Washington's Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer

https://www.amazon.com/Washingtons-C...s%2C249&sr=1-1

Fischer’s book, “Washington’s Crossing” is a gift for those who love military history and desire to gain a deeper understanding of the American Revolution. This deeply researched and well-told story dispels a lot of myths. He doesn’t sidestep the issue that many of our founding fathers owned slaves, but puts it in context and doesn’t allow it to mask the larger story. This is a history based on research, not politically correct dribble that too often masquerades as history.

My previous and admittedly limited understanding of the 1776-1777 Winter Campaign was that General Washington led a force across the Delaware River to conduct a surprise attack on the British and their Hessian mercenaries. A victory, yet more significant psychologically than militarily. Amazon introduction to the book describes the significance of the campaign:

Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia.

Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, George Washington--and many other Americans--refused to let the Revolution die. On Christmas night, as a howling nor’easter struck the Delaware Valley, he led his men across the river and attacked the exhausted Hessian garrison at Trenton, killing or capturing nearly a thousand men. A second battle of Trenton followed within days. The Americans held off a counterattack by Lord Cornwallis’s best troops, then were almost trapped by the British force. Under cover of night, Washington’s men stole behind the enemy and struck them again, defeating a brigade at Princeton. The British were badly shaken. In twelve weeks of winter fighting, their army suffered severe damage, their hold on New Jersey was broken, and their strategy was ruined.
He goes into great detail on different command styles, information, leadership, tactics and operational approached used, and much more. I’ll touch on a couple areas as relevant to small wars today as they were in the 18th Century.

The command styles used by the British and Americans were very different. This in large part explains why the Americans prevailed. The British commanders were highly skilled professionals that bonded together as old boys but remained sensitive to rank and privilege. General Cornwallis made the major decisions himself and rejected contrary advice from his officers.

General Washington would have preferred to use a similar command style, but many factors forced him to adjust his leadership style. Arguably Washington led a coalition of many armies from different colonies. They were all motivated to fight for freedom, but each army had its own view of what freedom meant. These men came from a society that was much less stratified than the British and their German societies. Sometimes the men from a particular army or unit in a colony only volunteered for a year and then returned home. Washington learned that top-down command was less effective than building consensus. He held frequent councils of war and encouraged a free exchange of views and he listened more than he talked. He also frequently fought on the front lines, inspiring his men to hold their positions when they were ready to break ranks. He learned to delegate authority, which resulted in his officers and men taking the initiative resulting in an operations tempo that the British could not adjust to. He urged his officers to be drivers of events and never allow events to drive them. Washington practiced mission command while the British practiced a hierarchical form of command similar to what the U.S. military uses today.

The British and Hessians were confident they could defeat the freezing, near naked, rebels quickly after the winter passed. They did not recognize the inner strength of the Americans. This strength came from their belief in their cause (reinforced by the harsh treatment the British), deep religious faith, and their entrepreneurial spirit. Not to mention their physical toughness and superior rifle skills one would expect backwoods pioneers. The British like the modern U.S. military believed their superior firepower would cause the rebels to give up their cause. The Americans like the Viet Cong and Taliban endured.

At least one historian said the American Revolution started before they fired the first shots in 1774, because the revolution was a revolution of ideas, the war was the process to free themselves from the British yoke so they could implement those ideas. Like most wars of resistance, ideology is essential, and Thomas Paine provided the ideology with his book titled, “Common Sense.” The American army was the most literate army in the world at that time, and most of the men carried a copy of the book and the soldiers called by his nickname Common Sense. After the initial American defeats in New York, the Army was in crisis and Paine realizing the power of narrative wrote his second book titled, “The American Crisis.” It resulted in a great revival, a call to arms in response to the initial defeat. Often overlooked in the modern American view of information, which focuses excessively on the adversary and mostly ineffective, is the necessity to focus information on the home front and one’s own army to maintain their resolve. Today we complain our foreign partners don’t have the will to fight in many cases, yet we direct 90% of our influence against the adversary. Target audiences for decisive influence may very well be friendly forces.

Not unlike today, British officers debated different approaches for defeating the rebels. Some argued for more harsh methods, and others sought to convince the rebels to surrender with promises of amnesty. To protect the Tories who supported the British, the British initially dispersed their forces to protect the population, but the American army attacked these weak outposts, forcing the British to consolidate their forces. When the Tories realized the British couldn’t defend them they burned their oaths of loyalty to the King and signed oaths of loyalty to the Congress. We learned relearned the importance of protecting the populace in Afghanistan and Iraq late in the game, and never truly had the means to do so.

Contrary to much popular history, Washington outmaneuvered the British Generals, and even British and Hessian records from the time state this. Using mission command he could combine various operational approaches to keep the British back on their heels. They ranged from rapid night marches to major conventional forces relying on massed firepower, to petite guerre, and the forage wars. A large part of his success was due to extensive human intelligence networks they established, unlike the bureaucratic human intelligence processes we have today. Washington encouraged all his officers to establish their own sources to enable operations. This gave the Americans an information advantage over the British. Washington pushed his officers to be bold but to temper their boldness with prudence. His leadership resulted in initiative and tempo that overcame superior British forces. Over the winter, they reduced the British army from 31,600 men to 14,000 effectives. Much like the Tet Offensive, this campaign had a telling effect on the British domestic audience who initially supported the war.

Most inspiring was the hardship the Americans endured and yet continued to fight on. In some battles, not a single American fell because of enemy fire, but many died of exposure, hunger, and exhaustion. They pushed themselves to the limits of their endurance to close with the enemy, and after the fight simply perished. Despite this hardship, they embraced the same value for human rights we embrace today, and Washington and his officers insisted treat the British and Hessian prisoners well, which is why many opted to stay after the war, or return home and get their families then return to America.

It is a superb book.