Free The Drillmaster of Valley Forge by Paul Lockhart Page B

defensive posture and did not move until it was too late. The Continentals waded uncertainly into Matson’s Ford—with Lafayette plunging his horse impulsively into the water ahead of his men—while the Oneidas delayed the British cavalry threatening the American rear guard. Even then, escape was not a sure thing. The river was deep and the current strong at Matson’s. The men had to link arms as they pushed into the roiling chest-deep water—some men lost their muskets, but not a man drowned. 8
    Lafayette had made his escape. Clinton and Howe gave up the chase and withdrew to Philadelphia, while the Americans rested for the night on the west bank of the Schuylkill, returning to Valley Forge the next day.
    The “battle” of Barren Hill had been a close scrape and a near disaster. “It was a very Luckey afair on our side, that we Did not Loose our whole Detachment,” noted Henry Dearborn, lieutenant colonel of the 3rd New Hampshire Regiment. 9 Lafayette could count himself very lucky indeed, having lost only six Canadians during the initial clash with the dragoons on the Ridge Road. It could have gone much, much worse. The entire force could have been taken captive. The loss of one fifth of Washington’s army would have wrecked American morale and negated any chance Washington might have had for a successful offensive in the summer. Washington, Steuben, and Greene had done much to boost the spirits of the army over the winter months; Barren Hill could have undone their handiwork in a matter of hours.
    Lafayette credited his “victory” to his own quick thinking. In public, Henry Laurens and George Washington encouraged that notion, praising Lafayette’s consummate skill as a tactician. Privately, Washington expressed some doubts as to Lafayette’s readiness to handle an independent command. Lafayette had been careless to have been ensnared so readily. But it would not do to express such sentiments openly. Reprimanding the marquis would serve no purpose other than to dampen morale, cast Washington’s leadership in a bad light, and embarrass America’s French allies.
    Among Washington’s generals there were accolades, too, but the praise went not so much to Lafayette as to the men themselves. Lafayette’s corps had escaped because the men had kept their cool, responding quickly and smartly to the orders given them. Barren Hill, if it can be called a battle at all, was a soldier’s battle.
    And that was the lesson of Barren Hill, the significance of which was far greater than the anticlimatic encounter’s minimal strategic importance: that American soldiers, properly trained, could maneuver with disciplined precision and order as well as most European armies.
    The Continental Army could not have performed so well, in similar circumstances, before April 1778, before a down-on-his luck Prussian nobleman taught them the basics of modern tactics. That transformation had been Steuben’s doing, and his contemporaries gave him full credit. To the clergyman William Gordon, who had befriended the Baron in Boston, “The orderly manner in which the Americans retreated on this occasion…is to be ascribed to the improvement made in their discipline owing greatly to the Baron De Steuben.” Henry Laurens was just as impressed by the response of the main army at Valley Forge to the alarm on the morning of May 20: “To the honour of Major General Baron Stüben, the whole Army in fifteen minutes were under Arms formed & ready to March.” 10
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    S TEUBEN DID NOT RECORD HIS THOUGHTS on the Barren Hill episode. It was not the kind of operation he would have approved if it had been his place to do so. He knew better than anyone the extent of the army’s battle-readiness, and the perils of sending an expeditionary force under an inexperienced commander deep into enemy territory. In allowing the operation to go forward, Washington had gone