The Revolution cometh . . .

The American Revolution began on a military high note for the Revolutionists, as Washington was able to bottle the British up in Boston, essentially forcing their retreat in the spring 1776 not just from the city but the rebellious colonies.

That didn’t last very long – the British regrouped, and under new and (somewhat) better leadership, returned in July with a new and (somewhat) more coherent strategy. They landed on Long Island, New York, and after a sharp battle and perhaps some treachery by locals, managed to kick Washington’s army out of Brooklyn. Washington regrouped in the city of New York across the East River, but was quickly beaten northwards.

The next several years saw a series of conflicts in and around eastern New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The British were never able to completely defeat the Americans and in fact suffered several humiliating defeats, most notably at Saratoga. The Americans, meanwhile, were always just a few hard months away from total dissolution. It was during this time that Washington developed what would become the signature strategy not just of the Revolution, but of all guerrilla wars to follow. It was a strategy of small victories and saving retreats; above all, it was a strategy of endurance. Washington realized that he need not defeat the British militarily to win the war; all he needed to do was outlast them: fight on long enough, and make the war expensive enough, and the British would eventually leave.

The strategy was more complicated than that, of course. Among its many key points was the need for popular support. This partly relied on timely psychological victories – Trenton and Princeton, for example – as well as more substantial ones such as Saratoga. To do both, he needed accurate and timely intelligence – spies, in a word.

Washington had an extremely effective secret service, which played an important role in most of his victories. Unfortunately, much of the information about the network and their activities has been lost to history – not entirely a surprise, of course, given the nature of the work. The few accounts in history books seem as based on rumor and tall tale as on facts.

I drew on all three when I wrote my trilogy, Jake Gibbs: Patriot Spy, in the 1990s. The inspiration for the first tale, The Silver Bullet, came from a oft-repeated, possibly true, story relating to British troop movements during the summer of 1776, as well as a real silver bullet used at the time to deliver secret messages behind the lines.

The books are still around in paperback but increasingly hard to find. We’ve recently posted them on Kindle; other ebook versions will be available soon. (You can find the first one, The Silver Bullet, here.) I’ll talk about them some more in the coming days.