Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America From Colonial Dependence to World Leadership (14 page)
Authors: Conrad Black
BOOK: Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America From Colonial Dependence to World Leadership
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The Congress had received three resolutions from Richard Henry Lee of Virginia on June 7, 1776, proclaiming “that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states” and should dissolve all political association with Great Britain; proposing “articles of confederation and perpetual union”; and recommending that envoys be sent to France and other powers to seek alliance against Britain. These resolutions were adopted on July 2, and the Declaration of Independence, as all the world knows, was signed on July 4, 1776, though at first only by the president (John Hancock) and the secretary (Charles Thomson) of the Congress. Over the next year or so, most of the other delegates signed.
4. WAR, THE FIRST PHASEIt is not the purpose of this book to give a detailed military history of the Revolutionary War. It took Washington a few months to settle on the correct strategy, and it was to some degree forced upon him as the only remaining option, but it became in many respects the first modern guerrilla war. (Then and subsequently, guerrilla wars have only been conducted by powers that have not had the means to wage real wars.) The British could not occupy the entire insurrectionist territory, as Lord Amherst, who had enjoyed such success in the previous war, calculated that it would require 45,000 troops to occupy New York, Philadelphia, and Newport, and a standing army of at least 30,000 additional soldiers to be prepared to meet the main enemy army at any time. (Philadelphia was the second largest British city, though it only had 34,000 people, compared with London’s 750,000, which was the second highest city population in the world after Beijing’s, at about one million.) Amherst’s optimum force levels were completely out of the question, because the worldwide strength of the British army was 50,000, only about 10,000 of them in North America. A substantial army was always necessary to assure continued control of the immense empire in India.
After eight years of war in America, the British army in all areas would only total 145,000, including 5,000 American loyalists and 30,000 hired Germans (as part of the old exchange with Hanover, which had so often availed itself of British forces). Even at the end of the war, there were just 57,000 of these in America. Washington started with 10,000 regulars and 7,000 militiamen at Boston, which attrition wore down to only 3,000 regulars within a year. Throughout the conflict, Washington rarely deployed more than about 8,000 regulars that moved with him. The Continental Army had about 150,000 members, plus around 100,000 militiamen, and wherever Washington and his later southern colonies commander, Nathanael Greene, went, there were ample forces to set aside what they were doing and rally to the revolutionary colors. John Adams and others had advocated an army of militiamen, but Washington, though his militia were relatively trained as events progressed, never lost his respect for trained professionals and his skepticism about part-time soldiers, who enlisted when the enemy was close by, grumbled at conditions and lack of pay, and melted as soon as they weren’t under direct threat to their homes and families.
On August 29, 1776, after a very professional assault by the British, Washington withdrew in good order from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Washington declined to defend Manhattan more than perfunctorily, after tactically blundering badly in advancing his forces across the East River into Brooklyn, where they were roughly handled on land and could have been cut off by water. Both General Howe and Admiral Howe missed their chance out of, it was suggested, relative kinship and hopes for American surrender.
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Washington did demonstrate great organizational ability and opportunism by evacuating back to Manhattan an army of 9,500 and all their guns in the night of August 30, ignominiously ending what was called the Battle of Long Island. Stronger and swifter action here too, by the Howes, could have done grievous early damage to the Revolution.
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Washington did demonstrate great organizational ability and opportunism by evacuating back to Manhattan an army of 9,500 and all their guns in the night of August 30, ignominiously ending what was called the Battle of Long Island. Stronger and swifter action here too, by the Howes, could have done grievous early damage to the Revolution.
Washington then developed a plan that became general for the war, and retreated to Westchester, drawing the British inland and away from their sea-borne communications and supplies, and into territory where they would have to expend troops protecting their lines against constant irregular harassment. Washington retreated first to White Plains and then to New Jersey, and the British did take 2,700 Americans prisoner at Fort Washington, at the far northern end of Manhattan on November 16. There were again great celebrations in Britain, as in Pitt’s time, but it was an illusion; Washington was conducting a Fabian campaign, drawing and pulling British forces fruitlessly about the interior. In New Jersey, he was chiefly concerned to protect Philadelphia. Washington conducted an almost scorched-earth retreat to Trenton, New Jersey, on the Delaware River, and on into Pennsylvania on December 8, 1776, blowing up bridges and leaving the path of the warily advancing British strewn with obstacles and enfiladed by snipers.
At this point, one of Washington’s greatest problems was the short and precise enlistments of most of his men. They could pack up and leave after six months, no matter how intensely at grips with the enemy they might be. Washington had pulled together a force of 6,000 on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware, and just as he seemed in inexorable retreat and the Continental Congress quit Philadelphia for Baltimore, Washington, in the boldest and most original move of his military career to date, recrossed the Delaware, and on Christmas Day and December 26 attacked the British and their German allies at three points, exploiting a considerable post-Christmas hangover of the Germans. As the eminent British historian George Otto Trevelyan wrote: “It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater or more lasting results upon the history of the world.”
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Washington had sent his skeptical and scheming second-in-command, General Horatio Gates, to Philadelphia, where he agitated to replace Washington, who gambled all the meager forces he had on this daring counter-attack, which moved on to the capture of Princeton and the advance to Morristown, about 10 miles west of the Hudson and Manhattan. It was a masterstroke and is the basis of much of Washington’s claim to being a first-rate commander, albeit with small forces. This was where the armies sat, Washington in Morristown and Howe in New York, until the spring of 1777. With expiring enlistments and the months of hard slogging and fighting, Washington’s forces had dwindled down to about 3,000, against nearly 10 times as many under Howe. But Howe did not know how feeble his opponent’s numbers were, only that if he attacked, the Americans would draw the British farther into America. Washington was able, as he put it, to “keep up an appearance”
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and expressed “great surprise that we are still in a calm ... much beyond my expectation” at the end of March. Howe made a feint with 18,000 men in late June, but Washington outmaneuvered him and the British withdrew to Staten Island. Howe embarked 15,000 men by sea from New York in July and generated great mystery about his destination, as Washington marched his forces to and fro trying to anticipate a landing. This finally occurred in late August near Philadelphia. The Battle of Brandywine ensued, in which the British forced an American withdrawal and inflicted more casualties than they sustained, but the Americans fought well and tenaciously and remained between Howe and Philadelphia, the capital through which Washington had marched his crisply turned-out forces in a morale-boosting parade on the way to the battlefield.
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and expressed “great surprise that we are still in a calm ... much beyond my expectation” at the end of March. Howe made a feint with 18,000 men in late June, but Washington outmaneuvered him and the British withdrew to Staten Island. Howe embarked 15,000 men by sea from New York in July and generated great mystery about his destination, as Washington marched his forces to and fro trying to anticipate a landing. This finally occurred in late August near Philadelphia. The Battle of Brandywine ensued, in which the British forced an American withdrawal and inflicted more casualties than they sustained, but the Americans fought well and tenaciously and remained between Howe and Philadelphia, the capital through which Washington had marched his crisply turned-out forces in a morale-boosting parade on the way to the battlefield.
Washington did not have the forces to prevent a direct British march on Philadelphia from two directions by all Howe’s forces, and the British captured the city with 18,000 men, more than one for every two inhabitants, on September 26, 1777, without opposition. The Congress had fled again and there remained many loyalists to welcome the British, but maintaining the sea-land supply lines to the occupying forces consumed a large number of troops to no practical military end. It should be remembered that while these operations were under way, almost all the rest of the Thirteen Colonies apart from New York were functionally independent and accustoming themselves to self-government. The British could muscle their way into the large towns but that did not return to them the forced, much less the voluntary, fealty of over two million insurrectionist Americans. On October 4, Washington provided a plan too intricate for his under-trained troops at Germantown just outside Philadelphia. He almost prevailed but had to retire, in good order, having taken about 1,000 casualties out of 11,000 mainly militiamen, to 500 British casualties in a force of 9,000 regulars.
British general John Burgoyne, who had been unwisely given the command in place of the able Carleton, had been approaching New York from Canada, along Lake Champlain, by Fort Ticonderoga (formerly Montcalm’s Carillon), and in actions reminiscent of those in the same terrain less than 20 years before. The British plan was to cut New England and the western country off completely from the colonies south of New York, and take Philadelphia as a first step in pushing Washington into Virginia and gradually driving organized rebel military forces south and bottling them up and destroying them in the Carolinas. When Burgoyne, who had been repulsed at Ticonderoga in 1776, descended the well-trodden route to New York in 1777, it was evacuated, but at the end of August 1777, some of his units suffered a severe defeat and nearly a thousand casualties in a confused action around Bennington, New York. The American commander was General Philip Schuyler, who was sacked for his trouble and replaced by the politically ambitious General Horatio Gates.
Gates had 7,000 men to block Burgoyne from taking Albany, and his force was increased by nearly 10,000 militiamen. If Burgoyne could reach Albany, it was expected that Howe could advance toward him both by land and on the Hudson and cut the colonies in two. There was an indecisive skirmish at Saratoga on September 19, 1777, and a clear American victory there on October 7, followed by the capture of Burgoyne and the surrender and deportation of his army of over 4,000 after a well-executed pursuit by Gates. This led to what was known as the Conway Cabal, in which there was an attempt to infiltrate the Congress and recruit Lafayette, a French nobleman leading some volunteers from among his Anglophobic countrymen, to assist in displacing Washington in Gates’s favor. Washington, who was sensitive to the political currents, rallied Lafayette and squashed the plot. Gates was chastened and the other conspirators were punished. As the historian Robert Harvey remarked, Washington “had not yet proved himself to be a great general, but he was a masterly political operator.”
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5. FRANCE JOINS THE WAR36
Benjamin Franklin had arrived in Paris on December 4, 1776, to seek an alliance. For a time, he was saddled with the less devious and less diplomatic John Adams, who tended to engage his hosts on what he presented as their moral duty to assist the Americans. Franklin, one of the world’s most technically sophisticated printers, established a small printing press in his house and began churning out effective, though outrageously inaccurate, pamphlets, alleging British atrocities and making wild claims of the success of American arms. Franklin’s puckish sense of humor, as well as his subtle techniques of insinuation and polemical advocacy, were all well-served. Louis XVI was smarting from the cataract of defeats of the Seven Years’ War. Franklin dressed very plainly in black and wore a fur hat, and played to perfection the role of the frontier philosopher and the Enlightenment scientist. Louis’s foreign minister, the Count of Vergennes, had already persuaded the king to give a million
livres
secretly to the Americans, and despite the warnings of the king’s finance minister, the astute A.R.J. Turgot, that the country could not afford to invest much in this effort, the king was lured both by vengeance and by the spirited performance of the Americans. The king and his advisers were even more impressed by Washington fighting it out so effectively at Germantown than they were by the American victories at Saratoga.
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livres
secretly to the Americans, and despite the warnings of the king’s finance minister, the astute A.R.J. Turgot, that the country could not afford to invest much in this effort, the king was lured both by vengeance and by the spirited performance of the Americans. The king and his advisers were even more impressed by Washington fighting it out so effectively at Germantown than they were by the American victories at Saratoga.
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Washington marched his now ragged army of 10,000 to Valley Forge, to monitor and, if possible, retake Philadelphia, and went into uncomfortable winter quarters there. He lost a quarter of his men to frostbite and other problems of exposure and malnutrition, but maintained morale; training was improved under the German adventurer Baron Friedrich von Steuben, Washington famously shared the rations of his men, and in the spring of 1778 new volunteers replenished his famished ranks.
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The war had now been going on for over three years and the British were not close to subduing the rebellion, though they had occupied Philadelphia and New York. And on March 13, 1778, the French government announced a Treaty of Amity with America, a declaration of war on Britain in fact. Franklin’s achievement in bringing France, despite its precarious finances, into the war and in support of republicanism and secessionism was an astonishing one. No parliament had sat in France since the young Richelieu had dismissed the Estates General in 1614 with such finality that it did not dare to reconvene until the start of the French Revolution 175 years later, to which revolution the exertions of the American Revolutionary War doubtless contributed. Yet France, instead of seeking a payoff from Britain to remain neutral, was wheedled by Franklin into assisting a movement that in its liberalism would infect much thinking in France, to the peril of the French monarchy. The entire history of diplomacy yields few triumphs so great and important to the world as this coup wrought by Franklin at the age of 72.
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The war had now been going on for over three years and the British were not close to subduing the rebellion, though they had occupied Philadelphia and New York. And on March 13, 1778, the French government announced a Treaty of Amity with America, a declaration of war on Britain in fact. Franklin’s achievement in bringing France, despite its precarious finances, into the war and in support of republicanism and secessionism was an astonishing one. No parliament had sat in France since the young Richelieu had dismissed the Estates General in 1614 with such finality that it did not dare to reconvene until the start of the French Revolution 175 years later, to which revolution the exertions of the American Revolutionary War doubtless contributed. Yet France, instead of seeking a payoff from Britain to remain neutral, was wheedled by Franklin into assisting a movement that in its liberalism would infect much thinking in France, to the peril of the French monarchy. The entire history of diplomacy yields few triumphs so great and important to the world as this coup wrought by Franklin at the age of 72.
On the news from Paris and Saratoga, British policy was reappraised. As would frequently occur in subsequent distant wars against rebellious populations, the commander requested more forces and was removed. Howe, so successful in the Seven Years’ War, asked for 10,000 more men.
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Howe was replaced by General Henry Clinton, and Clinton was ordered to abandon Philadelphia and Rhode Island and to defend the West Indies, where French aggression was feared and which was still more highly prized not only than Canada, as was shown 15 years before, but even than what was left of the British interest in the Thirteen Colonies. Clinton redeployed some of his forces to Florida accordingly (a strategically insane disposition, since there were no enemy forces there and the territory was worthless militarily). Washington gave an army command to Lafayette, largely to encourage tangible French solidarity, and he shared in a skillful harassment of the Howe-Clinton army as it moved from Philadelphia toward New York.
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Howe was replaced by General Henry Clinton, and Clinton was ordered to abandon Philadelphia and Rhode Island and to defend the West Indies, where French aggression was feared and which was still more highly prized not only than Canada, as was shown 15 years before, but even than what was left of the British interest in the Thirteen Colonies. Clinton redeployed some of his forces to Florida accordingly (a strategically insane disposition, since there were no enemy forces there and the territory was worthless militarily). Washington gave an army command to Lafayette, largely to encourage tangible French solidarity, and he shared in a skillful harassment of the Howe-Clinton army as it moved from Philadelphia toward New York.
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