George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Most of all, the confident Hessian troops garrisoned at Trenton still basked in their recent successes on American soil that had already garnered the “greatest honor,” in one Hessian officer’s words, to German arms. They had played the leading role in overwhelming Fort Washington, a seemingly impregnable fortress, by assault, inflicting yet another defeat after Washington made the mistake of attempting to hold onto the only remaining position on Manhattan Island.7 In fact, most of these cocky German soldiers, perhaps Colonel Rall himself, had only recently believed that Christmas 25, 1776 would be the war’s last Yuletide. After all, the Hessians had so often seen that whenever Washington’s men were attacked, as one young Hessian lieutenant wrote, “they ran, as all mobs do.”8

  Therefore, these German professional soldiers at Trenton now believed that they would soon return to Germany to be reunited with friends and family. But instead of the much-anticipated reunion, Rall’s men were now stuck at dreary, cheerless Trenton and badly in need of rest. After the New York Campaign, Rall’s fusiliers and grenadiers were sick and tired of battling homespun revolutionaries in a strange land far from home. They found little glory in fighting a people, mostly farmers like themselves, struggling for their own freedom. During their own personal odyssey on the Atlantic’s other side, the average German soldier on American soil was little more than a clog in the long-accepted mercenary system that exploited the young and rural poor of various German states, such as Hesse-Cassel, Brunswick, Hesse-Hanau and a trio of small states.

  This time-honored Teutonic practice was increasingly condemned by European humanitarians and liberals as a corrupt, immoral soldier trade. Money-hungry monarchies of Christian Europe had traditionally benefitted from hiring out their fighting men, including against Islam, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries. No one knew exactly how many sons of impoverished German farming families, especially lowly peasants, had been impressed into regular army service, marched off to distant wars, and never returned to their homelands along the Rhine and Weser Rivers, while greedy rulers grew rich.

  More than half of the nearly thirty thousand German soldiers who served in America hailed from the landlocked, mid-sized German kingdom known as Hesse-Cassel, or Hessen-Kassel, in today’s west central Germany: hence, the generalized name and popular generic appellation of Hessians for all German troops who fought in America. Here, ruling his domain from the “beautiful town” of Cassel that had been recently rebuilt by skilled architects, the Landgrave Frederick II, the cousin of King George III who was also the king of Hanover, gained vast profits by hiring out his subjects as cannon fodder. Half a dozen minor German states contributed soldiers to England’s bid to subjugate America.

  All in all, these well-trained Hessian troops filled a large void in the British war effort because of the conflict’s unpopularity in England and the diminutive British Army already being overextended by global commitments. Because of pressing economic and global considerations, Great Britain had long been the best customer of lower class German cannon fodder, securing at the lowest price, from the small north German principality of Hesse-Cassel. Hessian troops had even been earlier utilized for the Albion island’s defense against anticipated Jacobite French and Scottish invasions. Hessians had also served in stemming the surging Jacobite rebel tide at Culloden in 1746. England’s successful utilization of ready-made German military units of a professional standing army had not only permitted the British to tie down the troublesome French in Europe but also allowed for the bolstering of a military machine for imperial adventures and overseas expansion far from the mainland.

  And now an entire Hessian brigade of hardened professional soldiers was stationed at Trenton primarily because they were essentially pawns in the strategic chessboard game of England’s imperial ambitions to retain control of their sprawling North American empire to counter its chief international rival France. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the British government’s controversial decision to dispatch thousands of German soldiers to wage war against its own subjects was far less morally offensive to many European intellectuals than the Landgrave’s crass sale of his own soldiers’ services.

  But more importantly, the sending of thousands of Hessian troops to America had helped to fuel greater moral outrage in America that in part led to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. In fact, America’s direct “answer to the treaty with the Landgrave was the Declaration of Independence.” In a strange case of the revolutionary struggle now having come full circle in regard to the impending showdown at Trenton, therefore, the very fighting men whom Washington was about to attack had already played an unintentional early role in the establishment of the new American nation.9

  Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall, age fifty, was anything but the worst of all possible commanders: one of the most persistent myths of the battle of Trenton. By December 1776, this hard-fighting Hesse-Cassel colonel possessed not only thirty-six years of solid military experience, but also a most distinguished record and a lengthy list of battlefield accomplishments that earned him the well-deserved sobriquet of “The Lion.” In truth, Rall was destined to become a victim at Trenton principally because of a cancerous hubris at higher leadership levels rather than inherent military deficiencies.10

  Like almost everyone else in the British Army, Rall was confident this December when hopes of smashing the rebellion were never higher. Vanquishing Washington’s amateurs at war had been so relatively easy that it even became a source of some embarrassment among the German victors at Trenton by this time. This well-deserved contempt for America’s ragtag revolutionaries in dirty farmer’s and hunter’s clothes caused Donop’s adjutant to lament with disgust how “what we have seen so far brings us little honour to fight against these” Americans in rebellion against their own king for reasons not readily understood by Germans not privy to Age of Enlightenment thought and ideology.11

  But in fact Colonel Rall was neither complacent or entirely a victim of his own hubris as so commonly alleged by his distractors. He had received timely intelligence from three different sources on December 23 that Washington’s troops had been issued three day’s rations and were making vigorous preparations for an offensive operation. On December 24, therefore, Rall had dispatched two strong parties on reconnaissance missions north of Trenton: one marched all the way to Pennington and the other one, under Captain Adam Christoph, or Christian, Steding, of the von Lossberg Regiment, pushed up the River Road to Johnson’s Ferry and then on to Pennington.

  Nevertheless, generations of American historians have long embraced the popular image and stereotype that Colonel Rall was the most incompetent and befuddled of commanders of the American Revolution. But like so many other experienced men and officers in the British Army before the battle of Trenton, Lieutenant Jacob Piel viewed Rall as a highly capable commander of outstanding military ability. To shatter another popular stereotype that has long endured to become gospel, Lieutenant Andreas Wiederhold, Knyphausen Regiment, described Rall as “all too easy-going,” which was very much the antithesis of the stereotypical mindless martinet and despotic Teutonic officer.

  At the head of his men, Rall had known nothing but one victory after another in America, beginning with the battle of Long Island. Here, he captured one of the first American battle flags, embroidered with the word “Liberty.” Instead of the incompetent buffoon so long alleged by historians, Rall was in truth one of the hardest fighting, most tactically astute, and aggressive German colonels in America. Unlike so many fellow German officers of high rank, he had advanced not by way of politics, noble blood, or currying the favor of the Landgrave, but by demonstrating outstanding ability on one battlefield after another.

  Indeed, by December 1776, Rall was a proven winner on every battlefield upon which he led troops. And his admiring men of the enlisted ranks loved him for leading them to so many victories. As usual in a typical hierarchy military setting where inflated egos and vanity dominated the ran
ks of the upper echelon, than as today, he engendered considerable jealousy among his superiors for his winning ways. Unlike Howe’s officers, who were almost exclusively of the privileged ruling class aristocracy, especially the British who Captain Alexander Hamilton acidly denounced as “effeminate striplings,” Rall possessed common roots: the antithesis of an officer and a gentleman. Unlike his more aristocratic peers, the hard-fighting colonel forged surprisingly close bonds with the common soldier in the ranks: the first sign of a good commander and a key to success on multiple levels.

  Born in Hesse-Cassel, Rall was the son of a middle-class officer who spent his entire life in the military. He had first enlisted in his father’s regiment as a serious-minded, ambitious young cadet. Rall rose from cadet to a second lieutenant’s rank in 1745 and then major in 1760 on his own merit. To secure greater career opportunities like so many other foreign officers who served in Russia’s Imperial Armies during the eighteenth century, Rall fought under Catherine the Great’s banner from 1771 to 1772. He demonstrated leadership ability under Count Gregory Orlov against the Islamic Turks of the Ottoman Empire during the Russo-Turkish War on Russia’s southeastern frontier, defending Christianity of the Orthodox faith and Mother Russia, which had been victimized by invaders, including the Mongols, for centuries.

  Rall has been long condemned by American historians for not erecting earthworks to defend Trenton. However, in truth, the town of Trenton was simply too sprawling and too vulnerable on three sides to be defended, even by a full brigade. In addition, relinquishing the initiative by cowering behind defenses and awaiting an attack was simply not part of the military traditions and ethos of offensive-minded and professional German soldiers and quite unlike some other European militaries, especially the defensive-oriented Russians. The experienced Rall knew better than to waste a great deal of time and extensive efforts, especially in regard to wearingout his men, in erecting defenses that could be easily outflanked by attackers. He allegedly mocked Major Friedrich von Dechow, commanding the Knyphausen Regiment at Trenton, who had advocated the creation of fortifications, declaring, “Works!-pooh-pooh.”12

  Most Hessian officers, such as thirty-year-old Lieutenant Ernst Christian Schwabe who had served for sixteen years in the von Lossberg Regiment, were entirely unconcerned about any unpleasant surprises stemming from Washington’s generalship, which had been long mocked. After all, the rebellious Americans were now widely considered to be little more than a disorganized body of “half-starved, half-clothed, half-armed, discontented, ungovernable, undisciplined wretches.”13

  Of course, at this time, Colonel Rall had no way of knowing that among this despised rabble of revolutionaries was his own cousin, a middle-class cobbler from Maryland and a Continental captain of Washington’s German Regiment. He was now advancing toward Trenton along with hundreds of his Teutonic comrades in Greene’s Second Division column. Interestingly, Colonel Glover had started out life as a lowly shoemaker before becoming a successful merchant and ship captain of Marblehead, demonstrating that social mobility for a bright, industrious man was possible in New England.14

  Although deserted by most inhabitants, Trenton meant something very special to Rall and his men, promising that they would put up a stiff fight in defending their newfound winter home. Because of his excellent battlefield performances throughout the New York Campaign, especially at Fort Washington and White Plains, Rall had been awarded the assignment of occupying Trenton by Howe himself.15 He now commanded Trenton and its environs from his modest quarters at the two-story house of Stacy Potts on King Street near the town’s center. Potts had grown wealthy from profits generated by his nearby tannery and a small iron works on Petty’s Run on Trenton’s northern and western outskirts. Rall’s acting King Street headquarters, located on the street’s west side, was strategically located near the heart of Trenton and just across the street from the Anglican, or English, Church.16

  On this stormy Christmas night, Potts’s roaring stone fireplaces in his wood-frame house provided ample warmth to Rall’s cozy headquarters. Earlier near sunset on Christmas Day, the alarm had been sounded when Hessian pickets on the town’s northwestern outskirts were fired upon by a band of Americans lurking in the dark New Jersey forests. A small raiding party under Captain George Wallis’s Fourth Virginia Continental Regiment, Stephen’s brigade—which Rall assumed was the force that General Grant had earlier warned him about in a message written late on the night of December 24 to reach Trenton on Christmas morning—proved of little concern. These Virginia riflemen had only briefly harassed Corporal William Hartung’s picket post on the Pennington Road northwest of Trenton with long-range gunfire.

  Half a dozen Hessians were hit by the Virginian’s accurate gunfire from deadly Long Rifles erupting from a belt of black woodlands, however. Like a prudent commander, Rall had turned out his entire brigade on the double to meet the sudden threat. But the troublemaking band of around thirty Virginians soon slipped away into the night, vanishing like ghosts. Entirely unknown to Washington, this daring raid by his fellow staters had been launched across the Delaware by his brigade commander General Stephen. Washington’s former top lieutenant of his Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War had been actively waging his own personal war in typical guerrilla fashion. As written just before midnight on Christmas Eve, Grant’s warning—about an attack from Washington’s Army instead of only a company-sized raiding party—had been grossly overexaggerated, or so it seemed to Rall and his top lieutenants, who dismissed the threat and its implications.

  Like other officers at Trenton, therefore, Rall experienced considerable relief by Christmas evening after the pesky Virginia sharpshooters faded away into the night. After all, Trenton’s northern approaches were now well guarded, after Rall prudently strengthened them by pickets with trusty veteran officers in timely fashion. He had significantly upgraded his advanced warning system around Trenton’s immediate outskirts in case any new threat from roving rebels suddenly emerged along the Pennington Road. In fact, Rall had done everything right and by the book.

  On this stormy night, not taking any chances, he even made sure that his own grenadier regiment remained under arms and in a state of full alert at their previously specified alarm houses along King Street. In fact, based on Rall’s wise precautions, the entire Rall Brigade, now well honed from the practice of responding to recent alarms, was ready to quickly assemble at three predesignated points—one for each regiment—to defend Trenton. Besides the Rall Regiment, hundreds of troops of the brigade’s other two regiments also slept in uniform, with cartridge-boxes strapped on. As a result, Rall and his garrison were not guilty of what was later described as “fanciful security,” as so long assumed. In truth, the garrison was on full and “high alert,” as the German “troops have lain on their arms every night,” penned one Hessian in a letter.17

  Meanwhile, the omnipresent legacy of Frederick the Great, who was even admired by Washington’s officers, was alive and well at Trenton. The notable battlefield achievements of this dynamic Prussian king and prince-elector of the sprawling Holy Roman Empire yet inspired the tough fighting men of Rall brigade. In a strange irony and like members of the Rall Brigade, some of Washington’s soldiers, including the general himself, now carried copies of Frederick the Great’s Instructions. By winning so many sparkling victories over Prussia’s enemies, especially Austria, he had transformed Prussia, despite being landlocked and surrounded by hostile neighbors, into a major European power. His remarkable successes stemmed in part from the creation of a superior officer corps and an elite military caste system, based upon the ruling nobility and a professional standing army, of which Frederick the Great was the revered father.

  As part of this omnipresent martial legacy, highly efficient Rall Brigade officers had been educated at the West Point-like Collegium Carolinum in Cassel. Here, they had learned about the mysteries of engineering, tactics, cartography, foreign languages, mathematics, and logistics. Like Rall’s offi
cers, the common Hessian soldiers also were the disciplined products of Frederick the Great’s professional standing army tradition. This enduring memory of the blue-uniformed master of war (nicknamed “Old Fritz”), especially among Rall’s veterans who had served under Frederick the Great, yet lingered with vibrance among the crack soldiers stationed at Trenton.18

  Barely six months earlier on June 18, 1776, ironically, Frederick the Great had written a letter to Voltaire, one of the greatest French Enlightenment thinkers, writers, and philosophers. He lamented the sad fate of so many of his Teutonic countrymen, especially lower-class members, who had become nothing more than manipulated pawns of the ruling elite when their princes “sold his subjects to the English as one sells cattle to be dragged to the shambles [and] I pity the poor Hessians who end their lives unhappily and useless in America.”19

  Frederick the Great had been prophetic about the future disasters awaiting German troops—nearly thirty thousand in total—sent to faraway America, including Colonel Rall and his crack brigade, which had been molded by the omnipresent Frederickan legacy. Symbolically, Hesse-Cassel’s ruler, Langraf Frederick II, who signed the contract with Great Britain for fifteen regiments to serve in North America in mid-January 1776, had been named after the Prussian military genius. The Hessians’ tactics, drill, and values were copied from those of the Prussian Army. Even more, the very weapons, including muskets, of the Hessians had been made in Prussia. And the blue uniforms of the Knyphausen and Rall Regiments stationed at Trenton were modeled after Prussian Army uniforms. The Hessians also hailed from other Germanic states besides Hesse-Cassel, such as Brunswick, Waldeck, Anspach-Beyreuth, Hesse Hanau, and Anhalt Zerbst. Soldiers from these diverve regions possessed different faiths (Catholic and Protestant), dialects and community values.