01:00 AM EDT on Monday, June 19, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Like the Cowardly Lion of Oz, Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus von Steuben wore courage upon his chest.

Von Steuben was one of the outsized characters of the American Revolution: a baron, a former Prussian officer and a bit of a con man.

Von Steuben appeared one February day in Valley Forge, accompanied by a little Italian greyhound and a 17-year-old boy who could translate the native German's French into English. Von Steuben himself knew no English, though he proved proficient at picking up the curse words.

In their book Rebels and Redcoats George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin describe Steuben as, "The stout, balding, big-nosed baron, resplendent in a new, blue uniform upon whose breast flashed, as large as a saucer, the dazzling, jeweled Star of the Order of Fidelity of Baden."

He carried a letter from Ben Franklin introducing him as the Baron von Steuben, "a Lieutenant General in King of Prussia's service."

It was true that von Steuben was a baron and had been an officer in the King of Prussia's army, a formidable force; but now, at age 48, he had not served in the army for 14 years. He was not, in fact, a current lieutenant general, but a penniless former captain, an unemployed foreigner needing a job.

Gen. George Washington put von Steuben to work drilling the troops.

As a former captain in Frederick the Great's army, von Steuben truly did know how a crack 18th-century army operated. He chose 100 of Washington's best troops and tried to teach them the Prussian system of marching, forming the line, wheeling, firing, thrusting and parrying with the bayonet.

He stood in the muck of Valley Forge's parade grounds thinking in German, speaking commands in French, which his translator barked out in English. Often the commands did not translate, leaving the men stumbling about the drill field while the roly-poly baron with a huge medal on his chest cursed in German, "Gott damn!"

His translator, Pierre Duponceau, remembered that von Steuben's "fits of passion were comical and rather amused than offended the soldiers."

His 100 men learned the Prussian system of warfare; others learned from their example, and over the month of March the soldiers at Valley Forge drilled and drilled till even von Steuben had to say:

"My enterprise succeeded better than I had dared to expect, and I had the satisfaction, in a month's time, to see not only a regular step introduced into the army, but I also made maneuvers with ten and twelve battalions [some 7,000 men] with as much precision as the evolution of a single company."

Lee returns

Nathanael Greene watched in disgust as wagons full of sick and dying men became bogged down in the ruined roads leading from Valley Forge to Lancaster and Reading; oxen and draft horses strained dangerously hard to haul wagons from the mire, this at a time when a good draft horse cost more than 10 times a soldier's annual wage.

As quartermaster, Greene couldn't afford to be losing horses to bad roads. Through a colonel he asked Washington for 100 men to fix those roads; he ordered another colonel to send along tar needed to build wagon bodies. Within a month of accepting the quartermaster general's post, Greene had more wagons rolling over rebuilt roads hauling food and forage, knapsacks and canteens.

The surviving soldiers at Valley Forge weren't living in luxury, but with wagons rolling again they were no longer starving. Thanks to von Steuben, they now moved on the parade ground with a smooth efficiency, and the hills above the valley were growing green, providing natural forage to fatten the horses.

Spring brought good news into Valley Forge: the young French King Louis XVI -- impressed with victories at Saratoga and the aggressive attack on Germantown -- had agreed to recognize American independence in treaties against Great Britain. The new United States -- broke, with nearly no navy, could now count on support from the French treasury and from France's formidable navy.

News of the treaties took nearly three months to cross the Atlantic and roll into Valley Forge; when Washington learned of the pacts on May 1, 1778, he wrote: "I believe no event was ever received with more heartfelt joy."

Washington ordered a "feu de joye" -- fire of joy -- provided by roaring cannon and by 8,000 muskets fired down the line like falling dominoes. The thunder reverberated from the hills, filling Valley Forge with sound.

Another piece of good news came wandering into the valley that spring -- the eccentric Gen. Charles Lee himself, along with what Greene called his "usual train of dogs." The British had agreed to release Lee in a swap for their general, Richard Prescott, captured the previous June by William Barton's raid on Rhode Island.

The man sent to fetch Lee, Elias Boudinot, noted that the general had not changed much since his 1776 capture in New Jersey. After a fine feast at Washington's headquarters, replete with music "playing the whole time," Boudinot showed Lee to his quarters, right behind Martha Washington's sitting room.

The next morning, Boudinot wrote, he lay very late and breakfast was detained for him. When he came out, he looked dirty, as if he had been in the street all night. Soon after I discovered that he had brought a miserable dirty hussy with him from Philadelphia (a British sergeant's wife) and had actually taken her into his room by a back door, and she had slept with him that night.

In a letter written from Valley Forge to a cousin, Greene observed: General Lee has joined this Army with his usual retinue [of dogs]; and I hope he may be of use. But I apprehend no great good. . . . He is undoubtedly a good officer and a great scholar. But he is not a little unhappy in his temper.

Leaving Valley Forge

May 17, 1778: From headquarters at Valley Forge, Washington sent a mounted messenger to find Nathanael Greene; the courier found Greene in Morristown, New Jersey. Greene broke the seal on Washington's letter and read:

Every piece of intelligence from Philadelphia makes me think it more and more probable that the Enemy are preparing to evacuate it. . . . There are some reasons that induce a suspicion they may intend for New York. In any case it is absolutely necessary we should be ready for an instant movement of the army. I have therefore to request you will strain every nerve to prepare without delay the necessary provisions to support an army on the move.

So, the long months of encampment at Valley Forge were drawing to an end. The British -- alarmed by the possibility of a French naval attack on New York City -- were poised to move their 12,000 troops in Philadelphia back into New York. The British had a new commander in chief, Sir Henry Clinton, a neurotic, shy, "smallish, paunchy" man, who had led the successful invasion of Rhode Island.

Clinton could move his troops from Philadelphia to New York by land or by sea; he chose to march them across New Jersey. Now this would be a real test: the last time the British army marched through New Jersey in 1775, it breezed through with no opposition, chasing Washington and Greene's beaten troops like scared hares. Washington vowed that this time would be different.

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

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