Washington [209]
Three routed American divisions fell back “in the most broken and confused manner,” according to Nathanael Greene, who managed to fight a noble rearguard action with his division. During the American retreat Lafayette showed his usual valor, jumping into the fray to rally his men. Shot in the left calf, he didn’t grasp the severity of the wound until his boot was soaked with blood and he had to be lifted off the battlefield. Possibly with some exaggeration, he claimed years later that Washington told the surgeon, “Take care of him as if he were my son, for I love him the same.”19 If true, this was an extraordinary statement, given how briefly Washington had known Lafayette. It would confirm that the young French nobleman had touched him in some special way, and it again speaks to Washington’s unseen emotional depths. He was always impressed by Lafayette’s bravery, his eagerness to return to service. “When [Washington] learned I wanted to rejoin the army too soon,” Lafayette told his wife, “he wrote the warmest of letters, urging me to concentrate on getting well first.”20
With the sound of muskets still reverberating in their ears, the overpowered Americans streamed east toward Chester in an unruly flight. Lafayette recalled the confused swarm of carts, cannon, and other military paraphernalia that the soldiers managed to salvage. These battlefield refugees, who straggled into the American camp throughout the night, left behind so many hundreds of bleeding compatriots at Brandywine Creek that Howe asked Washington to send doctors to care for them. All told, the Americans lost about 200 killed, 500 wounded, and 400 captured versus only 90 killed and 500 wounded for the triumphant British.
Toward midnight, in a private home in Chester, Washington informed Congress of the shattering defeat. After asking Timothy Pickering to draft a note, he found the message so dispiriting that he said some “words of encouragement” were needed .21 If this was self-serving, it also reflected Washington’s firm belief that he had to uphold American morale at all costs. The management of defeat had become an essential aspect of his repertoire. Rather desperately, he tried to give a positive gloss to the terrible thrashing his men had taken, grossly understating American losses. His letter to John Hancock began, “Sir: I am sorry to inform you that in this day’s engagement, we have been obliged to leave the enemy masters of the field.”22 It continued: “Our loss of men is not, I am persuaded, very considerable; I believe much less than the enemy’s . . . Notwithstanding the misfortune of the day, I am happy to find the troops in good spirits; and I hope another time, we shall compensate for the losses now sustained.”23 This sounded, after the bloody disaster, like sheer fantasy, but the troops had fought in a spirited manner; the defeat resulted from the failed performance of the leaders, not the lethargy of the rank and file. Two weeks after the battle Washington still maintained that “the enemy’s loss was considerable and much superior to ours.”24
It had been an ignoble defeat for Washington, who had failed to heed clues that might have unlocked the key to Howe’s strategy. The commander in chief had frequently seemed marginal to the battle. As Pickering said, Washington had behaved more like “a passive spectator than the commanding general.”25 Fighting on home territory near Philadelphia, he should have been able to master the terrain instead of relying on crude maps and erring scouts. The carnage and chaos of Brandywine only reinforced an image of Washington as dithering and indecisive.
Thomas Jefferson traced Washington’s strengths and weaknesses as a general to a persistent mental trait. He prepared thoroughly for battles and did extremely well if everything went according to plan. “But if deranged during the course of the action,” Jefferson noted, “if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was