Who won the Battle of Fort Washington?
The British won. The Battle of Fort Washington, fought on 16 November 1776 at the northern end of Manhattan, ended with the surrender of about 2,800 American soldiers to General William Howe's British and Hessian army. It was one of the worst Patriot defeats of the war, forced the abandonment of Fort Lee and opened Washington's retreat across New Jersey.1
Anniversary 16 November 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the fall of Fort Washington; the counterstroke that followed in late December is told in The Ten Crucial Days.
On the morning of 16 November 1776 George Washington crossed the Hudson to the heights of northern Manhattan with Generals Nathanael Greene, Putnam and Hugh Mercer, meaning to decide at last whether to defend the last American stronghold on the island or give it up. They found the British attack already under way. His generals urged him not to stay where he might be cut off, and the party was rowed back to the New Jersey shore. By the afternoon the garrison had surrendered.2
The loss, in the New York campaign of the American Revolutionary War, came after a season of defeats at Long Island and White Plains. It cost the Continental Army men and guns it could not replace, and began a bleak retreat across New Jersey that ended, against all expectation, in a December victory at Trenton.3
Part of The greatest battles of the American Revolution · Before: The Battle of White Plains · Next: Battle of Trenton
Who won the Battle of Fort Washington and why?
The British won. Howe's much larger army struck an isolated garrison from three sides at once. The American outer lines, two and a half miles long, gave way one after another, and the defenders crowded into a fort too small to shelter them. Colonel Magaw then surrendered rather than sacrifice his men in a hopeless defense.4
Why the fort was held
Fort Washington was a five-sided earthwork on the highest ground of Manhattan, paired with Fort Lee on the New Jersey Palisades opposite. Between them the Americans sank hulks loaded with stones in the Hudson to stop British warships sailing upriver. It failed: British warships broke through in October, and in early November more vessels passed the obstructions without difficulty.5
Washington drew the obvious conclusion. On 8 November he wrote to Nathanael Greene, commanding on the New Jersey shore, that the passage of the ships was "so plain a Proof of the Inefficacy of all the Obstructions" that holding the post served no purpose. He was inclined not to hazard the men and stores there, but because Greene was on the spot he left the decision to him and revoked his earlier order to Colonel Robert Magaw to defend the fort to the last.6
Greene argued for holding on. He replied the next day that the garrison tied down twice as many enemy troops as it used: "I cannot conceive the Garrison to be in any great danger." The men, he thought, could be brought off at any time. Magaw believed the British would need until the end of December to take the place.7
Washington reached Greene's headquarters at Fort Lee by 14 November and found that nothing had been withdrawn. He did not overrule his general. A council of war had earlier voted to keep the post, and Congress had asked that the river be obstructed there if possible; Washington later told his brother that the fort had been held "contrary to my wishes and opinion."8
On 2 November Magaw's adjutant, William Demont, deserted to the British and brought Lord Percy plans of the fort and its outer works. In a letter written in London in 1792 he claimed that the fortress was taken by those plans. Henry P. Johnston, writing in 1878, doubted it: Howe, he argued, would have attacked the fort anyway, because it stood in his way.9
Armies and commanders
Magaw had his own Pennsylvania battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Lambert Cadwalader's Pennsylvanians, detachments of the Pennsylvania Flying Camp and Lieutenant Colonel Moses Rawlings's Maryland and Virginia riflemen. Greene had reinforced the garrison until it numbered about 2,800 men by Johnston's count, nearly 3,000 in Lowell's and the American Battlefield Trust's; Washington, writing that evening, put it at about 2,000.10
The ground they had to hold ran for two and a half miles across the top of the island. Cadwalader held the old lines to the south, another detachment held Laurel Hill above the Harlem River on the east, and Rawlings's riflemen held the wooded heights to the north.11
Howe planned four attacks. Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen would come from Kingsbridge in the north with his Hessians and the Waldeck regiment. Brigadier General Edward Mathew would land light infantry and Guards from boats across the Harlem River, supported by Lord Cornwallis with grenadiers and the 33rd Regiment. The 42nd Highlanders would make a feint across the Harlem, and Lord Percy would advance from the south.12
On 15 November Howe sent his adjutant general, Lieutenant Colonel Paterson, to demand the surrender of the garrison and warn of the consequences of a general attack. Magaw refused: "I am determined to defend this post to the very last extremity."13
The assault from three sides
Artillery opened on the American lines early on 16 November. Washington put the start of the infantry fighting at about ten o'clock; Howe and the American Battlefield Trust have Knyphausen's columns moving forward around noon, after a delay to let the other attacks get ready. For a long time the Hessians had to stand and wait while the British columns got into position; Captain Andreas Wiederhold, who led the van of the left column, was already halfway up the hill when he was ordered back.14
In the east Mathew's light infantry landed under fire from riflemen behind rocks and trees and climbed the steep slope of Laurel Hill, and the Guards, grenadiers and the 33rd followed. In the south Percy pressed Cadwalader's lines. When Percy made progress, Howe sent the 42nd across the Harlem in earnest: the Highlanders forced their way up a steep height behind Cadwalader and took between 150 and 170 prisoners.15
Caught between Percy and the Highlanders, Cadwalader's men fell back toward the fort in confusion, and many were captured on the way. Washington, watching from across the river, wrote that a number of them surrendered as the enemy came in upon them.16
The hardest fighting was in the north. Knyphausen's two columns, one under Colonel Johann Rall, had to cross a marsh and climb a steep, wooded, rocky slope through felled trees, under rifle and cannon fire. Rawlings's riflemen held them for a long time with a destructive fire. Knyphausen was in the thick of it, pulling down fences with his own hands, and Wiederhold wondered that he came out unhurt.17
At last the Hessians reached the top of the heights, took the batteries there and drove the riflemen back to the fort. By early afternoon all the American troops were packed inside or around a work that could not shelter them.18
The surrender
Rall sent in a summons. Washington had already sent a note across the river telling Magaw to hold out until dark, when he would try to bring the garrison off, but by the time it arrived Magaw had gone too far in the negotiations to draw back. That afternoon he agreed to surrender.19
The garrison became prisoners of war and gave up their arms, ammunition and stores, but the men kept their baggage and the officers their swords. They marched out between two Hessian regiments and laid down their muskets before Knyphausen.20
Counting the losses
The number of prisoners differs from account to account, from about 2,600 to about 2,870. Wiederhold counted 2,600 men marching out of the fort. Howe reported 2,700 taken there besides the 170 captured by the 42nd. The return of prisoners cited by Johnston lists 2,637 enlisted men and 221 officers, and the American Battlefield Trust gives 2,838.21
American killed and wounded were few by comparison. Howe reported 3 officers and 50 men killed and 6 officers and 90 men wounded; Johnston gives 4 officers and 50 privates killed and not over 100 wounded; the American Battlefield Trust, 59 killed and 96 wounded. Washington lost a good deal of artillery and many of his best arms as well.22
The attackers lost far more men killed and wounded. The American Battlefield Trust gives 84 killed and 374 wounded. Johnston puts the total at something over 450, about two thirds of them Hessians, and Lowell counts 56 German officers and men killed and 276 wounded, with English losses of more than 120.23
The prisoners paid the highest price. Johnston describes New York churches turned into prisons where captives died by the hundreds of hunger and disease, and the American Battlefield Trust notes that historians believe only about 800 of the Fort Washington men survived their captivity.24
Margaret Corbin at the guns
Among the defenders on the northern heights was Margaret Cochran Corbin. At twenty-one she had married John Corbin, a Pennsylvania soldier, and she was with him at Fort Washington, helping to load his cannon. When he was killed she took over the gun herself and was badly wounded. She was taken prisoner and then paroled, and soldiers came to call her "Captain Molly."25
On 6 July 1779 the Continental Congress resolved that Margaret Corbin, "wounded and disabled in the attack on Fort Washington, whilst she heroically filled the post of her husband who was killed by her side," should receive for life half the monthly pay of a soldier and a complete suit of clothes. She was the first woman to receive a pension from the United States for military service.26
She later served with the invalid corps at West Point and died in 1800. She belongs to a long line of women who went to war, from Boudica to the Soviet Night Witches.27 › Night Witches
Even her grave is a mystery. In 1926 the Daughters of the American Revolution had remains believed to be hers moved from Highland Falls to the cemetery at West Point. After excavators disturbed the grave in 2016, a forensic study found that the bones were those of an unidentified man.28 › Molly Pitcher and the women at Monmouth
The American view
For the Americans, Fort Washington was a disaster partly of their own making. Writing to Congress that evening, Washington warned that the loss of so many officers and men, many of them trained "with more than common attention," would be severely felt, and the loss of their arms even more. To his brother he admitted his "great mortification" that a post he thought hazardous had been held too long.29
The blame has been argued over ever since. Lowell wrote that the men in the fort made a creditable resistance and that the fault lay with the generals who insisted on holding it after the main army had left the island. The American Battlefield Trust calls the fall of the fort one of the lowest points of Nathanael Greene's career.30
The British and Hessian view
For Howe the capture was a clean professional success that cleared Manhattan and opened the way into New Jersey. In his dispatch he praised the Hessian troops, and the Hessian generals and regiments that had climbed the northern heights were named in general orders. The Hessians had paid most of the price in killed and wounded.31
The consequences: Fort Lee, New Jersey, Trenton
Four days later the blow fell on the other bank. On 20 November Cornwallis crossed the Hudson some miles above Fort Lee and climbed the Palisades, and the garrison of about 2,000 men abandoned the fort in haste, leaving its artillery, tents and provisions behind.32
Washington's shrinking army fell back across New Jersey and crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania in December. Then, on 26 December, he struck back at Trenton, capturing most of a Hessian garrison, among them Rall's men who had stormed the northern heights of Fort Washington.33
If you visit
Nothing of the earthwork survives. The site lies in Bennett Park in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, where a monument commemorates the battle.34
The battle is also marked each November a little to the north, in Fort Tryon Park, with a reenactment, 18th-century music and blacksmith demonstrations run with the park's conservancy.35
Why Fort Washington still matters
Fort Washington is remembered far less than Trenton, but the two belong together. The fall of the fort strengthened the British hold on New York City, and closed Washington's New York campaign. For other anniversaries, see On This Day in Military History, and for the wider war, the greatest battles of the American Revolution.36
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