The Rebuke of Charles Lee and Battle of Monmouth!
Though we at Black Labrador Creations thoroughly enjoy alternative history and making board games where you decide the fate of empires at war, we are also avid fans of the history and art that inspires the games we make.
Here we see Jason Grossman’s rendering of “The Rebuke of General Charles Lee.” This infamous event occurred during the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in 1778, in which Washington gave confusing orders to the officer in question, who then, despite his experience and thanks to his limited ability, carried them out in a dubious manner, causing his subordinates, individual colonels in the newly reformed and painstakingly retrained Continental Army, to take the initiative and to complete their assigned goal their own way. This led to a severe repulse of the Rebel forces by outnumbered soldiers of the Crown under Sir Henry Clinton until George Washington and his reinforcements arrived to even the odds and snatch a draw in battle from the jaws of defeat. “Yes, sir,” one of Washington’s staffers quoted, “he [Washington] swore on that day, till the leaves shook on the trees”
Interestingly, the battle of Monmouth was an exercise in extremes for both armies. While Lee misconstrued Washington’s orders and was unable to rally and control his men to do battle effectively, the British suffered in the opposite order. Clinton, surprised by Lee’s numbers and discombobulated assault and pushed back initially, having never wanted this fight, and was, in fact, escorting Loyalist refugees from newly vacated Philadelphia to British-occupied New York, recovered his senses and, having received reinforcement from Charles Cornwallis, struck back hard, leading a charge from the front to keep his men inspired. This was especially jarring to Lee, who estimated British numbers at about a fifth they actually were and who initially sent back early reports of success to Washington. Indeed, even after withdrawing his men, he felt he withdrew in force rather well, and expected a commendation from Washington, having not heard of the chaos some of his other detachments faced, as he was leading one directly.
When Washington arrived on the field and the two officers had words, however, Washington was firm, and, many said, outright enraged about Lee’s command of the vanguard. Relieving him, Washington took over and, with the assistance of his newly trained army, born out of the winter at Valley Forge with the help of Prussian drillmaster “Baron” von Steuben, managed to hold off Clinton’s counterattack in a series of pitched actions that saw very high casualties on both sides, both to combat and extreme June heat.
Eventually, the British counterattack lost momentum as Washington’s Prussian-drilled regulars stood firm. The British, having pushed back the initial Rebel assault but finding themselves incapable of breaking their defensive line and also having never wanted this fight in the first place (again, they were initially concerned with relocating refugees and their headquarters from Philadelphia to New York, nothing more), retired for the day and moved on, unopposed, the next morning The Rebels, incapable of seizing the British refugee, HQ, and supply caravan, as per their mission, did just about as well, having inflicted similar casualties (with the heat doing even more harm to both parties) to the Crown and having held against trained British forces.
A bloody, gruesome, enormous scale (for the time period) and ultimately indecisive battle.
D. Lessin
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