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This food, and then there's Baker's super foods. Hello and thank you for joining the American Revolution.

Today episode 175 Van Stuyben at Valley Forge.

For the last couple of weeks, we covered events in France and Britain as the US signed its first foreign treaty and Britain declared war on France.

Before that, we left the Continental Army, cold, hungry, and slowly falling apart in Valley Forge.

In February of 1778, a Prussian officer made his way to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

I mentioned Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus von Steuben back in episode 136, when he met with

Benjamin Franklin in Paris seeking a commission.

The 47-year-old Bunschdeuben had served as an officer in the Prussian army as a young man.

He spent much of his early years in Russia as his father served as a lieutenant in the Russian

war against the Turks.

By age 14, he was serving with his father in the war of Austrian Succession, and by age 17 he had his own

commission in the Prussian army and served in the Seven Years War.

Now records of Van Stuyben's service in the Seven Years War are somewhat sketchy, but he was

wounded in two different battles during the war and we know that he served as an agitant for a couple of generals.

By the end of the war, he was an up-and-coming young officer who had risen to the rank of

captain and was serving as an aide-de- camp on the staff of Frederick the Great.

When the war came to an end in 1763 though, so did Von Steuben's military career.

The size of the army shrank dramatically. So did Von Steuben's military career.

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