Original subtitles

A ragtag band of brothers takes on the largest empire in history.

Among them, not just founding fathers and future presidents,

but the unsung heroes who also played their part.

Ordinary men and women whose extraordinary acts of courage and sacrifice

are the real story of the American Revolution.

It's been 14 months since the first major battle

of the American Revolution at Bunker Hill.

Seven weeks ago, the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence,

announcing the birth of a new nation.

But with the Continental Army on the brink of defeat,

the future of that nation seems likely to be short-lived.

The war has moved south from Boston to New York,

where George Washington and his 19,000 soldiers

are being decimated by 32,000 redcoats of the British army,

the largest invasion force ever assembled by the empire.

Washington's men are no match for the king's experienced soldiers.

The British regarded the Americans as groups, as farmers, as mechanics,

people with no experience or training in war,

and for the most part, they were right.

America's Continental Army is an undisciplined force of volunteers.

Each soldier's term of enlistment lasts for one year

and few will serve for the entire duration of the war.

But 100,000 men will fight under Washington's command before the revolution is over.

Another 200,000 bear arms as militiamen defending local home fronts

and sometimes fighting alongside the Continentals.

But in the war's earliest years, the patriots are far from a unified force.

They're an outgunned, disorderly rabble.

In a week of furious fighting at Long Island,

nearly a thousand patriots have been killed or

wounded and another thousand taken prisoner.

Washington and half of his army, some 9,000 men,

are now cornered in Brooklyn with their backs to the East River.

The British are digging a patchwork of trenches toward the American position.

They're preparing for an assault.

Washington's only possible escape route is across the water.

But the British fleet stationed off the southern tip of Manhattan

is preparing to sail upriver and cut them off.

Washington knows it's only a matter of time

before he and his men are either captured or annihilated.

This is a critical moment.

If Washington and the main army stay in fight,

they'll be destroyed, and they know that.

So it's really important that they rejoin with the rest of their forces

so that they can go on to fight another day.

If Washington were to lose his army, it would mean the war would be over.

That's really the problem that Washington is

facing, and it seems to be insurmountable.

What Washington desperately needs is time

to safely retreat before the British attack.

And miraculously, it is provided by a fierce, southerly wind

that prevents the British fleet from sailing up the East River.

If the British Navy had been able to make it up the East River,

they would have blocked their escape.

The winds and luck were against them.

We need to act aggressively. We need to go forward.

Washington immediately seizes on this stroke of good fortune.

We evacuate tonight.

His plan is to ferry his 9,000 men, their horses,

arms and equipment across the East River to Manhattan.

From there, they will head north to escape the Redcoats' advance.

The retreat must be made in a single night,

and in silence, so that the British are caught by surprise.

We must begin immediately.

Well, there you have it, gentlemen.

The Americans and the British are only 600 yards apart at this point,

and if the British catch on to what Washington is planning to do,

they could catch the Americans with their pants down and wipe them out.

For Washington's forces to retreat across the river undetected seems a long shot,

and failure will pitch them against a British

force that outnumbers them almost three to one.

But Washington has a secret weapon,

in the form of Colonel John Glover,

an officer described as a tough little terrier of a man.

Glover is a tenacious Massachusetts shipping merchant

who's known to carry two silver pistols and a Scottish broadsword into battle.

John Glover was a master mariner.

He was a no-nonsense kind of guy.

He demanded discipline and hard work from his men to keep his ship afloat.

John Glover is the leader of one of the Continental Army's most unusual units

in that it's very disciplined and very effective.

It's made up of fishermen from Marblehead,

and they know exactly what they're doing.

Glover and his 1,200 New England mariners

have a keen understanding of tides and currents,

making them the perfect choice to spearhead the operation.

Glover wastes no time marshalling the resources he'll need

to undertake the daring mission in just one night.

We will commandeer every boat, every canoe,

every skiff, every raft that we can find.

We will effect this evacuation in relay teams of ten.

We will gather here on this southern shore around midnight.

He is really a tough guy and doesn't care what obstacles he has to face.

The Patriots' evacuation plan is a desperate gamble.

But it appears to be their only chance of avoiding a disastrous defeat.

Hurry, lads! Hurry! Let's go!

At a site near the present day Brooklyn Bridge,

Glover and his team begin the evacuation in dozens of small boats.

And as soon as men are in boats,

they're as vulnerable as they're going to get,

because there's nowhere to hide, there's only so fast you can go,

long boats are sitting ducks.

But on this night, the Patriots once again receive a valuable slice of luck.

It was overcast and it kept it really dark,

and so the Americans were able to fake still being at their post

and being human there, and keeping the campfires burning.

Glover has to ferry the troops across the river,

but he also has to ferry their cannon and their weapons, also their horses.

Try to load horses onto boats and have them keep

quiet when you're trying to do this silently.

The boats are so heavily loaded that they are at risk of being swamped.

The fact that none of the boats capsize upon loading

when you have those kinds of shifting and nervous cargoes

is not a good thing.

To avoid detection by the British,

Glover has ordered that the oars be muffled with canvas,

and he forbids anyone to speak.

The only noise heard from the Patriot camp during the retreat

is deliberate, made by Washington's men in front of their fortifications.

It's partly so the British will think that they're digging entrenchments

also to cover the noise of the men getting into boats and rowing across the river.

For nine hours, with rigid order and precision,

Glover's Armada sails back and forth across the East River.

Hurry, lads! Hurry! Hurry!

Some boats make as many as 11 separate crossings.

But as the sun begins to rise over New York,

Washington and more than a thousand soldiers are still stranded in Brooklyn.

Disaster still seems inevitable.

Until another huge stroke of luck materializes.

By some miracle, a really thick, heavy fog rolls in.

One soldier says that he couldn't even see 20 feet in front of him.

That's how thick the fog was.

The fog allows the last of Glover's boats to retreat from Brooklyn.

But they do not pass completely undetected.

As Washington and his remaining men board the last boats,

a British patrol spots the Patriots and opens fire.

Four of the rebels are hit, but Washington and the Revolution survive.

The plan hatched by Washington and executed by John Glover

had successfully used the cover of night and fog to execute a near-perfect retreat.

Washington's escape at this situation is a

combination of bold thinking and blind luck.

The end result being that they will be able to fight again and again.

Defeat after defeat followed the retreat from Long Island

as Washington's forces were driven out of New York,

down the length of New Jersey, and to the brink of collapse.

Down, but not yet out, the future of the Patriots' ragged and

retreating army will soon rest on another audacious gamble.

Three days before Christmas, the Revolution is all but lost

for George Washington and his Patriot forces.

In the five months since his miraculous escape from Long Island,

he's lost every battle,

and 75% of his army.

The British have driven him from New York and deep into the farmland of Pennsylvania.

Only 2,400 Continental soldiers are now under his command.

His army is melting away.

Men are just deserting,

and it seems as though he's not going to have an army left to fight in the spring.

As patriotic as those who joined the Continental Army were,

not many of them were inclined to stay indefinitely with a lost cause.

So with one-year enlistments coming up at the end of the year,

Washington was literally within days of having his army disappear.

Washington knows he now needs a decisive victory to rescue the Revolution.

But the idea seems virtually hopeless.

General, he's a Tory spy. We found him by the river.

No spy! I was just looking for a stray calf.

Leave us. I will question him.

Mr Honeyman.

A pleasure again, sir.

A little-known cattle farmer and butcher named John Honeyman

is about to give Washington a golden opportunity

to wrestle the initiative away from the British.

John Honeyman is one of the Revolution's best mysteries.

It's said that he was a spy who was only known to George Washington.

But some doubt that because there isn't much in the way of a paper trail.

But a lot of people say,

well, maybe there isn't a paper trail because they

didn't write anything down to keep his identity a secret.

John Honeyman is born in Ireland. At 29, he enlists in the British army.

He fights nobly in the French and Indian War and receives an honorable discharge.

He's well-liked by the British.

This allows him to move freely between the British camps and the American camps.

He's a classic spy.

Honeyman has allowed himself to be captured

because he has vital information to deliver.

You are Trenton.

The Hessians.

Yes, sir.

Trenton, New Jersey, is 10 miles away across the Delaware River.

1,400 German mercenaries are stationed there.

Like the rest of the British army, they've dug in for the winter

following the European military tradition of ceasing all fighting until the spring.

War was a little bit different in those days.

War wasn't this constant, total kind of thing.

War was a very seasonal operation.

There were very few in the way of winter battles.

The armies get to rest during the winter.

Honeyman believes Washington can pull off an unlikely victory

by breaking this cardinal rule.

The Hessians are off their guard, sir.

Half of them are asleep or drunk, dreaming for Christmas.

A precisely timed attack could devastate the British.

Washington approves a bold surprise attack.

He'll lead his army on Christmas Day across

the ice clogged river and march on to Trenton.

An aide reports seeing Washington scrolling on a piece of paper

as he's talking, as he's outlining the plan,

and later he looks at this piece of paper

and on that Washington has written, victory or death.

But Honeyman's work isn't finished.

On the eve of the attack, he reports to the Hessian commander, Johann Raal.

For the past year, Honeyman has duped the British forces

into believing he's a loyalist spy on their side.

Honeyman informs Raal that he's been to the American camp.

He tells Raal the Americans are in disarray.

They're lacking food, they're lacking material, they're on the edge of mutiny.

While the information is at least partially true,

Honeyman's real purpose is to give Washington's men the best possible chance

by lulling the Hessians into a false sense of security.

On Christmas Day, at 4pm, Washington's forces begin crossing the river

in several locations, several miles apart.

The largest force of 2,400 men is led by Washington himself.

The second force of 1,500 militia men begin crossing downriver,

while a smaller force of 700 men will cross the river directly opposite Trenton.

Washington and his detachment must land on the other side

by midnight if they are to reach Trenton by daybreak.

It's essential to the whole operation that the German soldiers be surprised

that they not see this coming, that they don't

have any advance word that an attack is coming.

The best time to do that is at dawn.

The iconic painting by Emmanuel Lutz is often

criticized for depicting Washington standing up.

But in truth, he really did stand during the crossing,

along with his soldiers, as the boats they used

were different from those depicted in the painting.

These are big barge-like boats that they're using to get across the river.

And the men would have been standing. There weren't seats.

They're actually transporting men the same way an LST would

be transporting men to the shores of Omaha Beach in 1944.

By the time Washington's troops complete the grueling crossing, it's 4am.

Four hours behind schedule, there's no way for them to reach Trenton by dawn.

So time has gotten away from him.

And he also learns that the other two prongs

of the attack weren't able to cross at all.

He has a much smaller force. So he has to make this choice.

Do we call it off and go back because chances are we could very well get beaten?

Or do we press on and try to win with what we have?

And Washington makes the decision to continue with

what he has and make the best of the situation.

But Washington doesn't know that any hope of

surprising the Hessians may be about to vanish.

A loyalist spy has witnessed the crossing.

It's sort of unforgivable for a commander not

to at least look at the message in this moment.

And I think that comes from the overconfidence

and frankly contempt of the Americans.

Raul never reads the note. If he had, he could have laid a trap for

Washington and the Continental Army and ended the war right then and there.

The following morning, Washington and his 2,400 troops launch the attack.

The Hessians are caught completely off guard.

Colonel Raul is among the first of the casualties.

Those who survive are captured.

A scrappy Continental Army with few resources and fewer men

had dealt a punishing blow to the world's most powerful empire.

It was a stunning victory for Washington and a

huge morale boost for the faltering colonial cause.

The victory at Trenton is an astonishing thing. It's like a lightning bolt.

And that victory at the very, very end of the year gave just enough of a positive

ending to the year to keep the revolution, literally keep the revolution alive.

So if John Honeyman was all that we suspect he was,

his contribution to the American Revolution is immense.

He changed the course of the battle at Trenton and changed the outcome of the war and

turned what really could have been an absolutely crushing defeat into a stunning victory.

Honeyman continued his work as a spy for four more years,

remaining undetected by the British and unknown to the Patriots.

But the victory he helped to achieve at Trenton was

already enough to cement his name in American history.

The shocking upset ignites the fury of Britain's

imperial forces. The response is swift and devastating.

America's fate now rests on the shoulders of ordinary men and women

willing to make extraordinary sacrifices to keep the revolution alive.

After their humiliating defeat at Trenton, the British

vowed to crush the colonial rebellion once and for all.

In 1777, they launch a new strategy to divide the colonies in two

by seizing centrally located New York and its all-important harbor.

The British strategy at this point in the war was to cut off New England. And if Britain

could cut off New England, the heart of the rebellion, maybe they could end the revolution.

One of Britain's targets is a store of

Continental Army supplies at Danbury, Connecticut.

As British soldiers search the town and set it ablaze, a Patriot

messenger is dispatched to Fredericksburg, New York, for help.

The nearest militia must be alerted to the British assault.

Colonel Luddington! Danbury! It's in flames!

Henry Luddington is the leader of 400 militiamen in New York's Duchess County.

His is the only force in the area that can stop the

sacking of Danbury and save the rebels' supplies.

Luddington has to try to get troops together from local militias and local posts,

so he has to get the word out to as many men as possible as quickly as possible.

And this messenger himself had ridden through the night and was exhausted.

Luddington himself cannot be spared.

He will need to organize the militia as soon as they arrive.

There's no one else. You must do this now.

I can't make it.

Father.

I'll go.

Father, Luddington can't bear the idea of his daughter riding out into the night.

But he realizes he has no other choice.

16-year-old Sybil knows the area well,

including the homes of her father's militiamen.

And she can ride like the wind.

She knew exactly where to go and how to get from place to place.

She was the perfect person for that job.

Sybil isn't willing to just sit back and watch things happen around her.

She's full of foxy. She wants to be a part of it.

And when she sees the opportunity, she grabs it.

Heroism and the fight for freedom knows no age. Sybil is young, strong-willed.

She's going to do what she thinks she needs to do.

Sybil Luddington rides across the New York countryside

throughout the night to rally the patriots to save Danbury.

Sybil undertakes her daring mission alone, covering 40 miles.

24 more than Paul Revere did on his famous ride.

Revere's mission was to get from Boston to conquer, to warn the people there

that the British were coming to confiscate the weapons. He never made it.

Sybil Luddington, on the other hand, dodged the British, managed to complete

the full 40-mile ride and collect this militia without being caught.

Much more successful mission.

Monster of Luddington! Danbury's burning!

Boys!

Sybil's heroism may seem remarkable for one so young, but half the

population of colonial America was just 16 years old or younger.

And in the course of the revolution, they

also had their part to play in the struggle.

Colonial Americans didn't have the idea of the teenage years that we have. You move

from childhood into learning how to be an adult into adulthood at a much earlier age.

Sybil's mother Abigail was wed just four days after she turned 15. Today that would

raise eyebrows. Back then, children had to mature a lot sooner than they do now.

During the war, the Patriot militias recruited

thousands of teenagers, even boys as young as 10.

The most renowned name among these young militia

men is America's seventh president, Andrew Jackson.

He joined the Patriot cause at the age of 13, but was

captured by the British in South Carolina in 1781.

This officer orders Jackson to shine his boots. And Jackson was a sassy

kid from the time he was young. He always had this sassy streak in him.

And apparently he told this officer what he could do with his boots.

And the officer outraged, pulls out his saber and takes a swipe at Jackson.

Jackson did his best to ward off the blow,

but the saber slashed his left hand and scalp.

And because Jackson was still relatively young, it left a crease in his skull. And for the rest of his life, until he died in 1845, his hand

would sort of unconsciously go to his forehead and he would feel this crease in his skull and he would remember how much he despised the British.

Patriot children like Jackson not only served in the American

militias, but also in the shadowy world of espionage.

They made for good spies because people didn't pay attention to them. One of the ways that you could

smuggle a message out on a kid was write a message on a piece of paper and then sew it into a button.

No one can say how many children lost their lives during the war. And the harshness of

life in colonial America had certainly made them a generation all too familiar with death.

Many, many mothers died in childbirth. Many infants died. About a third of children died before reaching the age of five. You were very

unlikely to live in a family where nobody had died early. That doesn't mean you're ready for war. War is a different kind of killing.

But death didn't surprise colonial children.

Risking her own capture and possibly her life, Sybil's night ride

succeeds in rallying 470 local militiamen at Ludington's farm.

The next morning, they join more than 2,000 other American soldiers and

militia fighters and attack the Redcoat invaders in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

The British forces prevail, but the Americans' rapid and fierce response

ensures that they never invade the interior of Connecticut again.

But the King's army still outnumbers and outguns the Patriot fighters on every front.

And in their hearts, the revolution's leaders believe they will lose the war.

But that doesn't mean the rebels are ready to stop trying.

A single bullet can't win a war.

But no one will come closer to challenging that idea than 26-year-old Timothy Murphy.

In the autumn of 1777, 500 riflemen are helping to level the playing field

against the superior British army advancing through upstate New York.

Pennsylvania woodsman Timothy Murphy is among them.

In the backcountry, along the Appalachian Mountains, it was said that boys would

learn to use a rifled musket as soon as they were strong enough to lift one.

So his boyhood would have consisted a great deal of hunting in the woods,

and that's where he got his early training using the rifled musket.

Murphy and his fellow riflemen are such deadly shots

that the British have nicknamed them the Widowmakers.

The secret of their success is not only down to raw skill.

The accuracy of their Kentucky long rifles is far superior to

that of the muskets wielded by most Patriot and British soldiers.

The inside of a musket's barrel is smooth. As the ball fired from it is smaller in

diameter, it moves erratically as it travels down its length and towards its target.

It's like throwing a knuckleball. It goes, but you can't direct where it goes.

So muskets are meant to be fired by men standing in a line, and all of

them fire a volley, and all of this lead is going to go and hit something.

If you're shooting at a large group of people, that ball is going to hit somebody.

I mean, I hit the guy you're aiming at, but it's going to

hit the guy next to him or the guy on the other side of him.

And this is why, to our eye, it seems silly to see these troops line up in ranks

and fire at each other, but that was the only way to hit anything, to do any damage.

But the ingenious technology of a rifle brings

a revolutionary new precision to warfare.

A rifle has a groove inside the barrel that will make the bullets spin.

So this is like throwing a fastball that has a spin to it, much more accurate.

The new, more accurate rifles allow a skilled sniper

to do something never before possible in warfare.

To hit a specific enemy soldier from a distance of 100 to 300 meters.

And the Americans' most valued targets are the British officers.

British battle tactics require them to be in the thick of the action,

directing the Redcoats' highly disciplined firepower and field movements.

But that also puts them in harm's way.

Even at Bunker Hill, the Americans are targeting the officers,

because if you take out the command, these men won't know what to do.

When you pick off the British officers, they're used to fighting in formations.

It created just the kind of chaos that the Americans needed to win.

Under the 18th century rules of war that European armies

recognized, you were not supposed to fire at officers.

It was considered something of a war crime, a violation of the rules,

an ungentlemanly act for one gentleman to shoot at another gentleman.

But this is what these backcountry riflemen specialized in.

This is where they could really make a difference in the outcome of a battle.

The British army relied heavily on such tradition, but

they realized they must adapt to counter this new threat.

So they have deployed their own unit of sharpshooters.

Led by Captain Patrick Ferguson.

Before Murphy gets his chance to change the course of the war

with one bullet, Ferguson will be granted the same opportunity.

Ferguson was one of a number of British soldiers who liked the idea of light infantry, of troops who

were trained to fight, not in close order, but rather self-reliantly and emphasizing marksmanship.

Ferguson's golden opportunity comes in Pennsylvania, as he and his

patrol move ahead of the main British force, advancing on Philadelphia.

Through the trees, Ferguson glimpses an American general

on a routine reconnaissance mission, George Washington.

Ferguson had Washington in his sights. Washington's back was turned,

and because Ferguson was a man of honor, he wouldn't take the shot.

Ferguson chooses instead to take Washington prisoner.

Dismount! But fails.

His legacy as a sharpshooter will be defined by the shot he didn't take.

If Ferguson had pulled the trigger, he might have killed the revolution right there. Who else but

Washington could have led the Americans to victory? That's a great unanswered question of history.

A month later, at the Battle of Saratoga in New York, the British are

closer than ever to achieving their goal of splitting America in two.

Their 7,000-strong invasion force has the upper hand against

America's 6,000 Continental soldiers and another 6,000 militiamen.

If the British win this battle, the war will be over.

The war will be over.

Leading his troops to almost certain victory

is the brilliant British general, Simon Fraser.

Marksman, Timothy Murphy, has been ordered to target the general.

But Fraser is almost 300 meters away.

Murphy was a good shot, but that was a challenge even for him.

In the chaos of this battle, which took place largely in forests around farms,

he realized that the best view he could get would be from the branch of a tree.

The very public death of Fraser, as he's rallying

his troops, was a huge blow to British morale.

Once Fraser fell, the relentless attack of his troops faltered

and the British troops had to fall back to defensive position.

By the end of the day, the American victory is sealed. A week later, 6,000

red coats surrendered, nearly a quarter of the British forces in America.

This stunning victory at Saratoga is a turning point in the war.

Not only was Saratoga a major military victory, it convinced

France that the rebels might win this war, that Britain might lose.

So the King of France then welcomed Benjamin Franklin to court

and they began work on an alliance between France and America.

And now you're going to have this major European power that's going to step up to

bat, join your team and give a good whack to the British whom they don't like anyway.

France will shower the Patriots with soldiers,

supplies and the modern equivalent of $13 billion.

The Battle of Saratoga paved the way to this breakthrough and at the heart of

this vital victory for the Patriots was Timothy Murphy's precisely aimed bullet.

But as 1777 comes to a close, a bitter winter in a place called Valley Forge

will threaten to stop the Patriots' renewed hope of victory in its tracks.

The victory at Saratoga had given the Patriot

forces a renewed hope of winning the war.

But as 1777 comes to a close, a wave of shocking

setbacks appear to have doomed their cause once again.

America's capital, Philadelphia, has fallen to the British and

George Washington's Continental Army is unraveling before his eyes.

20 miles northwest of Philadelphia, 11,000 men are fighting to

survive a perilous winter at a remote village called Valley Forge.

The supply system simply broke down. They're short on supplies, they're

short on medicine, they're short on blankets. It's an awful situation.

Whenever food runs short, the death toll spikes. Foraging parties in search of

provisions constantly move in and out of camp, but often return empty-handed.

The food supply is constantly being exhausted. So the men are eating tree bark, they're

melting snow to drink. So it's a desperate time for this army without shoes, clothing or food.

Horses were dying for lack of food, for fodder, for feed. And the ground's frozen, they can't bury

the horses, so they got a problem with the carcasses, so it smells awful on top of everything else.

Valley Forge is remembered as an icy graveyard

where legions of Washington soldiers froze to death.

But an onslaught of disease kills many patriots

before the bitter cold can even set in.

Typhus, dysentery and smallpox ravage the camp.

As many as 2,500 of the 11,000 soldiers stationed at Valley Forge would die.

With the camp's food stocks dwindling, Washington fears for the future of his army.

Congress has promised to fix the army's crippled supply system,

but that will take time. His starving troops need food now.

But Washington has no idea that a daring rescue party is already on the way.

Han Yeri is a warchief of the Oneida, a tribe from New York

that prides itself on being an ally of the colonial cause.

Han Yeri is a warrior who is as tough as they come. In one battle in New

York, he and his fellow warriors of the Oneida fought alongside the patriots.

And he single-handedly kills nine redcoats, and then even after he's shot in the wrist and

can't shoot anymore, he takes his hatchet and starts hacking away at the British with that.

The Oneida are among the few Native American allies the patriots have.

When the Native American tribes realized that the Americans were fighting

against the British, they had to make a decision. Which side did we join?

It was a fraught decision either way, because they

were sort of gambling on which side is going to win.

Most Indians who fought in the American

Revolution fought on the side of the British.

The colonists, after all, were the very people that

Indians who lived near them worried about most.

They were the people moving on to Indian lands, and the British Empire

was who had promised Indians that they would protect their lands.

Han Yeri chooses to side with the patriots, because he really

thinks that that's going to be the best for his nation.

The Oneida's support of the rebels has divided a powerful

league of Indian nations called the Iroquois Confederacy.

Like the patriots and loyalists, Native Americans have turned on one another.

Hearing of the Continental Army's distress, Yeri and his warriors are

now carrying 600 bushels of white corn, 400 miles to Valley Forge.

Slipping past both the British and their Indian

allies, the Oneida finally arrive at Valley Forge.

The Oneida corn is a lifeline, helping Washington's starving

soldiers hang on until the army's supply lines are restored.

Washington's troops not only survive Valley

Forge, but also learn something new, discipline.

Their teacher is a Prussian officer, Friedrich von Steuben.

The plump, 47-year-old drill master, is an

unemployed soldier of fortune in search of a cause.

And he finds one, as he whips the motley

patriots into a well-oiled fighting machine.

The army that comes out of Valley Forge is a professional army.

It can go toe-to-toe with the British. Prior to Valley Forge, it really can.

But the revamped Continental Army is more than the product of von Steuben's drills.

During their ordeal at Valley Forge, the men

have drawn strength from their stoic commander.

It was almost as though Washington, by force

of his personality, held the army together.

That was a bit of an exaggeration, but it did demonstrate that Washington

had quite a hold on the emotions of the soldiers who fought for him.

Washington was more than old enough to be their father,

and he really was a father figure to many of them.

Thousands and thousands of these guys stayed.

They didn't have to. They couldn't be forced to stay.

They could have just given up, put down their guns and left, but they didn't.

There are critical times in which ordinary people really make the difference.

For Washington and his soldiers, the challenge ahead

is daunting, and the odds are still against them.

As the war moves to the American south, the outnumbered patriots must somehow

resist a new wave of British invaders, as well as enemies closer to home.

They don't dare dream of victory, but they have made their

choice and will continue to fight until the bitter end.