Battle of Germantown, 1777: Washington's bold gamble

Barely a week after the British marched into Philadelphia, the beaten American army came back out of the dark. At dawn on 4 October 1777, in a fog so thick that men could hardly see the next regiment, George Washington threw his army at the British camp at Germantown. But a single stone house, and the fog itself, turned the attack into a defeat, but a defeat daring enough to change how Europe saw the American cause.⁴

Part of The greatest battles of the American Revolution · Before: The Battle of Brandywine · Next: The Battle of Saratoga

The fall of Philadelphia

In the summer of 1777 General Sir William Howe set out to take Philadelphia, the revolutionary capital, and destroy Washington's army. In August he sailed up Chesapeake Bay with some 13,000 troops and landed at the Head of Elk in Maryland. On 11 September he outmaneuvered Washington at Brandywine, turning the American flank under cover of fog, and on the night of 20 September his troops surprised Anthony Wayne's division in its camp at Paoli.⁵ › Battle of Brandywine, 1777

Paoli was a humiliation. Wayne had been sent to harass the British march, but the British learned where he was camped and fell on his sleeping men in a silent night attack; according to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, he lost 53 men killed and 71 taken prisoner. Accused of misconduct, Wayne demanded a court martial, which found that he had made tactical mistakes but cleared him of misconduct. His soldiers turned the "Paoli massacre" into a rallying cry.⁶

The Continental Congress fled, first to Lancaster and then to York, and on 26 September the British marched into Philadelphia unopposed. Most people with American sympathies had already left, leaving behind Loyalists and those too poor to move. Housing was short, and plundering by British soldiers did nothing to win over the residents who remained.⁷

The armies at Germantown

Howe split his army between Philadelphia and the village of Germantown, a few miles to the northwest. At Germantown he posted some 9,000 British and Hessian troops, including two brigades under General James Grant and Hessians under General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, camped across the main road that ran through the village. Washington, with about 8,000 Continentals and 3,000 militia, saw a divided enemy and a chance to strike back before winter.⁸

Washington's four columns

Washington's plan was daring and imaginative, an echo of his surprise attack at Trenton the previous Christmas. Four columns would march through the night of 3 October along different roads and strike the British camp at dawn from different directions at once. John Sullivan, with Washington riding alongside, would lead the main attack down the Germantown road; Nathanael Greene's column would hit the British right flank; militia under William Smallwood would swing wide against the British right and rear. The aim was to drive the British back into Philadelphia and then cut their supply line by land.⁹ › Battle of Trenton, 1776

On paper it was brilliant. In practice it asked an inexperienced army to keep four columns moving on schedule over miles of dark country roads, with no means of communication between them but riders.¹⁰

Into the fog

The night march fell behind, and at dawn a heavy fog settled over Germantown, made thicker by the smoke of the firing. Sullivan's column made contact first, drove in the British pickets on Mount Airy and pushed on down the road, forcing the British back through the village. Some British troops were so surprised by the size of the attack that they were cut off from their main body.¹¹

Elsewhere things went worse. The column on the American right was stopped by Hessian resistance, and the units on the left were still lost in the fog when the fighting was well under way.¹²

The Chew house

One of the cut-off groups, some 120 men under Colonel Thomas Musgrave, took refuge in Cliveden, the large stone country house of Chief Justice Benjamin Chew, and turned it into a fortress. The leading American troops passed it by. But the units behind stopped to deal with this strongpoint in their rear. Cannon were brought up and fired at the walls without effect, and assault after assault on the house was beaten back with heavy losses.¹³

The fight at the house did more than cost lives. Its noise, coming from behind the American front, unsettled the troops ahead, and it drew other units toward it in the fog.¹⁴

Friendly fire and retreat

On the left of Sullivan's column, Anthony Wayne's division had become separated in the fog. His men were running low on ammunition, heard the firing at the Chew house behind them and began to believe they were cut off. At that moment a brigade of Greene's column under Adam Stephen, drawn toward the sound of the guns and lost in fog and smoke, mistook Wayne's men for the British and fired into them. Wayne's men fired back, and both units broke and fled.¹⁵

The retreat exposed the flanks of the units still advancing. British reinforcements arrived from Philadelphia, Howe counterattacked, and one advanced Continental unit was surrounded and captured. Washington conducted a skillful fighting retreat of about 10 miles, covered by his artillery and the steadiness of Greene's and Wayne's men, and the battle was over. American losses were about twice those of the British.¹⁶ › Nathanael Greene

How many died at the Battle of Germantown?

Britannica counts 152 Americans killed, 521 wounded and about 400 captured, against 71 British and Hessians killed, 450 wounded and 14 captured. The American Battlefield Trust gives roughly 700 Americans killed and wounded, another 400 captured, and more than 500 British casualties. By either count, American losses were about twice the British.¹⁷

General Howe's dog

The battle left behind a famous footnote. Britannica recounts that during the fighting General Howe's terrier followed the retreating Americans and was brought to Washington's headquarters. Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton sent an emissary to return it with a polite note: Washington sent his compliments to General Howe and returned the dog, which had accidentally fallen into his hands and which, by the inscription on its collar, appeared to belong to Howe. Howe's reply has been lost, but, Britannica adds, it is said that afterward he no longer pursued Washington's army with the same fierce vigor.¹⁸

Aftermath

Germantown was a clear British victory, and Philadelphia stayed in British hands. Howe still had to open the Delaware River to supply the city, and it took him until mid-November to overcome the American river forts; a Hessian assault on Fort Mercer at Red Bank failed in October, and Fort Mifflin fell only after the heaviest bombardment of the war. Washington's army went into winter quarters at Valley Forge. Howe himself, complaining that he lacked support from London, offered his resignation that October and was replaced by Sir Henry Clinton in the spring of 1778.¹⁹

When Howe finally left Philadelphia in the spring of 1778, his officers sent him off with the Meschianza, a lavish farewell entertainment for more than 400 Loyalist and British guests, with a 17-gun salute from the warships and fireworks.²⁰

Why was the Battle of Germantown important?

Germantown was a defeat, but a telling one. Weeks after losing Philadelphia, the Continental Army had come back and attacked the main British army. European observers, the French above all, were impressed by that determination, and together with the American victory at Saratoga that month it helped persuade France to enter the war in 1778.²¹ › Battle of Saratoga, 1777

Visiting Cliveden today

Most of the 1777 battlefield now lies under the streets of Northwest Philadelphia, but Cliveden still stands on Germantown Avenue. Built as a country house for the lawyer Benjamin Chew and completed in 1767, it was home to seven generations of the Chew family, who in 1972 gave the house, its remaining 5.5 acres of grounds and its collections to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Today it is a National Trust Historic Site, where research is also uncovering the lives of the people enslaved by the Chew family.²²