Colin Ross, "Unser Amerika", Chapter 25

 25.

The German Inspector General and

German bodyguard of Washington

General Steuben had made good use of his time. As summer dawned, he was able to provide Washington with an army of fifteen thousand well-drilled and disciplined soldiers, a force such as the American commander in chief had never had under his command. For the first time, British troops faced American ones of equal combat value.

The British, however, dodged the decision. General Howe, who had spent the entire winter idle in Philadelphia, was recalled and replaced by Sir Henry Clinton. At the same time it was decided to evacuate the American capital and transfer the army to New York. Washington did not hesitate to attack them. The clash of the two armies, equally strong and this time equally well trained, would probably have resulted in an American victory, had there not been a traitor in their ranks, and in a leading position at that. It was an American of English descent, Major General Charles Lee.

Lee had opposed Washington's plan of attack, but had been outvoted. The American commander-in-chief wanted his main force to attack the English at Monmouth, while Lee was to flank them. The traitor took up a commanding position, which the English partially surrounded, but instead of attacking, he gave the order to retreat at the decisive moment, to everyone's amazement, over a swamp at that. Clinton immediately recognized the opportunity and pressed on. The retreating American troops fell into disarray. In earlier times, the retreat would surely have degenerated into flight, Washington himself having formerly reported to Congress: "The militia is incapable of making or sustaining a serious attack."

The regiments drilled by Steuben, however, remembered what they had learned. Hearing the commands of their instructor, who had galloped with Washington to the vulnerable spot, they fell back into line in the midst of the hail of bullets, just as they had on the drill ground at Valley Forge. The battle came to a halt. The ground Lee had abandoned was regained, and the battle would have been decisively won for the Americans had not Clinton made his escape under cover of night.

Charles Lee was not the only example of unreliability and treachery by Americans of English descent during the War of Independence. Both when Howe cleared Boston and when Clinton withdrew from Philadelphia, thousands of citizens departed with him who had good reason to fear the vengeance of their patriotically minded countrymen. When Washington fled across the Jersey Plain - "like a hunted fox" - after the English landed at New York in the summer of 1776 and after the American defeat on Long Island, having already been abandoned once by Lee, the leading Jersey farmers swore allegiance to the crown again by the thousands and joined the British army by the hundreds. As late as 1780 - after five years of fighting for freedom - Washington reported to Congress, "While our troops are suffering hardships, those of the enemy in New York are abundantly supplied from the adjoining States; indeed, commerce with the enemy is so general as scarcely to be considered a crime."

In the same year occurred the treason of Benedict Arnold, who had distinguished himself at Quebec and Saratoga. Arnold had already believed himself to be behind in command at Saratoga. After the British withdrew from Philadelphia, he became commander of the capital and got into disputes with the state government of Pennsylvania as with Congress itself. A court-martial, which he himself had requested, ended with Washington giving him a light reprimand. That was enough for the man, wounded in his ambition, to go over to the enemy. Not content with that, he decided to play the important fortress of West Point in the Hudson Valley into the hands of the British. However, he had a confidant in the planned betrayal, the British Major Andre. The latter fell into the hands of the Americans. West Point was saved, but Arnold escaped. He received the promised reward of his betrayal, 6000 pounds sterling and a command in the British army. Arnold's correspondence with the British command, found later, reveals all the baseness of his disposition. For the successful delivery of West Point he had negotiated 20000 pounds. It seemed to him that everything was for sale. Thus he had offered the British commander-in-chief three thousand American soldiers, at a guinea apiece "cheaper than Hesse," as he advertised his wares. Yes, he thought, even Washington could be had for the price of an English peership.

Arnold pushed his brazenness immediately after the betrayal to the point of invading, looting, and pillaging Virginia with the body of British troops turned over to his command. Steuben, who was in the process of raising troops for Green, who was operating in Carolina, was assigned to oppose Arnold. Steuben held only small forces at his disposal, moreover he had to keep the connection with Green open, nevertheless he succeeded in locking up the traitor in Portsmouth. There he was replaced in command by Lafayette. The Frenchman was then a young man of twenty-three. The man in his fifties, the veteran of the Seven Years' War, who had actually created the American army, resigned in silence. He did not go over to the enemy out of aggrieved ambition as did the American Arnold. He uttered not a word of criticism or indignation; indeed, no one ever learned what he thought about the fact that he, the deserving general, was being replaced by a boy.

Washington's reasons had been merely political. The Marquis of Lafayette, who had come across the Atlantic as a romantic enthusiast of twenty years to offer his rapier to Washington, was now regarded as a sort of ideal figure for whom France and America alike were equally enthusiastic. By entrusting Lafayette, Washington wanted to flatter his French allies and entice them to participate more fully in the upcoming operations. For Steuben, therefore, it was no less painful to have to hand over command to one so much younger and inexperienced. Like any soldier, he was eager to show his ability as a commander in battle, not just as Washington's adviser. But as a Prussian officer, he complied without protest. Washington knew how reward and achievement were divided between Lafayette and Steuben, that on the one fell all glory and all glorious deed, on the other all toilsome, renunciatory labor. But the difficulties he had with Congress and state governments, with all the jealous scheming politicians, officers, cliques, and groups, were in any case so great that he felt grateful that Steuben did not insist on being entrusted with an important command, which would at once have aroused the jealousy of all the native officers.

Once one has looked behind the scenes and the glittering patriotic façade of the American Revolution and seen the almost superhuman efforts of its leader not so much to beat England as to keep his own divergent countrymen in line, one understands why Washington was not only reluctant to let his German Inspector General leave his immediate vicinity, but why, during the latter half of the War of Independence, he also surrounded himself with a bodyguard under a German commander and composed entirely, or almost entirely, of Germans.

When a mounted bodyguard was first to be raised for the commander-in-chief, Washington gave explicit orders to include only Americans in it. Even when in 1777 the original force had to be reshuffled because no fewer than ten of its members were implicated in a plot to assassinate Washington, the American general still favored Americans. It must have been a serious shock to him that the first American soldier to be hanged was a rider in his bodyguard, which after all consisted, or rather was supposed to consist, of people chosen for the sake of their special sense of patriotism and loyalty.

Whether Washington was under the aftermath of this conspiracy or the various other treacheries of Americans of British descent prompted him to do so, in any case he placed the bodyguard, newly formed in 1778, under the command of the German Major von Heer. The other officers and all, or just about all, of the soldiers in this select small force also consisted of Germans. It accompanied Washington throughout the campaign, and it was the last force to be demobilized. Twelve men of the bodyguard remained with him until he took off his general's coat and retired to his Mount Vernon estate as a commoner. For the last time they paraded there before the commander with whom they had shared joys and sorrows through so many years. It is a fact that America should never forget that its great leader and commander in the Revolution entrusted his personal safety to German loyalty.