After a heroic rear guard action at the Battle of Paoli, Wayne escaped with 1900 men, and the survivors carried the memory of that night into later fighting. Their cry of “Remember Paoli!” was heard at the Battle of Germantown as they fought the British with vengeance, and the lessons learned at Paoli shaped Wayne’s own midnight bayonet attack in 1779 that captured the British fortress at Stony Point, New York. Wayne and many of his Pennsylvanians also survived to witness the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. Before the Battle of Paoli on September 20, there were signs that the British knew of Wayne’s mission. On the morning of September 19, after arriving at the Paoli Tavern, Wayne wrote to Washington that he believed Howe knew nothing of his situation, yet less than two hours later he shifted his troops to high ground above Warren Tavern on the Lancaster Road after learning the enemy intended to attack, bringing them to this campsite. Later that day, Wayne abruptly evacuated the camp; no American source explained why, but one of Howe’s aides wrote that British light infantry and riflemen had nearly surrounded Wayne two and a half miles behind them until two drunken Englishmen fired at a picket, raising an alarm and allowing the Americans to escape in confusion. On the night of September 20, Colonel Thomas Hartley reported that an old man named Jones entered camp after dark, having heard at the Paoli Tavern from a servant who had been in the British camp that soldiers planned to attack Wayne and would have done so the night before if he had not changed his ground. In response, Wayne increased the pickets and sent out horse patrols, and those patrols were the first to spot the British advance on Swedesford Road and return with the warning. After the battle, rumors among Wayne’s officers accused him of receiving warnings without taking adequate precautions, but after he demanded a court martial, the court found him not guilty of negligence and acquitted him with the highest honor, declaring that he had done everything that could be expected of an active, brave, and vigilant officer under the orders he had.
