His back to the wall, Washington had saved the Revolution with an army that had technically ceased to exist. The Annual Register, a British publication edited by Whig leader Edmund Burke and dedicated to recording the history of each year based on primary documents, concluded, “Thus by a few well concerted and spirited actions, was Philadelphia saved, Pennsylvania freed from danger, the Jerseys nearly recovered, and a victorious and far superior army reduced to act upon the defensive.” Concerning the effect that the battles had on Washington's reputation, “These actions, and the sudden recovery from the lowest state of weakness and distress, to become a formidable enemy in the field, raised the character of General Washington, as a commander, very high both in Europe and America,” the Register noted with some admiration, and “gives a sanction to that appellation, which is now pretty generally applied to him, of the American Fabius.”7
Fabius (Quintus Fabius Maximus, ca. 275–203 B.C.) was a Roman general who fought against Hannibal by avoiding large battles, relying instead on attrition and “wasting” the enemy through harassment. Allusions to ancient history and classical figures like Fabius, Hannibal, Pompey, and Cato were common on both sides during the American Revolution. Roman history, in fact, was foremost among the literati in Britain in 1777 as a result of the publication of a monumental book by Edward Gibbon in 1776. “We do not remember any work published in our time, which has met with a more general approbation than Mr. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” trumpeted The Annual Register for 1776 when the first volume appeared. “We are happy in adding our suffrage to the public voice, which has so justly declared in its favour.”8 Gibbon himself commented, “My book was on every table, and almost on every toilette.”9 In the eighteenth-century world of great struggles for empire in Europe and elsewhere, comparisons with ancient Greece and Rome were not only fashionable, but inevitable.
“It was the Wisdom of Fabius to put himself in the State of Defence but by no means of Inactivity,” Samuel Adams told Gen. Nathanael Greene, one of Washington's most reliable commanders, a few months after Princeton. Alluding to Fabian tactics, the Massachusetts congressman wrote, “By keeping a watchful Eye upon Hannibal and cutting off his forraging & other Parties by frequent Skirmishes he had the strongest Reason to promise himself the Ruin of his army without any Necessity of risqueing his own by a general Engagement.”10
For the remainder of the winter of 1777, the two forces settled into winter quarters, and low-level Fabian tactics became routine. Popular histories of the war tend to gloss over the nine months after Princeton, for besides what at first glance appear to be inconclusive skirmishes and pointless maneuvers, nothing “major” happened—except the recovery and rebuilding of the American Revolution and the Continental Army after its near extinction in the 1776 campaign. Washington's true leadership abilities were often put to their fullest test during the obscure times of the war, holding the cause and the army together through the long periods of attrition, when they were neglected by the nation and Congress. After Princeton, “General Washington, with the little remnant of his army at Morristown, seemed left to scuffle for liberty, like another Cato at Utica,” Capt. Alexander Graydon, a Pennsylvania officer, wrote of this period.11
The British Army's general headquarters was in New York City, but its main post in the field was New Brunswick, New Jersey, a provincial trading town on the Raritan River, with outposts between the Raritan and Perth Amboy, the capital of East Jersey. Capt. Johann Ewald of the Hessian Jäger Corps, an elite unit of German marksmen, wrote that New Brunswick “consisted of about four hundred houses, partly deserted and partly destroyed,” and was occupied by “the two battalions of English grenadiers under Colonel Monckton, the four battalions of Hessian grenadiers under Colonel Donop, the two English brigades under General Grant, the artillery, and the 16th Regiment of Light Dragoons.”12
Six months earlier, New Brunswick had been a thriving port, its handsome buildings a colorful mix of Dutch and English Colonial architecture. It became a rendezvous point for American forces arriving from Pennsylvania and points farther south, volunteers who had streamed by the thousands toward New York City in the heady days after independence was declared. It was here in a crowded tavern on September 10, 1776, that John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, on their way to Staten Island for a peace conference with Admiral Lord Howe (the general's brother), provided a memorable scene when they shared a bed in a small, stuffy room and argued over the merits of fresh air, the two great leaders alternately opening and shutting the window.
But the fortunes of war turned rapidly, and within a matter of weeks New Brunswick suffered abandonment by the Americans, evacuation by many of its residents, and occupation by the Crown Forces, along with pilfering and plundering committed by troops from both sides and the lawless elements thrown up by war. Now, in early 1777, it became the main base for His Majesty's forces in New Jersey, an island of British control in a sea of uncertainty and danger.
In reaction to the Trenton debacle, which the British blamed on lax security by the Hessians, New Brunswick was guarded by fortifications and outposts of elite units. Lt. Gen. Charles Earl Cornwallis was placed in command. “Since this place lies in a valley surrounded by hills, several redoubts and flêches were erected to cover the approaches from South Amboy, Princetown, and Millstone,” Captain Ewald explained. “The two light infantry battalions, under Lieutenant Colonel Abercromby, cantoned in the houses above Brunswick at the Raritan bridge and occupied the approaches from Hillsborough and Bound Brook. Lord Cornwallis's brigade, under Colonel Webster, cantoned in and around Bonhamtown.” Across the Raritan:
The 42nd Scottish Regiment had occupied Piscataway, adjoining the English brigade under General Leslie, which cantoned on the plantations up to Raritan Landing. The English Guards Brigade cantoned at the landing, and Chevalier [Sir George] Osborn with three hundred grenadiers occupied the outlying houses where the road runs to Quibbletown and Bound Brook. Captain Wreden and the Donop Jäger Company, and the twelve mounted Jägers under Captain Lorey, were stationed at a plantation on the road to Bound Brook in front of the English grenadiers.”13
Superseding Grant as commander in New Jersey, Lord Cornwallis settled in for the winter. “But surely ye force you have now at Brunswick is full sufficient to drive Washington to ye devil if you could get at him,” Howe had chided Grant from the comforts of New York on January 9. “An army you will know does not go into Cantonments to fight, but with an intention to be left quiet.”14
Washington's situation was desperate, almost beyond belief. After Princeton, he took the remains of his forces into the Watchung Mountains of north-central New Jersey, with general headquarters at Morristown. Who was left? A handful of volunteers, mainly Associators from Pennsylvania, together with militia from parts of New Jersey and a few die-hard Continental regulars who stayed with the commander in chief beyond their term of enlistment. More than 90 percent of the force he had had in New York six months earlier—over 20,000 men—was gone: dead, sick, or in ghastly New York prisons, while thousands of others deserted or went home when their time was up.
The Continental Army had been authorized by Congress in 1776 for one year, and the soldiers’ enlistments expired at midnight on December 31 of that year. Congress would have to authorize a new army and once more begin the endless task of finding the wherewithal to equip it. Additionally, the army's basic organizational structure had to be drastically altered, with enlistments extended to three years or “during the war,” and a more professional arrangement was needed for the officer corps.
In the meantime, Washington became a master of illusion by moving his few available troops from place to place and ordering them into action: sniping, ambushes, alarming British outposts—anything to give the appearance of numbers and to keep the Crown Forces off balance and agitated. “The two Companies under Command of Col. Durkee, aided by the militia of that Quarter should be constantly harassing the Enemy about Bound Brook and the wes
troad side of Brunswick,” he wrote to his adjutant general, Col. Joseph Reed of Pennsylvania, on January 17. “I have directed Genl. Sullivan to do the like on the quarter next him.” Regarding Gen. William Winds of the New Jersey Militia, Washington wrote, “I recollect of my approving of Wind[s's] waylaying of the Roads between Brunswick and Amboy.” He asked Reed, “Would it not be well for the Militia under Colo. Malcolm to unite with the Rangers for the purpose of keeping out constant scouts to annoy and harass the enemy in manner before mentioned?”15
Militiamen were not regular soldiers; they were citizen-soldiers called up for military service in times of emergency. Because of their general lack of training and discipline, the militia were frequently a problem, and yet they were indispensable. Too often they were the only forces available. In most states, they were drafted for home defense only and for short tours of duty, usually sixty days.
Some militia companies were well drilled, uniformed, and properly equipped, but most were not. Pennsylvania did not even have a government-sponsored militia system until early 1777, for the prewar government had refused to authorize one. Instead, units of volunteer Associators had provided defense for the province since the 1740s, and in 1776, hundreds of Associators had formed battalions to fight alongside the Continental regulars. Ironically, the three battalions of Philadelphia Associators, as well as the Philadelphia Artillery and the Philadelphia Troop of Light Horse, were among the few units on active duty in 1776 and 1777 that were properly uniformed, equipped, and fairly well drilled. However, they were not under the Pennsylvania government's jurisdiction in 1776, and they were not enlisted in the Continental Army.
Chaos resulted from this arcane arrangement as companies of volunteers came and went, sometimes without so much as a by-your-leave. “The misfortune of short enlistments, and an unhappy dependence upon militia, have shown their baneful influence at every period, and almost upon every occasion, throughout the whole course of this war,” an exasperated Washington wrote in late January. “At no time, nor upon no occasion, were they ever more exemplified than since Christmas…all of our movements have been made with inferior numbers, and with a mixed, motley crew, who were here to-day, gone to-morrow.” Continually frustrated by uncertain and undependable forces, he continued, “In a word, I believe I may with truth add, that I do not think that any officer since the creation ever had such a variety of difficulties and perplexities to encounter as I have. How we shall be able to rub along till the new army is raised, I know not. Providence has heretofore saved us in a remarkable manner, and on this we must principally rely.”16
The British response to American harassment was lethargic, which puzzled the American commander. “The Enemy must be ignorant of our Numbers, or they have not Horses to move their Artillery,” Washington told Congress in late January, “or they would not Suffer us to remain undisturbed.”17
The British Army had its own command-and-control problems, in part a result of the employment of “the Foreign Troops.” The British government had signed treaties with six German states to hire soldiers: Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Hanau, Anhalt-Zerbst, Anspach-Brandenburg, Waldeck, and Braunschweig (Brunswick). The majority of German soldiers with Howe's forces were from Hesse-Cassel, so they are collectively referred to as Hessians, but there were also Waldeckers and Anspachers who arrived later in the spring, each of whom had to be dealt with separately. But the most serious problem here for British commanders was the fact that the foreign troops were not directly subject to British military discipline, and they not only ignored Howe's orders that forbade plundering or marauding, but also plundered indiscriminately—from rebels, Loyalists, and neutrals alike—thus infuriating the entire American population.
In February 1777, a New York Loyalist told a friend in England about the strange turn the war had taken. “For these two months, or nearly, have we been boxed about in Jersey,” he wrote. Who in England could possibly imagine that “our cantonments have been beaten up; our foraging parties attacked, sometimes defeated, and the forage carried off from us; all traveling between the posts hazardous; and in short, the troops harassed beyond measure by continual duty”? Astonished and dismayed, the Loyalist added, “Yet the friends to government have been worse used by these troops than by the rebels. Plundering, and destroying property, without distinction, have been practiced.”18
As muster master general of the foreign troops, thirty-five-year-old Sir George Osborn was required to keep track of the numbers and condition of the Germans and make frequent reports about them to Lord George Germain, who passed them on to the prime minister and the king. He did his job so well and so thoroughly that King George III, after reading some of the reports, wrote a terse note to the prime minister, saying, “Lord North—I return the letters received from Sir G. Osborn, who seems to write with his usual desire of giving every information that he can acquire.”19
Sir George was the fourth Baronet Osborn, a title bestowed on the Osborn family by King Charles II more than 100 years earlier at the Restoration. Born in 1745, George was the eldest son of Sir Danvers Osborn, who died tragically after becoming governor of New York in 1753.20 A personal friend of George III, Groom of His Majesty's Bedchamber, Member of Parliament for Bedfordshire, grandson of the first Lord Halifax and nephew of the second, cousin of Lord North, and nephew of Sir John Burgoyne, Sir George was not only well connected, but also much respected in the army and at court.
The previous October, Osborn had told Lord Germain, “The Circumstance of Plunder is the only Thing I believe gives Trouble or Uneasiness to General Howe with respect to the foreign Troops.” He continued, apprehensively, “It is that which I much fear No public Orders can ever reclaim, as the Hessian Troops even in their own Country could never be restrained from the Crime of Morauding More or less, and they were unfortunately led to believe before they Left the Province of Hesse Cassel, that they were to come to America to establish their private Fortunes, and hitherto they have certainly acted with that Principle.”21
Part of the problem lay in the chain of command. The Hessian commander was sixty-nine-year-old Lt. Gen. Leopold Philip von Heister, who did not speak or understand English. Osborn did not speak or understand German; communication between British and Hessian officers was usually done in French, the international military language of Europe.22 Not until November 1776 did Howe acquire a multilingual aide on his staff, Capt. Levin Friedrich Ernst von Münchhausen of the von Minnegerode Regiment, who revealed, “General Heister was very pleased with [my appointment] because he had often received oral and written English orders, which he did not understand.”23
Despite this, Hessians on plundering parties could always plead ignorance to English verbal orders or printed protection papers issued to Loyalists from Howe's headquarters. Even Gen. James Grant, who repeatedly advocated draconian measures to crush the Americans, all Americans, was moved to comment, “Heisters Corps behaves well, but plunders a great deal too much, & it will not be Easy to put a stop to the Abuse.”24 According to another British officer, Lt. William Hale of the 45th Regiment, von Heister himself was largely to blame. His successor, “Gen. Knyphausen who is said to be one of the best Generals in Germany,” Hale wrote in 1778, “has by the severity of his discipline in a great measure put a stop to the infamous practice of plundering, which was much encouraged by De Heister who shared in the profits of this lucrative occupation.”25
Plundering caused numerous problems. It not only damaged relations with the local people, but also threatened discipline within the army itself. “There is not an officer in the world who is ignorant, that permitting the soldier to plunder, or maraud, must inevitably destroy him,” wrote John Graves Simcoe, a British grenadier captain in 1777 who later commanded the Loyalist Queen's Rangers. Simcoe correctly observed “that, in a civil war, it must alienate the large body of people who, in such a contest, are desirous of neutrality, and sour their minds into dissatisfaction.” That was easy enough to see; “but,” Simcoe quickly added, “however obviou
s the necessity may be, there is nothing more difficult than for a commander in chief to prevent marauding.”26 Although General Howe had issued a number of orders and proclamations throughout the 1776 campaign forbidding his soldiers to plunder on pain of death, British troops saw Hessians plundering without restraint, and some followed suit.
Those British officers who were repelled by such practices often felt overwhelmed by the scale of the looting, and if they tried to interfere, they were sometimes were threatened by the men. Howe's deputy adjutant general, Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble, was a native of New Jersey and had important family connections in New York. He had served in the British Army in America with his brother-in-law Gen. Thomas Gage since 1757. Kemble noticed a disturbing and very dangerous reality associated with plundering while the army was near White Plains, New York, the previous November: “8 or 10 of our People taken [i.e., captured while] Marauding; Scandalous behaviour for British Troops; and the Hessians Outrageously Licentious, and Cruel to such a degree as to threaten with death all such as dare obstruct them in their depredations. Violence to Officers frequently used, and every Degree of Insolence offered.” With trepidation for his home province, he added, “Shudder for Jersey, the Army being thought to move there Shortly.”27
At the same time, there were some British officers who boasted of their plundering exploits. Lt. Martin Hunter of the 52nd Regiment was a young officer in the regiment's light infantry company, part of a unit that was always “on the point,” assigned to outpost duty or on patrol. He and twelve of his fellow junior officers in the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion spent the winter of 1777 at New Brunswick crammed in a two-room house with a Loyalist family, the officers all sleeping on straw in one room while the men slept in barns. Perhaps it was his youth—Hunter was nineteen years old, and many of the junior officers in the British Army were about the same age, some considerably younger—or perhaps it was the bond of sharing in the sort of hard living and certainly the same dangers as the men that gave Hunter a more lighthearted view of marauding. “The 52nd Light Infantry were famous providers,” he reminisced years later. “They were good hands at a Grab. Grab was a favourite expression among the Light Infantry, and meant any plunder taken by force; a Lob when you got it without any opposition, and I am very certain there never was a more expert set than the Light Infantry at either grab, lob, or gutting a house.” With fondness he recalled, “The Grenadiers used to call us their children, and when we got more plunder than we wanted we always supplied our fathers.”28
The Philadelphia Campaign Page 2
