On September 11, 1777, the largest battle of the American Revolution by troops engaged erupted in the Pennsylvania countryside, with fighting crashing past a Quaker meeting house during worship. This episode explores how General William Howe outmaneuvered George Washington along the Brandywine River and opened the road to Philadelphia.

We trace Howe’s grueling 34-day sea voyage to Head of Elk, Washington’s fixation on Chadds Ford, and the 17-mile flanking march by Howe and Cornwallis across unguarded fords. We examine how confirmation bias led Washington to dismiss scouting reports, why 18th-century linear tactics made a flank attack so deadly, and how a desperate rearguard action saved the Continental Army from destruction.

• How loyalist guides led 9,000 British troops across fords Washington did not know existed
• Why Washington trusted the scouts who told him the northern roads were clear
• The Marquis de Lafayette’s first combat and the musket ball through his leg
• The rearguard efforts of Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox and Casimir Pulaski
• How the Liberty Bell was hidden under the floorboards of an Allentown church