Germantown and the Roads to Valley Forge Read online

  Sullivan's column halted on the march just short of Whitemarsh Church to give the men a rest and a rum ration; it was also to avoid the British patrols. Adj. Gen. Timothy Pickering stated that the halt was “occasioned by information from a prisoner that half a battalion of ye enemy light infantry had the preceding evening advanced on the same road a considerable way beyond their picket.” Pickering said that Sullivan deployed troops to surround the patrol, “but the enemy had retired about midnight to their camp.”50

  Earlier, Smallwood's column had passed Whitemarsh Church without encountering the patrol and continued over the Whitemarsh Church Road toward the Old York Road. But as they approached the Lime Kiln Road, three miles beyond Whitemarsh, some of their flankers became lost in the dark. One party of flankers ended up moving down Lime Kiln Road instead of Church Road, coming closer and closer to the outposts of the 1st Light Infantry Battalion.

  “The Advanced post of the 1st Light Infy. About ½ a mile to the right and rear of 2nd Light Infy. Consisted of 17th, 28th, 38th companies commanded by Capt. Boyd 38th,” Captain Scott stated. The 17th commander also described in detail their “Mode of doing duty: a captain and 2 Subalterns [lieutenants and ensigns] walking about, or sitting down occasionally in the house which served the officers as a barrack; men in a sort of wigwam camp ready to stand to their arms in an instant; strong picket at night; duty eased in the day.—Officers and men off duty slept in the night half dressed.” These troops had to be prepared to fall out at a moment's notice.

  Sometime after midnight, Captain Scott was awakened by the picket commander, thirty-nine-year-old Capt. St. Lawrence Boyd of the 38th Light Company. “We have taken a prisoner,” Boyd told Scott. “I have examined him.” In a written statement titled, Manner of the Capture of the Prisoner, Scott explained how the man was taken into custody:

  On the lime kiln road one sentry was posted; two was usually posted on high road. This being a cross road and near other sentries, one had been judged sufficient.—Sentry heard a man approaching; bent on one knee, thought him armed and a deserter, but resolved to secure him; night dark, man approached close; sentry challenged gently; answer “it is I; it is Fynn, don't you know me?”; “Throw down your arms or I will put you to death,” [the sentry replied]. Prisoner surprised, surrendered. Told him he had been on the flanking party: stopt for a particular occasion [i.e., to answer a call of nature]; afterwards went on but not meeting the party, had got on the road and continued his marching, thinking the party forward.

  The prisoner told Captain Boyd that he belonged to two brigades “that marched forward as candles were lighting, to attack us; he had lost his way.” Scott then noted, “The companies are ordered to stand to their arms an hour before day.”

  Boyd sent Fynn to his battalion commander, Sir Robert Abercromby, “who always examined himself the prisoners in the night.” When Abercromby asked if Washington's whole army had marched, the flanker answered that he understood that it had. The prisoner was then sent to headquarters at Stenton, and Abercromby rode down to Sir William Erskine, the Quartermaster General, who had “just returned and laid down” from his patrol with the 2nd Battalion. “Sir William Believed the account, dressed himself and they went together to Genl. Grant, who commanded the 1st Line,” the right flank of the main British camp.51 Capt. Archibald Robertson of the Engineers, who evidently shared quarters with Erskine, wrote, “Saturday at 4 in the morning Colonel Abercrombie came to our Quarters and told of a man Taken by the Piquet who said he was a Flanker from the Rebel Army coming to Attack our Camps. Got on horseback with Sir William immediately.”52 Erskine and Abercromby then went to General Grant's quarters, where “the General beleived the account, dressed himself, and ordered the line to accoutre.”53

  Grant's version of the episode is even more colorful and bombastic than usual, fairly bursting with yet more evidence of his own brilliance and foresight. “None of the Inhabitants gave information of Washingtons march but We had an Hours notice by the lucky accident of one of his Flankers missing his Road & falling into the Hands of a Light Infantry Patrole,” he informed General Harvey. “Col. Abercromby came to my Quarters at four in the morning and told Me what had happen'd.” Unfettered by modesty, the Laird of Ballindalloch trumpeted that “from Circumstances which I knew to be right I luckily gave Credit to the story, Tho’ I never before had paid the least attention to a thousand Reports of attacks intended.”

  Gifted with extraordinary discernment and now on a mission, the corpulent general moved with lightning speed, sending Jove-like bolts throughout the main camp. “I got a Horseback, put the 1st & 2nd Brigades under Arms, sent to Head Quarters & to Genl. Grey who was upon the Left of the Line of British & rode on to the advanced post of the 1st Lt. Infantry, when Erskine came up to Me and said laughing, ‘the most Alert Man in the Army.’” Unshaken by the quartermaster general's mockery, “I told Him that He knew & thought I was an Infidel about Rebell attacks.” Grant assured Erskine “that I never thought they were equal to such an Attempt, but that for once Hussar-like I had taken the Alarm, had faith in a Battle that morning and had acted accordingly.”54 Captain Scott confirmed, “Sir W. Erskine went to the Commander-in-Chief; Genl. Grant and Col. Abercrombie came to the post of 1st Light Infy. Then under arms.” Here, the pickets were ordered “to remain till the enemy advanced in force; then to fall back on the battalion.”55

  Then, in an almost unbelievable failure of communication, “The 2nd L. I. & 40th Regt. Encamp'd at the Head of Germantown & a mile in Front of the Line were by mistake omitted in the order to Accoutre.”56

  Grant's amazing performance was counterbalanced by an equally extraordinary display of monumental incompetence plaguing the main headquarters in those early morning hours. “The Prisoner being sent to head Qrs. Was put in the Guard House, & Lt. Col. Abercromby having given the necessary Orders in his Battalion & apprehending that a mistake might happen, waited upon Major General Grant & Brigadier General Erskine,” Lieutenant Wetherall of the 1st Light Infantry Battalion wrote. “They then went to Head Qrs. & found the Man in the Guard House, without having been Examin'd by any of the Generals Family.”57 Lt. Martin Hunter of the 2nd Battalion revealed that Maj. Nisbet Balfour, one of Howe's aides, “was too lazy to get up to examine him; and the first that General Howe heard of General Washington's marching against us was the attack upon us at daybreak.”58

  Howe's aide Captain von Münchhausen, who maintained careful, assiduous notes of events at headquarters all during the campaign, gave no indication that any warnings were ever received. That morning, he went out on a minor errand, which almost certainly would not have happened had there been concerns about an impending attack. “At my General's request,” von Münchhausen wrote, “I rode to Philadelphia to arrest a man named Reichell, who was hiding there.” Reichell belonged to the Continental Army Quartermaster Department.59

  Captain Ewald also kept careful track of details in his diary. Though stationed at an outpost miles from Stenton, he stated that Howe “was awakened by the enemy cannonballs striking his headquarters,” which probably did not literally happen, but the sound of artillery may have done so. Whatever the case, despite the warnings received, Washington's attack at Germantown appears to have been a complete surprise to Sir William Howe.

  Washington's General Orders for Attacking Germantown specified, “Each Column to make their disposition so as to attack the pickets in their respective rout[e]s, precisely at five OClock,” emphasizing, “with charged bayonets and without firing, and the columns to move on to the attack as soon as possible.” In a surprise assault, such as the British had demonstrated at Paoli, it was crucial to maintain silence as long as possible. “Pickets on the left of Vanderin's mill to be taken off by Armstrong: one at Allen's house on Mount-Airey by Sullivan—One at Lucans Mill by Greene.” The columns were also supposed to “get within two miles of the enemy's pickets on their respective rout[e]s by two OClock and there halt ’till four and make the disposition for attacking the picke
ts at the time above mentioned.”60

  Over at the Jäger outpost above Vanderin's Mill, the Hessian pickets were alerted and ready. The mill was on the south side of Wissahickon Creek near a stone bridge, and the main Jäger camp was below the mill. Up at the picket post, “I was duty officer,” Captain Ewald stated, “and the colonel ordered the pickets which were posted from the Schuylkill along the Wissahickon Creek doubled at midnight.” Colonel von Wurmb instructed Ewald “to patrol steadily both roads near the Schuylkill and the highway to Norriton” on the north side of the bridge where the roads forked, the lower road (now Main Street, Manayunk) going to Levering's Ford, and the Ridge, or Manatawny Road, up the hill past Smith's Octagon and the Jäger picket. “I did this unceasingly,” Ewald particularized, “and assigned each part of the picket its place, which should be taken at the first shot.”61 The Jägers were well prepared.

  Nearly three miles to the right of the Jäger picket, on the other side of the deep, thickly forested Wissahickon gorge, the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion pickets at Allen's house Mount Airy were to be silenced by the bayonets of Conway's advance guard, composed of Capt. Jacob Bower's Company of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. Josiah Harmar. Recruited largely from the city of Philadelphia and Philadelphia County (now Montgomery County), this unit was on home ground. Lt. James Glentworth and Ens. John Markland of Bower's Company were both born in Philadelphia. Ens. Charles Mackinett was a native of Germantown; his mother ran “Widow Mackinett's Tavern,” known also as the Sign of the Hornets Nest and The Green Tree, a handsome and substantial stone building on the Germantown High Street about half a mile below Cliveden.

  Conway's 3rd Pennsylvania Brigade [3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th Pennsylvania Regiments] had been part of Stirling's Division at Brandywine. Casualties and reinforcements changed the army's makeup from week to week, so units were reassigned as needed, and Conway was now attached to Sullivan. These men were not at Paoli, but their desire to avenge the butchery of their fellow Pennsylvanians was in full blaze.

  Casualties also affected the makeup of British units, especially the light troops. “As it was the close of the campaign the battalion was very weak,” Lt. Martin Hunter of the 2nd Light Infantry Battalion revealed. “They did not consist of more than three hundred and fifty men, and there was no support nearer than Germantown, a mile in our rear.”62 A month earlier, at Head of Elk, the commissary listed 661 men, seven wagons, and forty-two women with the 2nd Light Infantry.63 Between battle losses, sickness, and assignments to other duties, the actual strength of the unit on October 4 was nearly half of what it had been.

  Like the 1st Battalion, the 2nd Battalion had also taken up hasty quarters in the scattered buildings along the Germantown High Road during the rainstorm on September 25. Beggarstown (now called Mount Airy) was the northern “suburb” of Germantown, spread for a mile along the road. Its handful of houses and places of worship were small and plain, one or two stories high, and for the most part built of local gray stone, with rail or picket fences between them. Several fenced lanes ran off both sides of the main road. Many of the houses were fronted with stoops—wide steps with seats or benches, often shaded by a door hood, pent roof, or overhang—and some had “piazzas” or roofed porches. The properties were long and narrow, laid out perpendicular to the road and enclosed with stout rail fences. Behind the houses were acres of orchards and vegetable gardens, often protected by paling or picket fences, and a sprinkling of outbuildings reached into the long, rolling fields, which typically ended in clumps of woods and thickets down the many ravines and rock clefts in the area.

  To pull the troops closer together for better security, on September 28 the Battalion Orders stated, “The Companys to make Wigwams as fast as possible, the Quartermaster will attend & show thier Ground.”64 Lieutenant Hunter commented, “It was a very fortunate circumstance for us that we had changed our quarters two days before from the houses in Beggarstown to wigwams out side the town, for I am certain, had we been quartered in the town the morning we were attacked, we should all have been bayonetted.”65

  The 2nd Battalion's main camp of wigwams—and tents for the officers—on Mount Pleasant, about 400 yards behind Mount Airy, was located on both sides of the high road behind some isolated buildings. The pickets were spread out on the northern slope of Mount Airy, and two Royal Artillery 6-pounders were nearby to support the light infantry position and to alert the main camp in case of attack.66

  “One Regiment from Conways Brigade & one from the 2nd Maryland Brigade were Detached to Mount Airey followed by Conways Brigade to attack the Enemys Picket at Allen House,” General Sullivan wrote.67 This column began its movement down the south side of Chestnut Hill and over Cresheim Creek about 5 AM, with the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment in the lead, supported by the 4th Maryland Regiment. “As we descended into the Valley near Mount Airy,” Maj. John Eager Howard of the 4th Maryland recalled, “the sun rose, but was soon obscured.”68

  Fog began to form at daybreak as it does in country areas in southeastern Pennsylvania quite often at that time of year. But it was not a solid cloud: it was blindingly dense in some places, hardly noticeable in others, and it appeared and disappeared as the temperature changed throughout the morning. Combined with smoke from gunpowder and smoldering field stubble ignited by gun flashes, “the fog and smoke, which, from the stillness of the air, remained a long time, hanging low and undissipated,” played a significant role as the battle developed.69

  After passing Cresheim Creek, Bower's Company advanced silently in the murky dawn up the long slope of Mount Airy with charged bayonets, along with a troop of Moylan's 4th Continental Dragoons with drawn sabers. Ahead of them, on picket duty at Allen's house, were men led by Capt. William Wood of the 45th, Lt. Mark Anthony Saurin of the 46th, and Lt. Alexander Philip Forbes of the 40th Light Companies.70 As Captain Scott described for his picket in the 1st Battalion, here also the officers and men rotated their watch so as to keep alert.

  Lieutenant Forbes was the officer on duty when the chilly, opaque calm of Saturday morning, October 4, was abruptly shattered by hoarse shouts and a series of popping gunshots as the British sentries spotted the Continentals coming up the Germantown High Road. Two earsplitting blasts followed in quick succession; “the British picket at Allen's House had two six-pounders, which were several times fired at the advance and killed several persons,” Major Howard reported.71 The guns alerted both armies that the picket post was under attack. Conway's Brigade immediately began moving from column into battle line on the fence-lined road and in the fields immediately on either side. “General Conway ordered Captain Bower's Company to flank the enemy while the line was forming,” Ensign Markland reported, “and immediately on the line being formed, they fell into their place in the line” on the left flank of the brigade.72

  “The picket comanded by Lieut. Forbes sustained the Charge & gradually retired to the Battalion who were ready to Receive them,” wrote James Parker, who came up from Philadelphia while the battle was in progress.73 Lieutenant Hunter recalled, “On the first shots being fired at our piquet the battalion was out and under arms in a minute. So much had they in their recollection Wayne's affair that many of them rushed out at the back part of the huts,” Hunter remembered specifically. “At this time the day had broke about five minutes, but it was a very thick, foggy morning, and so dark that we could not see a hundred yards before us. Just as the battalion formed the piquet ran in and said the enemy were advancing in force.”74 At some point in the growing fracas, Lt. Alexander Philip Forbes of the 40th Light Company was wounded.75

  Conway's Brigade stayed on the high road and in the fields immediately on either side while moving forward over the crest of Mount Airy past the Allen house. The Maryland troops behind them, still in column on the road, began to deploy into a battle line on the west side of the road, forming the right flank of the attack. “Sullivan's division in the Valley left the road and moved to the right through fields, and formed in a lane runni
ng from Allen's house towards the Schuylkill [Allen's Lane],” Major Howard of the 4th Maryland wrote. “Our left was about two hundred yards from the house.”76 As Sullivan's Division formed, Wayne's Division, which was on the road behind the Marylanders, turned into the fields east of the road at the same time to form the left flank, but several hundred yards back.

  Before Wayne's troops were formed, Conway's Pennsylvanians went after the British pickets as they fell back to their camp on Mount Pleasant. Lieutenant Hunter wrote that the pickets “had not well joined the battalion when we heard a loud cry of ‘Have at the Bloodhounds! Revenge Wayne's affair!’ and immediately fired a volley.” Lieutenant St. George toppled to the ground, unconscious from “a shocking wound in the head.” His skull was fractured and he sustained a severe concussion from a glancing musket ball. “It was in the first volley that poor St. George was so badly wounded in the head,” Hunter noted. “He was carried off the field by Peacock,” Cpl. George Peacock of the 52nd, who served St. George as a waiter and was “a famous good soldier,” according to Hunter. Peacock “behaved like himself, otherwise St. George must certainly have been taken prisoner.”77

  After Conway's first volley, “we gave them another in return, a cheer, and charged,” Hunter remembered. As they had demonstrated so well at Brandywine and elsewhere, the British Light Infantry were capable of fighting in open order, close order, and extended order. Initially formed in the fields on both sides of the road, and a handful in the road itself, the 2nd Battalion charged bayonets, let out a loud “HUZZA!” and rushed forward at Conway's men. “On our charging they gave way on all sides, but again and again renewed the attack with fresh troops and greater force,” Hunter said.78 Faced with a wall of anxious light bobs wielding bayonets in their front and on both flanks, the 6th Pennsylvania and the 4th Maryland fell back and regrouped. “This Compelled General Conway to form his Brigade to sustain the attacking Regiments & to Repulse the Light Infantry,” Sullivan wrote. “They maintained their ground with great Resolution till my Division was formed to support them.”79