The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (28 page)

At the commander's request, Steuben and Duponceau left Morristown for Philadelphia on January 16, 1780. After six days of pushing through snowdrifts the height of a man and riding precariously along treacherous, icy roads, the two men arrived in the city, setting up their headquarters at a boardinghouse on Front Street. They did not so much as pause to catch their breath. Steuben presented his written report on the state of the army only four days after his arrival.

That report made for doleful reading, though the members of the Board of War couldn't have been too surprised. Using the devastating statistical evidence of the army's weakness to make his case, the Baron attacked the notion of “incorporation.” Incorporation might save money in the short term, but it would not make the army any more capable of defending the country. It would sap morale, sacrifice experienced officers, and send a message of encouragement to the British and the Loyalists: that the rebels were tiring of the war and were no longer capable of supporting an army. The only possible solution was to enlarge the army through vigorous recruitment, to a minimum strength of thirty thousand men, including a larger cavalry arm.
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The Board weighed Steuben's new proposal against the incorporation plan for more than a month. In the meantime, its members wanted more specific figures on manpower, showing just how many troops would be available when the new campaign began in the summer. Hence a hefty delay, as the sub-inspectors scrambled to compile accurate returns from each and every regiment, at a time when much of the army was scattered around Morristown and the foul weather made routine headcounting an arduous chore. Steuben became so impatient that he could barely contain himself. If recruiting did not start soon, there would be no time to prepare new troops for combat. “We shall
Certainly lose two months at a Time when we ought not to lose two Days,” he grumbled to Washington.
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These were not his only headaches. Unbeknownst to him, Congress and Washington had added yet another set of tasks to his department's unmanageable workload. In mid-January, Congress abolished the office of the mustermaster general and assigned its duties to the inspector general's office. The mustermaster had supervised recruiting and kept tabs on regimental strengths. That department had been defunct for quite some time. Steuben and his assistants had already been taking up the slack for several months, and the merger of the two departments had been under discussion for just as long. But the Baron resented the final decision all the same, because it was presented to him as a fait accompli, “without my knowing any thing of the Matter.” He did not have enough assistants to handle the added labor, he was not allowed to appoint assistants, inflation had diminished his pay to almost nothing, and Congress had not seen fit to give him an expense account to cover the costs of his necessary travel.

Sick at heart—the Board was inclining perceptibly toward Livingston's incorporation plan—and physically ill as well, Steuben lapsed into a despair almost as deep as that he experienced after Monmouth. He felt that he had been backed into a corner. “My dear friend,” he wrote in French to Ben Walker at the end of February, “there is a letter on my table for the Honorable Congress, which has been sealed for a week. It contains my resignation from the office with which America has honored me. The bad state of my private finances compels me to quit a game which I can no longer play.”
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By vowing to resign—something he had done before, but without result—Steuben shook Congress more than he could have imagined. Unlike his earlier threats, this was not an empty one. He did not say he would resign his commission and return to Europe. Instead, he swore that he would resign his “office,” meaning the inspectorship. If he did so, he would remain a major general, but without the extensive travel and extra duties that came from being inspector general. And since Nathanael Greene had also tendered his resignation as quartermaster
general, it must have seemed as if the entire army staff was about to abandon ship.
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Congress took him at his word. Only two days later, the Board of War received congressional authorization to negotiate Steuben's finances. A few days after that, Congress voted to grant the Baron two bills of exchange: one for his expenses in coming to America in 1777, another for his expenses in office to date, for a total of 796 louis d'or. The amount was not huge, given the circumstances. Steuben had to accept a 40 percent discount when he cashed the first bill; the second was given to him at face value, as just over $150,000 in Continental scrip. Yet it was satisfactory, and far more than Steuben had a right to expect from a Congress that had devoted itself to pinching pennies.
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Steuben had not only saved himself—temporarily—from financial ruin, but he had also saved the army.

Early in February, Congress had given its stamp of approval to one of Steuben's recommendations, setting the size of the Continental Army for the 1780 campaign at thirty-five thousand troops. This was five thousand more than Steuben had recommended. The Baron was pleased, though he knew that the number meant nothing if Congress didn't strong-arm the state governments into disgorging their assigned quotas. The Board of War, in the meantime, was not quite so accommodating. On March 16, before harried Ben Walker could get all of the regimental returns forwarded, the Board voted to accept Livingston's incorporation plan. If Congress approved, which they almost certainly would, 25 percent of the army's regiments would disappear in very short order.

This was sheer madness, Steuben thought. Even if the army were increased in size, consolidating the army at this stage of the game would only cause confusion, absorbing all the attentions of the high command at a time when training and preparations for the coming campaign should be the paramount concerns. For all of the effort he had put into showing the Board the disadvantages of incorporation, he might as well have been arguing with the walls.

That was the last straw. The Baron told his opponent Livingston
so, adding that he would return immediately to Morristown, where he was needed. If the Board of War would not listen to him and to reason, then he certainly was of no further use there.

Coming so close on the heels of his February letter, his statement to Livingston might as well have been a resignation threat. The Board was afraid of just that, and they had no desire to alienate a man who had earned for himself the reputation of miracle worker. Livingston himself begged Steuben to stay on in Philadelphia for a little while longer, promising him that he could present his arguments against incorporation directly to Congress. And the Baron, with just a trace of smugness, assented.

To Congress the Baron brought his best and most eloquent arguments against incorporation, citing the damage it would do to morale and to the discipline of the army. The regiments should instead be left intact, and new recruits fed into them until each regiment reached a standard size of 315 rank and file.

Congress listened. Only five days after Steuben's plan was introduced, on March 25, the delegates voted to table the incorporation issue altogether until December 1780 at the earliest. There would be no incorporation that year. The army could focus on recruitment and training, on working with the French, and on beating the Redcoats.

Steuben remained in Philadelphia for another two weeks, hounding the Board about recruiting and looking after Duponceau, who had taken quite ill. The Baron was not entirely satisfied, for despite his qualified victory over the Board of War, Congress had taken no positive steps to bring new recruits into the army. There were, however, signs of hope. In the first week of April, Congress decided to dispatch a special committee to Morristown, to observe the army and discuss the strategic situation with Washington.
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Something else of value came from Steuben's protracted stay in the capital that winter. The fight over the incorporation plan forged a new relationship between the inspector general and the commander in chief. The two men had corresponded throughout the season with a warmth and candor absent from their earlier letters. On an almost
weekly basis Steuben poured out his frustrations, all of the details of his exasperating exchanges with the politicians, to Washington. Washington reassured him and gave friendly encouragement. To be sure, Steuben did ask for more money, but his principal business in Philadelphia was the fate of the army. Steuben put the Cause ahead of his personal interests, and that made a tremendous difference to Washington. Now Steuben was a friend and a trusted adviser. After two years of working side by side, Washington and the Baron had finally become partners in the stewardship of the army.

 

S
TEUBEN WAS GLAD
to leave Philadelphia behind, but the journey back to Morristown was not one of his most pleasant travels. For starters, he had to leave Duponceau behind and make the trip alone. The secretary was still confined to his bed, too sick to travel, which worried Steuben to no end. Despite his crusty exterior and his casual attitude toward his own health, when it came to the members of his staff, the Baron was a doting nursemaid. He left $10,000 Continental behind to cover Duponceau's medical expenses. But life just wasn't the same without his exuberant twenty-year-old translator by his side.
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Nor was Morristown itself a welcome (or welcoming) sight. The snow had just recently receded, leaving a muddy, pestilent wasteland in its wake, populated by hollow-eyed shadows who had once been soldiers in the full vigor of their youth. Clothing and food were not yet reaching the camp in satisfactory quantities, and would not for some time to come. Even a full month after the Baron's reunion with the army, the lack of food was so acute that two entire regiments of the Connecticut Line mutinied, threatening to go home if not fed. The prevailing mood at Valley Forge had been lively compared to this, but then, these men had suffered far more from every conceivable discomfort than the soldiers at the Forge had.

Yet for all that, Steuben resumed his duties as inspector with cautious optimism, or at least a feeling of resignation that came from a realistic appraisal of the limits that had been imposed upon him by
Congress. He could not fix everything that needed to be fixed; he had come to terms with that fact. Without once bemoaning the circumstances of his position, he launched into what by now had become a familiar routine: a showpiece review of the army, followed by intensive training.

The occasion for the review was the visit of the new French ambassador Luzerne. Steuben had only a couple of days to cobble together an appropriate spectacle for the diplomat. Luzerne, Washington, Steuben, and other dignitaries watched from a specially constructed reviewing stand as about twelve hundred infantry staged a mock battle for their benefit. It “made a great noise, if nothing more,” according to one participant. Luzerne was impressed, and that had been the intention. That evening, Luzerne and the generals attended a ball and were entertained by a fireworks display orchestrated by Henry Knox's artillerists. The men and the junior officers engaged in festivities that were more their style. Washington had rewarded them with a gill of rum per man. The raw liquor “took violent hold” of men with empty stomachs, who caroused, sang, and fought with all of the gusto that one would expect from drunken soldiers.
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There was little time for further levity, though, even if the British army remained inactive in New York and Clinton himself was occupied with the siege of Charleston, where Benjamin Lincoln's pitiful remnant of an army sat bottled up and without hope of relief. Soon the Continental camp at Morristown bustled with activity again, much of it the Baron's doing. Regular inspections of the army began anew in the first days of May, as Steuben resumed his twelve-hour, seven-to-seven work schedule. The inspections revealed nothing new, just the customary absenteeism and the perennial neglect of guard duty, and that expiring enlistments would soon whittle the army down from around ten thousand effectives to eight thousand.

Still, Steuben would work with what he had at hand. The task of training the remaining troops began in mid-May. There were few raw recruits in the army, so Steuben and his inspectors could skip over the elementary levels of the
Regulations
and proceed straight to brigade
and divisional maneuvers. By month's end, Steuben introduced mock battles as part of the training program—not for show this time, but with the intent of demonstrating just how the grand maneuvers would actually work in combat. He tried to simulate battlefield conditions, employing cavalry and artillery in the scenarios, while the field music lent the skirling of fife and drum to the din.
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The only real blow to morale came from Charleston, where Lincoln's battered command finally fell to Clinton on May 12. This was no minor setback. It was, in fact, an absolute disaster, perhaps the worst American defeat of the entire war. Any despondency over the loss of Charleston and its defenders, however, was quickly offset by much more encouraging intelligence, news that Washington, Congress, and indeed anyone with rebel sympathies had longed to hear: the French were coming. Six thousand royal troops, under the command of the Comte de Rochambeau, were already en route to America. There was no questioning it this time; Lafayette himself, having just returned from his trip to Paris, brought the good word to Congress. Another six thousand French soldiers, the marquis reported, would shortly follow Rochambeau's corps.

The imminent arrival of French forces electrified both Congress and the high command. Congress, rather belatedly, pressured the states to fill their recruiting quotas and bring their Continental regiments up to strength. Washington's thoughts turned again to the attack. But before he could make any definite plans, the British made up his mind for him. On June 6, 1780, six thousand Redcoats and Hessians left the safety of their camp on Staten Island, crossed into New Jersey, and began to march toward Morristown.