All language subtitles for The American Revolution S01E05.en

"I have of late lost a great many
intimate friends.

"The numbers of fine young men
from 15 to five-and-20

"with loss of limbs hurt me beyond conception.

"And I every day curse Columbus

"and all the discoverers of this
diabolical country.

"In what manner the Parliament will
act on this occasion

"we cannot conceive."

Major John Bowater.

- "You cannot, I venture to say you
cannot conquer America.

"My Lords, in three campaigns,
we have done nothing

"and suffered much.

"If I were an American,
as I am an Englishman,

"while a foreign troop was landed in
my country,

"I never would lay down my arms.

"Never, never, never."

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

- "There comes a soldier.

"His bare feet are seen through his
worn-out shoes.

"His legs nearly naked from the
tattered remains

"of an only pair of stockings.

"His breeches not sufficient to cover
his nakedness.

"His whole appearance pictures a
person forsaken and discouraged."

Dr Albigence Waldo, surgeon, 1st
Connecticut Infantry.

- The weary Continentals,

whom George Washington led into winter
quarters at Valley Forge

in December of 1777,

were, a visitor said, "just a skeleton
of an army."

They'd been fighting and marching for
months,

but many hadn't been paid since
August.

Nearly 3,000 of them were officially
unfit for duty.

Over the next six months,

2,500 soldiers would die,

mostly from typhus, typhoid, influenza
and dysentery.

Clothing was so scarce that when a man
died,

what was left of his uniform was
washed and carefully preserved,

so that another member of his unit
might be at least a little warmer.

- "I am now convinced that unless some
great change takes place,

"this army must inevitably be reduced

"to one or the other of these things -

"starve,

"dissolve,

"or disperse in order to obtain
subsistence

"in the best manner they can."

George Washington, headquarters at the
Valley Forge.

- Valley Forge took its name from an
abandoned iron works

that stood at the intersection of a
small creek

and the Schuylkill River,

some 20 miles northwest of
Philadelphia.

Washington himself called it "a dreary
kind of place,"

but he chose it because it was close
enough to Philadelphia

to move quickly against British
foragers

when they dared venture out of the
city,

and far enough from it to make
surprise attacks unlikely.

Pennsylvania legislators complained
that

instead of withdrawing to Valley
Forge,

Washington should be about the
business of recapturing Philadelphia.

- "I can assure those gentlemen

"that it is a much easier and less
distressing thing

"to draw remonstrances in a
comfortable room

"by a good fireside

"than to occupy a cold, bleak hill

"and sleep under frost and snow
without clothes or blankets.

"It would give me infinite pleasure

"to afford protection to every
individual

"and to every spot of ground in the
whole of the United States.

"Nothing is more my wish.

"But this is not possible with our
present force."

- Now huddled in tattered canvas tents
at Valley Forge,

soldiers went for days with nothing to
eat but fire cakes -

just flour and water baked on hot
stones.

Several days went by when many
soldiers had no food at all.

There was talk of mutiny.

Congress, still in exile in York,
Pennsylvania,

told Washington to commandeer food and
fodder

from the surrounding countryside,

but he resisted,

worried it might turn civilians
against the cause.

Instead, he tried to purchase
everything as men needed.

But the steady depreciation of
continental currency

made that problematic.

- The British Army has lots of hard
cash,

and lots of Americans

who are not politically interested one
way or the other

see opportunities for commercial
benefit,

selling products, selling goods and
services to the British Army.

- Washington's army was dwindling
again.

Men simply went home.

Hundreds enlisted in Loyalist
regiments.

Others joined roving outlaw bands that
looted isolated farmhouses.

Still others made their way to
Philadelphia to surrender,

hoping they would be treated better as
prisoners of war

than as soldiers at Valley Forge.

Washington's officers were leaving
too.

- "The number of resignations in the
Virginia Line

"is induced by officers,

"finding that every man who remains at
home is making a fortune,

"whilst they are spending what they
have

"in the defence of their country."

Thomas Nelson.

- "I did not solicit this command,

"but accepted it after much entreaty.

"As soon as the public gets
dissatisfied with my service,

"I shall quit the helm with as much
satisfaction

"and retire to a private station

"with as much content as ever the
weariest pilgrim

"felt upon his safe arrival in the
Holy Land."

- Washington would work tirelessly,

first to maintain and then to improve
his army.

Shelter came first.

He ordered the men to cut down trees,

dismantled farmers outbuildings and
fences

and banged together row upon row of
log huts,

perhaps 2,000 of them,

each one 14 by 16ft, and meant to
house 12 men.

Valley Forge would, for a time, be the
fourth largest city in America.

20,000 men, women and children from
all 13 states.

Martha Washington joined her husband
at Valley Forge.

At least eight servants - men and
women,

white and black, enslaved and free -

lived alongside the Washingtons in a
stone house they rented

from the family of the mill owner who
had built it.

Eight of General Washington's closest
aides

were crowded in there as well.

Among them, the Marquis de Lafayette.

- As soon as Lafayette arrives,

he starts to look around and get
inspired by everything he sees.

He's young, so he's excited to be in
this new country

in what, to him, is the New World,

and he's going to explore and
understand.

He really starts to believe in the
cause for equality,

for liberties.

- Washington had this really
interesting quality

of being able to project authority and
confidence,

and allowing that to spill out into
others,

so that they acquired authority and
confidence by being in his orbit.

I think he had the effect of

pulling out some of the best in the
people who were around him.

- To provide his army with the
reliable logistical support

it desperately needed,

Washington insisted that Congress
appoint as Quartermaster General

the officer he trusted most -
Nathanael Greene.

But Greene was a fighting general.

He knew there was more combat ahead

and wanted to be in on what he called
"the mischief."

- Greene says nobody in history has
ever heard of a quartermaster.

He doesn't want the job, but he takes
the job.

Like Washington, he's got a brain
built for executive action,

and he's good at being the
quartermaster.

- Thanks to Nathanael Greene's mastery
of logistics

and Washington's appeals to state
governors,

by the end of March, 1778,

herds of cattle and sheep were
plodding toward Valley Forge

from several directions,

along with wagon trains filled with
everything

from barrels of nails to brand-new
uniforms

and crates of bayonets and muskets.

Now that his men were better fed,
clothed and equipped,

and their ranks were swelling,

as fresh recruits, recalled Regulars

and returning convalescents all
converged on Valley Forge,

Washington wanted every man in his
newly reorganised army

to undergo formal military training to
end what he called,

"the confusion that had too often

"undercut its performance on the
battlefield."

The man he picked to oversee that task
was a newcomer to America -

Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard
August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben.

- "Never before or since have I had
such an impression

"of the ancient fabled god of War

"as when I looked on the Baron.

"The trappings of his horse,

"the enormous holsters of his pistols

"all seemed to favour the idea -

"he seemed to me a perfect
personification of Mars."

Private Ashbel Greene.

- Steuben claimed to be a baron,

a Lieutenant General in the Prussian
Army

and a close aide to Frederick the
Great.

He really was a baron, though a
penniless one,

and he had served in Frederick's
headquarters for a time.

But his army career in Europe had been
cut short

by an accusation that he had taken
familiarities with young boys.

In America, he said, he wanted to put
his talents in the arts of war

in the service of a republic.

Steuben was hot-tempered,

and his English was initially limited
to a single word -

"Goddamn."

- "When some movement or manoeuvre was
not performed to his mind,

"he began to swear in German,

"then in French,

"and then in both languages together.

"When he had exhausted his artillery
of foreign oaths,

"he would call to his aides,

"'Come and swear for me in English!

"'These fellows won't do what I bid
them!'"

- Baron von Steuben is really a
comical figure

when he arrives at camp.

The men make fun of him,

but he is a man who you need

pulling the men together

and giving them a sense of common
purpose.

After the men have drilled with him
for a little while,

they stop laughing.

- But for all his bluster,

Steuben grasped the character of the
men he was to work with.

"The genius of this nation is not to
be compared with the Prussians,

"Austrians or French," he wrote to an
old friend back home.

"You say to your soldier, 'Do this,'
and he does it.

"But here I am obliged to say,

"'This is the reason why you ought to
do that.'

"And THEN he does it."

Steuben taught the men to march at a
common step of 75 paces a minute

and a quick step of 120 paces.

To move in columns rather than
straggle in single file.

To shift into battle line and back
again when under fire.

To load and fire musket volleys more
quickly.

And to become proficient with the
bayonet,

the weapon that had once terrified
them

when in British or Hessian hands.

As skills improved, so did morale.

By spring, the danger of mutiny had
eased.

So had the mutterings about
Washington's leadership.

He was, it was clear, indispensable to
the cause of liberty.

- He was the glue that held people
together.

These 13 colonies had to come together

and he was the person to do it.

We would not have had a country
without him.

- Washington was eager now

to test his newly-disciplined army
against the enemy.

- "The enemy imagined Philadelphia

"to be of more importance to us than
it really was.

"And to that belief added the absurd
idea

"that the soul of all America was
centred there,

"and would be conquered there."

Thomas Paine.

- The British, German and Loyalist
troops penned up in Philadelphia

had had a hard winter too.

They had subsisted on half rations.

Wounded troops occupied every public
building in town

except the State House

where the Declaration Of Independence
had been signed,

which was crowded with Patriot
prisoners.

1777 had ended badly for the British.

General Burgoyne had surrendered an
entire army at Saratoga.

General Howe might have occupied
Philadelphia,

and his subordinates still held New
York City and Newport,

but they controlled little else.

And now with the French joining the
war,

Britain would be required to defend
all its imperial holdings

in India, Africa, Ireland, the
Mediterranean

and the Caribbean,

as well as in North America.

- Suddenly, those 13 colonies that
were rebelling

are kind of the small potatoes of the
war.

They could lose their profitable
plantation islands.

They could lose Jamaica.

The stakes are big in this war.

- "On the 10th of May, Sir Henry
Clinton arrived at Philadelphia,

"relieving Sir William Howe as
Commander In Chief."

Captain Johann Ewald.

- Henry Clinton is a formidable
military officer.

He's had a lot of combat experience,

but he's a very, very difficult
personality.

He's easily aggrieved,

he carries his grievances and grudges
with him.

He will be the British Commander In
Chief

longer than any other general in the
American Revolution, for four years.

- General Henry Clinton,

who had been fighting in America since
Bunkers Hill,

had hoped to be relieved.

Instead, he would be asked to do

at least as much as his predecessor
had been asked to do,

and to do it with far fewer men.

His new orders were to send 8,000 of
his soldiers

to protect British interests in
Florida and the Caribbean.

He was to leave the rest of the New
England and Mid-Atlantic states

in Patriot hands, for the most part,

and eventually mount seaborne assaults

on the four Southern Colonies.

BELL RINGS

Clinton concluded he first had to get
his army back to New York,

which meant evacuating Philadelphia

that had been taken just nine months
earlier.

Most of his men, he decided, would
have to march to New York.

He had too few ships to carry his
entire army.

As well as some 3,000 Loyalists now
eager to leave with him.

- "Philadelphia, June 18th.

"This morning when we arose,

"there was not one Redcoat to be seen.

"Colonel Gordon and some others

"had not been gone a quarter of an
hour

"before the Americans entered the
city."

Elizabeth Drinker.

- To act as military governor of
Philadelphia,

George Washington selected General
Benedict Arnold,

still suffering from war wounds so
severe

that he could not mount a horse.

He was to restore order and preserve
tranquillity.

By June 18th, 1778,

most of Clinton's army was in New
Jersey

and had begun its march toward New
York,

some 90 miles away.

They moved in two great columns.

More than 18,000 soldiers,

nearly 2,000 non-combatants,

46 artillery pieces

and 5,000 horses.

The next morning,

George Washington led his army out of
Valley Forge

for the first time in months

and began shadowing the British as
they moved east,

looking for an opportunity to strike.

- Washington has decided

that he is not going to directly
intercept this column,

which is very strong.

He wants to nick at them and peck at
them from the rear

and make life miserable for them

and watch for an opening.

- "The whole province was in arms,

"following us with Washington's army

"constantly surrounding us on our
marches and besieging our camps.

"Each step cost human blood."

Johann Ewald.

- The weather added to their misery.

Heat that soared above 90 degrees,

sudden downpours that turned sandy
roads into bogs,

followed by dense humidity,

swarms of mosquitoes

and still more heat.

20 British soldiers died of heat
exhaustion on a single day.

As many as 500 men are thought to have
deserted during the march,

most of them Hessians,

blending into German-speaking
communities nearby.

Clinton decided to head east

toward Sandy Hook,

a Loyalist stronghold from which royal
transports

could ferry his men to New York.

He merged his two divisions into one
column,

and, he recalled,

"Hoping that Mr Washington might
possibly be induced

"to commit himself to battle,

"I placed the elite of my army between
him

"and my supply train to defend it from
insult."

He put General Charles Cornwallis in
charge of that force.

At Hopewell, Washington convened a
council of war.

General Nathanael Greene, back in the
field, was eager for a fight.

- "If we suffer the enemy to pass
through the Jerseys

"without attempting anything upon
them,

"I think we shall ever regret it.

"People expect something from us, and
our strength demands it."

- But most commanders urged caution.

Major General Charles Lee -
Washington's second in command,

captured two years before and only
recently exchanged -

was especially adamant in his
opposition.

"Sending Americans against British
Regulars would be criminal," he said.

But when Washington decided to send
forward 4,500 troops anyway,

Lee insisted seniority required that
he lead them.

If he weren't given command, he said
he would be disgraced.

Washington relented

and ordered Lee to follow Cornwallis's
elite rearguard

and look for an opportunity to attack.

The British left their encampment
around Monmouth Court House

well before dawn on Sunday, June 28th.

DISTANT SHOUTING AND CANNONFIRE

By mid-morning,

Lee's men had formed west of the
British line,

trying piecemeal to attack and
dislodge Cornwallis's forces.

All their efforts proved futile.

As the Patriots struggled in
increasingly brutal heat,

Clinton sent an entire division to
reinforce Cornwallis.

More than 10,000 British, German and
Loyalist troops counter-attacked.

- Things go south in a hurry for the
Americans.

Lee loses control

and the next thing you know, this
American advance guard,

the vanguard that's supposed to be
attacking, is fleeing.

- They're confused. They begin falling
back.

But then Washington appears.

The knowledge of his presence causes
the retreat to stop instantaneously,

without even having said a word.

Those who witnessed this moment

said that it was like a bolt of
electricity

shot through the forces,

once they realised that Washington was
there.

- "His presence stopped the retreat,

"his fine appearance on horseback,

"his calm courage gave him the air

"best calculated to excite enthusiasm.

"He rode all along the lines, amid the
shouts of the soldiers

"cheering them by his voice and
example."

Marquis de Lafayette.

- Washington gives some orders, the
men get back into line.

And they face down the British attack.

- SHOUTING
- Load the cannon!

- And they don't break.

- General Steuben's training had paid
off.

The British launched a series of
assaults.

General Henry Clinton himself led one
of them, sword in hand.

Colonels Alexander Hamilton and Aaron
Burr

both had horses shot out from under
them,

but the Americans held.

- Washington places his defences in a
way

that stops the British assault.

He's got good ground for his
artillery.

He's hammering the British.

- The artillery duel continued for two
hours.

Infantry on both sides sought whatever
cover they could.

- "With the thermometer at 96,

"what could be done in a hot pine
barren,

"loaded with everything that the poor
soldier carries?

"It breaks my heart that I was
obliged,

"under those cruel circumstances, to
attempt it."

General Henry Clinton.

- Finally, at around 3:45, Clinton
ordered a stop to the firing.

With his supply train now well on its
way toward Sandy Hook and safety,

he reluctantly began to withdraw his
exhausted troops.

- "It was generally understood

"the battle was to be renewed at the
dawn of day.

"But at the dawn of day, I heard the
shout of victory.

"'The British are gone.'"

Dr William Read.

- The Battle Of Monmouth had left some
362 of Washington's men,

and 411 of Clinton's, dead, wounded or
missing.

Corpses, swollen and blackening in the
heat, sprawled everywhere.

Both sides claimed victory.

Clinton's column reached Sandy Hook

without serious interruption

and embarked for Staten Island.

His objective was to get his army to
New York,

and he had done so.

But when the fighting ended,

Washington's men held the field.

Although there would be fierce
fighting

and many skirmishes in New England and
the Mid-Atlantic states,

Monmouth would be the last major
battle fought in the North

during the American Revolution.

And it would be more than three years

before George Washington would
personally

lead his troops into battle again.

The French fleet Washington had been
waiting for

finally appeared off New York

in the week after Independence Day.

12 ships of the line, four frigates,

and over 4,000 French Marines,

all commanded by Vice Admiral Charles
Henri, Comte d'Estaing,

a veteran of warfare against Britain
in India and Sumatra.

- D'Estaing is a French aristocrat.

He considers himself quite superior to
this American ragtag army

and is looking at them and thinks,

"How am I going to work with these
people?"

Because he thought, "I'm the French
Admiral.

"I know what to do here, so they
better listen to me."

- Washington hoped a coordinated
attack with this new French force

could trap Clinton in New York,

take back the city and, by so doing,

persuade Britain that further
prosecution of the war was hopeless.

Because d'Estaing had convinced
himself that his heaviest ships

would run aground trying to enter New
York Harbour,

he decided to move against the British
garrison

at Newport, Rhode Island instead.

It was to be a coordinated assault

with American ground forces under
General John Sullivan.

But neither commander spoke the
other's language.

Sullivan, the son of Irish indentured
servants,

loathed aristocrats like the French
commander,

who, in turn, found Sullivan crude and
inept.

It all went wrong.

Without informing the French,

Sullivan advanced a day earlier than
had been planned.

When a British fleet appeared
offshore,

d'Estaing sailed out to do battle.

But a howling storm scattered and
seriously damaged both fleets.

- 18th-century warfare is mainly based
on the weather.

You have no alternative.

If there is a big storm coming in,

you can't do anything besides getting
just wiped away.

Admiral d'Estaing had to go for
repairs in Boston.

- The French, in essence, leave the
Americans in the lurch.

Sullivan is barely able to extract his
forces

from what could have been a
catastrophe.

- The first joint French-American
operation had failed.

Once the repairs were finished in
Boston,

d'Estaing would set sail for the
French West Indies

without even bothering to tell
Washington he was leaving.

French ships would be available to the
Americans

only during the late summer and early
fall,

when hurricanes threatened the
Caribbean.

The American Revolution was important
to France

only when its successes deepened
Britain's failures.

And Washington knew he could not win
the decisive battle

without French help.

- Anti-French feeling runs so high
after this

that Lafayette said he never, at any
point in the war,

felt that his life was at so much risk

as it was when he walked down the
streets of Boston

after this catastrophe at Rhode
Island.

He thought he was going to be strung
up.

- By the fall of 1778,

Washington's army was arrayed in an
arc

from Middlebrook, New Jersey to
Danbury, Connecticut.

He would remain within striking
distance of New York City,

determined to recapture the place he
had been forced to abandon in 1776.

For months, his and Clinton's armies
had probed one another's lines.

On a single summer afternoon near
Kingsbridge,

a Maryland patrol ambushed a German
unit,

killing six and wounding six more.

And Loyalist cavalry ambushed

and hacked to death most of the
Stockbridge Indians

who had been with Washington's army
since 1775.

"They have fought and bled by our
side," Washington said.

"We consider them as our friends and
brothers."

- "A great majority of the inhabitants

"of North and South Carolina are loyal
subjects.

"It is also well known

"that the principal resources for
carrying on the rebellion

"are drawn from the labour of an
incredible multitude of Negroes

"in the Southern Colonies."

Moses Kirkland.

- The Southern Colonies are seen as an
integrated part

of an economic system that generates
great power and wealth for Britain.

So keeping the Southern Colonies,

with their ability to provision the
West Indian Islands

and particularly their plantation
economies,

is seen as a vital British interest.

And that, more than anything else,

is why the war shifts to the South
from 1778.

- From New York, General Clinton sent
a squadron South

to try to capture Savannah,

the capital of Georgia, and its only
city of any size.

With the help of an African-American
river pilot named Sampson,

the British fleet sailed up the
Savannah River

and began disembarking below the city

at dawn on December 29th, 1778.

Some 700 Continental troops and 150
local militia were waiting.

The British commander saw that a
direct assault

was certain to be bloody.

Then Quamino Dolly, an elderly
enslaved man,

led part of the British force through
a swamp

that allowed them to get behind the
startled Americans and open fire.

The Patriots panicked.

British troops chased them through the
town.

83 Americans were killed

and 30 more drowned trying to swim
across the Yamacraw Creek.

453 surrendered.

The British lost just seven dead.

Over the weeks that followed,

the British captured Augusta

and reimposed royal rule in Georgia.

"I have," their commander boasted,

"ripped one star and one stripe from
the Rebel Flag."

- "If the enemy have it in their power
to press us hard this campaign,

"I know not what may be the
consequence."

George Washington.

- Like Washington, British General
Clinton was stretched thin too,

and could only take small-scale
actions.

In May of 1779,

he ordered raids in the Chesapeake Bay

to destroy Virginia shipyards, dry
docks and tobacco warehouses.

17 ships were needed just to carry the
loot back to New York.

A few weeks later, he dispatched ships
to sail up the Hudson

and capture two forts at Stony Point
and Verplanks Point.

The ease with which those forts fell
convinced Washington

to strengthen the fortifications ten
miles to the north,

at a narrow curve in the river called
West Point.

Washington believed West Point the
most important post in America.

The Polish engineer Colonel Tadeusz
Kosciuszko had been given the task

of designing a series of interlocking
fortifications

on both sides of the river.

An enormous chain weighing 65 tonnes

and covered by gun batteries at both
ends

had been installed to block hostile
passage.

It had been more than a year since the
Battle Of Monmouth.

Washington remained eager to take back
New York,

but he didn't have the men or the
ships.

Still, he understood it would be
damaging to his army's reputation

if he did not strike back somewhere.

So on the night of July 15th,

he ordered General Anthony Wayne and a
hand-picked force of 1,350 men

to attack Stony Point on the Hudson.

Under the cover of darkness,

they took it.

"The fort and garrison are ours,"

Wayne reported back to Washington at
two in the morning.

"Our officers and men behaved like men
who were determined to be free."

In June 1779, King Carlos III of Spain

joined France in the war against
England.

His goal was to recapture for his
empire

everything Spain had lost to Britain
during the Seven Years' War

and to add to it as well,

including Gibraltar - the British-held
spit of land

that controlled the narrow entrance to
the Mediterranean.

For the Spanish king, like the French
king,

the American Revolution was useful
only to undercut Britain.

- This is not about securing American
independence.

This is about cutting Britain's
economic,

commercial might down to size.

But it's risky, though,

especially for Spain,

because Spain has a empire in the
Americas

that looks a little bit like Britain's
North American empire,

only much larger and many, many, many
more people.

And so you encourage a colonial
independence movement

in the British Empire.

Who's to say your own people won't get
the same idea?

- Given the sudden widening of the
global war,

the opposition in Parliament called
upon King George

to direct measures for restoring peace
to America.

He would not hear of it.

- "The present contest with America,

"I cannot help seeing as the most
serious

"in which any country was ever
engaged.

"Step by step, the demands of America
have risen.

"Independence is their object.

"Should America succeed in that, the
West Indies must follow.

"Ireland must soon be a separate
state.

"Then this island would be reduced to
itself,

"and soon would be a poor island
indeed."

- "We do not mean to let the enemy
penetrate into our country,

"for we well know that as far as they
set their foot,

"they will claim the country as
conquered."

Old Smoke.

- Back in the summer of 1777,

the British and their Mohawk and
Seneca allies

had prevailed over their enemies.

Over the months that followed,

New York and Pennsylvania saw raid
after raid,

skirmish after skirmish.

Patriots drove Loyalists from their
homes.

Loyalists and their Indian allies
burned settlements

at Cherry Valley and in the Wyoming
Valley.

Hundreds died on both sides.

- It has gotten to the point where
Washington is

under intense pressure from Congress,

from the state of New York, from the
state of Pennsylvania,

to do something about it.

And because the war has kind of gone
fallow in the north after Monmouth,

he agrees that he will put together

a punitive expedition against the
Indians,

led by one of his major generals, John
Sullivan,

to drive them away from the frontier.

- One of the things that I think is
always on Washington's mind

during this war

is the end of the war.

So Washington basically realises,

"We're going to win independence,

"because France is in the war, Spain's
in the war,

"and we need to make sure that we can
present

"a legitimate and robust claim to
Western land."

One of the foundational truths of
American history

is that this is a nation built on
Indian land.

And Washington would not dispute that,
I think, for a minute.

- Washington's orders to General
Sullivan in May of 1779

had been clear and uncompromising.

- "The immediate objects

"are the total destruction and
devastation of their settlements

"and the capture of as many prisoners

"of every age and sex as possible.

"It will be essential to ruin their
crops now in the ground

"and prevent their planting more.

"That the country may not merely be
overrun, but destroyed.

"You will not, by any means, listen to
any overture for peace

"before the total ruin of their
settlements is affected."

- The Continental Army invaded from
three sides.

In early August, Colonel Daniel
Brodhead

led 600 men northward from Fort Pitt

to destroy the Seneca villages along
the Upper Allegheny River.

Sullivan and three Continental
brigades

started north along the Susquehanna,

while another moved west from the
Mohawk Valley.

At the end of the month, their
combined forces -

4,500 men - began marching north.

- They don't find destitute villages,

or scattered villages of savage
people.

They find what, to them,

are undoubtedly easily recognisable,
prosperous villages.

Their cedar-planked buildings,

multiple-storey buildings, often with
chimneys,

often with glass windows.

These people have material wealth

that they've accumulated over the
years,

and they have houses that look like
something

that people in the Eastern Seaboard
would inhabit.

- On August 29th,

some 600 Senecas, Mohawks, Cayugas,
Delawares and Loyalists

tried to halt the invasion and were
defeated.

- "We sent out a small party to look
for some of the dead Indians.

"They found them

"and skinned two of them from their
hips down for bootlegs.

"One pair for the major, the other for
myself."

Lieutenant William Barton.

- "Our brigade destroyed about 150
acres

"of the best corn that I ever saw.

"Some of the stalks grew 16ft high.

"Besides great quantities of beans,
potatoes,

"pumpkins, cucumbers, squash, and
watermelons.

"And the enemy looking at us from the
hills."

Lieutenant Erkuries Beatty.

- "There's something so cruel

"in destroying the habitations of any
people,

"however mean they may be,

"that I might say the prospect hurts
my feelings."

Dr Jabez Campfield.

- When some soldiers asked General
Sullivan

if he wouldn't at least spare fruit
orchards

that had taken years to grow,

he refused.

"The Indians," he said,

"shall see that there is malice enough
in our hearts

"to destroy everything that
contributes to their support."

- The Sullivan Expedition ends up
mapping New York

for future settlement.

Everybody kind of moves through New
York and says,

"Wow, these apple orchards are so
great.

"These cornfields are so fantastic.

"I'm coming back here at the end of
this," right?

And so in many ways, it is not only a
military campaign,

it's a scouting expedition for future
settlement.

- The troops torched village after
village.

Catherine's Town.

Appletown.

Cayuga Town.

Kanadaseaga.

Canandaigua.

Honeoye.

By then, Sullivan was within miles of
Little Beard's Town,

which he had been told was the grand
capital of Indian Country.

Little Beard's Town was the home of
Mary Jemison,

who had been adopted years earlier by
Senecas

after her Irish parents had been
killed during a raid.

- "He was about to march to our town

"when our Indians resolved to give him
battle on the way.

"They sent all the women and children
into the woods,

"and then, well armed, they set out to
face the conquering enemy."

- A scouting party of 26 Continentals,

guided by an Oneida scout, and
commanded by Lieutenant Thomas Boyd,

was advancing ahead of the main column
on September 13th,

when they stumbled into a Seneca and
Loyalist ambush.

16 men were encircled.

14 were killed and scalped.

Boyd and another man were captured.

The next day, Sullivan's main army
reached Little Beard's Town.

- "On entering the town,

"we found the body of Lieutenant Boyd
and another rifleman

"in a most terrible mangled condition.

"They was both stripped naked and
their heads cut off."

- Sullivan's men buried what was left
of their companions,

looted and burned all 128 dwellings in
Little Beard's town,

and then spent eight hours

methodically uprooting and destroying
crops.

By the end, Sullivan reported to
Washington

that his army had burned a total of 40
towns.

Farther to the west, Colonel Brodhead
had destroyed ten more.

Most of the Seneca refugees

made their way to Fort Niagara on Lake
Ontario,

where some 5,000 men, women and
children

belonging to a host of nations huddled
together in muddy camps.

- "We of the Six Nations have been
much cast down

"by the great loss we have sustained.

"But yet we do not despair.

"We are determined to persevere in the
cause we have engaged in.

"We hope to be able to survive the
winter.

"And then we mean once more to meet
our enemies

"and see whether we are to live or
die.

"And if such is the will of the Great
Spirit,

"we will leave our bones with those of
the rest of our brethren,

"rather than evacuate our country,

"or give our enemies room to say we
fled from them."

Twethorechte.

- The damage Patriot campaigns did

to Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga and Mohawk
homelands

was profound and permanent.

Some Haudenosaunee would come to call
George Washington

"The Town Destroyer,"

and would remember the American
Revolution as "The Whirlwind."

In the late summer of 1779,

both George Washington and British
General Henry Clinton

believed that the long-awaited all-out
American assault

on British-occupied New York City

could finally be just weeks away.

Each had learned that the French fleet
was sailing back north

from the West Indies.

Neither was sure where it was headed.

Clinton ordered all British troops to
withdraw from occupied Newport

to strengthen New York's defences.

Washington readied plans for a siege
of the city

and called upon five neighbouring
states

to provide him with more militia.

But French Admiral d'Estaing never
came.

Instead, he appeared at the mouth of
the Savannah River with 32 warships

to join forces with southern Patriots
who had already retaken Augusta

and were eager to recapture the rest
of Georgia.

Aboard were 4,000 French troops,

including 750 free men of colour -

black and mixed-race troops, from what
would one day be called Haiti.

While d'Estaing waited for his
American allies to join the siege,

he surrounded Savannah with heavy
artillery

and demanded its surrender.

The outnumbered British refused,

stalling for time until reinforcements
of their own

could reach the city.

As they braced for an attack,

Redcoats and Loyalist troops

and scores of Savannah's free and
enslaved residents

had time to complete two defensive
lines around the city.

CANNONFIRE

After Continentals and Patriot
militiamen arrived from Charleston,

d'Estaing led a direct assault on
October 9th.

Some Americans became mired in a rice
field.

French troops in white uniforms proved
easy targets.

British guns sent grapeshot - nails
and chunks of iron -

tearing through the attackers.

"The ditch," a British officer
remembered,

"was chock full of their dead."

- For the French-American alliance, it
is quite the defeat.

People do lose their trust in the
availabilities of the French

to help the Americans.

They were very happy to have signed an
alliance with them,

but the first campaigns - plural -
completely failed.

- D'Estaing, who had been wounded
twice, sailed away to France.

The American commander, General
Benjamin Lincoln,

limped back to Patriot-controlled
Charleston.

- "You know the importance of
Charleston.

"It is the bond that binds three
states to the authority of Congress.

"If the enemy possessed themselves of
this town,

"there will be no living for honest
Patriots."

David Ramsay.

- The winter of 1779, 1780,

probably the harshest winter in North
America in the 18th century.

New York Harbour froze over solidly.

You could drag cannon

from the tip of Manhattan Island to
Staten Island.

You could cross the Hudson River on
foot.

- For General Washington and most of
his army

at winter quarters in and around
Morristown, New Jersey,

the temperature rarely rose above
zero.

"It was cold enough to cut a man in
two," Joseph Plumb Martin remembered.

- "We were absolutely, literally
starved.

"I did not put a single morsel into my
mouth for four days,

"except a little black birch bark.

"I saw several of the men roast their
old shoes and eat them,

"and I was afterwards informed that
some of the officers

"killed and ate a favourite little dog
that belonged to one of them."

Joseph Plumb Martin.

- "This is the most important hour
Britain ever knew.

"If we lose it, we shall never see
such another."

- It had now been 21 months since
General Clinton

was ordered to take the Carolinas.

On the day after Christmas, 1779,

leaving enough of a force behind to
defend New York,

Clinton finally sailed south for
Charleston.

- Every farthing of the wealth in
South Carolina

is built on the back of slavery.

That's one of the reasons why South
Carolina

and the other southern states have
robust militias.

It is not to repel foreign invaders,

it's to suppress potential slave
insurrections.

- Charleston was one of the largest
cities in the United States,

home to 12,000 people, half of them
enslaved.

If it could be captured, the British
believed,

a Loyalist majority in the Carolinas
would rally to the Crown.

- Charleston has resisted British
attacks before.

There's a sense of confidence

that it'll be able to resist British
attacks again.

Americans are almost delusional about
it.

They don't look the facts in the face

of how vulnerable Charleston really
is.

The geography is impossible.

Charleston is really out on a limb.

The British, they're going to cut this
place off

and they're going to capture it.

Congress, instead of recognising this
fact,

they keep sending more and more men to
defend Charleston.

They send the best that the
Continental Army has.

It's a mistake.

- Some 30 miles southwest of the city,

on February 11th, 1780,

Clinton began landing his troops.

As the British Army marched toward
Charleston,

first hundreds, then thousands of
enslaved men, women and children

fled their plantations to join them.

It would be more than a month before
Clinton's forces could form a line

a mile and a half north of the Rebel
fortifications

and begin a European-style siege.

More British troops from New York and
Savannah

would swell the British Army to more
than 10,000 -

roughly twice as large as the force

with which Patriot General Benjamin
Lincoln

hoped somehow to defend the city.

Desperate for reinforcements,

Lincoln suggested arming enslaved men
and was told no.

Whites feared giving weapons to black
people,

and besides,

slave owners did not want their
property killed or maimed in battle.

Militia from the backcountry

were also reluctant to come to the
crowded city.

They feared smallpox

and were unmoved by the plight of
planters and merchants

whose wealth and political power they
had long resented.

On April 1st, 1780, the British began
constructing the first

of a series of parallels -

sequential support trenches

that would allow them to inch closer
and closer to the city.

A week later, British warships forced
their way into Charleston Harbour

and took command of it.

General Clinton called upon the Rebels
to surrender

in order to save the town and its
people

from what he called "havoc and
desolation."

General Lincoln refused.

The British opened fire.

The Americans fired back.

The guns would continue day and night
for a month.

As each blasted at the other,

the British parallels moved closer to
the American lines.

800 yards,

450 yards,

250.

There was no escape.

General Lincoln asked that his
surrendering men

be granted the usual honours of war.

But General Clinton refused.

"Rebels deserve no such honours."

- When Charleston falls,

it's a body blow to the revolution and
to the American cause.

It's a humiliation,

because we've lost not only
Charleston,

but we've lost some of the best troops
that we have.

And the British, in their surrender
terms,

really drive home that humiliation.

- It was the worst defeat suffered by
the Patriots during the Revolution.

An entire army was captured.

5,618 men by Clinton's count,

including Benjamin Lincoln and six
other generals,

along with more than 300 cannon,

376 barrels of gunpowder

and 5,916 muskets.

Hundreds of South Carolinians

streamed into the occupied city from
the countryside,

eager now to swear allegiance to the
Crown.

- "To Lord Germain,

"with the greatest pleasure, I report
to Your Lordship

"that the inhabitants from every
quarter

"declare their allegiance to the King,

"and offer their services in arms in
support of his government.

"In many instances, they have brought
prisoners,

"their former oppressors or leaders.

"And I may venture to assert that
there are few men in South Carolina

"who are not either our prisoners or
in arms with us."

Henry Clinton.

- General Clinton and 4,000 troops
returned to New York,

leaving General Charles Cornwallis in
command of the Southern Theatre.

A few more such victories, British
commanders believed,

and the loyalty to the Crown of all
the Southern Colonies

would be reconfirmed.

"The English lion," a German officer
wrote,

"has awakened from his sleep."

- "Unless Congress is vested with
powers

"competent to the great purposes of
war,

"our cause is lost.

"We can no longer drudge on in the old
way.

"I see one head gradually changing
into 13.

"I see one army branching into 13.

"And I'm fearful of the consequences
of it."

George Washington.