The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (20 page)

Shortly after his escape from the dragoons, Steuben worked his way toward Englishtown, where Lee had encamped that night. Lee had not ignored the intelligence related by Steuben and Dickinson, but his failure to prepare his subordinates adequately for that day showed plainly as the sun ascended in the sky. Sometime between three and four o'clock, having received the news of Clinton's march, Lee ordered Brig. Gen. William Grayson to lead two brigades down the road from Englishtown to Monmouth Courthouse, a march of around six miles. Poor planning delayed the movement, for Grayson knew nothing of the local countryside and had to find a guide at the last minute. He did not get going until nearly six o'clock.

The rest of the advance guard was not ready to march until eight. They were little better prepared than Grayson. Lee had recalled Grayson before the latter could make contact with the enemy, and in his place sent Anthony Wayne with two small regiments. These two regiments fared only a little better than Grayson. The terrain over which they had to march was not conducive to rapid, large-scale troop movements. The fields and orchards that lay on either side of the Englishtown Road between the Tennent (Freehold) Meetinghouse and Monmouth Courthouse were broken up by a series of morasses and deep ravines. They were not impassable but made it very difficult to maintain order and cohesion in an advancing line of battle. To make matters worse, one of Wayne's units, Jackson's Additional Regiment,
had not been supplied with musket cartridges and had to round up ammunition en route. Wayne's two regiments would therefore take the field in a piecemeal fashion. Both of these problems—difficult terrain and poor ammunition supply—could have been obviated if Charles Lee had been attentive to his duties.

When Steuben came upon the bulk of Lee's forces on the Englishtown Road, they were still a good distance from Monmouth. Cornwallis's division had already broken camp and moved north along the Middletown Road. To the Baron, it seemed like a good opportunity had been thrown away by virtue of Lee's tardiness. “Having seen that the enemy was marching, and doubting of our being able to overtake them, having seen nothing in my way but some militia which followed at some distance,” he later testified, Steuben became convinced that there would be no battle that day. Disappointed and exhausted, his last reserves of energy expended, he continued on to Englishtown to make his report to Washington. The commander in chief was not yet there, so Steuben, on the verge of collapse, sought out lodgings in the village, claimed a room for himself, and flopped down to sleep without removing his clothes. The time was roughly nine o'clock.

He awoke after a nap of no more than an hour and a half.

It could be that the sound of distant gunfire roused him from his slumber, or maybe it was the tramping feet of Washington's eight thousand troops as they approached Englishtown. Whatever the reason, Steuben jerked awake, bolted from his temporary quarters, mounted, and rode eastward down the Englishtown Road, hoping once more to find Washington. No sooner had he left Englishtown than he distinctly heard the muffled boom of distant cannon-fire. A battle was definitely in the offing, and the Baron urged his horse to a faster gait.
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Around the time he passed the Tennent Meetinghouse, Steuben saw the first signs of defeat: first, some of Dickinson's militia who had been driven back awhile before, and then the Continentals. The militiamen, predictably, were slightly unnerved—who wouldn't be, after being ridden down by British cavalry?—but the Continentals, stream
ing to the rear in growing numbers, were not. They still had their muskets and leather accoutrements, a sign that they had not scampered in fear, and they did not have the look of defeated soldiers. The men looked bewildered; their officers appeared angry. Some of them openly cursed Charles Lee for ordering a general retreat.

Alarmed by what he saw, Steuben continued to ride toward the sound of the fighting. He caught a glimpse of Washington, and nudged his horse in his direction; but before he could get within speaking distance of his commander, he saw from a distance what had become of Lee's division. The entire advance guard was withdrawing, some units faster than others, moving in his direction parallel to the Englishtown Road. Around fifteen hundred British troops, mostly infantry, were on their heels. Lee's Continentals were, Steuben later recalled, “retreating in great disorder,” their cohesion disrupted by the ravines and swampy morasses that made retreat in line almost impossible. Just like the men he encountered on the road, though, Lee's troops were not scampering for their lives as they had so many times in the past. Their training at Valley Forge had at least proven useful in helping the troops maintain their composure under stress.

Steuben did not know all of the details, and would not until the smoke had long since cleared from the boggy fields that spread along the Englishtown Road. He could, however, discern the obvious: Lee's attack had failed, and miserably.

After the uneventful advance of Grayson's two brigades and Wayne's tiny force, Wayne had taken control of the forward elements while the rest of Lee's corps moved up along the road that led from the Tennent Meetinghouse to Monmouth. Wayne pushed eastward across the plain near the courthouse. Along the way, he encountered nothing more than a handful of British cavalry, which he brushed aside without much effort. A much larger British force, however, was forming a line along the Middletown Road north of Monmouth. Wayne liked a good fight. Impetuously, he advanced on the British position with only one small regiment, which stood alone to face a counterattack by British cavalry. Thanks to what one historian has called their “Steuben-instilled
instinct,” this regiment—William Butler's Pennsylvanians—held firm, repulsing the British horse with crisp volleys of musketry delivered at point-blank range. Wayne halted his advance until the rest of Lee's troops could catch up with him.

Lee saw what he thought might be a golden opportunity to cut off and envelop the rearmost elements of Cornwallis's division, which he estimated at no more than 1,500 to 2,000 men. This prospect, however, quickly vanished, for soon a growing body of British infantry began to move south toward him on the Middletown Road. Clinton was not retreating; quite the opposite: he was turning to fight with the bulk of his forces. Hastily, Lee attempted to shore up his line to receive the inevitable onslaught, with Lafayette's command moving to protect the right flank and Charles Scott's troops bolstering the center. Lee's intentions were sound, but they failed in the execution: there was not enough room in which to maneuver, and Lee had neglected to inform his subordinates just what it was he planned to do. Lafayette's troops never reached the right flank, leaving a gap in the American line that Cornwallis quickly exploited. The right flank began to crumble. This left Scott's troops, now on the American right, exposed, and Scott saw no other option than to withdraw to the southwest.

Scott's withdrawal proved to be the undoing of the entire enterprise. The American left began to fall apart as well, and within minutes word passed through the ranks that Lee had ordered a general retreat. The American line of retreat, which crossed the forbidding East Ravine and led through a soggy quagmire known as the East Morass, rendered an orderly withdrawal impossible. If Cornwallis moved quickly enough, his troops could envelop and destroy Lee's command before Washington's main army could come to its rescue.

The commander in chief was doing everything in his power to push his troops to Lee's support, but not because he suspected that anything was wrong. He had set his force in motion from Manalapan as soon as he had received Steuben's report much earlier that morning, and to speed the army's progress he had ordered the men to discard their blankets and knapsacks. The only word he had received from Lee was en
couraging. Alex Hamilton had met Washington along the way to inform him that Lee was advancing against Cornwallis. Washington was only two miles away from Monmouth Courthouse when he spotted the first signs of trouble: stragglers, first in pairs and small clusters, then eventually in whole companies, officers as well as enlisted men. By the time he reached the bridge that crossed the West Ravine, Washington could discern that entire battalions and brigades were turning away from the action and heading back toward Englishtown.

For a man who was ordinarily so collected, even stoic, George Washington had a ferocious temper, which only rarely showed itself in public. He had erupted in a wrath of legendary proportions during the battle at Kips Bay nearly two years before. His temper burst forth again as he rode into the midst of Lee's retreating troops at Monmouth. It may have been a relief to see that the troops who were now streaming away from the fighting were neither unnerved nor frightened, only confused, but that very fact made Lee's withdrawal inexplicable to Washington. He was angry because he was disappointed, because after months of waiting for this very moment, he was witnessing everything for which he had worked so hard unravelling before his very eyes. The men who were marching to the rear all seemed to agree that they were retreating not because they were defeated but because General Lee had ordered it. Their officers were inclined to agree that the sudden withdrawal had been unnecessary. When one of Washington's aides confronted Col. Matthias Ogden, commander of the 1st New Jersey Regiment, about the reason for the retreat, the flustered Ogden replied, “By God! They are flying from a shadow!”
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Despite Washington's visibly foul mood, his presence breathed new life into Lee's broken command. His timing was perfect. The Redcoats were close now, and since it would take time to bring up and deploy the main body, it would be necessary to re-form at least part of the advance guard and hold off the British advance until a new defensive line could be formed. And it was imperative that the retreat be checked immediately so that the malaise of Lee's men did not spread through the rest of the army like a contagion.

The regiments in Washington's immediate presence, mostly from Maxwell's New Jersey Brigade, rallied first, and without much difficulty. Their training did not fail them, and Washington's talent for inspiration came through. As the Jerseymen formed a new line of battle, he rode before them and addressed them directly. “Gen Washington on that occasion asked the troops if they could fight and…they answered him with three cheers.”
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The retreat slowly abated. On the American right, where the pursuit was the hottest, Anthony Wayne's little brigade of Pennsylvanians only grudgingly gave ground, finally halting and holding firm at a well-placed hedgerow.

So far, Lee was nowhere to be found, but as the troops rallied around Washington, he finally emerged—slouched in his saddle, head low, utterly defeated. For more than two centuries, Lee has remained the whipping boy for Monmouth, and the notion persists that he alone stood between the might-have-beens and the actual outcome of the battle. Yet Lee was not a villain. He stood to gain nothing from a failed attack, and once he launched his attack on Cornwallis he was fully committed to it. His principal sins were his failures to prepare adequately or to communicate effectively with his subordinates.

Washington, however, was not acquainted with the finer points; all he knew was that his army was on the verge of being routed, and that Lee was immediately responsible. His face twisted and reddened with anger, Washington confronted Lee directly. Precisely what transpired between the two generals at the West Morass has become a hotly debated issue. Several officers—not all of whom were actually present—insisted that Washington was so enraged that he swore in public, a remarkable thing: Lafayette said that Washington called Lee a “damned poltroon”; Charles Scott recalled that his commander “swore on that day till the leaves shook on the trees…he swore like an angel from Heaven.” All those within earshot of the meeting agreed, however, that Lee was confused and uncharacteristically inarticulate, stammering, “Sir, sir,” when Washington asked him the reason for the retreat. Lee, who appeared highly embarrassed to those present, then
responded that contradictory intelligence, and disobedience of his orders, was responsible for the failure.

Lee was a beaten man, probably realizing that his military career was over. He retired to Englishtown, where he would wait out the rest of the battle that he had begun, leaving Washington and his other generals to save the army as best they could.

 

R
EGRETTABLY
, Steuben did not see the confrontation. As a discerning connoisseur of profanity, one wonders what he would have thought of Washington's deportment on that occasion. Instead, the Baron arrived near the West Morass just before Washington and Lee exchanged words, and went straight to work.

The inspector general had no troops to command, but his appearance was nearly as much a relief to Washington as if he had brought a fresh brigade with him. Washington did not lack troops. True, Lee's men were disorganized, but they were not racing from the field, nor were they yet physically drained. They needed only inspiration and direction to form a serviceable defensive line, and Washington could not be everywhere at once. As a familiar figure whose presence might comfort Lee's dejected soldiers, Steuben was a godsend.

The Baron had no trouble finding Washington—it would be hard to miss such an angry giant mounted on a fine white charger—but he did not yet approach his general for instructions. He knew by instinct and long experience what needed to be done. He spotted Henry Knox, Washington's rotund artillery chief, and after consulting with him, helped to form and position a battery of light artillery on the American right flank. Then he rode north, straight into the thick of the retreating troops on the left flank, where the disarray was the greatest—passing, incidentally, a silent and humbled Charles Lee, now on his way to the rear after Washington's tongue-lashing—and exhorted the men in his broken English to stand and fight. After restoring a modicum of order in this sector of the field, Steuben rode to find
Washington, who curtly ordered the Baron to go west, rally those of Lee's troops who had already left the field, and reform them in the vicinity of Englishtown.