Who won the Battle of Brandywine?
At the Battle of Brandywine on 11 September 1777, British forces under William Howe defeated George Washington's army near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, in what the Pennsylvania state historic site calls the largest single-day battle of the Revolution. Howe pinned the American front while marching a large column around the undefended upper fords to strike Washington's flank, repeating his Long Island maneuver. The defeat opened the road to Philadelphia, which the British occupied soon after.3
A year after outflanking Washington at Long Island, William Howe did it again at Brandywine. While the Americans watched the fords in front of them, the British marched around their flank, and the rebel capital was lost.4
Part of The greatest battles of the American Revolution · Before: The Battle of Princeton · Next: Battle of Germantown · Key figures: The Marquis de Lafayette
Howe moves on Philadelphia
In 1777 the British commander William Howe sailed his army to the head of Chesapeake Bay and marched on Philadelphia, seat of the Continental Congress. Washington placed his army behind Brandywine Creek to block the road, guarding the obvious crossing at Chadds Ford.5
Instead of moving up the Hudson to meet John Burgoyne's army coming south from Canada, Howe sailed from New York in late July on a fleet under his brother, Admiral Richard Howe. The army began landing at the Head of Elk in Maryland on 25 August, after more than a month at sea.6
Washington paraded his army through Philadelphia and moved south. After a skirmish at Cooch's Bridge in Delaware on 3 September, he chose to stand where the main road to Philadelphia crossed the Brandywine; according to the battlefield park, he arrived on 9 September and made his headquarters in the house of Benjamin Ring, about a mile east of Chadds Ford.7
The line on the Brandywine
Washington expected a frontal attack at the ford and massed his strength there. British and Hessian troops demonstrated against that front, holding the Americans' attention while the main blow gathered elsewhere.
The American line ran for several miles along the creek. John Armstrong's Pennsylvania militia held Pyle's Ford on the left, the divisions of Nathanael Greene and Anthony Wayne the main crossing at Chadds Ford in the center, and John Sullivan the fords to the north. Two crossings farther upstream, Trimble's Ford on the west branch and Jefferis' Ford on the east branch, were left unguarded. Washington believed his army blocked every ford; it did not.8
The fighting began early on 11 September, in fog and heat. By the battlefield park's account, William Maxwell's light infantry fired on the head of Wilhelm von Knyphausen's column near Welch's Tavern and fell back from position to position for two to three hours. Knyphausen then deployed opposite Chadds Ford and opened a heavy cannonade, but he had orders not to force the crossing until he heard Howe's guns to the north.9
How many soldiers fought at Brandywine?
About 30,000 soldiers fought at Brandywine: roughly 14,600 to 16,000 Americans against 15,500 to 16,000 British and Hessian troops. The fighting lasted about eleven hours, and the Pennsylvania state historic site calls it the largest single-day land battle of the Revolution. By the American Battlefield Trust's count only Long Island, with some 40,000 men, involved more.10
Losses are known only roughly: about 1,100 to 1,500 Americans killed, wounded or captured, some 400 of them prisoners, against about 540 to 590 British and Hessians.11
The flank march
Howe sent a large column on a long march to cross the creek at unguarded fords upstream, then wheeled down onto the exposed American right, exactly the move that had won Long Island. Confused and contradictory reports left Washington slow to grasp the danger.12
The flanking column, about 8,000 men by Lafayette's count and 9,000 to 10,000 by the battlefield park's, under Charles Cornwallis with Howe riding along, left Kennett Square at about 5 a.m., guided by local Loyalists. Estimates of its march run from 12 miles to Michael C. Harris's 17. It crossed both branches of the creek between late morning and mid-afternoon and halted to rest on high ground facing Birmingham Meeting House.13
Why did Washington lose at Brandywine?
Washington lost Brandywine because he did not know the whole river. Two upstream fords were left unguarded, Howe's column used them, and the reports that reached American headquarters about his flank march contradicted each other. By the time Washington knew the truth, the British were already behind his right.14
Late in the morning a report from Lieutenant Colonel Ross placed a large British column on the Great Valley Road, and Washington began to act on it. Then word from Major Joseph Spear of the Chester County militia, who had seen no British there, persuaded him the danger was false. Only when Colonel Theodorick Bland's dragoons found the enemy forming near Birmingham did he send the divisions of Lord Stirling, Adam Stephen and Sullivan north.15
Those divisions never formed one line: Sullivan's reached the hill late and out of place, and the gap it left let the British in.16
The American stand
When the flanking blow fell, the Americans scrambled to form a new line and fought hard to hold it, among them the young French volunteer Lafayette, who was wounded. The stand kept the defeat from becoming a rout, and the army withdrew after dark to Chester.17
The attack on Birmingham Hill began at about 4 p.m. Stirling's and Stephen's men threw back several charges by British grenadiers and light infantry before they too were driven off the hill. At the same time Knyphausen, hearing the guns upstream, forced his way across Chadds Ford against Wayne, who had to give up his position and most of his cannon.18
What saved the army was Greene. Called from the reserve near Chadds Ford, his division covered three to four miles in well under an hour and formed across the road south of Dilworth, where men rallied from the hill joined it. It held until dark. Lafayette, shot in the leg while rallying the line, rode on to Chester and that night helped stop the fugitives at the bridge there.19
What did Casimir Pulaski do at Brandywine?
Casimir Pulaski, a Polish cavalry officer who had reached America that summer and still held no commission, helped cover the American retreat. With Washington's permission he led a small body of horsemen, about thirty men of the commander's own mounted guard, against the British pressing on the collapsing right, buying time for the Continentals to withdraw in order.20
The battlefield park places his charge against British light infantry trying to turn Greene's flank. Congress rewarded him with a brigadier general's commission and command of the cavalry; the National Park Service dates the promotion to 15 September 1777. His later career, from the Pulaski Legion to his death at Savannah in 1779, is told in our profile of Casimir Pulaski and in the Polish heroes of the American Revolution.21
Why Brandywine mattered
Brandywine was a clear British victory, and barely two weeks later, on 26 September 1777, the British occupied Philadelphia. Yet Washington's army survived, fought on at Germantown, and endured the winter at Valley Forge, while far to the north the British disaster at Saratoga was about to change the war.22
In the days after the battle the two armies kept maneuvering. A second clash in Goshen township, the park's historians note, was washed out by a torrential storm and is remembered as the Battle of the Clouds, and on the night of 20 September British troops surprised Anthony Wayne's camp at Paoli. Congress left Philadelphia, and Cornwallis marched into the city unopposed on 26 September.23
The loss did not break the army. Washington attacked at Germantown on 4 October, and American garrisons held the Delaware River forts below the city until mid-November. The historian Jennifer Janofsky argues that the performance of Washington's army in the Philadelphia campaign, together with Burgoyne's surrender in October, helped bring France into the war in 1778; the British left Philadelphia that June.24
Can you visit the Brandywine battlefield today?
Yes. Brandywine Battlefield Park, a Pennsylvania state historic site at Chadds Ford supported by the Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates, has a museum and visitor center and the reconstructed and restored houses of the Ring and Gilpin families. It covers only about 50 acres of a battlefield that, by the park's count, spread across some ten square miles.25
Most of the ground where the armies fought is now private land and suburban housing spread over about fifteen municipalities. The wider battlefield was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and preservation groups have bought back parts of it since: the American Battlefield Trust alone counts more than 202 acres saved.26
