Paoli

The Battle of Paoli and the Making of American Memory

On the night of September 20, 1777, a quiet stretch of Pennsylvania countryside near the Paoli Tavern became the site of one of the most brutal and psychologically transformative engagements of the American Revolution. What happened there — a British night assault conducted largely with bayonets, resulting in the killing and wounding of several hundred Continental soldiers — was not the largest battle of the war, nor was it the most strategically decisive. But the Paoli Massacre, as Americans immediately and permanently labeled it, became something arguably more powerful: a rallying cry, a source of righteous fury, and a turning point in the emotional life of the Continental Army. To understand Paoli is to understand how a single night of violence could harden the resolve of a revolutionary cause and transform a cautious officer into one of the war's most aggressive fighters.

The very name "Paoli" speaks to the transatlantic currents of liberty that animated the American Revolution. The tavern that gave the battle its name was built in 1769 by Joshua Evans and named for Corsican patriot General Pasquale Paoli.

Paoli was a freedom fighter who helped win Corsica's independence from the Republic of Genoa and served as president of the Corsican Republic during its brief existence from 1755 to 1769. He was also the author of the republic's constitution, considered to be the first ever democratic constitution, based on Enlightenment principles.

Although Paoli never visited America, he was an inspiration to the American revolutionaries, and so much admired in this area that an inn was named after him — and the town was named after the inn. The area boasted at least three well-known inns: the Paoli, the Warren, and the White Horse.

While the Warren Inn was nearest the site of the battle, traditional lore claims its owner was a suspected Tory; the Paoli Inn was about a mile east and closest to General Wayne's home, and it became the namesake of the battle. The battle cry "Remember Paoli" would become so deeply associated with the inn that, according to the Paoli Battlefield Preservation Fund, the words were spelled out in copper pennies hammered into the Inn's floor around a central stove.

The Paoli Inn was destroyed by fire in 1892.

That a tavern honoring a Corsican champion of republican government should become the landmark for one of the Revolution's most infamous engagements is one of history's grimmer ironies.

The events at Paoli unfolded within the broader crisis of the Philadelphia Campaign. In late summer 1777, General Sir William Howe landed a massive British force at the head of the Chesapeake Bay and began marching north toward Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress and the symbolic capital of the American rebellion. George Washington attempted to stop him at Brandywine Creek on September 11, but the Americans were outflanked and defeated, suffering over a thousand casualties. Washington's battered army retreated northward, and the British positioned themselves to advance on Philadelphia largely unopposed. After the Battle of the Clouds, an ultimately aborted engagement due to bad weather on September 16, Washington withdrew to Yellow Springs and Reading Furnace in northern Chester County to replenish his ammunition. In this desperate moment, Washington detached Brigadier General Anthony Wayne — a local Pennsylvanian who knew the terrain intimately — with a division of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 troops to shadow the British rear, harass their supply lines, and strike at their baggage trains if the opportunity arose. Wayne knew the Philadelphia area well; his grandfather, a British officer of distinction, had purchased a large land grant in the farmlands west of the city, and Wayne was born in the ancestral home, Waynesborough, in 1745 — just three miles east of the Paoli Massacre site.

Wayne's position, however, was far more precarious than he realized. The British were successfully intercepting most of the messages between Wayne and Washington, meaning they knew Wayne's position and intentions in advance.

Complicating matters further, this part of Pennsylvania was a mix of citizens loyal to the Patriot cause and citizens loyal to the crown, and because of this, Grey's soldiers were as well informed about enemy dispositions as Wayne was about what his adversary was planning.

Wayne was under the impression that General William Smallwood's forces were close enough to reinforce his division at any moment, and it was this belief that kept him from relocating his position, even with the knowledge that Howe's troops likely knew his location.

Once Howe ascertained Wayne's position near the Warren Tavern, he entrusted the attack to Major General Charles Grey, a veteran officer who would earn lasting infamy for what followed. Howe dispatched Grey with the 42nd and 44th Regiments of Foot, along with a detachment of the 2nd Light Infantry, to rendezvous with Colonel Thomas Musgrave and the 40th and 55th Regiments of Foot on their approach.

A Captain John André — later the major who acted as the British Army's liaison to turncoat American general Benedict Arnold — accompanied this patrol and would later provide one of the most detailed British accounts of the assault.

Grey's tactical innovation was as ruthless as it was effective. As an extra precaution, Grey ordered his troops to remove all flints from their muskets, preventing them from firing, as a powder flash would give away their position.

His bayonet charge was one of the most well-executed tactical maneuvers of the entire war, and his decision to remove his troops' flints gave him his nickname "No Flint" Grey.

Reaching the Warren Tavern, Grey's troops forced a local blacksmith to guide them to the American sentry posts.

Wayne had received two warnings of a possible attack and sent out mounted sentries, who spotted the British force two miles from the camp and gave the alarm — but it was too late.

At approximately 10 p.m. on September 20, a detachment of 1,200 British soldiers under Major General Charles Grey silently approached Wayne's encampment.

The battle became known as the "Paoli Massacre" or "Wayne's Affair." Wayne's troops had constructed brush huts, also called "wigwams" or "booths," rather than tents. The Pennsylvanians fired their muskets, which made it easier for the British to find and attack them in the dark; Wayne withdrew his troops in a fighting retreat to save them from total defeat. The results were devastating. The battle cost the Americans fifty-three confirmed dead, all to bayonet strikes, with about one hundred more wounded and about 70 taken prisoner; the British only reported four killed and seven wounded, none taken prisoner.

A British officer who participated in the assault called it "one of the most dreadful scenes" he had ever encountered, noting that "every man that fired was instantly put to death."

British officer Richard St. George remembered Paoli as a "nocturnal bloody scene."

The Continental Army was poorly stocked with