The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (35 page)

Nor did Steuben have the money to follow his heart and join Greene. Instead, he would have to go to Philadelphia to wring more pay from a bankrupt Congress. His prospects for success there were not good and he knew it. If need be, he would quit, though he didn't quite know what he would do then, either. “I sacrifice my time, my Interest & my Health & what is more than all these, I risk a reputation gained by twenty seven years service in Europe,” he sadly wrote Greene. “Can you blame me for quitting when all my Zeal &…my Military Experience is attended with so little success & procures me so little Satisfaction?”
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Greene didn't blame him. “A terrible picture of the Rewards of Long Service,” he scribbled on the Baron's letter after reading it.

The Baron said his goodbyes, reluctantly taking leave of Billy North, still too sick to travel. “I must leave you, my Son,” he told North. “The instant you are able, quit this deleterious situation.” He gave North what little he had left: his two-wheeled sulky and one of the two Portuguese gold coins, known as “half Joes,” that constituted his entire wealth. With a single half Joe, worth less than ten dollars, in his pocket, he set out alone for Philadelphia.
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A
T
P
HILADELPHIA WERE FRIENDS
who were glad to see the Baron, rich or poor. He spent the winter there, mostly at Belmont, where the growing Peters family—Richard and Sarah now had three “little aides-de-camp”—happily took him in.

To his friends at Hechingen, Steuben described the money, land, and honors heaped upon him by a grateful nation. “I am not lacking in the good things of this life,” he wrote. But any rumor that “I lead an existence like one of the chief princes of the Empire is a little exaggerated. I live more as a good republican than a German baron. My
table is simple, I have no unnecessary servants.”
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It was a brave attempt to mask his financial embarrassment. All of the Continental officers suffered from the fiscal inadequacy of Congress, but it was worse for Steuben.

The members of Congress, ecstatic that the war seemed to be drawing to a close, were looking to save money, not to spend more. They proposed—with Washington's blessing—a reduction of the inspector general's office, collapsing the intricate network of sub-inspectors and brigade inspectors down to two assistants, one for Greene's army and one for Washington's. Steuben did not raise any serious objections. Most of the army's officers knew the Blue Book by heart, and did not need constant tutoring as they once had.
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His main concern was his pay. He did not ask for riches—that, presumably, would come later—and was happy to get enough to last him through the next campaign. Congress obliged. An audit of his accounts in January 1782 revealed that the Treasury did indeed owe him some $8,500 in back pay, one fifth of which he was allowed to withdraw in cash. Living expenses and payments to creditors ate up that $1,700 in no time flat, reducing Steuben once again to begging. Washington interceded, prevailing upon Robert Morris to forward the Baron a small sum so that he could return to the army. By the summer of 1782, that money, too, was used up, and Steuben had to return to Philadelphia for a couple of weeks to plead for another advance from his back pay.

In the meantime, he still had a job to do. The war was not yet over.

 

T
HOUGH ALL BUT FORGOTTEN
by historians of the Revolution, the Continental Army's training program in 1782 produced results that were even better than those of Valley Forge. There was not much likelihood of an attack on British-held New York. As Steuben pointed out to his general, Admiral de Grasse's fleet had been humbled by the British in the West Indies that winter; even if the Yorktown coalition
of French, Continental, and militia forces did converge on the Hudson, an assault on a place as “naturally fortified” as New York City would be unwise. Still, Washington intended the army to be ready just in case.

Washington, who had also wintered in Philadelphia, rejoined the army at Newburgh, New York, at the very end of March 1782, with Steuben following a few days later. A thorough inspection of the army began immediately; large-scale maneuvers commenced in June.

Steuben's team of assistants—his “kids,” as North called them—had changed a great deal from the early days. Sickly Duponceau, much missed by his master, had resigned after the retreat from Point of Fork; Fairlie was in British captivity; Washington had raided Ben Walker for his own staff. A new face, Capt. William Popham of New York, joined the Baron's family. Pennsylvanian Walter Stewart took over the new position of assistant inspector for the main army.

The Baron and his “kids” whipped the army into the best shape of its entire history. The emphasis was on constant large-unit drills, along with the introduction of exercises of a very different but very practical sort. At the end of August, for example, when Washington decided to move the army down the Hudson from Newburgh to Verplanck's Point, Washington and Steuben orchestrated a mock amphibious assault. Five full infantry brigades piled into flat-bottomed boats, aligned in perfect order by brigade, and hit the beach at Verplanck's. Jumping out of the boats onto shore in full gear, the men formed brigade lines of battle in minutes. If only the French had been in a position to cooperate, Washington could have made a very dramatic entrance into New York City.
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The most exacting test came in September and October 1782. Rochambeau's army, having served its purpose, marched north from Virginia toward Boston to begin its long sea voyage home. En route, the French stopped for a few days' rest near the Continental encampment to bid farewell to their American comrades. Amid the feasting and drinking, Steuben took the opportunity to show just how adroit his army had become.

In a series of reviews held in honor of their valiant allies, Steuben and Walter Stewart led the army through all sorts of complicated maneuvers for Rochambeau's benefit. Steuben took the visit as a personal challenge, and was not about to let the French brass find anything wrong with
his
men. Before one review, one of the French generals dropped by Steuben's marquee to go over the upcoming maneuvers. One of the proposed movements caught the Frenchman's attention. He had seen it performed before, by the Prussian army, “but with a very complex addition.” “You will recollect,” Steuben pointed out, “that we are not quite Prussians.” The Frenchman conceded, “This is true, but that will come with time.” It was not an unkind response, but Steuben took it as patronizing. As soon as the French general left, Steuben muttered angrily to North, “
This is true, this is true, but that will come with time!
I will let these Frenchmen know that we can do what the Prussians can, and what
their
army cannot do.” Wheeling around to Popham, he barked, “Get the order for review. Set down and add as I dictate…. They may come to Verplanck's Point next week for instruction with their
that will come with time!
” Steuben amended the proposed maneuver, replete with the “complex addition,” and the review went off without a hitch.
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The French generals took note. “We went to watch the American army, which drills extremely well,” observed Rochambeau's aide, the Baron de Closen. “Both its direction and the ease and precision of its movements really astonished us.” Another general said to Steuben in utter amazement, “I admire the celerity and exactitude with which your men perform, but what I cannot conceive, is the profound silence with which they maneuver!” (To which the Baron replied that even his brigadiers “dare not open their mouths, but to repeat the order!”) Steuben received all the credit. The army “owes all its improvement…to the labors and zeal of General Steuben, and to his subordinate, Colonel Stewart…who has learned M. de Steuben's style perfectly.”
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And then the ultimate compliment, straight from Rochambeau himself: “You must have formed an alliance with the king of Prussia. These troops are Prussians!”
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The Baron, for once, took the compliments at face value. “The French connoisseurs,” he announced proudly to General Greene, had assured him that “the British never had an Infantry comparable to ours.”
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B
Y THE END OF THE YEAR
, Steuben had again run dry on funds, so it was off to Philadelphia to beg for a few more scraps from Congress's table. He had learned, from experience and from the counsel of his politician friends, that it did little good to demand large sums of money to compensate all that he had lost by leaving Europe. That argument had clearly worn thin, and Congress just didn't have the funds to make good on such claims. Instead, he emphasized what he had done for the army recently. “I dare assure you that your Enemies cannot oppose to you an Infantry equal to your own,” he boasted to President Elias Boudinot in early December 1782. And it didn't hurt to remind the money-conscious delegates that his administrative reforms had “produced the most important savings to the Public.”
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The approach worked. On the recommendation of a committee chaired by the Baron's loyal friend Alexander Hamilton, Congress forwarded him $2,400 in back pay and a monthly allowance of $300 to cover expenses.
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So, with any luck, Steuben would have enough money to see him through the next campaign…if, indeed, there would be one. Rumors of an imminent peace with Britain flew thick and fast through the streets of the capital. He might be preparing the army for another operation; he might be supervising the dissolution of the army.

Peace, and with it British recognition of American independence, would be a good thing. But there was also good reason to be highly apprehensive of peace. Once the war was officially over, Congress could no longer justify the expense of maintaining an army in the field. But demobilization could also result in fiscal disaster. The soldiers' pay was long in arrears, and would have to be made good; the officers expected half-pay for life or a reasonable lump-sum payment in lieu of a pension. And those obligations simply could not be met, not anytime
soon at least. The Treasury was empty, and the prospects of solvency were quite dim.
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At New Windsor, New York, where the army had encamped for the winter, officers and men alike feared that Congress would welch on its obligations to the military. Egged on by the disaffected in Congress and malcontents in the officer corps, a growing number of army leaders began to toy with the idea of a move against Congress, to force the delegates to meet the army's demands, at bayonet point if need be. Washington, the one man who seemed to have understood the ugly ramifications that would result from a violent clash between army and civil government, defused the more destructive passions of the so-called “Newburgh conspiracy” by mid-March. But even the great general could not drive away the underlying feeling that the politicians were within a hairsbreadth of betraying the army to which they owed everything.

Steuben, who remained in Philadelphia until the end of March, kept his distance from the controversy. But as someone who had himself felt the sting of ingratitude, he could not help but sympathize with his fellow officers. He felt passionately, too, for the men he had trained and led, who had done all that had been asked of them and more. They had done so without pay, food, or clothing, and now it seemed likely that they were going to be sent home without so much as an expression of thanks.

The black, poisonous atmosphere that hovered over New Windsor cantonment and Independence Hall also permeated Steuben's temporary residence outside Philadelphia near Belmont, a country house he dubbed “Bellisarius Hall.” The Baron and his staff lived in dread uncertainty, not knowing if the discipline that they had tried so hard to instill in the Continental Army would completely unravel. “We are frequently in town but receive no pleasure,” Billy North wrote to Ben Walker from Bellisarius Hall. “We dine & suspect…. We go. We return. This is a most infamous world…. Whether troops will be kept up or disbanded, a monarchy or our present government—What will be the event nobody knows.”
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One wonders if anyone in Congress read a deeper meaning into the appellation with which Steuben christened his Philadelphia house. It was named for Belisarius, the great Byzantine general, who had led his armies to victory without a shred of support from his government.

 

I
N MID
-F
EBRUARY
1783, General Washington summoned Steuben to the main army. Peace was not yet a fact, he told the Baron, so the army must be kept prepared for war. Steuben reported to Washington at Newburgh at the end of March.

Though he inspected and drilled the troops as he always did in the spring, it seemed a hollow and pointless enterprise now. Definite word of the conclusion of peace came at the beginning of April. Congress signed the treaty on the eleventh, and Washington—after pondering the wisdom of announcing the peace to his disgruntled troops—proclaimed the formal end of hostilities on April 19. It was precisely eight years, to the day, after the first clashes at Lexington and Concord.

Steuben spent much time that spring at Washington's Newburgh headquarters, discussing with the general the future of the army and not infrequently staying for dinner. He had the unaccustomed luxury of time on his hands, and at Newburgh he could reacquaint himself with the Washingtons and with his old aide Walker. The Washingtons likewise enjoyed the lighthearted banter that the Baron brought to the table; Martha in particular found his accent and his occasional difficulties with the English language highly amusing. The Baron knew when he had an appreciative audience, so he pretended to be clumsier with the language than he actually was. One evening Martha asked him how he passed the time now that his military duties were somewhat reduced. Steuben replied that he read, wrote, played chess, and—for the first time in his life—went fishing. But he knew he wasn't a very good angler, he confessed, for he had sat in a boat in the Hudson for three hours and had caught only two fish. One of them, he said, was a whale. “A whale, Baron, in the North River?” Lady Washington asked. “Yes, I assure you, a very fine whale.” Turning to his staff, he
demanded with a wink, “It
was
a whale, was it not?” Billy North corrected him: “An
eel
, Baron.” Steuben shrugged his shoulders and pretended to be mortally offended by the correction. “I beg your pardon, my Lady, but that gentleman certainly told me that it was a whale.”
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