From Trenton to Yorktown

My newly published book, From Trenton to Yorktown, has an important subtitle: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War. The book is essentially my interpretation of the key military moments of the American War of Independence. This concept begs the question, what is meant by the concept of a “turning point” in a military campaign or a war in military history? Not every dramatic military event can be a turning point or decisive, yet there is no consensus definition of either term. One recent historian posits a reasonable definition of a key battle as “a period of intense, continuous or near-continuous fighting over a relatively short period in a distinct geographical area, ending usually, but not always, in a clear result – victory or defeat.” Read on for a sample from Trenton to Yorktown, in which I examine how this contentious notion of a military “turning point” can be applied to the American War of Independence.

Currently, making exaggerated claims of significance in book titles or subtitles is a common trend regarding prominent and obscure themes. There are numerous books on battles or other military events that “saved the Revolution,” or the Union, or America. Other book subjects “changed American history,” “doomed slavery,” or “saved democracy.” Many books now cover events that “changed the world forever,” or “shaped the course of history.” We can also read that America or the world or civilization were changed or saved by a book, Ireland, capitalism, Christianity, plumbers, Maine, the Byzantines, Winston Churchill, the 1960s, the AK-47 rifle, New York City, auto mechanics, a camping trip, a Boston bookseller, an English trading company, and Mason jars. Apparently, the Irish are not only lucky but also very influential (and busy) because they not only “saved civilization,” they also “won the American Revolution.” And we dare not overlook the Scots, who apparently “invented the modern world, and created our world and everything in it,” all the while being “western Europe’s poorest country.”

Military history has many examples of these kinds of embellished titles. Some battles “defined World War II,” a mission “changed the war in the Pacific,” and a new fighter plane “saved the Allies” in the Second World War.

One may also read that Col John Glover’s remarkable Massachusetts regiment saved Washington’s army during the Revolutionary War, “shaped the country,” and “formed the navy,” while the 1st Maryland Regiment “changed the course of the Revolution.” And an innumerable number of titles are about untold or unknown stories. One author has six publications with one of those two words in his subtitles. This is not to devalue these books; many of the questionable claims were likely invented and insisted on by publishers understandably conscious of marketing needs, while other title assertions may be in part true.

Commonly seen at chain bookstores and online are oversized, discounted books detailing “decisive battles” in military history, many with lavish color illustrations and glossy maps. A typical example of these often reductive “great battles” type of coffee table books is The Greatest Battles in History: An Encyclopedia of Classic Warfare from Megiddo to Waterloo. Published in 2017, its short introduction does not define “greatest battles” or explain why the battles chosen were included. The book also makes odd choices of which battles to include, such as the inexplicable inclusion of the obscure battle of Paulus Hook in 1779, a small engagement in the American Revolution without significant strategic implications. It hardly merits a claim to be one of “the greatest.”

Another example is Charles Messenger’s Wars that Changed the World (2019), which ambitiously attempts to examine “the defining conflicts of world history,” but the author also posits that “all wars change history,” so his “selection of 25 conflicts” from the 5th century BC until the current decade is quite limited for such a long time span and a broad claim. To be fair, “any selection of battles of course involves debate,” as prolific military historian Jeremy Black has observed. Likewise, renowned scholar Richard Overy, in A History of War in 100 Battles, writes that “choosing just 100 battles from recorded history is a challenge,” and that “any century of battles has to be arbitrary.” One wonders then how truly decisive the battles he chose were if they were picked, as he admits, indiscriminately.

British historian Edward S. Creasy was most likely to have been the first modern writer to publish a study of important engagements in The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (1851). “There are some battles,” Creasy asserted, “which claim our attention, independently of the moral worth of the combatants, on account of their enduring importance.” Creasy’s contention suggests a more thoughtful definition of what decisive battles and crucial turning points really are. Creasy called them engagements that, if they “had come to a different termination,” would not have made us “who we are.” He goes on to quote the early influential English historian Henry Hallam (1777–1859), who wrote that a battle was decisive if “a contrary event would have essentially varied the drama of the world in all its subsequent scenes.” Creasy, like later scholars, also made the point that “no two historical inquirers would entirely agree in their lists of the Decisive Battles of the World.” His standard of what to include was quite simple: decisive battles are those “collisions” that “may give an impulse which will sway the fortunes of successive generations of mankind.”

One hundred years later, to give just one example, popular historian Fletcher Pratt, writing in the 1950s, offered a similar definition of a decisive or important battle. “The war in which the battle took place,” he held, “must itself have decided something, must really mark one of those turning points after which things would have been a good deal different if the decision had gone in the other direction.” Pratt also excluded battles and campaigns that, “although decisive, could hardly have had any other result, given the forces engaged.”6 But weren’t they decisive nonetheless?

The idea of “the great battle” resulting in momentous results is not as easy to qualify or categorize as Creasy and Pratt suggested. In fact, historians over the past several decades have taken various views on how to study campaigns and engagements that were significant turning points. Winston Churchill, deploring the tendency he saw among academics to deemphasize the importance of battles, wrote in his 1930s biography of his illustrious ancestor and brilliant general, the Duke of Marlborough, that

Battles are the principal milestones in secular history. Modern opinion resents this uninspiring truth, and historians often treat the decisions in the field as incidents in the dramas of politics and diplomacy. But great battles, won or lost, change the entire course of events, create new standards of values, new moods, new atmospheres, in armies and in nations, to which all must conform.

Professor Michael Mandelbaum of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies makes a similar point more recently. “The concept of the decisive battle, once a familiar one, has gone out of fashion, especially in the United States,” he writes. That is no doubt because, for “all the occasions on which American troops have been ordered into harm’s way in recent decades, they have fought relatively few battles and no decisive ones.” Nevertheless, he adds that “wars can change the course of history and great battles often decide wars.” The fact that this last observation needs to be made in Mandelbaum’s article tells us much about the focus of military history today.

In this vein, Boston University historian Cathal Nolan writes that although “many modern historians are indifferent to military history” and “some are openly hostile … war remains hugely important in explaining much history and wider human affairs. Indeed, it may be the most important thing.” He writes that “armed conflict is too important to be reduced to bromides ‘that war doesn’t solve anything.’” Quite true. War in history has, in fact, decided many truly important things, and major wars “have altered the deep course of world history.” Yet he also claims that “battles did not usually decide the major wars of the modern era that decided most everything else.” Nolan holds that attrition in warfare replaced decisive battles won in an afternoon or at most a couple of days. “Exhaustion of morale and materiel, rather than finality through battles, marks the endgame of many wars. Even of most wars. Almost always of wars among the major powers in any era.” Any era? Nolan’s overly thesis-driven argument, excluding evidence that does not fit his thesis, quickly breaks down with numerous examples from military history. For instance, the fact that he barely mentions the American Civil War and thus ignores such battles as the clash at Antietam in a 700-page book should give every reader pause.

Nolan also writes in a 2017 article that
War is thus far more than a strung-together tale of key battles. Yet, traditional military history presented battles as fulcrum moments where empires rose or fell in a day, and most people still think that wars are won that way, in an hour or an afternoon of blood and bone. Or perhaps two or three. We must understand the deeper game, not look only to the scoring. That is hard to do because battles are so seductive.

Nolan mistakenly uses a twentieth century lens to look at battles as if all of them were like the Somme, Verdun, or Stalingrad. Eighteenth- century warfare was certainly different. The scale of the battles, the size of the armies, and the politics involved in the 1700s meant that battles had significant consequences and often led to significant results. One need only consider Culloden, Poltava, Quebec, and Saratoga to counter his argument.

Not all scholars – or warriors – see battles today as did Churchill or Nolan. As British scholar Hew Strachan notes in his introduction to the recent Oxford University Press Great Battles series:
For those who practice war in the 21st century, the idea of a ‘great battle’ can seem no more than the echo of the remote past … contemporary military doctrine downplays the idea of victory, arguing that wars end by negotiation, not by the smashing of an enemy, army or navy. Indeed, it erodes the very division between war and peace, and with it, the aspiration to fight a culminating ‘great battle.’

This may be true. Other recent interpretations are not so clear. In a muddled conclusion written by the UK’s National Army Museum, we read that the 1690 battle of the Boyne in County Meath, Ireland, was both “militarily indecisive” and “a turning point with far-reaching consequences,” a battle that “has taken on a great historical and cultural significance.” Could it be both?

Battles, it seems, have gone out of fashion in some historical circles as meaningful events. “Until a few decades ago,” writes Professor Yuval Noah Harari, “battles were the historical events par excellence, and ‘decisive battles’ served as axes around which many histories of the world revolved.” Not so today. Harari finds that “among the vast majority of world historians, battles are decidedly out of favor. It is extremely unfashionable today to ascribe global or even regional historical developments to the outcome of this or that battle.” He then notes that “at least some battles were indeed capable of changing the course of history. However, under close scrutiny it transpires that only few battles really deserve the appellation ‘decisive.’” This conclusion applies to the American War of Independence. Similarly, Cathal Nolan correctly concludes that “a war is usually deemed to have been decisive when some important strategic and political goal was achieved in arms, gaining a lasting advantage that secured one side’s key values and hard interests.” He writes that “if the term ‘decisive battle’ is to illuminate rather than obscure military history, it must be used more narrowly, to mean singular victories, or defeats that created lasting strategic change, leading directly or ultimately to the decision in the war that frames them.” This, too, applies to America’s Revolutionary War, in which few military events can be said to be decisive turning points that lead to victory.

Harari’s definition of decisive battle is how I approach the key turning points of the long destructive war for American independence. In this book, turning points refer to battles, campaigns, sieges and other military events that are decisive and result in significant change that alters the trajectory of the conflict toward the war’s outcome. Nolan’s conclusion that “we are drawn to celebrate battles because they seem to deliver a decision” is true. In the case of the Revolutionary War, I identify and explore five military turning points that were the most significant events that led to American victory and independence in 1783. These five are the battles of Trenton and Princeton; the sprawling Saratoga campaign in the New York wilderness; the suffering Continental army’s 1777–78 winter encampment at Valley Forge; the events leading up to and including the bloody battle of Guilford Courthouse; and the culminating Yorktown campaign (including the naval actions off the Virginia Capes). A concluding chapter will discuss why many of the war’s most famous battles, while important, were not the key turning points that, in Churchill’s words, “change[d] the entire course of events.” Those wanting more elaboration on this last point before reading about the war’s turning points may wish to read my concluding chapter first.

To be sure, many battles in world military history had important outcomes, but one must ask if they acted as catalysts for significant changes in the course of a conflict that led to victory. For example, the South African battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879 during the Anglo-Zulu War is widely known among military history students and scholars (and film buffs). About 150 British hard-pressed soldiers bravely fought off repeated attacks by thousands of charging Zulu warriors for a dozen hours. Although the heroic British victory was a morale boost to the public, the fighting had little strategic importance.

In a larger example, the battle of Agincourt, fought in 1415 during the Hundred Years’ War, was a bloody English victory over French forces in the countryside south of Calais. Though quite well known today, in part due to Shakespeare’s play Henry V, and potentially the only medieval battle (some) Americans could name, it was not a turning point in the war, as historian Anne Curry has recently written. “Agincourt has not been seen as a decisive battle, [and] rightly so,” she concludes. “Since the [French] king and Dauphine were not present at the battle, government continued as before … Whilst prisoners had been taken, none were so significant that they would force the French crown to rush to negotiate and pay ransoms.” In hindsight modern historians see that “Agincourt was a moral but not a strategic triumph,” and the clash “had not brought [Henry] advantage save in terms of military damage to and demoralization of the French.” Thus, Agincourt was not a turning point in that it had little lasting effect.

Some historians, including Alan Forrest, make a similar assessment of the Battle of Waterloo. He writes that the famous 1815 battle “finally brought peace to Europe … ended Napoleon’s dreams of hegemony, and [that] went on to form a central plank in Britain’s military identity during the Victorian era.” The French defeat “led to Napoleon’s second abdication, and established the Duke of Wellington’s reputation as one of the greatest British military commanders of the modern era.” But was it “a great battle from a military perspective?” More than a few modern historians, as well as Napoleon’s enemies at the time, would answer “no.” Forrest states that Waterloo “was, of course, a decisive victory, the battle that inflicted Napoleon’s final defeat … [and] brought an end to a generation of war, in which millions of soldiers lost their lives, civil society had been undermined, and agriculture and industry across Europe have been disrupted to serve the war economy.” But he also notes that “across Europe Waterloo’s status was more uncertain.” A huge number of German-speaking soldiers fought beside Wellington’s British regiments at Waterloo on the left flank, but Forrest says “in German eyes, [the 1814 battle of ] Leipzig was the really significant encounter, the moment which signaled Napoleon’s defeat … Leipzig, not Waterloo, would remain the vital battle for Germany, and for Europe.” Many in France would have said the turning point of the Napoleonic Wars “had come earlier, in the Peninsular War, or during the 1812 Russian Campaign, at Borodino,” or, indeed, at Leipzig. Forrest points out that “the war was already lost with the 1814 campaign and the surrender of Paris; Napoleon had abdicated, and been exiled to Elba; the Bourbons returned to the throne; and the European order had been restored at the Congress of Vienna” through June 1815.

By the time of the Battle of Waterloo, the Allied forces “so heavily outnumbered Napoleon’s army as to make the outcome of the campaign a foregone conclusion.” Waterloo “was not in itself critical to the outcome of the war,” Forrest asserts, and the “odds that faced the French in 1815 were overwhelming. If not at Waterloo, the defeat would’ve happened elsewhere.” Thus, many argue that the great battle was not a turning point, but a bloody coda on a war that had already been decided.

Another example exists in a 17th-century battle fought near York, England. Oliver Cromwell’s famous victory at Marston Moor on July 2, 1644, during the English Civil War was the largest battle of that conflict; Cromwell called it a great victory for the Parliamentary forces over the Royalists, and it was. But while some historians have argued that the battle was a major blow to the Royalists in the north of England as it significantly increased the reputation of Cromwell (who was the cavalry commander that day for Parliament’s cause) and secured their control of the region, others disagree. Some modern scholars do not regard the battle as a turning point, as Parliamentary victory was not assured afterwards, particularly since two defeats at Lostwithiel and the Second Battle of Newbury soon afterwards were major setbacks to their cause. One may also turn to the American Civil War to see that many of its large-scale battles were indecisive, even if they seemed to have important immediate results. President Abraham Lincoln was often frustrated by Union army defeats but also by northern victories not followed by aggressive pursuit of the southern enemy to annihilate them, such as after Antietam and Gettysburg. Confederate leaders, too, bemoaned “empty” victories that did not result in destroying defeated enemies during or immediately after a battle. Gen Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army soundly defeated Union forces in 1863 at Chancellorsville, Virginia, which is often called his tactical masterpiece and greatest victory, but his subordinate generals could not maneuver their exhausted troops effectively to crush the defeated Yankees against the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers behind them and allowed them to escape. The Confederacy simply could not afford to suffer 12,000 casualties in a three-day battle and not destroy the enemy. Therefore, while costly for the defeated Union army in terms of casualties, Lee’s daring victory was hollow and indecisive. Likewise, the furious battle of Chickamauga fought in Georgia later that year was another bloody slugging match that, although an unquestionable tactical triumph for the Confederates, did not bring the war any closer to a southern victory in its aftermath.

These three examples are not to imply that there are few battles or campaigns that were turning points in other conflicts. Wolfe’s triumph at Quebec in 1759 made British victory over France in the Seven Years’ War assured, with lasting worldwide consequences, including the French removal from Canada, Britain’s financial crisis, and the coming of the American Revolution in 1775. Japan’s crushing victory at the sea battle of Tsushima in 1905 “brought about the end of the Russo- Japanese War and affected dramatically the two belligerents’ geopolitical vision and naval outlook for decades.” The grinding attritional warfare amidst the smoke and rubble at Stalingrad was the crucial turning point of the bitter Soviet–German War that began in 1942 – if not of World War II in Europe. This brutal months-long urban slugfest repulsed the German offensive to crush the Soviet Union and obtain Hitler’s key goal of Lebensraum. It also dealt a fatal blow to Nazi Germany’s hopes for military victory in the East. Many more examples could of course be suggested.

Classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson has written much about the importance of battles in history. “Battles really are the wildfires of history,” he observes in Ripples of Battle (2003), “out of which the survivors float like embers and then land to burn far beyond the original conflagration.” He urges his readers to “go back to the past to see precisely how such calamities affected now lost worlds – and yet still influence us today.” Hanson adds that “battles … alter history for centuries in a way other events cannot.” In this vein, this book attempts to show which events of the Revolutionary War were crucial to achieving American independence and altered history for going on two and a half centuries.

As Creasy noted, not every writer or reader will have the same turning points on their lists, and I expect some readers will disagree with a few of my selections and even how many I have made. It is my intention to show in five chapters why I consider the military events I have suggested to be turning points in the Revolutionary War, as I defined this term earlier. My concept for this book is to provoke debate and discussion among those interested in the young country’s founding conflict. But as discussion and debate may ensue, I hope too that no matter how readers react to and engage with my argument, we never forget, in British military historian Hew Strachan’s words, that “however rich and splendid the cultural legacy of a great battle, it was won and lost by fighting, by killing and being killed.”

You can read more in From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War

• American Revolution