American rebels face the greatest military superpower of the day. A war against overwhelming odds. To defeat the British they need... Secret Intelligence.
To conquer the world. to conquer disease and new ways of fighting as revolutionary as their cause. New York City, gateway to North America. Today, it's the financial capital of the world.
Population, 8 million people. In June 1776, this is a city of just 20,000. And it's preparing to defend against the largest land invasion in American history. Five kilometers north of Wall Street, where 23rd Street crosses Lexington Avenue today, the rebels dig in to defend New York at Kipps Bay.
Commander-in-chief of the rebel army is General George Washington. He has already driven the British out of Boston. A surprise victory against superior forces. But no one doubts the British will be back.
The hour is fast approaching, on which the honor and success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding country depend. Joseph Plum Martin was inspired to fight under Washington's command. He enlisted at just 15. A farm boy, he's joined thousands of untrained volunteers. Our Revolutionary Army was quite something. It was in a nation that wasn't really a nation yet, just starting out.
And we took on the greatest superpower of the time. Washington's inexperienced recruits are about to face the best equipped and most powerful fighting force in the world. On June 29th, 45 British warships group a few kilometers off Manhattan Island.
These ships are the greatest war machines of their day. Built from over 2,000 century-old trees, Each carries hundreds of soldiers. They're armed with up to 64 heavy cannons. Capable of hurling a cannonball to a target nearly 2 kilometers away. Another 350 ships have already set off to join them.
The British plan is to terrify the rebels into submission. Instead, it inspires them to resist. On July 2nd, they call a crisis meeting in Philadelphia. 50 delegates from the 13 colonies hold an emergency session of their newly formed assembly, the Continental Congress.
Delegates include radicals like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. They debate nothing less than high treason, total independence from Britain. The penalty is death.
We're in the midst of a revolution. The most complete in the history of the world. It's the birth of American democracy.
We have to expect a great expanse of blood to obtain it. Some delegates don't believe the rebels stand a chance. We are about to brave the storm. In a skiff made of paper. We are about to brave the storm.
But the doubters are outnumbered nearly five to one. On July 4th, 1776, the delegates ratify a document that will change the world. The American Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
Think about that. They're saying that your rights come not from the king, not from the government. Your rights come from God.
And furthermore, they can't be taken away from you. They're inalienable. Every group, blacks, women, gays, everybody looks to the Declaration as a way of saying, we are Americans too.
So the Declaration is the American creed. And among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Cannot help but be stirred when you read those words.
And you feel the excitement of being on the cusp of something so profound. We can be free. Now soldiers like Plum Martin are fighting for independence. On July 12th, two British warships opened fire on New York City.
Must have been quite a shock because New York up to that point was pretty quiet city. It was a business city. So you had significant support for the rebels, but also significant support for the people who were still loyal to the king. A month later, Joseph Reed, secretary to George Washington, watches the British fleet massing off New York.
Over 400 ships, the largest British naval task force until D-Day. 32,000 British troops prepare to storm Manhattan Island. They outnumber the rebels two to one. Greed is awestruck. When I look down and see the prodigious fleet they have collected, I cannot help being astonished that a people should come 3,000 miles at such risk, trouble, and expense to rob, plunder, and destroy another people because they will not lay their lives and fortune at their feet.
New York City won't experience another attack like it until September the 11th, 2001. But the rebels believe they have right on their side. The difference for me was that the British army was fighting for a king. The Americans were fighting for their lives.
Plum Martin is one of 500 men standing guard at Kipps Bay. Have a look. The first thing that saluted her eyes was all four ships at anchor. Within musket shot of us. The Phoenix.
I could read her name as distinctly as though I was directly underneath her stern. September 1776. New York City is under fire. In one hour, two and a half thousand British cannonballs smash the rebel defences. 4,000 British troops storm Manhattan.
A British Redcoat has on average six times more combat experience than a rebel recruit. Get back in your lines! Washington's army collapses.
Hold the line, men! They retreat along an ancient Native American path that will become Broadway. On September 20th, British-occupied New York burns.
No one knows who starts the fire, but over two days it destroys a quarter of the city. It gives you a sense of the people who wanted to be free, how much they were willing to endure. The city being burned, the city being occupied, gives you a sense of how much they wanted freedom.
Thousands of rebel prisoners of war are thrown into prison ships in New York Harbor. The most notorious is the HMS Jersey, nicknamed Hell. One escaped prisoner, Robert Sheffield, recorded his ordeal. The air was so foul that at times the lamp could not be kept burning, by reason of which the bodies were not missed until they had been dead ten days. Nine in ten prisoners die.
There is a memorial over in Brooklyn to those that died on British prison ships in New York Harbor. Thousands of Americans. 12,000 prisoners will die in these ships, three times more than are killed in battle. The loss of New York is Washington's first defeat as Commander-in-Chief.
Facing overwhelming odds, he takes the battle far inland. In doing so, he will revolutionize 18th century warfare with new weapons, new rules of engagement, and a new type of soldier. Let's go kill us some redcoats.
By June, a new British army of 8,000 men head south from loyalist Canada. They're led by General John Burgoyne, one of the best cavalry officers in the British military. Burgoyne pushes south, following the Hudson River. His army is like a mobile city. The Redcoats are accompanied by 2,000 women, including servants and wives.
200 supply wagons carry 84 tons of powder and shot. As well as silver and porcelain tableware for the officers meals. Burgoyne's plan is simple.
He's travelling from St. John's in Canada, 270 kilometres south to Saratoga, deep in the interior of the New York colony. From here, he'll link up with the victorious British army in New York City, cutting the colonies into two. But from the outset, Burgoyne's advance is fraught with difficulties. The problem is they're in what we might call a counterinsurgency kind of campaign, where their passage through the land and the offense that they give to farmers creates enemies wherever they go.
Washington now turns to tactics almost unheard of in Europe. Guerrilla warfare. And men whose skills were learnt on the frontier.
So this army came together, an army of militia, an army of woodsmen, an army of sharpshooters, and we didn't play by the rules. British Redcoats are trained for open battlefields. Now they face rebel sharpshooters hidden in dense cover.
Leading them is Daniel Morgan. Appointed by Washington as the colonel of the elite corps of 500 riflemen. He was a self-made man, and he was, although not educated at a great school, was a smart guy, was a tough guy, and was ready and willing to step up when the time called. He was the perfect guy to show up at the perfect time. Burgoyne's route takes him through dense forest.
Trees, once intended to build British ships, now become rebel roadblocks. The British become sitting ducks. Their advance slows to just over a kilometer and a half a day. The march south is a six-week ordeal. But the sharpshooters have more than the terrain on their side.
Morgan's men are armed with long rifles. Lightweight, with a slender barrel at least 40 inches long, they fire a.50 caliber shot a half inch wide. Based on a German hunting weapon, the guns have a unique innovation.
Grooves inside the barrel that spin the shot, stabilizing it, giving it deadly accuracy. Armed with this rifle, a Patriot marksman can hit a target 250 yards away, twice the range of the British muskets. Morgan first takes out Burgoyne's Native American scouts.
400 have allied themselves with the British to preserve their ancestral lands. But Morgan and his men now use traditional Native American tactics against them. They attack by using speed, stealth and surprise. After three months, all the scouts are either dead or have deserted. With them goes their knowledge of the terrain.
The rebels now train their sights on new targets, adopting tactics that will rewrite the rules of war. 1777. As the American War of Independence enters its second year, New York and many parts of the 13 colonies are in British hands. Driven into the wilderness, the rebels now target General John Burgoyne's army. His men are under fire from rebel sharpshooters using new and controversial tactics. The two armies meet near Saratoga.
Here the rebels break the rules of 18th century warfare and start targeting British officers. The plan, leave the foot soldiers leaderless. Your officers tended to be your most educated guy. They understood the communication line, they understood exactly what the orders were.
They were the source of trying to get something done on a battle space. In Britain's 53rd Regiment, all but one of its 11 officers are killed or wounded. The British are forced on the defensive. They regroup under General Simon Fraser, who leads the counter-attack. Daniel Morgan, commander of the sharpshooters, acts fast.
She's on that tree. The red coot on his high horse. His best marksman is an illiterate frontiersman from Ireland, Tim Murphy.
His first shot misses. left. The second skims Fraser's horse.
Too high. Reload. Come on. Take him out. The third shot is fatal.
I could argue that whoever fired the bullet that took out Simon Fraser did as much as any founding father to establish American independence. Without leadership, the British lose a thousand men. Twice as many as the rebels.
On the 17th of October 1777, General Burgoyne surrenders. It's a turning point. The victory persuades Britain's greatest rival, France, to join the war on America's side. The French navy will now force the British to fight a war on two fronts, land and sea.
But as winter closes in, Washington's army must face its greatest challenge at a place called Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. In freezing temperatures, his men build 900 huts in just 40 days, but they are woefully under-equipped. He has an army of 14,000 men and no houses. And the Continental Congress has failed to provide him with resources. And by willpower, by courage, by leadership, by cajoling, he has to hold the army together in the middle of a terrible winter.
Joseph Plum Martin, veteran of the Battle of New York, makes it to Valley Forge. It's a desolate place. We're now in a truly forlorn condition.
No clothing, no provisions, and it's as hardened as can be. Our prospect is indeed dreary. Right, soldier.
This is gonna hurt a bit, all right. You just bit your teeth. Surgeon Albigens Waldo watches Washington's army head towards crisis.
The army, which has been surprisingly healthy, now begins to grow... ...sickly from the fatigues they have suffered from this campaign. We don't keep this clean, you're going to be right back in here.
A fifth of the soldiers have no shoes. With little clean water, dysentery spreads through the camp. Within weeks, 2,000 men are sick and they've run out of meat.
Down to their last 25 barrels of flour, the men survive on fire cake, a mixture of flour and water. As many as 60% of recruits are convicts, freed slaves and immigrants. Keeping this unruly army together becomes the defining test of Washington's leadership.
What he had was a confidence that if you want freedom, this is what it's going to take. It's going to take sacrifice. It's going to take blood. It's gonna take cold winters at Valley Forge. It's gonna take losses.
General Washington, he was a great general. To be able to uplift his army during Valley Forge, during that winter, and still be able to fight, I wish I would have been there. I wish I could have fought for him. Because I damn sure would have. But Washington's army faces an enemy more lethal than the freezing cold or the British.
Smallpox. The American Revolution coincides with the worst smallpox epidemic in U.S. history. The deadly airborne virus spreads through the British prison ships. Isolated from the disease for generations, the American colonists have little resistance to it. and there's no cure.
Victims break out in blisters and sores. The virus spreads through the blood, invading healthy cells which it kills, producing more of the virus in the process. Four in ten victims die. Once smallpox arrives at Valley Forge, it rapidly spreads through the cramped huts. Having survived smallpox as a child, Washington has decided to take a gamble.
With one of the most daring experiments in US military history. His surgeons have learned about inoculation from African slaves. They harvest pus from a smallpox victim.
and smear the live virus into cuts on the skin of a healthy patient. The inoculation spreads the infection, but at a slower rate. A week after exposure, the victim's white blood cells create antibodies. These attack and kill the virus before the disease can spread.
But it's a dangerous race against time. To survive, the patient's immune system must work faster than the virus or it will run out of control. One in 50 of those inoculated will die. But for most, Washington's gamble pays off. New cases of smallpox fall from several thousand to just a few dozen.
But to win the war against the British, Washington's inexperienced troops must be transformed into a genuine fighting machine. A task that calls on an unlikely hero. 1778. After surviving an outbreak of smallpox at Valley Forge, the American Rebel Army welcomes a new recruit.
Washington hopes he will change the course of the war. Baron von Steuben is an ex-Prussian army officer, an elite soldier whose career is said to have been ruined by his homosexuality. Washington makes him one of the most powerful men in his command.
Washington was a genius in taking people in who didn't seem like they could achieve great things, but under him they rose to the challenge, they rose to the occasion. And that's what great leaders do. Von Steuben's task?
Reinvent the demoralized rebel army so they can take on the British in open battle. Our arms are in horrible condition, covered with rust. Our men are literally naked, some to the fullest extent of the word.
Von Steuben starts by drilling discipline into Washington's recruits. He finds the men unlike any he's trained before. The genius of this nation is not in the least to be compared with that of the Prussians or Austrians or French. You say to your soldier, do this, and he does it.
But here, I'm obliged to say, this is the reason why you ought to do that, and then he does it. Von Steuben brings order, discipline and hygiene to Valley Forge. He moves latrines away from living quarters, rebuilds the kitchens on the opposite side of the camp and organises housing according to regiments and companies.
He also writes a training manual, parts of which are still used by the US military today. Von Steuben drills European battle... tactics into an elite corps of 100 men.
Each will train a hundred more. He also instructs them in a new and deadly weapon. The bayonet will revolutionise how the rebels fight.
Simply adding a dagger to a rifle makes close hand-to-hand combat possible without reloading. But perhaps most important of all, von Steubens inspires the rebels with a new spirit. You know, we can talk about weapons and how certain weapons change the face of warfare, which is absolutely true, but the greatest weapon that you could ever have is right up here.
Men like Plum Martin will leave Valley Forge highly skilled killers. While they retrain, another secret war has been raging in British-occupied New York. Here, a network of spies has been busy passing information to the rebels.
Their leader is George Washington himself. A man who has come down to us in history as someone who is incapable of telling a lie succeeds as a commander in no small measure because of his capacity for deception. A British general will later claim that Washington did not outfight his enemies, but outspied them. This secret war comes to a head when the rebels'French allies sail toward disaster.
In New York, an estimated 20% of the population is still loyal to the British. The price of goods are up 800%. One young woman in five is a prostitute. To the British, New York merchant Robert Townsend is a loyalist.
A member of the loyalist militia, he writes the loyalist press. But to Washington's spy network, his code name is Culper Jr. By July 1781, New York is buzzing with rumour.
A French fleet has been sighted off Rhode Island. News leaks out that the British plan to send warships from New York for a surprise attack. Culper must get word to Washington to somehow stop the British fleet. The spies use invisible ink, an advanced formula unknown to the British. Made from gallic acid, it only reveals its contents when the paper is brushed with iron sulfate.
The next link in the chain is Austin Rowe, a tavern owner from Long Island. His contact, Abraham Woodall, picks up the message and buries it at a secret drop. Another agent, Ann Smith-Strong, then uses her laundry as a secret code. It signals to a sailor who picks up the message and takes it to Washington. Washington responds by moving troops towards New York, threatening the city and forcing the British fleet to stay put in New York Harbor.
The French fleet sails out of danger to play a critical role in the next stage of the war. Now backed by French naval power, Washington's army is finally ready to face the British on the open battlefield. October 1781. Six years into a war the British thought would last six months. The American Revolution comes to a head at Yorktown, Virginia.
In trenches around the fortified city, Plum Martin, now a sergeant, waits with 8,000 other rebel soldiers for the signal to attack. Washington's army has reinvented itself. With sharpshooters, with training, discipline and new weapons. And with a spy network that has saved the French fleet, giving the rebels dominance at sea. What remains of the British Army is under siege in Yorktown.
Trapped in the city, the Redcoats wait for reinforcements. But back in Britain, the war is unpopular and costing far too much money. This is a case of hanging on in the face of the British. actions long enough to where the British literally would grow weary of this and realize that it was endless. This is Washington's chance to end the war with one decisive blow.
He committed to this idea. of being able to stand on your own. See, America is a dream, and the only way to go get that dream is to show up and bring your very best to that moment and not stop until you bring that dream into existence. Plum Martin is to be one of the first over the top. Godspeed.
Good, how are you? Good to check it out. Behind Yorktown's defences, 9,000... Battle-hardened British troops are waiting.
They're protected by a series of outlying cannon forts called Redoubts, where October 14th just to remain. If they're captured and their guns turned on Yorktown, the British will be forced to surrender. Listen, look up there.
It's time. All the batteries in her line lay silent. We lay anxiously waiting for the signal.
The rebels race 100 yards to the British lines under fire and a hail of hand grenades. A force of 400 breaks through and storms the British fort. Fighting in close combat with bayonets, they beat the Redcoats back. Immediately after the fighting had ceased, I went out to see what had become of my wounded friend.
He was dead. 34 of Martin's comrades lie dead or wounded. But they've breached Yorktown's defences. Two days later the British surrender and begin negotiations for peace.
After six long years of struggle, the rebels have achieved the impossible. The United States is the only country to win independence from the British in war. On April 30th 1789 Washington is inaugurated first president of the United States of America under the new constitution. But liberty comes at a price.
Over 25,000 men have lost their lives in the battle for independence. But a new nation is born. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.