Battle of Brandywine
Howe outflanked Washington at Brandywine Creek in September 1777 and took Philadelphia a fortnight later. The British campaign that year had gone to sea rather than up the Hudson: some 15,000 men embarked at New York, spent six weeks sailing round to the head of Chesapeake Bay, and landed fifty miles south-west of the American capital. Washington placed his army of some 14,000 behind the Brandywine, covering the fords on the direct road, with the main position at Chadds Ford. Howe repeated the manoeuvre that had worked on Long Island. Knyphausen demonstrated at the ford with about a third of the army and heavy artillery while Cornwallis took the rest on a march of some twenty-five kilometres north, crossed the two branches of the creek above the American right, and came down behind it. Washington received contradictory reports through the morning — one of them cancelling the warning of the flanking march — and did not move until the column was already in position. Sullivan's divisions redeployed under fire and held long enough on Birmingham Hill for the army to withdraw rather than be destroyed. Lafayette was wounded in the leg in his first action. Around 1,300 Americans and 600 British were casualties. Congress left Philadelphia, the British occupied it on 26 September, and Washington's army went into winter quarters at Valley Forge — while Burgoyne, unsupported, surrendered at Saratoga in October. Howe's campaign is the standard illustration of a general winning battles while losing a war. He took the enemy capital and found that it was not a capital in any sense that mattered, and the army he had not supported in the north surrendered while he was doing it.
- Year: 1777 CE
- Category: Military
