Lafayette's First Command: Barren Hill

In May of seventeen seventy-eight, a twenty-year-old French marquis received his first independent command in the American Revolution. Lafayette led about twenty-four hundred Continental troops to Barren Hill, just northwest of Philadelphia, to gather intelligence on the British garrison.

General Howe sent a much larger force to surround him. Caught in a dangerous position, Lafayette executed a controlled withdrawal across Matson Ford on the Schuylkill River, saving his entire force. He reoccupied the hill once the British pulled back, then returned to Valley Forge on May twenty-third. The operation impressed George Washington, who came to regard Lafayette almost as a son. It was the young Frenchman's proof of competence, a near-disaster turned into a demonstration of cool judgment under pressure.