The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (34 page)

Lafayette refused, correctly noting that he was too busy to attend to the affair. He understood that the Virginians' fury at Steuben came in part from their deep dislike of the Baron's methods, even if they had done much to earn his scorn. He reassured the Baron publicly that he did not share the prejudice of the state officials at Staunton, but in private he expressed much different thoughts. Even after Steuben told the marquis his side of the story, Lafayette wrote in confidence to Washington that the Baron's conduct at Point of Fork had been “unintelligible.” The American force at Point of Fork, he asserted, was larger than Simcoe's corps, and could easily have held the Point for another twenty-four hours—enough time to evacuate the remaining stores and still retreat in good order. Steuben's retreat from the Point was a panicked one, alienating Lawson and the Virginia militia, who deserted him in protest.
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On every point, Lafayette's recounting of the affair at Point of Fork was wrong. Over time, he modified his views, once he came to realize that the lost stores were inconsequential and that Steuben had no hope of holding out at the Point. One cannot help but sense, however, that a strange and uncomfortable relationship existed between the two Euro
pean nobles, and that if there was indeed bad blood, it came from Lafayette's side and not Steuben's. When the marquis wrote his account of the American campaigns years later, his assessment of Steuben was not a kind one. He saw the Baron as little more than a drill sergeant, “an old Prussian whose methodical mediocrity perfected the organization and tactics of the army.”
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Even those who supported Steuben in everything he did, however, knew that his feud with the civil authorities was far past the point where it could ever be patched up. As William Davies informed Greene, “The Baron has however become universally unpopular, and all ranks of people seem to have taken the greatest disgust at him…. A very little, however, has raised all this Clamour; but at all events his usefulness is entirely over.”
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S
TEUBEN WOULD NOT DISPUTE
Davies's prognosis. He no longer had a purpose in Virginia, nor even the possibility of one. And he was truly sick. “The heat of the season, uneasiness of mind and a thousand other things” worked their cumulative effect on his body and spirit. For a couple of weeks he tagged along with Lafayette, but had nothing to do. In mid-July his strength left him completely, and with Lafayette's permission he took up residence in a “country house near Colonel [John] Walker's,” in the vicinity of Charlottesville. Tended by Walker's physician father, he remained in bed for much of July and August, suffering from a serious “skin eruption,” recurring flare-ups of gout, and general exhaustion.

He was too weak and listless to even be a bystander as the young marquis, who had been spared the tribulations of preparing Virginia for war in the first half of the year, garnered the glory of a successful campaign against Cornwallis. He could only fulminate against the administration that had robbed him of his chances of winning some of that glory. “I have seen so many atrocious villainies since I have been in this state,” he intimated to Richard Peters, “that I can no longer be surprised at anything.” The final straw was the uproar over the evacu
ation of Point of Fork, which he attributed to “the dastardliness of the government, the absurdity of the laws and the pusillanimity of those who should have executed them.”
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Greene summoned him to join him in the South, which the Baron intended to do, though a painful recurrence of the gout delayed his plans. A letter from Lafayette then changed everything: Would the Baron care to join the army at Williamsburg?
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Though a half-invalid and more than a hundred miles distant from the army, Steuben knew that Lafayette and Wayne had been gradually wearing down Cornwallis, who had since withdrawn his forces toward Yorktown in hopes of being rescued by sea. But the British general, in George Weedon's pungent words, was caught in a “pudding sack.” Washington had been counting on a Franco-American assault on Clinton in New York, but Cornwallis's predicament was too good an opportunity to be missed. Washington and the overall French commander, Rochambeau, decided on a joint expedition to Virginia. By great good luck, the French royal fleet, under the Admiral François-Joseph-Paul, comte de Grasse, came up from the West Indies, ran into the British fleet of Sir Thomas Graves, and on September 5 the French admiral bested Graves in a slugging match off the Virginia capes. Admiral de Grasse landed 3,200 French troops, Washington and Rochambeau were on their way with 7,000 Continental and French soldiers, and the French controlled the seas off the Chesapeake. “It will be a miracle if [Cornwallis] escapes,” Steuben exclaimed in delight to Ben Walker on September 9. “If he saves himself from this, Cornwallis will be immortal in his homeland.”
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The summons from Lafayette lifted Steuben's spirits as nothing else could. “My gout was cured at once,” he told Walker. He set out immediately for Williamsburg, with Billy North and John Walker in tow, arriving there on September 10. Washington and Rochambeau had not yet appeared, but already the French, Continentals, and Virginia militia vastly outnumbered Cornwallis's 7,500-man army.

The Baron had little to do there, at first. He could not consult with Lafayette, who was himself sick in bed and not taking visitors. But for
two months now, Steuben had been bored and desperately lonely. Fairlie had been taken prisoner by Simcoe's patrols at Point of Fork, Ben Walker was in Philadelphia, and there were few friends in Virginia. There was only Billy North, who had also taken ill while still on the road. Steuben feared that his “poor lad” might not survive his serious fever.

Washington's arrival on September 14 at least brought Steuben another friend, a much-missed one, and the Baron easily slipped back into the familiar role of inspector. At last he was surrounded again by soldiers, and not by carping, vindictive politicians. “This, my dear General,” he wrote to Greene, “is the decisive moment—the happiest time I have spent in America.”
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Washington, however, had other plans for his inspector. As French and American engineers started to dig siege works around Yorktown, tightening the noose on Cornwallis, the general-in-chief reorganized his forces. He divided the Americans into four divisions: one of Virginia militia under Thomas Nelson, who had just resigned as governor, and two Continental divisions under Lafayette and Benjamin Lincoln. A third division of Continentals, consisting of the Pennsylvania brigade of Anthony Wayne and the Maryland brigade of Mordecai Gist, he entrusted to the Baron de Steuben.

One gets the sense that Steuben's appointment was a consolation prize of sorts, given to him as a token of friendship from Washington. Nathanael Greene felt bad for his would-be collaborator who had so damaged his own career in his earnest efforts to support the Southern Army. He hoped that Washington would do something to reward Steuben. “Baron Steuben seems to have got into some kind of disgrace, and I believe it without cause,” he wrote to Washington in mid-September. “I wish your Excellency would write him a letter to console him.” The general-in-chief did not wholly exculpate all blame from Steuben. He had heard too much damning, if inaccurate, testimony from Lafayette to do otherwise. “The Baron from the warmth of his temper had got disagreeably involved with [Virginia], and an inquiry into a part of his conduct must one day take place,” Washington re
sponded to Greene. But for all that, “I have for the present given him a command in this army which makes him happy.”
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Regardless of the motives that lay behind Steuben's new assignment, it did indeed make him happy. It was also a vindication, in his eyes. His commander in chief, a son of Virginia, had made a public demonstration of his regard for the Prussian, with a command in Virginia no less.

Siegecraft consisted of a series of highly stylized routines, which once set in motion required very little in the way of tactical skill on the part of the attacker, or of leadership on the part of the commanders. Steuben really had very little to do besides lead his troops into and out of the parallel trenches once every three days after the first parallel was opened on October 6. The Pennsylvanians and Marylanders of his division did their duty in the siege works much the same as the men of the other American divisions, manning the lines by day, digging new and closer parallels by night, and under enemy fire. They witnessed the great allied bombardment that commenced on the ninth, the awe-inspiring cannonade that lit up the sky and shook the ground, cannon and mortar shells all but destroying the town within the British lines. The Baron's men were on duty on October 17, when a single drummer boy and an officer waving a white handkerchief mounted the British parapet to signal Cornwallis's heart-wrenching decision to capitulate.

Steuben's division was still in the trenches two days later, on the nineteenth, the day designated for the surrender ceremony. It was actually Lafayette's turn to man the works, but the Baron stubbornly refused to be relieved. Tradition, he told Lafayette, dictated that those on duty in the trenches when peace overtures were first made should remain at their posts until the surrender was signed. The Baron planted the American flag on one of the captured British redoubts with his own hands. A small satisfaction, perhaps, but satisfaction nonetheless. After he had done so much to make this day possible—both by training the victorious army and by holding Virginia until Lafayette could take his place—Steuben no doubt felt that he deserved the honor.
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In the midst of one of the most dramatic moments in American history, the triumphant climax of the War for Independence, Steuben was at his most relaxed. He wrote very little about his time at Yorktown, but every account that mentions his presence at the siege invariably depicts him as lighthearted and jovial. During a British artillery barrage, Steuben was seen standing up—fully exposed—and chatting with Anthony Wayne as he watched the bombardment. Suddenly a shell arced through the air toward him, its sputtering fuse spiraling a telltale corkscrew of smoke as it came. Steuben instinctively threw himself into the nearest trench, and Wayne fell on top of him. Surprised, the Baron swivelled his head to see what had happened. Discovering his brigadier lying on top of him, he roared in laughter. “I always knew you were a brave general, but I did not know you were so perfect in every point of duty. You cover your general's retreat in the best manner possible.”
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Many in the ranks of the Continentals believed that Yorktown was the last battle of the war; Steuben seems to have sensed that this was the last of his life. It was fitting that he should end his career as a soldier in the way it had begun, almost forty years before, when as a wide-eyed young lad he had stood in his father's commanding presence in the trenches at Breslau.

 

O
NCE THE SIEGE
drew to its glorious conclusion, once the pageantry of Cornwallis's surrender was over and the muskets of the British and Hessian soldiers lay piled in heaps where their teary-eyed owners had thrown them, Steuben came back down to earth. He could no longer forget about his problems, and at the moment the worst of these problems was money. He could no longer hide from his poverty or hide it from others.

His stint in Virginia had wrecked him financially. During his time there, he had drawn more than $220,000 in Continental and state currency to cover his expenses. It sounded like a great deal of money,
but in specie it translated to only about $750 or so. That would not go very far. Steuben's host for much of the time he spent in Chesterfield, one Henry Winfree, charged him nearly £53—roughly $130 in specie—for the use of two cramped rooms and one bed for him and his staff over an eleven-week period. The Baron wore out three horses because of his constant travel and had to purchase replacements out of his own pocket. When North took ill, Steuben had to pawn a gold watch and much of his silverware to pay for his aide's medical care.
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The Baron de Steuben. One of two known (and extant) color portraits of Steuben, this one painted by Ralph Earl in 1786. Note that Steuben wears not only the star of Fidelity (
Bruststern
) on his coat, but the medal of the Order as well, suspended by a ribbon from his neck.
(Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York. Photo credit: Richard Walker)

The social scene at Yorktown turned his private money woes into public embarrassment. For days after the surrender, the officers of all three armies took turns entertaining one another with lavish parties. To Steuben, as a senior commander, this was no matter of choice—it was a social obligation that befell him as a gentleman. But he could not afford to. “We are constantly feasted by the French,” he remarked to North, “without giving them a bit of
Bratwurst
, I can stand it no longer. I will give one grand dinner to our allies, should I eat my soup
with a wooden spoon for ever after.” Ultimately he was able to host a dinner, but only after pawning one of his favorite mounts to his friend Col. Walter Stewart, commander of one of Wayne's Pennsylvania regiments.
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