howe was making a feint

southward, so strongly did he believe that the most profitable strategic

move for the British would be in the north, bisecting the rebellious states

down the line of the Hudson. Not knowing where Howe would fetch

up—the Carolinas? Philadelphia? Boston? the Hudson?—Washington

was forced to march and countermarch, driven by the winds of shifting

intelligence: “compelled to wander about the country,” said Nathanael

Greene, “like Arabs.”

Howe reached the Delaware Capes on 29 July and rendezvoused

with Captain Sir Andrew Snape Hamond of the Roebuck, which had

been on station in the Delaware for some time. At this point events

become as murky as the waters of the turbid river. Most popular histories

have Hamond warning Howe off a landing farther up the river. Or

as Lieutenant William John Hall put it, Hamond went on board

Howe’s flagship and “produced a chimerical draught of fortifications.”

Hamond, in fact, had done no such thing and was himself flabbergasted

when the Howes rejected his advice to land at Reedy Island, about

thirty-five miles south of Philadelphia.

Hamond did, however, mislead the Howes about the whereabouts

of Washington’s army, informing them that it was at Wilmington,

south of Philadelphia, when in fact it was at Coryell’s Ferry in New

Jersey, 100 miles to the northeast, and would not arrive at Philadelphia

until 24 August.

Perhaps it was this crucial piece of misinformation

that persuaded the British commanders to take the long route to the

patriot battles 270

Chesapeake. To have tried an amphibious landing at, say, New Castle,

just south of Wilmington, might have courted disaster if opposed by

Washington’s supposedly proximate army. To have gone farther up to

Chester would have been to commit the fleet to such narrow navigable

channels that it would have been strung out for four miles

and exposed

to shore batteries. Hardly a propitious springboard for an amphibious

landing. Perhaps Howe was now convinced that Washington would

stay in defense of Philadelphia, and a landing at Head of Elk at the

most northerly reaches of the Chesapeake would give enough time for

the British commander to prepare his ship-weary troops for the pitched

battle he sought.

After another wretched twenty-five days at sea (during which over

300 dead and dying horses were thrown overboard), Howe’s exhausted

army finally fetched up in the Chesapeake. After a short period of

recuperation it headed up toward Philadelphia, while Washington

on 9 September moved his army (by now some 11,000 strong and

predominantly Continentals) into a blocking position at Chad’s Ford

where the main road crossed the Brandywine creek.

The Brandywine offered a solid defensive position, deep enough

to force the British and Hessians to cross via fords which would act as

choke points and very effective killing zones if adequately defended. On

its east side (the American positions) there was good high ground and

abundant wooded cover. The terrain, in other words, would have been

excellent if the American command had been thoroughly conversant

with it. However, as events would ruthlessly expose, it was not.

Washington’s dispositions from south (downstream below Chad’s

Ford) to north were as follows: The most southerly (the American left

wing) was anchored by Brigadier General John Armstrong’s 1,000

Pennsylvania militia at Pyle’s Ford, a particularly strong defensive

position that Washington hoped would offer his militia maximum

protection. A half mile upstream was Chad’s Ford, the center of the

patriot defense under Nathanael Greene’s division with Anthony

Wayne’s brigade and Thomas Procter’s artillery attached. A little behind

them stood Adam Stephen’s division in support. The right wing, under

the overall command of John Sullivan, had Sullivan’s own division at the

the philadelphia campaign 271

Brandywine

11 September 1777

American

British

American movements

British movements

MILES 1 1

/2 2

Knyphausen

Painters’

Ford

Sconneltown

Birmingham

Meeting

House

Kennett Meeting House

Greene

Armstrong (militia)

Stirling

Stephen

Hazen

Sullivan

Wilmingto

nPike

A MERICAN

Hill

Jeffrie’s Ford

Trimble’s Ford

Taylor’s Ford

Buffington’s Ford

Wistar’s Ford

Chad’s Ford

Brinton’s Ford

Welch’s Tavern

OWE AND

ORNWALLIS

OWE AND

ORNWALLIS

Wayne

RETREAT

Osborne’s

next ford upstream, Brinton’s. Lord Stirling’s division was in support.

The next upstream ford, Painter’s, one mile from Brinton’s, was held

by the Delaware regiment of Sullivan’s division; at the next, Wistar’s,

a further mile from Painter’s, a battalion of Moses Hazen’s regiment

patriot battles 272

stood guard. The last ford controlled by the American’s, Buffington’s, a

mile above Wistar’s and close to the fork of the east and west branches of

the Brandywine, was held by Hazen’s second battalion. Across the river

from Painter’s Ford Sullivan had the army’s lone cavalry detachment.

Theodorick Bland’s 1st Dragoons, which was both understrength and

weakly led. Also across on the west side (opposite Buffington’s) was a

militia detachment under Major James Spear. The army’s total strength

was about 11,000.

Concerned about his vulnerability on his far right, Sullivan

inquired on 10 September about other fords that might be even farther

upstream of Buffington’s. Washington’s headquarters informed him

that locals had completely ruled out any that might be a threat.

One

mile above Buffington’s was Jeffrie’s Ford, but it was dismissed as being

too far north (about ten miles from Chad’s) and approached from the

west by a difficult road.

At 5:00 am on Thursday, 11 September Howe and Cornwallis

led a column of twelve British and three Hessian regiments totaling

approximately 6,500 men, and headed up the Great Valley Road on the

eastern side of the Brandywine toward the unguarded Jeffrie’s Ford.

A half hour later, a second column of around 6,000, commanded by

General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, set off down the main road (today’s

Route 1) to Chad’s Ford. Howe’s battle plan was to be a replay of the

battle of Brooklyn: Knyphausen was to hold the American center in

place while Howe and Cornwallis worked a huge detour around

the American flank. By 10:30 am Knyphausen had driven Brigadier

General William Maxwell’s light infantry skirmishers back across the

Brandywine and was in position.

Moving over 6,000 men without being spotted is not easy, and, as

at Brooklyn, the British flanking column was sighted. The first alarm

came from Hazen at Painter’s Ford, who passed it along to Sullivan and

from him to Washington. It was around 11:00 am. Washington, sensibly,

ordered Sullivan to have Bland’s cavalry detachment investigate.

Meanwhile, another sighting came in from Lieutenant Colonel James

Ross, scouting out by the Great Valley Road. It was now 11:25 am, and

Washington’s instinct for aggressive action was piqued. If Howe had

the philadelphia campaign 273

split his force, he had also opened himself to defeat in detail. Washington

ordered Sullivan, Greene, Maxwell, and Armstrong to cross the creek

and attack Knyphausen. Stephen’s and Stirling’s divisions would move

northward up the Brandywine to screen the American right flank.

Even as units of Sullivan’s division clashed with the 4th Foot

across from Brinton’s Ford, Washington received yet another message

that threw his whole strategy into disarray. At 1:30 pm Sullivan passed

on Major Spear’s observation that he had traversed most of the Great

Valley Road opposite the American positions and had seen nothing of a

British column above the forks of the Brandywine. Perhaps, concluded

Washington, what the earlier reports had seen was merely a feint, and

the whole British force was about to attack at Chad’s and Brinton’s.

He immediately ordered Stirling and Stephen to halt and stay put and

canceled all plans for the attack.

No sooner were the orders issued than two more reports threw

Washington into further confusion. A farmer, Thomas Cheyney,

insisted to a doubting Washington that he had seen the British massing

on the eastern side of Jeffrie’s Ford. And at about 2:10 pm Washington

received a report from Sullivan forwarding Bland’s account of seeing the

British “to the rear of [Bland’s] right about two miles, coming down,”

in an eerie repetition of the passage through Jamaica Pass during the

battle of Brooklyn. The British had slid through a narrow defile on the

eastern side of Jeffrie’s that could have easily been denied them with “a

hundred men,” thought the Hessian Captain Johann Ewald. It was, one

of them remembered, “left wide open for us.” Washington had been

blindsided.

Now Stephen and Stirling were hurried to block the British at

Birmingham Meeting House. Sullivan was ordered to join them there,

and Greene’s division was pulled back from Chad’s Ford into a reserve

position from which it could equally support the positions either at Chad’s

or at Birmingham Meeting House. Stirling and Stephen established their

divisions on the north-facing slope of Plowed Hill, facing the British on

Osborne’s Hill. The Americans had taken up a formidable defensive

position; the British chief of engineers, John Montresor, acknowledged it

was “remarkably strong, having a large body advanced, small bodies still

patriot battles 274

further advanced and their rear covered by a wood wherein their main

body was posted.” Sullivan, however, was having a hard time joining

them. He simply did not know the way: “I neither knew where the enemy

were, nor what route the other two divisions were to take, and of course

could not determine where I should make a junction with them.”

The British deployed in three frontline assault groups. On their

right, the Guards; in the center, British grenadiers; on the left, British

light infantry and German jägers. Hessian grenadiers backed up the

Guards, while the 4th brigade supported the center and left. James

Agnew’s 3rd Brigade was held in reserve. The British attacked at 4:00

pm. The light infantry bit into the Frenchman Prudhomme de Borré’s

division on the far left, which crumbled and ran (de Borré leading the

way, for which disgrace he would resign a few days later). The Guards

and grenadiers hit the patriot center and Sullivan’s still-forming

division on the American left. Sullivan’s men wilted under the bayonet

attack and fell back in confusion. The American center, well served

by its artillery, held on until attacked by grenadiers who, an observer

noted, “ran furiously at the rebels” without stopping to fire (further

evidence that heavy packs were discarded before battle). What followed

was fifty minutes of an eighteenth-century slugfest. The New Jersey

Continental Joseph Clark recorded in his diary, “The firing, while the

action lasted, was the warmest, I believe, that has been in America since

the war began.”

Stephen Jarvis, serving with the Loyalist Queen’s

Rangers, watched the American army from an eminence and reported,

“We saw our brave comrades cutting them up in great style.”

His safe

distance may lend a certain charm to the battle that those at the sharp

end found hard to appreciate, as an anonymous British officer who was

in the thick of it described.

What excessive fatigue. A rapid march from four o’clock in the

morning till four in the eve, when we engaged. Till dark we

fought. Describe the battle . . . Thou hast seen Le Brun’s paintings

and the tapestry [depicting Marlborough’s victories] perhaps at

Blenheim. Are these natural resemblances? Pshaw! . . . There

is a most infernal fire of cannon and musquetry. Most incessant

the philadelphia campaign 275

shouting, “Incline to the right! Incline to the left! Halt! Charge!”

etc. The balls plowing up the ground. The trees cracking over one’s

head. The branches riven by the artillery. The leaves falling as in

autumn by the grapeshot.

In another echo of Brooklyn, Washington remained detached

from the crucible of the battle, as though mesmerized—in “a daze,” as

his biographer Freeman put it—by the developments on two fronts. At

around 5:00 pm he ordered Greene’s reserve to shore up the collapsing

front to the north. He would also go there; except the commander in chief

did not know the way to his own battle and had to be led northward by

a local, Curtis Lewis. In all, it had been an inept performance that could

well have cost him his army had it not been for the magnificent rear

guard actions of George Weedon’s and Peter Muhlenberg’s brigades

of Greene’s division, and the tenacious defense of Wayne’s division at

Chad’s Ford.

As evening drew on, elements of Cornwallis’s and Howe’s

right wing made contact with Knyphausen’s left, and the whole of

Washington’s army began streaming back toward Chester. The British

had been on the go since 5:00 am with only one brief halt. Howe’s

column, for example, had marched seventeen miles before going into

a battle that lasted three hours. They were in no shape to pursue, and

Howe must have bitterly regretted his lack of cavalry.

For Washington it was a low point as commander in chief, and the

overwhelming exhaustion of the defeated engulfed him. The usually

punctilious correspondent could only fall into bed with the final order of

the day: “Congress must be written to, gentlemen, and one of you must

do it, for I am too sleepy.”

Later he would report to Congress that his

losses were “not . . . considerable.” Nathanael Greene estimated them

at 800 to 900 killed and wounded with an additional 400 captured.

(Howard Packham’s Toll of Independence puts American losses much

more modestly at 200 killed, 400 wounded, and 400 captured.) Howe’s

losses were 90 killed, 448 wounded. (All but 40 of his killed and

wounded were British.) Indeed, considering the numbers involved and

the intensity of the firing, these figures represent low percentages for

patriot battles 276

each side, as a young local who visited the battlefield immediately after

the cessation noted: As “awful was the scene to behold,” there were

“a few dead but a small proportion of them, considering the immense

quantity of powder and ball that had been discharged.”

In the days following the battle Washington sought to keep his

army between Howe and Philadelphia. Despite defeat, the morale was

surprisingly high, and the commander in chief was filled “with the

firm intent of giving the Enemy Battle.”

And he would have done so

on 16 September but for a stupendous rainstorm that ruined 400,000

cartridges. On 20–21 September Anthony Wayne’s brigade of 1,500

men, which had been ordered to harass the British rear guard, was

completely surprised at Paoli by a midnight bayonet attack conducted by

the 40th, 42nd, 44th, and 55th Foot; the 2nd Battalion of light infantry,

and some elements of the 16th Dragoons, under Major General Charles

Grey. Major John André described the action from the British point of

view.

No soldier . . . was suffered to load; those who could not draw

[unload] their pieces took out their flints

. . . . It was represented to

the men that firing discovered us to the enemy, hid them from us

[because of the considerable smoke caused at discharge] killed our

friends and produced a confusion favourable to the escape of the

Rebels

. . . . On the other hand, by not firing we knew the foe to be

wherever fire appeared and a charge ensured his destruction.

It was certainly a one-sided affair, and there were exaggerated claims

of huge numbers of American dead—200, even 300—which led to a

charge of massacre.

Other authorities put the patriot dead at just over

50 and point out that the American wounded, far from being mercilessly

bayoneted, were taken from the field to British hospitals.

With Washington on the east side of the Schuylkill, Howe now

marched north up the west side, threatening the important American

military depot at Reading Furnace. When Washington responded by

also marching north, Howe doubled back during the night and crossed

his whole army over to the east bank of the Schuylkill. He was now

the philadelphia campaign 277

between Washington and Philadelphia, and the patriot army, which

had marched 140 miles in eleven days and had insufficient clothing

and food, was in no condition to contest the prize. On 26 September

Cornwallis entered the city, while the main part of the army encamped

at Germantown.



One commander invariably preferred a straightforward approach: fix

the enemy’s front in place and, while he is preoccupied, work around

a flank. Perhaps the relatively straightforward strategy reflected a man

of a blunt, none-too-sophisticated disposition. The other commander

had a predilection for the complicated, multipronged attack that

required highly developed military skills in his men, and particularly

in his officers. Paradoxically, the more experienced commander usually

opted for simplicity, like a master chef who cooks a simple omelet. The

inexperienced commander, like many amateur cooks, enjoyed doing

complicated things with foie gras and truffles.

Washington had a taste for the fancy when it came to planning

attacks, and the upcoming battle at Germantown, five miles north

of Philadelphia, would be a classic example. Howe had stationed the

bulk of his army here, with a subsidiary garrison in Philadelphia under

Cornwallis. At the end of September Washington learned that the

British commander in chief had sent off a sizable contingent for duties

elsewhere, reducing his numbers at Germantown to approximately

9,000. In contrast, the patriot army had grown through various

reinforcements and levies to 8,000 Continentals and 3,000 militia.

Many of them were green, but Washington saw an opportunity and

constructed a plan of impressive intricacy that depended on a degree

of coordination that would have been remarkable for even the most

experienced and trained troops.

As at Trenton, Washington would rely on separate columns

converging on target more or less simultaneously. At Germantown

he wanted a grand pincer movement involving four assault elements.

Column one would consist of himself, Sullivan, and Wayne (with

patriot battles 278

Stirling’s division in support) and would barrel down the Skippack

Road (the main approach from the west) with 3,000 men to engage

the British center head-on. Meanwhile, column two, the American

left wing, under Nathanael Greene, with General Adam Stephen’s

division and Brigadier General Alexander McDougall’s brigade,

would come in from the northeast with about 6,000 men (two-thirds

of the total army), down the Limekiln Road, and flank the British

right wing.

Scott

GREENE

Stephen

Donop

HOWE’S

WASHINGTON

Grant

Musgrave

Armstrong

Conway

SULLIVAN

Wayne

Stirling

Agnew

Knyphausen

Jägers

Grey

Muhlenberg

McDougall

Luken’s

Mill

Philadelphia

Van

Deering’s

Mill

Chew

House

Market

House

MILES

/2 1

American

British

Hessian

American movements

British movements

Old York Road

Allen’s Lane

Limekiln Road

Chestnut Hill

Mount

Airey

Queen’s

Rangers

Light

Infantry

Germantown

4 October 1777