Band of Giants_The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence

by Jack Kelly

  Portraits from that time show Lafayette a slender, homely, effeminate, and impossibly youthful soldier. Possessed of enormous inherited wealth, he came to America at his own expense. He instantly charmed Washington and the entire high command with his affability, modesty, and sheer brilliance. Congress named him a major general but did not intend him to lead troops. Washington loved him and recognized his preternatural ability. Nathanael Greene found him irresistible due to “an inexplicable charm.”

  In September 1777, Lafayette had seen his first action at Brandywine Creek, where he had been shot in the leg. “Take care of him as if he were my son,” Washington admonished those attending him.11 By December the youth had assumed a role as one of Washington’s most trusted confidants and was in command of an entire army division.

  * * *

  Given the defeats the army had endured, it was not surprising that grumbling about Washington’s leadership rustled through the ranks and ignited whispers in Congress. He’d been outgeneraled, then outgeneraled again. By contrast, Horatio Gates had bagged an entire British army. Some thought Gates might be the man to take charge. A Congressional committee accused Washington of “Want of Genius & Activity.” Even Anthony Wayne, a Washington supporter, detected in the commander “an over stretched caution, which is oftentimes attended with as fatal Consequences, as too much rashness.”12

  Congress formed a Board of War to look over Washington’s shoulder, with Gates at its head. They sent a committee to Valley Forge to investigate the condition of the army. They appointed Thomas Conway, an Irish volunteer and critic of Washington, to the new post of inspector general, putting him in charge of training the troops.

  To Washington and his close supporters, including Greene, Knox, Lafayette, and aide-de-camp Alexander Hamilton, these actions amounted to a “cabal” aimed at deposing the commander. Washington feared that Gates would “be exalted, on the ruin of my reputation and influence.”13 Showing his aptitude for political infighting, Washington deftly outmaneuvered his opponents. By spring, Congress had accepted Conway’s resignation and Washington was again firmly in charge.

  * * *

  As winter began to relent, a foreign officer arrived in camp who would transform the beleaguered army almost overnight. At first glance, Baron Friedrich von Steuben appeared to be the most experienced and prestigious officer of any to join the American cause. In Europe, he held the exalted rank of lieutenant general. He had served as aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great, the Prussian king widely considered the military mastermind of the century. He traveled with an entourage of handsome young French officers, as befitted a personage of great stature. He bragged about his European estates.

  It was a show. Yes, Steuben was a baron—a Germanic prince had made him a knight in the Order of Fidelity and given him the title Freiherr. He wore a large star on his breast to prove his nobility. Yes, he had served under Frederick the Great—he had been wounded twice during the Seven Years’ War. But the highest rank Steuben had gained in Frederick’s army was captain. After the war ended, he had been dismissed from the service. He owned no estates. He had filled the past fourteen years managing the household of a prince in a minuscule German dominion. His prospects had been marred by a rumor that he had once “taken familiarities with young boys.”14

  Desperate for work, Steuben came to the attention of playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a former watchmaker who had transformed himself into a brilliant courtier at Versailles. The author of the satires The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, Beaumarchais was an idealist and an intriguer. He had been helping to funnel French money and gunpowder to the Americans through the West Indies. Steuben might win a position in America, Beaumarchais told him, if he was willing to play a role. Steuben loved theater and agreed to assume the part his French friends created for him. They supplied him with the entourage and with travel expenses.

  Steuben’s sparkling credentials impressed Congress. His modesty and sincerity made their mark on Washington, who probably suspected that he was less than what he claimed to be. A gallant knight at heart, Steuben used his charm and refined social skills to win over the top American officers.

  When he arrived in Valley Forge in late winter, 1778, he found that he was desperately needed. Order in the camp was missing, sentries not always posted, sanitation deficient, drunkenness common, marching sloppy. The Americans were novices, as a young patriot captain admitted, who “had everything to learn, and no one to instruct us who knew any better than ourselves.”15

  Washington had already been planning to put the army on a more professional footing. Greene’s efforts as quartermaster were part of it. Someone had to oversee the rigorous training in a uniform method of drill that would shape the troops into a more efficient fighting force. That was Steuben’s job.

  In March, the baron began the daunting and urgent task of imparting military basics to ten thousand men in two months. Starting with a “model company” of a hundred men drawn from Washington’s personal guard, Steuben began to train those who would in turn serve as trainers in their own regiments. He taught them how to stand at attention, their heads turned to a precise angle so that each man’s left eye lined up with his coat buttons. He drilled them in uniform march: seventy-five paces a minute, each step twenty-eight inches long. Then he imparted more complicated maneuvers like wheeling, advancing obliquely, and deploying from a column of march into a line of battle. This last was an exercise that could easily descend into chaos. He taught them to wield the bayonet.

  Steuben wandered the camp, asking questions through an interpreter and listening carefully to the answers. He came to empathize with the American soldiers, to admire them, and to understand the way that pride could mesh with patriotism in a republic. He strictly forbade officers to abuse their men, insisting that “their faults are to be pointed out with patience.”16

  He slowly turned the troops into a semblance of the disciplined, agile, and lethal infantry that had given Prussia its edge in European fighting. He understood that American soldiers responded more readily when they were told why to do something, not just given an order. He admired the men’s perseverance. “No European army could have been kept together under such dreadful deprivations.”17

  The Prussian, who had put on a show to get his job, understood that spectacle was a critical part of military affairs. His alleged rank, his spruce uniform, and the shining star on his chest inspired awe. “Never before, or since, have I had such an impression of the ancient fabled God of War as when I looked on the baron,” a private wrote.18

  When necessary, Steuben swore. “Goddamn!” was one of his few English words. The French and German oaths he spouted amused the troops, who, like all soldiers, were connoisseurs of profanity. His rants prompted them to try and try again. Steuben made a show of his anger, and when it reached the point of absurdity, joined in the laughter.

  Drilling the troops by day and feverishly writing out new instructions to be shared with the army by night, Steuben impressed his system on the forces. The men learned what Horatio Gates called “the Discipline of the Leggs.”19 They learned to respond instantly to an order or to the compelling tattoo of a drum. The Baron trained majors, captains, and lieutenants as if they were privates and insisted that officers participate in drilling their men, not leave the duty to sergeants. “My task,” he wrote later, “has not been an easy one.” He embraced it as a passion, not a job. “He is exerting himself like a Lieutenant anxious for promotion,” an officer reported.20

  * * *

  At the end of April, word arrived that Benjamin Franklin had secured a treaty of alliance with France. The news gave Washington “the most sensible pleasure.” Patriots were ecstatic. The alliance “puts our Independence beyond a doubt,” one gloated.21

  On a green day in May, Washington’s entire army turned out on the grand parade ground at Valley Forge to celebrate the alliance. K
nox’s gunners fired off salutes from thirteen cannon. Baron von Steuben choreographed a rolling volley, with the ten thousand men firing their muskets in quick succession. The sound went twice around the lines like an earsplitting drumroll. Vive la France! The men were given extra rations of whiskey. Officers and guests feasted at an outdoor buffet. Through the whole affair, Washington “wore a countenance of uncommon delight.” He even joined in a cricket game with some younger officers.22

  More good news arrived. The British were planning to depart from Philadelphia. The taciturn Henry Clinton had replaced William Howe as commander. The threat of a French fleet coming up the Delaware to trap his army in the city made Clinton nervous. He understood that Howe had been wrong to think that capturing the rebel capital would strike a fatal blow. This was not Europe, where capital cities were the nerve centers of nations. America had no nerve center. Clinton decided to consolidate his army in the more defensible bastion of New York City.

  Just as many of Boston’s loyalists had fled with the evacuation of that city, the Philadelphians who had enthusiastically collaborated with the British were struck with “Horror & melancholy” at the prospect of being abandoned. Thousands demanded to be shipped to safety in New York. The civilian cargo would leave little room on the ships for Clinton’s army, baggage, or horses. These he would have to transport to New York by trekking the ninety miles across New Jersey.

  When word of this impending hegira reached Washington, he saw a ripe opportunity to test his newly trained army. Each side had about twelve thousand troops. Washington could additionally count on several thousand New Jersey militiamen to harass Clinton as he crossed their state.

  During the early weeks of June, Washington held several councils of war to listen to the opinions of his generals. They split into two factions on the advisability of an attack. Leading one was General Charles Lee, the distinguished, crotchety former British officer who had helped Washington in the early days of the war, and who had resisted his orders during the retreat from New York in 1776. Washington had warmly welcomed Lee when he finally returned to the American camp in April following a prisoner exchange. The story circulated that Lee, who initially occupied a room in the quarters Washington shared with Martha, appeared late and disheveled at breakfast on his first morning back, having snuck “a miserable dirty hussy” into his bed.23

  Washington did not know—no one knew until a document turned up in Henry Clinton’s papers many decades later—that Lee, while held by the British, had suggested to them a plan by which their forces could most effectively defeat the rebels. Had Lee turned his coat out of fear for his neck? Was his scheme a ploy to trick the British into a doomed strategy? The questions remain unanswered to this day.

  What’s certain is that Lee, having been away from the American camp for more than two years, was out of tune with the sentiment of the army and the country. He scoffed at Steuben’s efforts and broadcasted his conviction that the British military was unbeatable, that the Americans’ only hope was to stay on the defensive and wait for French help. Privately, he continued to regard Washington as a hopeless provincial, “not fit to command a sergeant’s guard.”24 Yet Lee’s counsel of caution won the support of the majority of generals. Even Steuben did not feel an all-out attack was advisable.

  Leading the side for a more aggressive strategy was Anthony Wayne. The logic of attack was clear, the glory of the fight beckoned. Fall on Clinton’s creeping, burdened army? Of course.

  To reoccupy Philadelphia, now abandoned by the British, Washington sent a small force headed by Benedict Arnold. His Saratoga wound still kept the enterprising general from a field command. With the rest of the army, his Excellency ferried across the Delaware north of Trenton and marched on a route parallel to Clinton’s. The British and Hessians, who were dragging a twelve-mile-long, thousand-wagon baggage train, made an inviting target.

  At a final council of war a week later, Lee and some other officers advised Washington to take the army to safety in the Hudson Highlands and wait. Washington instead decided to send out 1,500 men to shadow the British rear and look for a chance to mount an attack. The generals judged this a measured response, all except Wayne, who refused to sign the compromise plan. When Washington asked his opinion, Wayne said, “Fight, sir.”25

  The next day, Generals Greene and Lafayette reconsidered and joined Wayne in begging Washington to deploy a larger force. “People expect something from us,” Greene insisted. Persuaded, Washington ordered out more than four thousand men to attack the British rear. He would follow with the rest of the army, ready to join in a full-scale battle if the opportunity arose.

  Charles Lee, by rank still second in command of the army, had refused to lead the detachment when the force was small. Washington handed the duty to Lafayette, an indication of his confidence in the boy general. But now the thought of the twenty-year-old Frenchman gaining glory in a major battle galled Lee, who demanded to take over the expanded division. Washington compromised, leaving Lafayette in charge of the initial march, with Lee to assume command when contact with the enemy became imminent. Was it wise to assign a plan to a man who disagreed with it? Time would tell.

  * * *

  An early summer heat wave, with temperatures in the high nineties, made the chill of Valley Forge seem a distant memory to the Americans. The suffocating humidity and frequent rain storms turned marching into a nightmare for Clinton’s men, who were dressed in wool coats and carrying eighty-pound packs. Hordes of biting insects and sporadic firing by hidden militiamen tormented them. Even at a pace of seven miles a day, the journey was wearing them out. They spent June 27 resting near Monmouth Courthouse, thirty miles from Sandy Hook, where British ships would ferry them up the bay to New York.

  That same Saturday, Washington gave Charles Lee a specific order to attack the British rear guard on the morrow. Although Steuben had been out scouting the British position, Lee remained unfamiliar with the terrain. He decided that the situation was too fluid to make detailed plans.

  Hessian general Knyphausen led the British baggage train and part of the army out of camp at four o’clock on the morning of June 28, 1779. Clinton planned to take the main body of the army a little way down the road until he determined the rebels’ intentions. Lord Cornwallis would stay at Monmouth with the two-thousand-man rear guard.

  Lee assigned Wayne’s brigade, two Pennsylvania regiments, to lead the attack. Wayne’s men marched out and crashed into the British near the courthouse. The Americans deployed into a line of battle and began shooting. Lee sent brigades to the right and left, forming a pincer to envelope Cornwallis’s men with two times their number. “The rear guard of the enemy is ours,” Lee boasted in a message to Washington. Hot firing pounded a staccato along Wayne’s front and he found himself pressured by charging British cavalry. He called for reinforcements.

  In the growing heat, confusion hampered the American deployments. Some officers did not receive orders, some acted without orders. Wayne wanted to push ahead. Lafayette pulled his men back to reposition them. Other officers did the same, thinking the line was retreating. Daniel Morgan and his riflemen never reached the field, which had become a “great anthill” of moving men. “The dust and smoke . . . sometimes so shut out the view that one could form no idea of what was going on,” one officer lamented.26

  The gist of what was going on soon became clear. Clinton had countermarched his main force and sent an additional five thousand men into the fray to back up Cornwallis. The all-out battle that the American officers had feared was now unavoidable.

  Sensing that the attack had gone very wrong and worried about losing his whole detachment, Lee called a retreat. Wayne protested, but the danger was very real. It was no time for bravado. Pulling off an orderly retreat in the face of an enemy attack is one of the most difficult of military operations. Lee managed to disengage and maneuver his men back through terrain broken by ravines and wet
lands.

  Meanwhile, George Washington was moving toward the sound of the guns with the rest of the army. He heard rumors of a retreat and refused to believe them. Lee would have informed him. But as he approached the edge of a ravine, he encountered a steady stream of men moving in the opposite direction.

  General Lee himself came up. His intention, probably, was to form his men near that very spot, where the oncoming British would have to attack uphill. Washington reined in his lathered horse and confronted the man who had disobeyed his orders, had defied him. In a blistering passion, he demanded “What is this? What is this unaccountable retreat?” Lafayette said Washington cursed Lee as “a damned poltroon,” others that he swore “till the leaves shook on the trees.” By one report, Lee, ordinarily so voluble, was dumbfounded at the reprimand and could only stammer, “Sir. Sir.”27

  With the enemy advancing and musket fire mounting, the two red-faced generals had time for only a brief horseback confrontation. Washington’s aides credited his personal charisma with stopping the retreat and forming a line of battle. An observer attributed “the orderly manner in which the Americans retreated” to the discipline Steuben had instilled in them.28

  The British came on fast. The second phase of the daylong battle was about to begin. The task of stopping the enemy until units could be sorted out and order restored went to Anthony Wayne. He took three regiments and two field guns more than a half mile east toward the enemy and arrayed them in the face of the Hessian grenadiers, British infantrymen, and mounted dragoons.

  Wayne’s men let loose a volley that brought the advancing troops to their knees. The British reformed and again came on. Another volley. Wayne’s men beat back three charges before they were overwhelmed and had to give way. Wayne marched them rearward and inserted them into the solid line that Washington had formed at the top of the ravine. Nathanael Greene took command of the American right, Lord Stirling of the left. Steuben, thrilled to be breathing gun smoke in battle for the first time in twenty years, rallied men and returned them to the fight. Henry Knox directed the firing of the artillery.