In what order the American line was formed we know. The division of Stephen occupied the right, that of Stirling the centre, that of Sullivan the left. But many of the details are vaguely and contradictorily stated. Lossing, following the sketch of the battle in the Pennsylvania Historical Society's collections, describes Sullivan's circuitous march to outreach Deborre, both seeking to obtain the right of the line, while Bancroft says that Sullivan posted his division in advance of the extreme left, detached by a half-mile gap from the rest of the line, but that, on being remonstrated with, he moved to close up the space, and was attacked before he had again formed his line of battle. What followed, however, is distinct enough. Rested and fed, the royal army precipitated itself, three to one in strength, and equally disproportionate in discipline and experience, upon the unready line of the Americans. The German and British troops, we are told, "vied with each other in fury" as they ran forward in a superb and irresistible bayonet charge. The struggle began about four o'clock: it lasted perhaps half an hour. As the enemy advanced they were fired upon by a body of outposted riflemen in an orchard near the road on which the attacking column moved; whereupon, says Joseph Townsend, who was near by watching the movement, the Hessians ran up the bank by the roadside, and, levelling their guns through the fence, returned the fire.
Overwhelmed by the attack, the Americans broke on the right. This was the post of honor which Deborre, an old French officer, had obtained for his brigade. Conway, in a letter written a few weeks later to support Sullivan's defence, says the latter, though entitled to the right, took the left in order to save time, and that Deborre, though the ground was much more favorable for the quick formation of his line, was not in order when the enemy attacked. It is agreed that Deborre's brigade broke first, and that then the left, Sullivan's men, gave way, though Sullivan struggled bravely to hold them. "I saw him," says De Fleury, "rallying his men with great ardor," but unsuccessfully; and he then came to Stirling's division, which was fighting on the hill, braving the thick of the fire until the centre too gave way, when, at the last, he was striving to rally the fugitives and encourage them to form a new line behind the fences. Had Sullivan shown vigilance and discretion equal to his courage, the day's history might have been totally different.
Thirty minutes completed this epoch of the battle. The first line was destroyed. Those who had formed it were stretched on the sere pastures or hurrying to the rear. Stirling and Conway, as well as Sullivan, had shown great bravery and coolness, but the resistance, practically, had been totally ineffective. The beaten and demoralized troops streamed into the woods, and sought shelter or escape until they met the reinforcements under Greene.
As the sound of Sullivan's encounter reached him—possibly sooner—Greene had moved from his reserve position to the support of the right flank. He marched, it is asserted, four miles in forty minutes. Washington himself left Chad's Ford, giving the command there to Wayne, and hurried off to the more perilous quarter of the field. Joseph Brown, a resident of the vicinity, was impressed as a guide. He was hurriedly mounted on a fine charger belonging to a staff officer, and Washington bade him ride with all speed in the direction of the firing. Away they went, Joseph's horse clearing fences and ditches gallantly, the commander at his flank urging him on. "Push along, old man! push along, old man!" was his repeated command, remembered and related for many years after by Joseph. They rode, he said, to a point between Dilworthtown and the meeting-house, half a mile away from the former place, and here the sounds of the battle seemed close at hand. Bullets flew thick, the general and his staff turned their attention from the guide, and he, glad to be excused, slipped from his saddle and withdrew.
Precisely when and where Greene met the fugitives from the first rout is another of the uncertainties. The best descriptions of the battle, upon being compared carefully, will be found vague and to some degree conflicting. But there are two points on the road from the meeting-house to Dilworth, marked upon the military map of the field as the "Second Position," where Greene undoubtedly posted his men. These positions are near together: one is south of the road, half a mile east of the meeting-house, on a hill-slope descending toward the west; and the other is north of the road, at a ravine now known as Sandy Hollow.
It is said that Greene opened his lines, received the fugitives from the front, and re-formed. Possibly this took place at this second position. It is certain that here the British advance was sharply checked, and the Americans stubbornly held their ground until late in the afternoon. It was at this turn in the battle that La Fayette was wounded, and not in the first encounter, as the current historical narrative would give us to understand. A survey of the map ascertains very precisely the place where he was shot, according to abundant testimony, and this is more than a mile distant from Sullivan's lines. It is very unlikely that La Fayette was in the first encounter, beyond the meeting-house. He probably arrived on the field with Washington, or he may possibly have accompanied Greene. The place where he was wounded is a field about halfway from the meeting-house to Dilworth, south-west of the road and about a hundred rods away. Trustworthy accounts say he was with Washington at the time, both engaged in rallying the troops; and this is quite likely: the place is only a little distance westward from the point to which Joseph Brown guided the general. In July, 1825, when La Fayette revisited the ground, he drove up from Wilmington in a carriage with the Messrs. Du Pont, whom he had been visiting. Great crowds accompanied him over the historic field, and as he drove along the road near the place already described, the carriage was stopped and the gallant old gentleman rose to his feet to point out the position in which he sustained his wound. "It was," he said, "somewhere on yonder slope. The exact spot I cannot now tell."[A]
[A] The precise nature of La Fayette's wound is differently stated in the chronicles. It was a gun-shot injury in his left leg, and did not immediately disable him. He rode that night to Chester, and thence reached Bristol, from which place Henry Laurens took him to the gentle nursing of the Moravian Sisters at Bethlehem. He remained there two months before he rejoined the army.
Baffled as Howe was by the stubborn resistance after Greene arrived, this check was almost the only American triumph in the day's contest. There was hard fighting from five o'clock until dusk. Posted in strong positions, well supported by the artillery, commanded by Washington himself, the patriot troops displayed their most soldierly qualities. The brigades of Muhlenberg, the Episcopal rector, and of Weeden, the Virginia innkeeper, stood well and fought bravely. History preserves especially the names of three regiments as earning distinction—one from Pennsylvania, under Colonel Stewart; and two from Virginia—the Tenth, under Colonel Stevens, and the Third, commanded by John Marshall, afterward chief-justice of the United States. The Marylanders, under Smallwood, and the Delaware regiment, acquitted themselves with probably equal credit. Amongst the officers, Sullivan, Stirling and Conway had been conspicuous for courage; La Fayette was wounded; De Fleury had his horse shot under him (Congress soon voted him another); Pulaski had rendered gallant service, earning early promotion; the marquis de la Rouerie was a prisoner.
But though resisting so well, the effect was only to cover the needful retreat. Down at Chad's Ford the conflict had been quickly over after the fighting began at Birmingham. The sound of the guns from the hills set Knyphausen in motion in earnest after all his feints and pretences since morning. He pressed forward to cross the creek. Wayne fought him well a little while, Proctor's artillery raking the advancing Hessians as they waded the stream until its placid waters ran crimson with their blood. But while Knyphausen's column was itself too heavy for Wayne to oppose successfully, the catastrophe at Birmingham followed so quickly upon the beginning of the struggle there that the contest at the ford was soon ended. Howe was rapidly gaining his rear when Wayne learned of Sullivan's disaster, and there was now only one resource—to retreat with all speed. Proctor's guns and other munitions were abandoned, and the fragments of the left wing, like those of the right, went drifting toward the Delaware.
As the friendly shades of night came down the British were pressing the fugitive army off the field, though not with a hot pursuit. In the Wilmington road, below Dilworthtown, at dusk, we have a view of Washington riding hastily along and ordering the officers whom he met to gather up the disorganized troops and hurry toward Chester. As the night hid the retreat, the stars came out to shine upon the dead, the dying and the wounded. Howe estimated the American loss at three hundred killed, six hundred wounded and four hundred prisoners—figures which Greene's report did not essentially contradict. The wounded were mostly in Howe's hands: few had escaped, as one did in a "chair" hurriedly driven over to the Black Horse tavern, on the road to Chester, by Robert Mendinhall, a neighboring Quaker farmer. The British loss was reported as five hundred and seventy-eight killed and wounded, including fifty-eight officers. Even if these figures were too low, the day's casualties aggregated fifteen hundred. The little meeting-house was filled with the badly wounded, and Howe sent word to Washington that more surgeons were needed, in response to which message several were sent to the field. The dead, as usual, were hastily buried, and heavy rains after the battle washed out many of the shallow pits, exposing their ghastly occupants to the elements and prowling beasts. The neighboring people were compelled to undertake the work of re-interment, in which, Joseph Townsend says, "it would be difficult to describe the many cases of horror and destruction of human beings" that they encountered. The battle was over, the tide of war had swept past, but these horrid evidences of its slaughter remained as the memorials of the struggle by which, for a time, the British had captured Philadelphia.