The Drillmaster of Valley Forge (32 page)

The Baron did not lose his temper. He did not fire off angry letters to the governor. He had expected as much from the government, as did his supporters. “I was fearful,” George Weedon commiserated, “our Scheme would be rejected by the Executive who has not an Idea beyond local security.” Steuben only wished for Greene to summon him to his side, and to be done with Virginia forever. “If I preferred my own inclination to the public interest,” he wrote to Greene in resignation, “I should immediately set out to join you.”
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S
TEUBEN WASHED HIS HANDS
of Virginia. He really did intend to leave this time. Virginia was as good as lost, and for reasons of honor he did not want to be in the state when it collapsed. But he also felt duty-bound to delay his departure until he could accomplish something positive for Greene. He was fairly certain, he informed Greene,
that he already had five hundred Continental recruits waiting at the Chesterfield barracks. Once he had these men armed and ready, plus a handful of cavalry, he would lead them to the South and be rid of Virginia forever.

Greene pressed him to stay as long as he could. “I see and feel for your disagreable situation…. But if you leave Virginia everything will run into confusion,” he wrote to Steuben at the beginning of April. “I am greatly in want of your aid here as well as there; but it is my opinion that you can be more extensively useful there than here.”
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Greene could have spared his breath, for the Baron had been overly optimistic about Continental recruitment. As if the pace of recruiting hadn't been slow enough already, the arrival of Phillips's corps had brought it to a complete halt. When Steuben returned to Chesterfield at the end of March, he found a grand total of five new Continental recruits housed in the barracks, and three of these deserted within a couple of days.
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The Baron was not destined to leave Virginia anytime soon.

That was just as well, maybe not for his sake but certainly for Virginia's. For Phillips was preparing to make his move.

Phillips had no intention of sitting passively at Portsmouth. As soon as he landed there, the British commander put his men to work constructing barges for carrying the Redcoats upriver. To keep the rebels guessing, Phillips sent a few smaller warships and some troops up the bay toward the Potomac and the Rappahannock, raiding the coastline as they went—burning houses, seizing tobacco, freeing slaves.

Steuben was convinced that this was just a feint, that Phillips's real target would be the upper James River, specifically either Richmond or Petersburg. And at least the raids caused enough panic to compel Jefferson's government to act. Finally Hood's Landing would be fortified. When no one showed up to dig the fortifications, Jefferson came up with an ingenious expedient: men who volunteered to work at Hood's for twelve days would be credited for six weeks of militia duty.

Perhaps, if Jefferson had thought of this a month or two before, it might have staved off the impending invasion, but like so much of the
Virginia war effort, it was too little too late. The militia was faltering, too. Many had been serving since January, and their three-month terms were beginning to expire, so they were deserting by the score. Muhlenberg reported that on just one night in early April, one hundred militiamen unceremoniously left their posts and went home. The new levy of militia, slated to relieve those currently on duty in April, would not be ready for a few weeks. Throughout the state, there was open opposition to militia duty, even violent riots. Muhlenberg's force outside Portsmouth was down to seven hundred militia—with another five hundred on the opposite side of the James—and the numbers were dropping rapidly.

Washington was well aware that trouble was brewing on the Chesapeake. He ordered Lafayette to return to Virginia. By the first week in April, Steuben knew that Lafayette's light infantry were en route, and one thousand Pennsylvanians under Anthony Wayne were not far behind. By the twenty-first, Lafayette's corps was at Alexandria, where the marquis intended to dump all unnecessary baggage so that he could come to Steuben's aid in time. “For Gods sake try to get us some shoes,” he wrote to Steuben, “or we cannot advance principally at the rapid rate we are now going.”
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On April 23, 1781, Phillips struck.

The sight of the British squadron working its way up the James estuary was breathtaking and menacing at the same time. Thirteen warships, black cannon muzzles jutting from each port and the Union Jack snapping from their mastheads, escorted twenty-three flat-bottomed barges. Most of the barges were crammed stem to stern with red-clad infantry, close to one hundred per barge. The vessels crowded the broad estuary, and were in no great hurry. The mere sight of the British force was enough to set the Peninsula in a panic. Richmond, though still some distance away from the danger, became a ghost town in very short order.

The militia had all but vanished, so the British encountered little or no resistance. At noon on the twenty-fourth, the squadron passed the half-dug fortification at Hood's, the one place where the rebels—had
they been prepared—might have been able to cause Phillips some trouble. The British found the place deserted. A few local men had answered Jefferson's call for volunteer labor on the twentieth, but they had scampered off the very next day without having accomplished much.

The British ships hove to at Westover. Steuben rode from Richmond to Westover to watch the British from a safe distance, fully expecting a repeat performance of Arnold's actions. But Phillips decided not to disembark his force there. Instead, the squadron and the transports pressed on to City Point, on the south bank of the James, dropping anchor shortly before sunset.

Steuben knew it would be impossible to defeat Phillips outright, and therefore did not want to risk open battle. Still, he hoped to make a “demonstration”—namely, to slow Phillips's advance, buying precious time so that Richmond and Chesterfield could be evacuated before the British arrived, ready to torch anything of value. He also understood that if the British crushed the militia, it would devastate Virginian morale, but so, too, would giving the British free rein to terrorize the countryside unopposed. No matter what course he decided to take, though, the Baron did not dare concentrate his forces until he knew what Phillips was up to.

When the British ships came to rest at City Point, and the Redcoats leaped out of their barges to regroup on shore, Steuben could make a very accurate guess about their intentions. Though the British might attack Richmond later, that was not their primary target. First they would march on Petersburg, where state and Continental military supplies awaited their torches.

 

T
HE
V
IRGINIA MILITIA
along the James was formed in two bodies: one on the north side, under Col. James Innes, and a second, larger one on the south, under Steuben's old friend General Muhlenberg. Innes could be of no immediate help; his force had moved to the north and west, having evacuated supplies and patients from the military hospital at Williamsburg.

Muhlenberg had been shadowing Phillips, marching his militia along the river and monitoring the British general's every movement. Steuben caught up with Muhlenberg, and together they decided not to attack the British as they disembarked. The warships were too close, and their guns would play havoc with the militia. The Virginians would instead make their stand in Petersburg itself, twelve miles up the Appomattox River from City Point. Leaving a few men behind to observe the enemy, Steuben and Muhlenberg led their citizen-soldiers down the road that wound along the river to Petersburg.

The sky that night was moonless, so when the first men of Muhlenberg's command reached the village of Blandford, just east of Petersburg, the darkness was already thick around them. Here Steuben halted them for the night. Though exhausted from the long forced march from the James, they slept fitfully, their muskets close at hand. Few, if any, had been in battle before, but they sensed from the urgency of their movements that they would not have to wait long for their baptism by fire. Most had received nothing but the most elementary training. Three days before, the Baron had issued orders that all militia—men and officers alike, with no exceptions—were to train constantly in the drill prescribed by the official
Regulations
. During those three days there had not been much time for drill.
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Steuben gathered Muhlenberg and his other officers for a council of war. They would hold here, at Blandford, when Phillips arrived the next day, withdrawing when necessary across the Appomattox via the long, narrow Pocahontas Bridge.

Rebel pickets first spotted Phillips's corps a couple of miles east of Blandford, around noon on Wednesday, April 25. They fired on the scarlet columns advancing toward them on the river road, and then fell back to the first line of militia.

The Baron had picked the overall positions to be held, while Muhlenberg—who was better acquainted with his militia and its officers—made the specific dispositions for the individual units. Two of the five battalions of militia infantry were formed in line of battle along high ground on the eastern edge of Blandford; two more held
the next ridge at Petersburg, just west of the first line. Steuben was very concerned about the line of retreat—he knew that he would have to retreat, no matter how well the militia fought—so securing the Pocahontas Bridge, the only easy route across the Appomattox, was of the utmost importance. Accordingly, he positioned the fifth militia battalion inside Petersburg at the foot of the bridge. His small band of cavalry, plus two brass six-pounders that had been dragged laboriously upriver from Portsmouth, were situated on a commanding rise across the bridge, on the north bank of the river. Here they could cover the eventual retreat, but without having to retreat along with the infantry across the bridge. It would be difficult enough to perform an orderly withdrawal from Petersburg; if the panicked infantry had to share the bridge with horses and guns, the result could well be catastrophic.

Phillips deployed his marching columns as soon as he made contact with the American pickets. The bulk of his force, consisting of some light infantry and His Majesty's 76th and 80th Regiments of Foot, pressed steadily onward with bayonets fixed toward Muhlenberg's first line. The Queen's Rangers, an elite Loyalist unit under the command of the talented Col. John Graves Simcoe, moved quietly around the British rear and arced south around the American right flank. Phillips was facing only militia, but he was a competent commander and knew better than to assume that militia couldn't fight if pressed. If he could envelop the Americans on the flank and crush them against the river, so much the better.

Steuben and Muhlenberg had no intention of letting the British get close enough to use their bayonets, where they would have an overwhelming advantage. The dispositions of the American units were carefully chosen to allow the militia to rely on firepower instead of cold steel. To get at the first line, the British infantry first had to advance over a broad stretch of swampy low ground, cross Poor's Creek, and move uphill toward Blandford. Phillips's force was large enough to smother the American first line by sheer weight of numbers, but the militia held its ground, pouring volley after volley into the British lines as the Redcoats slowly plodded through the soggy morass around
Poor's Creek. Just when the British threatened to overtake the American right flank, Muhlenberg ordered the first line to withdraw to the second line. The movement was perfectly timed, the withdrawal executed without panic or disorder.

Now the oncoming British faced a more formidable obstacle. Once again they had to advance across low, marshy ground and cross yet another creek—Lieutenant's Run, which separated Petersburg from Blandford. Ahead of them were four battalions of Virginia militia, all of which unleashed devastating volleys of musketry. Artillery on both sides came into play, five British light guns as opposed to the Americans' two, but it was the British, not the Virginians, who reeled and staggered from the blows. The militia beat back two determined assaults before Muhlenberg decided it was a good idea to withdraw again, before Simcoe's Rangers could take them flank and rear.

The Americans had done enough for the day, in Steuben's eyes. They had not panicked, they had disputed “every inch of ground to the bridge.” Now it was time to leave before it was too late. The militia had fought hard for nearly two hours and were beginning to run low on ammunition. The four embattled battalions drew back through the streets of Petersburg, firing as they retreated, toward the Pocahontas Bridge. The British were hot on their heels now, there being no real obstacles to slow their pursuit. Phillips did indeed catch up to the American rear guard, but even as the British closed in for hand-to-hand fighting in the narrow lanes and alleys of Petersburg, the militia did not panic. They fought back, with fists and clubbed muskets and even a few bayonets, while the remainder of the American troops made their way across the bridge to safety on the north bank. Finally the rear guard was able to break off the action, but did not run in fear. On Steuben's orders, the last militia to set foot on the bridge maintained their composure long enough to rip up the bridge's planking as they withdrew, safeguarding their retreat.
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Steuben's little militia army had achieved about as much as it could. The Baron and Muhlenberg retreated north as Phillips's men searched Petersburg, in vain, for the military supplies they hoped to find there.
The next day, Phillips marched his force to Chesterfield, where they burned the Continental warehouses and barracks. Steuben, wisely, stayed out of reach.
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Blandford was a magnificent little battle regardless. Steuben commended Muhlenberg for his role, but above all he praised the militia for their “particular good behaviour,” for executing “their manoeuvres with great exactness.” “The General…assures the militia, that from this day forward he shall always think himself honoured to have such deserving men to command.” Jefferson was equally delighted, his previous spats with the Baron forgotten. “I cannot but congratulate you on the initiation of our militia into the business of war,” he wrote to Steuben the day after the battle.
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