Below the line of Washington's main army, at Pyle's Ford, were posted the Pennsylvania militia under General Armstrong, and below their position the Brandywine enters rocky hills, flowing between steep banks that forbid the easy passage of an army.
Washington slept on this night at Benjamin Ring's, just east of Chad's Ford, and La Fayette at Gideon Gilpin's, near by. Both the dwellings are still standing and occupied as places of residence. To defend the crossing at the ford a battery of six guns was planted in front of John Chad's house. Its location may yet be distinctly traced. West of the stream, Maxwell's riflemen were posted well out on the road toward Kennet Square, where General Howe occupied Wiley's tavern, an ancient hostelry, as his quarters. He had formed his plan of attack—to engage the attention of the Americans by a sharp attack on the road to the crossing at Chad's with Knyphausen's division of five thousand men, while Cornwallis should proceed, upon roads concealed from the American view by distance and intervening forests, far up the creek to the fords that Sullivan had not guarded, and, crossing there, descend with crushing force upon the American line. Sullivan himself declared, in letters written after the battle, that he had anticipated such an attack: it was the natural plan of battle for Howe to adopt under the circumstances. If, then, our general had only taken sufficient precaution to meet it!
Early on this foggy, warm morning of the 11th the British were in motion. There was no hurry for Knyphausen, but Cornwallis's men had a long, hard march before them. At five o'clock they set off, leaving behind them all encumbering baggage, even their knapsacks. Turning northward, they took the road which, pursuing a direction generally parallel with the Brandywine, reaches the west branch of the creek at Trimble's Ford. Howe himself rode with them. He was mounted, Townsend says, "on a large English horse, much reduced in flesh"—thanks to short rations on shipboard. Thirteen thousand men, the whole left wing of the army, marched in this column. Hidden by the forests and hills, as well as by the mists of the morning, they had moved several miles on their way before any word of their march reached the Americans across the creek, only three miles away.
Cornwallis having gone, Knyphausen presently took up his share of the morning's work. At nine o'clock, or thereabout, he pressed forward on the road toward Chad's. The opposing force between him and that place was mainly Maxwell's command of riflemen and light infantry, whose main body, about a thousand strong, lay upon the high ground a mile west of the ford, but whose scouting-parties the British advance-guard speedily encountered. A party of scouts, indeed, tradition says, had ventured to Johnny Welsh's tavern, almost in the very embraces of Knyphausen, and there, in cheerful disregard of precaution, had tied their horses in front, and were making merry with the apple whiskey and New England rum of the bar-room. Surprised thus, the patriot bacchanals ran for their lives from the back door and escaped through the fields, emptying their guns in one sputtering volley that wounded one of their own horses left in the hands of the enemy.
A little farther, however, the riflemen began to fire upon the advancing British, though, pressed by the heavy column, they fell slowly back toward Maxwell's main body. From behind the clumps of trees, the hedges, the walls and the houses they aimed at the invaders, and harassed, if they did not impede, their march. The "Old Kennet" meeting-house and its graveyard walls gave them another and yet more favorable ambush. But by ten o'clock the fighting had become more serious. Maxwell, pressed by a greatly superior force, resisted stoutly, and the firing on both sides was heavy. Proctor's artillery pounded away across the stream. The riflemen, well under cover, at first threw Knyphausen's men into confusion, though they included some of the best regiments of the British army, the Fourth, Fifth, Twenty-eighth, Forty-ninth and Seventy-first being among them.
As Proctor trained his guns upon the advancing British, the house of William Harvey (Senior—his son William, Junior, lived east of the creek) was directly in the line of fire. William, who was a quiet but firm old Friend, was at his home, intending to protect his goods if possible, though he had sent his family away. His neighbor, Jacob Way, found him at this juncture sitting on his front piazza, which ended to the eastward against his kitchen, a semi-detached building. "Come away!" said Jacob: "thee is in danger here. Thee will surely be killed." But William refused. Jacob expostulated. As they exchanged words, a twelve-pound cannon-ball came from Proctor's battery directly for the house, passed through both walls of the kitchen, and plunged along the piazza floor, tearing up the boards and barely avoiding William's legs, until, a little farther on, it buried itself six feet deep in the earth. It is recorded that William hesitated no longer, but sought a safer place. His house was thoroughly despoiled when the British came up.
Knyphausen, however, steadily pressed the Americans back, forced them from the high ground down to the edge of the creek, and finally drove them across. By half-past ten o'clock this was accomplished, and the British line was then formed half a mile back from the stream, where it lay until half-past four in the afternoon, the artillery keeping up a threatening but not serious fire upon Wayne's position on the east side, which his batteries returned. On the whole, the Americans thought themselves doing fairly well. Washington's secretary sent off a despatch to Congress saying that the British loss must be three hundred killed and wounded, "while ours does not exceed fifty altogether."
Part of the British force at the ford on this morning was a rifle corps commanded by Major Patrick Ferguson, a young Scotchman recently arrived in America, and subsequently killed in the sanguinary fight on King's Mountain. In a letter describing the Brandywine battle he says his men were lying concealed in a skirt of woods when "a rebel officer in a huzzar dress" passed in front, followed by another in dark green and blue "mounted on a good bay horse and wearing a remarkably high cocked hat." Ferguson ordered three men to steal near and fire upon them, but believing that they would surely be killed, so near were they riding, he felt the act to be murder and recalled his men. Again, having first passed to some distance, the officer on the bay horse returned, and rode within easy shooting distance, but Ferguson again restrained himself. The next day he learned from wounded Americans who fell into the hands of the British "that General Washington was all the morning with the light troops, and attended only by a French officer in a huzzar dress, he himself mounted and dressed in every respect as above described."
The Friends whom we left gathered in the wheelwright-shop adjourned with some agitation. "While we were sitting therein," Joseph Townsend says, "some disturbance was discovered near the house and about the door, which occasioned some individuals to go out to know the cause, and they not returning and the uneasiness not subsiding, suspicions arose that something serious was taking place: the meeting accordingly closed."
It was indeed quite time that the heads of the meeting had shaken hands as the signal for adjourning. The "uneasiness" outside had good reason. The cry was that the red-coats were coming. Women were weeping and crying that "they murdered all before them, young and old." The men endeavored to allay their fears, and urged them to be more composed; but while this took place "our eyes were caught, on a sudden, by the appearance of the army coming out of the woods into the fields belonging to Emmor Jefferis, on the west side of the creek, above the fording-place. In a few minutes the fields were literally covered over with them, and they were hastening toward us. Their arms and bayonets, being raised, shone bright as silver, there being a clear sky and the day exceedingly warm."