Brandywine: The Largest Battle of the War

On September 11, 1777, William Howe's army outmaneuvered Washington at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania, in a battle larger than any other fought during the Revolutionary War, more than 30,000 combatants engaged across eleven hours of continuous fighting. The British won the field and went on to occupy Philadelphia two weeks later. But Washington's army survived intact, and a nineteen-year-old French volunteer serving without pay on Washington's staff fought his first battle and was wounded rallying the retreat. Washington's own report to Congress and Lafayette's letter to his wife written the next day both survive.

Rather than march directly on Philadelphia from New York, Howe loaded his army onto ships in July 1777 and sailed south around the Delmarva Peninsula, landing at the Head of Elk, Maryland, in late August, after a grueling 34-day voyage that left his men and horses badly weakened. The roundabout approach confused Washington as to British intentions and meant Howe's army had to march roughly fifty miles overland before threatening Philadelphia at all.

Washington positioned his army of approximately 15,000 men behind Brandywine Creek, the last significant natural barrier before Philadelphia, concentrating his defense at Chadds Ford. He believed he had covered the available crossing points. He was wrong about two of them.

Under cover of heavy morning fog, Howe sent roughly 6,800 men under Wilhelm von Knyphausen to demonstrate against the American position at Chadds Ford, fixing Washington's attention there, while the larger portion of his army, some 9,000 men under Cornwallis, marched twelve miles north and crossed the Brandywine at Trimble's Ford and Jefferis Ford, two crossings Washington's reconnaissance had missed entirely. By the time American commanders realized the British were behind their right flank, the larger British force was already in position to attack from a direction Washington's army was not prepared to defend.

Among the foreign volunteers serving with Washington's army was the Marquis de Lafayette, a nineteen-year-old French aristocrat who had arrived in America in March 1777 and quickly formed a close friendship with Washington. As the American right flank collapsed under the British assault, Lafayette rode into the fighting at Birmingham Hill and was wounded in the leg while attempting to rally retreating troops. He wrote to his wife in France the following day.

Sergeant Andrew Wallace carried the wounded Lafayette roughly two miles from the battlefield to a nearby farmhouse. Lafayette recovered and returned to active command within weeks. He visited the battlefield again decades later, in 1824, and pointed out where he had been wounded along the crest of the hill.

As the British pressed their advantage, Washington and Nathanael Greene brought reinforcements forward to slow the collapse, with Henry Knox deploying artillery to cover the withdrawal. The fighting south of Dilworth held the British pursuit for nearly an hour, allowing the bulk of the American army to escape in the gathering darkness rather than being destroyed outright. Washington reported the day's events to Hancock that same evening.

British forces occupied Philadelphia without opposition on September 26, 1777, forcing the Continental Congress to evacuate the capital. But Washington's army, though defeated, remained an organized fighting force, and the same British strategic decision that won Philadelphia, splitting Howe's attention away from supporting Burgoyne in the north, contributed directly to the British surrender at Saratoga five weeks later.