Valley Forge

by Bob Drury

  Unaware of the gossip dogging Steuben, Franklin and Deane slowly warmed to the Prussian with the receding hairline, ample nose, and budding second chin. They were no less intrigued by his stint at Frederick’s war college than by his description of spending five years in the ranks before obtaining his lieutenant’s commission. That this included sharing the hardships and perils of the enlisted men he would one day command was a not inconsiderable skill to possess in a Continental Army lacking a history of expertise in military logistics and training. Moreover, aside from his military service, Steuben’s curriculum vitae also included his turn as an amateur diplomat—while a prisoner of war, no less. The Americans also recognized that Steuben’s broad intellectual interest in ancient Greek and Roman history, the arts, and literature would stand him well with the sophisticated Continental officers whom he would need to convince that he was not just another freebooting foreigner. Even the most famous character, Don Quixote, of his favorite writer Cervantes could be seen as a metaphor for the American Revolution. There was, however, a complication. It was clear to all who met him, particularly fellow military men, that Steuben possessed the qualities and credentials of a Renaissance soldier. But Franklin and Deane wrestled with the notion of recommending to Washington and Congress an officer who, for all his laurels, had never advanced past the rank of captain.

  Thus, with the assistance of de Vergennes and Beaumarchais, the two Americans set out to tweak Steuben’s résumé. His captain’s bars were miraculously replaced by the three stars of a lieutenant general, and his brief interludes at Frederick’s court were extended to two decades at the great warrior’s side as both an aide-de-camp and the Prussian army’s quartermaster general. His character now came recommended not only by King Frederick, but by a flock of respected European dignitaries including de Vergennes and his counterpart at the French Ministry of War, Comte Saint-Germain. Moreover, Franklin wrote that it was neither fame nor fortune that was driving Steuben to the shores of the United States, but a burning “Zeal for our good Cause.” In their letters of introduction he and Deane hinted that Steuben had turned down several lucrative military posts in Prussia in order to fight under Washington. Further, that he had not simply retired to his vast estates in southwestern Germany—invented out of whole cloth by Deane—exhibited his revolutionary ardor. As a final hedge against anyone’s requiring documentation of Steuben’s credentials, they intimated that he had been in such haste to reach America that he had inadvertently left all his papers behind in his home country.

  Summoning Steuben to Passy for one final meeting, Franklin stressed that he would be undertaking his overseas enterprise strictly as a volunteer, with no promise of rank. Should his services prove useful, perhaps after the war he would be rewarded with a land grant in the American wilderness. But even this was not guaranteed. One can imagine the two pear-shaped personages conversing in French in Franklin’s pretty little garden cottage, their faces set in speculative half smiles at the irony of concocting tall tales for the now repackaged Comte de Steuben to buff the bona fides he most certainly already possessed.

  In late September 1777 Steuben boarded a merchantman in the port city of Marseille allegedly bound for the French Caribbean. Its cargo manifest listed wine, sulfur, and vegetables. In reality, it was transporting to New England thousands of small arms, hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, and dozens of mortars and cannons. With money borrowed from Beaumarchais, Steuben had purchased his Percherons and—unfamiliar with the color of Continental uniforms—outfitted his entourage in dazzling scarlet jackets and black bicornes sporting plumes and cockades. The horses and stylish retinue would serve as a sign of “Gen.” Steuben’s importance, and the entourage included his tall, lanky 17-year-old military secretary Pierre Étienne du Ponceau, rumored to be Steuben’s lover and the only member of the party who spoke English. Also traveling with the baron were his personal French chef, his African servants, and his chief aide-de-camp, the former French army lieutenant Louis de Pontière.

  When Steuben and his company stepped onto the pier at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the first day of December they were momentarily mistaken for Redcoats and surrounded by gun-wielding patriots. Once the misunderstanding was cleared up, they journeyed on to Boston, where Steuben was extravagantly entertained by the likes of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Steuben had written to Washington from Portsmouth, enclosing Franklin’s and Deane’s letters of introduction and ostentatiously reiterating his intention to serve only as an unpaid volunteer. The object of his “greatest ambition,” he wrote, “is to render your country all the services in my power and to deserve the title of a citizen of America by fighting for the cause of your liberty.” A cautious if cordial Washington redirected Steuben’s application to the Continental Congress, and before long the Prussian was in York to formally introduce himself and press his case.

  The congressional delegates were well aware of Washington’s disdain for most of the foreigners who had landed in America seeking battlefield honors. Steuben’s circumstances differed in one major aspect that immediately ingratiated him with the cost-conscious delegates—he was willing to fight without pay. He had but two requests—that Congress recall several disaffected French officers whom he had befriended in Boston and who planned on returning to France; and that du Ponceau and de Pontière be awarded honorary captains’ commissions.II He also asked that when the British were finally defeated and American independence was gained, if Congress deemed his sacrifice worthy, it would compensate him with retroactive pay and a pension.

  Within days the delegates voted nearly unanimously to accept Steuben’s offer of service as well as his nominal conditions. In the interest of military protocol—and in a delicate irony that no congressman could have been aware of—he was also assigned the rank of volunteer captain. Henry Laurens was so taken with the Prussian’s spirit of cooperation and formidable je ne sais quoi that he personally provided Steuben with effusive letters of introduction to his son John as well as to Washington. Over the course of their conversations the elder Laurens was also candid about the squalid conditions at Valley Forge, which may have influenced Steuben’s decision to tarry in York for nearly two weeks before setting off for the winter camp.

  Despite his foppish appearance, Steuben was warmly greeted at Washington’s headquarters, particularly by John Laurens. The two had a conversation in French long into Steuben’s first night at camp, the beginning of a series of deep discourses between the young American and the worldly soldier of fortune. Laurens was so impressed that he wrote to his father that after but a few brief interactions he already considered Steuben “a man profound in the Science of war, and well disposed to render his best services to the United States.” Young Laurens pressed Steuben to look past the horrendous conditions at Valley Forge, which, he said, masked the innate discipline that the Continentals had demonstrated throughout the fall campaign. Even amid the deprivations of the February food crisis, he added, morale among the Continentals who had not deserted had barely slackened. “Our men [remain] the best crude materials for Soldiers I believe in the world,” he wrote. He also noted that Steuben “seems to understand what our Soldiers are capable of.”

  John Laurens had reasons for his optimism. He had watched the emaciated and half-naked soldiers engage in such frivolities as sleigh races, snowball fights, and ice-skating competitions even during the most disastrous weeks at Valley Forge. He had also no doubt heard of, if not contributed to, the collection of 50 pounds a group of Virginia officers had raised for a widowed Pennsylvania camp follower who had tended to American prisoners in Philadelphia. Did this reflect the behavior of a beaten army? In the same correspondence with his father he cited the patience that the winter soldiers had shown in the face of desolation, and concluded with an upbeat assessment. “With a little more discipline,” he wrote, “we should drive the haughty Briton to his ships.”

  Establishing discipline would be Steuben’s primary hurdle, a task for which he was well suited. For pe
rhaps the first time, there was an experienced officer at hand who could instill a dedicated professionalism in the Continental Army. Neither Prussian nor American soldiers simply sprang from the earth fully formed, and Steuben’s years developing the clockwork efficiency of an unremarkable group of German peasants and serfs had enabled him to provide the leadership the average American soldier required. The would-be drillmaster would take on the task of molding the raw material the colonies had provided to George Washington into effectives with a distinctly martial enthusiasm. But first he found himself attending to more quotidian details.

  Steuben spent his initial weeks at Valley Forge on an informal inspection tour during which he personally interviewed scores of officers and soldiers in their huts. Most were shocked when the eminent foreigner crossed their dingy thresholds to inquire about their rations, their arms, their sanitary habits. Steuben was equally astonished. His first report detailed a list of shortcomings including rusty muskets and ammunition tins, a dearth of bayonets, and—incredible to a former officer serving under Frederick the Great—both officers and enlisted men standing guard duty “in a sort of dressing gown made of old blankets or woolen bed covers.” The camp’s overall squalor offended not only his European sensibilities but his Teutonic sense of order. Particularly distasteful was the haphazard disposition of the open latrine trenches that snaked through the cantonment with no thought to their placement. Though officers had been instructed to ensure that all enlisted men used these “vaults” for bowel movements, this was more easily ordered than carried out, particularly under cover of darkness. Some men never even left their huts to urinate. In their ignorance of or indifference to personal hygiene, Steuben wondered, did the American soldiers not realize that the “foul airs” that enveloped the encampment were a virtual invitation to the diseases spreading among the soldiery?

  In one of his first memorandums that John Laurens passed on to Washington, the Prussian suggested filling in the existing trenches and replacing them with new privies dug on a downhill slope at the far end of the camp from the cooking facilities. These vaults, he added, should be filled with dirt and new ones dug after every four days. He also worked with the French engineers on improving the breastworks, and laid out plans for a familiar arrangement of company and regimental rows and lanes to crisscross the plateau, a standard morale-boosting procedure in European armies. These hands-on instructions alone distinguished him from the more theoretical military maunderings the Americans were accustomed to receiving from foreign “experts.” Steuben had not been in camp four full days before the young Laurens was touting him for the office of inspector general. This in spite of the fact that at the time Thomas Conway still technically held the post and Steuben had mastered only one word of English—“Goddamn.”

  “We want some kind of general tutoring in this way so much,” Laurens wrote, “[Steuben] will not give us the perfect instructions, absolutely speaking, but the best which we are in a position to receive.”

  John Laurens was closer to the mark than he knew. For as February 1778 unwound, Washington recalled all his foraging parties in order to ready his army for war. Any supplies too unwieldy to be hauled back to Valley Forge were ordered burned lest they fall into enemy hands, and all boats remaining on the New Jersey banks of the Delaware were to be sailed or portaged north to Trenton. Just below that city the river dropped off the rocky Piedmont Plateau and into New Jersey’s sandier coastal plain. With the ice floes soon to melt, this geological fault line, aptly named the Trenton Falls, created a natural barrier to British ships attempting to ride the strong flood tides upriver. With that, the commander in chief had taken every defensive precaution he could. It was now time to concentrate on turning the 8,000 troops who remained at Valley Forge into a force diligent enough to avoid the previous autumn’s mistakes.

  Since the engagement at Germantown, Washington had reluctantly accepted the resignations of nearly 300 officers. This left a void not only in the Continental Army’s leadership, but in its training regimen. In that sense, Steuben’s arrival proved a godsend. One of Washington’s treasured books was Frederick the Great’s Instructions to His Generals, a detailed army manual admired the world over. If the baron could replicate on the Valley Forge parade grounds even a semblance of the guidance sprung from the plains of Mecklenburg, there was hope for a successful spring campaign.

  Like Washington, Steuben was also prone to taking the long view. Sensing the martial stirrings invigorating the Potts House and reverberating through camp, he plunged into his new duties determined to prove his worth, as well as to set the stage for his transformation from a volunteer captain into a salaried general officer. As he wrote to an old friend in Prussia, he could envision but two paths beckoning to him in the coming fighting season—one led to hell, the other to the head of a regiment.

  * * *

  I. There were rumors, never substantiated, that Steuben had made a side agreement with the French to secretly provide intelligence on the Continentals in exchange for a commission in the French army upon his return to Europe.

  II. Among the French officers Steuben met in Boston was the 23-year-old engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who 13 years later was selected to design the city plan for Washington, D.C.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE RAINS NEVER CEASE

  In London, it was not Prussians crossing the Atlantic who alarmed British war planners. It was the French. As a result, in anticipation of the long-rumored Franco-American alliance, King George III and his ministers were in the process of drawing up an entirely new strategy for the colonial campaign.

  Over the preceding months the generals Howe and Clinton had held decidedly differing views regarding the Continental Army’s travails at Valley Forge. Washington’s spies and double agents in Philadelphia repeatedly attempted to inflate the number of troops stationed at the winter encampment in order to discourage an attack. But the honeycomb of Loyalists reporting from counties surrounding the cantonment made it clear to British authorities that the slew of desertions and detachments had combined with the dearth of supplies to drastically reduce the Americans’ effectiveness. When Clinton’s agents informed him that the Continental Congress was so concerned about the loyalty of its soldiery that it planned to administer an army-wide oath of allegiance, he viewed this as an invitation for Howe to overwhelm the rebels and force them to the negotiating table. “Now is the time to press them hard and offer them terms,” he wrote to his uncle, the Duke of Newcastle. Clinton’s hawkish exhortations, however, were met with less enthusiasm by his superior in Philadelphia.

  The Howe brothers were in the peculiar position of fighting a war as well as acting as semiofficial peace commissioners. They thus commanded, in Gen. Howe’s words, “with the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other.” This placed them in conflict with both George III and the hawkish George Germain, whose inclinations were to destroy the Continentals much as the king’s uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, had crushed the Scottish Jacobite rebellion 30 years earlier. As such, Gen. Howe couched his reservations to London about attempting a winter offensive in both military and political rhetoric. His men and horses, he wrote to Germain, lacked sufficient food and forage to take the field for any extended period. On a broader, more strategic plane, he also argued that he had come to better understand and even appreciate the Continental mind-set. A full-out assault on Valley Forge, even if it ended in victory—a result he was certain of—would serve only to harden their resistance.

  As noted, to this point Gen. Howe had limited his winter expeditions primarily to minor probes no farther afield than southern New Jersey and lower Bucks County. These somewhat haphazard excursions were aimed at collecting forage, disrupting American recruiting efforts, and—in the case of New Jersey—sowing terror among the Whig populace after the failure to destroy Anthony Wayne’s command. Despite his triumphs at Brandywine and Germantown, Howe sensed that Lord Germain had lost confidence in him, and was resigned to the fact that the king
would accede to his multiple requests to return to England—a certitude that would be confirmed to him in April.

  For even the previous autumn’s tactical victories had failed to tamp the savage treatment he was receiving in Parliament and in London newspapers for the loss of Burgoyne’s army. He did not relish the idea of arriving home with the stain of another major defeat on his record. And as his excuses piled up, it became evident to Germain that the general did not have the stomach for one last major engagement. In the event, affairs in London to which neither Howe nor Clinton was yet privy would render their contrasting military strategies irrelevant.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  In mid-February Lord North had introduced proposals in the House of Commons suggesting some form of “conciliation” with the rebels. By early March these peace overtures had crystallized into specific instructions directed to Gen. Clinton, who had been selected to succeed Gen. Howe as commander in chief of British land forces in North America. Though Whitehall had yet to officially learn of the Franco-American treaty signed a month earlier, the tone and content of Germain’s communiqué to Clinton strongly hinted that he and the king’s war counselors considered the alliance a fait accompli. To counter this development, Clinton was to be informed that a new Peace Commission was being organized to present the Americans with terms similar to those the British agent Wentworth had offered to Franklin in Paris—most important, the modifications to the numerous parliamentary acts the colonists found so onerous and a restoration of normal trade. In short, nearly everything the Americans desired save formal independence.