Battles of Bennington, Brandywine, Germantown

On August 16, 1777, General John Stark led New Hampshire and Vermont militia to victory over a Hessian force near Walloomsac, New York, in the Battle of Bennington and captured roughly 700 British-allied troops. On September 11, 1777, General William Howe defeated George Washington at Brandywine in Pennsylvania and opened the road to Philadelphia, which British troops occupied on September 26. On October 4, 1777, Washington struck back at Germantown outside Philadelphia in a four-column attack that nearly succeeded before fog and friendly fire broke the assault apart.

These three 1777 battles together revealed the dual crisis facing the American cause: the northern campaign against John Burgoyne and the British drive to seize Philadelphia. Bennington damaged Burgoyne's ability to gather supplies and contributed to the isolation that ended at Saratoga, while Brandywine and Germantown showed that Washington could lose ground without losing the Continental Army itself. The campaign therefore tested whether the Revolution required possession of cities or the continued survival of an army capable of taking the field.

The combination of Bennington, Saratoga, and persistent American resistance around Philadelphia helped persuade France that the United States could survive a long war. That confidence fed directly into the Treaty of Alliance of February 1778, which brought French military and financial support into the conflict.