On August 22, 1776, British troops commanded by Sir William Howe landed at Gravesend Bay, Brooklyn, with 88 warships for fire support. He had 15,000 men ashore by noon with scarcely a shot fired.

Washington’s forces were up on the Heights of Guan (now Crown Heights, Stuyvesant Heights, Ocean Hill, and Ridgewood). They had left unguarded the Jamaica Pass, “a deep winding cut” at today’s Broadway Junction, near East New York. It led to the Jamaica Road, which ran parallel to today’s Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue, separating the rebels on the Heights of Guan from their fortifications near Brooklyn Heights.

After Howe learned this, he sent 4,000 light infantrymen unopposed through the Pass during the early morning of August 27. They held the Jamaica Road by dawn. Thus, the Battle of Long Island was lost before the first shot. Several hours after sunrise, two cannon were fired behind the American rear. Then the British smashed into Washington’s troops fore and aft.

The rebel left and center collapsed. But on the right, 1,500 troops under General William Alexander, a stocky, jovial Scot who claimed to be the lawful sixth Earl of Stirling, had more than held their own. Two of Lord Stirling’s regiments had driven British regulars from the crest now called Battle Hill, in Green-Wood Cemetery. Stirling had not held it for 15 minutes when, as thousands of British and Hessian troops unexpectedly smashed into his front, his scouts told him his left flank was in the air, the rest of the army was gone, and the redcoats were cutting him off.

Stirling, unlike most American generals that day, had studied his ground and even considered routes of retreat. He had one left: through marshes to Gowanus Creek, 80 yards wide at the mouth. Even then, his men would be slaughtered in the mud unless the British advance was stopped, if only for an hour. Stirling, “with grim-faced Scottish fortitude,” detached 400 Marylanders. He ordered his officers to move the rest of his command down the Porte Road (today’s First Street) toward the Gowanus. Then he rode to the Marylanders, put himself at their head, and moved off Battle Hill toward the Old Stone House on Third Street between Fourth and Fifth avenues.

They faced 10,000 British and German regulars, advancing in broad ranks two or three lines deep, now confident of victory, the field music’s drummers beating a quick step, the king’s and regimental colors unfurled. Company-grade officers marched beside their men, swords at the carry, and field-grade officers rode behind the lines, not out of cowardice but to maintain communications and control. At 100 yards from the enemy, they would halt, fire a volley, and then charge at full run, bayonets fixed, cheering at the top of their lungs. The effect was intentional: to seem terrifying, invincible, and nearly inhuman.

Stirling had seen it before. He told his men that he knew James Grant, the British commander on his front, and had been in the House of Commons gallery when Grant had boasted he could march from one end of America to the other with 5,000 men. He urged them to prove Grant wrong.

Then his sword flashed from its scabbard, and the 400 went with him. They charged, broke, withdrew, regrouped, and charged again – five times. They “fought like wolves,” and 250 died to buy their comrades time to cross the Gowanus. Ten men and one officer stumbled into the American entrenchments at Brooklyn Heights by nightfall. The rest were prisoners. Stanford White’s Maryland Monument, on Lookout Hill in southern Prospect Park, commemorates their valor.

It was only noon. Howe had inflicted more than 2,000 casualties while losing 65 killed and 255 wounded. One imagines the response of a Patton to a demoralized enemy hopelessly off balance with his back to a river. Howe could have ended the war that afternoon, and there would have been no United States. Instead, Sir William paused and ordered preparations for a careful assault on the American fortifications. Inexplicably, the Royal Navy failed to patrol the East River to bottle up Washington in Brooklyn. Now Washington had his opening.

Few things are more difficult than the controlled withdrawal of a defeated army, but Washington had a genius for it. Between August 26 and August 29, Washington and his staff assembled every boat “that could be kept afloat and had either sails or oars.” The 14th Continentals, a regiment raised among sailors of Marblehead, Mass., manned the oars. Gradually, the army was withdrawn from the lines and ferried to Manhattan under cover of darkness from today’s Fulton Ferry Landing, just south of the River Cafe. The last boats left at dawn on August 30. One carried Washington. He had not slept in 48 hours. He still had an army.