Battle of Brandywine: Washington's Costly Defeat
Near Wilmington, Pennsylvania
On September eleventh, seventeen seventy-seven, George Washington positioned about eleven thousand American troops along Brandywine Creek, hoping to stop a British advance toward Philadelphia. Facing him was a force of roughly eighteen thousand British and Hessian soldiers under General William Howe.
Howe outmaneuvered Washington with a classic flanking attack, sending a column across an unguarded ford to the north while pinning the Americans at Chadds Ford. By evening the American line had collapsed. It was one of the largest engagements of the entire Revolutionary War and one of Washington's clearest tactical defeats. Philadelphia fell to the British fifteen days later. Washington's army survived to fight another day, retreating northwest toward what would become the infamous winter at Valley Forge. The Brandywine battlefield has been partially preserved and is one of the most significant Revolutionary War sites in Pennsylvania.
