end of August, when the net was closing on Burgoyne, Howe was
three hundred miles away. His disregard of time and distance had
been magnificent. In July he had sailed to the mouth of the
Delaware, with Philadelphia near, but he had then sailed away
again, and why? Because the passage of his ships up the river to
the city was blocked by obstructions commanded by bristling
forts. The naval officers said truly that the fleet could not get
up the river. But Howe might have landed his army at the head of
Delaware Bay. It is a dozen miles across the narrow peninsula
from the head of Delaware Bay to that of Chesapeake Bay. Since
Howe had decided to attack from the head of Chesapeake Bay there
was little to prevent him from landing his army on the Delaware
side of the peninsula and marching across it. By sea it is a
voyage of three hundred miles round a peninsula one hundred and
fifty miles long to get from one of these points to the other, by
land only a dozen miles away. Howe made the sea voyage and spent
on it three weeks when a march of a day would have saved this
time and kept his fleet three hundred miles by sea nearer to New
York and aid for Burgoyne.

Howe's mistakes only have their place in the procession to
inevitable disaster. Once in the thick of fighting he showed
himself formidable. When he had landed at Elkton he was fifty
miles southwest of Philadelphia and between him and that place
was Washington with his army. Washington was determined to delay
Howe in every possible way. To get to Philadelphia Howe had to
cross the Brandywine River. Time was nothing to him. He landed at
Elkton on the 25th of August. Not until the l0th of September was
he prepared to attack Washington barring his way at Chadd's Ford.
Washington was in a strong position on a front of two miles on