The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (12 page)

 

S
TEUBEN HAD ALREADY FORMED
a fairly accurate impression of the army, its organizational and procedural flaws and the nature of its men, when Washington gave him his first solid assignment: the Baron was to take over the training of the army.

Perhaps Lafayette was correct, that drill could be taught by any officer, but that still trivializes the task that lay ahead of the Baron de Steuben in early March 1778. He would not have to train a single regiment but, rather, scores of them simultaneously. If new recruits rendezvoused with the army in the springtime, as everyone hoped they would, then they would have to be fed into the training regimen while the process of retraining the old hands was still going on. Steuben would have to do this without the authority of a legitimate rank, and without even a decent command of the English language. And he would have no more than three months in which to accomplish this minor miracle.

A European army to fight a European war, but in America—that was what Washington wanted. Though most of the army's leaders agreed with him, there were naysayers, too, men who thought that the best chance for winning independence was to fight a “war of posts,” a guerrilla war. American soldiers, as free men unaccustomed to deference, would never be fully capable of emulating their European counterparts. They were better suited to fighting an irregular war of raids and ambushes, avoiding outright confrontations with superior forces. They would never allow themselves to be led dumbly to the slaughter, like the poor Redcoats at Bunker Hill in 1775. Instead, by fighting a war of posts, eventually the Continentals would convince the British crown that crushing the revolt was not worth the investment in blood and treasure. And it would be infinitely less expensive for the Americans to rely on improvised militia levies than on a standing army. One did not need an army of automatons to fight King George's slaves.

But there was much to recommend Washington's more conventional approach. A successful war of posts required patience and stamina, qualities that the Americans generally had not exhibited. The British, moreover, were no strangers to irregular warfare. In the French and Indian War, and against the Jacobite rebels in the Scottish Highlands, they had learned a great deal about counterinsurgency tactics. If the Americans were to defeat the British, if they wanted to earn the respect of the great powers of Europe, they would have to fight the war in both ways—as a war of posts and as a conventional war.

This meant that the Continental Army would have to learn the intricacies of linear warfare, and learn them well. And this, in turn, entailed drill and lots of it. Drill was an essential ingredient in linear warfare. To the casual observer, drill may not appear to be anything more than a series of stylized movements performed in unison by a group of soldiers, a practice that has about as much a place on the modern battlefield as horses and flintlock muskets. Yet even today, drill exercises remain an important component of basic military training—and in part for the same reasons that made it so fundamental in eighteenth-century warfare. Drill instills discipline. Constant practice of repetitive motions and movements turn men into unthinking cogs in a larger military machine. It breaks down individuality, replacing the inclination to think with the instinct to obey.

In Steuben's day, this kind of discipline was vital because there was no room in linear tactics for soldiers who thought for themselves, at least not in the line infantry. Thought was a tactical liability, for thought and emotion could induce panic in stressful situations. Once an individual soldier perceived that he was in great peril—that a hostile battalion was marching toward him, bayonets levelled at chest height, or was about to fire a volley in his direction—he would likely seek cover or, even worse, flee. If he had a loaded musket in his hand, he might be tempted to fire it, even without being ordered to do so.

Such instincts had to be suppressed, for they were dangerous. Once panic set in, it would become infectious, and under fire, a company, a regiment, or even a larger unit would easily succumb to a herd mental
ity that could push reason and physical courage to the side. Once a single soldier fired off his musket without being ordered to, then “fire discipline” was compromised: the entire unit was likely to join in, and the effect of restrained volley fire at close range was lost. Once a single soldier decided that he should seek safety in flight, then others would flee, too. Even if his comrades did not decide to turn and run, their cohesion could be shattered. When an entire regiment or brigade lost the will to stand fast and fight, it became easy pickings for a determined assault, especially a headlong rush of enemy cavalry with sabres drawn.

Visceral reactions to the stresses of combat were difficult enough to suppress when casualties were light. The noise and smoke of the battlefield were sufficient to panic raw troops. But when men began to fall, when the screams of the wounded and the dying filled the air, then all bets were off. Soft lead musket balls, travelling at subsonic speeds, could cause ghastly wounds, especially at the short ranges characteristic of eighteenth-century battles. Artillery casualties were worse yet; the damage caused by solid shot—ordinary cast-iron cannonballs—to flesh and bone, even at long range, was unspeakable. A man who witnessed a comrade or filemate mangled by solid shot or torn to pieces by grapeshot or canister, or who saw the entire rank in front of him practically melt into the ground after a point-blank volley of musketry, would have to be very tough indeed not to run away in sheer terror.
³⁰

Drill did not inoculate soldiers against the horrors of the battlefield. But it helped. Troops who had been exercised on the parade ground, day in and day out, for months at a time, were more likely to respond to their officers' commands in the heat of battle without thinking about the awful carnage all around them.

What made drill especially important for armies of the period was the intricacy of linear tactics, and two elements in particular: firepower and movement. Soldiers trained to load and fire at the same rapid rate would be much more efficient than those who were not trained as a group. They would also be more likely to fire by volley when required
to do so, and could better restrain themselves from the instinct to shoot until given the command by their officers.

Discipline of movement was even more essential than fire discipline. The mere act of forming an army in line-of-battle involved a complex series of motions: first it would have to be moved to the desired deployment point in a marching column; then the individual subunits, the battalions or regiments, would have to be deployed in long lines, two or three ranks deep, facing the enemy; and finally those subunits would have to be placed alongside each other, flank meeting flank, to form a full line of battle. The process could take hours to perform. In a large but untrained force, it could well prove impossible. And that was only for initial deployment. If it became necessary to change the disposition of forces in the midst of battle to meet unanticipated threats—for example, to shift or turn a flank in order to meet an enveloping movement by the enemy—then drill made all the difference between victory and defeat. Only an army in which the men did precisely as they were told without hesitation could execute such actions.

The Continental Army in 1778 was not unfamiliar with drill. It had, in fact, experienced quite a great deal of it. The problem was that there was no uniform “system,” no standard to which all the army could be held. The absence of uniformity was a curse that pervaded almost every aspect of life in the Continental Army. Choice of a drill manual was left to the regimental commanders themselves. Without an accepted standard, colonels used whatever resources they had at hand. Frequently they relied on the current British military manual, the
Regulations
of 1764; others turned to drill manuals published in the colonies before the war for the use of local militia outfits. “Each Colo[nel] Exercised his Reg[imen]t according to his own Ideas, or those of any Military Author that might have fallen into his hands,” Steuben complained.
³¹
The differences were enough to cause some confusion when units operated together in larger formations.

Nor was drill evenly practiced or enforced. Some commanders were sticklers for drill—Anthony Wayne, for example; others were all but
indifferent. Commissioned officers rarely participated in the training of their men, but—following British practice—left that task to their sergeants, something Steuben found unconscionable. With so little direction from above, very few soldiers in the army had experienced drill in larger formations. Regimental drill was unusual, and drill in entire brigades or divisions all but unknown in the Continental Army.

Such was the army—if army it could be called—that was thrust upon the Baron de Steuben for training in mid-March 1778. The Baron had not drilled so much as a single company in nearly twenty years. Then he had had the advantages of time, support, an established procedure, youth…and insignificance. As a mere line officer, one among many hundreds, he had to worry only about pleasing his regimental commander. But this was an entire army. Much hinged on his performance, and all eyes were on him.

O
N
T
HURSDAY
, March 19, the Baron de Steuben resumed the military career he had left behind some fifteen years before.

It was mid-morning, and he had already been awake for hours. He had been at his desk, working by candlelight long after sunset, and had roused himself again at 3:00
A.M
. after very little sleep. The early start on the day afforded him the chance to put himself together. He was very particular about his appearance, and this was an especially important day. After his manservant Vogel dressed and powdered his long graying hair, braiding it into a tight queue as he had worn while a young lieutenant at Breslau, he still had time to put on his uniform and fuss over the details. He lit his pipe, tried to enjoy a cup of
coffee—a precious luxury in the camp, but one the Baron found very difficult to live without—and reviewed the notes he had written the night before. Donning his heavy woolen cloak, he went out into the cold gray light of the winter morning, saddled and mounted his horse, and rode northeast to meet the men waiting for him on the Grand Parade.

The men, hardened veterans of Washington's previous campaigns, were drawn up in line of battle, two ranks deep, on the frozen, packed earth of the Parade. They craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the portly German as his horse cantered toward them. Many of them had seen him as he made his rounds of the camp, not entirely sure as to who he was or what he wanted from them. Perhaps now they would find out.

The Baron, for his part, was apprehensive—and with good reason. Today he could not rely on wit and charm. It was not that he was un-prepared. He had been readying himself for the better part of a week—no, that was not quite right; he had been awaiting this moment for most of his adult life. He was an introspective man; he knew that a great deal rode on today's events, that his new life in the New World, his chance to resurrect his failed career, would begin as soon as he set foot on the Grand Parade.

Precisely one week ago, General Washington had informed Steuben that he would be acting as inspector general, but in an unofficial capacity. Congress could not give him the rank he desired, nor could Washington nominate him for it. The commander in chief still would not risk alienating his American-born generals. He could not afford to be the author of more rancor, not when the wounds opened by the plot against him were yet raw. And although humbled, Thomas Conway remained an obstacle, for he was still inspector general by congressional decree. There was no way that Steuben, with or without Washington's blessing, could usurp that position without bruising a few egos in the process. There was nothing, however, to prevent Washington from using Steuben as an outside consultant of sorts.

Steuben had already been acting in this capacity for several weeks, but so far he had only been offering advice. Now he would be expected to put his ideas into action. The army needed
so
much repair, more than one man could possibly do in such a short period of time. The Baron focused on the army's organizational flaws: the uneven sizes of the regiments and brigades, the almost criminal neglect of guard duty, problems that not only made the proper administration of the army a nightmare but that actually impeded its performance in the field and compromised its safety in camp. Solving the first problem would be a simple matter of reorganizing and consolidating the army's regiments so that every one of them maintained an equal and reasonable size, but the regimental commanders would have none of it. “Everyone of them would command his own Reg[imen]t, tho' he could have no more than 40 men under Arms,” Steuben complained.
²
What he could do, and what Washington wanted him to do, was to attend to the “discipline” of the troops, retraining them in accordance with a “universal system.”

Although woefully understrength—its numbers pared back drastically by desertion and disease—the army at Valley Forge was large enough that training the entire force by late spring would be well nigh impossible for the Baron and his small band of assistants. So he suggested an eminently practical shortcut: he would train a single company of handpicked veterans, who would learn the basics of drill and maneuver directly under his tutelage. Once he felt satisfied with their progress, he would turn them loose on the rest of the army, sending them back to their respective brigades, where they would function as drill instructors. Steuben would teach teachers.

It was not a novel concept. Conway had suggested the same thing several months before. But the general-in-chief had not been inclined to accept anything Conway had to offer. The idea meant much more coming from Steuben. On March 17, Washington ordered the formation of a “model company,” one hundred strong, to be drawn from each brigade in the army. They were to be assigned temporarily to Washington's headquarters guard of fifty Virginians, and were to assemble
on the Grand Parade at guard mount on Thursday morning, there to await the Baron's instructions.
³

Together, on the Grand Parade, the model company and the Baron would attempt to settle a question that had vexed the Cause since the beginning of the war three years before: Was it possible to turn a collection of farmers, landless laborers, tradesmen, and Irish and German immigrants into an
army
, one capable of taking on the Redcoats? Britain did not have the greatest or most modern army in Europe, but it was still infinitely better, man for man and battalion for battalion, than anything the Americans had been able to put in the field. Could the Americans effect the transformation, and in time?

Steuben and his pupils were going to try.

His assistants trailing behind him, the Baron drew up in front of the assembled company, halted, and proceeded to dismount. Those watching could not help but notice a curious juxtaposition. The immaculately dressed, well-fed, and bejewelled German nobleman looked very much as one would expect of a Prussian soldier: his hat of fine black beaver, a bicorn blocked in the French style, sitting atop queued and powdered hair; dark blue cloak; knee-high riding boots wrapped impossibly tight around his calves. Standing before the company—a little soft, perhaps, in the midriff, but still at attention without being rigid, his
Exerzierstock
gripped in his right hand—he appeared to be the very embodiment of Old World society, of aristocracy and privilege, the very same values the men were fighting against. He beamed confidence and optimism. And opposite him, the men, representing nearly every state in the union, dressed in a kaleidoscopic array of tattered clothing, hats and coats of every description, with some wearing blankets in lieu of overcoats. They were gaunt, maybe even a bit jaded, and had the look of men who had traveled far and seen much—heartbreak and hardship both.

Steuben did not take much time to reflect on the sight. With Ponthière and the newest member of his staff, Jean-Baptiste Ternant, standing deferentially behind him, the stumpy Prussian with the stern manner and kindly face pulled out the sheaf of notes he had scrawled
the night before and went straight to work. Duponceau, Hamilton, and Laurens were close at hand to aid in translation.

The Baron started, appropriately enough, at the beginning, treating the model company as if it consisted of raw recruits—not from condescension, but from necessity, as the men had been trained in so many different ways. “The only part which retained a shadow of Uniformity,” Steuben observed with some annoyance, “was the least Essential of all, the Manual Exercise, as it was nearly an Imitation of that Established in the English Army.” First things first—how to march. “The most Essential part which is the March & Manœuvring step,” the Baron reported, “was as varied as the Colour of our Uniforms.”
⁴
That would have to change, and fast. It mattered little if the men could handle their muskets in unison—that was what Steuben meant by the term “Manual Exercise,” the manual of arms—if they could not even keep step with one another.

On Steuben's order, the oversize company stacked their muskets and re-formed, unarmed and in a single rank. At one hundred and
fifty men, it was too large a body to be taught anything as a group, so the Baron first selected a twenty-man squad. He gave his instructions verbally to the squad as the rest of the men looked on, reading laboriously from the notes he had written with the help of his aides. First he explained the “Position of the Soldier,” the eighteenth-century version of “Attention”: the soldier was to stand straight, feet slightly apart and spread at the toes, forming a loose
V;
his shoulders back, chest forward; with his head cocked slightly to the right so the left eye formed a straight line with the buttons of the waistcoat—for those soldiers fortunate enough to possess such a garment.

Von Steuben Instructing Troops at Valley Forge,
by Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911). Abbey's imagining of the Baron drilling the “model company” in March 1778 is probably not too far off the mark, although Steuben spent most of his time with the model company teaching marching and maneuvers, and very little on the use of the musket (the “Manual Exercise”).
(Brian Hunt & Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee)

Then he demonstrated that stance himself so that each man could see him clearly and imitate him exactly. He walked down the line from flank to flank, checking each man's position, not hesitating to point out deficiencies, his big hands roughly pushing men into the correct posture as if he were arranging scenery on a stage. His ministrations were gruff and never tender, but even when playing the role of drill sergeant he could not hide his essential affability. He complimented those who got it right; he joked and swore, effortlessly, at those who did not. The men found it difficult to suppress the occasional chuckle. Steuben did not discourage them from finding humor in the lesson, and sometimes laughed with them.

Next he taught the men how to dress their ranks, to turn their heads and cast their eyes to the left or right, each soldier aligning himself on his neighbor so that the ranks became perfectly straight. And then the marching step: the key ingredient to well-ordered infantry tactics, which in the Baron's estimation was the most obvious shortcoming of the Continentals. Driven on by his barked commands, the men learned to move forward at a uniform gait and at a consistent pace, the “common step” of seventy-five paces per minute, each step covering precisely twenty-eight inches.
*
Step, step, step, step…each man's left heel touching the ground at the same moment as that of his
fellows on either side of him, and along the same imaginary line drawn upon the ground, so that the line of men maintained a straight front as it moved forward. The speed of marching was entirely new to the soldiers, who were accustomed to the standard British pace of sixty steps per minute. As one observer noted approvingly, “Slow Time is a Medium between what was in our service slow and Quick Time[;] Quick Time is about as Quick as a Common Country Dance.”
⁵

Finally, the men were taught how to face 90 degrees to the right, 90 degrees to the left, and to face to the rear, which must
always
be done by spinning 180 degrees clockwise on both heels. And that was it. It was all over in about an hour.

In mid-afternoon the model company fell in again for another lesson. After reviewing the morning's lesson as a single body, the men broke once again into squads to practice wheeling. In performing a wheel, the entire line would march forward in a giant arc, swinging like a gate upon a pivot fixed at either the right or left flank of the squad. As simple as it sounds, of all the basic maneuvers it was by far the most difficult to master, for unless the soldiers kept their intervals and their pace, the line would collapse into an inchoate muddle of confused men before it even described a quarter of a circle.

And collapse it often did, despite the best efforts of the men. Sometimes they simply misunderstood the Baron's fractured English, or just did not recognize a shouted command. Frustrated by his failure to communicate and his assistants' inability to help, Steuben would become wroth with himself when basic movements went awry. At such moments his complexion darkened visibly, and he began to sputter. He vented his exasperation in streams of shouted invective and profanity, directed at no one in particular. To a civilian, these outbursts would have appeared inappropriate and maybe frightening, but the men of the model company—like soldiers everywhere—were discriminating connoisseurs of foul language. They approved heartily.

With dinnertime, the day's work on the drill field came to an end. The model company broke ranks and returned to their fires to cook what few scraps their messmates had been able to scrounge, and to tell
their less fortunate comrades of the day's excitement. Pervasive boredom was almost as much a hardship as hunger; the school on the Grand Parade, driven by the eccentric but no longer mysterious Baron, was the stuff of great storytelling.