The Battle of New York Explained

0:00Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to history and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like How William Concord England? What it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We got hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history.com slash subscribe. It was hell of a summer storm. The superstitious authors of the ancient world would have struggled to come up with them a potentious omen. Peels of thunder thumped like the bombardment of cannon. Louder, one witness wrote, than a thousand guns fired in use. Lightning forked and flashed. White heat reflected off the dark waters of the Hudson history.

1:01Rain thudded into the river's surface like volleys of muskim balls. American centuries wrapped cloaks around them tight and took shelter in the lee of their cannon, plustered, thickly along the shoreline of New York City. The momentary flashes of lightning illuminated the harbor suddenly, and each time showed the silhouettes of a forest of mass spars and rigging gathered around Staten Island. It was as if the heavens were locked in battle, previewing that which was about to shatter the peace on earth below. Friends, this was pathetic fallacy on a very grand scale, but no, in fact it was more. It's much more tangible than just a literary trick. This storm could be as lethal as battle. Men were killed, surely if they were struck down by enemy fire. Americans we know were hit by bolts of lightning. The mates frisking down their corpses found the coins melted in their pockets. Watchman on exposed defensive works were struck down in this celestial onslaught.

2:05The pious thought that God was talking or shouting more likely. Others insisted it was just go-instental, but in hindsight it's very clear that it was a dramatic, heavenly harbinger of the very earthly onslaught that would follow on the tomorrow. The American knew that onslaught was coming. We expect a very bloody summer of it at New York, their commander George Washington wrote to his brother in early June. I'm sorry to say that we are not either in men or arms prepared for it. For days now the Americans had watched nervously, as the largest amphibious assault fleet in North American history to that point was shuffled around the harbor. Navell ships were loaded with infantrymen. They'd packed up their tents on Staten Island which had briefly been a tentative city, and they'd trudged aboard transport vessels. Naval ships bristling with cannon on their broad sides slid menacingly around the harbor.

3:07Sometimes pushing up the Hudson River to the west of Manhattan, sometimes probing up the east river between Manhattan and Long Island. At dusk on the night of the storm, it was clear that the job of loading those assault troops was complete. Top-master arrayed yards were crossed. The frenetic criss-cross of beetling open boats had still. The British blow, so long anticipated, was about to land. On American witness said it was as if all London was afloat, so great was the force arrayed, and it was indeed astonishing. This was, and I'm going to deliberately pull these superlaces up at the top here because it is remarkable. This was, the biggest British force ever sent overseas to that point in history. In fact, friends, no army of that size had ever been deployed by any nation or empire across such a distance of ocean ever before in recorded history.

4:09It was an awesome statement of Britain's might, but also its determination to regain control of her rebellious colonies in North America. It was a terrifying indicator of just what those rebellious colonies were up against. A global superpower. In the throes of an engineering, a scientific and industrial revolution that allowed it to project such force at such distances. Hundreds of vessels, thousands of men, tens of thousands of muskets, hundreds of thousands of bullets, gallons of rum and barrels of beef. From bases, thousands of miles away across angry grey seas. Folks, I'm taking you back to that storm-lashed night of the 21st of August, 1776, 250 years ago if you're listening to this podcast when we first put it out. The first great pitched battle of the American Revolutionary War was about to begin.

5:11You'll listen to Dance of those History and this is part of my multi-year project. Hit all the big important Revolutionary War anniversaries. This time, it's the story of the largest battle in that war. The setting, appropriately, probably America's most important city. Key of the whole continent according to the future President John Adams. New York City. It was in New York for the world would see what America's dreams of independence were made of. Let's get into it. A year earlier, in the summer of 1775, Lord North, the chief minister, the prime minister, if you like, of his most Britannic majesty, King George III of Great Britain and Ireland, spoke to the King to update him on the unfortunate proceedings in his North American colonies. Protest had turned to riot, to resistance, to rebellion.

6:15He informed his monarch that the conflict is now, I quote, grown to such a height that it must be treated as a foreign war. War always means blood and treasure and uncertainty. And it also meant the King's rebellious possessions in North America would need to be conquered, county by county, a vast, vast undertaking. A senior British military officer knew the scale of that challenge. He commented that taking America as it at present stands, it is impossible to conquer it with our British army. To attempt to conquer it internally by our land force is as wild an idea as ever contraverted common sense. So listen to him. Britain, you see, was not Persia, it was not Rome, it was not the Mongols. Britain was a sea power. It's empyantil a few years before it had been one of really nodes of control, very useful scraps of land dotted all over the planet. Gibraltar, Bombay, Halifax, Barbados, a constellation really a valuable port controlling sea lanes and lucrative commodities or markets that were close at hand.

7:19Britain had never been in the business of conquering swathes of territory with massive armies. The brutal subjugation of neighbouring Ireland had taken centuries and repeatedly brought London close to bankruptcy and despair. And that was a few hours sail away and a mere 250 miles from top to bottom. Instead rather than carve out massive empires on the continent, Britain had invested its money and its manpower in its navy and its fleet. It was the finest in the world, no question, the finest that there had ever been. But that meant that Britain had a small army less than 50,000 troops, it was tiny in fact. And those red coated lands were spread across Britain, Ireland and the empire. Thanks for a very successful previous war, the 70th war, Britain found itself controlling vast, vast North American territories. The British colonies in North America had not been conquered by huge armies of redcoats, a very different process of colonisation had taken place there. And that colonisation had been very successful, these colonies were vast and now they were

8:22in a state of rebellion. And if those rebels proved resistance and tenacious, if they just dug in, hit behind hedges and fences and shot at the Brits wherever they went, well then the Brits would inevitably eventually lose. It was far too big to conquer Hedro by Hedro. And far-sighted Brits got this, the endless to this. One British general suggested that they withdraw all together and wait for the Americans to fall out between themselves. There was a Secretary at war, another member of the King's government called Batlord Barrington. He also thought it was best to follow a piranha naval strategy. So blockade the coast, take control of the water and let the internal politics collapse. Others though disagreed. Now these were often bewigged gentlemen who'd never tried to drag an artillery piece across the impossible terrain of the Hudson Valley. They had ideas, friends, they had other ideas. They overruled these cautious councils. One of those types of guys, Lord Germain, he was the colonial secretary. And he had the idea that, where he said, one decisive blow on land is absolutely necessary.

9:22As there is not common sense in attracting a war of this sort, he went on to say, I should be foreexerting the utmost force of this kingdom to finish rebellion in one campaign. So there's general acceptance that the rebellious colonies are just so too big to re-conquer bit by bit. But there's not been the last time you had this, folks. Perhaps one hard blow and the whole situation resolve itself. So short war fallacy alert. One hard shavon will be home by Christmas for tea and medals. He and others were of this opinion. So they thought Britain had to win. They had to do it fast. Or it would simply bankrupt the country. Or maybe on the means of Britain to conquer the American colonies. We would bankrupt the country. So Britain needed a climactic decisive campaign. When you are fighting a rigly annoying slippery enemy, you need to find something or somewhere that the Americans have to defend. They have to commit their entire effort to. So you can annihilate it. And with that, the rebellion, that's the plan.

10:25By the way, the counterpoint to all this is what the Americans realize is all they have to do is survive. They just have to wait for British money and patience and focus on morale to desert them. So the British are looking for something that they hope will prove decisive. And their gaze fell on what was probably the most important city of the Americas. New York. Perhaps 4,000 buildings packed into under square mile perched at the very southern end of Manhattan. Manahata, Hilly Island, as the Native Americans called it. It controlled the mouth of a mighty river highway running into the interior. It was a very rich city. It would also split the rebellious American colonies in two. You've got Rhode Island Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire to the north, and you've got all the others to the south. The British rightly felt the Americans couldn't just abandon New York without a fight. It would be a devastating blow for their cause. Who's going to sort of get excited about the rebellion? Who's going to join up to fight in the rebel army that simply just admitted it was no

11:26match for the British to abandon New York to the British? So King George's men would strike at the heart of the American colonial world, and they expected the Americans to stand and fight for that heart. Now, there was an added bonus, I should say, that this was a very commercial city, and it was a bastion of loyalism. Many New Yorkers thoroughly disapproved of the excitable New England radicals. A bunch of tack-dodging smugglers up there in Massachusetts. This wealthy city in New York had benefited enormously from Britain's transatlantic empire. The city, in fact, was a strange mix of Dutch and English architecture. The steep gables of Amsterdam reminded visitors that only a century earlier, just a recentry, this had been New Amsterdam, not New York. It was the centerpiece of Holland's North American empire. The riverfront there in New York was packed with walls, built out into the rivers. The warehouses packed with skins brought down from the interior, and foreign imports on their way into the colonies.

12:27We need to bear in mind that already New York City was extending beyond Wall Street, where the Dutch wall had guarded the city from the north. It now sprawled as far as the common, which was uptrying to grass, now approximately city hall park. Much of the rest of it happened with farmland, and well, there were a few other settlements on the island like Greenwich and Harlem in the very north. For the British effort, the city was just the start. Beyond New York, the British strategy was then to split those colonies into, taking New York would be like smashing a wedge into a log of wood, and then you just hit that wedge and drive it right through the heart of the tree trunk. The British would push up from New York, up the Hudson River, and drive New England away from the colonies further south. Once New York City had been secured, they'd got the Hudson is navigable 150 miles inland. Meanwhile, the really clever bit is a force from Canada would advance down that natural corridor of lakes and rivers from Montreal, those trackways, those paths worn bare-hair

13:29by boots of endless invading armies over the previous decades, until that force from Canada also reached the Hudson and completed the encirclement of New England. Now, this is a very interesting situation in military history because both sides sort of agreed that that was the best strategy for the British to follow. After the war, one side is rather happy to let the other side dash headlong, tilting at the wrong strategic objective, but on this occasion rightly or wrongly, both sides did believe that New York was the key, and that this was the best British strategy that they could have followed. So the commander of the Revolutionary American Army, George Washington, called New York a post of infinite importance. Should the British who went on get that down and the command of the North River, meaning the Hudson River, they can stop the intercourse between the Northern and Southern colonies upon which depends the safety of America. So strategically New York was a bit of a no-brainer for the British, but also operationally it was right for the taking. They had the most effective Navy in the history of the world, as I said.

14:30New York is a river estuary, a mess of river branches in Ireland, 800 miles of waterfront. Manhattan, the island, is separated from Long Island by the East River, from New Jersey by the Hudson, and from the North by the Harlem River. And with ships, you can outflank, you can get behind, you can surprise the lead-and-footen troops are sure. Whoever commands the sea must command the town, wrote a senior American soldier. Because the tide can push you 10 miles in one direction without you really lifting a finger. Before grumbling infantrymen are sure, rubbing sleep out of their eyes, have formed up and started marching. Then you can just ride the tide back again as it changes. The enemy can respond by fortifying, by entrenching, and placing obstacles on one stretch of coast. They can break their backs doing that. And all you have to do is sail a bit further and land somewhere else. Anyway, that was the plan. That's what it looked like on the map. And the man giving the job of translating that sort of operational plan, that strategy into actually results on the ground, into union flags fluttering once again over public

15:33buildings, was William Howe. He's so likely like that, William Howe, but he certainly was a tried and tested commander. He was a man of enormous talent. Yet, he was also a man, spoiler alert, who would perform so badly in 1776 that it left people wondering whether he was deliberately sabotaging things. He was, I think, trying to work it out, a half first cousin twice removed from George III. His mum was George I's half sister. Now the rumor was that she was actually lovers with George I. So William Howe might even be a closer relative, but let's not go there. His older brother George had been killed in America. He'd been killed leading a charge against entrenched French soldiers during the last war. So William was not from a family of perfumed dandies. William himself had sweated up the heights of Abraham outside Quebec in 1759. He'd smelt the acrid clouds of powder smoke as the British and Americans, to shoulder shoulder to blast King Louis men out of North America, 1520 years before.

16:35He'd watched the frozen corpses stacked up like firewood in the miserable winter that followed. He'd survived the horrors of the assault on Havana in Cuba during that same war when they were just so many way to die. The British forces winnowed down by tropical disease. You might meet your end vomiting blood from yellow fever or the Spanish bayonet in your guts. He was a veteran. And perhaps because he was a veteran, perhaps he knew a four-lewn cause when he saw one. He did not want this job. He didn't even pretend. He said, my going hither was not of my seeking. I was ordered and could not refuse. The King overlooked his lack of enthusiasm and promoted him to full general and gave him command of his majesty's army in North America in early 1776. I suppose one thing is you could look forward to an unusually warm relationship with his naval counterpart because the British fleet in North America was commanded by his brother,

17:39Richard. General Hous first great contribution to the war was ordering an embarrassing retreat. On March 17, 1776, the British had withdrawn from Boston. American guns had been hauled up some commanding ground and they now overlook the city and threatened to smash it and its British garrison to dust. How evacuated? There was chaotic. There was 78 crowded transport ships. They all sailed out of the harbor. They left a mound of supplies behind. They left a hundred horses. It was embarrassing. They sailed to Halifax where how reorganized? Meanwhile the British decided to send two thousand men to the Carolinas where there was a particularly disastrous campaign commanded by General Henry Clinton. The local British governors there who had been kicked out and were basically living on little ships off the coast. They had promised that with a force of 200 redcoats they could bring Virginia or North Carolina or South Carolina back to their state of obedience. Instead 200 redcoats were killed or maimed and not one acre, not one hectare had been

18:44reclaimed for the king. It had been a disaster. So all eyes now switched back to the summer's campaign and that was the campaign for New York. General Hous heard that the rebels were digging strong fortifications around New York City and that was an nightmare. The British had learned a very harrowing lesson the year before. Outside Boston in a place called Bunker Hill. How had seen the British survivors march back into Boston with blood, spattered gators and bridges? He'd seen how the Americans, when they were entrenched behind good solid defenses, nice big earthwork, you can rest your musket on. They were very, very expert with those muskets and they were happy enough to die for their cause. They had turned the slopes of Bunker Hill into a killing ground. Red coated corpse is littered the slopes of that terrible hill. How wanted no repeat of that? Instead, he hoped that Washington might be encouraged to march out of his defenses and face the British on the field of battle. He wrote that nothing is more desired or sought by us as Washington doing that.

19:47That said how would be the most effectual means to terminate this expensive war? How knew that if Washington built strong defenses and stuck behind them? Many wrote that the Americans would be able to spin out the campaign without exposing themselves to any decisive stroke. So how's going into battle, crossing his fingers and hoping that Washington's going to present his army for destruction? Yet again, friends, a general is going to war hoping that the enemy would conform to his expectations. It's a recipe for disaster. How was definitely impatient to get underway, strike before those defenses were completed? But he had a big problem. Supplies were just dribbling in too slowly. Transport ships battled spring gales near Atlantic. It was not until the 11th of June that how felt strong enough and well supplied enough to leave Halifax. He had 9,000 men with him. And the men really are a precious commodity. Troops are hard to find in Britain. They just weren't enough recruits. The government tried everything. The Scottish Highland Chief Simon Fraser raised the regiment of Highlanders, the 71st

20:50Highlanders, 2,000 men he raised. And they sailed with the 1,000 men of another Scottish Highlander unit, the Black Watch. The troopers you could empty the Highlands of Scotland and still not have nearly enough troops. And so the British government had turned to another source of fire-eating war-like folk who were happy enough to charge into a blizzard of lead at the slightest provocation. They tried the Scots. Next, they tried the Germans. They recruited German mercenaries. The Brits tried to get 20,000 Russians out of Catherine the Great, but that didn't work. The small German states, Brunswick Wolfenbuttl and the landgraveate of Hesse Castle. Amazing. We're just 300,000 people in it, about half the size of London. Hesse Castle was one of Europe's tiniest, tiniest states, but also one of the most militarized. All Hesse and males registered for military service at the age of 7. And from 16 to 30, they all, every single one of them, had to present themselves annually to the recruiting office.

21:51As always, there's always a loophole. Important trades and professions were exempted, but others, especially vagrants or the unemployed, the unemployed, well, they were expendable and they were given a uniform and a musket and taught how to march and shoot. In this period, depending on what the market was like, the demand, as many as 15% of the entire population of this little tiny country were serving in uniform, about a quarter of households had someone serving in the army. As I reckon, a smidge more than the UK during the First World War and a much higher proportion at the time than even heavily minotried pressure, which as you know, was not a state with an army, but an army with a state. So there was nothing particularly novel about hiring these mercenaries. That's how the rulers of this place made their money. In the War of Austrian Succession, both Britain and Bavaria had employed Hesse and Soldiers, which meant that they'd often end up serving against each other on opposite sides of the battlefield. What a world. In the end, Germany would supply as many as 35,000 troops in this war, about a quarter of

22:58British forces. And Britain paid millions of pounds for these men. It was a lucrative business for their rulers, but the men themselves would pay a terrible price. A quarter of them would die in the Americas. A quarter would defect or be taken prisoner and settle, just simply disappear. So only around half of them would ever return home. Projecting all these men across the ocean, sending them far away across the ocean, had never ever been attempted on this scale before. Thousands and thousands of tons of shipping were required to carry them across and supply them once they were there. An annoying number of these transport vessels would fall into enemy hands during the epic voyage across the Atlantic. 600 red coats one stage ended up in the wrong place. They were snapped up and clapped in American jails in the space just a couple of weeks. How raged that this was impenetrable stupidity? While the British had to jump through these hoops and gather their forces for a war-winning knockout blow, the Americans waited and prepared.

23:58George Washington had enjoyed success in his first campaign as the leader of this new continental army. He had closed the net on Boston. He had held together a diverse eccentric army. He turned a mass of amateurs into something more professional and he had chased the British out of Massachusetts. But 1776 would be the real test. Would this young army be able to take the field against the British? Would they be able to defend New York? He would do his best. Throughout the late spring, he was just sending floods of orders and messengers and misceves to everybody. He commandeered a lovely spot. He moved his headquarters out of New York City into a beautiful 30 acre state with a grand house that had been the British commander in chiefs headquarters during the last war against the French and North America. It was called the Richmond Hill Estate, which by the way would be brought by Aaron Byrne it was from there the left for his duel with Hamilton. That stood a smidge south of Greenwich Village, a few hundred meters inland from the Hudson.

24:58Very close in St. Louis, to where I spent a very pleasant couple of weeks, quite a few weeks in fact, in the early summer of 2001. Little did I know how close I was to the Great Man's headquarters. Washington also had manpower concerns. He spent much the war dealing with headcount. He wrangled with soldiers who only signed up for a year, men whose terms of service came to an end at New Year's, and he decried their dirty mercenary spirit. And they no doubt replied that some Republican virtues all very well for the owners of large inherited estates, but it's not a feed and clothe the common man's wife and kids. Armies need paying and supplying. They also need purpose and identity in Washington had to forge, had to create a united force of Americans. Because the units that arrived to join his army, they were colonial units. They often regard each other as foreigners. One soldier said he'd rather serve with Indians than men from a different colony. There was no standard uniform. There was a brown coat that was issued, but it quickly wore out.

26:00There wasn't really uniformity of weapons. They did have quite a lot of gunpowder, lucky for them. Enterprising merchants and ventures would slip through the British blockade and come back with gunpowder from France or the Caribbean. My favorite story is about one crew. They sailed to Bermuda. They repelled down a rope at night through a ventilation hole into the Royal Powder magazine in Bermuda. The unlocked door from inside rolled out the powder barrels onto waiting ships. That is Hollywood stuff. There was one other disaster for the British when the supply ship Hope lost her convoy in foul weather. She was sailing from Britain to North America. She was captured alone by the Americans off Boston. An onboard was 75 tons of gunpowder, 1600 muskets now the stores as well. In addition, led was collected from every source possible. The weights on fishing nets, and puter dishes and drain pipes, bullets were made and wrapped into cartridges. It was non-stop work. Somehow to his great credit, Washington managed to cobble together 28,000 men in and around

27:01New York to defend it. But despite his endless reminders and cleanliness on the importance of wetter sight, latrines, sickness soon ripped through this force. That meant a quarter of the number were laid up. They were writhing, sweating, shivering, spewing up in barns and lean twos across Manhattan and Mongolia. So realistically, less than 20,000 were fit for duty. I mean, you've got to remember, disease stalks these armies. Half of Washington's men, what we might call regular troops, men who aspire to be full-time professional soldiers. They could fight and march and organize and die exactly like European armies at the time. The other half were militia, or local levies. These were part-timers from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. They might be well trained and well armed and repaired. They might not be. There was a lot of variation. Their willingness to take a bullet in unflinching obedience to their officers, possibly a little less enthusiastic than their regular comrades. At this point, though, before the start of the campaign, Washington strangely, I actually

28:05like the British, seemed to want a decisive battle. Now, remember, the British want one because they don't think that they can afford to fight their way across the American colonies. They can't bear the expense of fighting this war, as unimaginable. Washington wants a battle because he didn't trust his army to stay together for much longer. Now, I say they want the same thing. There's a subtle difference. The British hoped the Americans would march out and fight them hand-to-hand in the open field. Washington wants a bigger version of bunker hill. He wants the British to hurl their troops at well-fortified positions, and they would die in their ranks. He wanted to see the corpses of highlanders, landowners, west countrymen, Irishmen, German, far from home, fantastically hard to replace, lying dead or breathing their last on a Brooklyn hillside. And he hoped that striking bloody defeat for the British might win America its freedom. The weeks passed, the British attack still did not come. Washington spent his time upscaling the defence of the city.

29:08He sunk vast resources into it, but illiterate sunk them. This was guttled. They were deliberately sunk, sent to the bottom, tried block various channels in the rivers. And glittering New York became a frontline fortress. Many of the houses were shut up. It was if apparently a plagued struck. Half of the 25,000 inhabitants of left town once it looked like war was coming their way. And once the rebel army had marched in with its five syndromes. There was a curfew at night. And Washington dug defenders in every conceivable landing point. So all the roads leading back from the water, from the warves sticking to the harbour, all of these roads were barricaded. Everyone had been forced to wield a picker or a shovel. The whites worked on one day. Black enslaved people worked on alternate days. But strangely the more he fortified, the more he needed to fortify. Because you end up with a classic case of fortification creep. So he's got these barricades, these batteries of cannons. They're now able to stop any frontal assault on the city. But go to the site of some of those revolutionary war defenses today, like Old Slip Park,

30:08with the ferry terminal just to your left. And you gaze a few hundred meters to the south. And what do you see? Well, you see Governor's Island. Now that's a dangerous place for cannon if it's in enemy hands. So a thousand men have to be sent to Governor's Island to dig in fortifications there and mount ten heavy cannon. So hopefully, Washington thought that would stop British ships from poking up the East River. But from your vantage point, right there on the In Lower Manhattan, you can also see Brooklyn. Now it's a borough of the city of New York. It's perched near the tip of Long Island. But your look up, it sits on a hill. That shoreline is reasonably steep. And if you look up there and think, how, a battery of guns in Brooklyn would pound these New York, these Manhattan defenses to dust. So you have to fortify Brooklyn as well. Brooklyn heights were now turned into a fortress. Because Brooklyn heights is the key to defending New York. But then what's the key to defending Brooklyn heights? Because the sun went on, men hacked and dug and felled and then banked until there was

31:09a line of fortifications to protect Brooklyn heights from an assault from the interior of Long Island. They used the landscape here. There's the long natural slope all built on now. I feel it's called the Guarnas Heights. But the trouble is it never ends. Who or what would defend the interior of Long Island? Remember, thanks to those British ships, they can choose the timing and location of the assault. They had a large force of professionals. However many men Washington had, this landscape would swallow them up and would make his army vulnerable to being defeated peace meal. It was sort of a nightmare for Washington. He was entrenching across ever wider areas, spreading his men out more and more thinly. But how was it having great time, either? He was cooped up a board ship on a very tedious 600 mile voyage from Halifax, New York. It took a fortnight. They're averaging about two miles an hour. Essentially, it was on a hot Saturday morning. The British general stood on the course deck of H.M.S. Greyhound and rounded breezy point

32:11entering New York Harbour. He was pleased to see that Norfolk had been made to protect the entrance to the Harbour with guns on Sandy Hook and the Rockaway Peninsula. So it meant the fleet could enter New York Harbour untroubled by enemy cannon fire. The city was quick to find out the news that the British had arrived. Head and white striped flags were hoisted atop Staten Island. That was the pre-arranged signal for an enemy fleet. And there was uproar. Signal guns roared, men dashed around, dashing to their defensive positions. Officers wives crowded onto ferries heading for New Jersey. Refugees straddling, heaped wagons headed north out of the city. We have one of the American lookout reports and it says that the endless stream of ships now filled New York Harbour. There was so many masks, it was said to look like a forest of trimmed pine trees. And in some senses the lookout was right. The masks were simply pine trees trimmed off their branches, sanded down and lashed upright with shrouds. How had hoped to land direct on Long Island, go to Graves-N Bay,

33:15just along from Coney Island Beach? But he found strong American defenses there. So no problem, he altered course and he seized Staten Island instead. Grateful soldiers who've been cooped up for ages piled onto the ships boats and onto the shore. And pitched tents and dug down fresh water gleefully. They could stretch their legs now. Though local people on Staten Island saw allegiance to the king and escaped slaves flocked to offer their services to British because it was under to the British encouraged slaves to escape their servitude. They'd offered them their freedom and that would hopefully disrupt the economies, the rebellious colonies. The first acres of one of those colonies, New York, had now been liberated or reclaimed or pacified or conquered or occupied, depending on your point of view. Interestingly as the British were taking Staten Island, great events were afoot in Philadelphia. The delegates assembled from these rebellious North American colonies agreed to the text of a declaration. It was a declaration of independence.

34:17On the night of the 4th of July following those deliberations, copies were printed of this declaration, one of which I was lucky enough to film with recently for a documentary on our history of video channel. Make sure you go and check it out. Those copies were sent all over what were no longer rebellious colonies, but an independent United States. One of them was spirited the 90 miles from the Philadelphia printers to Washington's handsome HQ on Manhattan. So on the 9th of July, a few days later, Washington ordered the Army to assemble on parade grounds at 6 p.m. sharp. Washington himself attended the Master on New York Common, and there were units from New York and Connecticut, they formed a hollow square. Washington rode into the middle, and one of his assistants, an ADCLE, unfailed a printed piece of paper and read the declaration in a carrying voice. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

35:17The soldiers listened and everyone present you instantly, that what had been an imperial, fractrousidal squabble over tax and devolution and trade, was now something very different. It was now an attempt by a free people to determine the nature of the society in which they lived. A righteous struggle rendered by the prose of Thomas Jefferson. This was not a squalid fight for money in power and land. It was one unlike any before in the history of mankind. Washington's assistant apparently was horse, by the time he finished the declaration. As he declared that these colonies were now free and independent states, there were loud, loud cheers. In fact, there was a very wild party. Crowds rushed down Broadway and tore down the statue of George III, which had been on Bowling Green. His head was put on a spike outside of Tavan. The 4,000 pounds of lead that they got from this process,

36:18melting it down, was turned into muskipals, 42,000 of them. While the Americans celebrated their new independence, General Howe, the British General, left the army of the new republic well alone. He led the loan for weeks. He waited. Green forcements, dribbling in his seas. He got Clintons battered North Carolina force, arrived on the 1st of August, remember the ones that had been sent down there in our turn. On the 12th of August, German mercenaries and more British troops arrived from Europe. One naval squadron set out from the river Clyde in Scotland, and it had taken four months to cross the Atlantic. By the middle of August, howe had around 30,000 men and 400 ships. The logistics needed to supply them, just astonishing. They're surrounded by hostile terrain, so the bread has to come from Ireland. The rum ration for the men was a gallon a month per soldier, so just do the math on that. All of it carried by ship. And it's not just the men, you've got 4,000 horses that needed 20,000 tons of hay and oats every year.

37:22And astronomical costs are being racked up here. So there's no one of the French ambassador in London who no doubt was totally thrilled by all this. Wrote in a secret dispatch to his boss in a Versailles. This ruinous and mad war is the reverse of the philosopher's stone for England. The question that everyone to know was where would that rum-swilling army strike? And that question was particularly terrifying one for Washington. He wrote that British command of the sea was an amazing advantage. And their mobility kept the Americans, I quote, in a state of constant perplexity and the most anxious conjecture. I'm not surprised, he just didn't know where the British were going to strike. Washington had 3,000 men on Long Island. He also had to send a large force to the north of Manhattan, to the north of the city to protect his main artery, King's Bridge, Free Bridge, the two crossing points on the Harlem River, where Manhattan is linked to the rest of the country. In public though, Washington put on a good show. He was less pessimistic.

38:23He sent a lyrical message to his army around this time, which I might quote here. The time is now near at hand, which will most probably determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves. The fate of unborn millions will now depend under God on the courage and conduct of this army. They must therefore animate and encourage each other and show the whole world that a free man contending for liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth. Fine words. Still, general how? Weighted. There was an abortive attempt to negotiate, but this all failed when he realized that he couldn't use Washington's titles, because Washington was no longer Mr. Washington. He was his excellency, George Washington, but the bridge couldn't acknowledge his status, conferred by the new independent republic, and the Americans would not allow themselves to respond to any other form of address. So difficult to arrange peace talks if you can't agree about the identity of those who you're trying to talk to. On the night of the 21st of August, that was the night of the storm, with which I began this

39:28episode, the lightning flashed and forked the storm, raged, and people knew that the bridge blow was finally about to land, because they'd watched the British filing back and bought their transport ships for previous few days. The rest on Staten Island had fattened all the red coats up and they'd recover their health after their long miserable Atlantic crossings or their trips down from Halifax or Carolinas. And they were now ready to go. Officers removed insignia of rank, the reputation of American sharpshooters was already deadly. The men were issued with three days worth of provisions, issued with extra rum, and blankets. The D-Day was indeed the day after the storm, the 22nd of August 1776. The sky was crystal blue. The air was clear after that downpour, the hillsides were green. Witnesses report there was never a more perfect day. Perfect too. For war. The winner waves or stiff winds to discomfort, the flat bottoms amphibious assault

40:30craft, which each held 50 men. They beethal across the calm waters of New York Harbor towards Long Island. At 8am that morning a blue and white flag broke out above the Mism top master HMS Phoenix, a signal gun crashed, the assault on New York. I'd begun. You listen to Dan Snow's history at there's more coming up. Are you looking for the perfect podcasts to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights? Well, look no further than the award-winning after dark myths, misdeeds, and the paranormal with me, Maddie Pelling. And me, Anthony Delaney, we are historians and love all things gloomy and macabre. From Tudor executioners and ancient Egyptian death rituals to which trials and folklore feel transported back in time on after dark, out every Monday and Thursday wherever you get

41:33your podcasts. And guess what, we're also now on YouTube. After dark, a podcast from History Hit. The attacking troops packed in the boats held their muskets barrels pointing at the cloudless sky so that the muskets rounds wouldn't roll out. As they hit the shallows, hit the surf line, sailors threw a keg jankrat, stopped the boats sluing around and breaching. The men jumped into the wastey of water, the sailors then hauled on those keg jankers, hauled on those cables, heave the boats back off the shingle before the men on the thwarts could dig their blades in and speed back to the ships from the boatload of assault troops. Back on the beach encouraged by the bellows of the sergeants, the attacking infantry charged in land. A spearhead of 4,000 men landed at Denise's ferry, a roundabout where Denise's wolf is today. Not the most beautiful place I've ever been, but a lot of concrete, lots of change there. But that's where it happened.

42:34Go and check it out. 5,000 troops followed them landing at Graves' Enbay shortly afterwards. That meant before noon as many as 15,000 men and 40 cannon were assured. The Americans on Long Island didn't defend all of the long shoreline, they just didn't have enough troops. Skirmishes took potshots before falling back and the British troops pushed in land. The Empire was now striking back. It was on a roll. After a strange set of disappointments and embarrassments and setbacks, this was the British war machine humming along, moving, fighting on its terms at its tempo. Officers rejoiced. One wrote, after a few beatings, the people will begin to return to their senses. And other officers predicted that the Americans would be weird with disorder and panting after the suites of peace. So the British are obviously feeling quite optimistic at this point. Washington cautiously sent reinforcements to Long Island during the day. In case this was a fate, this was a trick. And that meant the British would face roughly 7,000

43:35men on Long Island. Most of these men were in forts guarding the tactically important high ground on which the little village of Brooklyn stood. In front of those forts, trees had been felled to clear fields of fire, a tangle of sharp and sticks and stakes, and thorn bushes had been stacked up to the back to 18th century barbed wire. And then guarding those forts beyond those forts, like I said earlier, there was a line of defenses on the slope that I mentioned before, the Guarnas heights, that runs along the axis of Long Island to the east of Brooklyn. It's 150 feet high, not mountainous, but commanding on a battlefield where a fold in the ground gives you enormous advantages. And noticeable today if you're trying to bicycle up 60th Street, for example, heading up towards Brooklyn. These hillsides were pretty steep and they were heavily wooded. But there were roots through the hillsides, like passes through a chain of mountains. Each one of these was defended by about 500 men or sally more. Well, not every single one of these passes, as we shall see. General Clinton was one of the senior

44:37British officers. Now, on the whole, he was an enormous pain in the backside for General Howe. But to be fair, Clinton, the man had grown up on Long Island and he did give decent advice on these occasions. It was a little bit self-aware. He admitted that his zeal might have been troublesome for his colleagues. And he suggested on this occasion, in fact, this was not troublesome. He's just on this occasion that they should make a reconnaissance to check whether the Americans had indeed fortified every one of these passes in the heights. And how agreed, he was keen to avoid frontal assaults on strongly entrenched positions, and I've said many times, he had stood up to his ankles in the blood and body parts of British infantry at Bunker Hill. He had no appetite for repeating that attack. In the teeth of well-amed muskutry, volleys fired by men who certainly knew their business. And I should say, I mentioned as all the brother that began the podcast, his older brother had died in just that circumstance in the previous war, leading a frontal assault against troops that were professional and well dug in. And this reconnaissance proved to be a very good idea. It's very valuable because they did discover that three passes were protected.

45:41But a fourth, the one to the north, the most distant from the British landings, a fourth was not. It was Jamaica Pass and it was wide open, undefended. So the plan came together. How would lead a large force guided by Clinton and the Vanguard through Jamaica Pass and up into the village of Bedford, whose name remains in them, type pack grid system of Brooklyn today. And once Bedford a shot would be fired, that would be the signal for two other assaults that would go straight up the Guana Heights and that would keep the Americans divided and distracted. Meanwhile, Washington was still putting more and more troops into Long Island. He recognized it a bit himself, but unforgivably, he did not put a blocking force in that Jamaica Pass. In the end, a subordinate commander put five mounted men there, paid for out of his own pocket for which he was not reimbursed, by the way. And that's definitely not enough to stop 10,000 redcoats. However, fired up in the cause of liberty you might be. That British column of redcoats stepped off at eight o'clock at night on the 26th of August. They left flatlands. Clinton was in the lead. Their tents were all

46:47left standing. Their fires were left burning to trick anyone observing them. The column was like classic mix of British armies. There were guardsmen. There were Highlanders. There were normal line regiments recruited from round Britain Island, men who took the King's Shilling from the ale house of London or Northumberland Glasgow, Danygall. There were aristocratic officers, men who bore the scars from the lash on their backs. Many of these men had crossed the sea for the first time to step out here onto an island off the coast of America. The column was about two miles long when it was marching. It had supply wagons with it. Those axles were muffled. And if trees fell across the road, they'd be cut with soles, not hacked with hatchets to keep the noise down to a minimum. The moon was nearly full, so you could see where they were going. But silence and surprise were essential. It's so easy for me to describe these night marches. You just say, off they went and they arrived 12 hours later. But the reality for those people that took part was just grim. The traffic was slow. It was arbitrary. The column would stop

47:53as units bunched up. Officers at the lead had arguments every time they reached a crossroad. Men dropped to the ground to grab some sleep. Sargent kicked them awake. They'd shuffle another 20 yards. The musket is heavy with its wooden stock and its iron barrel is growing heavier on the shoulder all the time. Your feet are hot and rubbing and blistered and a bit soft after a long sea voyage. They didn't know where they were going or why. They didn't know what they're going to face when the sun came up. They might have to face masked enemy volleys. They were have to hack their way through tangled offences and fell trees and thorn bushes. They might have to traverse a kill zone similar to that which, Lord Howe, the older brother of their commander, was shot down in 20 years before. It must have been a grueling experience. And the following day would indeed be dramatic. Early in the small hours of the 27th, the British force did capture the five men manning that most northerly pass. After this lopsided little British victory, the British troops pushed up the road and scaled the Guana's heights.

48:54And it is very rare to say this of an 18th century battle plan. But the surprise attack was going absolutely and perfectly according to the plan. Meanwhile, further south at dawn, a brisk little action had broken out when British troops who had been looting a watermelon patch were attacked by Americans, defending the very southern end of the Guana's heights. Delaware and Maryland units nearby bravely marched towards the sound of the guns, the scrapping, and it developed into a sort of sharp battle, an exchange of fire. In fact, this was it. This is the first pitch battle. And in fact, this will be the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War. And it's begun right here, right now, it began in the watermelon patch. The British also reinforced their troops and the Americans were pushed back. And as that was happening, the sun rose red and angry. A witness said the columns of red coats gleamed like sheets of fire in the rising sun. The Americans also sent reinforcements and volleys were exchanged. The American troops performed

49:56worryingly well under fire thought the British. They fired a volley and then they would withdraw in good order without messing up their dressing, without falling out their ranks. It's one of the most difficult maneuvers to perform on the battlefield. Now, this is the first time in the American Revolutionary War that two bodies of regular troops lined up on the battlefield and shot to each other with musket. This was the beginning really of a new kind of warfare. And it was a sign that this derided colonial rabble, according to the British, was in fact nothing of the sort. One American wrote, the British advanced within about 20 yards of us and began a heavy fire from their cannon and mortars for both the balls and shells flew very fast now and then taking off ahead. Our men stood it amazingly well. Not even one of them showed a disposition to shrink. Our orders were not to fire until the enemy came within 50 yards of us. But when they perceived we stood their fire so coolian, resolutely, they declined coming any nearer, although treble

50:58our number. The Americans were brave as they sustained casualties. There's one sorry of a lieutenant colonel from a Pennsylvania unit. He took a bullet to the brain and dropped without a word to the ground. They were definitely suffering, but the Americans were holding off the empire. What the Americans unfortunately didn't know was that this was a diversion. But even so, their resistance was stout and very unwelcome for the British. The British unit down here was commanded by a general who claimed in Parliament that he could lead 5,000 men, the length of the Americas. So far that was already looking like one of the most grotesque overestimations in military history. And this maelstrom of fire must have felt rather different from the green benches of the House of Commons with the warm gentle murmurs of approval from the armchair echoing around the chamber. I wonder if he was beginning to rethink his boasts. The two lines eyeballed each other at what became known as battle hill. Now roughly speaking, in and around the Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn, where you still actually get a sense of the

51:59steepness of that hill. And the Americans were happy. Reinforcements were sent down there. They appeared to be holding off the British to Britishers, they certainly stopped. The Hessians to the east were lackluster as well. And at nine in the morning, the Americans were feeling confident. Then as clocks struck the hour, two cannon roared from the direction of Bedford. It was the sound of impending doom. The British flanking column was precisely on time, on schedule, and it was now behind the American lines on the Guanas heights. The British juggernaut rolled forward. They advanced on all fronts. The Americans faced that most terrible of predicaments. They have an enemy to their rear. Now men can be brave when there's an enemy to their front, but their logistics, their supplies, their escape routes, their personal possessions, their commanders out of the rear, their homes. That is the natural order of things. A man will go to extreme lengths to hold out against enemy they can see in front of them. But when the word spreads to your enemy are already behind you, pouring like poison into the

53:02innards of your army, capturing your rear areas, cutting off your route to friendly territory, to your family, stopping supply wagons and barrels of rum and water and extra gunpowder, well that really saps the will to resist. Now these Americans had an enemy to the front and the rear. No, thank you very much, not a good situation. In the centre of the heights, the Hessians advanced and the Americans, while they melted away, they scattered back to the fortifications in Brooklyn itself. The Hessians had a particular reputation. They were foreign boys in a distant land. Didn't speak English. They didn't understand the nice tease of what was going on here. They had been told they needed to do a job. They had been told to take the fight to the enemy. They did not lumber themselves with prisons. I'll just say that. And now the Hessians and the British rolled up this American defensive line together. How surging down with his secret march from the north, the Hessians in the centre, more British coming from the south, the Americans scattered. Troops in Brooklyn saw men arrive with broken arms and broken

54:04heads. The Hessians moved through the brush like hungry wolves up through what is now a prospect park. It's now a neatly landscaped pleasure park, but it was once a heavily forested hillside. After months of marching and ocean crossings and waiting and unfamiliar places and smells here on the battlefield, these men were at home. At the very south end of the American line, where the troops had fought well against the British, first thing in the morning, the Americans would continue to perform miracles of heroic. Where the Guanas Canal now is, there was a sort of creek and wetlands. An American commander realised that his men had to withdraw fast. And he took a few hundred Marylanders down and tried to hold off the British to buy time for the rest of his men to escape. His men swam and waded across the marsh. While this commander led this brave rear guard on at least six desperate charges against the British. The focus of the fighting was around something called the Old Stone House, which still stands stay in Brooklyn. It is a reconstruction, but it's a pretty faithful one. Well, they moved it a block, but it's

55:06not bad. Anyway, don't see it. It is there between 5th and 6th avenues today. And this building and the ground around it became a graveyard of Marylanders. The British seized the house. They used to cover the five muskets with the window. They had a six pound cannon in the garden. But the Marylanders came on again and again. They advanced across a carpet of their own dead. 250 men had answered the call of their commander to act as a sort of rear guard. And with their next fix, they swirled up to the house. They fought inside the house, fighting room to room. They drove the British out once. They drove them out twice. But they were forced to retreat before the sledgehammer of counterattack. Of these 250 men, only nine would escape death, injury or capture. And speaking of prisoners, it was very interesting when the British would capture a senior officer like a Lieutenant Colonel. They were surprised to find out that they were likely as not to be common-born British accounts of the mechanics, tailors, shoemakers, etc. They were rather shocked.

56:06The heroic sacrifice these Marylanders ensured that to the south-hundreds of men did escape back to the safety of the forts in Brooklyn. And Washington was there himself. He was watching from the top of Cobble Hill, not far from Cobble Hill Park today. And he was heard to mourn the loss of these brave fellows. The Marylanders had certainly earned their reputation as the elite of the Continental Army. But by the end of that terrible day, the reputation would be all that was left. The Americans had been routed. They'd been driven back from pretty strong defensive positions by perfectly delivered devastating right hook. 1,200 men, including three generals and, alongside dozens of cannon, had been captured. It was the biggest battle, if you can believe this, of the Revolutionary War. It's the first battle, and it remained the biggest battle of the American Revolutionary War. Something like 40,000 combatants, if you include the naval forces. It's also the most lopsided battle. It was an American route. Well, it was disaster for the Americans.

57:09When news reached London, there were celebrations. The king expected the end of hostilities in short order. A British general wrote, the fever of independence should soon evate. But, but that was all a bit too soon, a bit too keen. It was not over yet, not by a long stretch. The defeat actually could have been worse. Washington's army, and perhaps the young American Republic, could have died on that ground. But they didn't. The Redcoats surged forward. On they came towards the well-defended Brooklyn forts. Fleeing Americans were falling back. Unwittingly, they showed the Redcoats the best way to approach the fortifications. And forward elements of the British force pushed ever closer to one of the forts in particular for Putnam. And the site today is Fort Green Park for those who know the area. And general how, interestingly, desperately tried to apply the brakes at that point. It can always be a dangerous moment. Overconfident troops go too quickly, help strip their main body, their commanders, their supplies. They find themselves among the enemy. They are isolated, disordered. And so,

58:09how in his office is bellowed at the rampaging men whose blood was up. They're the backs, they're fleeing enemy were before them. The city perhaps was at their mercy. Perhaps the war was one, but how and the officers tried to regain control. How stopped them? And we'll never know. Was the whole American position close to collapse? Was there a moment when the Americans doubted themselves? Did they think about giving in to those rumors? Did they think about listening to those insolces? Had that an American amateur force wouldn't be able to stand up for trained European professionals? We'll never know. Great battles can turn on a dime. An army can become a rabble, but that didn't happen on this day. How ordered a halt and the Americans rallied? The men stood too. They prepared to defend their entrenched positions from British attack that never came. Why didn't it come? Was how traumatized by his experiences assaulting Bunker Hill the previous year? Maybe we know that his uniform, as I said, was splattered with the blood and brains of his men. Was he just being cautious? Was he thinking about his older brother who died in a frontal assault

59:14like this one? There are many other generals in world history who would have charged hard that day. But for whatever reason, general how is not one of them? He says later that he stopped to regroup. But fascinatingly, in that same report, he writes to his political master London, he doesn't say that had they gone on, they would have carried the American redouts, the American defensive positions. So did he have regrets? Did he think he should have just let the men keep going? Was this another of the, I must say, galaxy of mischances that British had to smash the young army of the Republic? Well, General Clinton certainly thought so. He had all the indignation of a subordinate. There's nothing like not having overall responsibility to really let your opinions fly. He did not have the top job. He's not the man who goes sleep at night worrying about the fate of the entire British military effort in North America. He's not the man who has to tabulate. He has to sweat over the neat 18th century versions of Excel spreadsheets, which regimental commanders would send in showing their insufficient manpower. Clinton's a guy, I'm sure we've all been in that position who

1:00:16merrierly assures everyone that had the assault and press to him, it would have led to a glorious conclusion. But on this occasion, I think Clinton certainly had a point. He stated that had the attack gone in, the completist success would most likely have been the consequence. There's a version of history folks, which at the end of that day, General Washington and a huge chunk of his army was marching into captivity. But that didn't happen. How did stop his men were called back? They've been marching and fighting since the previous evening. He did not want to costly assault, I suppose, against Doug in marksman. And that was that. The British then dug themselves in opposite the American defenses, all went a bit world-of-one. They hacked trenches into the earth. They prepared, essentially for a siege. And those trenches would zigzag forwards. Heavy guns would be pushed ever closer to the American positions to smashing range. And the engineers would take over. This was going to be scientific. It was going to be the irresistible approach of a global superpower. And it would have been terrifying. There was another theory that how was expecting Washington's surrender to come to terms to forget the whole unpleasant episode, just go back to how things

1:01:19were. But if so, how had terribly misjudged the spirit of this new republic, just a few weeks old? For a large enough portion of the population, there would be no going back. They would fight for this independence. Washington certainly wanted to fight. He pulled reinforcements into Brooklyn. Now this is possibly an error because, like Hitler pushing the units into Starlingrad, would this merely increase the losses when the British did strike hard at American positions? We will see. The rain then lashes both armies for two days. August rain on the east coast, particularly intense for all his rarity. And the Americans and their muddy trenches began to find they had more men than supplies. They were people sleeping in the open for lack of tense. The trenches became drains, sewers, filled with water and whatever else. The Americans were getting hungry. And so on the morning of the 29th of August, Washington took stock. He was outnumbered two to one. The British zigzag trenches were going close enough for British troops, thousands of them, to get close enough to fire musket volleys from nice concealed positions at the American lines.

1:02:22The cannons started blasting them. It always was going to feel a bit hopeless. Now Washington had gambled that the British would just march up the hill and parade ground order and die under a shower of American lead, raked by musket shot and rifle rounds and bit of scrap metal belched out by the bucket fall from cannon. But as soft and in war, the enemy did not oblige. The British were coming underground. They were being cautious. They were digging these trenches ever closer to the American positions. And also the prompt Washington, he's got to watch his back. The East River between Rutland and Manhattan is a place which the British have been trying to get into. Now they've been strong northeastly winds for a few days. So they'd been keeping the British ships out of there. But now they're attacking against that wind. They're getting up into the East River. And if they could really establish themselves, as that wind dies, if they can establish themselves in the river, Washington's army would be utterly surrounded by land and sea. His men were going hungry. His gunpowder was soaking and morale was a bit shaky. So Washington did something remarkable and quite optimistic in a way. It was very risky and it

1:03:23turned out to be very brilliant. He ordered an evacuation. Every ferry and batto, fishing smack, longboat, wary, anyone who could haul an all, who could grip a tiller, was called up. Manhattan was scoured for boats and shipping. Men who had been pushed into Brooklyn a few hours before would now be lifted out. And it would be that very night. A thousand brave souls were detailed to hold the front line. They would light fires, they would roar songs, they'd make as much noises as possible. And the rest of the army marched the shoreline and jumped on a boat to Manhattan. And the Americans got lucky. The Americans got very lucky here. A black slave was sent by American loyalists to warn the British. But by chance he arrived at the German lines, a Hessean lines, and he couldn't make himself understood. Elsewhere a scout spied empty fortifications and trenches. He reported back, but the news of that was sort of lost somewhere in the fog of war. The news was lost in the chain of command. So the British generals didn't get the news that the Americans were retreating. What about the Royal Navy that was spending all my time boasting about? Why were they not

1:04:27perfectly poised to stop exactly this happening? Why were they not in the East River to bottle Washington up on Long Island? Well, as it said, the wind seemed to him blowing from the northeast. So it was hard to get in that river and stay there, those big square rigged saying ships. But it was particularly the weather around this day and night. That was a problem as well. One captain later said, this all caused him inexpressible astonishment and concern. I agree, buddy. Let me tell you, I hear you inexpressible. So that northeast wind had kept the ships away. And in the small hours of the 30th of August, a thick fog formed, which seems to have discouraged the Navy as well, because you're not going to want to sail into a river that's bristling with navigation, obstacles and enemy defenses. And as you can see where you're going, so I kind of get that. But that fog seems to have discouraged the Navy. And that fog may well have saved the American Republic because the presence of the smallest armed slupe, tiny little ship with a few cannon that would have rained hell down on the Armada of Littleships. I mean, kind of really rowing boats

1:05:33that was beatling two and fro across the river that long night. Back and forward, they went muffled oars, so rags cloth wrapped around the oars and the oalocks so that they didn't squeak when the wooden shaft was ground against the oalocks, men pulled the boats across one way or another. The crews would take a little bit of rest as the evacuating men clambered aboard. Then they rowed back to Manhattan. They would disembark at market slip and elsewhere and then the boats would return. This American Dunkirk now has its place in the US National Memory. It was a brilliantly conducted evacuation that meant that the army and its commander were able to give the brits the slip. The next morning is the British Realize. No one was there. The British cavalry kind of penetrated the defenses. They stood on the heights, overlooking the river. As they got there, they saw the very last of these little boats slipping into the fog. One of those final boats contained Washington who waited for the last of his men to be safely evacuated from Long Island.

1:06:38The British cavalrymen they fired their carbounds, their short muskets, they fired them in a pointless fury. The lead balls plopped short into the river. The Americans would live to fight another day. It was a huge moment. Certainly huge moment in retrospect. At the time, I think the mood was a bit gloom yet. Washington received some praise, but it still been a retreat. It was still a defeat. As was made famous in the 20th century, Winston Churchill said, wars are not won by evacuations. But this one was pretty important. One person in the Americans were very pleased to celebrate. That was General Howe. One American wrote, General Howe is either our friend or no general. He had a whole army in his power, yet suffered us to escape without the least disruption. In the weeks that followed Howe would have the chance to prove that he was a decent general. The fate of New York looked pretty bleak now. And the American army was downcast. Washington proclaimed his troops that the evacuation did not stem his faith in their fighting spirit. Interestingly, he told Congress the

1:07:42complete opposite. Privately, he told the assembled delegates from the various, well, now independent states. He told them there was his painful and extremely grating duty to inform them that he would have defended Brooklyn if the men would do their duty. But he said they wouldn't do their duty. Lots of big decisions had to be made for this next part of the campaign. Washington went through the motions of defending New York City, defending Manhattan. His army started digging again. They went to work with their shovels and their pickaxes and they tried to entrench really the whole of the eastern shore of Manhattan. That's 14 miles. And that means that you're dangerously spread out. He just didn't have enough men to seriously build an equivalent of Hitler's Atlantic wall all throughout these coast of Manhattan. He also remember he had to have those forces north yet to guard the crossing points at Harlem because he was very worried that if the British would sell round to the North of Manhattan, they could just bottle up. They could just capture his entire army on Manhattan. He also built a fort, article Fort Washington on the

1:08:44Northwest edge of Manhattan. So overlooking Hudson, overlooking the New Jersey shore, an opposite fort Washington. He built Fort Lee on the other side of the Hudson. So they both mounted cannons that he hoped would be able to close off the river to British shipping. There was a huge debate in the American camp about whether to try and protect the city at all. There was a hotbed of loyalism, people who disapproved of the revolution. The jail had prisoners in it who been charged with singing God save the king under their breath. Hundreds of these circle Tories had been rounded up and they'd been sent to an abandoned copper mine in Connecticut. They were lowered 20 meters into the caverns on a rope. They were known as the catacombs of loyalty. And one of Washington's senior commanders encouraged Washington to burn the city of the ground, burn the nest of recidivists. But is the fate of supreme commanders to have to deal with the wild ideas of their underlings. Washington had that challenging job. He had to balance the military with the political. Could the army of the Republic deliberately burn one of the finest,

1:09:45most important and wealthiest cities in that new Republic? Could they abandon it without firing a shot? Washington thought no, no one both counts. Once again, how gave Washington plenty of time to think about it? He took his time. Now it looked to be fair to how. Organising amphibious assault against the defended shore requires a bit of time and go to take into account the moon, the time, the weather, the time, the ship handling, the men. Everything had to be exactly right. So some of his officers suggested a bold strike to the north into Westchester County, simply surround Manhattan and force it to surrender. How worried that would stretch the navy. Those supply lines might get a bit too thin. You have a force in Westchester. It's being supplied up these two narrow rivers, the East River, the Hudson. There's lots of obstacles and difficulties with those rivers. The weather might turn bad. He's a bit nervous about that. So instead, how was going to launch more conventional attack on Manhattan itself? But before he could do that, Washington did have another change of heart. It was just clear with British ships sailing up and down these rivers and a big amphibious

1:10:49group being brought together that New York, the city was just untenable. Every day, warships just slid up and down on the tide. The city is on the tip of narrow Manhattan islands. It's effectively surrounded on three sides by water and that water is controlled by the British. And also, I think Washington is learning here. He has realised, how long it is you want, a big single battle to win this war with a stunning victory. Instead, he's writing now as the summer's going on, quote, the war should be defensive. We shall all occasions avoid a general action or put anything to risk unless compelled. They should not draw out our young troops into open ground against their superiors in both number and discipline. So Washington's slowly working out the best way to beat the British, avoid fighting them on their terms. Washington's army didn't have to crush the British in one great battle. He had to stay alive. While it lived, America lived. And so the logic is, do not fight a big general battle, do not fight a big general

1:11:53action, a big ride or die to save New York. And his advisors came to agree with him. And so on the seventh of September, Washington's army abandoned the city. They marched north, right up to the top of Manhattan. And they took up a strong defensive position on the Harlem Heights. Washington himself left his lovely headquarters on the 14th of September and hours later Vandals broke in and planted the house. He listened to Dan Snow's history hit. The best is yet to come. Do it with us. Are you looking for the perfect podcasts to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights? Well, look no further than the award-winning after-dark myths, misdeeds, and the paranormal with me, Maddie Pelling. And me, Anthony Delaney, we are historians and love all things gloomy and macabre. From Tudor Executioners, an ancient Egyptian death rituals,

1:12:57to which trials and folklore feel transported back in time on after-dark. Out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. And guess what? We're also now on YouTube After Dark, a podcast from History Hit. Washington's treatment that house plan was now really out of date, frankly. He had chosen to make his assault five miles up the East Bank of Manhattan as judge from the tip of New York City. That's a place called Kip Space. Now midtown, it's reasonably close to the Empire State Building. It had been deep behind enemy lines, but no longer because Washington's army was retreating. And so on the 15th of September, his landing craft rode towards that point on the eastern shore. Cannon mounted in their bows, red coated infantry standing back to chest, packed in their like sardines, offshore, you've got H.M.S. Rose, H.M.S. Robuck, Phoenix, Orpheus, blasting shore positions with their broad sides. Well, annoyingly for the British, the majority of Washington's

1:13:59army had slipped past that point and avoided this encircling trap. There was no longer behind enemy lines. Now, it was still being defended. So all that was a little comfort to those brave men that were manning their coast. It was a militia unit from Connecticut. They were part-timers. They had spears in their hands. They had pickaxes. They crouch in a simple ditch with an earth ramp part and they were subjected to an astonishing battering from the British ships. They were anchored out to sea, bowed to stunt. The original wooden wall really. Perhaps 200 metres out, that range of guns would have been up sea brutal. Those heavy guns exploded with their guttural cries, sending cannonballs of 9 pounds, 18 pounds screaming towards those makeshift defenses. It was a thundering rattle, whittled, one survivor says. A board sweating sailors, stooping on packed gandex, swobbed and warmed the barrel. They cleaned any debris out from the previous round, any little bits of red hot debris. Before ramming home a new charge of powder that had been brought up from the powder magazine by boys by children who ran barefoot

1:15:03threading their way through the scrum of sailors like kids in a football crowd. Then inwent the cannon ball, boom, then the warding to hold it in place. Then the crew haul on big thick ropes attached to rings in the ship's hulls and the cannon on its little carriage they call with these tiny wheels. They pulled into position, they trundle out until the muzzle is poking out from the wooden wall of the hull. Then with the roar, it's fired, leaps back, restrained by those same ropes like a circus animal and they went through the drill again. Hot, noisy work. Impressive too, apparently. It was the finest scene ever beheld, wrote one of the ship's captains. Awful and grand, I agreed another British officer. I might say beautiful. For one hour this bombardment raged and assure those cannonballs ripped the flimsy parapet apart. Men were buried, they were covered in flying dust, they were hit by ricochets. Very few men can stand up to a cannon bombardment like that and these farmers, these part-timeers,

1:16:05these sometimes quite reluctant participants were not among them and they crawled away. The defenses collapsed, the British assault troops landed in 84 flat bottoms, beach assault craft, the Germans singing hymns, the British apparently squaring and cussing with a notable ferocity. And what they found when they got there was, well, it was a route. Fugitives were seen fanning out across Manhattan. But they also saw the last remaining men of Washington's New York garrison, army marching desperately north. They'd just by hours really, they'd managed to escape the trap that the British had just sprung. It was pretty scary for those retreating Americans. Some of those rear units were put to flight. They started running in disorder. Washington galloped south to try and rally the men, but they just ignored it and they just pushed past him as he yelled at them. Their eyes down, their heads were turned. He whipped the retreating men with his cane. He swore he and treated. Now at this point we think the redcoats got to within 100 meters of Washington. One report says that he considered charging to a certain death

1:17:09rather than live with the ignominy of this moment. But he was prevailed upon to leave and he would live to fight on. It was another retreat. It was another terrible sight. Shambolic retreat. One American wished the day could be blotted out of American history. It was nothing. He says, but fright, disgrace and confusion. But again, the British was sort of lackluster. They advanced halfway across Manhattan and just sort of stopped. Had they pushed one solitary mile further, they would have actually cut off a portion of Washington's retreating armies at Banda New York. So again, they missed this opportunity. And while how was concentrating on getting all his forces safely ashore, the American general Putnam with his assistant Aaron Burr squeezed three and a half thousand men right up the bank of the Hudson's on the western edge of Manhattan away from the British landings, he squeezed three and a half thousand men up to safety before the British could bottle them up. Again, this landing had not delivered a decisive British win far from it. That night, the hot weather broke. There was another powerful storm, the big rain storm and

1:18:15temperatures plunged. Tramping through puddles, the British marched into New York City the following day. A third of the population had left with the rebels. So many of the people that were there were loyalists and they were reasonably pleased to see the king's men. They were even crowds of cheering people. The captain of HMS Eagle was raised onto the shoulders of a mob and carried the fort to raise the British colors. One New Yorker wrote that the city was delivered from the usurpers who had oppressed it for so long. A declaration of dependence was published and many New Yorkers added their signatures. But the battle was by no means over. The Union flag hanging over the city. Well, that was one thing. But remember, the main purpose of this campaign, even if I think sometimes how didn't actually really internalize this and realize this, the main purpose was the destruction of Washington and his army. That was the Republic. While it marched, the United States lived. And those men were now dug in once again on high

1:19:17ground. This time the Harlem Heights, the British captain roughly speaking of what would become Central Park. I think we're starting to realize that there were a lot of escarpments and hills and ridges stretching from here to the Ohio country. And they did not have the men or the treasure or the bullets or the time to take them one after the other. It was a little bit worrying. If Washington could hold that army together, he could retreat a long way in the interior and wait for the British to break. And Washington hoped that he would be able to defend these positions if his troops behaved with tolerable bravery. But he wrote, experienced to my extreme affliction, has convinced me that it is rather to be wished for than expected. He's rather down on his men at this point. And he was wrong about them. Because hardly had he penned this letter, then a British unit approached his lines, a scouting expression really. They blew a horn as if this was a mere fox hunt. The quarry on this occasion though proved rather tenacious and did not run. Washington sent down some units to take

1:20:17them on to outflank them. In fact, these were Virginians, road islanders, Connecticut men, a real cross section. And they hurled themselves out of the British and they forced them all the way back to their encampment. It was only a little skirmish really, but it had a huge effect, extraordinary effect. The Americans had pushed back. They had humiliated a crack British unit, a British unit of Highlanders. In fact, Scottish Highlanders. These Brits were not supermen, shoot them, stab them, and they bled. They got scared. They turned. They were retreated. Their aura was shaken. The youngsters might say. One American officer wrote, The men feel a confidence which before they had quite lost. I hope the effects will be lasting. As the war goes on, we see that Washington has a knack of doing this. He'll retreat. He'll be driven off battlefields. But he'll then order a little demonstration like this to show that the British are beatable, to fill his own men with courage. General Howe, well guess what he did? He did nothing. He bided his time. The Harlem Heights were a strong position. He had no wish, again, to attack up that slope against Americans who were dug into the top. Just side note here,

1:21:21ironically, all the American's gestions, they burned New York City. There was actually a terrible fire in New York City on the night of 21 September. It was started in a groggery at a place where you buy grogos, a bar, it was called the fighting cocks. About a quarter of the city was destroyed, extraordinary. We will never know if it would deliver a tonne out. There's no firm evidence. Suspects were rounded up, but none of the charges stuck. But certainly more bad news for the British. There's glittering prize now partially in ashes. We rode to the North, Washington's men strengthened their lines on Harlem Heights. Just as a reminder, the spade was important that the musket on this campaign stretching across the North of Manhattan now. Three parallel lines of entrenchments are to stride the Harlem Heights. Slightly behind them that you've got Fort Washington, I mentioned before, it's on the shoreline of the Hudson. For two weeks, the armies just gazed at each other. Washington, from his hilltop headquarters with a specially lengthened bed, as he was a tall man. He didn't seem to cheer him up much. He's back to writing his rather

1:22:23depressing letters. I never was in such an unhappy, divided state. Since I was born, he wrote to a confident. He had around 30,000 men at this point. Half of them were sick, we think. So in experienced soldiers are very loose when it comes to hygiene in camps. There was extravent lying around. Men didn't obey their officers. Washington had to order men's backpacks to be searched for stolen goods. So he hasn't got a very high opinion of his own men at this point. As for how well he bows to an eftable eventually, and he realizes that he should do what so many men have been asking him and arguing for all summer. He would embark his men on ships once again and send them behind American lights. He'd use that naval superiority in land somewhere further north. Not a long way north on this occasion. No, he didn't find that kind of bold, troke into Connecticut that would entirely surround the Americans. Instead, he wanted to do a modest jump for north. He was obviously very low-threatened with risks, which ironically, I always think is quite risky in war. He chose to land at a place called Frog's Neck. Now,

1:23:26Frog's Neck. The Americans were astonished when they found out when these landing started to take place. It was the worst place possible to land. I mean, it makes no sense. Assault ships first had to pass through Hell's gates. This is a savage narrow between some islands and marshes off Manhattan and what is now Queens on Long Island. It really is one of the world's most challenging waterways. There are ripping tides, rocks, currents, whirlpools, all that stuff. The British, if I'm lucky enough to do it in a thick fog and one ship sure enough drove straight up onto the jagged rocks and was lost. So once they're through this of Celer and Caribdis like passage, the British arrived at their assault beach. And it was an astonishingly bad place to land. One American commented that had the British pushed their imaginations to discover a worse place, they could not have succeeded. Frog's Neck was a narrow peninsula, which at high tide becomes an island. It's not even attached to the land. It's not even attached to the place where the British try to get to. And they haven't

1:24:26just got the tide to contend with. To ensure it remained isolated, the rebels immediately removed all the wooden slats of a causeway which gets uncovered at low tide. And they made sure that causeway was covered by a force of sharpshooters. So the British pushed 11,000 men onto this island and discovered they couldn't get off. They were held up by a very small American force. They tried to cross at low tide, slithering and getting stuck in the mud. They were cut down in a hail of bullets as well. This is embarrassing. It is certainly one of how's most inexcusable failures of the campaign. Although to be fair to how I suppose it was not a war-winning landing, it was not going to cut off the Americans. But eventually, though, the presence of all the British stuck on this island to the north of the Harlem Heights defenses, it did encourage it, it did convince Washington he knew to withdraw once again. He assumed eventually the British would find a way of breaking off that stupid island and into Connecticut. And at that point, the Americans would be surrounded in northern Manhattan. And so he also assumed that it was only a matter of time for the British

1:25:27work to help a better place further north to land and withdraw their troops from Throog's neck and push even further north up into Connecticut. And so in a pattern that was now becoming quite established for this campaign, Washington's troops would withdraw from a strong defensive position as it was outflanked out manoeuvred by the British. Once again, Washington would retire. He was learning. Remember, he'd written, we should on all occasions avoid a general action. He didn't need to risk everything on a big battle. He didn't have to win. Washington did not have to win a big battle. He simply had to endure, he had to be there at the end of the year. So the Americans abandoned their trenches on Harlem Heights and they trudged north again. This time they finally trudged north of Manhattan Island. Well, I say that, they did leave a sizable force in Fort Washington on the Hudson Shore. But the main army plodded north and it was a bit of a race. Again, the British should finally realize the pointlessness of Throog's neck. They reimbucked at 1am on the 18th of October and they moved a little bit further up the coast to land at Pell's point.

1:26:30If they'd marched inland fast from here, they could catch the Americans as they withdrew to the north. 4,000 Brits marched land before sunrise on the 18th of October and they advanced one mile inland without opposition. It was looking good for the Brits. But once again, a brave unit stepped up and possibly saved the American Revolution. The Brits got lucky because the way was barred by a particularly tough unit of New Englanders. Massachusetts men from Marblehead, which support town just north of Boston. And interestingly, these Marblehead guys were the ones who done most of the work to evacuate the Americans from Long Island weeks earlier. They were sailors, they were boatmen. These men had saltwater in their blood. But unfortunately for the Brits, they were just effective on land. They had fire in their bellies and they were not going to give an inch. Their commander ordered skirmishes to harass the British advance. So yeah, try and pick off any officers and sergeants they can see, cause mayhem in the ranks. Any place, the rest of his 750-man unit by under stone wall. And they rose as one as the

1:27:32British column approached and poured a brutal volley into those red coated ranks. And it stopped the British in their tracks. They reeled back. They re-organized and came again. They got to in meters the Americans. And again, the Americans lashed them with fire. The enemy broke, broke the Massachusetts commander dupalently. The British officers managed to get a grip on their men. They rallied them again and came a third time. Once again, they attacked. This time the Americans conducted a skillful withdrawal, one unit leapfrogging another, moving from wall to wall so that they could continue to fire a hurricane of lead at the British column as it crept forward. Hundreds of British and German troops were killed and wounded. Now remember, every casualty was one that British could iller-forward. Every casualty meant another young lad had to be found thousands of miles away back in Britain, Ireland, Germany, recruited, paid for, equipped, and sent across the oceans. This ferocious resistance had made how very cautious and he paused again. At this point,

1:28:38there's no question an aggressive strike inland could have won the war. He could have crossed the Bronx River. He could have blocked Washington's fairly shambolic army retreating north. But how did not? He paused, he licked his wounds again. And as a result, Washington was able to squeeze through while how was regrouping. And Washington seized, you guessed it, high ground to the north of the village of white plains. Once again, I can't, I'm counting how many times now, but Washington had wriggled out of a bridge of trape, he devoided these amphibious landings, and he had escaped to fight another day. It was becoming a habit. How now proceeded north slowly, shadowing Washington who wanted to use white plains as another trap. Yes, another strong defensive position, hoping the British would hurl themselves at it and shed blood that they could ill afford. But now it's getting cold. Autumn fall is here. Winter is on the way. Men's water bottles are freezing at night. There are about 13,000 fit men in Washington's army. They were ill supplied. But he's on that high ground and he thought it would be a powerful advantage. And interestingly,

1:29:41this time, how did what Washington was hoping he might do? This time, how launched a frontal assault? It was Monday the 28th of October. The British General unleashed a large force. 15,000 men advanced in perfect order. Lines of uniform troops stepping off together. Colors flapping above their heads, fife and drum marking the beat, bayonets flashing in the autumn little sun, bands playing. It must have looked unstoppable and that was the point. The colors, the music, the noise, the moral effect. In a way, that was the first volley, if you like. It was an attempt to break the enemy before shots even flew. And it didn't work. Washington sent forward troops to contest this advance. And that's exactly what they did. Again, the Americans made use of stone walls. Again, there was fighting at the closest of quarters and both sides could see the whites, their enemy's eyes. The flames erupted from the muzzles of muskets set the tall grass on fire. And suddenly, it smoked at it that the battle. It was a confused, swirling scene. One American

1:30:44artillery battery did heroic work. Cannon blasting away every salvo spitting its monstrous load of cannonballs. It also scrapped metal at the advancing brits. The crew then hurled in themselves at the wheels to get the guns back into position. Bucket chains carrying water up to swab the hot barrels. The guns laid or aimed by the young commander who we think at this point was the precocious, young, recently former student, a certain Alexander Hamilton. The Americans were pushed back, but they made the British pay for every yard that they advanced. A Maryland regiment was commanded by a rich landowner, educated at Eaton, yes, that Eaton in England. And his unit held fast under great pressure before yielding and retreating. But again, the Americans had a little real estate behind them. The Battle of White Plains was a British victory, but a very unsatisfactory one. Washington withdrew in decent order. He dug in again at North Castle Heights. And now the October rains came and turned the roads into rivers and seas of mud and how sat despondently looking up at this fortified set of lines.

1:31:48What's he going to have to lead his men up every blasted bridge line from here to the Ohio river against determined opposition? November came around. The men could see their breath on the morning air. They stamped their feet on frosty ground. The campaigning season was coming to an end. On the 5th of November, how astonished the rebels? He turned tail. He headed back south for Manhattan. And the American army did something strange. They advanced. They recaptured or liberated ground. How had decided to stop chasing Washington North? But there was one job he wanted to get done before the snows ended the campaigning, one more mopping up operation. A beleaguered American garrison. You'll remember I mentioned they were holed up in a place called Fort Washington. And I suppose they were left exit looked impressive enough. You can visit the park today. It's a lump of granite in the north of Manhattan. 300 feet up from the Hudson River. It's a prominent spot. It's a beautiful place to go. There were steep forested slopes on three sides. And a

1:32:50fort had been built up there by sweating laborers. A proper European style fortification. We call them star forts where you've got like the letter in Malta or the endless forts, the low countries, the polygonal bastions. Each of the sides swept by cannon, ditches, arrow shaped ravellins, scarps, counter scarps, glassy. Wonderful going to give it Google it's good to see. Well now all that military engineering will be tested because it was invested by the Brits. It was surrounded. It was besieged by the Brits. Now I can see why this attempting target. It was the last American troops on Manhattan. I suppose you don't want to leave them there. But it seems crazy to us now that how it was going to waste his time on this. It doesn't seem to kind of realize that all that matters is Washington's army. The art of war friends if you have found yourself commanding an army that's what you need to remember. The art of war is to find the enemy's center of mass. It's brain. It's beating hard and then kill it. And that is the simple and yet brilliant insight, the brilliant gift of the greatest commanders in history. They get this.

1:33:52Now how is not among our greatest commanders? No sir. If he destroys Washington's army, well the war might be on it. It's certainly Britain's best chance of winning this war. Charging off and attacking Fort Washington is I'm afraid of distraction. As for General Washington, he left some men in the North in Connecticut. But with most of his army, he crossed the Hudson and brought them down the New Jersey coast to Fort Lee, which opposite Fort Washington. So you can see what's going on. Now it's pretty clear that he wanted the men from Fort Washington evacuated across the Hudson. He realizes they're not being able to hold out. But for some reason, the orders weren't given. The garrison stayed in place. General Howe had spent the summer largely avoiding attacking strong defensive positions, but this time for some reason he was up to it. A triple attack was planned. Sledge Hammer blows from three directions at once. Well, from the river, a Royal Navy ship battered the fort from the water. So pretty grim attack from all four sides. Howe sent a message. He gave the garrison a chance to surrender. But the commander replied defiantly that actuated by the most glorious cause that mankind ever fought in. I am determined to defend the post to the very last

1:34:58extremity on the 16th of November. A beautiful, bright, clear, crisp, fall November, New York day. Three columns smashed into the Fort's defenses. Hessian's March North from the tip of Manhattan, other British units assaulted from the east coast of the Anunnus salt craft, another British force marched up from Harlem. Now today the fort's gone, but you get a sense of the power of the natural position at Washington Park. You get quite out of breath walking up to it and then from the top you get wonderful views across the Hudson and New Jersey. The Hessian troops had to drag themselves up a hill holding onto roots and saplings and bushes. Defenders poured fire down upon them and the furious Germans took few prisoners once they got to grips with their tormentors. One American artilleryman John Corbin was shot down at his station. His position was immediately taken by his wife Margaret. She knew well enough how to worm the barrel to check it for any residue of warding or burning embers. She could swab with damp rags on a stick. She knew how to place

1:35:59the powder charge and ram it home, roll the shot down the barrel, shove in some old bits of rope or bit of straw to keep it snug. She could also put her shoulder to the wheel to reposition the gun after its spat flame and leapt back. She impressed the other crewman and she immediately fit into the well-practiced team. The amphibious assaults on the East Coast of Manhattan was met with a furious barrage of fire. The soldiers related scornfully how sailors had dropped their oars and hid in the bottom of the boat, which forced the redcoats to grab the ore handles and row themselves to shore. It's good to see evidence of inter-service rivalry that's lasted hundreds of years. Once again, however they got there, the British did splash ashore, and there'd be many such landings by the time this war was done. And up the hillsides clambered the Highlanders and other troops. The Americans fell back towards their redout, onto which plunged mortar rounds fired by the naval ship on the Hudson River, so the defenders are being pushed in on all sides. And eventually, they're being squashed into the fort. They're really fighting some shoulder to shoulder inside

1:37:00the fort, so there was no shortage of targets for the mortar bombs that arked overhead and plunged down to explode on impact, or indeed the iron roundshot fired by cannon, which carved furrows in the mud before ripping up into the soft flesh of the crowds of men. Margaret Corbyn, the artillery woman, fought to the last, she was wounded in the chest, the arm and the jaw. Eventually her gun crew were silenced. They were overrun. The Hessians were at the wall of the fort now, and the Hessian commander paused and sent a man forward with a flag of truce and gave the Americans 30 minutes to surrender before a final bloody assault that would end certainly in a massacre. Realising the situation was hopeless, the American commander did surrender rather than force his men to die a pointless death on the tip of British bayonets. Americans wept. One wrote that they were sacrificed and disgraced, on the two Americans swam the Hudson to fight again another day, but the vast majority marched into captivity. They had to run the gauntlet of angry Germans and Scotsman who kicked and punched them as they marched out of the fort,

1:38:04ripping bags from their bags, going through their pockets, leaving them with nothing. The fort was captured, but now the 450 British troops have been killed or wounded. It might not sound that many, but manpower so difficult to replace for the British. At least in this attack, the Brits felt they wanted a useful victory. Fort Washington's capture did help to ensure that British ships could now pass more unhindered along the Hudson, and they had netted a remarkable 3,000 prisoners, 40 guns and a mound of supplies. By the way, those prisoners would experience wretched, deadly conditions. Two-thirds of them would be dead within two years as cold and maltreatment and disease whittled their numbers down. Margaret Corbin survived, she was released because she was a woman, but disabled from her wound, she became the first American woman ever to receive a military pension. Washington was watching the battle from the Jersey Shore. He wept, he should never have left that garrison in place. He claims straight away it had been done against his orders. His ambitious subordinate General Lee wrote to him saying

1:39:06it was a cursed affair. He also wrote powerful allies in Philadelphia trying to put the knife into Washington. Lee offered himself up as a dictator in this great moment of peril. And at this exact point, it is entirely possible that George Washington could have been fired, he could have been removed, his position hung in the balance. And just imagine history if General Lee had indeed become a dictator at this point, what a different well. This is just one of the many occasions, you got so many of them, in which the career of one of the most celebrated men in modern history could so easily have been snuffed out. General Washington himself wrote that he was wearyed almost to death with the retrograde motion of things. As for the British, they were hardened. They seemed spurred by this success. Only a few hundred yards away across the Hudson was George Washington's battered army. It now been driven out of Manhattan and parts of southern New York. It retreated time and again before the British forces. Nearly 5,000 men have been captured, 600 of them killed and wounded. Vast amounts of American stores have been captured. Many of the

1:40:10men had quietly abandoned the cause. The British realised that his army was not be given any time to recover. And so now reasonably bold, late in the year, strike, at dawn on the 20th November, another fleet of shallow draft boats once again, pootled across another river. This time it was the Hudson. They landed in New Jersey and the men hauled cannon and supplies up narrow trails to the high ground to rub the river shore, sweating and cursing and losing their footings and shoulders roar from the ropes attached to their cannon. They reached the top by afternoon and they saw galloping riders criss-crossing the landscape, messengers delivering the evil tidings, the Americans. The British were coming. The British were, indeed, coming. They marched south to Fort Lee, but that was a fort in name only, really. It was indefensible in practice. And the commander ordered another mound of supplies to be abandoned, marched his men out. There was no appetite for a piece of the Fort Washington fiasco. The British marched in to find meat cooking over fires, pots boiling, dozens of drunken Americans staggering about, online around, who'd chosen

1:41:13stupor faction and grog over trudging once again behind their officers. Not everyone know, not everyone, some kept the faith, two by two, the Americans marched, blankets around their shoulders, holes in the souls of their shoes. South they went to Newark, in the direction of Princeton, Trenton. There were still believers, enough of them. One senior officer wrote, The virtue of the Americans is to be put to a trial. I am hearty and well amidst all the fatigues and hardships. Be of good courage. Don't be distressed. All things will turn out for the best. By December of 1776, that certainly felt a little delusional. The British marched on, they swept through New Jersey. In fact, it raised the specter, the even the birthplace of the Republic Philadelphia might be captured before Christmas. The British had cause for celebration. And yet, Washington, his rag-tag army lived on. They had shown fight. They had shown considerable

1:42:14bravery, resilience, tenacity. They had proved that they could, on their day, withstand the attack of some of the world's finest soldiers. Their withering volleys had shredded British advances that were grounds for optimism. Above all, they were still here. They endured. And that, as only some of the participants realized, was the point. Sure, British flags now flutter across southern New York and New Jersey. But this was not about capturing territory. This was about destroying an idea, an idea of an independent American public in which free men ruled themselves, an idea that was embodied in the form of the army of that Republic. And while that army lived, so too did that idea. And not only was that army still alive, it was about to stun the British in the depths of winter in one of the great turnaround stories in military history, a blow that might

1:43:15just have saved the American Revolution. But that friend is a story for next time. The battle for New York was over. The battle for New Jersey was not. And the battle for America was only just beginning. Make sure you like and subscribe and follow and do whatever you have to do. And you will hear me tell the story of that great battle for the Americas over the next few years. But in the near future, watch out for that episode in the Clomac Dick battle in New Jersey, in the depths of winter, 1776. It's going to be a good one, folks. It's going to be on in the final few days of this anniversary year. Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time. Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sunlux history and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like How William Concord England? What it was like to live in the Georgian era. And you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We got hundreds of hours of original document trees plus new releases every week.

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