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’s column for half an hour and gave Howe’s men a chance to regroup. Small squads of Americans kept darting toward the house, only to be pelted by British fire until the grounds were “strewn with a prodigious number of rebel dead,” said a British officer.42 Those who tried to clamber through the windows were pierced with bayonets. One Hessian officer, viewing this slaughterhouse the next day, “counted seventy-five dead Americans, some of whom lay stretched in the doorways, under the tables and chairs, and under the windows . . . The rooms of the house were riddled by cannonballs, and looked like a slaughter house because of the blood splattered around.”43 Three American regiments managed to kill a risible four British soldiers. In a scathing judgment of this misstep, General Anthony Wayne later wrote, “A windmill attack was made upon a house into which six light companies had thrown themselves to avoid our bayonets. Our troops were deceived by this attack, thinking it something formidable. They fell back to assist . . . confusion ensued and we ran away from the arms of victory open to receive us.”44

Belatedly, Washington heeded his dissenting officers and told his army to move on, leaving a small detachment behind. Cool as ever, shielded only by a pack of aides, Washington again exposed himself to danger on his conspicuous white horse. “With great concern I saw our brave commander-in-chief exposing himself to the hottest fire of the enemy,” recalled Sullivan, and “regard to my country obliged me to ride to him and beg him to retire.”45 Washington briefly withdrew to the rear, only to ride forward again. At first he imagined he was hearing the sound of British soldiers retreating, with the enemy falling back “in the utmost confusion.”46 He was so sanguine of victory that he nearly ordered his men to march to Philadelphia. Washington remained unalterably convinced that, until bad weather reversed the situation, the British had been on the brink of withdrawing from the battlefield.

Unfortunately, the strange conditions had played havoc with his overly intricate plan. Enveloped in fog and drifting smoke, the four columns found it hard to coordinate their actions. As so often with Washington’s strategies, the many interlocking parts were hard to harmonize. American soldiers began firing at one another in the fog, precipitating a headlong retreat. False reports flew about of an enemy force in the rear, causing patriots to flee a phantom enemy. Washington ordered Major Benjamin Tallmadge to block these stampeding foot soldiers by lining up a row of horses across the road, only to have the infantry run around or crawl desperately beneath them. Washington shouted at his men, even struck at them with his sword, as he had done at Kip’s Bay—to no effect. At the same time Greene’s men to the north were falling back in disorderly fashion. The whole battle lasted less than three hours.

By nine P.M. the American troops had regathered at Pennypacker’s Mill, twenty miles away. By all accounts, they weren’t bowed or crestfallen. “They appeared to me to be only sensible of a disappointment, not a defeat, and to be more displeased at their retreating from Germantown than anxious to get to their rendezvous,” said

Thomas Paine.47 But the final tally of battle—150 Americans killed, 520 wounded, and 400 captured versus 70 British killed, 450 wounded, and 15 captured—decidedly favored the British. “In a word,” Washington told his brother Jack, “it was a bloody day. Would to heaven I could add that it had been a more fortunate one for us.”48

In a letter Howe complained of the torching of flour mills and the suffering of law-abiding citizens; on October 6 Washington replied in a sternly worded reproach. He noted the “wanton and unnecessary depredations” committed by Howe’s own army and the annihilation of Charlestown.49 On that same day, in a magnificently gallant gesture, he sent Howe a two-line letter about a dog found roaming the Germantown battlefield. It said in full: “General Washington’s compliments to General Howe. He does himself the pleasure