It is January 15th. Welcome to Episode 15 of History in a Year. Today, we enter the “Winter of Despair.” While Benjamin Franklin drinks champagne in Paris, George Washington’s army marches into a frozen hell called Valley Forge. We witness the starvation, the bloody footprints in the snow, and the arrival of a mysterious, fraudulent Prussian Baron who transforms a mob of farmers into a professional machine of war.
STEPHEN: Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH: Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN: You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH: And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN: It is January 15th. Welcome to Episode 15. Yesterday, we saw Benjamin Franklin secure the French Alliance in 1778. It was a diplomatic triumph.
LEAH: But while champagne corks were popping in Paris, the reality on the ground in Pennsylvania was grim. In the fall of 1777, the British had captured Philadelphia—the capital of the United States.
STEPHEN: The Continental Congress fled to York, Pennsylvania. And George Washington, after losing two battles to defend the city, had to find a place to put his army for the winter.
LEAH: He needed a place that was close enough to keep an eye on the British in Philadelphia, but far enough away to be safe from surprise attacks. He chose a high plateau near the Schuylkill River called Valley Forge.
STEPHEN: On December 19, 1777, the army marched in. And “marched” is a generous word. They stumbled in.
LEAH: Washington wrote to Congress that nearly 3,000 of his men were “barefoot and otherwise naked.” You could literally track the movement of the army by the blood left in the snow from their frozen, cut feet.
STEPHEN: When they arrived, there was nothing there. Just woods. It was freezing cold. They had to build their own city from scratch.
LEAH: They worked like demons. Washington ordered them to build standard log huts—14 feet by 16 feet—each housing 12 soldiers. In just a few weeks, they built over 2,000 huts. It became the fourth-largest city in America, made entirely of logs.
STEPHEN: But a roof over your head doesn’t fill your stomach. The supply system had completely collapsed. The Quartermaster General had resigned, and Congress—which was bickering and incompetent—hadn’t appointed a replacement.
LEAH: The soldiers were starving. For weeks, they lived on something called “Firecake.” It wasn’t cake. It was a paste made of flour and water, baked on a hot rock until it was hard as a brick. That was it. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
STEPHEN: Sometimes, they didn’t even have that. There were days when entire regiments chanted, “No meat! No meat!” Washington was terrified of a mutiny. He warned Congress that the army must either “starve, dissolve, or disperse.”
LEAH: And then came the disease. Typhoid, dysentery, typhus, and smallpox tore through the camp. Men were packed into those small huts with poor ventilation. The sanitation was terrible.
STEPHEN: Of the 12,000 men who marched into Valley Forge, about 2,000 died that winter. They didn’t die from British bullets; they died from neglect.
LEAH: Washington was fighting a war on two fronts. He was fighting to keep his men alive, and he was fighting to keep his job.
STEPHEN: This is something we often forget. There was a secret movement in Congress called the “Conway Cabal.” Many politicians were jealous of Washington. They looked at Horatio Gates—who had won at Saratoga—and said, “Why can’t Washington be more like him?”
LEAH: They wanted to replace Washington with Gates. Washington had to play a very delicate political game to survive. He stayed with his men. He refused to go home to Mount Vernon. He slept in a tent until the huts were built. His integrity is what held the army together.
STEPHEN: But the army needed more than integrity. It needed training. They were still a collection of amateur militias. They didn’t know how to march in formation. They didn’t know how to use bayonets—they mostly used them to cook meat over fires.
LEAH: Enter Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.
STEPHEN: He arrived in camp in February 1778. He was a Prussian officer. He claimed to be a Lieutenant General and a personal aide to Frederick the Great, the most famous military genius in Europe.
LEAH: Spoiler alert: He was lying. He was actually just a lowly captain who had been discharged from the Prussian army. He was broke and looking for a job. Benjamin Franklin had met him in Paris, realized he had talent, and helped him fluff up his resume.
STEPHEN: But frankly, it didn’t matter. Because Steuben was a genius. He didn’t speak a word of English, but he marched out onto the parade ground in his fancy uniform and started screaming in German and French.
LEAH: He realized that Americans were different from European peasants. You couldn’t just beat them into submission. You had to explain why.
STEPHEN: Steuben wrote: “The genius of this nation is not in the least to be compared with that of the Prussians… In Prussia, you say to your soldier, ‘Do this,’ and he doeth it. I am obliged to say to the American, ‘This is the reason why you ought to do that,’ and then he does it.”
LEAH: He simplified the drill manual. He taught them a standard marching pace. He taught them how to reload their muskets faster. And most importantly, he taught them how to fight with the bayonet.
STEPHEN: He started with a “Model Company” of 100 men. He trained them personally. Then those 100 men went out and trained others. It was a “train the trainer” program.
LEAH: Steuben was a character. He would get so frustrated when the soldiers made mistakes that he would start swearing in German, then French, and then he would ask his translator to “swear at them for me in English!”
STEPHEN: The soldiers loved him. He worked harder than anyone. He woke up at 3 AM. He inspected the latrines personally to ensure sanitation improved.
LEAH: By the spring of 1778, the snow began to melt. And something miraculous had happened. The sick, starving mob that had stumbled into Valley Forge had disappeared.
STEPHEN: In its place was a professional army. They could march in columns. They could wheel and maneuver. They were disciplined.
LEAH: And just in time, too. Because in May 1778, the news finally arrived from France that the alliance was official.
STEPHEN: The British in Philadelphia realized they were in trouble. A French fleet was on the way. They evacuated Philadelphia and marched back to New York.
LEAH: Washington saw his chance. He chased them. At the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, the Americans stood toe-to-toe with the British Regulars in an open field and fought them to a draw.
STEPHEN: Valley Forge had forged them into iron. But while the North settled into a stalemate, the British were coming up with a new strategy.
LEAH: Join us tomorrow for Episode 16. The British invade the American South. We witness the disastrous Fall of Charleston and the humiliation of Horatio Gates at Camden. The war is about to get very ugly.
STEPHEN: I’m Leah.
STEPHEN: And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN: You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.