On September 19 the weather was near the freezing mark, with hoarfrost on the fields. This helped the defenders, among whom was Florimond du Bouchet. For several weeks in camp, Gates had treated the young French officer cavalierly, refusing to allow him into a tent; du Bouchet in response made a covering of pine branches and lived “like Robinson Crusoe on his island.” He also found in the camp an old acquaintance, Kermorvan, now a Morgan sharpshooter.
At Bemis Heights while under fire du Bouchet seized control of a battalion whose leader had been killed, and with it captured two British cannons. Morgan’s sharpshooters, directed from Gates’s headquarters by Arnold, did the most damage to the British, killing nearly every British officer on one field. Arnold then wanted to throw reserves into the battle to achieve a big victory, but Gates would not permit it. The fighting at Bemis Heights on September 19 thus ended with neither the attackers nor the defenders able to claim complete victory. In the aftermath of the battle, Gates granted du Bouchet admission to the officers’ sleeping tent and gave him permanent command of the troops he had led on the field.
On September 21, with the forces only a mile or so apart, Burgoyne was about to renew his attack on Gates when he received a coded letter from Clinton: “You know my poverty [in soldiers]; but if with 2,000 men, which is all I can spare from this important post, I can do anything to facilitate your operations, I will make an attack upon Fort Montgomery, if you will let me know your wishes.” That fort, well south of the Bemis Heights area, was a key rebel outpost. Burgoyne agreed that a Clinton attack there would siphon defenders from Bemis Heights, and decided to wait for it to take place before again assailing Gates. He waited and waited. From the American camp his men heard the unmistakable sound of a feu de joie, a rifle-firing ceremony. A few days later he learned the reason for it: other American troops under General Benjamin Lincoln had retaken Ticonderoga and now controlled Lake George, completely cutting Burgoyne’s supply line. Lincoln had then marched some of his men to Gates’s camp. In the fortnight since the first battle of Bemis Heights, Gates had been further reinforced with cannon, nearly all of which had come from France, as had over 90 percent of the ammunition and the rifles. Also, he now had more than twice as many troops as the British.
Burgoyne, with no relief known to be on the way from New York, and his men on short rations, needed to act soon. On October 6 he distributed twelve barrels of rum to his men, and the next morning they once more attacked Bemis Heights.
In the middle of the fighting Arnold, with permission from Gates, made his way out of headquarters into the field, where he fought with such fervor that to some colleagues he seemed quite mad. Gates remained mostly behind the lines and conducted the overall battle, although he occasionally conferred with Arnold in the field. Arnold’s inspiration, leadership, and bravery helped the American forces triumph. The British and Hessian troops were routed so completely that the attackers abandoned their guns, were pursued to their own lines, overwhelmed in a redoubt, and continued to flee. Burgoyne was almost killed as bullets tore into his horse, hat, and waistcoat; and his most experienced and favorite subordinate was fatally wounded. Arnold was shot through his already wounded leg by a barrage that also killed his horse, toppling it over on him and pinning the leg underneath. Lincoln was shot through the ankle.
For a day Burgoyne marched the remainder of his men north, toward Saratoga. There, ten days later, still without reinforcements from New York, and with his army almost completely bereft of supplies and surrounded by American forces, Burgoyne surrendered six thousand men and forty-two cannons. It was the largest and most significant American victory of the war—and French armaments, munitions, and expertise had been essential in making it possible.
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News of the victory at Saratoga reached Washington indirectly, for it seemed as though Gates had arrogantly chosen to report the victory to Congress before informing his superior officer. The real culprit was the messenger, Gates’s aide Captain James Wilkinson, who was attempting to aggrandize his own role in the battle so he could get a promotion. Gates’s victory fed into the growing congressional discontent regarding Washington’s leadership, and it led to the reestablishing of the Board of War by men who had long been opposed to Washington, such as General Thomas Mifflin, and to a plan to promote Conway to major general. Washington, learning of the possibility of a Conway promotion, wrote Congress that if there was any truth to the rumor, “It will be as unfortunate a measure as ever was adopted,” adding, “General Conways’ merit then, as an officer, and his importance in this Army, exists more in his own imagination than in reallity; for it is a maxim with him to leave no service of his own untold nor to want any thing which is to be obtained by importunity.” Such an elevation, Washington asserted, would end the cooperation of Knox, Greene, and Sullivan, who would refuse to serve under Conway, and it would render his own command untenable: “To Sum up the whole, I have been a Slave to the service: I have undergone more than most Men are aware of, to harmonize so many discordant parts, but it will be impossible for me to be of any further service, if such insuperable difficulties are thrown in my way.”
Congress went ahead with the promotion, but then there was a hitch. On November 3 Stirling received word via Wilkinson (who had overheard a discussion in Gates’s camp) that Conway in a letter to Gates after Saratoga had written, “Heaven has been determind to save your Country; or a weak General and bad Councellors would have ruind it.” Stirling, who several times had had to report Conway for bad conduct, forwarded this morsel to Washington, who took Conway’s remark as an unequivocal insult to his leadership. He wrote a short note to Conway repeating the attributed sentence but not its provenance. Conway responded:
I Believe i can attest that the expression Weak General has not slipped from my penn, however if it has, this Weakness by my Very Letter can not be explain’d otherwise even by the most Malicious people than an excess of Modesty on your side and a confidence in Men who are Much inferior to you in point of judgment and Knowledge. i Defy the most Keen and inveterate Detractors to make it appear that i levell’d at your Bravery honesty, honour, patriotism or judgment of which I have the highest sense.
Conway also denied having written the offending sentence; however, he admitted that he had such negative sentiments and asserted that such grumbling was the norm among officers in armies; threatened to trash the conduct of the war in America to his friends in France in terms that might lessen future aid to the United States; and said he would permit Gates to send Washington a copy of the original letter.
“The perplexity of his style, and evident insincerity of his compliments, betray his real sentiments, and expose his guilt,” John Laurens wrote to his father of the Conway letter, which Washington had shared with him. The French had a word for it, the young aide continued: “Persiflage, or humouring a man.”
Conway offered to resign and return to France, citing the likelihood of an impending war between France and Great Britain, Washington’s coldness to him, and the promotion of Baron de Kalb, who, Conway pointed out, had been of inferior rank to him in France. Washington informed Conway that if Congress allowed Conway to resign, he, Washington, would not stand in the way. Congress’s response was to appoint Conway to the new post of inspector general of the army, with power to inspect, investigate, and report directly to Congress.
Washington made no move to confront Conway, for he had a more pressing matter to deal with—preventing British resupply of Philadelphia from the Atlantic. He had finally been able to welcome de Kalb to the army and to command of a new division of two brigades, and now sent him, along with other senior-level commanders, to reconnoiter the forts near Philadelphia to determine whether they were defensible. At stake was control of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers that flanked Philadelphia and provided that city’s access to the Atlantic.
In many histories of the Revolutionary War the Battle of Saratoga looms so large that Washington’s near-simultaneous actions to hold the Delawa
re and Schuylkill Rivers against General Howe receive short shrift, perhaps because they were not as clear-cut a victory as the capturing of an army. But in war, preventing a terrible loss is often as important as achieving a success. Washington knew the importance of holding Fort Mercer on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River and Fort Mifflin on the Pennsylvania side for as long as possible. Should the forts be lost, Washington reasoned, Howe could be readily reinforced by sea with added men and supplies, and emboldened to more actively pursue the tattered Continentals. Such a sequence of events, he summed up to Congress, would “have thrown the Army into such a situation, that we must inevitably have drawn on a general Engagement before our Reinforcements arrived, which, considering our disparity of Numbers, would probably have ended with the most disagreeable Consequences.” He emphasized that “Nothing, in the Course of this Campaign, has taken up so much of the attention and consideration of myself and all the General Officers, as the possibility of giving a further releif to Fort Mifflin, than what we had already afforded.”
To each fort, along with substantial reinforcements, Washington sent a French officer with artillery and entrenchment experience, Captain du Plessis to Mercer, and Major Fleury to Mifflin. Both men had already proved themselves in battle under Washington’s appreciative eye, and were among the best-qualified men on the continent for these vital tasks at the two forts.
As experienced soldier-engineers, du Plessis and Fleury were aware, as was Washington, that the forts would eventually have to be given up to numerically superior forces, but that it was imperative to hold them until ice closed the rivers to navigation. Both men also understood that such hold-the-fort assignments, common during European wars, had long provided prime opportunities to achieve gloire.
Du Plessis prepared for an attack by intentionally abandoning part of the outer defenses in order to create a “re-entrant salient angle” through which the enemy would have to enter but at which he could aim four cannons with langrage shot—scrap metal, an anti-personnel measure. On October 22, when a large contingent of Hessians under a well-respected leader attacked Fort Mercer, they entered a killing zone in which more than five hundred of them were killed or wounded. Fort Mercer remained untaken. Washington would shortly recommend to Congress a promotion for du Plessis, asserting that beyond his valor and service to the country, “he possesses a degree of Modesty not always found in men who have performed brilliant actions.”
Fleury found Fort Mifflin’s defenses in deplorable shape, which ratified the prior assessment of the much-maligned Coudray. Fleury set out to improve them and did so before the British started daily bombardment. He also, each evening after the bombardment had ceased for the day, sent out crews to repair the damage. He wrote to Hamilton, Washington’s aide, that he was no longer worried about the adequacy of the defensive preparations, contending that the garrison “wants no Retreat—its Refuge is in its Pallisades and its Courage. Let it be reinforced … and the Enemy will not be so soon Masters of the River—but we must have men.” “Our batteries were nothing more than old spars and timber laid up in parallel lines and filled between with mud and dirt,” recalled Joseph Plumb Martin, an American soldier-diarist at Fort Mifflin; however, Fleury, “a very austere man … kept us constantly employed day and night; there was no chance of escaping his vigilance.” Washington sent an additional four hundred men to Fort Mifflin, and when Fleury complained to Hamilton, about the colonel in charge there, that his “obstinacy is equal to [his] insufficiency,” Washington instructed that colonel to yield to Fleury’s expertise, and when he did not, recalled him and sent in a new commander. Fleury, wounded several times, remained at his Mifflin post.
After a month of bombardment had not dislodged the Americans from Fort Mifflin, on November 9 the British began a much heavier assault with cannons, mortars, grenade throwers, and sharpshooters. By November 15 high tides and rain had raised the level of the Delaware River enough to allow the British to float in large ships with their big cannons. The British positioned three in one river channel and three in another, and together with the British shore batteries this made for more than two hundred cannons aimed at Fort Mifflin. One estimate from the fort was that they were being fired upon at a rate of a thousand cannonballs per hour. Even so, it took the British six more days to reduce Fort Mifflin and kill or wound 250 of the Americans within. “If ever destruction was complete, it was here,” Martin wrote. On the sixth night the Americans evacuated the fort and the wounded in vessels propelled by muffled oars; Fleury was among the last to leave, setting fire to the fort as the final boatload departed.
Washington was resigned to the loss, but angered because Gates had not sent men from Saratoga fast enough. “Had the reinforcements … arrived but ten days sooner,” he wrote to his brother, “it would, I think, have put it in my power to have saved Fort Mifflin … and consequently have rendered Phila. a very ineligible Situation for [the British] this Winter.”
Fort Mercer also had to be abandoned as no longer defensible. Du Plessis remained there until the very last and blew up the powder magazine, even though he lacked the long fuse kept in reserve for such situations and thus was in great danger of perishing with the blast. He survived.
Once Mifflin and Mercer fell, British supply ships pulled up to Philadelphia, crews began clearing the chevaux-de-frise, and Howe received reinforcements. But it was already too deep into winter for the British to launch a new offensive against Washington’s troops. According to a contemporary British veteran of many sieges, the resistance put up by the American forts on the Delaware “cost us two of the most precious months of the year,” during which the British were unable to pursue the Americans. The delays to Howe’s forces inflicted by du Plessis and Fleury at Forts Mercer and Mifflin were as important to the survival of the American cause as the delays to Burgoyne’s forces caused by Kościuszko and Baldwin in the run-up to Saratoga. And both sets of delays were due to the ingenuity of French-trained engineers.
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Another contribution by the French was made in the wake of the loss of the forts on the Delaware: sage advice. General Anthony Wayne, a Washington favorite, sought to attack Philadelphia and submitted a plan to do so. On November 24, 1777, Washington convened a council of war on this subject with his high-ranking officers, who included Duportail, just appointed a brigadier-general, Lafayette, and de Kalb. It was to address just this sort of critical question that Washington had yearned for experienced strategic counsel. Duportail’s memo (translated by Laurens) directly addressed the question’s most salient point:
To attack the Enemy in their Lines appears to me a difficult and dangerous Project. It has especially this very considerable Inconvenience: the exposing [of] our Army in case it does not succeed, to a total Defeat.… Now does it become this Army which is the principal one, to run such Risques—does it become it to stake the fate of America upon a single Action? I think not.
To reject Wayne’s plan Duportail dissected it in detail, showing how each proposed facet courted utter failure—a frontal attack over the ice, risking two thousand men in a chancy maneuver, and no provision for escape if the attack failed. Compared with the other memos that Washington received, including Lafayette’s, Duportail’s was a cut above—masterful, demonstrating an impressive breadth of strategic vision and an argument based on thorough, very tough analysis.
In going beyond the specifics of Wayne’s attack plan Duportail offered the essence of strategic counsel, urging Washington henceforth to openly embrace what few commanders in history had been able to see through to completion: a Fabian strategy. Fabius Maximus, a Roman general and consul, forbade his troops to engage in pitched battles or directly confront Hannibal’s in the Second Punic War, choosing to wear down his numerically superior army through small raids and cutting supply lines. Initially vilified, Fabius was later lauded. In Europe, French gazettes had already favorably compared Washington’s strategies to Fabius’s. Although Washington was reluctant to admit that Fabius
was his model, after the signal defeats of Brandywine Creek and Germantown, he was ready for Duportail’s encouragement to do so. And during the remainder of the war, Washington almost never made an important strategic decision without first seeking the French engineer’s counsel. As he wrote to General Lincoln, “You cannot employ [Duportail] too much on every important occasion.”
After the majority of the generals had agreed that attacking the British in Philadelphia was foolhardy, Washington sought more permanent winter quarters for his army, and when Valley Forge was chosen over other sites he had Duportail design its defenses. Even before completion the works convinced Lord Howe’s scouts of the fruitlessness of a British assault on Valley Forge.
Would the American cause survive? Duportail asked rhetorically in a letter to Saint-Germain. His answer: “There is a hundred times more enthusiasm for this revolution in a single café in Paris than in all the united colonies,” but the surrender of Burgoyne and the demonstrated incompetence of General Howe provided reason for optimism. Had Howe pressed his advantage after Brandywine, the Revolution would have been over, Duportail believed, but Howe “conducted his activities with a sluggishness, a timidity, that astonishes me every day.” He feared that Howe would be replaced by a more competent general who might overwhelm the Americans if by spring they were not better trained and equipped. Should France send twelve to fifteen thousand men to assist the Americans? That, he wrote, “would ruin everything. People here, though at war with the English, hate the French more than they do the English … and in spite of all that France has done and will do for them, they would prefer to become reconciled with their former brothers.”
Lafayette, whose leg wound was mostly healed, asked Washington, in his improving English, to “Consider, if you please, that Europe and particularly France is looking upon me—that I want to do some thing by myself, and justify that love of glory which I let be known to the world in making those sacrifices which have appeared so surprising, some say so foolish.” Washington sent Lafayette to Greene, who permitted him to take four hundred men and raid the picket lines at Gloucester, Pennsylvania.
How the French Saved America Page 10
