Depiction of the Battle of Bunker Hill by Percy Moran, 1909
Howe, though, had lost his nerve when he saw the fresh line
of defences on Brooklyn Heights. ‘I would not risk the loss that might be
sustained by the assault,’ he said later. Clinton and many other officers felt
that there would have been little risk in forcing it while the Americans were
in such confusion. The Battle of Long Island cost Washington more than 1,000
casualties and prisoners, including three generals. Ministers in London were
delighted when they heard about the victory (British casualties were fewer than
400), and knighted Howe for his feat, but officers in the army itself were
flabbergasted that a far greater opportunity had been lost.
During 28 and 29 August, Washington made good use of the
breather given him by Howe. A fleet of small boats evacuated his army from
Brooklyn to Manhattan. He thereby saved himself and more than 8,000 troops to
fight another day.
Although Washington had eluded capture, there was still
everything to play for. Much of the enemy army was now on Manhattan, which was
connected to the mainland by just two bridges, close together, on the island’s
northern tip. A skilful use of British naval and military power might trap
them. Yet, from 29 August to 15 September, the British Army did not move. There
were some valid reasons (the difficulty of navigating the waters around
Manhattan due to tidal flows, batteries and sandbanks) and some less impressive
ones (bringing up the creature comforts for the soldiers in camp), but
Washington gained another breather.
When Howe finally moved on 15 September, he landed not on
the mainland, where Clinton had suggested that he could cut off most of
Washington’s army on Manhattan, but on that island itself, just above New York
at Kip’s Bay. Operations, once again, developed at a leisurely pace and the
Americans gained another lease of life. Howe waited nearly another month, until
12 October, before launching an amphibious operation, which marked the third
failure to trap the main body of Washington’s army, this time on the northern
part of Manhattan.
The fourth missed chance took place one week later, when
Washington stood and faced Howe at White Plains, north of New York. The
Americans had prepared elaborate fortifications, but Howe cleverly spotted that
a hill to the west of them would allow the whole position to be turned. This
was done by a division of Hessian (i.e. German mercenary) and British troops,
but Howe did not then exploit his success to hit the main part of the enemy
position.
Reviewing Howe’s actions from the Battle of Long Island
onwards, one modern historian comments: ‘to have destroyed or captured this
substantial force personally led by Washington would have dealt the Americans
an irreparable blow. Had such a stroke been followed by a prompt landing on the
northern part of Manhattan, the war would no doubt have been over.’ It may be
over-egging it to say that Howe could have won the war, but, as subsequent
events would show, the months following the landings of 22 August on Long
Island certainly represented the best — and perhaps the only — chance that
Britain had to break the back of the American rebellion by force. Howe was too
dilatory and unimaginative to seize it.
There is no unfair use of hindsight here. In the late summer
of 1776 friend and foe alike were baffled by Howe’s failure. The American Major
General Israel Putnam wrote after Long Island, ‘General Howe is either our
friend or no general . . . had he instantly followed up his victory, the
consequence to the cause of liberty must have been dreadful.’ Some have tried
to build historical castles on suggestions like Putnam’s — often made
rhetorically — that Howe’s insipid campaign resulted from his own desire for
reconciliation between Whig and Tory brothers in America. Although his personal
beliefs may have given rise to some conflict, this theory holds little water,
for it is apparent that Howe saw the humiliation of Washington’s army in battle
as an aid rather than an obstacle to that goal. Rather, the failures of his
campaign can be seen as the product of excessive caution, and a complete
inability to grasp the strategic opportunities that opened with the victory of
Long Island.
Washington was criticised by many of his countrymen for
mistakes of his own during this period, with one arguing that he showed ‘little
genius and not much natural aptitude for war’. The American C-in-C only really
paid for one of his misjudgements, though: leaving behind a large garrison in
Manhattan at Fort Washington appropriately enough. When Howe captured it in
November 1776, he secured a consolation prize of 2,800 American prisoners and
146 cannon.
Many advantages accrued from holding New York: it cut the
rebels from their principal port; proved a rallying point for loyalist
Americans (of whom there were plenty in the city and its environs); could form
a base for operations up the Hudson; and gave the Royal Navy a vital anchorage.
There were considerable costs, too, though. Holding the city soaked up
thousands of troops from an army that could ill afford such detachments. The
outposts needed to secure waterways leading to the city attracted constant
enemy raids.
In garrisoning these outposts, British commanders saw the
limitations of their troops. The army found recruitment very tough indeed
during the late 1770s. In England and Ireland these were times of relative
prosperity, so few sturdy farm lads were interested in taking the King’s
shilling. Recruiting parties were often reduced to throwing criminals and
invalids into uniform. (It was better in Scotland, where the Highland gentry,
keen to atone for the 1745 rebellion, curried favour by raising new regiments.)
Manpower problems sapped the usual quality of the British infantry and had many
implications for Howe. He feared costly battles. There were constant courts
martial of deserters, thieves and rapists, leading to much friction with locals
and presenting a gift to rebel propagandists. Finally, the problems filling the
ranks led the government to hire thousands of foreign troops, mainly from
Hesse-Kassel.
The extended dispositions occupied by Howe in New Jersey in
late 1776 provided Washington with a chance to end the year’s campaign with a
daring coup. The rebel general’s attack on a Hessian brigade encamped near
Trenton on 26 December represented a last desperate throw of the dice, a chance
to win back the faith of his people at the end of a miserable year.
Washington’s regulars, his Continentals, advanced in driving snow, catching the
Germans unawares. In the confusion that followed, 918 Hessians were taken
prisoner. Fewer escaped, shamefaced, to tell the tale of their surprise by the
enemy.
Howe cannot be blamed for the poor precautions taken by the
German commander. He can be held responsible for taking up such long lines in
New Jersey in the first place, though, and for ordering his troops into winter
quarters (i.e. to stop fighting) without realising that his enemy could not be
relied upon to play by such gentlemanly European conventions. ‘Due to this
affair at Trenton,’ wrote Hessian Captain Johann Ewald in his journal, ‘such a
fright came over the army that if Washington had used this opportunity we would
have flown to our ships and let him have all of America. Since we had thus far
underestimated our enemy, from this unhappy day onward we saw everything
through a magnifying glass.’ Ewald even went as far as to claim that the
psychological reversal of fortunes caused by the capture of substantial numbers
of George III’s troops ‘surely caused the utter loss of the thirteen splendid
provinces of the Crown of England’.
Of course, those around the King or the Prime Minister did
not see things in quite such bleak or portentous terms. But at the end of 1776
the conflict had in fact reached a tipping point. The British had taken their
best shot — for reasons we will see, they were never again able to concentrate
similar numbers of troops against the main enemy army. The American citizenry
had seen what the Ministry could do, and it had failed to break Washington’s
army. Far from it, even in the midst of winter his troops had rebounded from a
series of defeats and humbled the professional soldiers. It would not be until
the campaign of 1777, though, that affairs assumed a decisive character.
Fort Ticonderoga was a strategic prize enveloped in a thick
blanket of wilderness. When this post on Lake Champlain — sitting astride the
key route to and from Canada — changed hands, people wanted to know about it.
But Ticonderoga’s position, so far from Europe’s corridors of power, meant that
knowledge took an agonisingly long time to arrive in London.
On 7 July 1777, Lieutenant General John Burgoyne became
master of the fortress, having placed guns on a hill commanding the works, thus
forcing the Americans to abandon it. The ease of Burgoyne’s coup finally dented
Ticonderoga’s reputation as the ‘Gibraltar of America’. It marked a hopeful
opening to Burgoyne’s campaign to advance deep into the colony of New York with
a force of 10,000 British and German troops. For the victorious general, the
capture of Ticonderoga bolstered his ambition to push down to Albany, driving
rebels to one side and the other, opening most of the 300-mile route between
Montreal and New York City.
The events on the banks of Lake Champlain convinced Burgoyne
that he could advance away from the water, and his line of supply, into the
interior of New York, while all the time thousands of rebel militia gathered
from across New England to oppose him. The third British campaign had thus
begun in earnest, and was entering a dangerous phase. A serious attempt was
being made to implement London’s strategy of cleaving apart the rebellious
Thirteen States.
Howe simply couldn’t decide what part to play in this. Between
November 1776 and April 1777 he had sent three completely different plans of
campaign to London. Finally, he had resolved to take the rebel capital,
Philadelphia, while sending a smaller force up the Hudson valley from New York
in order to lend Burgoyne a hand. But this meant that there would be several
British armies in being simultaneously: Burgoyne’s coming south from Canada; a
garrison of 3,000 in Rhode Island, where Howe had sent them to secure a naval
anchorage late in 1776; the garrison of several thousand needed to hold New
York; the force Howe intended to send up the Hudson from that city; and the
main expeditionary force, heading for Philadelphia, under Howe’s own hand. This
was such an obvious violation of the military principle of concentrating force
— exposing each of these five armies to defeat in detail by the Americans —
that many officers simply could not believe their C-in-C was about to do it.
On 5 July, Henry Clinton returned to New York from London.
There he had discussed strategy for the year ahead with Lord Germain, other
ministers and the King himself. He was fully aware of Burgoyne’s expedition and
believed that it made obvious strategic sense for the main army, under Howe, to
move towards Burgoyne, crushing any Americans who offered battle in between. At
the first of several difficult meetings in headquarters, Clinton tried to
persuade Howe to abandon any idea of going to Philadelphia, or at least to
postpone such a move. Instead, Clinton, in his own words, ‘with all deference suggested
the many great and superior advantages . . . from a cooperation of his whole
force with General Burgoyne on the River Hudson’.
That same week, Washington, collating snippets of
intelligence from spies about the embarkation of various regiments on transport
vessels in New York, reasoned, like Clinton, ‘there is the strongest reason to
conclude that General Howe will push up the river immediately to cooperate with
the army from Canada’. Both the rebel C-in-C and the British second-in-command
understood that a two-pronged movement of this kind would bring together 25,000
redcoats and most likely crush the American Army.
Clinton thought he had convinced Howe, but on 18 July the
latter informed him that he would shortly set sail with the substantial fleet
(now carrying 15,000 troops) that had gathered in New York harbour and that
Clinton should assume command of the New York garrison. Three days later, a
messenger arrived and told them that Burgoyne had taken Ticonderoga. Both
Clinton and Howe therefore knew the thrust from the north had begun in earnest.
Howe’s fleet finally sailed on 23 July, on a course for the
south. ‘I could not to the very last bring myself to believe it,’ Clinton wrote
later. ‘I was persuaded he intended to deceive us all.’ Finally, the scales
fell from Clinton’s eyes: going south was no clever ruse prior to turning about
and sailing the fleet up the Hudson; Howe was taking his army in the opposite
direction to Burgoyne.
The distance overland from New York to Philadelphia is
roughly 100 miles. A man on a good horse could cover it in a few days. But
Howe’s sea journey, complicated by contrary winds and his own indecision, took
a whole month. Cooped up on board their smelly transports, short of rations and
information, many of Howe’s officers worried about wider events. One Hessian
colonel wrote home to Germany:
If I dared to tell you
what I think of our present situation. I should say outright that our
expedition into these parts of the south is not to my liking. For if, instead
of coming here, we had set sail for New England and joined Burgoyne’s army, we
should without fail have forced that province and its capitol to their duty
before the end of the month . . . we should have had one of the most glorious
campaigns, and perhaps peace before the end of it.
This letter was addressed to the Prince of Prussia, and it
is important to note how closely the American events were being watched in
every European capital. When news of Ticonderoga’s fall finally reached Paris,
it stymied the vocal war party there. The French, anxious to gain revenge for
the loss of Canada eighteen years earlier, had been supplying the Americans
with muskets, cannon and powder. Many ‘volunteers’, professional officers, had
also crossed the Atlantic in order to help Washington’s army. Even so, there
was a reluctance to wage all-out war against Britain. They had no intention of
doing it — with all the risks that war entailed — if Howe’s forces were about
to crush the rebellion. Everything depended upon the 1777 campaign. In Spain
and the Netherlands, too, those who felt the time was ripe to relieve George
III of some of his colonial possessions awaited news.
It was early September before Clinton, in New York, received
further word of Burgoyne’s progress. Messages had to be smuggled through the
forests, and the information, in a letter dated 6 August, was already a month
old. Burgoyne had begun the most difficult part of his advance — the inland
stage — south of Lake Champlain, through the forested back country, towards the
Hudson. This passage of just a few dozen miles had not been easy for Amherst in
1759 and was proving even less so for Burgoyne. Rebel militias were swarming
about the British column and had started a process of blocking and flooding the
route south. Even so, Burgoyne’s message did not yet show signs of alarm.
Clinton replied to him on 11 September that he hoped by the 21st to set off
from New York up the Hudson with the long-promised diversionary push towards
Albany.
On the same day Clinton wrote, Howe succeeded in his aim of
getting Washington to stand a general action in defence of Philadelphia. The
American C-in-C had taken up a defensive position along Brandywine Creek, a
river about twenty-five miles south-west of Philadelphia. Howe later justified his
strategy for 1777 by saying that striking at the rebel capital would force
Washington to fight, and that ‘the defeat of the rebel regular army is the
surest road to peace’.
Washington’s dispositions that morning exploited the
defensive value of the creek, with cannon and infantry ready to attack any
British who crossed one of several fords. The weakness of his position was
that, even though he extended his divisions over several miles, there were
fords on his flanks that he could not cover. The rolling ground, with thick
copses between the fields, made it very difficult for either C-in-C to have a
good idea what was going on outside his immediate environ.
Howe exploited this by using 8,000 troops (just over half
his men) to march in the early hours around Washington’s right flank.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the army moved up to the front of the American
positions, beginning a heavy bombardment to convince them that the main British
assault would come in the obvious place. Howe’s manoeuvre — very similar to
that of Long Island — succeeded admirably, and when his larger division
attacked Washington’s flank that afternoon, the American army was thrown into
confusion. Late in the day, Washington struggled to stabilise his right, while
disengaging his army in order to save it. In the end, he succeeded, as once
again Howe’s failure to pursue his fleeing enemy denied him the full benefits
of victory.
The British C-in-C lacked vigour and aggression. One
civilian who saw him on the morning of the battle recorded: ‘He was a large,
portly man, of coarse features. He appeared to have lost his teeth, as his
mouth had fallen in.’ This was what had become of the dashing light infantry
officer who had stormed the Plains of Abraham. Howe at Brandywine was
forty-eight years old. He was worn out and struggled to find a way to win. Some
of those officers who were most frustrated by these failings spread rumours
that his lethargy resulted from too much drinking and too much time in bed with
his mistress.
When the British Army entered Philadelphia just over a
fortnight later, Howe gained his objective for the 1777 campaign. It had taken
him two months to get there from New York. Although his move on Philadelphia
had produced the hoped-for general action, it had not been decisive. Congress
had evacuated the city, and Washington was to make his camp near by. But what
of Clinton and Burgoyne’s progress?
Between the Battle of Brandywine and Howe’s capture of
Philadelphia, Burgoyne had been fought to a standstill on the banks of the
Hudson near Saratoga. He was still well short of Albany, with the New England
militias closing in on all sides. Burgoyne should have tried to fight his way
out of the trap and back towards Lake Champlain, but instead gambled that he
might still be able to get through to Albany, and sent a message to New York to
that effect. Clinton had finally set out from New York on 3 October and
managed, with the small force he could scrape together without exposing New
York to capture, to take some key rebel fortresses guarding the Hudson River.
By 16 October, his force was just forty-five miles south of Albany, but on that
very day Burgoyne, beaten, surrounded and outnumbered, surrendered. Nearly
6,000 troops under his command went into captivity.
J.F.C. Fuller, an officer whom we shall meet again later,
estimated the Saratoga capitulation as one of the decisive battles of world
history. That might seem odd given the small numbers of troops involved and the
remote scene of the action, but news of Burgoyne’s surrender triggered the
French declaration of war, which was followed by similar announcements by Spain
and the Netherlands. In Britain, the humiliating defeat destroyed the
Parliamentary majority in favour of a vigorous prosecution of the war. After
1777, it became impossible to fund large-scale reinforcements to America. Such
was the sympathy among Whigs for the American struggle for liberty and their
schadenfreude at George III’s problems that fashionable ladies attended London
parties dressed as Washington’s soldiers.
Between 1778 and 1783, Britain thus faced a worldwide
onslaught against its interests from the combined forces of America, France,
Spain and the Netherlands. Despite shipping thousands of troops from America to
the Caribbean (further weakening the Crown’s war against the rebels), Britain
lost most of its rich island possessions there to the French, as well as
Florida and Minorca to the Spanish. Across the globe, the French were able to
assemble powerful fleets and landing forces, which also succeeded in throwing
Britain out of Senegal and southern India. It has been described as the loss of
the first British Empire.
Eventually, caught out by the shuttling of French squadrons
between the Caribbean and the eastern seaboard, this wider conflict also cost
George III the Thirteen Colonies of America: a surrounded British force in
Virginia was cut off from rescue by the Royal Navy and surrendered at Yorktown
in 1781.
On the night of 18 May 1778, Philadelphia witnessed one of
the strangest spectacles in its history. Processions of British officers
dressed as knights, and young women as medieval damsels, celebrated a party. In
a city gripped by war, there were tables groaning with food, fireworks and mock
tournaments, and poetry was declaimed in the night air. This themed event,
called the Mischianza, was staged as a ceremonial send-off for William Howe
following his resignation. In accounts published at the time, it was described
as an affectionate gesture from the officers who had served under him.
Leaving aside the fact that the British Army has always
jumped at the chance to throw a party, it is interesting and only fair to point
out that Howe was popular among many of his people right until the end of his
command. He was correct and affable with the regimental officers he met on the
march, and the soldiers appreciated his concern for their comfort.
Even as he sailed home, though, there was plenty of
whispering that Howe was a failure. On his return he demanded a board of
inquiry which he hoped would vindicate him. There were hearings for many
months, but in the end there was no official report or ‘closure’ to the whole
affair. The more people looked into his command, the more self-serving and
feeble his excuses sounded: it was too cold to do anything in the winters of 1775/6
and 1776/7; it was too hot to do anything for much of the summer of 1777; the
troops were too tired to finish off Washington after the Battle of Long Island;
and so on.
Among those who had worked with the general most closely,
there was plenty of criticism. One staff officer wrote probably the fairest
assessment during the 1777 campaign: ‘Brave he certainly is and would make a
very good executive officer under another’s command, but he is not by any means
equal to C-in-C.’ The leader of a loyalist regiment heavily engaged at
Brandywine was tougher: ‘His manners were sullen and ungracious, with a dislike
to business, and a propensity to pleasure. His staff officers were in general
below mediocrity.’ The most bitter but acute appraisal was made by Henry
Clinton. In life the two men managed to maintain cordial relations, even though
Clinton made clear that he held Howe responsible for missing many opportunities
in 1776 and for a misguided strategy in 1777. However, a note later discovered
in Clinton’s papers read: ‘Had [Howe] gone to the Devil before he was sent to
America, it had been the saving of infamy to himself and indelible dishonour to
his country.’
History, for some reason, treated Howe very leniently for at
least 150 years. Much of what was written blamed others, notably Lord Germain.
The American Secretary was regarded with particular distaste by many of the
generals, because he had previously served in the army and been disgraced for
cowardice at the Battle of Minden in 1759. But Piers Mackesy, in The War for
America 1775-1783 (1964) managed a pretty credible vindication of Germain,
based on the most comprehensive examination by any scholar of the state papers
relating to the strategic direction of this war. Mackesy showed Germain to have
been an effective mobiliser of the vast armies and fleets required for global
war, whereas Howe and Clinton (succeeding as C-in-C) were described as ‘members
of a stable political community who had arrived and could not be shaken from
their perch . . . their fertility of invention was spent in devising reasons
for inaction’.
Too many of Britain’s generals had turned into the same kind
of highly paid ‘play it safe’ bureaucrats that officered the French Army of
Marlborough’s time. The divisions over America among Britain’s landowning
oligarchs had undermined the ability of their institutions — Parliament and the
army — to win the war.
Howe was without doubt the person responsible for failing to
crush Washington in 1776, when Britain had its best chance. The American victory
at Trenton convinced the rebels that it was worth fighting on. Howe then failed
to formulate a coherent strategy for the 1777 campaign, sending instead
confusing alternatives over a period of months to London. Germain was guilty of
errors, no doubt, but had the Commander-in-Chief in America been capable of
thinking and acting like someone worthy of this lofty title, Germain’s
influence on the strategy pursued during that pivotal year would have been kept
to a minimum.
As for the disaster of Saratoga, clearly Burgoyne should
have doubled back when it became clear how serious his predicament was. He
alone got himself into the mess. Equally, though, Howe was the only person who
could have got him out of it. Instead, the C-in-C ignored advice and took himself
off to Philadelphia, having his number two with insufficient force to make a
meaningful push on Albany. Clinton’s critique is hard to dispute: had Howe
instead moved with his main army up the Hudson in July 1777, there would have
been time enough to open the way to Albany before moving on to Philadelphia
later. Such a plan would probably have saved Burgoyne, kept British forces more
concentrated, and still forced Washington to give battle either in upstate New
York or, eventually, near Philadelphia.
It is arguable whether Britain ever could have won a
complete military victory in America. But I do think that Howe’s mismanagement
of the command allowed the rebellion to grow and emboldened Britain’s enemies
to wage a global war that was disastrous to its interests. Had the general
‘gone to the Devil’ before he ever took up the American command, there can be
little doubt that the map of the world could look quite different today. Howe
was not a completely useless general, since he had a very sound tactical touch
(for example, at Long Island and Brandywine). He was, however, somebody without
the faintest idea of strategy.
Victory could have been defined in 1776-7 as breaking
Washington’s Continental Army, capturing or killing him and scattering
resistance into guerrilla bands. Had this been done, France would not have
intervened. The historical alternatives then become mind-boggling: the global
French campaigns of 1778-83 bankrupted the country and led directly to the
Revolution. A successful British general in America during 1775-7 might thus
have forestalled those tumultuous events and thereby the consequent rise of
Napoleon.
There can be no doubt, though, that the emergence of a
militant revolutionary state in France, something Howe witnessed in his old age,
was to present Britain with a threat of an altogether higher order. In the
1770s and 1780s it had been a fight for empire. In the 1790s and 1800s it was
to be a struggle for national survival.
