Germantown and the Roads to Valley Forge Page 12
One of the last shots fired from these guns soared over Conway's men in the road, passed Washington and his staff who were following, and landed several hundred yards back up the high road as Nash's North Carolina Brigade and Maxwell's New Jersey Brigade, the reserves under Lord Stirling, were approaching. Brig. Gen. Francis Nash was at the head of his troops along with Maj. James Witherspoon of New Jersey, one of Maxwell's aides. The 6-pound iron ball reportedly struck a signpost along the road and ricocheted into the front of the North Carolina Brigade with appalling results. In the blink of an eye, the shot tore through the neck of Nash's horse, ripped across the general's left thigh, and smashed in the side of Witherspoon's head, creating a hideous spume of blood, horse flesh, brains, and bone fragments.
Major Witherspoon, the son of Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon who was president of Princeton College and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was killed instantly. “General Nashes thigh & the head of Major Witherspoon were, it's said, both taken away by one & the same Cannon Ball,” Gen. John Armstrong reported the next day.139 The horse was thrown backward and landed in a dead heap on top of the general. Nash, his leg all but severed, told his men to keep going, and as he was pulled from under the repulsive wreckage, it became evident that the general was grievously wounded. He was bandaged and placed on a litter made of poles lashed together, and carried nearly twenty miles back toward camp. “We lost one Brigadier General who was shot in the thy with a cannon Ball,” Colonel Dayton of the 3rd New Jersey wrote afterward, and “our good Major Weatherspoon was shot dead by a cannon shot in the head as we were advancing through the Streets of German Town.”140
Up ahead, Conway's and Wayne's Pennsylvanians were momentarily halted at Cliveden. “Here we are at Chew's House,” Ens. Charles Mackinnet commented, just up the street from his mother's tavern. Bower's Company of the 6th Pennsylvania swung left into Cliveden's driveway. “The firing from Chew's house was tremendously severe—the balls seemed to come in showers,” Ensign Markland noted. As the company advanced, Markland was shot in the right arm. Pvt. Philip Ludwig of Reading, who moments before had picked up a British musket he found leaning on a fence, fell dead with a bullet through his forehead.141 Wayne's troops, coming up on the north side of the house, fired a few volleys at Cliveden, but then moved on, passing behind the house and through the 40th's camp. It was at this point that they lost contact with the right wing.
Across the road, the Maryland troops continued advancing. “At Chews House a mile & a half from where the attack began Wains Division came abreast with mine & past [passed] Chews House while mine was advancing on the other side of the main Road,” Sullivan noted. Having now entered the village, where houses lined the road, “Though the Enemy were Routed yet they took advantage of every yard, House & Hedge in their retreat which kept up an Incessant fire Through the whole pursuit,” Sullivan remarked.142 Major Howard's regiment, the 4th Maryland, “had orders to keep to the right of the road, and as we passed Chew's house we were fired at from the upper windows, but received no injury.”143 Conway's Brigade, momentarily halted at Cliveden and disengaged from the fleeing Light Infantry, were ordered to file off behind Sullivan's Division and fall in on the far right of the Maryland troops. The 6th Pennsylvania withdrew back down the driveway, having lost a handful of men.
A lull now occurred at Cliveden as the Pennsylvanians moved on. Colonel Musgrave took the time to give his men a pep talk. He told them, “their only safety was in the defence of that house; that if they let the enemy get into it, they wou'd undoubtedly every man be put to death; that it would be an absurdity for any one to think of giving himself up, with hopes of quarters.” Musgrave reassured them “that their situation was nevertheless by no means a bad one, as there had been instances of only a few men defending an house against numbers; that he had no doubt of their being supported and delivered by our army; but that at all events they must sell themselves as dear as possible to the enemy.”144
Washington and his staff halted in front of the Bensell-Billmeyer House, about 200 yards north of Cliveden.145 The commander in chief noticed that Sullivan's troops were firing one volley after another into the murky air and that they would soon run out of ammunition if they did not slow down. “I am afraid General Sullivan is throwing away his ammunition,” Washington remarked to Adj. Gen. Timothy Pickering. “Ride forward and tell him to preserve it.” Pickering galloped ahead through the fields west of the road where Sullivan's battle line had just passed and found the New Hampshire general about 400 yards below Cliveden. He delivered Washington's message, and then moved over to the street and headed back toward the Bensell-Billmeyer House.
“At this time I had never heard of Chew's house and had no idea that an enemy was in my rear,” Pickering stated later. “The first notice I received of it was from the whizzing of musket balls across the road, before, behind, and above me, as I was returning after delivering the orders to Sullivan.” The effect was unnerving; “Instantly turning my eye to the right I saw the blaze of muskets” in the second-floor windows of the hulking gray mansion, “whose shot were still aimed at me from Chew's.” Sitting at an angle about 100 yards east of the street, Cliveden was barely within effective musket range. Pickering spurred his horse and galloped quickly out of the way.
“Passing on I came to some of our artillery who were firing very obliquely on the front of the house,” the adjutant general noted. The shots glanced off the front and side walls of Cliveden. “I remarked to them that in that position their fire would be unavailing and that the only chance of their shot making any impression on the house would be by moving down and firing directly on its front.” The artillery battery, two guns of Proctor's Pennsylvania Artillery and the two 6-pounders abandoned by the Light Infantry, were shifted down to fire square on the front. Unknown to the crews, the guns would now be directed against the strongest part of Cliveden, the heavy, ashlar stonework of Germantown's finest masons. The 40th Regiment was shielded by nearly two feet of Wissahickon schist.
As the artillerymen began to manhandle the guns down the road, Pickering continued his ride back to the Bensell-Billmeyer House. “I rejoined General Washington who, with General Knox and other officers, was in front of a stone house next northward to the open field in which the Chew's house stood.”146 There, the adjutant general found a discussion over what to do about the British in Cliveden already in progress.
Washington's aides recommended leaving a single regiment around the house to keep the British in. “Many junior officers, at the head of whom were Colonel Pickering and Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, urged with zeal the propriety of passing the house,” Capt. Henry Lee of the 1st Continental Light Dragoons wrote. Lee was an eyewitness, “being for that day in the suite of the commander-in-chief, with a troop of dragoons charged with duty near his person.”
But then fate intervened in the form of Washington's largest general, Chief of Artillery Henry Knox. “Brigadier Knox opposed the measure with earnestness, denouncing the idea of leaving an armed force in the rear,” Lee recalled vividly. Washington listened to the advice of his stout artillery chief, “and being always high in the general's confidence, his opinion prevailed.”147 The commander in chief concurred: the British must be driven out of the Chew House.
“It would be unmilitary to leave a castle in our rear,” is how the adjutant general later recalled Knox's statement. Pickering was horrified; he remembered answering Knox by saying, “Doubtless that is a correct general maxim; but it does not apply in this case. We know the extent of this castle (Chew's house); and to guard against the danger from the enemy's sallying, and falling on the rear of our troops, a small regiment may be posted here to watch them; and if they sally, such a regiment will take care of them,” he wrote years later.148 At the time, “We mistook our true interest,” he entered in his journal immediately afterward, adding “We ought to have pushed our advantage, leaving a party to watch the enemy in that house.”
Then, to his further astonishment, “it was
proposed (for our advanced brigades had driven the enemy some way beyond it) to send a flag to summon the enemy posted there to surrender, it being urged as dangerous to leave them in our rear.” Pickering couldn't believe his ears. He was sure that the flag would be fired upon, especially after the Pennsylvanians had refused to take prisoners. “A flag was sent, Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, Deputy Adjutant-General, offering himself to carry it,” the adjutant general stated, saying, “I did not expect to see him return alive. I imagined they would pay no respect to the flag, they being well posted, and the battle far enough from being decided.”
No British accounts mention any attempt at a truce. Smith bravely went forward, but got nowhere near the house. As he crossed the murky, smoke-shrouded field, British soldiers in the upstairs northwest corner of the house spotted the outline of a figure coming toward them and fired, as they had fired at Pickering on the road a few minutes before. “The event justified my apprehensions,” Pickering recalled wistfully. “In a few minutes Mr. Smith was brought back with his leg broken and shattered by a musket-ball fired from the house.”149 Maj. Caleb Gibbs, the commander of Washington's Guards, a small contingent of infantry who protected the headquarters and Washington himself, said to Pickering, “While you were absent I offered to carry the flag; I thank my stars that the offer was not accepted.”150
The battle for Cliveden now began in earnest. Infuriated by having the flag fired upon, the Continentals proceeded to bombard and storm the Chew House. “By this time the rebels had brought four pieces of canon (three-pounders) against the house, and with the first shot they burst open both the hall-doors, and wounded some men with the pieces of stone that flew from the wall,” a British officer, writing to the London Chronicle, reported. Capt. William Harris, “a brave intelligent officer, who commanded on the ground floor, reported to Col. Musgrave what had happened, and that he had thrown chairs, tables, and any little impediments he could before the door, and that he would endeavour to keep the enemy out as long as he had a single man left: he was very soon put to the test, for the rebels directed their cannon (sometimes loaded with round, sometimes with grape shot) entirely against the upper stories, and sent some of the most daring fellows from the best troops they had, to force their way into the house under cover of their artillery.”151
The British troops in the house stayed clear of the windows and doors as best as they could while the artillery blasted away. Solid shot slammed against the walls and punched through the shutters on the first floor, showering the occupants in the dark hallway with broken glass, splinters, and stone fragments, while the bone-jarring concussions of iron hammering on unyielding stone filled the air with plaster dust. Chips flew from the front steps, while upstairs, grapeshot sprayed against the fine stonework and cornices, splintering the window frames and pelting the troops with shattered glass. Shot thudded into the plaster walls and ceilings and smashed the cedar paneling, while iron hail drummed on the roof, scarring the handsome stone urns and knocking numerous holes through the wooden shingles. The life-size marble statues on the grounds lost arms and legs, even heads. Some were knocked off their pedestals; the cold, pale torsos sprawled on the lawn in an eerie parody of death on a gray, foggy morning.
Despite the pounding, the house stood firm, as did its occupants. It quickly became clear that the field guns were too light to break down Cliveden's “massy walls.” Stirling's reserves, Maxwell's and Nash's Brigades, were positioned out of musket range across the high street and north of Cliveden respectively, so the generals agreed to storm the house with infantry while the artillery fired grapeshot at the upper stories to keep the heads of the 40th down. Half of Maxwell's Brigade, the 2nd and 4th New Jersey Regiments, formed into a battle line and began firing volleys at Cliveden, while an attack column composed of Col. Aaron Ogden's 1st New Jersey and Col. Elias Dayton's 3rd New Jersey Regiments advanced up the driveway. In support of the attack, the North Carolinians also fired volleys at the windows on the north side.
Proctor's guns had blown the front doors off their hinges, so Harris's men barricaded the main entrance with furniture and the broken door panels. Bristling bayonets with some guts behind them would have to fill in the gaps. “The lads” on the second floor, many of them scratched and bleeding, crouched under the sills or crammed between the windows to avoid the grapeshot, waiting for a pause in the barrage.
As the Continentals advanced up the driveway, the artillery ceased firing so the men could rush the house. Ogden's and Dayton's cheering Jerseymen charged toward the front and side entrances, their officers leading the way. Sheets of fire spewed from the upper windows as Musgrave's growling redcoats sprang up and opened fire by turn, pulling back out of sight to reload while others filled the firing positions in an effective and deadly rotation.
The Continentals were staggered by the showers of musket balls at point-blank range. They fell in heaps, but the attackers kept moving forward. “We suffered considerable in Advancing by a party of the Enemy had thrown into a large stone House,” Colonel Dayton wrote. “At this place fell Capt. McMyer [Andrew McMires] & Ensign [Martin] Hurley of Col. Ogdens Regiment,” the 1st New Jersey, “Capt. [John] Conwey, Capt. [Isaac] Morrison, & Capt. [Daniel] Baldwin & Lt. Robinson [Robert Robertson] wounded of the same Regiment, together with about 20 men.” In Dayton's 3rd New Jersey, “Lt. [William] Clark & Ensign [Jarvis] Bloomfield wounded & 18 men killed & wounded.” On horseback, leading his troops up to the front walls, Dayton reported, “my horse was shot under me at same place within about 3 yds. of the Corner of the House.”
The valor of the Jerseymen was remarkable, as both British and American accounts attest. “I beleive Every man we had eighther killed or wounded meet his fate full in front as he was advancing,” Dayton proudly noted.152 “To do them justice,” a British officer wrote of the New Jersey troops, “they attacked with great intrepidity, but were received with no less firmness.”153
Musgrave's determined stand and personal leadership were extraordinary. “With his regiment he occupied a house,” Lieutenant von Feilitzsch wrote. “The enemy stormed it about 10 times, but the Englishmen fought like lions, and Musgrave went from one room to the other and yelled: ‘Hurrah to the King! Hurrah to the English!’ He did not let his men shoot far, but had them wait until the rebels had come very close each time.”154
But, other than damaging the building, the American cannon fire and supporting musketry was mostly ineffective. The distance, smoke, and fog meant that most of the troops firing in support had only occasional gunflashes to aim for, and every discharge lessened the visibility.
In the 1st New Jersey, or “Jersey Blues” as they were nicknamed for their handsome blue regimentals faced with red, Ens. Martin Hurley made a good-sized target as he charged up the lawn, sword in hand. “When the House in which the 40th Regiment was posted was attacked,” Pvt. Matthew Fitzgerald of Musgrave's Company in the 40th later testified, he saw Ensign Hurley “with a drawn Sword in his hand, come up with a number of rebels to the Attack; that he there saw him wounded and fall.” When asked what distinguished Hurley, Fitzgerald replied that “He saw no other with a drawn sword.” Later, when Private Fitzgerald “afterwards came out of the House, he saw [Hurley] laying on the ground, at the place where he had seen him drop,” and also that “there were none within three or four yards of him.” Also, he was “dressed in a blue coat faced with red.” 155
“The fire from the upper windows was well directed and continued,” a British officer wrote. “The rebels nevertheless advanced, and several of them were killed with bayonets getting in at the windows and upon the steps, attempting to force their way in at the door.”156 The gunfire from Cliveden, “in fact, was well-directed, and killed and wounded a great many of our officers and men,” Pickering confirmed. “Several of our pieces, six-pounders, were brought up within musket-shot of it, and fired round balls at it, but in vain: the enemy, I imagine, were very little hurt; they still kept possession.”157
Having failed to disl
odge Musgrave's force with artillery and infantry, the Americans changed tactics. Several young officers volunteered to set the house on fire. “I suppose you hear of the Gallantry of Col: Musgrave of 40th,” Lt. Loftus Cliffe wrote. “He and his 6 Companies were surrounded & took to the friendly shelter of a large House just by them, there they gallantly defended themselves till supported & tho’ the House was made a Riddle of with grape & round Shot, they lost very little Blood in the House, but as their defence was praise worthy, the attack of a few entheusuasts for Licentiousness was as culpable, thirty or 40 perished just within a few Yards of the House, some attempting to set fire to the Window Shutters, amongst those desperate Quixots fell a Captain very genteely dressed and a fine looking fellow.”158
The “desperate Quixots” included several volunteer aides from Washington's and Sullivan's staff. Col. John Laurens, the son of Congressman Henry Laurens of South Carolina (soon to become the president of Congress), was a volunteer aide on Washington's staff. Together with a young French aide, Thomas Antoine du Plessis-Mauduit, and two of General Sullivan's aides, Maj. John White, an Irish volunteer, and Maj. Edward Sherburne of New Hampshire, the eager young officers decided to try and set Cliveden ablaze.
According to the Marquis de Chastellux, who visited Cliveden in 1780 and spoke at length with several of the aides about the battle, du Plessis-Mauduit “proposed to Colonel Laurens to take with him some determined men, and get from a nearby barn some straw and hay which they would pile up against the front door and set afire.” The barn was set back about fifty yards northeast of the house, so the officers approached the premises by using the kitchen dependency as cover, hugging the wall to avoid gunfire from upstairs. The aide “went straight to a window on the ground floor,” one of the dining room windows to the left of the servants’ entrance, “broke it open, and climbed up on to it.”