The rebels on the plowed hill caught sight of Sullivan’s division marching–so they hoped–to reinforce them at the same time the British appeared from the light woods covering Osborne’s Hill. In awed silence, the Continentals watched British guns unlimber and commence a covering barrage over the heads of the Redcoats starting up the hill. Then, when the British line drew closer, the Continentals received the order they had been waiting for: Fire!

There was a most infernal fire of cannon and musquetry, said one of the king’s officers, The balls plowing up the ground. The trees cracking over one’s head. The branches riven by the artillery. The leaves falling as in autumn by the grapeshot. Above the deafening roar of cannon and musket fire came incessant shouting: Incline to the right! Incline to the left! Halt! Charge! As the British closed with the Continental battle line, the rebel fire swelled to an ear-shattering crescendo and the British Grenadiers and light infantry were forced to go to ground in front of Lord Stirling’s division.

The initial British advance against Stephen’s division on the rebel right was also less than successful. Brigadier General William Woodford had posted one of his regiments, the 3rd Virginia under Colonel Thomas Marshall, in a wood on the right to cover his fieldpieces and flank. When Sullivan ordered the shift to the right to make room for his division on the plowed hill, Marshall’s 170 officers and men found themselves masking the advancing British from the fire of Woodford’s and Brig. Gen. Charles Scott’s brigades. Before Marshall could redeploy his men, the 3rd Virginia was attacked by the British 1st Light Infantry and forced to fall back to the Birmingham Meeting House, where they took positions behind a sturdy stone wall. Once Marshall and his little force were out of the way, the British moved on rapidly, only to be met by a withering blast of buckshot from Stephen’s division and enfilading fire from the 3rd Virginia.

A half-hour after it began, Howe’s flank attack ground to a halt. Sullivan’s division had been routed, but the rebels were clinging tenaciously to their hill, and it would soon be too dark to fight. Something had to be done–and quickly.

During the initial assault on the plowed hill, a Jäger patrol had circled the rebel right. When it was discovered that the enemy line did not extend beyond the Birmingham Meeting House, the whole Feldjägerkorps and the 2nd British Light Infantry began a flanking move. Howe noticed the movement of the Jägers and light infantry and brought up the 4th British Brigade. Three companies of the 2nd Light Infantry charged the 3rd Virginia and, after a brief but violent clash of bayonets against musket butts, drove them back. The Jägers on the rebel flank also fired on the retreating Virginians with their rifles and several fieldpieces.

Outflanked and with four fresh British regiments–the 33rd Foot, 37th Foot, 46th Foot and 64th Foot, totaling almost 1,400 men–pressing forward against it, Stephen’s division began to waver. Woodford’s brigade still stood, even though its commander was wounded and had to be carried from the field, until Marshall’s regiment made good its escape. Woodford’s troops then began to retreat, joined by Scott’s brigade. The rebels came off the hill in fair order, although without their guns (the horses had been early casualties), until the Jägers and the 2nd Light Infantry hit them sharply on the flank. Then the retreat became panic-stricken flight.

Cornwallis rode forward and joined the two battalions of British Grenadiers, who rose to their feet and charged with fixed bayonets. They got to within 40 paces of the Continental line before Stirling’s men opened fire. Again, the Grenadiers halted and dropped to the ground. The 1st British Light Infantry and the three battalions of Hessian Grenadiers, with the British Guards in support–their movement masked by the smoke billowing across the battlefield–worked around the rebels’ left flank and pressed in against Hazen’s Canadians and the New Jersey Brigade. The British Grenadiers again clambered to their feet and drove forward, angling slightly to their left and engaging Brig. Gen. Thomas Conway’s brigade.

Earlier in the day, while the British were forming for their attack on the plowed hill, Lord Stirling had been joined by a young volunteer from Chavaeniac, in the French province of Auvergne, Maj. Gen. Marie Joseph Paul Ives Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. As the British Grenadiers closed in on Conway’s men, Lafayette and some of his friends dismounted and joined the Continental battle line. Grabbing muskets from the men’s hands, they showed the rebels how to fix bayonets. In the smoky confusion, a British Grenadier’s musket ball struck Lafayette in the leg. An aide helped the Continental Army’s youngest general back onto his horse and guided him off the plowed hill.

The 33rd Foot, the right-hand regiment of the 4th Brigade, pivoted and opened an enfilading fire on Stirling’s division, forcing them to abandon the plowed hill. The retreat was covered by the New Jersey Line and Hazen’s Canadians. The last post taken by the Jerseymen was in a wood just north of present-day Dilworth. The Grenadiers, by then virtually out of ammunition, attacked with bayonets and drove off the rebels.

As the Continentals began to fall back, the three battalions of Hessian grenadiers and the Brigade of Guards became entangled in thick woods. Their role in the battle was over.

Soon after 4:30, Washington received word of the disaster that had befallen Sullivan’s division and issued new orders. Armstrong and his militia were to remain in place. Wayne, with his own division and Maxwell’s light corps, would defend Chadd’s Ford. Greene’s division and Nash’s North Carolina Line were to march toward the sound of the guns. Then the commander in chief mounted his horse and galloped toward his army’s right flank, trailed by a troop of dragoons and a dozen aides, including another foreign volunteer, Polish Count Kasimierz Pulaski.

Shortly before 5 p.m., Greene’s and Nash’s men were on the road, trotting toward the plowed hill, having covered nearly four miles in less than 45 minutes. As he neared the village of Dilworth, Greene met Washington, Sullivan and Lafayette. Without hesitation, Greene deployed his forces–Nash to the left, Brig. Gen. Peter Muhlenburg’s brigade to the center, and a brigade of Virginians and Pennsylvanians under Brig. Gen. George Weedon to the right. Meanwhile, Pulaski led the 30 dragoons who had ridden along with Washington in a mad charge against the Hessian Jägers he saw edging toward the right of Greene’s battle line. Nothing more was heard from the Feldjägerkorps that day.

The British Grenadiers, unaware that Greene’s division was forming up directly in their path, drove toward Dilworth. By mistake, the 1st Battalion inclined to the right. The 2nd Battalion pushed on until it was struck by heavy fire from the front and left flank. Not for the first time that day, the Grenadiers were thrown back in disorder. The battalion commander, Colonel Meadows, asked Hessian Jäger Captain Johann Ewald to ride back and get help. Ewald found Brig. Gen. James Agnew of the 4th Brigade, explained the Grenadiers’ predicament and pointed out a low rise from which the Redcoats could effectively engage the rebels. Agnew detached his two left-flank regiments, the 64th and 46th Foot, and Ewald led them toward the rise.

We had no sooner reached the hill, Ewald recorded in his diary, than we ran into several American regiments, which were just about to take the grenadiers in the flank and rear. The rebels were Weedon’s brigade, sent by Greene to attack the Grenadiers, and their first volley dropped 47 officers and men of the 64th Foot. The stunned British jerked to a halt as the rebels repeatedly fired at a range of 50 yards. Nearly half the men and most of the officers of both British regiments went down, but neither regiment broke. The slaughter of the two king’s regiments was finally halted at 6:30 p.m., when a British artillery officer brought up a pair of light 6-pounders and opened fire on Weedon’s Continentals.

Recoiling from the British artillery, Weedon’s men encountered Colonel Marshall’s 3rd Virginia, making its way toward the Chester Road. In the gathering darkness, Virginians fired on Virginians. The other units of Sullivan’s, Stirling’s and Stephen’s divisions were luckier, drifting safely through Greene’s line. Some Continentals, like John Hawkins, the regimental sergeant major of Hazen’s Canadians, were ready to make yet another stand. But most joined the growing throng trudging along the Chester Road to safety.

The British, exhausted and out of ammunition, made one more brief effort before halting and then dropping back out of range of rebel artillery and muskets at 6:45. The battle on the right was over.

The barrage marking the British advance from Osborne’s Hill had alerted Knyphausen that the flanking column was in position and that it was time for an attack across Chadd’s Ford. Before the Hessian threw his regiments against the rebels posted on the heights on the far side of the Brandywine, he ordered his artillery to open fire. The rebel guns answered, and for an hour and a quarter an artillery duel went on, filling the valley with smoke.

At 5:15, the leading unit of the British assault column, the 4th Foot, advanced and plunged into the waist-deep creek. The Redcoats’ crossing was slowed by felled trees the rebels had anchored in the flow, and as they neared the far shore, the British were swept by grapeshot. A sergeant of the 4th recalled that creek was much stained with blood. But the 4th pushed on up the slopes, followed by the other regiments of Knyphausen’s column.

The left of the British line ran into Maxwell’s light corps and pushed it back. Knyphausen then fed additional regiments across the ford, and Maxwell’s troops retreated.

The 4th Foot, with the 5th Foot in close support, went straight against Proctor’s battery, clearly intending to storm it at bayonet point. The battery had been evacuated and the gunners ordered to deploy several hundred yards to the rear to cover Wayne’s troops as they re-formed to meet the British thrust. The two king’s regiments swept over the earthworks and bore down on the artillerymen, bayonets leveled. The gunners fled, led by their commander, Captain Hercules Courteney, who would later be court-martialed.

As he watched the British coming steadily forward and the men of the Pennsylvania State Regiment of Artillery scampering to the rear, Wayne ordered the 1st Pennsylvania under Colonel James Chambers to get the guns underway. Pennsylvanians and British met, and amid a raging firefight at 30 yards, the Continentals dragged off a howitzer and two field guns. The two remaining guns had to be left to the British.

The duel for the guns bought Wayne just enough time to form his division in a strong position behind a stone wall covering the road to Chester. The British advanced rapidly against the Pennsylvanians and were met with volley fire and grapeshot. More and more British troops crossed the ford and joined the battle line, until even the fiery Wayne had no choice but retreat. The Pennsylvania Line began a slow, orderly withdrawal, halting at every stone wall and fence line to loose off a volley or two at the king’s men.

Out of the growing darkness stumbled Armstrong’s retreating division of Pennsylvania militia. A soldier of the 3rd Philadelphia Associators remembered: Our way was over the dead and dying, and I saw many bodies crushed to pieces beneath the wagons, and we were bespattered with blood. As we marched directly under the English cannon, which kept up a continual fire, the destruction of our men was very great.

Once the militia were shepherded safely along the road to Chester, Wayne and Knyphausen, as if by mutual consent, broke off the action. It was 7 p.m. The Battle of the Brandywine was over.

Through the night Washington’s army staggered and stumbled along the road to Chester. Estimated casualties on both sides were almost equally high–about 900 British and 850 to 1,000 Continentals–but according to the 18th century’s rules of warfare, the British, who had held the field, were the victors. As Major Joseph Bloomfield of the New Jersey Line wrote in his diary, it certainly had been an unfortunate day for our army. Greene, however, was sure that Mr. Howe will find another Victory purchased at the price of so much blood must ruin him, and Weedon, whose brigade had fought so well, earnestly wished them the field again tomorrow on the same terms. The Continental Army had lost a battle, but it was not beaten.

Early the next morning, a detachment from Knyphausen’s column marched toward Chester but failed to contact the retreating rebel army. It would not be until September 15 that Howe could resume his drive on Philadelphia. On September 26, Cornwallis led the British and Hessian Grenadiers into the rebel capital.

The Battle of Brandywine displayed Washington’s generalship at its worst and at its best. The rebel commander in chief grossly underestimated the marching ability of the British and his opponent’s daring. Washington had no idea that the Brandywine could be crossed where Howe’s column forded the creek, an oversight that one of his officers, the thoroughly competent Colonel Elias Dayton, found truly astonishing. Washington had, however, scattered patrols in a wide arc, covering flanks and front, and his scouts did not fail him. Later, Washington blamed the defeat, in part, on the contrariety of intelligence he had received, and he tucked the fault firmly into the stirrups of his cavalry commander, Colonel Bland. When faced with conflicting reports, Washington had dithered. But once it became clear what was happening–too late to prevent a defeat but just barely in time to stave off disaster–Washington was able to save his army to fight again another day.

As for Sir William Howe, who has been excoriated for more than two centuries for his battlefield performances, he fought a battle of which anyone could be proud. When one reviews the entire attack on the enemy, wrote the Hessian Johann Ewald, who would go on to become one of the foremost military theorists of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, one will perceive that General Howe is not a middling man but indeed a good general. The Jäger captain added, It is really regrettable that the result of the battle fell short of the excellent and carefully prepared plan. But when does a battle ever go according to plan?

In spite of his tactical success, however, Howe had, in one very important sense, failed. The Continental Army was still in existence; the rebellion still lived. Bloodied though they were at the Brandywine, Washington’s men would be back, again and again.

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This article was written by Allen G. Eastby and originally published in the October 1998 issue of Military History magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today!

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