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| George Washington |
Were it not for the fact that George Washington died more
than two centuries ago, I might have suspected that he lifted his Five Rules
from Army Field Manuel 3-24, Counterinsurgency,
last revised in 2006. In fact, a central
purpose behind Raphael’s article is to offer the example of Washington to contemporary
U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan. [1]
Washington’s rules were actually a set of instructions he gave to one of
his expeditionary commanders, Colonel Benedict Arnold. What they generally have in common with Army
counterinsurgency doctrine is that success is not measured by the amount of
territory conquered but by capturing the hearts and minds of the people. Here, as captured by Raphael, are
Washington’s five rules—
1. Don't Assume You Are Welcome
2. Cultivate Local Support
3. Respect Local Religious Practices
4. Don't Abuse Prisoners
5. Withdraw if Your Objectives Are Unobtainable
Though territorial gain was not Washington’s primary
consideration, it nevertheless was a consideration. He hoped that by winning the confidence of
the citizens of Quebec (predominately French), he might persuade them to come
over to support the American cause and help him thwart British designs on
colonies by capturing “the gateway to the St. Lawrence River and thereby to all
of Canada.” [2] But to do so, Washington
felt it necessary to forge an alliance—or at least an understanding—with the
citizens of Quebec. Moreover, Washington
felt that to ignore the Canadian situation would leave the colonies exposed to
a “potential [British] threat along the northern border.” [3]
To that end, he launched an invasion of the city of Quebec,
to be led by General Richard Montgomery and Col. Arnold. The two officer’s forces were to rendezvous at
the fortified city which, for Arnold and his men, was a long and arduous
journey.
In warning Col. Arnold not to assume his welcome, Washington
exhibited a keen awareness of certain political realities. The Brits had horned in on the French in
Quebec a dozen years previously and were exerting increasing control over what
the French felt was a sovereign French territorial possession. Washington hoped that French bitterness
against the English would push them over to the American’s side. Nevertheless, there remained strong
opposition between the French and Americans, mainly on religious grounds, which
was strong enough, Washington felt, to preclude any alliance the Americans
might hope to build.
His warnings concerning the necessity of gaining the support
of the locals, respecting their religious practices, and the treatment of
prisoners, stemmed from his understanding of the youth and inexperience of his
fledgling Army. A misstep in any one of
these areas, however slight—and particularly if an egregious one—could very
conceivably ruin the entire expedition and add disadvantage on top of
disadvantage.
His final instruction to Col. Arnold was that the American
forces were to withdraw if their objectives proved unattainable. [4] There was a battle at Quebec, though for some
reason Raphael does not mention it.
General Montgomery was slain and Col. Arnold was wounded. Raphael writes that Arnold “saw his mission
through.” [5] However, Washington biographer, Ron Chernow
described it as a “shattering defeat,” a “catastrophe,” and “a severe setback
for Washington, whose first strategic plan had misfired.” [6]
Given Washington’s Five Rules at the outset of the mission, and the bitterly disappointing defeat at the end, I suppose that one could draw the moral lesson from this story that, at least for our forefathers, the road to Quebec was paved with good intentions.
What I learned from this article
If I were asked, before reading this article, who was the
first U.S. commander to lead an invasion of a foreign country, George
Washington would not have been one my first ten
choices. This surprise stems from, I
must confess, my relative ignorance both of Washington and his times. Of the former, I learned something of his
sentiments as he expressed them in an open letter to the people of Canada—
“We have taken up Arms in Defence of our Liberty, our Property; our Wives and our Children: We are determined to preserve them or die." [7]
Of the latter, I was surprised to learn of the degree of
anti-Catholicism that existed and some of the ways in which this sentiment was
expressed. I was appalled to learn of
the desecration of George Whitefield’s grave by American soldiers which gave
the Quebec expedition something of the flavor of a religious crusade.
Not directly from the article, but from the supplementary
research to write this analysis, I learned something about the troops who
fought under Col. Benedict Arnold during this time. I mention it because it is of a piece with
something I learned earlier in the course while writing an analysis on Creasy’s
account of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Creasy, in the course of his account, described Wellington’s soldiers’
daily fare, and wrote of “ammunition bread” as one of their staples. Ron Chernow, in his biography of Washington
wrote of Col Arnold’s men subsisting in 1775 on things like “soap and candles
and … boiled moccasins.” [8] Thirty
years separated these two campaigns, Arnold’s and Wellington’s, so one could
infer that civilization had made considerable progress by Wellington’s day,
simply by comparing the two armies’ chow.
Alternatively, since in that era these two events, Waterloo and the
Revolutionary War, may be considered contemporary to each another, one may
detect a subtle sense of superiority within the British profession of arms, as
opposed to their poorer American cousins, for at least the British had
bread. One could argue that herein lay
the real reason that the Revolutionary War was won by those soap devouring,
moccasin chewing Americans.
Notes.
1. Ray Raphael, “Washington’s 5 Rules for
Honorable War,” Historynet (December 11, 2009), http://www.historynet.com/washingtons-5-rules-for-honorable-war.htm
(accessed November 30, 2011). “Indeed,” writes Raphael, “[Washington’s] instructions
could offer useful insights to contemporary American leaders and soldiers as
they carry out military campaigns in distant lands.”
2. Ibid.
4. Raphael.
5. Ibid.
6. Chernow.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
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