Battle of Germantown

Background

Washington spent September 1777 failing to keep Sir William Howe out of Philadelphia. After a skirmish at Cooch's Bridge, Howe beat him at Brandywine on 11 September; on 20 September a British attack at Paoli inflicted a stinging defeat on Anthony Wayne's division; and on 26 September Cornwallis led the British vanguard into Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress.

Howe did not keep his army in the city. He left a garrison of about 3,500 in Philadelphia and camped the main body, something over 9,000 men, at Germantown, a village about five miles north of the city on the east side of the Schuylkill, with his headquarters at Stenton. Other troops were away working to open the Delaware, whose forts still blocked British shipping. The camp faced north: light infantry and the 40th Foot as pickets out front at Mount Airy, Knyphausen's wing on the left towards the Schuylkill, and Howe's own right under Grant to the east of Market Square.

Washington saw a divided enemy and a chance to repeat Trenton. His army had lost about a tenth of its men at Brandywine but was intact, and at noon on 3 October, some sixteen miles away, he announced his plan: four columns would march through the night, converge on Germantown at dawn and fall on the camp with the bayonet. The men were to mark their hats with white paper so that they could tell friend from foe in the dark.

The armies

Washington had about 11,000 men: some 8,000 Continentals, 3,000 militia and a few hundred dragoons. Sullivan's column, with Wayne's and Conway's Pennsylvanians and Sullivan's own Marylanders, about 3,000 men, was to come straight down the Germantown road from Chestnut Hill, with Lord Stirling's reserve, the North Carolina and New Jersey brigades of Nash and Maxwell, following. Greene's column, his own Virginian division, Stephen's division and McDougall's Connecticut brigade, about 4,000, was to take the longer Limekiln road and strike the British right-centre. Armstrong's 1,500 Pennsylvania militia were to work down the Schuylkill against the left, and Smallwood's and Forman's 1,500 Maryland and New Jersey militia round the far right into the rear. Henry Knox commanded the artillery.

Howe had about 9,000 British and Hessian troops: two composite light infantry battalions, two battalions of Foot Guards, four brigades of British line regiments under Grant, Grey and Agnew, the Queen's Rangers, two squadrons of light dragoons and Knyphausen's Hessians, with jäger battalions on the left. They were veterans who had beaten Washington at Brandywine and Paoli within the month. The British grenadiers had gone into Philadelphia with Cornwallis; part of them, with Donop's Hessian grenadiers, came up during the battle. Several Continental regiments were short of ammunition, and Washington had overestimated how well his half-trained army could carry out a complex, closely timed attack.

The battle

The night march, 3–4 October. The columns paraded at 6 p.m. and moved off after dusk on roads of different lengths. They were to halt two miles from the British pickets at 2 a.m. and attack together at 5 a.m. Progress was far slower than planned, and Sullivan's and Greene's men were only at Chestnut Hill and the Limekiln road at dawn. A thick fog came down as the sun rose and lay over the field all day, thickened by the smoke of the fighting.

Mount Airy, about 5 a.m. Sullivan's vanguard, led by Captain Allen McLane's detachment, struck the picket at Allen's house on Mount Airy, whose two 6-pounders fired the alarm. The 2nd Light Infantry formed at Mount Pleasant and fought hard before giving way. Howe rode up, told his light infantry he had never seen them retreat and that it was only a scouting party, and withdrew when three American guns opened with grapeshot. Sullivan's and Wayne's men pushed on down the road.

Cliveden. As the light infantry fell back, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Musgrave put six companies of the 40th, about 120 men, into Chief Justice Benjamin Chew's stone house, barricaded the doors and lower windows and posted musketeers upstairs. Sullivan and Timothy Pickering wanted to mask it and press on; Knox argued that leaving a fortified enemy post in the rear was unmilitary, and Washington agreed. Lieutenant-Colonel William Smith, carrying a summons under a flag, was shot and later died. Knox's light guns could not breach the walls. Maxwell's brigade then assaulted for about an hour; John Laurens piled firewood against the door but the fire did not catch, and he was wounded. Some 57 Americans died around the house.

Wayne and Stephen. Ahead, Sullivan's men were running out of ammunition. Wayne, hearing the firing at Cliveden behind him, turned back to help. Greene had arrived about three-quarters of an hour late, driven in the pickets at Luken's Mill and pushed towards Market Square, but Adam Stephen's division swung off its route towards the sound of the guns at the Chew house. In the fog and smoke it struck Wayne's flank; each took the other for the enemy, opened fire and broke to the rear.

The British recover. Howe counter-attacked with fresh regiments. Grey's brigade struck Sullivan's right, McDougall's brigade on Greene's left was driven back by the Queen's Rangers and the Guards, and Brigadier James Agnew was shot dead leading his brigade along the main street. Colonel George Mathews's 9th Virginia broke through the British line and took about 100 prisoners, only to be surrounded by the brigades Cornwallis brought up from Philadelphia and forced to surrender. Grey's men relieved the Chew house after a defence of over two hours.

Withdrawal, about 8.30 a.m. With Sullivan's column falling back and Greene isolated, Washington ordered a general retreat; by Knox's watch the fighting had lasted two hours and forty minutes. Armstrong's militia had only shelled the jägers at the mouth of the Wissahickon before pulling back, and Smallwood's column never got into action. The British pursued for about nine miles, held off by Greene's infantry, Wayne's guns and the dragoons, and the Americans fell back to Pennypacker's Mill.

Aftermath

By the commonly cited returns the Americans lost 152 killed, 521 wounded and about 400 captured; the British 71 killed, 448 wounded and 14 missing, only 24 of them Hessians. Francis Nash lost a leg to a cannonball and died on 8 October; Major John White and Lieutenant-Colonel William Smith also died of wounds. The British lost Brigadier Agnew and Lieutenant-Colonel John Bird killed, and Lieutenant-Colonel William Walcott of the 5th Foot mortally wounded. Colonel Sir George Osborn paid for a 40th regimental medal for the defence of Cliveden, thought to be the first British medal for one action.

Blame fell on the fog, the plan's complexity, the halt at Cliveden and Adam Stephen, whom a court-martial found him guilty of unofficerlike behaviour in the retreat and of frequent drunkenness and dismissed; his division went to Lafayette. Howe did not follow up. His troops took Forts Mifflin and Mercer by mid-November, opening the Delaware; after failing to bring Washington to battle at Whitemarsh he wintered in Philadelphia, his resignation already offered. Washington wintered at Valley Forge.

Germantown was a defeat, but American soldiers blamed bad luck, not bad tactics, and that an army beaten a month earlier could attack at all impressed Europe. Trevelyan judged it of 'great and enduring service to the American cause'; John Fiske wrote that the French court was said to have been influenced almost as much by it as by Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga. How much weight it carried in Paris is still argued over.

Wargaming it

Germantown is a grand-tactical game on a narrow board: about 11,000 Americans in four converging columns against some 9,000 British and Hessians camped along two miles of road. It suits brigade or regimental units with turns of fifteen to twenty minutes, or a double-blind or umpired game, because the battle turned on what nobody could see.

Fog is the heart of it. Rules should limit visibility to a few hundred yards, make friendly units hard to identify, and delay messages between columns. Column arrival should be variable: Greene was late, Armstrong and Smallwood barely appeared, and the American player should never be sure who is where. Ammunition supply matters too; Sullivan's men ran dry at the moment of success.

The key terrain is the Germantown road itself, the stone house at Cliveden, the Market Square, Luken's Mill on the Limekiln road and the mouth of the Wissahickon. Cliveden is a perfect wargame trap: a strongpoint of about 120 men that guns cannot breach and that tempts a cautious commander to commit a brigade. The British player's problem is to recover from surprise, hold the line long enough for Grant, Grey and the reinforcements from Philadelphia to arrive, and then punish isolated columns.

What-ifs: Washington masks the Chew house, as Sullivan and Pickering urged; Greene arrives on time; Stephen keeps to his route; the militia columns press home on both flanks; or the fog lifts at dawn, giving the Americans surprise without the confusion. A smaller scenario can play Cliveden alone.

Maps and pictures