Cecily Zander

Like they think so little of me that they're not even.

gonna help me get out i could be helping the war effort and he shows this propensity in the capture in the moment he is captured he's not very good at retreating and sometimes as a general you need that skill and in the american revolution funny enough i think the greatest skill george washington had was getting his army out of scrapes yeah washington didn't actually win a lot of battles but he didn't sacrifice his army he didn't conduct disorderly retreats

Charles Lee had shown a propensity to do that in his capture in the New York campaign.

And it's going to be his ultimate downfall when he does finally get exchanged and return to the battlefield to serve under Washington, you know, that couple of years later.

yeah he he sort of right you're sort of sitting around for two years with your enemy and he had been born a british citizen he'd fought for the british army he'd fought alongside some of these guys you know shooting the you know breeze and and i think he probably whether he intended to or not you know did expose some of the the principal parts of the american war effort though you know to be honest

I don't know that the British needed that much information.

It was pretty clear what the Americans were trying to do.

The Americans didn't have all that many options in terms of the strategy that they were going to pursue.

But any information is good information in a war.

Yeah.

And he is sort of back as a really sort of right hand guy to Washington.

He's been given a pretty substantial role in this campaign.

He's supposed to be leading the vanguard of the Continental Army.

He's supposed to be the person who really pushes through, kind of penetrates to lead the way for Washington and the rest of the army to kind of over all the British.

You know, at Monmouth, he gets up there and he has explicit orders from Washington to attack early in the morning as soon as possible.

And Washington does not write bad orders.

This is not unclear.

There is nothing unclear about the directive that Charles Lee has gotten to initiate the American attack on the British troops.

Lee delays.

He ignores the order.