PINKIE

10 September 1547

In 1543 Henry VIII arranged a marriage between the infant Mary Queen of Scots and his six year son Edward, the Prince of Wales. He was enraged when the Scots repudiated the betrothal.

The resultant series of punitive expeditions intended to restore the hand of Mary to the young English Prince were known as the 'rough wooing'. On Henry VIII's death in January 1547 his son became Edward VI. As the new King was still only nine years old the 'rough wooing' was resumed on his behalf by the new Protector of the Realm, the Duke of Somerset. On 1 September 1547 Somerset crossed the border into Scotland with 80 cannons, 8,000 foot and 4,000 cavalry (including a contingent of Spanish horse). He was supported off the coast by the English fleet, commanded by Lord Clinton. 

In response to the English threat, the Earl of Arran, Mary's Regent, summoned every Scottish man between the ages of sixteen and sixty to assemble at Edinburgh with one month's food. Though woefully short of artillery and cavalry, the resultant army of about 25,000 men was deployed on high ground behind the River Esk. To their right was a marsh and to their left the sea. On the seaward side they had also erected an earth bank to protect themselves from the cannons of English ships. The Duke of Somerset arrived to find himself outnumbered almost 2: 1. Reluctant to mount a frontal assault on the formidable Scottish defences, he stalled for time. 

On 9 September the Earl of Arran rashly advanced his 1,500 cavalry in order to lure the English to attack. Tragically for the Scots, this bait worked only too well. In a relatively short space of time the English horse, under Lord Grey, effectively destroyed the Scottish cavalry as a fighting force.

On the morning of 10 September 1547 the English army began a slow advance, dragging their heavy cannons over the rough ground towards the river. The Scots responded by abandoning their impregnable position in order to launch an attack of their own. Somerset could hardly believe his luck. On open ground his strength in artillery and cavalry could be deployed to the best advantage.

Three Scottish pike divisions led by the Earls of Arran, Huntly and Angus crossed the river and crowded in upon each other until they formed one vast pike block. It was an imposing sight, but the flanks of this formation were very vulnerable. The Earl of Argyll's Highland division, which should have comprised the left wing, had been driven off by the guns of Clinton's fleet offshore. On the other side the battered remnants of the Scottish cavalry formed a thin right wing. 

As the English horse charged towards them, the Scots adopted the defensive schiltron formation in which the mass of pike points bristled like' ... the skin of an angry hedgehog'. Grey's cavalry floundered into a ditch, struggled free and came gamely on to hurl themselves against the Scottish pikes. Not surprisingly the schiltron proved impervious. Providing the Scots kept close together, their pikemen were more than able to hold the English cavalry at bay. In the pandemonium that followed, men and horses were disembowelled and Grey himself was struck through the mouth by a pike point.

Then, at last, the English cannon began to pound, wreaking bloody havoc among the dense mass of the Scottish formations. Packed together like sardines, whole lanes of pikemen were gored and dismembered by flying round shot. While the Scots were still reeling beneath this onslaught, Pedro de Gamboa's contingent of Spanish cavalry sallied forth to demonstrate state-of-the-art European tactics; firing their arquebuses from the saddle. English arquebusers and archers rushed forward on foot to add a few volleys of their own. Finally, as sheets of rain began to sweep in from the sea, the persistent English cavalry rallied for another charge. 

The Scots attempted an orderly withdrawal. However, with visibility reduced by smoke and rain, and shouted commands drowned out by the din of battle, panic swept the ranks and the army disintegrated and fled, with the English horse in triumphant pursuit. 

Surprisingly, for all the blood spilled in the 'rough wooing', Somerset failed to consolidate his victory by taking possession of Mary Queen of Scots. The planned matrimonial union of England and Scotland never took place. It was not Mary, but her son James Stuart, who was one day destined to wear the English crown.

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BARREN HILL, PENNSYLVANIA.

Lafayette fighting for American Indepedence

For a foreign volunteer, Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, enjoyed extraordinarily rapid advancement in the American military establishment after arriving in America in June 1777. In mid-August the commander in chief, George Washington, could neither spell nor correctly pronounce his aristocratic name. Barely more than a month later, after Lafayette had performed bravely and resourcefully at Brandywine, an admiring Washington began drawing him into his inner circle of aides. The wounded Lafayette rehabilitated his leg in a hospital at Bethlehem and rejoined the Continental army in December. During the early part of the winter at Valley Forge in 1777–1778, Lafayette remained staunchly loyal to Washington through the weeks of institutional intrigue and personal recrimination within the Continental establishment that some historians have mislabeled the Conway Cabal.

What Lafayette did not receive from his commander and now his mentor—and which he wanted very badly both for reasons of personal honor and to gratify the yearnings of youth—was a field command leading troops in circumstances of combat or at least the potential for combat. The limited types of operational assignments available in the late fall and early winter, after Lafayette returned to camp and later at Valley Forge, involved small unit patrolling and skirmishing of a nature poorly suited to whatever military skills the marquis may have possessed. Washington preferred Lafayette’s presence at headquarters, and for the sake of his diplomatic value, he could not have afforded to have him killed or captured performing minor patrol duties.

In January 1778 the new Board of War, an administrative agency headed by Washington’s rival, General Horatio Gates, pushed through the Congress a plan for a Continental invasion of Canada. Perhaps seeking to buffer the plan politically with a nomination from Washington’s own suite, it recommended Lafayette to lead the expedition. Despite Lafayette’s hearty distrust of Washington’s adversaries, he could not resist this opportunity for action and glory, nor could Washington refuse his prote´ge´ the opportunity. To Lafayette’s great credit, when he reached Albany—the expedition’s departure point—in mid- February, he recognized the folly of the very idea of a midwinter invasion, and he was gratified when the project was abandoned. Then he returned to Valley Forge, where he continued to champion Washington’s interests and agenda.

DEFENDING THE PHILADELPHIA COUNTRYSIDE

Washington, meanwhile, found his tactical and strategic intentions for the winter increasingly pressured by events. Despite a preference of his generals to place the army in inland urban quarters for the winter, he had personally brokered the compromise decision for the army to remain in the field, in deference to the political sensibilities of the Revolutionary political bodies, especially the beleaguered state government of Pennsylvania. He arranged a division of responsibility for securing the Philadelphia countryside by which the Continental army assumed control of the territory west of the Schuylkill River to the Delaware River near Wilmington. The state government, meanwhile, promised to keep enough militia in the field to patrol the area east of the Schuylkill to the Delaware at Trenton, New Jersey. Even when the state’s ability to meet this manpower commitment faltered, Washington resisted pressures to fill the territorial gap by expanding the sphere of army responsibility. Only when bold British and partisan guerilla raiding east of the Schuylkill in February threatened the army’s supply line to the northern states during a severe provisions crisis did Washington reluctantly agree to make even modest increases in the small Continental security patrols already working east of the Schuylkill.

By the late spring, the complete collapse of American militia resistance and modest improvements in Continental strength and proficiency levels caused Washington to rethink this approach and to gradually increase the army’s involvement in Philadelphia and Bucks Counties. General Howe, meanwhile, took advantage of American tactical disabilities in the field to send increasingly aggressive patrols of British and partisan raiders into the area to attack both military and civilian targets. In mid-May 1778, after the announcement and celebration of the new American alliance with France and during the transition in command in Philadelphia from the retiring William Howe to his successor, Henry Clinton, the British sent a party up the Delaware to attack rebel nautical facilities at Bordentown, New Jersey, and Bristol, Pennsylvania. Extensive damage was done to civilian property and morale in that area, and predictable demands emerged from the Pennsylvania government for the army to respond to the crisis.

LAFAYETTE’S COMMAND

Washington ordered Continental troops patrolling near the Schuylkill under the command of Brigadier General William Maxwell to move north toward Trenton to respond to the incursion. This mission expansion tore the Continental grip loose from the Schuylkill River, leaving a gap in the army’s immediate security system near Valley Forge that could not be tolerated. On 18 May, Washington was finally able to gratify the thirst of the loyal and generally uncomplaining Lafayette for a field command. He ordered his protégé to lead an expedition of about twenty-two hundred troops across the Schuylkill to cover Maxwell’s previous positions. He reminded Lafayette of the large size and importance of his detachment and warned him to move warily and to avoid being engaged by a major enemy force or being cut off from a retreat to the west side of the river.

The British quickly discovered the inexperienced Lafayette’s presence in the area. They increased their routine patrols and intelligence activity to protect the meschianza, an elaborate festival that the officers planned to bid farewell to their departing commander, Howe. Late on the evening of 19 May, Clinton learned that Lafayette had taken a stationary post at Barren Hill, an elevated plateau just beyond Chestnut Hill, northwest of Germantown. Clinton sent a party of between five thousand and six thousand British regulars and Hessians under General James Grant to try to get beyond Lafayette’s position and between it and Valley Forge. Early the next morning, the superseded Howe was given the honor of leading the main body of the army up the Germantown Road with the intention of trapping Lafayette between Howe’s and Grant’s forces. General Charles Gray was sent with a party of troops to intercept any retreat to alternate Schuylkill fords.

Lafayette, who had with him a group of Indian scouts, was alerted to the maneuver. He notified Washington and quickly made arrangements to withdraw across the Schuylkill by the one still-unobstructed road to Matson’s Ford. Washington, mortified that his young aide had put him into this compromised position, prepared to lead most of the army to his rescue, risking the general action that he had carefully avoided for most of the previous year. Lafayette was accused by British sources of having ‘‘sacrific[ ed] his rear guard’’ in his haste to retreat, and several soldiers were indeed drowned, otherwise killed, or captured in or near the river. Most British and Hessian memoirists blamed Grant for moving too slowly and for hesitating to spring the trap that they believed he had it in his hands to close. For Howe, the event—supplemented with whispered criticisms for the excesses of the meschianza—punctuated the overall failure of his strategy to that point. From a strictly military point of view, Barren Hill was not an important or even a very memorable event. One would not be able to say that, however, if Lafayette, with nearly one-fifth of the Continental army, had been cut off and captured or if Washington had fought and lost an inadvisable general battle that day to rescue his spirited but headstrong aide.

Official American casualties were six men killed and about twelve captured. British losses in this action are not reliably known.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Gottschalk, Louis. Lafayette Joins the American Army. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937. Lengel, Edward G. General George Washington, A Military Life. New York: Random House, 2005. Taafe, Stephen. The Philadelphia Campaign, 1777–1778. Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2003.

WILLIAM ALEXANDER (1726–1783).

Continental officer and claimant to the title of Lord Stirling. William was the son of James Alexander (1691–1756), a prominent New York lawyer, and Mary Sprat Provoost, a merchant. Growing up in privileged circumstances, he received a good education from his father and private tutors and became a proficient mathematician and astronomer. He was associated with his mother in her mercantile business. In 1748, he married Sarah Livingston, daughter of Philip Livingston, thus securing a close connection with the wealthy and powerful Livingston family of New Jersey. At the start of the Seven Years’ War, he joined the military staff of Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts as his secretary. In addition, he and some business partners were hired as army contractors during the Niagara campaign of 1755 and 1756. His connections with Shirley proved to be a liability when the governor failed as a military leader, for Alexander and his partners were accused of profiteering. In 1756 he accompanied Shirley to London, where he defended his mentor’s reputation and fought successfully to clear his own name.

Alexander lived in Britain from 1757 to 1761, hobnobbing with land-owning gentlemen and spending money in pursuit of the lapsed Scots earldom of Stirling. He got the Scots lords to accept his claim to the title, but not their English counterparts. Undeterred by this rebuff, he assumed the title, and his American contemporaries thereafter called him lord Stirling. Upon his return to America, he gave up his previous occupation of merchant. Building an elegant country house near Basking Ridge, New Jersey, he lived there with his family in emulation of the English landed gentry. He dabbled in science, invested in iron mining, speculated in land, drank to excess, and squandered a fortune of more than £100,000. He served on the councils of New York and New Jersey and the Board of Proprietors of East Jersey. He also held the post of governor of King’s College (later Columbia University). As tensions grew between America and Britain in the 1760s and 1770s, Alexander expressed pro-parliamentary views. On one occasion he even urged the Board of Trade to tighten its enforcement of navigation and tax laws in the colonies.

When the war with Britain began in 1775, however, Lord Stirling quickly declared for America and never wavered thereafter. The royal governors of New York (William Tryon) and New Jersey (William Franklin) removed him from their councils. He was appointed a member of the extralegal Council of Safety in New Jersey, and on 1 November 1775 was commissioned as a colonel of the First New Jersey Regiment. He assisted in the seizure of an armed British transport, the Blue Mountain Valley, on 25 January 1776, and was rewarded with promotion to brigadier general on 1 March. Assuming command at New York City, he directed the construction of defensive works in preparation for a threatened British invasion. In April he welcomed General George Washington to the city, and soon developed a congenial association with the commander in chief. He confronted his first big test as a military leader on 27 August 1776, when Washington gave him command of the American right wing in the battle of Long Island. Through no fault of his own, his brigade was overwhelmed and he was captured.

Stirling was included in a prisoner exchange on 6 October 1776. Rejoining Washington’s army on Manhattan, he was given command of another brigade. He operated in a semi-independent command over the next two weeks, retreating with the rest of the American army to White Plains, New York. There, on 28 October, he participated in a pitched battle before joining in a fighting withdrawal across New Jersey in November and December. At Trenton on 26 December he played a major role in the defeat of a Hessian garrison commanded by Colonel Johann Räll. On 19 February 1777 he was one of five American officers promoted to major general. He took up his post with his division near Metuchen, New Jersey, on 24 June. Two days later he was assaulted by a superior enemy force commanded by Lord Charles Cornwallis and was given a severe mauling before he extricated himself from his dangerously exposed position. Retaining Washington’s confidence, he served in the Hudson Highlands for a short time before rejoining the main army and marching into Pennsylvania. He commanded well in the battle of Brandywine on 11 September, rushing his division to the support of John Sullivan when Sullivan was attacked near the Birmingham Meeting House. In the battle of Germantown on 4 October, Stirling’s division was in the thick of the fight.

After spending the winter of 1777 and 1778 at Valley Forge, Stirling accompanied the American army in mid-June 1778 as it followed the British forces withdrawing from Philadelphia across New Jersey. In the battle of Monmouth on 28 June he played a key role in the American victory by deploying cannon to good effect in the third and final line of defense. For almost two hours, he cannonaded the enemy, with the British reciprocating in kind. Breaking up a British infantry advance, he then ordered his own men to assault the enemy’s right flank. As the redcoats broke into flight, he wisely ordered his soldiers not to press the pursuit. From 4 July to 12 August he presided over the court martial of Charles Lee, who was subsequently suspended from the army for one year. In the summer of 1779 he assisted Major Henry Lee in the latter’s brilliant assault on Paulus Hook, New Jersey. On January 14 and 15, 1780, he led a mismanaged, abortive raid on Staten Island during a period of cruelly cold weather. Later that year he served on a board of general officers that inquired into the activities of John Andre´.

Given an independent command at Albany in 1781, Stirling prepared to defend Fort Ticonderoga from a possible British attack. No attack materialized, and his duties were easy. He died of a virulent and painful attack of gout on 15 January 1783. Although not a brilliant soldier, he was loyal, trustworthy, reliable, and brave. His loss was mourned by Washington, his fellow officers, and his family.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Duer, William Alexander. The Life of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling: Major General in the Army of the United States, during the Revolution. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1847. Nelson, Paul David. William Alexander, Lord Stirling. University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1987. Schumacher, Ludwig. Major-General the Earl of Stirling: An Essay in Biography. New York: New Amsterdam, 1897. Valentine, Alan. Lord Stirling. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.