The Glorious Cause, page 49
These appeals to pride, to heroism, to honor had been made before, but their linkage to a cause which was “righteous” as well as glorious and which was shared by the “Country” marked a subtle departure, a broadening understanding. Washington ended by bringing these grand concepts into conjunction with the immediate and personal interests of his troops. The enemy, he reminded them, “brand you with ignominious epithets. Will you patiently endure that reproach? Will you suffer the wounds given to your Country to go unavenged?” These questions concerned his soldiers’ families, especially since a revolution that failed would undoubtedly be regarded as treason: “Will you resign your parents, wives, children and friends to be the wretched vassals of a proud, insulting foe? And your own necks to the halter?”53
Perhaps only in a revolutionary war do soldiers go into battle with a conception of a “righteous cause” competing with an image of their own necks in a halter. These men could have no doubts about what they were fighting for, though they may have blurred some of the fine distinctions in republican theology. What they had to understand was that their fight was for themselves, not for an overmighty lord and master.
The first task at Germantown was to surprise the British. Washington took care to give Howe no warning by a leisurely march to the village. Rather, he broke his camp which was twenty miles to the west and, by a forced march during the night of October 3, got into position. At 2:00 A.M. on the next day he stopped two miles away from the British pickets.54
Germantown, five miles northwest of Philadelphia, extended two miles on both sides of Skippack Road, which ran between Philadelphia and Reading. All of the British there were east of the Schuylkill, as indeed was most of the town. Most of their camp lay at the south end of town, though of course they had placed pickets along its northern edge. Four roads which led into Germantown seemed to make an attack on a broad front possible, and Washington decided that his army should converge on Howe’s camp in overwhelming strength. Accordingly, he drew up a plan which provided that four prongs of the American army would push into Howe simultaneously at 5:00 A.M. on October 4. Major John Armstrong and his Pennsylvania militia would advance down the Manatawny Road on the American right and behind the British left. Sullivan with his own and Wayne’s reinforced brigade would deliver the main blow down the Skippack road, which cut the town in two; Green would lead his force, including Stephen’s division and Alexander McDougall’s brigade, along Limekiln Road to the northeast of Skippack; and a mile farther to the left Smallwood with Maryland and New Jersey militia would march down the old York Road and if all went well cut into the British right and into the rear of their main encampments.55
On the map the plan looked brilliant, and it very nearly worked on the ground. Once the American troops positioned themselves at 2:00 they moved forward within a few hundred yards of the outposts, and around five o’clock in early light they struck. Washington’s order called for an assault by “bayonets without firing” along all four roads.56 Sullivan’s force, which Washington rode with, hit first at Mount Airy and drove over the pickets. There was firing, apparently from both sides—American fire discipline was almost never tight—and the British in confusion gave ground. A heavy fog which made seeing ahead more than fifty yards impossible created some of the confusion, especially about the size of the attacking force. Howe rode up through the fog to scout the ground for himself and immediately berated his light infantry for yielding. “Form! Form!” he called, and added that he was ashamed of his soldiers for running before only a scouting party.57 The scouting party turned out to be Sullivan’s infantry accompanied by light artillery, which soon disabused Howe of the notion that only a probe was under way. The fog also confused Sullivan’s troops, who had trouble maintaining contact with one another. And within the first hour they experienced greater confusion when they ran into a strong point on Skippack Road. This point was the “Chew House,” an old and large house constructed of heavy stone which Colonel Thomas Musgrave of the 40th Regiment occupied with six companies. After failing to take it, Sullivan sent his men on, but the delay had given the British time to form.
Even this delay might not have proved detrimental to the attack had Wayne, leading Sullivan’s left, not been fired upon by Stephen coming in on Greene’s right. Greene had attacked about forty-five minutes after the designated hour, because he had to move two miles farther than Sullivan in order to reach his position of assault. This delay has often been blamed for the confusion at the center and ultimately for the loss of the battle. Of itself Greene’s delay was probably not important and may indeed, had fog not covered the ground, have been desirable. For when Sullivan struck, the British sent their troops forward to meet him. Greene might have been able to cut behind them had he been able to see. In the fog, however, Sullivan’s left remained uncovered for an hour, and Wayne moved to secure this flank. Stephen, uncertain as to where he was to link his flank with Wayne’s, drove behind him and then, his vision obscured by the fog, opened fire. Wayne returned fire, and before the two groups discovered their mistakes, casualties mounted and the left-center was thrown into disorder. Whether through good luck or shrewd timing, Howe then delivered a counterattack with three regiments. A major part of this attack hit Sullivan’s left and poured through almost unopposed. This drive blunted the American effort, and within minutes the impetus in the battle had swung to Howe. The Americans retreated despite Washington’s efforts to reform the retreating troops. Thomas Paine, who had accompanied Washington, later called this retreat “extraordinary, nobody hurried themselves.” They were much too tired to hurry and resembled nothing so much as a slow herd in motion. Greene too pulled back, for Sullivan’s collapse had left him terribly exposed. One of his regiments, the 9th Virginian, which had taken around a hundred prisoners, was now trapped itself and surrendered, four hundred strong. On the American right, Armstrong survived intact—he had not sent his force into battle. And on the far left Smallwood arrived much too late to exert pressure on the rear of the British, and retired almost as soon as he arrived. By late evening Washington’s bedraggled army had pulled back some twenty miles to the west to Pennybacker’s Mill.58
The failures of the day undoubtedly arose in part from a plan which was much too complicated to fulfill. The plan called for coordinated attacks by four widely separated forces. Their failures of coordination are often cited as reason for the defeat. Washington blamed the fog for a lack of coordination, but the mounted messengers and the flankers each column was supposed to send out might have kept the brigades in touch with one another even through the fog. There is a possibility too that the fog enabled the attack to get off to a good beginning, as the British could not determine just who or what they faced. Moreover, American troops usually fought at their best from cover, and the fog afforded cover of sorts. What might have occurred in bright sunshine with clear visibility is anyone’s guess. The British explained their recovery and victory on rather different grounds; discipline and the counterattack they made won the battle as far as they were concerned. Still, they and foreign observers conceded that the battle that had been won was almost lost. The Americans again had taken serious losses, but they had fought gallantly, as Washington remarked. And, as always, the British too had fought bravely. Perhaps Washington’s army derived most from the battle: knowledge that they could carry the attack to a fine professional army and carry it well. They lost the battle, to be sure, and for reasons which we will never completely understand, given the possibilities in this engagement and given the confusions on both sides. But even in defeat they had absorbed another valuable lesson.59
17
The Revolution Becomes a European War
Howe’s triumph at Germantown and his seizure of Philadelphia gave satisfaction to the British government, but these events did not lift the depression that had set in when information about Burgoyne’s capture arrived. The term inevitably attached to that event was “disaster.” Just how disastrous the loss of Burgoyne’s army was could not be known immediately, and for several months there was hope in the cabinet that its worst consequence could be avoided. What the cabinet feared was the entrance of France into the war on the side of the American colonies. French action against Britain would transform a rebellion within the empire into a worldwide conflict whose spread would necessarily result in the dispersion of British forces—and almost inevitably the establishment of American independence.
Since 1763 the French had husbanded their outrage and dreamed of revenge against the British for the defeat they suffered in the Seven Years War. Not surprisingly, the upheavals in the British colonies alerted the French government to the possibility of splintering the British empire. Choiseul, the foreign minister of Louis XV, recognizing that much of Britain’s strength lay in her colonies and trade with them, watched the rising American disaffection with hope that war would occur. Choiseul, however, also had other problems to think about, for example, how he was going to rebuild French naval and military power. This problem existed because of another—a treasury depleted by the Seven Years War. The agents he sent to America in the 1760s sent back opinions that rebellion would occur, but not immediately, an assessment Choiseul accepted without question.1
Of those who followed Choiseul in the French foreign office, none grasped the possibilities inherent in Anglo-American strife more clearly than Charles Gravier de Vergennes. Vergennes, who had assumed office under the young Louis XVI, shared Choiseul’s hope of exploiting the problems of Britain overseas. There were limits to this hope. The yearning to reclaim the French possessions on the North American continent had died, for example. Still, Vergennes did believe that France might reclaim the fisheries off North America and that the French colonies in the West Indies might be retained. And Vergennes never lost sight of his major purpose: to reduce British power wherever possible and thereby re-establish the primacy of France in Europe. Vergennes did not mean to proceed alone against England. He intended to preserve the “family compact” with Spain as the basis of a strong position and to support the Austrian alliance as a means of forestalling England’s use of Prussia against France. As for war, Vergennes believed that no war with England should be undertaken unless success seemed likely.2
When the strains of the 1770s in the colonies followed those of the 1760s, Vergennes reacted cautiously. The British government had shown its ability to ride out storms in colonial seas, and he did not wish to be sucked into a hurricane that would throw both Britain and America against France. There was an especially dire potential in such a situation—that premature action by France would bring the inveterate enemy, Chatham, back into power at the head of a united force. The opportunity of capturing the French West Indies might well produce such a union. By late 1775, with the outbreak of war, this possibility seemed remote and Vergennes’s resolve stiffened, and he dismissed as unworthy of consideration the idea of offering neutrality in the struggle in return for an English guarantee of the French islands. Instead he sent a secret agent, Julien Achard de Bonvouloir, to America in the late summer of 1775 with instructions to observe and to offer reassurance to rebels.
Another agent with varied talents offered himself about this time. He was Caron de Beaumarchais, a dramatist (who wrote The Marriage of Figaro), adventurer, and a man who possibly loved intrigue more than he hated England. Dramatists require imagination, and Beaumarchais allowed his to carry him into extravagant predictions of an English collapse in the summer of the year. He was in London then avidly gobbling up gossip and rumor and believing, for the time at least, the most absurd stories of radical strength and governmental weakness. Vergennes may have disabused Beaumarchais of these delusions. In any case, since, dramatics aside, Beaumarchais could be useful, Vergennes proceeded to make use of him—indeed, he put Beaumarchais on the payroll of the French secret service and, after an interview in Paris, sent him back to London with instructions to listen carefully and report accurately.
In London once more, Beaumarchais met an American agent, Arthur Lee, brother of Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, a man well suited in several respects to act his new part. Although Lee was often irascible and suspicious, he was also shrewd. He had remained in London as the agent of Massachusetts after fighting began America, and now he had a new master, the Continental Congress.
Congress had begun to look abroad for support early in 1775, in part because one of its members, Benjamin Franklin, had seen the need. But because reconciliation with Britain remained the heart’s desire of many of its members even after the battles of Lexington and Concord, even in fact after Bunker Hill, Congress hesitated to deal with foreign powers. Several members had proposed opening American trade to Europe, an act equivalent to declaring independence and therefore repugnant to many in 1775. The king’s declaration in August that the colonies were in a state of rebellion had added supporters to this proposal. Still Congress moved slowly and prudently.3
On November 29, 1775, Congress appointed a secret committee of correspondence “for the sole purpose of corresponding with our friends in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world.” Franklin was named to this group along with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, John Dickinson, John Jay, and, a few months later, Robert Morris. The committee wasted no time in instructing Arthur Lee to find out how European powers regarded the American rebellion. What the committee had uppermost in mind, of course, was the attitude of France. All this was done with considerable reservations—a Protestant Congress representing Protestant states retained ancient animosities toward Catholics and Catholic states. (And on the other side, European monarchs could not be expected to fancy rebellion against one of their own kind.)4
Throughout the winter of 1776 Beaumarchais sent strong arguments for intervention on behalf of the colonies against England. One of his carefully calculated warnings held that if France hesitated, the Americans would eventually have to reconcile with Britain. Vergennes sounded the same theme with more subtlety and with shrewd reminders of where French interests lay. By spring, Louis’s resistance and that of most of his ministers had weakened, and secret aid to America was approved. Only Turgot, the great controller-general of finance, opposed, insisting that American independence would occur in time whatever France did and that an independent America would contribute more to English commercial prosperity than the colonies had. By May 2, 1776, Louis had persuaded himself to disregard these predictions, and he authorized aid of one million livres for munitions for the colonies. Turgot resigned ten days later.5
The decision to provide assistance was taken in secret and covered by reassurances of friendship to Britain. And at the same time Vergennes pushed forward plans to add to French naval and military strength. The supplying of munitions, he knew, could not be done without Britain’s knowledge, and war would likely result. There were, however, compelling reasons to mask the aid. Britain would protest, even if the aid were concealed, but it would not immediately feel forced to fight over it. Face-saving fiction is often more acceptable than fact in foreign relations. The fiction in this case was that a private group, Roderigue Hortalez and Company, was providing the assistance. Beaumarchais himself was the bogus company. He and a number of colleagues organized the disbursement of monies for guns, ammunition, and other military supplies. A second American agent, Silas Deane of Connecticut, who had arrived in Paris in July, served as the American representative of Congress and worked closely with Beaumarchais—too closely, according to Arthur Lee. The aid which the French government may have regarded as loans was soon confused in Deane’s accounts with gifts. And both Deane and Beaumarchais, while expediting the purchase of supplies, found opportunities to divert some monies into their own pockets.6
Aid in the form of munitions and money was one thing, but as fighting continued thoughtful Americans began to consider the possibility of drawing France and Spain, Britain’s traditional enemies, into the war. They did not expect these nations to join the fight out of admiration for America and American principles. They did expect, however, that France and Spain would regard favorably any opportunity to settle old scores and more importantly to redress the balance of power which had shifted in Britain’s favor a dozen years before. There were dangers in appealing for too much from these old enemies: they might come into the war and, if they won, simply insert themselves into America as the new masters of the Americans.
Benjamin Franklin had reflected on this possibility and on how European states might be used by the colonies long before fighting began. Conflict over Parliament’s authority had stimulated him to examine the tactics available to colonies adrift in a world of rapacious states. A lack of power, he had concluded in 1770, did not necessarily imply weakness, for big states, at the mercy of their own desires and interests, might well act in ways protective of the small. Big states seemed more interested in damaging one another than in exploiting faraway colonies in America in any case.7
Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Paine, and other close observers of the European scene were, of course, correct in their belief that America might draw France and Spain into the war against Britain. But they underestimated the difficulty of the task. And until late in 1776 they underestimated what France and Spain would expect in return.
Their calculations began with the fighting. With the war under way the thought of appealing for foreign aid came naturally. In the first six months of the secret committee’s existence it concentrated on securing arms and money for the army. Much more than that would have been tantamount to declaring independence, and most in Congress were to resist that act until the last moment. Thus in February of 1776, when George Wythe, a delegate from Virginia, proposed that Congress study the right to enter alliances—a right Wythe seems to have believed Congress possessed—someone responded that doing so virtually amounted to proclaiming independence. Wythe’s proposal was then quietly sent off to committee, where it was discussed but not answered.8
