by Bob Drury
At first these were probing affairs. Doors were smashed, windows were broken, and John Bull and Herr Fritz would be back at the Man Full of Trouble tavern in time for a supper of cornmeal stew and spotted dick, or bratwurst and sauerkraut. But as mass desertions continued to plague the already paltry force of Pennsylvania militiamen under Gen. Lacey’s command, the British raids became more blatant. Mounted units of Redcoats—guided along back roads by local Tories whom Washington and his staff sneeringly dubbed “royal refugees”—succeeded not only in kidnapping several Whig lawyers and politicians but also in capturing a large herd of cattle being driven from Massachusetts to Valley Forge. The enemy also seized a crucial mill responsible for turning tons of cloth into uniforms destined for the Continentals’ winter camp.
It was as if Gen. Howe was toying with his antagonist. Though ice floes on the Delaware had begun to hamper the movements of his brother’s supply ships, the massive forage foray into Derby over the Christmas week had sufficiently stocked his storehouses for the moment. And what few provisions his troops might have otherwise lacked were furnished by the uptick of merchandise flowing into the city from Montgomery County and Bucks County. This allowed him to avoid the risk of hit-and-run guerrilla ambushes farther afield on the west side of the Schuylkill, where, unlike the ragged Pennsylvania militia, Dan Morgan and “Light Horse Harry” Lee had proved estimable enemies.
With a serious effort to move on the Continentals’ winter encampment itself out of the question, Howe and his senior officers settled into a lazy routine of enjoying the warmth, comfort, and urbane charms of the American capital city. As Dr. Franklin had predicted, Howe had not so much captured Philadelphia as Philadelphia had captured him.
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Unlike his more austere older brother Adm. Lord Howe, the married Sir William was an avowed voluptuary. As he had in Boston and New York City, he enjoyed several mistresses from among Philadelphia’s Loyalist upper crust, as noted in Francis Hopkinson’s facetious composition. And it was said that his fervor for a bottle of port was superseded only by his well-known taste for other men’s wives.
Moreover, Howe encouraged his officers to emulate his licentiousness. Those who could not afford the affections of high-end courtiers discovered a plethora of complacent servant girls in need of “protection” after their Whig employers had abandoned the city. And if by hard chance an unfortunate officer found himself momentarily shut out of the carnal revelry, all he needed to do was place an ad in a Tory newspaper soliciting a “housekeeper who can occasionally put her hand to anything” in exchange for “extravagant wages . . . and no character required.” Howe’s deputies—with or without “housekeepers”—enjoyed regular Thursday evening balls held at private homes and assembly halls, and Philadelphia’s famous City Tavern—where Washington’s officers once dreamed of dancing victory minuets—was turned into a private club. It was not unusual for its backroom faro bank to see the equivalent of today’s $50,000 change hands in a night.
Similarly, the occasional escort patrols, raids on Whig strongholds, and routine garrison duties could not long occupy the 15,000 troops billeted in the city. Following their superiors’ example, the rank and file were no less prone to a wide variety of leisure-time indulgences. If war was hell for a civilian population forced to quarter foreign soldiers prone to drunkenness, brawling, and petty thievery, it was a boon to the owners of the city’s less sophisticated taprooms, gambling dens, and bawdy houses. Junior officers, trapped in the no-man’s-land between the pageantry of bals masqués and the grime of venereal hotbeds serving watered-down ale, occupied themselves arranging elaborate dinner parties, organizing horse races and cricket matches, and staging amateur theatrics. These last, with the performers dubbing themselves “Howe’s Players,” were held each Monday night from January through May and included a variety of pantomimes, ballad operas, and dramatic productions such as Hamlet and Julius Caesar. Their venue of choice was South Street’s cupola-topped Southwark Theater, America’s first permanent playhouse.
Chief among the bon vivants capturing the hearts of Philadelphia’s distaff society was the boyish and debonair John André. André, 27, was the wealthy son of a Parisian mother and a Swiss merchant based in London, and in his seven years of service to the Crown he had proved himself on the battlefields of the New World from Quebec—where he was captured and spent 13 months as a prisoner of war before being exchanged—to the cold steel charge at Paoli. A prolific writer fluent in French, German, and Italian, Andre was one of Howe’s favorite secretaries. Further, André’s artistic bent and dazzling eloquence made him equally at home in the salons of Philadelphia and in musty campaign tents. André had acted in several dramatic productions while stationed in New York, although in Philadelphia his experience with “Howe’s Players” was apparently limited to scandalizing local Quakers with the racy dramas he suggested and painting the elaborate backdrops at the Southwark.II But it was as a sketch artist that he excelled, and he was rarely seen without his sketchbook and pencils protruding from his rucksack. The patrician ladies of the city vied to sit for him, among them the charming and alluring Margaret “Peggy” Shippen.
Peggy Shippen was the daughter of a prominent Philadelphia shipping magnate who was managing to survive the British occupation by proclaiming his “neutralist” leanings despite the fact that his brother was a Continental officer. Peggy had been tutored in the usual music, needlework, and drawing that were commonplace for upper-class girls of the era. But in contrast to most of her female peers, she was also an avid student of finance and politics. Her father indulged the indelicate curiosity of the youngest Shippen child and “family darling” by discussing the subjects in depth with her.
In keeping with their political interests and station, the Shippens hosted numerous social gatherings, and Capt. André, as stoically sensual as a Cézanne, was a frequent guest. It was said that André’s eyes possessed a hypnotic quality, and though it is unclear whether he and Peggy were lovers, she was certainly drawn to what one biographer described as the captain’s air of “subdued melancholy.” The two were seen together enough to invite the usual gossip, particularly as Peggy was known to venture without a chaperone to the house that André had seized from Benjamin Franklin, and to pose there for his sketches.III
General Howe no doubt viewed his protégé’s affaire du coeur with one of Philadelphia’s leading ladies through a lens of pride and envy. But despite the profusion of amusements at his fingertips, Howe was concerned. Shortly after occupying Philadelphia he had written to George Germain officially requesting relief from “this very painful service wherein I have not the good fortune to enjoy the necessary confidence and support of my superiors.” This was in reference to a string of criticisms that had begun with his abandonment of Boston and had reached fever pitch following the defeats at Trenton and Princeton. The latest, and most stinging, were the savage accusations that seeped from the halls of Parliament into London newspapers asking if he had sacrificed “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne and Burgoyne’s army in his zeal to take the American capital. Howe had promised Whitehall that the capture of Philadelphia would tap a wellspring of Loyalist sentiment whose torrent, in the form of a newly established Provincial Corps, would submerge the Continental Army. Instead, not only did the fall of the city lack the political and psychological impact of the capture of a European capital, but its occupation had seemingly inflamed the rebels while swelling Howe’s ranks by no more than a few hundred Tory volunteers.
Germain may have been imbued with a bleak worldview concerning his fellow man, but he was nothing if not calculating. For weeks he had contrived to force the resignation of both Howe brothers. Not only was he apoplectic over their failure to have put down the rebellion by now, he also sensed that King George and his military brain trust were moving in a softer direction against the insurgent Americans. The spark for this strategic realignment had been the Crown’s dismay over the defeat at Saratoga. England’s war planners suspected t
hat the American victory there would hasten France’s entry into the conflict, thus turning a colonial rebellion into a world war. In an effort to forestall this outcome, or at least reduce the number of fronts on which Britain would have to fight, Parliament was currently assembling a peace commission to cross the Atlantic to negotiate a treaty whose favorable terms toward the colonies mirrored the envoy Wentworth’s proposal to Franklin and Deane. As the two American diplomats had discovered during their dinner with Wentworth in Paris, the most surprising overture was England’s renunciation of the right to direct taxation. In essence, the king was proffering to the colonials an informal independence from London in all but name. Even if the rebels rejected this generous olive branch, the British were prepared to detach troops from the United States in order to confront France in Europe, Canada, and the French Caribbean.
In either case, to Germain the Howe brothers represented all that had gone wrong since the war’s onset, and both needed to be ushered offstage before the introduction of England’s new priorities. Now that Sir William’s request for retirement had landed in his lap—the Admiralty had initially refused to accept a similar tender from Lord Howe—he viewed it as an opportunity. Although Germain was a favorite of George III, as secretary of state for the Americas he had not been immune to the defamatory whispers when the conflict dragged into its third year. He understood that the king’s patience was not inexhaustible, and Gen. Howe’s request to be relieved was an ideal way to shift blame for the British setbacks, particularly at Saratoga, from himself to the commander in the field. He immediately began laying plans to replace Howe with Gen. Clinton.
Germain’s plan came to fruition in early February, when the king ordered his prime minister Lord Frederick North, first lord of the treasury and George III’s principal adviser, to sack either Germain or Gen. Howe. Lord North chose the latter. As an unexpected bonus, the prime minister also acceded to an appeal from Adm. Richard Howe’s wife that he be allowed to return home and retire. The well-connected Lady Howe had read the writing on the walls of Whitehall, and wanted her husband’s departure from the campaign to at least appear voluntary.
What Germain did not know, however, was that the rather morbid and extremely sensitive Gen. Clinton, wintering over in New York City with barely 6,000 troops under his command, was also beginning to view his position as career-crushing. “I renewed my solicitation for leave to return home,” Clinton wrote in his memoirs. “As I plainly saw that my continuance in America was not likely to contribute to the service of my country or the advancement of my own honor. But the Commander in Chief being of the opinion that my services could not be dispensed with for the present . . . I was obliged to submit to the mortification of enduring my situation somewhat longer.”
What attitude either British commander might have taken had he been aware of the state of treaty negotiations an ocean away in Paris, no one can say. The same holds true for Washington, who as recently as December 29 had published one of America’s earliest State of the Union addresses, warning his fellow patriots that, for all intents and purposes, the revolution was now America’s alone to win or lose. “We may rest assured that Britain will strain every nerve to send from home and abroad, as early as possible, all the Troops it shall be in her Power to raise or procure,” he wrote in his Circular to the States. “Her views and schemes for subjugating the States and bringing ’em under her despotic rule will be unceasing and unremitted. Nor should we in my opinion, turn our expectations to, or have the least dependance on the intervention of a Foreign War. Our wishes on this Head have been disappointed hitherto, and I do not know that we have a right to promise ourselves from any intelligence that has been received, bearing the marks of authority that there is any certain prospect of one.
“Be that as it may,” the Circular concluded, “our reliance should be wholly on our own strength and exertions.”
Given the vagaries of ocean travel in the eighteenth century, when a transatlantic crossing of five weeks was considered expeditious, it would be some time before any of the opposing generals discovered that the owner of the Philadelphia home which Capt. André had commandeered was at the moment concluding a pact that could well change the entire course of the war.
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I. That the artillery officers agreed on anything was quite remarkable, as historians generally concur that the feuding among the Continental Army’s squabblesome and brooding Artillery Division—a self-designated elite who occupied their own isolated “park” within the winter cantonment—encapsulated the willfulness, rancor, and fractious contentions of the greater whole at Valley Forge.
II. André’s last stage backdrop remained in place at the Southwark Theater until 1821, when it was destroyed in the fire that burned the playhouse to the ground.
III. André would later steal Franklin’s electrical equipment, musical instruments, and books, and a portrait painted in 1759 by Benjamin Wilson. The portrait was not returned to American hands until 1906, and now hangs on the second floor of the White House.
TWENTY-ONE
FRANKLIN’S MIRACLE
On February 8, 1778, Benjamin Franklin took quill in hand at his residence in Passy. With Silas Deane at his side, he addressed a letter to the president of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens, in York.
“Honourable Sir,” he began, “We have now the great Satisfaction of acquainting you and the Congress, that the treaties with France are at length compleated and signed. The first is a Treaty of Amity and Commerce, much on the plan of that projected in Congress; the other is a treaty of Alliance, in which it is stipulated that in Case England declares War against France, or occasions War by attempts to hinder her commerce with us, we should then make common cause of it, and join our forces and Councils.”
Franklin went on to praise King Louis XVI’s “Magnanimity and Goodness,” and clarified that the treaties required that neither France nor the United States agree to any future separate peace with Great Britain without recognition of the United States as an independent country. And with that, the world from Europe to India to Africa to the Caribbean was plunged into the war for American independence. It had not come easily. In truth, that it had ever come at all is a wonder.
Despite Franklin’s celebrity and popularity across the spectrum of French society, obstacles to a Franco-American alliance arose nearly from the moment he stepped off the Reprisal in Nantes. The memory of France’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War remained molten, and since the conclusion of overt hostilities the court at Versailles had pursued an anti-British foreign policy, instituted major military reforms, and ordered the country’s naval construction expanded in preparation for what the French foresaw as the next, inevitable engagement. This was all of a piece with the lessons learned in the wake of Britain’s victory. Further, with the tacit assent of the king, the French Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of War had set to harassing the British by funding the occasional smuggling operation to deliver arms and supplies to the American revolutionaries.
The foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, had even dispatched the occasional military “volunteer” to enlist in the Continental Army and secretly report back on the rebels’ dedication and fortitude. But France was not yet prepared to take on its rival in a declared war, and when it came to provoking England closer to home, de Vergennes trod a fine line. Thus Franklin had agreed to abide by a clause in the 1763 Treaty of Paris forbidding the two European nations to harbor privateers. Any American ships putting into French ports were thus proscribed from sailing against the Royal Navy. Yet only weeks after Franklin disembarked at Nantes, the Reprisal’s captain, Lambert Wickes, went hunting.
Cruising off the coast of Spain and along the mouth of the English Channel, Wickes captured six British merchantmen within a month. After refitting at the French port of L’Orient (later Lorient), he set sail for the Irish Sea, where the Reprisal was met by two smaller Continental Navy vessels. Together they formed a squadron, which sank or took another 18 priz
es, including two warships and nine brigs. Despite his assurances to de Vergennes, French spies discovered Franklin actively encouraging the raids. When in July 1777 the English ambassador to France lodged formal protests with Louis XVI against abetting American “piracy”—clearly a thinly disguised warning of military retaliation—an irritated de Vergennes wrote to Franklin and Deane reminding them of France’s treaty obligations. To drive home the point, he jailed the Irish-born American sea captain Gustavus Conyngham—the first American to be imprisoned in the Bastille. Conyngham promptly escaped, set sail, and continued to attack British shipping, capturing 24 vessels.I
Franklin, weighing the seizing or sinking of a few enemy vessels against future comity with the French, sent a letter of apology to the foreign minister and cautioned the raiding American captains—including John Paul Jones, awaiting a new ship in the Brittany port of Brest—against “giving any cause of complaint to the subjects of France, or Spain, or of any other neutral powers.” Nonetheless, the dispute had taken its toll on the fragile Franco-American relationship, and never had the court at Versailles appeared so ill disposed toward the United States. Amid this intrigue, the French were also at a loss as to what to make of the enmity that Franklin and Deane held toward the third American peace commissioner, Virginia’s Arthur Lee.
Lee, the youngest son of one of the state’s most politically connected families, had preceded Franklin’s arrival in Paris by six months. Portraits depict the 35-year-old Lee as a gruff, stone-faced man with a broad forehead accentuated by his receding hairline and a pointed, jutting chin that reached its destination long before the rest of him. What does not come through in the images is Lee’s intellectual versatility. Lee was a polymath who had attended England’s Eton College and studied medicine and law at the University of Edinburgh before passing the bar exam and opening a law practice in London. He was also a vociferous critic of slavery who, when revolution broke out, abandoned his legal career to become the United States’ first foreign secret agent. He may have been under the misguided impression that an American victory would validate the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence regarding the equality of “all men.”
