[Cannon fire] ♪ Voice: I have of late lost a great many intimate friends.

The numbers of fine young men from 15 to 5 and 20 with loss of limbs hurts me beyond conception, and I every day curse Columbus and all the discoverers of this diabolical country.

In what manner the Parliament will act on this occasion we cannot conceive.

Major John Bowater.

[Gavel bangs] Voice: You cannot--I venture to say, you cannot conquer America.

My lords, in 3 campaigns, we have done nothing and suffered much.

[Gavel bangs] You may swell every expense and every effort, pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow, traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country.

Your efforts are forever vain and impotent.

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms-- never, never, never.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.

♪ [Distant cannon fire] ♪ [Fife and drums playing] Jane Kamensky: The American Revolution is, on the one hand, an intensely local war, and, on the other hand, a great global war.

As a global war, the American Revolution continues the series of wars among empires for the prize of North America.

Britain, Spain, France are all seeking some form of victory or advantage... ♪ but the beginning of 1778, the rebellious United States' cause is at the thread end of its ability to continue to exist.

♪ Voice: There comes a soldier, his bare feet are seen through his worn-out shoes, his legs nearly naked from the tattered remains of an only pair of stockings, his breeches not sufficient to cover his nakedness.

His whole appearance pictures a person forsaken and discouraged.

Dr.

Albigence Waldo, surgeon, First Connecticut Infantry.

♪ Narrator: The weary Continentals whom George Washington led into winter quarters at Valley Forge in December of 1777, were, a visitor, said, just "a skeleton of an army."

They'd been fighting and marching for months, but many hadn't been paid since August.

Nearly 3,000 of them were officially unfit for duty.

Over the next 6 months, 2,500 soldiers would die, mostly from typhus, typhoid, influenza, and dysentery.

Clothing was so scarce that when a man died, what was left of his uniform was washed and carefully preserved so that another member of his unit might be at least a little warmer.

♪ Voice: I am now convinced that unless some great change takes place, this army must inevitably be reduced to one or the other of these things-- starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.

George Washington, headquarters at the Valley Forge.

♪ Narrator: Valley Forge took its name from an abandoned ironworks that stood at the intersection of a small creek and the Schuylkill River some 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Washington himself called it "a dreary kind of place," but he chose it because it was close enough to Philadelphia to move quickly against British foragers when they dared venture out of the city and far enough from it to make surprise attacks unlikely.

Pennsylvania legislators complained that instead of withdrawing to Valley Forge, Washington should be about the business of recapturing Philadelphia.

Voice: I can assure those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold, bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets.

It would give me infinite pleasure to afford protection to every individual and to every spot of ground in the whole of the United States.

Nothing is more my wish, but this is not possible with our present force.

[George Washington] [Cannon fire in distance] ♪