An early morning fog burned off with the dawn, and revealed two long columns of scarlet and blue clad troops. This was His Majestys Royal Army, commanded by General Sir William Howe. They were marching through the extreme southeastern corner of Pennsylvania and heading toward fledgling Americas capital at Philadelphia. Only short weeks earlier this army had disembarked at Head of Elk, Maryland, after a 32-day voyage from New York City aboard the largest armada North America has ever seen. With some 14,000 troops, including crack German mercenaries and elite American Loyalist units, Howes army was about to execute a flanking maneuver of Jacksonian proportions.

General George Washington, holding interior lines at Morristown, New Jersey, was unsure whether Howe would move north in support of the British invasion from Canada (see Saratoga, 1777), or whether he would move south against the Capital. Once the armada set sail, however, Washington shifted southwest and took up a naturally strong defensive posit