The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (23 page)

It was all over in a matter of minutes. Grey's men withdrew at daybreak, prisoners in tow, leaving the Blauvelt family to bury the dead and tend to the wounded left behind.

The Baylor Massacre, as the event came to be known, had no significant impact on British or American strategy—only about fifteen dragoons were killed outright—but, still, the “Butchery” appeared monstrous to many contemporaries, a sign of British barbarism. American leaders denounced the British officers for making no effort to restrain the bloodlust of their men.
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The Baron de Steuben was troubled by the incident, but not for the same reasons. The clash at Overkill was upsetting to him because it could have been prevented so easily. The real tragedy at the heart of the bloodshed was not the inhumanity of the attackers, but the carelessness of the Continentals, “the consequence of a bad discipline,” Steuben observed to Henry Laurens. “The service of the guards, piquets & patrolls is totally neglected in our Army. Our Cavalry is without a Chief, without an Officer acquainted with the service—Brave, it is true, but bravery never made an Officer.”
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Laurens thought Steuben's analysis cold. How could poor Baylor bear the responsibility when it was the British who had violated all the rules of civilized warfare? Yet the Baron had hit the nail on the head. Baylor had been criminally negligent—of his duty to the army, to the Cause, and above all to the men entrusted to his care. Steuben had been urging all along that the army pay greater attention to guard and outpost duty. He had been ignored, and Overkill demonstrated the tragic results that could ensue.

“I have acquitted what I owed to myself, as Well as to all the Military,” he had told Laurens, apparently washing his hands of any responsibility for whatever fate might befall the Continental Army now that he had been so brusquely rebuffed by his fellow generals. Yet the truth was that the Baron cared about the army much more than his hurt pride would allow him to let on. He accepted, grudgingly, that he
could not command troops in battle, and once he took this fact to heart, he became eminently useful. In the coming year, he would make his greatest, most enduring contribution to the Cause.

What Steuben realized at this moment, as he gave up on his dreams of battlefield glory, was that Congress, Washington, and the army brass did set great value on his counsel—so long as that counsel was not coupled with demands for augmented powers. And while this was personally disappointing, it was also liberating in a way. Since he was no longer angling for a more prominent role, he could offer his advice directly, without tact or restraint. The rebels needed this kind of guidance. Blunt advice, after all, is generally good advice.

Both Washington and Henry Laurens solicited the Baron's strategic insights—and he gave them, no matter how bleak the prognosis. And with French intervention temporarily out of the question, there was little good to say about the state of the war effort. His reflections on the condition of the army, written for Laurens at the beginning of October 1778, “would shock a feeble mind.”

What made the army's sad state even more depressing was that it stemmed from a deep-seated cause: the tendency of Americans, especially those who disdained a standing army, to eschew long-range planning and count instead on the occasional miracle.

Washington asked Steuben for his opinions on the army's strategic options in light of the French withdrawal, and once again the Baron held nothing back. His written reply to the general-in-chief was a piece worthy of a great operational planner. Because the army was both pitifully small and in poor condition, Steuben pointed out, there were no options. The British, he argued, were likely to either attack Boston or to remain passively in New York. Either way, they had the advantage. Clinton was no fool; he knew exactly how weak the Americans were. If the British attacked Boston, they could do so with impunity, for they had enough troops to do it while still retaining a respectable garrison in New York. What could Washington do if this happened? Nothing. Any force he might detach to defend Boston would so deplete the main army that the Hudson Highlands would be vulnerable, and no matter how many men Washington sent to Boston, it would not be enough to
save the city. The Continental Army was in no condition to do anything but sit tight for the winter and hope for the best.
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All the reforms in the world, Steuben had told both Washington and Congress, would not save the army or the country. Victory would require a substantial and lasting commitment in manpower, and that responsibility lay solely with Congress and the States. Steuben could do nothing about that. What he could do, within the few and limited parameters approved by both Congress and the generals, was to instill discipline, broadly defined. Discipline, as Steuben—and most European soldier-philosophers—saw it, was the universal application of rules and procedures that came from following a common code of conduct. The Continental Army had no such code. The incident at Overkill stood as bloody proof.

Despite his jeremiads, the Baron had not yet given up. The best thing he could do in his present situation, as he told Henry Laurens, was to “put on a cheerful face” and hope that Congress would eventually see the necessity of enlarging the army. In the meantime, he had to define discipline, and that entailed creating that missing military code.

Washington agreed. He had known all along how badly the army needed a set of official regulations. So with the general-in-chief's blessing, Steuben set out again for Philadelphia, on November 13, 1778, to spend the winter working out the details.
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T
HE TIME WAS RIGHT
. The Baron was not really needed at camp, even for drill. He had trained a competent group of subordinates, the sub-inspectors and the brigade inspectors, at Valley Forge. He could even spare Ternant, who was dispatched to spread Steuben's gospel to Gen. Benjamin Lincoln's badly organized Southern Army. Nor was there much possibility of action in the Northeast. Once D'Estaing removed his fleet from Boston Harbor in early November, choosing to spend the winter months in the West Indies instead, the campaign of 1778 came to an abrupt if anticlimatic end.

From his personal staff, Steuben assembled a team to help him draft
the new regulations. Fleury knew the details of French military practice as well as anyone in the Continental service; Duponceau could translate, and Walker was conversant in American military terminology; L'Enfant, a skilled draftsman, could fashion the plates and figures necessary for a drill manual. Together, they entered Philadelphia at the end of November and set up cozy quarters at the Peters' Belmont. This in itself was a great attraction for the Baron. Here he would have the comforts of family life as well as direct access to the Board of War.
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Steuben was driven, and he wrote almost without letup from the time he set foot in Philadelphia until he departed the city in late April 1779. His mind, and his quill, moved much faster than the slow pace dictated by the translating and editing process. He had no intention of merely copying the Prussian military regulations. He admired the Prussian system, and overall believed it to be the best in all of Europe, but he also recognized that the center of military thought was not Prussia but France. The composition of new regulations would involve picking and choosing the best elements from the Prussian and French systems, and then adapting them to American conditions—and this required juggling a dizzying quantity of details and ephemera. Working from memory, Fleury's advice, and the few military texts he had at hand, he composed scores of short essays, written on a variety of topics, for his own use: on the proper formation of infantry units, on tactics, on the duties of officers in European armies, on the administration of entire military establishments.
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The five men worked at a furious pace. Walker and Duponceau, as translators and scribes, took up most of the drudge work, but Steuben and Fleury were no less busy. They frequently labored into the wee hours, sketching maneuvers in pencil and comparing notes by candlelight. There was little time for them to partake of Philadelphia's social scene. Steuben was content to take the occasional dinner with his hosts, to chat with Richard Peters about politics, and to play with little Ralph. Until the final chapters of the regulations were complete, in late March 1779, however, Steuben and his team did not take a single significant break, allowing little to interrupt or distract them.

There were unavoidable disruptions nonetheless. Steuben still had a score to settle with an old enemy: Charles Lee. Through his few remaining adherents in the army, Lee had spread the rumor that Steuben was a fake. Even Francy was taken in by the talk. “It is pretended that [Steuben] is nothing less than a great soldier, [yet] people really mock the Order he carries, which is regarded in Germany as worthless,” Francy reported to Beaumarchais in early November 1778. Other Prussians in the Continental service claimed never to have heard of Steuben while in the army of Old Fritz. The Baron, Francy admitted, “infinitely embarrasses me.”
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The dangerous thing about Lee's gossip was that it contained more than a kernel of truth, but it was meanspirited and unnecessary, intended only to sabotage the Baron's high standing in the army. Francy soon recognized this and repented. The damage, however, was already done. Des Epiniers, whose admiration for Steuben had bordered on hero worship, quit the inspector's staff, only telling Francy that he “would have nothing to do with the Baron.” Steuben had done his best to ignore Lee up to this point, but he could do so no longer. At the time he left camp for Philadelphia, already there were whispers that the Baron would seek satisfaction in the way that any honorable gentleman would: by duel.

So when Lee made his next negative remark about him, Steuben was ready to pounce. Lee was in the process of appealing the sentence of his court-martial, refuting much of the written testimony, including Steuben's. He argued that Steuben had not been near enough to the action to judge Lee's conduct, and referred to the Prussian as a “very distant Spectator.” It was a minor criticism, but it did impugn Steuben's honor, and the Baron was not inclined to be very forgiving. “Were I now in my own Country, where my reputation is long ago Established, I should have put myself about your Epigrams, and would have despised them,” he shot back at Lee. “But here I am a Stranger. You have offended me. I desire you will give me satisfaction. You will chuse the place, time and Arms.” It was not the first time Lee had been challenged to a duel, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. He was a brave
soldier, but a coward and a bully in his personal life, and he backed down in great humility. He apologized profusely, assuring the aggrieved Baron that he had no intention of slighting him. Fortunately that was enough to satisfy Steuben.
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Steuben had challengers of his own, but over matters not of honor but of imitation. A young French lieutenant, William Galvan, was also writing a tactical manual. Coincidentally, he was working in Philadelphia at the same time as Steuben, but without making any effort to consult the Baron. Galvan submitted his text to Washington, unsolicited, hoping to impress the general. He did not get very far. For all of the trouble that Steuben had caused him, Washington was very protective of his inspector, and saw in Galvan's manuscript a direct affront to Steuben. “I do not perceive any utility that could be derived from encouraging the competition you seem to desire between you and the Gentleman who has already been appointed to superintend the instruction of the army,” Washington wrote Galvan. “The specimens he has given of his zeal and knowlege entitle him to my confidence.”
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Another foreigner, one Baron Knoblauch, also tried to cash in on Steuben's work. After Steuben had already finished, Knoblauch petitioned Congress for recognition, claiming that he deserved some credit for having lent his Prussian military texts to the inspector! Indeed, he would have written his own regulations if only he “had been Master of the English Language or could have had the steady assistance of a good Translator.”
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Congress ignored him.