Battle of Brandywine: The British Flank Attack
Near Wilmington, Pennsylvania
On September eleven, seventeen seventy-seven, British General Howe executed one of the most ambitious flanking maneuvers of the Revolutionary War. While Knyphausen's Hessian and British forces pinned George Washington's army at Chadds Ford along Brandywine Creek, Howe personally led a column of roughly nine thousand men on a seventeen-mile arc to the north. They crossed the Brandywine at Jefferis Ford and came crashing down on the American right flank late that afternoon.
General John Sullivan hastily formed a defensive line near Birmingham Meeting House, right here, but the weight of the British assault broke it. Sullivan's men fell back toward Dilworthtown, two miles to the southeast. The Americans suffered roughly twelve hundred casualties and were forced to abandon the field.
Fifteen days later, Howe marched into Philadelphia. More troops fought here than in any other battle of the war.
