He Lost Almost Every Battle — And Still Won the War | George Washington

The real story of how George Washington lost more battles than he won and still outlasted the British Empire — and the Culper spy ring that made it possible. In the summer of 1775, a Virginia planter with a losing military record was handed an army that barely existed and pointed at the most powerful military force on the planet. Almost nobody expected him to survive the year. He did not win this war with brilliance on the battlefield. He won it with a system: a Prussian drillmaster who turned farmers into soldiers, a French fleet that took the sea away at the exact moment it mattered, and a network of ordinary people — a farmer, a tailor, a courier — feeding him what the British never expected him to know. One member of that network has never been identified. Two hundred and fifty years later, she is still known only as Agent 355. This is the war as it actually happened: the tax that broke an empire's patience, forty-six tons of tea in Boston Harbor, the shot on Lexington green that nobody has ever claimed, the winter at Valley Forge that should have ended everything, the betrayal at West Point that came within days of splitting the country in two, and the October morning at Yorktown when the ships never came. No legends. No movie versions. Just the real story. CHAPTERS 00:00 — Who would you have bet on in 1776? 01:12 — What was Washington's record before the war? 04:10 — How did winning a war nearly bankrupt Britain? 06:11 — Why did they throw 46 tons of tea into the harbor? 08:59 — Who fired the shot that started the revolution? 11:07 — What really happened at Valley Forge? 14:20 — Who was Agent 355? 18:10 — Why did France finally join the war? 20:54 — Why did no British ships come to Yorktown? 22:46 — So how was this war actually won? SOURCES & FURTHER READING Primary material for this episode came from public-domain archives including the National Archives (NARA), the Library of Congress, and the Internet Archive. Where historical accounts differ, this episode says so rather than picking a version. New episodes regularly.