Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence (15 page)

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In late July 1777, Burgoyne faced supply problems of his own. Flour and meat had grown scarce. The expedition especially lacked horses. Hauling
guns and wagons over rugged ground wore out draft animals. Burgoyne also wanted to find mounts for his corps of Brunswick dragoons. These German cavalrymen, unable to round up horses in Canada, had been marching south in their thigh-high boots and spurs. A cavalry arm would significantly increase British striking power as they proceeded into the settled regions to the south.

A rumor reached British headquarters that the rebels had gathered horses and supplies at a depot near Bennington. A strike in that direction might prove very profitable. It would also discourage the New England states from sending troops to block his path south.

On August 9, Burgoyne sent German colonel Friedrich Baum eastward with 1,200 men—half German dragoons, half loyalist militiamen—armed with several small cannon. More armed loyalists were expected to join him along the way. His goal was to brush aside any rebels that might be guarding the Bennington depot and to collect as many horses and supplies as he could. Although a fifty-year-old veteran, Baum knew little about fighting in America. When word reached him that as many as 1,800 rebel soldiers waited at Bennington, he showed no alarm. They were, he was sure, “uncouth militia” who would vanish at his approach.

The withering summer heat slowed Baum’s march. He reached a mill about ten miles from Bennington on August 14. He scared off a contingent of rebels and found what he was looking for: seventy-eight barrels of flour and tons of wheat. He set a miller to grinding, posted a guard, and moved on, his hopes soaring.

The rebels he had encountered were Stark’s scouts. They hurried back to report the enemy’s approach. Stark put the main body of his force on the road to meet Baum’s troops. The two small armies came in sight of each other four miles west of Bennington just as Baum descended from high ground and started across a bridge that spanned the sluggish Walloomsac River. Beyond it, the road continued across a flat flood plain toward the town. Seeing that Stark’s force outnumbered his own, Baum took up a defensive position along the river and sent a message back to Burgoyne, requesting reinforcements.

The German dragoons climbed to the pinnacle of an adjacent hill and threw up rough earthworks. The loyalists who had accompanied Baum occupied some houses across the river and constructed another small fort on a rise there. The rest of Baum’s soldiers arrayed themselves near the bridge. Stark pulled back a mile and drew up a battle plan with the help of Seth Warner, who lived in Bennington. Warner was “given to few words and circumspect with strangers, but he knew the surrounding woods
intimately.”
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He sent word for his battalion of former Green Mountain Boys to hurry down from Manchester. Stark’s own force consisted entirely of militiamen. Many officers, including George Washington, thought these citizen soldiers unreliable at best. They would soon be given a chance to prove themselves.

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The next day, a heavy rain prompted Stark to hold off his attack. The wait was a nervous one, since he rightly suspected that a larger enemy force would be arriving soon. In spite of the damp, his skirmishers, firing through the trees, managed to pick off thirty of the enemy.

Reverend Thomas Allen, a militia leader known as the Fighting Parson, complained to Stark that his volunteers were continually being called out but not given a chance to fight. “If the Lord gives us sunshine tomorrow and I do not give you fighting enough,” Stark promised, “I will never call on you to come again.”
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In the morning, a warm drizzle softened the air. A German relief column led by Colonel Heinrich von Breymann was dragging two substantial 6-pounder guns along the muddy roads from the west. Baum now knew that he only need hold out a few more hours and the combined force could deal handily with the rebels.

As the morning advanced, the rain slackened. The humid day was drenched in late-summer green. Stark sent a battalion of three hundred men around the hill to his right and another on a long hike across the plain, over the river and up the far side. He planned to lead a force against Baum’s center by the bridge himself. By noon, the day was brightening. Tropical humidity clogged the air. Most of the rebels stripped to their shirtsleeves. They tucked corn leaves in their hats or pockets to distinguish themselves from the loyalists. An intense, nerve-stretching quiet settled on the valley.

The two flanking wings of Stark’s army, a total of 650 men, met in Baum’s rear at three o’clock. They burst out of the woods and attacked the Germans in their log and earthen redoubt. The dragoons fired back, blasting grapeshot from their small cannon.

The enemy troops fought desperately. They “fired by platoons and were soon covered with smoke.”
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The rebels hid behind trees and picked off targets of opportunity. Then, with “the coolness of veterans,” the American militiamen rushed the improvised fort.

“For a few seconds the scene which ensued defies all power of language to describe,” remembered one of the German survivors. “The
bayonet, the butt of the rifle, the sabre, the pike, were in full play, and men fell, as they rarely fall in modern war, under the direct blows of their enemies.”
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The militiamen prevailed. The dragoons gave way and ran for their lives down the hill.

The whole valley was now quaking with the banging clamor of battle. Stark sent militiamen down a sunken road that allowed them to reach the loyalist redoubt without being seen. He led his own men toward Baum’s soldiers near the bridge. The struggle became feverish. Relentless. Stark, the Bunker Hill veteran, admitted the fight was “the hottest engagement I ever witnessed, resembling a continual clap of thunder.”
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The fighting around the Tory fort was particularly vicious. John Peters, the leader of a loyalist brigade that had accompanied Burgoyne from Canada, watched one of the attackers fire and run at him with his bayonet. “Peters, you damned Tory,” the rebel screamed, “I have got you!” His bayonet stabbed into Peters’s body below his left breast just as Peters finished reloading. He recognized his attacker as “an old schoolmate and playfellow.” A half second of hesitation. “Though his bayonet was in my body,” Peters remembered, “I felt regret at being obliged to destroy him.” He fired.
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A rebel named William Clement drove his bayonet into a Tory’s eye with such force that it stuck and detached from his musket as the man dropped dead. The sight so shocked Clement that he refused to touch the bayonet to retrieve it—his victim would be buried with the steel still jutting from his head.

In less than two hours, the fight was over. Colonel Baum had been wounded and captured. Stark’s men had shot down many and taken hundreds more prisoner. As the ears of the patriots continued to ring, some sank down to rest, others scavenged for souvenirs. Many were reeling in the heat, having fortified themselves with rum throughout the desperate fighting.

At this point, about four-thirty in the afternoon, Colonel Breymann’s relief column came marching up the road. They ran into a band of militiamen a few miles west of the battlefield. A hot firefight alerted Stark. He gathered as many of his spent soldiers as he could and rushed up the road.

Seth Warner’s troops had not reached the scene of the action until the fighting was winding down. Still fresh, they stormed toward the sound of the guns and slammed into Breymann’s grenadiers. Surrounding the Germans’ two field pieces, they managed to turn the guns around and fire them at the enemy. Twenty more Germans died in the fight and 140 fell prisoner before Breymann extracted his force and headed back toward the main army.

Darkness forced Stark to call off the fighting. “Had day lasted an hour longer,” he stated, “we should have taken the whole body of them.”
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His raw militia force had beaten trained German mercenaries. They had scored a victory whose repercussions would echo down history. “Undisciplined freemen,” Stark would say much later, “are superior to veteran slaves.”
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George Washington praised the “great stroke struck by Gen. Stark.” A patriot proclaimed it “the compleatest Victory gain’d this War.”
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Burgoyne still led a potent force, but he had, in one day, lost a thousand men he could not replace. Vermont, he worried, “abounds in the most active and rebellious race of the continent and hangs like a gathering storm on my left.”
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The previous autumn, young Sally Kellogg had listened to the whiz of cannonballs as she and her family had rowed away from their home directly through Arnold’s Lake Champlain naval fight with the British fleet. They had taken refuge at Bennington. Now she witnessed the blood-soaked aftermath of another battle. It was “a sight to behold,” she wrote. “There was not a house but what was stowed full of wounded.”
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Eleven

Fight as Well as Brag

1777

“He will never make a scholar,” young Anthony Wayne’s schoolmaster wrote to his father. “He may perhaps make a soldier, he has already distracted the brains of two-thirds of the boys under my charge, by rehearsals of battles, sieges, etc.”
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It was the late 1750s and Wayne’s playmates were reenacting the clashes of the French and Indian War then raging in the hinterlands.

Now, on the morning of September 11, 1777, a month after the patriots’ Bennington victory, the thirty-two-year-old Wayne was a soldier in earnest, a general hungry for the glory he had dreamed of as a boy. With a thick body and assertive black eyebrows, he stood sweating in the late-summer heat along the Brandywine Creek, a small river about twenty miles west of Philadelphia and only a short distance from the scene of his pretend skirmishes. The massed army of British general William Howe was marching toward his position. Now he would face musket balls and bayonets instead of clots of dirt and wooden swords, death and horrific wounds instead of mock charges and bloody noses.

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The peace that followed the French and Indian War had dried up career opportunities for a military-minded youth like Wayne, so he learned the trade of surveyor. The Waynes had prospered for three generations in the agricultural enclave a day’s ride from Philadelphia. Anthony married Mary Penrose, known as Polly, and had a daughter and a son with her. He ably
managed the family farm and tanning business. During the run-up to the Revolution, he plunged into Whig politics, winning a seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He eagerly read the military classics, drilled militia, and dreamed of martial fame.

When war came, Colonel Wayne recruited a regiment and found himself working on the defense of New York City. Henry Lee later noted that Wayne “had a constitutional attachment to the sword.”
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Wayne and his men were soon ordered to join the corps that General Sullivan was taking north to support the faltering invasion of Canada. Wayne acquitted himself in battle, but found little glory in the long retreat that followed.

He ended up at Fort Ticonderoga, his men weak, tattered, and disease-ridden. Yet the Pennsylvanian was an optimist. “Our country can absorb much & still rise,” he declared.
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He and his troops manned the fort during the summer of 1776, while Benedict Arnold furiously constructed the fleet that would protect them on Lake Champlain. After Arnold ended the threat, Horatio Gates left Wayne in charge of the fort. Commanding a sick, undersupplied garrison in a freezing wilderness far from the action was onerous duty. Wayne’s only consolation was that Congress raised him to brigadier general that winter.

In May 1777, Washington called Wayne back to help organize militia units near his Chester County home. It was the first time he had seen his wife, children, and mother in a year and a half. Wayne’s relationship with Polly, at first affectionate, had grown cold. Long separation and Wayne’s admitted “fondness for ladies’ society” contributed to the estrangement. Flirtatious as he was with women not his wife, Wayne’s real love was war itself.

The patriots spent much of the summer waiting to see what General Howe would do. The British commander remained entrenched in New York City, leaving George Washington in “a State of constant perplexity.” In the middle of July, Howe loaded sixteen thousand troops, heavy guns, and horses onto the ships of his brother’s fleet and headed out to sea. The Americans scratched their heads and laid bets on where he was headed. On August 22, word arrived at Washington’s New Jersey headquarters that the British fleet was sailing up Chesapeake Bay and would soon land sixty miles southwest of Philadelphia, threatening the capital. Washington put his army into motion.

The commander in chief choreographed a grand parade through Philadelphia to buck up the morale of local patriots. Anthony Wayne, who rode at the head of his brigade of Pennsylvania Continentals, reveled in the display. Some of his troops referred to him as Dandy Wayne. He was, an observer noted, “somewhat addicted to the vaunting style.” He readily admitted the predilection. “I have an insuperable bias in favor of
an elegant uniform and a soldierly appearance,” he wrote to Washington. But Wayne was no popinjay. He could, it was said, “fight as well as brag.” Washington noted that Wayne was “more active and enterprising than judicious and cautious.”
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The ardent Wayne had suggested to his Excellency a plan to send out troops, including Wayne’s men, to strike the British hard on both flanks. He modestly admitted that the tactic was not his own—Caesar had used it against the Gauls. Washington decided to adopt a more conservative, defensive stance.

Wayne waited along the Brandywine early on that hot morning, listening to American riflemen sniping at the advancing British. The firing grew closer. Given the position of honor opposite Chadd’s Ford, Wayne had posted his Continentals on a rise that looked down on the waist-deep water. They stood in the center of the American position, ready to take the brunt of the enemy advance.

A red sun squinted through fog, promising a day of oppressive heat. The men fidgeted in bowel-loosening anticipation. Eager to fight, Wayne could only wait. Soon, forces led by Hessian general Wihelm von Knyphausen pushed the skirmishers back and approached the creek directly opposite Wayne’s position. General Knox’s cannon sang hosannas. The Germans blasted back with their own field guns. Wayne’s men kept up a rattling of musket fire. The enemy advanced no further.

Then a rumor: Scouts sent out by General Sullivan on the American right had spotted a large body of enemy troops moving northwest, left to right, along the river. Thousands of men, the reports said. Sixteen heavy guns. Generals Howe and Cornwallis, conspicuous in gold braid, at the head of the column.

Washington and his aides were mystified by “the very magnitude of the blunder.” For the British to divide their army directly in front of an enemy force was unorthodox and dangerous. It invited the Americans to fall upon and defeat one part of the force, then turn their attention to the other. That was just what Washington decided to do.

Wayne was thrilled. He was about to enact the type of soul-stirring head-on charge that had excited him since boyhood. Washington ordered his entire division across the creek.

But no. Another scouting mission had detected no movement on the opposite bank. The first move was likely a feint. Washington would not be fooled—he called off the attack. Wayne’s troops resumed their defensive positions and continued to trade shots with Knyphausen’s Hessians.

At two in the afternoon, a farmer showed up at the American headquarters with urgent news. He had seen two British brigades and the dust
of a larger force approaching the Americans on their side of the Brandywine. Further investigation made the truth snap into clarity.

In a close replay of the battle on Long Island, General Howe had again outthought and outmaneuvered both Sullivan and Washington. Just as British general Grant had toyed with Lord Stirling at the beginning of that battle, Knyphausen had been “amusing” Wayne at the ford. Howe had marched seven thousand men twelve miles up the Brandywine and come over at a ford that Sullivan had left unguarded. Washington had missed a chance by recalling Wayne’s men. Howe had gambled on the American commander’s cautious indecision.

The British host now attacked the hasty lines manned by the brigades of Lord Stirling and Adam Stephen. Sullivan’s own men came up late. The roar of the enemy’s heavy field guns was heard in Philadelphia, twenty-five miles away.

General Greene’s troops, who had been standing behind the line as a reserve, rushed to the scene of the main fighting, covering the four miles in forty-five minutes. Wayne’s men waited nervously on the riverbank, ready to handle the Hessians even as they listened to fierce musketry explode to their rear.

All over the field, the fighting was “almost Muzzle to Muzzle,” as “small arms roared like the rolling of a drum.” A Pennsylvania militiaman reported that “bombshells and shot fell around me like hail, cutting down my comrades on every side, and tearing off the limbs of trees like a whirlwind.”
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The Americans began to give way before the merciless attack.

“Our way was over the dead and dying,” a retreating American soldier reported, “and I saw many bodies crushed to pieces beneath the wagons, and we were spattered with blood.” A private described the battle as “Cannons Roaring muskets Cracking Drums Beating Bumbs Flying all Round, men a dying.”
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In front of Wayne’s troops, a hammering artillery duel filled the field with smoke. The Hessians took advantage of the thick haze to come pouring across the Brandywine. Wayne saw glory leak away. His men fought well in a losing cause. Like the rest of the army, they were forced back. They had to relinquish their field guns as the enemy overran them. The Americans backpedaled toward Philadelphia, having lost more than a thousand men.

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Derogatory rumors about Washington’s qualities as commander began to circulate just as they had a year earlier when Howe drove him from New York. The grumbling was justified. Washington had shown that
he could organize and sustain an army, but on the battlefield he seemed an inept tactician. Even Nathanael Greene was reported to have commented, “The General does want decision. For my part, I decide in a moment.”
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Through “a variety of perplexing Manoevres” over the next couple of weeks, Howe kept the American army off balance and continued to threaten Philadelphia. The American troops, “nearly without shoes or winter clothes and often without food,” marched 140 miles in eleven days.
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One British feint sent the members of Congress fleeing the city in the middle of the night.

Anthony Wayne’s game performance along the Brandywine impressed Washington, who sent him out with a 1,500-man brigade to keep an eye on Howe’s army. Intimate with the terrain, Wayne posted his men in a hidden camp only four miles from the British. He advised Washington, “For God’s sake, Push on as fast as possible.” Washington declined the invitation to launch a full-scale battle. He sent Wayne more ammunition but warned him to “take care of Ambuscades.”
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Wayne planned an attack on the British rear guard for the morning of September 21. He failed to take care of ambuscades.

While Wayne’s men huddled in makeshift huts or gathered around campfires near the Paoli Tavern, a British force, alerted by local loyalists, was marching toward them through the darkness. British general Charles Grey gave orders for the soldiers of his battalion to unload their muskets or remove the flints. They were to rely on their bayonets rather than risk shooting their comrades in the dark.

At midnight they came stampeding into the American camp and attacked the men they could see silhouetted against the fires. Wayne galloped among the tents to alert his men, but British soldiers were able to mingle with his troops before they could form a line or run. The violence became ugly. The British drove the points of their bayonets into human flesh and slashed opponents with swords. An officer described it as a “dreadful scene of Havock.”
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Wayne was able to muster his troops and save his field guns as he organized a hasty retreat. Civilians found fifty-three bodies on the battlefield in the morning and buried the fallen in a common grave.

“No-Flint” Grey acquired a reputation as a butcher. Stories of the merciless bayoneting of men trying to surrender gained wide currency. But giving quarter in the heat of battle was always discretionary, and the wholesale slaughter of prisoners was belied by the fact that Grey led away seventy of Wayne’s men as captives. Yet the battle lived in history as the “Paoli Massacre.”

Wayne would be acquitted with “highest honor” by a court-martial investigating his conduct in the battle. But the misadventure remained for him a keen embarrassment, one he was determined to avenge.

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Howe feinted an attack on Washington, then marched into Philadelphia unopposed on September 26. He stationed some of his men in the city and encamped most in the northern suburb of Germantown, a row of one hundred houses and shops along the north-south road out of town.
Washington gathered his army about twenty miles north of this village, hoping to pull off a repeat of the raid on Trenton. He wanted to hit Howe one more time before cold weather brought an end to the campaign.

Although Wayne and his wife had drifted apart emotionally, he and Polly continued to correspond. “Every Artery beats in unison,” he wrote to her as he prepared for the attack, “and I feel unusual Ardour.”
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The night of October 3, the Continental Army marched sixteen miles along four separate roads to carry out Washington’s typically complicated battle plan. Around eight in the morning, the troops under Wayne and Sullivan ran into the popping fire of British pickets. The enemy gave way. Wayne led forward his panting, cheering men. The sight of retreating redcoats thrilled them. For the first time in the war, an entire British army was fleeing before an American attack. For more than a mile, Wayne’s Continentals drove the enemy. Sullivan’s brigade pushed ahead on the other side of the road.