02:26 PM EDT on Thursday, June 15, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Sept. 11, 1777 -- the day had come for Gen. George Washington to make his stand. Throughout that summer Washington had ignored his rival's invitations to come down out of the Jersey hills and fight on the open plain. Now with Gen. William Howe leading 13,000 troops toward Philadelphia, the country's de facto capital, Washington had no choice but to defend America's biggest city.

To make his defense, Washington chose the ground behind Brandywine Creek at Chadd's Ford, Pa. The hills on each side of the creek were a patchwork of forest and farm, rising to a height of 200 feet.

Journal graphic / Tom Murphy

Knyphausen's small force of Hessians face the center of Washington's army across Brandywine Creek. Meanwhile, Howe and Cornwallis take the main body east, crossing at Jeffrie's Ford to turn the American's right flank. Sterling, Stephen and Sullivan try to meet the attack but are overwhelmed. Greene covers the retreat and the British do not pursue.

Howe made his encampment at Kennett Square, 6 miles south of Chadd's Ford. At 4 a.m. his 13,000 men began moving toward the American lines, 11,000 troops strong. With nearly 25,000 men poised for battle, Brandywine shaped up to be one of the biggest fights of the American Revolution.

Howe had a plan that would make him look either very smart or very foolish. He split his army in two unequal parts. He put the smaller unit of 5,000 men under the command of a Hessian general and sent them marching east toward Washington's army at Chadd's Ford.

Howe and Gen. Charles Cornwallis led the larger group of 8,000 north to Jeffrie's Ford, where they hoped to cross the Brandywine, then surprise Washington from behind, much as they had done on Long Island.

The plan held a major risk: If Washington realized that the army sent to attack his front was just a ruse to cover the larger army's flanking movement, he could annihilate that smaller army, then roll up Howe's 8,000 men. This is what military strategists refer to as a "defeat in detail."

The day dawned with a fog that dissipated beneath the sun, leaving oppressive humidity and heat. By 10:30 a.m., Gen. Wilhelm von Knyphausen was in position to attack Washington's front at Chadd's Ford. From high woods on both sides of the Brandywine, the artillery banged its thunderous duet.

At headquarters in a Quaker's house a mile behind the lines, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene and Washington waited for the British charge. None came, and they began to suspect that the artillery duel was just a feint to cover a march of the main army. At 11 a.m., word came down the Great Valley Road, well west of the action, that "a large body of the enemy" had been seen marching north through that morning's fog.

Washington decided to go on the offensive: he would attack and destroy the smaller army before him.

Across the Brandywine

Greene prepared to spur his horse across Brandywine Creek, a chest-deep river, into the teeth of the British artillery blasting at him while American artillery roared from behind. Greene led a division -- about 1,300 men -- of America's best soldiers, mostly veterans from Virginia.

Before Greene could get his men across the Brandywine, Washington canceled all orders for an attack. At 1:30 p.m., the height of a hot day, Greene marched his men back to Chadd's Ford.

Washington canceled Greene's attack after hearing from Gen. John Sullivan, stationed up on Brinton's Ford, that there were no British troops up in his quarter. That meant that the whole of the British forces must be marching straight toward Washington, and he could not afford to splinter his own forces for an offensive.

Unfortunately for the American cause, Sullivan's information was wrong. Most of the British army was up in his area and had in fact marched beyond his position, putting them in place to attack him from his rear. Washington was now in the jaws of a trap: Cornwallis was marching down on him from the rear, while Hessian Gen. Von Knyphausen was shelling his army from across the Brandywine at his front.

Now Washington gave Greene's crack division a different mission: instead of spearheading an attack, they would stay out of the action as a reserve force, ready to rush wherever the army might need them most.

After 4 p.m., the British sprang their trap. From headquarters Washington and Greene heard the thunder of cannon rolling to the north and the crack of musket volleys. This firing was the signal for Von Knyphausen to splash his 5,000 troops across the Brandywine to assault Washington's front; the cannonade increased to cover the crossing. Washington dashed off a hurried note to Congress back in Philadelphia, 20 miles away: "At half after four o'clock, the enemy attacked General Sullivan at the ford next above this, and the action has been very violent ever since. It still continues. A very severe cannonade has began here too, and I suppose we shall have a very hot evening."

Stained with blood

Around 5:30 p.m., with a hot sun sinking low into the September sky, Washington ordered Greene to march his division on the "quickest step" to aide Sullivan's men, a march of 4 miles. Washington also left the fighting at Chadd's Ford to see what Sullivan was up against, but he went by horse. Washington pressed into service an old farmer named Joseph Brown, who knew the shortest point between Chadd's Ford and the Birmingham Meeting House, where Sullivan's troops were under attack. Brown was reluctant to lead, but, as a friend of his later told it, "One of Washington's suite dismounted from a fine charger and told Brown if he did not instantly get on his horse and conduct the General by the nearest and best route, he would run him through on the spot."

Brown mounted the charger, which leaped over fences and rails while Washington rode hard on his heels yelling, "Push along, old man. Push along, old man."

When Washington reached the field he saw Sullivan's troops had been driven back from the meetinghouse and had formed along the face of the high ground known as Plowed Hill. Sullivan fielded about 3,000 troops to fight a British army of 8,000. The left side of Sullivan's line began to break and run; as Washington and Lafayette tried to rally the troops, Lafayette took a bullet in the thigh.

Almost miraculously, Greene's division of some 1,300 men arrived right on Washington's heels. Greene had somehow managed to march more than a thousand men, each one bearing the weight of packs, bullets and a 10-pound musket, nearly 4 miles in 45 minutes. As Sullivan's troops ran, Greene formed his lines to cover their retreat.

A British officer described the battle at Plowed Hill as "a most infernal fire of cannon and musquetry. . . . The balls plowing up the ground. The trees crackling over one's head. The branches riven by the artillery. The leaves falling as in autumn" dislodged by the grape shot, golf ball-sized cannon shot.

At Chadd's Ford the fighting was also fierce: "the [American] battery playing upon us with grapeshot . . . did much execution," wrote an officer with the Queen's Rangers, which waded through the Brandywine to attack. "The water took us up to our breasts and was much stained with blood. . . ." But the Queen's Rangers prevailed, driving the Americans before them on the road toward Philadelphia.

From a crossroads, Greene's division managed to hold off the British and Hessian forces from both Birmingham Meeting House and Chadd's Ford until darkness fell, mercifully ending the fighting for that day.

Washington never did tally his losses for that day, Sept. 11, 1777, but they were significant. Howe probably overestimated the American loss at 300 killed, 600 wounded and 400 captured, a loss of 1,300 men. Howe's own loss stood at 89 killed, 488 wounded and 6 missing.

A local Quaker, Joseph Townsend, walked over the battlefield and reported the scene "was awful to behold -- such a number of fellow beings lying together severely wounded and some mortally. The meetinghouse doors were torn off and pressed into service as stretchers to carry the wounded into the house, where surgeons amputated limbs with no anesthetic stronger than brandy.

Not just a rout

Although they lost the ground, many of their cannon and more than twice as many men, the Americans did not see the Battle of Brandywine as a rout. In his first orders issued after the battle Greene wrote: The Genl. has the pleasure to Inform the troops, that notwithstanding we gave the Enemy the ground, the purchase has been at much blood. . . ."

Writing about the Battle of Brandywine many months later, Greene was uncharacteristically immodest in his assessment of his own conduct that day.

I think both the general and the public were as much indebted to me for saving the army from ruin as they ever have been to any one officer in the course of the war, Greene wrote to Henry Marchant, Rhode Island's attorney general.

When I came upon the ground I found the whole of the troops routed and retreating precipitately, and in the most broken and confused manner. I was ordered to cover the retreat, which I effected in such a manner as to save hundreds of our people from falling into the enemy's hands. Almost all of the park of artillery had an opportunity to get off, which must have fallen into their hands; and the left wing posted at Chadsford, got off by the seasonable check I gave the enemy. We were engaged an hour and a quarter, and lost upwards of an hundred men killed and wounded. I maintained the ground until dark, and then drew off the troops in good order. We had the whole British force to contend with. . . .

Greene was entitled to crow. At Fort Washington he had lost an army. At the Brandywine, he saved one.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

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