The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (9 page)

Congress was elated with the Baron and with the deal they had struck with him. The delegates hosted a celebratory “entertainment” in his honor, something they had not done for any foreign officer before. He was treated, in the words of Richard Peters, member of the Board of War, “with every mark of distinction…[with] more particular attention…than I had known given to any foreigner.”
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And Steuben, for his part, felt that he was well on his way to a brilliant military career. If his stay in Boston had left him feeling unappreciated, the reaction of Congress acted as a tonic on his ailing spirits. In the few days he tarried in York before setting off for Valley Forge, he penned letters full of gratitude to his mentors in Boston, Sam Adams and John Hancock. This time he wrote in his own inelegant words, as translated by Duponceau. “My journey has been extremely painful,” he confided to Hancock, “but the kind reception I have met with from Congress and G. Gates at my arrival here have made me Soon forget those past incommodities. Now Sir I am an American and an American for life; your Nation has become as dear to me as your Cause already was.”
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Acting on behalf of the Board of War, without waiting for congressional approval, General Gates granted the Baron five hundred dollars to help him get to Valley Forge. President Laurens wrote to tell Washington that “this illustrious Stranger” had fully satisfied the Witherspoon committee and all of Congress, and that he “expects to be of use in planning Encampments &c. and promoting the discipline of the Army.”
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Before he had even laid eyes on the army, the Baron de Steuben had earned the trust and support of nearly every political leader at the heart of the rebellion. Now it was up to him to prove to Washington that he could fulfill that promise.

T
HOMAS
C
ONWAY
was angry. Bitter and defeated, but mostly just angry.

It was late April 1778, and the fiery Irish-born general had sat down at his desk in his Fishkill headquarters to pour out his frustrations in a letter to his old mentor and ally Horatio Gates. Conway's military career in America was drawing to a premature close, and it all seemed so unfair.

After building up an enviable reputation as a high-ranking officer in the French army, Conway had been ushered along to Congress by Silas Deane. Since then he had commanded a brigade in Washington's army with distinction. At Brandywine, his brigade held steadfast when all around it the rest of the army fell apart, and it proved its worth once again at Germantown. His superior, Maj. Gen. John Sullivan, proclaimed it the best-disciplined brigade in the entire army, bar none, and Conway the most knowledgeable officer. His star was in the ascendant; and now, only six months later, his name was vili
fied in Congress and at Washington's headquarters. So where, and how, had everything gone so wrong?

True, he had made a few impolitic remarks about General Washington's shortcomings, but then, so many other prominent men were saying the exact same things. Sam Adams, Benjamin Rush, Thomas Mifflin, Horatio Gates—the list of men who found Washington wanting in ability read like a who's who of American military and political leaders. All had pointed out the incontrovertible fact: that the amateur Washington was losing battles while Gates had captured an entire British army intact. Conway's only mistake was in getting caught—that, and losing his temper when Washington confronted him about it. “We know but the
great Frederick
in Europe and the
great Washington
in this continent,” he had written Washington, vicious sarcasm practically dripping from his quill. “I certainly was never so rash as to pretend to such a prodigious height.”

The very idea that mediocre Washington was his superior, and that there were men who would stifle any attempt to point out his faults, sickened him. Like his friend Charles Lee, he found it inexplicable that Americans “might fancy and call themselves republicans,” but “they always have a god of the day, whose infallibility is not to be disputed: to him all the people must bow down and sing Hosannas.”
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At least there were still some men of character in Congress, men who recognized that Conway would be ideal for the task of instilling discipline in the ramshackle Continental Army. The Board of War had gladly given him the newly created position of inspector general, with the rank of major general, over Washington's shrill objections.

But when Conway went to Valley Forge in December to take up his new duties, the vindictive Washington gave him the cold shoulder, ignoring or shooting down all of his proposals for reform. Conway could not do his job, thanks to Washington's implacable hostility and the undisguised contempt of the general's attack dogs, young sycophants like Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton. Conway was shut out. He had no choice but to leave Valley Forge without having accomplished anything. Everything had gone downhill from there. Washington, his lackeys at headquarters, and his self-righteous defenders in
Congress had silenced Conway's friends. Conway had served his adopted country to the best of his ability and yet now found himself, through no fault of his own, a pariah. Worst of all, he had been replaced—not in title, but in function, and that was the greatest insult.

Less than two months after Conway departed Valley Forge, Washington found a replacement for him. This Baron de Steuben—a man whom everyone saluted as “lieutenant general under Frederick of Prussia,” though for the life of him Conway could not recall ever having heard of such a man in Europe—had been entrusted with the task of training and organizing Washington's army. This Prussian upstart was doing what Conway was supposed to be doing. And all the while, the gullible Americans were bowing and scraping to him as if he were some omniscient military savior sent from Heaven.

Here was Conway, consigned to a remote village on the Hudson, commanding guard details and watching over supplies like a common clerk, while the unknown Prussian got all the credit for what Conway
would
have been doing if Washington had been more professional. “I am told that Baron Steuben is now in possession of the same place to which I was appointed,” Conway complained to Gates.

With that said, Conway asked to be given a better assignment or else be allowed to resign his commission and return to France. Congress accepted his resignation six days later.

 

C
ONWAY'S GRIEVANCES
had a great deal of substance. As he was officially inspector general until his resignation, he
should
have been the
man stomping through the snow, cursing Washington's “model company” as he put them through their paces on the parade ground. It should have been him, but it wasn't, and the usurper Steuben would be the man who would enter Revolutionary legend as the “Drillmaster of Valley Forge.”

If Steuben's main achievement was teaching drill to disspirited American soldiers, then any European officer could have filled his shoes. Lafayette said as much when he insulted Conway, not so subtly, in January 1778: “[I] do not believe…that the departement of maneuvers, administration of [regiments] &c &c is a very difficult thing. Every man who is not stupid and has been six month[s] in a french garrison must be pretty far advanced in that so easy knowledge but certainly no body can deny that kind of merit to Mr de connway in a very high degree.” Nor did the Baron ever claim that he alone was capable of doing what he did at Valley Forge. “I willingly allow that the few things I have hitherto shewn, are (tho Essential) so simple that each Major could perhaps have introduced them,” he admitted to Henry Laurens. “However, notwithstanding the number of Foreign Officers of Merit here long before my arrival I found the business left for me.”
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Steuben became drillmaster by default; it was a job that he neither wanted nor asked for.

Anybody with a rudimentary military background
could
have taught the Continental infantry how to march and maneuver. But to say that anybody could have accomplished what Steuben did at Valley Forge—and beyond—is to misunderstand the Baron's method and purpose. His success owed in equal parts to his expertise, his ability to understand the men he taught, and the force of his personality. He understood the character of American citizen-soldiers better than most American officers did, and he adjusted his teaching methods accordingly. Through a combination of charm, intimidation, and calculated theatrics, he bent the jaded Continentals to his will while earning their respect and affection. And all this he did in the space of less than three months.

 

S
TEUBEN
, with Duponceau and Ponthière in tow, left for Valley Forge on February 19. Their spirits buoyed by the warm reception
at York, they moved fast on fresh horses, covering the ninety miles to camp in five days. Unburdened by the worries he had carried from Boston on his thick shoulders, Steuben was lighthearted, even a little cocky. He was a celebrity now, though he scarcely understood why.

The citizens of Lancaster, one of many German-populated towns on the road to Valley Forge, saluted their countryman Steuben with a grand ball held in his honor. It was the Baron's first carefree evening in a very long time, and he enjoyed it thoroughly, flirting and dancing with the local German women with the energy of a much younger man. William North, a young infantry captain who first set eyes upon his future master at Lancaster that evening, was astonished by the Baron's skill as a dancer, at his “graceful entry and manner in a ballroom.”
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Compared with this, the welcome that Steuben found in Valley Forge was somewhat less cordial.

When later describing his first encounter with George Washington to Chancellor Frank, Steuben typically embroidered the particulars a bit, probably because the actual meeting was such a letdown. As the Baron recounted it, when he and his party drew close to the encampment on February 24, 1778, Washington and his aides rode out to meet them. The American general made quite a show of hospitality, providing his esteemed guests with an immaculately dressed honor guard on horseback to accompany them into camp.
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Washington did indeed ride out to greet Steuben. In reality, though, the commanding general was not very effusive; he did not bow to Steuben as Congress did, he did not treat him as a long-lost brother as Gates had. After a perfunctory exchange of translated pleasantries, the tall Virginian and the stocky German rode side by side along the dirt road that led to the new bridge over the partly frozen Schuylkill and thence into the encampment, their staff members trailing quietly behind them.

Steuben didn't know it, but the general was actually quite pleased to see his new guest, and had been looking forward to this meeting from the day he received the Prussian's gracious letter from Portsmouth, five
weeks earlier. He just didn't let it show, and not only because of his customary dignified reserve. The Baron had, inadvertently, chosen a very bad month to come to Valley Forge, in many ways the worst month in Washington's career to date. The commanding general had much on his mind. Washington's primary concern was the health of the army, which had been suffering from want and neglect for several weeks now. Congress had shown little interest in addressing the supply issues that had sapped the army's strength, but in February the heavens themselves seemed to turn against the troops, too. Heavy snow, followed by rain, followed by severe cold and ice—these made transportation all but impossible, impeding the already minimal flow of food, clothing, and firewood into the camp. The lack of horses made the situation even worse; hundreds of horses would die as a result of lack of fodder. The Continentals were fast becoming, in the words of one sympathetic congressional delegate, “the skeleton of an army,” half-naked and underfed.
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Then there were the political machinations against the commander. With the aid of Henry Laurens, his most powerful ally in Congress, Washington had just recently begun to uncover truly disturbing evidence of the plot to remove him from command. Thomas Conway's enmity was beyond doubt, but now there was written proof that clearly implicated Gates, Mifflin, and Rush. Their complicity was no longer a matter of merely criticizing Washington's leadership. Gates had recently taken up residence in York, as president of the Board of War, where he could work more closely with the true Whigs who favored him. He, Mifflin, and Conway persuaded Congress to dispatch a committee to Valley Forge—the Committee in Camp—to investigate the condition of the army and, it was hoped, to reveal Washington's incompetence and embarrass the general. They had tried to win over the Marquis de Lafayette to their side by offering him command over a harebrained, poorly planned expedition to conquer Canada, something as unlikely to yield positive results now as it had been in 1775. So far, Washington had fought back against his enemies, displaying a degree of political savvy that none of them had
anticipated, but at the day of Steuben's arrival the plot had not yet been dissolved.
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But the general-in-chief also had good reason to be circumspect regarding Steuben. As familiar as he was with what transpired in York, he must have known that the Baron and Horatio Gates had become quite chummy there. Although Steuben had studiously avoided lodging in Gates's spacious house, Gates had pushed his hospitality upon him anyway: in the thirteen days the foreigners had sojourned in York, Gates had Steuben and his party over for dinner no fewer than six times. Steuben, in fact, had even managed to charm Gates's highly unpopular wife, Elizabeth, an unpleasant woman whom even one of Gates's closest friends characterized as “a Medusa who governs with a rod of scorpions.”
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Gates was still a dangerous enemy, the linchpin of the plot against Washington as well as its nominal head. For all Washington knew, the Baron could well be involved somehow in the plot. Therefore, until the general knew Steuben better, it would not make sense to embrace this newcomer too closely.

 

S
TEUBEN DID NOT DWELL
on the cool reception outside Valley Forge, for soon the camp itself came into view. At this distance it was an invigorating sight for an old soldier who had been away from army life too long. Nearly ten thousand soldiers, plus a good number of women and other noncombatants, bustled about a city of nearly one thousand log huts occupying more than two thousand acres of land. Valley Forge was then the third largest city in America, and one of the best defended. The Schuylkill and the Valley Creek secured its northern and western flanks, and earthen fortifications protected the rest, with much of the army's artillery sited upon a central plateau, ready to sweep all of the approaches if necessary.

Valley Forge may have been hell on earth for the enlisted men and the junior officers, as Steuben would soon discover, but it was not all that unpleasant for the army's generals. Certainly it was much cozier than Steuben had been led to believe. In York, Henry Laurens had
warned him that even General Washington “lives himself in a Hut, that is a little temporary Cabin such as are inhabited by the poorest Boors.” The Baron was therefore delighted to find that the general actually maintained his headquarters at the modest stone farmhouse of Isaac Potts, near the confluence of the Schuylkill and Valley Creek, at the northwest corner of the encampment. Better yet, Steuben was immediately ushered into warm and comfortable quarters of his own, a house until recently occupied by the Baron de Kalb.
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