From a book titled 'Rebels and Redcoats' by George F. Sheer & Hugh F. Franklin on page 234, chapter 18 " A Most Infernal Fire of Cannon and Musquetry," Brandywine, September 11, 1777: 234 Rebels and Redcoats his advance parties lay and occasionally skirmished with enemy patrols. Advance American pickets were out as far as Christina Bridge, and on the, seventh the whole army moved up to the village of Newport, eight to ten miles from Iron Hill, to which Howe had advanced seven miles since landing. At three A.M. on the eighth, the general alarm sounded; tents were struck, and the regiments paraded and kept under arms until nine. A line of battle was then established on the east of Red Clay Creek, and Washington waited all day for an enemy attack he felt sure would come. In the evening, the enemy halted two miles from the American position. Washington scouted them warily and supposed that their real intention was to amuse him in front, while turning his right flank and getting between him and Philadelphia. To prevent this, he set his army in motion at two in the morning of the ninth, put Brandywine Creek between his men and Howe's, and took a position on the high grounds behind one of the principal crossings, Chad's Ford. At and below the forks of the Brandywine, which were about seven or eight miles northwest of Wilmington, were a scattering of fords through which an army marching toward Philadelphia from the southwest might pass. The most likely crossing place was Chad's, and it was a good position from which to maneuver to cover the other fords or to manage a withdrawal if necessary. At Chad's Ford, Washington established his center under command of Greene. The General himself assumed direction of the defense there. He posted Wayne's Pennsylvanians on the brow of a hill near Chad's house, a little above the ford, and Weedon's and Muhlenberg's Virginians directly east of the ford. Maxwell's eight hundred light troops of Lincoln's division he placed across the Brandywine on the southern bank nearest the enemy. The right wing was composed of three divisions on the east bank of the stream,s read from Brinton's Ford, next above Chad's, to Painter's Ford. p Stirling held the extreme right, Stephen the one below him, and Sullivan, in command of the wing, the near position at Brinton's Ford. The left wing was posted on the steep, rough heights at Pyle's Ford, where there was little apprehension of a crossing; this wing was composed of a thousand Pennsylvania militia under Armstrong. To guard the fords above the right, Sullivan detached light forces to three of them and threw picket guards across the upper part of the stream. Here on the Brandywine, Washington would face his foe. Every effort was made to prepare the minds of the men, as well as their military positions, for battle. On the tenth, the Reverend Mr. Joab Trout preached to the troops his text: "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." And, of course, he said, the Almighty was on the right side: *. . . the doom of the British is near! Think me not vain when I tell you that beyond the cloud that now enshrouds us, I see gathering thick and fast the darker frown and a blacker storm of Divine indignation.4 * That night Howe lay at Kennett Square, six miles away. Scoutin.9 Washington, he planned to rely on the strategy that had won at Brooklyn. Brandywine 235: Hessian General von Knyphausen was to advance to Chad's Ford and make a feint of attacking there, while the main force under command of Cornwallis was to march up the Brandywine, cross the stream above its fork, turn Washington's flank, and fall on his rear. Howe was to accompany Cornwallis. At half past eight the next morning, as the fog burned away and the sun began to bear down hot and sultry, General George Weedon on the heights above Chad's Ford saw the British-green ranks of loyalist rangers and riflemen come to Maxwell on the south bank and engage. "With great firmness'? Maxwell twice repulsed them before they obliged him to withdraw in good order, about ten o'clock, across the ford. He re-formed on the near bank, and occasionally advanced across the ford during the rest of the morning to skirmish with their vanguard. To Washington he sent a report that he had killed or wounded three hundred of the enemy with a loss of not over fifty casualties. Although his figure for the enemy loss was high, they suffered severely, admitted Stephen Jarvis of their vanguard, when he confessed the ignominy of his own injury: ". . . my pantaloons received a wound, and I don't hesitate to say that I should have been very well pleased to have seen a little blood also." More and more British troops concentrated on the sheltered ground opposite the ford. Artillery began dueling. "Our battery was on an eminence which commanded the ford," remembered Weedon, "and in the cannonading made the enemy retire several times; it was better served than theirs." As the forenoon passed, Washington and his officers began to suspect that Howe was amusing them at the ford while he crossed elsewhere. A little after eleven o'clock Washington began to receive reports that the enemy was attempting to flank him, but he would not accept this intelligence until he could confirm it. He wrote to Colonel Theodorick Bland, who was patrolling with the Light Horse on the far right, to send out an officer to reconnoiter and ascertain the truth. About an hour later, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of the First South Carolina Continentals, was with the General near Colonel Proctor's battery on the height above the ford. He reported that the General was impatient: I heard him bitterly lament that Colonel Bland had not sent him any information at all and that the accounts he had received from others were of a very contradictory nature. About one o'clock, intelligence was brought that the enemy's left wing were marching in the Valley Road and were about crossing the Brandywine above its forks. At length, Colonel Bland sent intelligence that he had seen two of the enemy's brigades marching in that road. . . . [Stephen's] and Lord Stirling's divisions were ordered to march up the Brandywine and attack them in case they should cross, and some Light Horse were dispatched above the forks . . . to see if they actually had crossed. And they . . . brought information that there was no appearance of the enemy in that quarter, which induced the General to suppose that the movement of the enemy was a feint and that they were returning to reinforce Knyphausen at Chad's Ford.