Dan Snow's History Hit - The Battle of New York Explained

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Hudson, the East River - today, these are the very heart and soul of New York City. But in 1776, they were the battlefield on which the American Revolution nearly died. Today Dan explains this crucial battle, fought between the largest invasion fleet North America had ever seen and George Washington's Continental Army.Written by Dan Snow and edited by Dougal Patmore.We need your help! Let us know what you want from Dan Snow's History Hit by filling in our anonymous survey here: https://forms.gle/PvgayWLkWGjYT4St6Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail] Snow's History Hit is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up's History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like How William Conquered England. What it was like to live in the Georgian era? And you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover.

Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history hit.com slash subscribe. It was a hell of a summer storm. The superstitious authors of the ancient world would have struggled to come up with the more potentious omen. Peels of thunder thumped like the bombardment of cannon. Louder, one witness wrote,

than a thousand guns fired in unison. Lightning forked and flashed. Its white heat reflected off the dark waters of the Hudson estuary. rain thudded into the river's surface like volleys of musket bars. American sentries wrapped cloaks around them tight and took shelter in the lee of their cannon, clustered thickly along the shoreline of New York City. The momentary flashes of lightning illuminated the harbour suddenly, and each time showed the silhouettes of a forest of masts, spars and rigging,

gathered around Staten Island. It was as if the heavens were locked in battle, previewing that which was about to shatter the peace on earth below. Friends, this was pathetic fallacy on a very grand scale. But no, in fact, it was more, it's much more tangible than just a literary trick. This storm could be as lethal as battle. Men were killed as surely if they were struck down by enemy fire. Americans, we know, were hit by bolts of lightning.

Their mates frisking down their corpses found the coins melted in their pockets. Watchmen on exposed, defensive works were struck down in this celestial onslaught. The pious thought that God was talking, or shouting more likely. Others insisted it was just coincidental, but in hindsight it's very clear that it was a dramatic, heavenly harbinger of the very earthly onslaught that would follow on the morrow. The Americans knew that onslaught was coming. We expect a very bloody summer of it at New York, their commander, George Washington wrote to his brother in early June,

I'm sorry to say that we are not, either in men or arms, prepared for it. For days now, the Americans had watched nervously as the largest amphibious assault fleet in North American history, to that point, was shuffled around the harbour. Ships were loaded with infantrymen. They'd packed up their tents on Staten Island,

which had briefly been a tented city, and they trudged aboard transport vessels. Naval ships, bristling with cannon along their broadsides, slid menacingly around the harbour, sometimes pushing up the Hudson River to the west of Manhattan, sometimes probing up the East River between Manhattan and Long Island. At dusk on the night of the storm, it was clear that the job of loading those assault troops was complete.

Topmasts were raised, yards were crossed, the frenetic criss-cross of beetling open boats had still. the British blow so long anticipated was about to land. What American witness said it was as if all London was afloat, so great was the force arrayed. And it was indeed astonishing. This was, and I'm going to deliberately pull these superlates up at the top here, because it is remarkable. This was the biggest British force ever sent overseas to that point in history. In fact, friends, no army of that size had ever ever.

ever been deployed by any nation or empire across such a distance of ocean ever before in recorded history. It was an awesome statement of Britain's might, but also its determination to regain control of her rebellious colonies in North America. It was a terrifying indicator of just what those rebellious colonies were up against. A global superpower in the throes of an engineering, a scientific and industrial revolution that allowed it to project such force at such distances. Hundreds of vessels, thousands of men, tens of thousands of muskets,

hundreds of thousands of bullets, gallons of rum and barrels of beef, supplied from bases, thousands of miles away, across angry grey seas. Folks, I'm taking you back to that storm-lashed night of the 21st of August, 1776.

250 years ago, if you're listening to this podcast when we first put it out. The first great pitched battle of the American Revolutionary War was about to begin. You listen to Down Snow's History, and this is part of my multi-year project, hit all the big, important Revolutionary War anniversaries. This time, it's the story of the largest battle in that war. The setting, appropriately, probably America's most important city. Key of the whole continent, according to the future president John Adams, New York City.

It was in New York that the world would see what America's dreams of independence were made of. Let's get into it. A year earlier, in the summer of 1775, Lord North, the chief minister, the prime minister, if you like, of his most Britannic majesty, King George III of Great Britain and Ireland, wrote to the king to update him on the unfortunate proceedings in his North American colonies. Protest had turned to riot, to resistance, to rebellion. He informed his monarch that the conflict is now, I quote, grown to such a height that it must be treated as a foreign war.

War always means blood and treasure and uncertainty. and it also meant that King's rebellious possessions in North America would need to be conquered county by county. A vast, vast undertaking. A senior British military officer knew the scale of that challenge. He commented that taking America as it at present stands, it is impossible to conquer it with our British army. To attempt to conquer it internally by our land force is as wild an idea as ever controverted common sense.

Should listen to him. Britain, you see, was not Persia, it was not Rome, it was not the Mongols. Britain was a sea power. Its empire until a few years before had been one of really nodes of control, very useful scraps of land dotted all over the planet. Gibraltar, Bombay, Halifax, Barbados, a constellation really of valuable ports controlling sea lanes and lucrative commodities or markets that were close at hand. Britain had never been in the business of conquering swathes of territory with massive armies.

the brutal subjugation of neighbouring island had taken centuries and repeatedly brought London close to bankruptcy and despair. And that was a few hours sail away and a mere 250 miles from top to bottom. Instead, rather than carve out massive empires on the continent, Britain had invested its money in its manpower, in its navy, and its fleet. And it was the finest in the world, no question, the finest that there had ever been. But that meant that Britain had a small army, less than 50,000 troops. It was tiny, in fact. And those red-coated lads were spread across Britain, Ireland, and the Empire. Thanks to a very successful previous war, the Seven Years War, Britain had found itself controlling vast, vast North American territories.

The British colonies in North America had not been conquered by huge armies of redcoats, a very different process of colonisation had taken place there. And that colonisation had been very successful. These colonies were vast. and now they were in a state of rebellion. And if those rebels proved resistant and tenacious, if they just dug in, hid behind hedges and fences and shot at the Brits wherever they went,

well then the Brits would inevitably eventually lose. It was far too big to conquer hedgerow by hedgerow. And far-sighted Brits got this, they understood this. One British General suggested that they withdraw altogether and wait for the Americans to fall out between themselves. There was a secretary at war, another member of the King's government called Battlelord Barrington. he also thought it was best to sort of follow a predominantly naval strategy.

So blockade the coast, take control of the water, and let the internal politics kind of collapse. Others, though, disagreed. Now, these were often bewigged gentlemen who'd never tried to drag an artillery piece across the impossible terrain of the Hudson Valley. They had ideas, friends, they had other ideas. They overruled these cautious councils. One of those types of guys, Lord Germain, he was the colonial secretary. And he had the idea that, well, he said,

one decisive blow on land is absolutely necessary, as there is not common sense in protracting a war of this sort. He went on to say, I should be for exerting the utmost force of this kingdom to finish the rebellion in one campaign. So there's general acceptance that the rebellious colonies are just so too big to reconquer bit by bit. But this not be the last time you'll hear this, folks.

Perhaps one hard blow and the whole situation will resolve itself. So short war fallacy alert. One hard shove and will be home by Christmas for ten. and medals. He and others were of this opinion. So they thought Britain had to win. They had to do it fast, or it would simply bankrupt the country. It would be beyond the means of Britain to conquer the American colonies. It would bankrupt the country. So Britain needed a climactic, decisive campaign. When you are fighting a wriggly, annoying, slippery enemy, you need to find something or somewhere that the Americans have to defend. They have to commit their entire effort to. So you can annihilate,

it, and with that, the rebellion. That's the plan. By the way, the counterpoint of all this is what the Americans realize is all they have to do is survive. They just have to wait for British money and patience and focus and morale to desert them. So the British are looking for something that they hope will prove decisive, and their gaze fell on what was probably the most important city of the Americas, New York, perhaps 4,000 buildings, packed into around a square, mile perched at the very southern end of Manhattan, Manahatta, hilly island, as the Native Americans called it. It controlled the mouth of a mighty river highway running into the interior. It was a very rich city. It would also split the rebellious American colonies in two. So you've got Rhode Island,

Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire to the north, and you've got all the others to the south. The British rightly felt that the Americans couldn't just abandon New York without a fight. It would be a devastating blow for their cause. Who's going to sort of get excited about the rebellion? Who's going to join up to fight in the rebel army that simply just admitted it was no match for the British, just abandon New York to the British. So King George's men would strike at the heart of the American colonial world and they expected the Americans to stand and fight for that heart. Now there was an added bonus, I should say, that this was a very commercial city and it was a bastion of loyalism. many New Yorkers thoroughly disapproved of the excitable New England radicals,

a bunch of tack-dodging smugglers up there in Massachusetts. This wealthy city in New York had benefited enormously from Britain's transatlantic empire. The city, in fact, was a strange mix of Dutch and English architecture. The steep gables of Amsterdam reminded visitors that only a century earlier, or just like a century, this had been New Amsterdam, not New York. It was the centrepiece of Holland's North American Empire. The riverfront there in New York was packed with war was built out into the rivers. There were warehouses packed with skins brought down from the interior

and foreign imports on their way into the colonies. We need to bear in mind that already New York City was extending beyond Wall Street where the Dutch Wall had guarded the city from the north and it now sprawled as far as the common which was a triangle of grass, now approximately city hall park. Much of the rest of Manhattan was farmland, and, well, there were a few other settlements on the island like Greenwich and Harlem in the very north. For the British effort, the city was just the start. Beyond New York, the British strategy was then to

split those colonies into. Taking New York, would be like smashing a wedge into a log of wood, and then you just hit that wedge and drive it right through the heart of the tree trunk. The British would push up from New York, up the Hudson River, and drive New England away from the colonies further south. Once New York City had been secured, they'd got the Hudson is navigable 150 miles inland. Meanwhile, the really clever bit is a force from Canada would advance down that natural corridor of lakes and rivers from Montreal, those trackways, those paths worn bare by boots of endless invading armies over the previous decades, until that force from Canada also reached the Hudson and completed the encirclement of New England.

Now, this is a very interesting situation in military history, because both sides sort of agreed that that was the best strategy for the British to follow. Often in war, one side is rather happy to let the other side dash headlong tilting at the wrong strategic objective. But on this occasion, rightly or wrongly, both sides did believe that New York was the key and that this was the best British strategy that they could have followed. So the commander of the Revolutionary American Army, George Washington, called New York a post of infinite importance.

Should the British he went on, get that town, and the command of the North River, meaning the Hudson River. They can stop the intercourse between the northern and southern colonies, upon which depends the safety of America. So strategically, New York was a bit of a no-brainer for the British, but also operationally, it was ripe for the taking. They had the most effective Navy in the history of the world, as I said. New York is a river estuary, a mess of river branches and islands,

800 miles of waterfront. Manhattan, the island, is separated from Long Island by the East River, from New Jersey by the Hudson and from the north by the Harlem River. And with ships you can outflank, you can get behind, you can surprise the leaden, foot and troops ashore. Whoever commands the sea must command the town, wrote a senior American soldier, because the tide can push you 10 miles in one direction

without you really, hardly lifting a finger, before grumbling infantrymen ashore, rubbing sleep out of their eyes, have formed up and started marching. Then you can just ride the tide back again as it changes. The enemy can respond by fortifying, by entrenching and placing obstacles on one stretch of coast. They can break their backs doing that, and all you have to do is sail a bit further and land somewhere else. Anyway, that was the plan. That's what looked like on the map. And the man giving

the job of translating that sort of operational plan, that strategy, into actually results on the ground, into union flags fluttering once going over public buildings, was William Howe. He's say what you like about William Howard. I mean, he certainly was a tried and tested commander. He was a man of enormous talent, yet he was also a man, spoiler, who would perform so badly in 1776 that it left people wondering whether he was deliberately sabotaging things. He was, I think, tried to work it out, a half-first cousin twice removed from George III. His mom was George I. Now, the rumour was that she was actually lovers with George the First, so William Howe might even be a closer relative, but let's not go there. His old

brother George had been killed in America. He'd been killed leading a charge against entrenched French soldiers during the last war. So William was not from a family of perfumed dandies. William himself had sweated up the heights of Abraham outside Quebec in 1759. He'd smelt the acrid clouds of powder smoke as the British and Americans, stood shoulder to shoulder to blast King Louis men out of North America 15, 20 years before. He'd watched the frozen corpses stacked up like firewood in the miserable winter that followed. He'd survived the horrors of the assault on Havana in Cuba

during that same war when there were just so many ways to die. The British force was winnowed down by tropical disease. You might meet your end vomiting blood from yellow fever or with a Spanish bayonet in your guts. He was a veteran. And perhaps it's because he was a veteran. perhaps he knew a forlorn cause when he saw one.

He did not want this job. He didn't even pretend. He said, My going hither was not of my seeking. I was ordered and could not refuse. The king overlooked his lack of enthusiasm and promoted him to full general and gave him command of his Majesty's army in North America

in early 1776. I suppose one thing is you could look forward to an unusually warm relationship with his naval counterpart, because the British fleet in North America was commanded by his brother, Richard. General Howe's first great contribution to the war was ordering an embarrassing retreat. On March the 17th, 1776, the British had withdrawn from Boston. American guns had been hauled up some commanding ground, and they now overlooked the city and threatened to smash it and its British garrison to dust. Howe evacuated, it was. It was was chaotic. There were 78 crowded transport ships. They all sailed out of the harbor. They left

a mound of supplies behind. They left 100 horses. It was embarrassing. They sailed to Halifax where Howe reorganized. Meanwhile, the British decided to send 2,000 men to the Carolinas, where there was a particularly disastrous campaign commanded by General Henry Clinton. The local British governors there, who'd been kicked out and were basically living on little ships off the coast. They'd promised that with a force of 200 redcoats, they could bring Virginia or North Carolina or South Carolina back to their state of obedience. Instead, 200 redcoats were killed or maimed, and not one acre, not one hectare, had been reclaimed for the king. It had been a disaster. So, all eyes now switched back to the Summers

campaign, and that was the campaign for New York. General Howe heard that the rebels were digging strong fortifications around New York City, and that was a nightmare. The British had learned a very harrowing lesson the year before, outside Boston in a place called Bunker Hill. Howe had seen the British survivors march back into Boston with blood-spattered gaiters and britches. He'd seen how the Americans, when they're entrenched behind good solid defences, nice big earthwork that you can rest your musket on, they were very, very expert with those muskets, and they were happy enough to die for their cause. They had turned the slopes of Bunker Hill into a killing ground. Red-coated corpses littered the slopes of that terrible hill. Howe wanted no repeat of that. Instead, he hoped that

Washington might be encouraged to march out of his defences and face the British on the field of battle. He wrote that nothing is more desired or sought by us as Washington doing that. That said how would be the most effectual means to terminate this expensive war. How knew that if Washington built strong defences and stuck behind them, then he wrote, the Americans were able to spin out the campaign without exposing themselves to any decisive stroke. So Howell's going into battle, crossing his fingers, and hoping that Washington's going to present his army for destruction. Yet again, friends, a general is going to war,

hoping that the enemy would conform to his expectations. It's a recipe for disaster. Howe was definitely impatient to get underway, strike before those defences were completed. But he had a big problem. Supplies were just dribbling in too slowly. Transport ships battled spring gales in the Atlantic. It was not until the 11th of June that Howe felt strong enough and well-supplied enough to leave Halifax.

He had 9,000 men with him. And the men really are a precious commodity. Troops are hard to find in Britain. They just weren't enough recruits. The government tried everything. The Scottish Highland Chief Simon Fraser raised a regiment of Highlanders, the 71st Highlanders. Two thousand men he raised. And they sailed with a thousand men of another Scottish Highlander unit, the Black Watch. The trouble is you could empty the Highlands of Scotland and still not have nearly enough troops. And so the British government had to turn to another source of fire-eating warlike folk who were happy enough to charge into a blizzard of lead at the slightest provocation. They tried the Scots. Next, they tried the Germans.

They recruited German mercenaries. The Brits had tried to get 20,000 Russians out of Catherine the Great, but that didn't work. So they went to the small German state, Brunswick Wolfenbutel, and the land graveyardate of Hesse Castle. Amazing. With just 300,000 people in it, about half the size of London, Hessee Castle was one of Europe's tiniest, tiniestates, but also one of the most militarized. All Hesian males registered for military service at the age of seven, and from 16 to 30, they all, every single one of them,

had to present themselves annually to the recruiting office. As always, there's always a loophole. Important trades and professions were exempted. Others, especially vagrants or the under-employed, the unemployed, well, they were expendable, and they were given a uniform and a musket and taught how to march and shoot. In this period, depending on what the market was like, the demand, as many as 15% of the entire population of this little tiny country were serving in uniform. About a quarter of households had someone serving in the army.

That's, I reckon, a smidge more than the UK during the First World War, and a much higher proportion at the time than even heavily militarized Prussia, which, as you know, was not a state with an army, but an army with a state. So there was nothing particularly novel about hiring these mercenaries. That's how the rulers of this place made their money. In the war of Austrian succession, both Britain and Bavaria had employed Hesian soldiers, which meant that they'd often end up serving against each other on opposite sides of the battlefield. What a world. In the end, Germany would supply as many as 35,000 troops in this war, about a quarter of British forces. And Britain paid millions of pounds for these men. It was a lucrative business for their rulers, but the men themselves

would pay a terrible price. A quarter of them would die in the Americas. Another quarter would defect or be taken prisoner and settle and just simply disappear. So only around half of them would ever return home. Projecting all these men across the ocean, sending them far away across the oceans, had never, ever been attempted on this scale before. Thousands and thousands of tons of shipping were required to carry them across and supply them once they were there. An annoying number of these transport vessels would fall into enemy hands during the epic voyage across the Atlantic. Six hundred redcoats, one stage ended up in the wrong place. They were snapped up and clapped in American jails in the space just a couple of weeks.

How raged that this was impenetrable stupidity. While the British had to jump through all these hoops and gather their forces for a war-winning knockout blow, the Americans waited and prepared. George Washington had enjoyed success in his first campaign as the leader of this new Continental Army. He had closed the net on Boston. He had held together a diverse, eccentric army. He'd turned a mass of amateurs into something more professional,

and he had chased the British out of Massachusetts. But 1776 would be the real test. Would this young army be able to take? the field against the British. Would they be able to defend New York? He would do his best. Throughout the late spring, he was just sending floods of orders and messages and missives to everybody. He commandeered a lovely spot. He moved his headquarters out of New York City into a beautiful sort of 30-acre estate with a grand house that had been the British commander-in-chief's headquarters during the last war against the French and North America. It was called the Richmond Hill

Estate, which, by the way, would later be bought by Aaron Byrne. It was from there the left for his jewel with Hamilton. That stood a smidge south of Greenwich Village, a few hundred metres inland from the Hudson. Very close, incidentally, to where I spent a very, very pleasant couple of weeks, quite a few weeks in fact in the early summer of 2001. Little did I know how close I was to the great man's headquarters. Washington also had manpower concerns. He spent much of the war dealing with headcount. He wrangled with soldiers who only signed up for a year, men whose terms of service came to an end at New Year's, and he decried their dirty mercenary spirit. And they no doubt replied that Republican Virtue is all very well for the owners of large inherited estates,

but it's not going to feed and clothe the common man's wife and kids. Armies need paying and supplying. They also need purpose and identity. Washington had to forge, had to create a united force of Americans, because the units that arrived to join his army, they were colonial units. they often regard each other as foreigners. One soldier said he'd rather serve with Indians than men from a different colony. There was no standard uniform. There was a brown coat that was issued, but it quickly wore out. There wasn't really uniformity of weapons.

They did have quite a lot of gunpowder, lucky for them. Enterprising merchants and venturers would slip through the British blockade and come back with gunpowder from France or the Caribbean. My favourite story is about one crew. They sailed to Bermuda. They repelled down a rope at night through a ventilation hole into the Royal Powder magazine in Bermuda, they unlocked the door from inside,

rolled out the powder barrels onto waiting ships. That is Hollywood stuff. There was one other particular disaster for the British when the supply ship, Hope, lost her convoy in Farweather. She was sailing from Britain to North America, and she was captured alone by the Americans off Boston, and on board was 75 tonnes of gunpowder,

there were 1,600 muskets and other stores as well. Ammunition-wise, well, lead was collected from every source possible, the weights on fishing nets and pewter dishes and drain pipes, bullets were made and wrapped into cartridges. It was non-stop work. Somehow, to his great credit, Washington managed to cobble together 28,000 men in and around New York to defend it. But despite his endless reminders and cleanliness on the importance of where to sight latrines, sickness soon ripped through this force, and that meant a quarter of the number were laid up. They were writhing, sweating, shivering, spewing up in Barnes and Lean Toes across Manhattan and Long Island. So realistically, less than 20,000 were

fit for duty. I mean, you've got to remember, disease stalks these armies. Half of Washington's men were what we might call regular troops, men who aspired to be full-time professional soldiers. They could fight and march and organize and die exactly like European armies at the time. The other half were militia, also local levees. These were part-timers from Connecticut, at Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. They might be well-trained and well-armed and prepared. They might not be. There was a lot of variation.

Their willingness to take a bullet in unflinching obedience to their officers, possibly a little less enthusiastic than their regular comrades. At this point, though, before the start of the campaign, Washington, strangely, I actually like the British, seemed to want a decisive battle. Now, remember, the British want one because they don't think that they can afford to fight their way across the American.

colonies. They can't bear the expense of fighting this war. It's unimaginable. Washington wants a battle because he didn't trust his army to stay together for much longer. Now, I say they want the same thing. There's a subtle difference. The British hope the Americans would sort of march out and fight them hand to hand in the open field. Washington wants a bigger version of Bunker Hill. He wants the British to hurl their troops at well-fortified positions and they would die in their ranks. He wanted to see the corpses of Highlanders, Londoners, West Countrymen, Irishmen, Germans, far from home, fantastically hard to replace, lying dead or breathing their last on a Brooklyn hillside. And he hoped that a striking, bloody defeat for the British might win America its freedom.

The weeks passed, the British attack still did not come. Washington spent his time upscaling the defence of the city. He sunk vast resources into it. in fact, he literally sunk them. Ships were scuttled. They were deliberately sunk, sent to the bottom, try and block various channels in the rivers. And glittering New York became a frontline fortress.

Many of the houses were shut up. It was if apparently a plague had struck. Half of the 25,000 inhabitants had left town once it looked like war was coming their way. And once the rebel army had marched in with its fiefs and drums, there was a curfew at night, and Washington dug defences in every conceivable landing point. So all the roads leading back from the water

from the war of sticking to the harbour. All of these roads were barricaded. Everyone had been forced to wield a pick or a shovel. The whites worked on one day, black enslaved people worked on alternate days. But strangely, the more he fortified, the more he needed to fortify. Because you end up with a there's always a classic case of fortification creep. So he's got these barricades, these batteries of cannons. They're able to stop any frontal assault on the city, right? But go to the side of some of those revolutionary war defences today, like Old Slip Park, with the ferry terminal just to your left, and you gaze a few hundred metres to the south, and what do you see? Well, you see Governor's Island. Now, that's a dangerous place for Cannon if it's in enemy hands. So, a thousand men have to be sent

to Governor's Island to dig in fortifications there and Mount 10 heavy cannon. So hopefully, Washington thought that would stop British ships from poking up the East River. But from your vantage point, right there in lower Manhattan, you can also see Brooklyn. Now it's a lot of borough of the city, of New York, it's perched near the tip of Long Island, but you'll look up, it sits on a hill, that shoreline is reasonably steep. And if you look up there and think, hang on, a battery of guns in Brooklyn would pound these New York, these Manhattan defences to dust. So you have to fortify Brooklyn as well. Brooklyn Heights were now turned into a fortress, because Brooklyn Heights is the key to defending New York. But then what's the key to defending Brooklyn

Heights? As the summer went on, Manhattan, and dug and felled and embanked until there was a line of fortifications to protect Brooklyn Heights from an assault from the interior of Long Island. They used the landscape here. There's the long natural slope, all built on now. It's called the Guarnas Heights. And the trouble is it never ends. Who or what would defend the interior of Long Island? Remember, thanks those British ships, they can choose the timing and location of the assault. They had a large force of professionals. However many men Washington had, this landscape would swallow them up and would make his army vulnerable to being defeated piecemeal. It was sort of a nightmare for Washington. He was entrenching across

ever wider areas, spreading his men out more and more thinly. But Halasn't having great time either. He was cooped up aboard ship on a very tedious 600-mile voyage from Halifax to New York. It took a fortnight, they're averaging about two miles an hour. Eventually, it was a very on a hot Saturday morning. The British General stood on the court deck of HMS Greyhound and rounded breezy point, entering New York Harbour. He was pleased to see that no effect had been made to protect the entrance to the harbour with guns on Sandy Hook and the Rockaway Peninsula, so it meant the fleet could enter New York Harbour untroubled by enemy cannon fire. The city was quick to find out the news that the British had arrived. Red and white striped flags

were hoisted atop staten island. That was the pre-arranged signal for an enemy fleet. And there was uproar. Signal guns roared. Men dashed around, dashing to their defensive positions. Officers, wives, crowded onto ferries heading for New Jersey. Refugees straddling, heaped wagons, headed north out of the city. We have one of the American lookout reports,

and it says that an endless stream of ships now filled New York Harbor. There were so many masts, it was said to look like a forest of trimmed pine trees. And in some senses, the lookout was right. The masks were, simply pine trees, trimmed of their branches, sanded down and lashed upright with shrouds. Howard hoped to land direct on Long Island, go to Gravesend Bay, just along from Coney Island Beach. But he found strong American defences there.

So, no problem, he altered course, and he seized Staten Island instead. Grateful soldiers who've been cooped up for ages, piled onto the ship's boats and onto the shore, and pitched tents and glugged down fresh water gleefully, they could stretch their legs now. The local people on Staten Island swore allegiance to the king and escaped slaves flocked to offer their services to the British because it was understood, the British encouraged slaves to escape their servitude, they'd offer them their freedom, and that would hopefully disrupt the economies, the rebellious colonies.

The first acres of one of those colonies, New York, had now been liberated or reclaimed or pacified or conquered or occupied. depending on your point of view. Interestingly, as the British were taking Staten Island, great events were afoot in Philadelphia. The delegates assembled from these rebellious North American colonies agreed to the text of a declaration. It was a declaration of independence.

On the night of the 4th of July, following those deliberations, copies were printed of this declaration, one of which I was lucky enough to film with recently for a documentary on our history of video channel. Make sure you go and check it out. Those copies were sent all over what were no longer rebellious colonies, but an independent United States. One of them was spirited the 90 miles from the Philadelphia printers to Washington's handsome HQ on Manhattan. So on the 9th of July, so a few days later, Washington ordered the army to assemble on parade grounds at 6 p.m. sharp.

Washington himself attended the muster on New York Common, and there were units from New York and Connecticut. they formed a hollow square, Washington rode into the middle, and one of his assistants, and aide de con, unfurled a printed piece of paper and read the declaration in a carrying voice. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. The soldiers listened and everyone present knew instantly that what had been an imperial, fracticidal squabble over tax and devolution and trade was now something very different. It was now an attempt by a free people to determine the nature of the society in which they lived. A righteous struggle.

Rended by the pros of Thomas Jefferson. This was not a squalid fight for money and power and land. It was one unlike any before in the history of mankind. Washington's assistant apparently was hoarse by the time he was. finished the declaration, as he declared that these colonies were now free and independent states. There were loud, loud cheers. In fact, there was a very wild party. Crowds rushed down Broadway and tore down the statue of George III, which had been on Bowling Green. Its head was put on a spike outside of tavern. The £4,000 of lead that they got from this process, melting

it down, was turned into musket balls. Forty-two thousand of them. the Americans celebrated their new independence. General Howe, the British General, left the army of the new republic well alone. He left it alone for weeks. He waited. Reinforcement's dribbling in, you see. So you've got Clinton's battered North Carolina force arrived on the 1st of August, remember the ones that had been sent down there and now returned. On the 12th of August, German mercenaries and more British troops arrived from Europe. One naval squadron had set out from the River Clyde in Scotland and had taken four months to cross the Atlantic. By the middle of August, Howe had around 30,000 men and 400 ships,

the logistics needed to supply them. It's just astonishing. They're surrounded by hostile terrain, so the bread has to come from Ireland. The rum ration for the men was a gallon a month per soldier, so just do the math on that. All of it carried by ship. And it's not just the men. You've got 4,000 horses that needed 20,000. tons of hay and oats every year. It's an astronomical costs are being racked up here.

So there's no wonder the French ambassador in London, who no doubt was totally thrilled by all this, wrote in a secret dispatch to his boss in Versailles. This ruinous and mad war is the reverse of the philosopher's stone for England. The question that everyone wanted to know was where would that rum-swilling army strike? And that question was a particularly terrifying one for Washington. He wrote that British Command of the Sea was an amazing advantage. and their mobility kept the Americans, I quote, in a state of constant perplexity and the most anxious conjecture. I'm not surprised. He just didn't know where the British were going to strike. Washington had 3,000 men on Long Island. He also had to send a large force to the north of Manhattan,

to the north of the city to protect his main artery, Kingsbridge, Free Bridge, the two crossing points on the Harlem River, where Manhattan is linked to the rest of the country. In public, though, Washington put on a good show. He was less pessimistic. He sent a lyrical message to his army around this time, which I might quote here. The time is now near at hand, which will most probably determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves. The fate of unborn millions will now depend under God on the courage and conduct of this army. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other and show the whole world that a free man contending for liberty on his own ground is super, superior to any slavish mercenary on earth. Fine words. Still, General Howe waited. There was an abortive attempt to negotiate, but this all failed when he realized that he couldn't use Washington's

titles, because Washington was no longer Mr. Washington. He was, His Excellency, George Washington. But the Brits couldn't acknowledge his status conferred by the new independent republic, and the Americans would not allow themselves to respond to any other form of address. So difficult to arrange peace talks if you can't agree about the identity of those whom you're trying to talk to. On the night of the 21st of August, that was the night of the storm with which I began this episode. The lightning flashed and forked. The storm raged. And people knew that the British blow was finally about to land. Because they'd watched the British filing back aboard their transport ships for previous few days. The rest on Staten Island had fattened all the redcoats up and they'd recover their health.

after their long, miserable Atlantic crossings or their trips down from Halifax or Carolinas, and they were now ready to go. Officers removed insignia of rank. The reputation of American sharpshooters was already deadly. The men were issued with three days' worth of provisions, issued with extra rum and blankets. The D-Day was indeed the day after the storm, the 22nd of August 1776. The sky was crystal blue. The air was clear, after that downpour, the hillsides were green. Witnesses report there was never a more perfect day. Perfect, too, for war. There were no waves or stiff winds to discomfort the flat-bottomed amphibious assault craft, which each held 50 men. They beetled across the calm waters of New York Harbor

towards Long Island. At 8 a.m. that morning, a blue and white flag broke out above the mizum topmast of HMS Phoenix. A signal gun crashed. The assaults. on New York had begun. You listen to Dan Snow's history, there's more coming up. The attacking troops packed in the boats held their muskets barrels pointing at the cloudless sky so the musket rounds wouldn't roll out.

As they hit the shallows, hit the surf line, sailors threw a kedge anchor out to stop the boats slewing around and breaching. The men jumped into the waste deep water. The sailors then hauled on those kedge anchors, hold on those cables, heave the boats back off the shingle, before the men on the thwarts could dig

their blades in and speed back to the ships from another boatload of assault troops. Back on the beach, encouraged by the bellows of the sergeants, the attacking infantry charged inland. A spearhead of 4,000 men landed at Denise's ferry around about where Denise's wharf is today. Not the most beautiful place ever been, but a lot of concrete, lots changed there. But that's where it happened. Go and check it out. 5,000 troops followed them landing at Gravesend Bay shortly afterwards. That meant before noon, as many as 15,000 men and 40 cannon were ashore. The Americans on Long Island didn't defend all of the long shoreline. They just didn't have enough troops. Scirmishers took pot shots before sort of falling back and the British troops pushed inland. The Empire was now striking

back. It was on a roll. After a strange set of disappointments and embarrassments and setbacks, this was the British war machine humming along, moving, fighting on its terms at its tempo. rejoiced. One wrote, after a few beatings, the people will begin to return to their senses. Another officer predicted that the Americans would be wearied with disorder and panting after the sweets of peace. So the British are obviously feeling quite optimistic at this point. Washington cautiously sent reinforcements to Long Island during the day, in case this was a faint, this was a trick. And that meant the British would face roughly 7,000 men on Long island. Most of these men were in forts guarding the tactically important high ground on which the

little village of Brooklyn stood. In front of those forts, trees had been fell to clear fields of fire, a tangle of sharpened sticks and stakes, and thorn bushes have been stacked up, to act as 18th century barbed wire. And then guarding those forts, beyond those forts, like I said earlier, there was a line of defences along the slope that I mentioned before, the Guana's Heights, that runs along the axis of Long Island to the east of Brooklyn. It's 150 feet high, not mountainous, but commanding on a battlefield where a fold in the ground gives you enormous advantages. And noticeable today, if you're trying to bicycle up 60th Street, for example, heading up towards Brooklyn. These hillsides were pretty steep and they were heavily wooded, but there were routes through the hillsides, like passes through a chain of mountains.

Each one of these was defended by about 500 men or slightly more. Well, not every single one of these passes, as we shall see. General Clinton was one of the senior British officers. Now, on the whole, he was an enormous pain in the backside for General Howe. But to be fair to Clinton, the man had grown up on Long Island, and he did give decent advice on these occasions. He was a little bit self-aware. He admitted that his zeal might have been troublesome for his colleagues. And he suggested on this occasion, in fact, this was not troublesome. He's just on this occasion that they should make a reconnaissance to check whether the Americans had indeed fortified every one of these passes in the heights. And Howard agreed, he was keen to avoid frontal

assaults on strongly entrenched positions, and I've said many times. He had stood up to his ankles in the blood and body parts of British infantry at Bunker Hill. He had no appetite for repeating that attack into the teeth of well-aimed musketry, volleys fired by men who certainly knew their business. And I should say, I mentioned his older brother at the beginning of the podcast. His older brother had died in just that circumstance in the previous war, leading a frontal assault against troops that were professional and well dug in. And this reconnaissance proved to be a very good idea. It's very valuable because they did discover that three passes were protected, but a fourth, the one to the north, the most distant from the British landings, a fourth was not.

It was Jamaica Pass, and it was wide open, undefended. So the plan came together. How would lead a large force, guided by Clinton and the vanguard, through Jamaica Pass and up into the village of Bedford, whose name remains in the tight-packed grid system of Brooklyn today. And once at Bedford, a shot would be fired that would be the signal for two other assaults that would go straight up the Guana's Heights, and that would keep the Americans divided and distracted. Meanwhile, Washington was still putting more and more troops into Long Island. He reconnoitled a bit himself, but unforgivably, he did not put a blocking force in that Jamaica Pass. In the end, a subordinate, at commander, put five mounted men there, paid for out of his own pocket, for which he was not

reimbursed, by the way. That's definitely not enough to stop 10,000 Redcoats, however fired up in the cause of liberty you might be. That British column of redcoats stepped off at 8 o'clock at night on the 26th of August. They left flatlands. Clinton was in the lead. Their tents were all left standing, their fires were left burning to trick anyone observing them. The column was that classic mix of British armies. There were guardsmen. There were Highlanders. There were normal line regiments recruited from around Britain Island, men who took the King Schilling from the alehouse of London or Northumberland, Glasgow, Donegal. There were aristocratic officers, men who bore the scars from the lash on their backs. Many of these men had crossed the

sea for the first time to step out here onto an island off the coast of America. The column was about two miles long when it was marching. It had supply wagons with it, those axles were muffled, and if trees fell across the road, they'd be cut with sores, not hacked with hatchets, to keep the noise down to a minimum. The moon was nearly full, so they could see where they were going, but silence and surprise were essential. It's so easy for me to describe these night marches. You just say, off they went and they arrived 12 hours later. But the reality for those people that took part was just grim. The traffic was slow, it was arbitrary, the column would stop as units bunched up and officers at the lead had arguments every time they reached a crossroad.

Men dropped to the ground to grab some sleep. Sargent kicked them awake. They'd shuffle another 20 yards. The musket is heavy with its wooden stock and its iron barrel. It's growing heavier on the shoulder all the time. Your feet are hot and rubbing and blistered and a bit soft after a long sea voyage. They didn't know where they were going or why. They didn't know what they're going to face when the sun came up. They might have to face massed enemy volleys. They have to hack their way through retangled fences and fell trees and thorn bushes. They might have to traverse a kill zone, similar to that which Lord Howell, the older brother of their commander, was shot down in 20 years before. It must have been a grueling experience. And the following day would indeed be dramatic.

Early in the small hours of the 27th, the British force did capture the five men manning that most northerly pass. After this lopsided little British victory, their British troops pushed up the road and scaled the Guana's Heights. And it is very rare to say this of an 18th century battle plan. But the surprise attack was going absolutely and perfectly, according to the plan. Meanwhile further south at dawn, a brisk little action had broken out

when British troops who had been looting a watermelon patch were attacked by Americans defending the very southern end of the Guana's Heights. Delaware and Maryland units nearby bravely marched towards the sound of the guns, the scrapping, and it developed into a sort of sharp battle, an exchange of fire. In fact, this was it. This is the first pitch battle. And in fact, this will be the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War.

And it's begun right here, right now. It began in a watermelon patch. The British also reinforced their troops, and the Americans were pushed back. And as that was happening, the sun rose red and angry. A witness said the columns of red coats gleamed like sheets of fire in the rising sun. The Americans also sent reinforcements and volleys were exchanged. The American troops performed worryingly well under fire, thought the British.

They fired a volley and then they would withdraw in good order without messing up their dressing, without falling out of their ranks. It's one of the most difficult maneuvers to perform on the battlefield. Now, this is the first time in the American Revolutionary War that two bodies of regular troops lined up on the battlefield and shot at each other with muskets. this was the beginning really of a new kind of warfare, and it was a sign that this derided colonial rabble, according to the British, was in fact nothing of the sort. One American wrote, The British advanced within about 20 yards of us and began a heavy fire from their cannon and

mortars, for both the balls and shells flew very fast, now and then taking off a head. Our men stood it amazingly well. Not even one of them showed a disposition to shrink. Our rulers were not to fire until the enemy came within 50 yards of us. But when they perceived we stood their fire so coolly and resolutely, they declined coming any nearer, although treble our number. The Americans were brave as they sustained casualties. There's one story of a lieutenant colonel from a Pennsylvania. He took a bullet to the brain and dropped without a word to the ground. They were definitely suffering, but the Americans were holding off the empire. What the Americans unfortunately didn't know was that this was a diversion. But even so, even so, their resistance

was stout and very unwelcome for the British. The British unit down here was commanded by a general who claimed in Parliament that he could lead 5,000 men the length of the Americas. So far, that was already looking like one of the most grotesque overestimations in military history. And this maelstrom of fire must have felt rather different from the green benches of the House of Commons with the warm, gentle murmurs of approval from the armchair warriors echoing around the chamber. I wonder if he was beginning to rethink his boasts. The two lines eyeballed each other at what became known as Battle Hill, now roughly speaking, in and around the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn,

where you still actually get a sense of the steepness of that hill. And the Americans were happy. Reinforcements were sent down there. They appeared to be holding off the British. The British certainly stopped. The Hessians to the east were lackluster as well. and at nine in the morning the Americans were feeling confident. Then as clocks struck the hour, two cannon roared from the direction of Bedford.

It was the sound of impending doom. The British flanking column was precisely on time, on schedule, and it was now behind the American lines on the Guana's Heights. The British juggernaut rolled forward. They advanced on all fronts. The Americans faced that most terrible of predicaments, They have an enemy to their rear. Now, men can be brave when there's enemy to their front,

but their logistics, their supplies, their escape routes, their personal possessions, their commanders are to the rear, their homes. That is the natural order of things. A man will go to extreme lengths to hold out against an enemy they can see in front of them. But when the word spreads that your enemy are already behind you, pouring like poisoned into the innards of your army, capturing your rear areas, cutting off your route-friendly territory to your family, stopping supply wagons and barrels of rum and water and extra gunpowder,

while that really saps the will to resist. Now these Americans had an enemy to the front and the rear. No, thank you very much. Not a good situation. In the centre of the heights, the Hesians advanced, and the Americans, while they melted away, they scattered back to the fortifications in Brooklyn itself. The Hesians had a particular reputation. They were foreign boys in a distant land.

They didn't speak English. they didn't understand the nice tease of what was going on here. They'd been told they needed to do a job. They'd been told to take the fight to the enemy. They did not lumber themselves with prisons. Let's just say that. And now the Hessians and the British rolled up this American defensive line together. Howe surging down with his secret march from the north,

the Hessians in the centre, more British coming from the south, the Americans scattered. Troops in Brooklyn saw men arrive with broken arms and broken heads. the Hessians moved through the brush like hungry wolves up through what is now Prospect Park. It's now a neatly landscaped pleasure park, but it was once a heavily forested hillside. After months of marching and ocean crossings and waiting and unfamiliar places and smells, here on the battlefield, these men were at home. At the very south end of the American line, where the troops had fought well against the British,

first thing in the morning, the Americans would continue to perform miracles of heroics. where the Guana's canal now is, there was a sort of creek and wetlands. An American commander realized that his men had to withdraw fast, and he took a few hundred Marylanders down and tried to hold off the British to buy time for the rest of his men to escape. His men swam and waded across the marsh, while this commander led this brave rearguard on at least six desperate charges against the British.

The focus of the fighting was around something called the Old Stone House, which still stands day in Brooklyn. It is a reconstruction, but it's a pretty faithful one. Well, they moved it a block, but it's not bad. Anyway, go and see it. It is there between 5th and 6th avenues today. And this building and the ground around it became a graveyard of Marylanders. The British had seized the house.

They used its cover. They fired muskets through the window. They had a 6-pound cannon in the garden. But the Marylanders came on again and again. They advanced to cross a carpet of their own dead. 250 men had answered the call of their commander to act as a sort of rearguard. And with barenecks fixed, they swirled up to the house. They fought inside the house fighting room to room. They drove the British out once. They drove them out twice. But they were forced to retreat before the sledgehammer of counterattack.

Of these 250 men, only nine would escape death, injury or capture. And speaking of prisoners, it was very interesting. When the British would capture a senior officer, like a lieutenant colonel, they were surprised to find out that they were likely as not to be common-born. British accounts said they were mechanics, tailors, shoemakers, etc. They were rather shocked. The heroic sacrifice these Marylanders ensured that to the south, hundreds of men did escape back to the safety of the forts in Brooklyn. And Washington was there himself. He was watching from the top of Cobble Hill, not far from Cobbler Hill Park today, and he was heard to mourn the loss of these brave fellows. The Marylanders had certainly earned their reputation as the elite of the Continental Army, but by the end of that terrible day, the reputation would be all that

was left. The Americans had been routed. They'd been driven back from pretty strong defensive positions by a perfectly delivered, devastating right hook. 1,200 men, including three generals, alongside dozens of cannon, had been captured. It was the biggest battle, if you can believe this, of the Revolutionary War. It's the first battle, and it remained the biggest battle of the American Revolutionary, War, something like 40,000 combatants, if you include the naval forces. It's also the most lopsided battle. It was an American route. Well, it was a disaster for the Americans. When news reached London, there were celebrations. The king expected the end of hostilities in short order. A British general wrote, the fever of independence should soon abate. But that was all a bit too soon, a bit too keen.

It was not over yet, not by a long stretch. The defeat actually could have been worse. Washington's army, and perhaps the young American Republic, could have died on that ground. But they didn't. The redcoats surged forward. On they came towards the well-defended Brooklyn forts. Fleeing Americans were falling back. Unwittingly, they showed the redcoats the best way to approach the fortifications. And forward elements of the British force pushed ever closer to one of the forts in particular Fort Putnam. And the site today is Fort Green Park, for those who know the area. And General Howe, interestingly, desperately tried to apply the brakes at that point. It can always be a dangerous moment.

Overconfident troops go too quick. They help trip their main body, their commanders, their supplies, they find themselves among the enemy, they're isolated, disordered. And so Howe and his officers bellowed at the rampaging men, whose blood was up, the backs of their fleeing enemy were before them. The city perhaps was at their mercy, perhaps the war was won. But Howe and the officers tried to regain control. Howell stopped them.

And we'll never know. Was the whole American position close to collapse? Was there a moment where the Americans doubted themselves? Did they think about giving in to those rumours? Did they think about listening to those insults? It said that an American amateur force wouldn't be able to stand up to the trained European professionals. We'll never know. Great battles can turn on a dime.

An army can become a rabble. But that didn't happen on this day. How ordered a halt and the Americans rallied. The men stood too. prepared to defend their entrenched positions from a British attack that never came. Why didn't it come? Was Howe traumatised by his experiences assaulting Bunker Hill the previous year? Maybe. We know that his uniform, as I said, was splattered with the blood and brains of his men. Was he just being cautious? Was he thinking about his older brother who died in a frontal assault like this

one? There are many other generals in world history who would have charged hard that day. But for whatever reason, General Howe is not one of them. He says later that he stopped to regroup. But fascinatingly, in that same report, he writes to his political master in London, he doesn't say that had they gone on, they would have carried the American redoubts, the American defensive positions. So did he have regrets? Did he think he should have just let the men keep going?

Was this another of the, I must say, galaxy of mischances that the British had to smash the young army of the Republic? Well, General Clinton certainly thought so. He had all the indignation of a subordinate. there's nothing like not having overall responsibility to really let your opinions fly. He did not have the top job. He's not the man who goes sleep at night worrying about the fate of the entire British military effort in North America. He's not the man who has to tabulate. He has to sweat over the neat 18th century versions of Excel spreadsheets,

which regimental commanders would send in showing their insufficient manpower. Clinton's a guy, I'm sure we've all been in that position, who merrily assures everyone that had the assault been pressed home, it would have led to a glorious conclusion. But on this occasion, I think Clinton certainly had a point. He stated that had the attack gone in, the completest success would most likely have been the consequence. There's a version of history, folks, which at the end of that day, General Washington and a huge ton of his army was marching into captivity. But that didn't happen. Howe did stop. His men were called back. They'd been marching and fighting since the previous evening. He did not want a costly assault, I suppose, against dug-in marksman, and that was that.

The British then dug themselves in opposite the American defences all went a bit World War I. They hacked trenches into the earth. They prepared, essentially, for a siege. And those trenches would zigzag forwards. Heavy guns would be pushed ever closer to the American positions to smashing range. And the engineers would take over. This was going to be scientific. It was going to be the irresistible approach of a global superpower, and it would have been terrifying.

There was another theory that Howell was expecting Washington to surrender to come to terms to forget the whole unpleasant episode, just go back to how things were. But if so, how had terribly misjudged the spirit of this new republic, just a few weeks old? For a large enough portion of the population, there would be no going back. They would fight for this independence. Washington certainly wanted to fight. He pulled reinforcements into Brooklyn.

Now, this is possibly an error, because like Hitler, pushing the units into Stalingrad, would this merely increase the losses when the British did strike hard at American positions, we will see. The rain then lashes both armies for two days. August rain on the East Coast, particularly intense for all his rarity. And the Americans in their muddy trenches began to find they had more men than supplies. They were people sleeping in the open for lack of tents. The trenches became drains, sewers filled with water and whatever else. The Americans were getting hungry. And so on the morning of the 29th of August, Washington took stock. He was outnumbered two to one. The British zigzag trenches were getting close enough for British troops,

of them to get close enough to fire musket volleys from nice concealed positions at the American lines, for cannons to start blasting them, it all was going to feel a bit hopeless. Now, Washington had gambled that the British would just march up the hill in parade ground order and die under a shower of American lead, raked by musket shot and rifle rounds and bits of scrap metal, belched out by the bucketful from cannon. But as so often in war, the enemy did not oblige. The British were coming underground. They were being cautious. They were digging these trenches ever closer to the American positions. And also the problem for Washington is he's got to watch his back. The East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan is a place which the British have

been trying to get into. Now they've been strong northeasterly winds for a few days. So they've been keeping the British ships out of there. But now they're attacking against that wind. They're getting up into the East River. And if they could really establish themselves as that wind dies, if they can establish themselves in the river, Washington's army would be utterly surrounded by land and sea. His men were going hungry, his gunpowder was soaking, and morale was a bit shaky. So Washington did something remarkable and quite optimistic in a way. It was very risky, and it turned out to be very brilliant. Heald an evacuation. Every ferry and batto, fishing smack, longboat, wary, anyone who could haul an awl, who could grip a tiller, was called up.

Manhattan was scoured for boats and shipping. Men who had been pushed in, into Brooklyn a few hours before, would now be lifted out, and it would be that very night. A thousand brave souls were detailed to hold the front line. They would light fires, they would raw songs, they'd make as much noise as possible, and the rest of the army would march the shoreline and jump on a boat to Manhattan. And the Americans got lucky. The American got very lucky here. A black slave was sent by American loyalists to warn the British. But by chance he arrived at the German lines, the Hessian lines, and he couldn't make himself understood. Elsewhere, a scout spied empty fortifications and trenches. He reported back, but the news of that

was sort of lost somewhere in the fog of war. The news was lost in the chain of command. So the British generals didn't get the news that the Americans were retreating. What about the Royal Navy that I spent all my time boasting about? Why were they not perfectly poised to stop exactly this happening? Why were they not in the East River to bottle Washington up on Long Island? Well, as it said, the wind seemed to him blowing from the northeast, so it was hard to get in that river and stay there, square-rigged sailing ships. But it was particularly the weather around this day and night. That was a problem as well. One captain later said, this all caused him inexpressible astonishment and concern. I agree, buddy. Let me tell you, I hear you. Inexpressible. So that northeastern wind had

kept the ships away. And in the small hours of the 30th of August, a thick fog formed, which seems to have discouraged the Navy as well, because you're not going to want to sail into a river that's bristling with navigational obstacles and enemy defences, unless you can see where you're going. So I kind of get that. But that fog seems to discourage the Navy, and that fog may well have saved the American Republic, because the presence of the smallest, armed sloop, tiny little ship with a few cannon on board, that would have rained hell down on the armada of little ships. I mean, kind of really rowing boats that was beetling to and fro across the river that long night. Back and forward, they went. Muffled oars, so rags, cloths.

wrapped around the oars and the oarlocks so that they didn't squeak when the wooden shaft was ground against the oarlock as men pulled the boats across one way and another. The crews would take a little bit of rest as the evacuating men clambered aboard. Then they'd row back to Manhattan. They would disembark at market slip and elsewhere, and then the boats would return. This American Dunkirk now has its place in the US national memory. It was a brilliantly conducted evacuation that meant that the army and its commander were able to give the Brits the slip. The next morning, as the British realised, no one was there, the British cavalry could have penetrated the defences, they stood on the heights, overlooking the river, and as they got there,

they saw the very last of these little boats slipping into the fog, and one of those final boats contained Washington, who waited for the last of his men to be safely evacuated from a Long Island. The British cavalrymen, they fired their carbons, their short muskets, they fired them in a pointless snarl of fury. The leadballs plopped short into the river. The Americans would live to fight another day. It was a huge moment. Certainly a huge moment in retrospect. At the time, though, I think the mood was a bit gloomier. Washington received some praise, but it's still been a retreat. It's still a bit a defeat. As was made famous in the 20th century, as Winston Churchill said, wars are not won by evacuations.

But this one was pretty important. One person who the Americans were very pleased to celebrate, and that was General Howe. One American wrote, General Howe is either our friend or no general. He had a whole army in his power, yet suffered us to escape without the least disruption. In the weeks that followed, Howe would have the chance to prove that he was a decent general. The fate of New York looked pretty bleak now, and the American army was downcast. Washington proclaimed to his troops that the evacuation did not stem his faith in their fighting spirit. Interestingly, he told Congress the complete opposite.

Privately, he told the assembled delegates from the various, well, now independent states. He told them that it was his painful and extremely grating duty to inform them, that he would have defended Brooklyn if the men would do their duty. But, he said, they wouldn't do their duty. Lots of big decisions had to unite from this next part of the campaign. Washington went through the motions of defending New York City, defending Manhattan. His army started digging again. They went to work with their shovels and their pickaxes,

and they tried to entrench really the whole of the eastern shore of Manhattan. That's 14 miles. And that means that you're dangerously spread out. He just didn't have enough men to seriously build an equivalent of Hitler's Atlantic wall all the east coast of Manhattan. He also remember he had to have those forces north, he had to guard the crossing points at Harlem, because he was very worried that if the British Rural's,

would sell round to the north of Manhattan. They could just bottle up. They could just capture his entire army on Manhattan. He also built a fort called Fort Washington on the northwest edge of Manhattan, so overlooking the Hudson, they were looking at the New Jersey Shore. At opposite Fort Washington, he built Fort Lee on the other side of the Hudson. So they both mounted cannons that he hoped would be able to close off the river to British shipping. There was a huge debate in the American camp about whether to try and protect the city at all. It was a hot bit of a lot of loyalism, people who disapproved to the revolution. The jail had prisoners in it who'd been charged with singing God Save the King under their breath. Hundreds of these so-called

Tories had been rounded up and they'd been sent to an abandoned copper mine in Connecticut. They were lowered 20 metres into the caverns on a rope. They were known as the catacombs of loyalty. And one of Washington's senior commanders encouraged Washington to burn the city to the ground, burn the nest of recidivists. But it is the fate of Supreme Commandists to deal with the wild ideas of their underlings. Washington had that challenging job. He had to balance the military with the political. Could the army of the republic deliberately burn one of the finest, most important and wealthier cities in that new republic? Could they abandon it without firing a shot? Washington thought, no. No, on both counts. Once again, Howe gave Washington plenty of time to think

about it. He took his time. Now, look, to be fair, to Howe, organizing amphibious assault against the defended shore requires a bit of time. You've got to take into account the moon, the tide, the weather, the time, the ship handling, the men. Everything had to be exactly right. So some of his officers suggested a bold strike to the north into Westchester County, simply surround Manhattan and force it to surrender. How worried that would stretch the navy, those supply lines might get a bit too thin. You'll have a force in Westchester. It's being supplied up these two narrow rivers, the East River, the Hudson. There's lots of obstacles and difficulties with those rivers, the weather might turn bad.

He's a bit nervous about that. So instead, Howell was going to launch a more conventional attack on Manhattan itself. But before he could do that, Washington did have another change of heart. It was just clear, with British ships sailing up and down these rivers and a big amphibious group being brought together, that New York, the city, was just untenable. Every day, warships just slid up and down on the tide. The city is on the tip of narrow Manhattan Island.

So it's effectively surrounded on three sides by water, and that water is controlled by the British. And also I think Washington is learning here. He has realized, no longer does he want, a big single battle to win this war with a stunning victory. Instead, he's writing now, as a summer's going on, quote, the war should be defensive. We shall all occasions avoid a general action

or put anything to risk unless compel. They should not draw out our young troops into open ground against their superiors in both number and discipline. So Washington's slowly working out the best way to beat the British. Avoid fighting them on their terms. Washington's army didn't have to crush the British in one great battle. He just had to stay alive. While it lived, America lived.

And so the logic is do not fight a big general battle. Do not fight a big general action. A big ride or die to save New York. And his advisors came to agree with him. And so on the 7th of September, Washington's army abandoned the city. They marched north, right up to the top of Manhattan, and they took up a strong defensive position on the Harlem Heights. Washington himself left his lovely headquarters on the 14th of September, and hours later, vandals broke in and plundered the house. He listened to Dan Snow's

history hit. The best is yet to come. Stick with us. Washington's treat meant that Howe's plan was now really out of date, frankly. He'd chosen to make his assault five miles up the east bank of Manhattan, as judge from the tip of New York City. That's a place called Kipps Bay. It's now midtown. It's reasonably close to Empire State Building. It had been deep behind enemy lines, but no longer because Washington's Army is retreating. And so on the 15th of September, as landing craft rowed towards that point on the eastern shore, and cannon mounted in their bows, red-coated infantry standing back to chest, packed in there like sardines. Offshore, you've got H-Mez-Rose, Roebuck, Phoenix, Orpheus, blasting shore positions with their broadsides. Well,

annoyingly for the British, the majority of Washington's army had slipped past that point and avoided this encircling trap. It was no longer behind enemy lines. Now, it was still being defended. So all that was of little comfort to those brave men that were manning the coast. It was a militia unit from Connecticut. They were part-timers. They had spears in their hands. They had pickaxes. They crouched in a simple ditch with an earth rampart, and they were subjected to an astonishing battering from the British ships. They were anchored out to sea, bow to stun. The original wooden wall, really.

Perhaps 200 metres out, that range of the guns would have been absolutely brutal. Those heavy guns exploded with their sort of guttural cries, sending cannonballs of nine pounds, 18 pounds, screaming towards those makeshift defences. It was a thundering rattle, we're told, one survivor says. Aboard sweating sailors, stooping on packed gun decks, swabbed and wormed the barrel. They cleaned any debris out from the previous round, any little bits of red-hot debris, before ramming home a new charge of powder that had been brought up

from the powder magazine by boys, by children who ran barefoot, threading their way through the scrum of sailors like kids in a football crowd. Then in went the cannonball, boom, then the wadding to hold it in place. Then the crew haul on big, thick ropes attached to rings in the ship's hulls and the cannon on its little carriage they're called, and they have these tiny wheels, they're pulled into position, they trundle out until the muzzle is poking out from the wooden wall of the hull, and then with a roar, it's fired, it leaps back, restrained by those same ropes like a circus animal, and they went through the drill again. Hot, noisy work. Impressive, too, apparently. It was the finest scene ever beheld, wrote one of the ships, captains.

Awful and grand, agreed another British officer. I might say, beautiful. For one hour, this bombardment raged, and ashore those cannonballs ripped the flimsy parapet apart. Men were buried. They were covered in flying dust. They were hit by ricochets. Very few men can stand up to a cannon bombardment like that. And these farmers, these part-timers, these sometimes quite reluctant participants were not among them.

And they crawled away. The defences collapsed. The British assault troops landed in 84, flat-bottomed beach assault craft. the German singing hymns, the British apparently swearing and cussing with a notable ferocity, and what they found when they got there was, well, it was a rout. Fugitives were seen fanning out across Manhattan. But they also saw the last remaining men of Washington's New York Garrison Army marching desperately north. They'd just, by hours, really, they'd managed to escape the trap that the British had just sprung.

It was pretty scary for those retreating Americans. Some of those rear units were put to flight. They started running in disorder. Washington galloped south to try and rally the men, but they just ignored him. They just pushed past him as he yelled at them. Their eyes down, their heads were turned. He whipped the retreating men with his cane.

He swore, he entreated. Now, at this point, we think the red coat's got to within 100 metres of Washington. One report says that he considered charging to a certain death rather than live with the ignominy of this moment. but he was prevailed upon to leave, and he would live to fight on. It was another retreat. It was another terrible, slightly shambolic retreat. One American wished the day could be blotted out of American history.

It was nothing, he says, but fright, disgrace and confusion. But again, the British was sort of lackluster. They advanced halfway across Manhattan and just sort of stopped. Had they pushed one solitary mile further, they would have actually cut off a portion of Washington's retreating armies abandoned New York. So again, they missed this opportunity. And while Howe was concentrating on getting all his forces safely ashore, the American General Putnam, with his assistant, Aaron Burr, squeezed three and a half thousand men right up the bank of the Hudson's on the western edge of Manhattan,

away from the British landings. He squeezed three and a half thousand men up to safety before the British could bottle them up. Again, this landing had not delivered a decisive British win. Far from it. That night, the hot weather broke. There was another powerful storm, a big rainstorm, and temperatures plunged. Tramping through puddles, the British marched into New York City the following day. A third of the population had left with the rebels. So many of the people that were there were loyalists, and they were reasonably pleased to see the king's men. There were even crowds of cheering people.

The captain of HMS Eagle was raised onto the shoulders of a mob and carried to the fort to raise the British country. this. One New Yorker wrote that the city were delivered from the usurpers who had oppressed it for so long. A declaration of dependence was published, and many New Yorkers added their signatures. But the battle was by no means over. The union flag hanging over the city, well, that was one thing. But remember, the main purpose of this campaign, even if I think sometimes Howard didn't actually really internalize this and realized this, the main purpose was the destruction of Washington and his army. That was the Republic. While it marched, the United States lived.

And those men were now dug in once again on high ground. This time the Harlem Heights. The British camped in, roughly speaking, what would become Central Park, I think we're starting to realize that there were a lot of escarpments and hills and ridges stretching from here to the Ohio country. And they did not have the men or the treasure,

or the bullets, or the time to take them one after the other. it was a little bit worrying. If Washington could hold that army together, he could retreat a long way into the interior and wait for the British to break. And Washington hoped that he would be able to defend these positions if his troops behaved with tolerable bravery. But he wrote,

Experience to my extreme affliction has convinced me that it is rather to be wished for than expected. He's rather down on his men at this point, and he was wrong about them. Because hardly had he penned this letter than a British unit approached his own. lines, a scouting expedition, really. They blew a horn as if this was a mere fox hunt. The quarry on this occasion, though, proved rather tenacious and did not run. Washington sent down some

units to take them on, to outflank them, in fact. These were Virginians, Rhode Islanders, Connecticut men, a real cross-section, and they hurled themselves at the British, and they forced them all the way back to their encampment. It was only a little skirmish, really, but it had a huge effect, extraordinary effect. The Americans had pushed back. They'd humiliated a crack British unit, a British unit of Highlanders, in fact, Scottish Highlanders. These Brits were not supermen. Shoot them, stab them, and they bled. They got scared, they turned, they retreated.

Their aura were shaken, the youngsters might say. One American officer wrote, The men feel a confidence which before they had quite lost. I hope the effects will be lasting. As the war goes on, we see that Washington has a knack of doing this. He'll retreat, he'll be driven off battlefields, but he'll then order a little demonstration like this to show that the British are beatable, to fill his own men with courage.

General Howe, well, guess what he did? He did nothing. He bided his time. The Harlem Heights were a strong position. He had no wish, again, to attack up that slope against Americans who were dug in at the top. Just side note here, ironically, all the American suggestions they burned New York City. There was actually a terrible fire in New York City on the night of the 21st of September. It was started in a groggery, a place we buy grog. It was a bar. It was called the Fighting Cox. About a quarter of the city was destroyed, extraordinary. We will never know if it was deliberate or not. There's no firm evidence. Suspects were rounded up, but none of the charges stuck.

But certainly more bad news for the British. There's glittering prize now partially in ashes. Meanwhile to the north, Washington's men strengthened their lines on Harlem Heights. Just a reminder, the spade was as important as they must get on this campaign. Stretching across the north of Manhattan now, three parallel lines of entrenchments at stride the Harlem Heights. Slightly behind them, that you've got Fort Washington, I mentioned before, it's on the shoreline of the Hudson. And for two weeks, the army just gazed at each other.

Washington, from his hilltop headquarters with an especially lengthened bed, because he was a tall man. Didn't seem to cheer him up much. He's back to writing his rather depressing letters. I never was in such an unhappy, divided state, since I was born, he wrote to a confidant. He had around 30,000 men at this point. Half of them were sick, we think. So inexperienced soldiers are very loose when it comes to hygiene in camps. There was excrement lying around. Men didn't obey their officers. Washington had to order men's backpacks to be searched for stolen goods.

So he hasn't got a very high opinion of his own men at this point. As for how, well, he bows to inevitable eventually, and he realizes that he should do what so many men have been asking him and arguing for all summer. He would embark his men on ships once again and send them behind American lights. He'd use that naval superiority in land somewhere further north. Not a long way north on this occasion, no. He didn't fancy that kind of bold stroke into Connecticut that would entirely surround the Americans. Instead, he wanted to do a sort of modest jump for north.

He was obviously very low to take risks, which, ironically, I always think is quite risky in war. He chose to land at a place called Frog's Neck, now Throg's Neck. The Americans were astonished when they found out when these landings started to take place. It was the worst place possible to land. I mean, it makes no sense. Assault ships first had to pass through Hell's Gates. This is a savage narrows between some islands and marshes off Manhattan and what is now Queens on Long Island. It really is one of the world's most challenging waterways.

There are ripping tides, rocks, currents, whirlpools, all that stuff. The British, well I'm lucky enough to do it in a thick fog, and one ship, sure enough, drove straight up onto the jagged rocks and was lost. So once they're through this of Cillar and Carbidis-like passage, the British arrived at their assault beach, and it was an astonishingly bad place to land. One American commented that, had the British pushed their imaginations to discover a worse place, they could not have succeeded. Throg's neck was a narrow peninsula, which at high tide becomes an island. It's not even attached to the land.

It's not even attached to the place where the British is trying to get to. And they haven't just got the tide to contend with. To ensure it remained isolated, the rebels immediately removed all the wooden slats of a causeway, which gets uncovered at low tide. And they made sure that causeway was covered by a force of sharpshooters. So the British pushed 11,000 men onto this island and discovered they couldn't get off.

They were held up by a very small American force, I know they tried to cross at low tide, slithering and getting stuck in the mud. They were cut down in a hail of bullets as well. This is embarrassing. It is certainly one of Howe's most inexcusable failures of the campaign. Although, to be fair to Howe, it was not a war-winning landing. It was not going to cut off the Americans. But eventually, though, the presence of all the British stuck on this island,

to the north of the Harlem Heights defences, it did encourage, it did convince Washington that he needed to withdraw once again. He assumed eventually the British would find a way of breaking off that stupid island and into Connecticut. And at that point, the Americans would be surrounded in northern Manhattan. And so he also assumed that it was only a matter of time for the British worked out a better place further north to land to withdraw their troops from Throg's neck and push even further north up into Connecticut. And so in a pattern that was now becoming quite established for this campaign, Washington's troops would withdraw from a strong defensive position as it was outflanked,

out-maneuvered by the British. Once again, Washington would retire. He was learning. Remember, he'd written, we should on all occasions avoid a general action. He didn't need to risk everything on a big battle. He didn't have to win. Washington did not have to win a big battle. He simply had to endure. He had to be there at the end of the year. So the Americans abandoned their trenches on Harlem Heights, and they trudged north again. This time they finally trudged north of Manhattan Island. Well, I say that. They did leave a sizable force in Fort Washington on the Hudson shore. But the main army plodded north, and it was a bit of a race. Again, the British had finally realized the pointlessness of Throg's Neck. They reimbarked at 1am on the 18th of October, and they moved a little bit further up the coastal land at Pell's Point. If they'd march inland fast from here, they could catch the Americans as they withdrew to the north. 4,000 Brits managed to land before sunrise on the 18th of October, and they advanced one mile inland. without opposition. It was looking good for the Brits. But once again, a brave unit stepped up and possibly saved the American Revolution. The Brits got unlucky because the way was barred

by a particularly tough unit of New Englanders. Massachusetts men from Marblehead, which support town just north of Boston. And interestingly, these Marblehead guys were the ones who'd done most of the work to evacuate the Americans from Long Island weeks earlier. They were sailors, they were boatmen. These men had salt water in their blood. But unfortunately for the Brits, they were just effective on land. They had fire in their bellies, and they were not going to give an inch. Their commander ordered skirmishers to harass the British advance, so try and pick off any officers and sergeants they can see, cause mayhem in the ranks, and he placed the rest of his 750-man unit behind a stone wall, and they rose as one as the British column approached

and poured a brutal volley into those red-coated ranks. And it stopped the British in their tracks. They reeled back. They reeled back. They reorganized. night and came again. They got to win meters of the Americans, and again, the Americans lashed them with fire. The enemy broke, broke the Massachusetts commander jubilantly. The British officers managed to get a grip on their men. They rallied them again and came a third time. Once again, they attacked. This time the Americans conducted a skillful withdrawal, one unit's leapfrogging another, moving from wall to wall so that they could continue to fire a hurricane of lead at the British column as it crept forward.

Hundreds of British and German troops were killed and wounded. Now remember, every casualty was one that British could ill afford. Every casualty meant another young lad had to be found, thousands of miles away, back in Britain, Ireland, Germany, recruited, paid for, equipped, and sent across the oceans. This ferocious resistance had made Howell very cautious, and he paused again. At this point, there's no question.

strike inland could have won the war. He could have crossed the Bronx River. He could have blocked Washington's fairly shambolic army retreating north. But Howe did not? He paused. He licked his wounds again. And as a result, Washington was able to squeeze through while Howe was regrouping. And Washington seized, you guessed it, high ground to the north of the village of White Plains. Once again, I haven't counted how many times now, but Washington had wriggled out of a brief trap, he'd avoided these amphibious landings, and he had escaped to fight another day. It was becoming a habit. How now proceeded north, slowly, shadowing Washington, who wanted to use white plains as another trap, yes, another strong defensive position, hoping the British would hurl themselves at it

and shed blood that they could ill afford. But now it's getting cold. Autumn fall is here. Winter is on the way. Men's water bottles are freezing at night. There are about 13,000 fit men in Washington's army. They were ill-supplied. But he's on that high ground and he thought it would be a powerful advantage. And interestingly, this time, Howe did what Washington was hoping he might do. This time, Howe launched a frontal assault. It was Monday the 28th of October. The British General unleashed a large force. Fifteen thousand men advanced in perfect order. Lines of uniform troops stepping off together. Colors flapping above their heads, fife and drum, marking the beat, bayonets flashing in the autumnal sun, bands playing. It must have looked unstoppable, and that was the point. The colours,

the music, the noise, the moral effect. In a way, that was the first volley, if you like. It was an attempt to break the enemy before shots even flew, and it didn't work. Washington sent forward troops to contest this advance, and that's exactly what they did. Again, the Americans made use of stone walls. Again, there was fighting at the closest of quarters, and both sides could see the whites their enemy's eyes. The flames that erupted from the muzzles of muskets set the tall grass on fire, and suddenly its smoke added that to the battle. It was a confused, swirling scene. One American artillery battery did heroic work, cannon blasting away, every salvo spitting its monstrous load of cannonballs, also scrap metal at the advancing Brits. The crew then hurling themselves at the wheels to get the guns back into position, bucket chains carrying water up to swab the hot barrels, the guns laid, or aimed, by the young commander,

who we think at this point was the precocious young, recently former student, a certain Alexander Hamilton. The Americans were pushed back, but they made the British pay for every yard that they advanced. A Maryland regiment was commanded by a rich landowner, educated at Eton. It's not Eton in England, and his unit held fast under great pressure before yielding and retreating. But again, the Americans have got a lot of real estate behind them. The Battle of White Plains was a British victory, but a very unsatisfactory one. Washington withdrew in decent order. He dug in again at North Castle Heights. And now the October rains came and turned the roads into rivers and seas of mud. And Howe sat despondently looking up at

this fortified set of lines. Was he going to have to lead his men up every blasted ridge line from here to the Ohio River against determined opposition? November came around. The men could see their breath on the morning air. They stamped their feet on frosty ground. The campaigning season was coming to an end. On the 5th of November, Howe astonished the rebels, he turned tail. He headed back south for Manhattan. And the American army did something strange. They advanced. They recaptured or liberated ground. Howe had decided to stop chasing Washington North. But there was one job he wanted to get done before the snows ended the campaigning. one more mopping up operation. A beleaguered American garrison,

you'll remember I mentioned, they were holed up in a place called Fort Washington. And I suppose they were left there because it looked impressive enough. You can visit the park today. It's a lump of granite in the north of Manhattan, 300 feet up from the Hudson River. It's a prominent spot, it's a beautiful place to go.

There were steep forested slopes on three sides. And a fort had been built up there by sweating labourers. A proper European-style fortification. We call them star forts where you've got, like Valletta in Malta, or the endless forts of the low countries, the polygonal bastions, each of the sides swept by cannon, there are ditches, arrow-shaped ravelins, scarps,

counter-scarps, glassy. Wonderful, go and give it a Google, it's good to see. Well, now all that military engineering would be tested because it was invested by the Brits. It was surrounded, it was besieged by the Brits. Now, I can see why this was a tempting target. It is the last American troops on Manhattan. I suppose you don't want to leave them there.

But it seems crazy to us now that Howe was going to waste his time this. It doesn't seem to kind of realize that all that matters is Washington and his army. The art of war, friends, if you ever find yourself commanding an army, this is what you need to remember. The art of war is to find the enemy's center of mass, its brain, it's beating hard, and then kill it. And that is the simple and yet brilliant insight, the brilliant gift of the greatest commanders in history. They get this. Now, how is not among our greatest commanders? No, sir. if he destroys Washington's army, well, the war might be on it. It's certainly Britain's best chance of winning this war. Charging off and attacking Fort Washington is, I'm afraid, a distraction. As for General Washington,

he left some men in the north, in Connecticut, but with most of his army, he crossed the Hudson and brought them down the New Jersey coast to Fort Lee, which opposite Fort Washington, so you can see what's going on. Now, it's pretty clear that he wanted the men from Fort Washington evacuated across the Hudson. He realizes that they're not able to hold out. But for some reason the orders weren't given. The garrison stayed in place. General Howe had spent the summer largely avoiding attacking strong defensive positions, but this time for some reason he was up to it. A triple attack was planned. Sledgehammer blows from three directions at once, while from the river a Royal Navy ship battered the fort from the water. So pretty grim, attacked from all four sides. Howe sent a message he gave the garrison a chance to surrender. But the commander replied defiantly that, actuated by the most glorious cause that mankind ever fought in, I am determined to defend the post to the very last extremity. On the 16th November, a beautiful, bright, clear, crisp, fall November, New York Day.

Three columns smashed into the fort's defences. Hesians marched north from the tip of Manhattan. Other British units assaulted from the east coast of the island, an assault craft, and other British force marched up from Harlem. Now, today the fort's gone, but you get a sense of the power. of the natural position at Washington Park. You get quite out of breath walking up to it, and then from the top you get wonderful views across the Hudson into New Jersey. The Hessian troops had to drag themselves up a hill, holding onto roots and saplings and

bushes. Defenders poured fire down upon them, and the furious Germans took few prisoners once they got to grips with their tormentors. One American artilleryman, John Corbyn, was shot down at his station. His position was immediately taken by his wife, Margaret. She knew well enough how to worm the barrel to check it for any residue or wadding or burning embers. She could swab with damp rags on a stick. She knew her to place the powder charge, ram it home, roll the shot down the barrel, shove in some old bits of rope or a bit of straw to keep it snug. She could also put her shoulder to the wheel to reposition the gun after it spat flame and leapt back. She impressed the other crewman and she immediately fit into the well-practiced team.

The amphibious assault on the east coast of Manhattan was met with a furious barrage of fire. The soldiers related scornfully how sailors had dropped their oars and hid in the bottom of the boat, which forced the redcoats to grab the ore handles and row themselves to shore. It's good to see evidence of inter-service rivalry that's lasted hundreds of years. Once again, however they got there, the British did splash ashore. There'd be many such landings by the time this war was done. And up the hillsides clambered the Highlanders and other troops, the Americans fell back towards their redoubt, onto which plunge mortar rounds fired by the naval ship on the Hudson River.

So the defenders are being pushed in on all sides. And eventually they're being squashed into the fort. They're really fighting shoulder to shoulder inside the fort. So there was no shortage of targets for the mortar bombs that arced overhead and then plunge down to explode on impact. Or indeed the iron round shot fired by cannon, which carved furrows in the mud before ripping up into the soft flesh of the crowds of men. Margaret Corbin, the artillery woman, fought to the last. she was wounded in the chest, the arm and the jaw. Eventually her gun crew was silenced. They were overrun.

The Hessians were at the wall of the fort now, and the Hessian commander paused and sent a man forward with a flag of truce and gave the Americans 30 minutes to surrender before a final bloody assault that would end certainly in a massacre. Realising the situation was hopeless, the American commander did surrender rather than force his men to die a pointless death on the tip of British bayonets. Americans wept.

One wrote that they were sacrificed and disgraced. One or two Americans swam the Hudson to fight again another day, but the vast majority marched into captivity. They had to run the gauntlet of angry Germans and Scotsmen who kicked and punched them as they marched out of the fort, ripping bags from their backs, going through their pockets, leaving them with nothing. The fort was captured, but another 450 British troops had been killed or wounded.

It might not sound that many, but manpower so difficult to replace for the British. At least in this attack, the Brits felt they won a useful victory. Fort Washington's capture did help to ensure that British ships could now pass more unhindered along the Hudson, and they had netted a remarkable 3,000 prisoners, 40 guns and a mound of supplies. By the way, those prisoners would experience wretched, deadly conditions. Two-thirds of them would be dead within two years, as cold and maltreatment and disease whittled their numbers down.

Margaret Corbyn survived. She was released because she was a woman, but disabled from her wounds, she became the first American woman ever to receive a military pension. Washington was watching the battle from the Jersey Shore. He wept. He should never have left that garrison in place. He claimed straight away it had been done against his orders. His ambitious subordinate General Lee wrote to him saying it was a cursed affair. He also wrote to powerful allies in Philadelphia trying to put the knife into Washington. Lee offered himself up as a dictator in this great moment of peril. And at this exact point, it is entirely possible that George Washington could have been fired,

he could have been removed, his position hung in the balance. And just imagine history if General Lee had indeed become a dictator at this point. What a different world. This is just one of the many occasions. There's so many of them in which the career of one of the most celebrated men in modern history could so easily have been snuffed out. General Washington himself wrote that he was wearied almost to death with the retrograde motion of things. As for the British, they were heartened. They seemed spurred by this success. Only a few hundred

yards away across the Hudson was George Washington's battered army. It had now been driven out of Manhattan and parts of Southern New York. It had retreated time and again before the British forces. Nearly 5,000 men had been captured, 600 of them killed and wounded. Vast amounts of American stores had been captured. Many of the men had quietly abandoned the cause. The British realized his army must not be given any time to recover. And so in a reasonably bold, late in the year, strike, at dawn on the 20th November, another fleet of shallow draft boats, once again, pootled across another river. This time it was the Hudson.

They landed in New Jersey, and the men hauled cannon and supplies up narrow trails to the high ground above the river shore, sweating and cursing and losing their footings and shoulders roar from the ropes attached to their cannon. They reached the top by afternoon, and they saw galloping riders, crossing the landscape, messengers delivering the evil tidings, the Americans. The British were coming. The British were indeed coming. They marched south to Fort Lee, but that was a fort in name only, really. It was indefensible in practice. And the commander ordered another mound of supplies to be abandoned, marched his men out. There was no appetite for a repeat of the Fort Washington fiasco.

The British marched in to find meat cooking over fires, pots boiling, dozens of drunken Americans staggering about or lying around who'd chosen stupefaction and grog over trudging once again behind their officers. Not everyone, no, not everyone. Some kept the faith. Two by two, the Americans marched, blankets round their shoulders, holes in the soles of their shoes. South they went to Newark, in the direction of Princeton, Trenton. There were still believers, enough of them. One senior officer wrote, The virtue of the Americans is to be put to a trial. I am hearted. and well amidst all the fatigues and hardships. Be of good courage. Don't be distressed. All things will turn out for the best. By December of 1776, that certainly felt a little delusional. The British

marched on, they swept through New Jersey. In fact, it raised the specter that even the birthplace of the Republic, Philadelphia, might be captured before Christmas. The British had calls for celebration. And yet, Washington and his rag-tag army lived on. They had shown fight. They had shown considerable bravery, resilience, tenacity. They had proved that they could on their day withstand the attack of some of the world's finest soldiers. Their withering volleys had shredded British advances that were grounds for optimism. And above all, they were still here. They endured. and that, as only some of the participants realized, was the point. Sure, British flags now fluttered across Southern New York and New Jersey,

but this was not about capturing territory. This was about destroying an idea, an idea of an independent American public in which free men ruled themselves, an idea that was embodied in the form of the army of that republic. And while that army lived, so too did that idea. And not only was that army still alive, it was about to stun the British in the depths of winter, in one of the great turnaround stories in military history, a blow that might just have saved the American Revolution. But that, friends, is a story for next time.

The battle for New York was over. The battle for New Jersey was not. And the battle for America was only just beginning. Make sure you like and subscribe and follow and do whatever you have to do. You will hear me tell the story of that great battle for the Americas over the next few years. But in the near future, watch out for that episode on the climactic battle in New Jersey, in the depths of winter, 1776. It's going to be a good one, folks.

It's going to be on in the final few days of this anniversary year. Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time. Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up's history and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England. What it was like to live in the Georgian, era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard the 3rd. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover.

Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history hit.com slash subscribe.