George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Fueled by a heightened determination to emerge victorious this morning that had only steadily increased since crossing the Delaware, Greene’s troops, despite in rags, torn blankets, and almost barefoot, continued to surge down the Pennington Road at an increased pace and with greater confidence. All the while, the homespun revolutionaries yet maintained their discipline and silence that matched the haunting quiet of the falling snow, which muffled the sound of thousands of marching feet. In an amazing, unprecedented display of discipline, Washington’s strict orders that “a profound silence is to be observed, both by officers and men,” was yet obeyed to the letter.65

  However, anxiety and mental anguish were high among a good many American officers, including Washington, because of the knowledge that they were hours behind schedule and shortly would have to face a full Hessian brigade of crack troops in broad daylight. In the strange quiet in which the only sound was that of the treading of hundreds of feet in the snow, perhaps some of Greene’s New Englanders, contemplating the upcoming battle with the dreaded Hessians, recalled the words of a fiery Massachusetts preacher who strengthened the soldier’s resolve by emphasizing “May we take to ourselves the whole armour of God,” from the book of Ephesians.66

  All of a sudden breathless New Jersey scouts, including the local strong-armed blacksmith and miller named David Lanning, came running back through the falling snow with the latest intelligence, breaking the monotony of seemingly endless marching southward. Upon reaching a mounted Washington at the column’s head, these local New Jersey men excitedly reported in low tones that they had ascertained the exact location of the first Hessian pickets on the Pennington Road about a mile from Trenton’s center. Of all places, these foremost Hessian pickets were garrisoned at a little cooper shop, where Richard Howell and son Arthur (two other sons, John and Elias, were apprenticed elsewhere) along the road northwest of Trenton. This well-known shop had been previously seen by Lanning when passing down the Pennington Road. And Washington had previously heard about the use of the cooper shop by the Hessians from his New Jersey informants. Most importantly, Washington fully realized that the Hessians had not been alerted at all, bringing a great sigh of relief and a sense of elation to the troubled Virginian.

  Before meeting the Rall brigade in the final showdown at Trenton, Washington called a brief halt so that his weary, sleepless troops could briefly rest on muskets and catch their breath, while his strung-out units closed up during the respite. He also had to allow more time for Sullivan’s First Division, to the southwest along the River Road, to ease closer to Trenton for any possibility of a simultaneous attack of both divisions before Greene’s Second Division column could strike as one.

  Fortunately, and besides the storm, a thick belt of dark woodlands now screened Greene’s lengthy column, stretched out along the Pennington Road for hundreds of yards, from view of the advanced Hessian picket outposts. Almost incredibly, after all that had gone wrong with Washington’s plan and timetable, an entire Hessian brigade could yet be caught by surprise at Trenton. Therefore, this brief respite for the Second Division troops just outside a completely quiet Trenton was much-needed for the exhausted common soldiery, who had been up all night.

  One of Stephen’s top lieutenants, Major George Johnston, Fifth Virginia Regiment, checked his watch. He realized that much more precious time had slipped away than he thought. While standing at the head of his half-frozen soldiers, with the other two regiments (the Fourth and Sixth Virginia) of Stephen’s Virginia vanguard, now poised on the Pennington Road just northwest of Trenton in the gathering yet faint, early morning light, dulled by the dense, low-hanging cloud cover and dropping snow, he estimated the time and wrote how: “At 7, we halted within 500 yds of their advanced guard [at the little frame cooper house of Arthur and Richard Howell] until the until the Right wing, commanded by General Sullivan [who led the First Division] could get within the same distance of another of the Guards, posted on the River road” to the southwest.67

  By way of careful tactical calculation, Washington was attempting to do whatever and all that he could to ensure a simultaneous attack from two different directions, the ever-elusive double envelopment. Unlike in the past, everything now had to go exactly right and according to Washington’s intricate tactical design if an impressive victory was to be achieved at Trenton. In a strange way, all of the many past defeats and miscalculations now had made Washington even more exceptionally meticulous, exacting, and a stickler for all details during this most desperate of bids to reverse the war’s course before it was too late. Washington early realized that he could only succeed if all aspects of the advance and upcoming attack were closely scrutinized with unprecedented precision and micromanaged to the last detail.

  With the level of tension rising among the silent column of bedraggled, winter soldiers, the 7:20 a.m. dawn had quickly passed by almost without much notice or contemplation because everyone was simply too exhausted. Cottony plumes of breath hung in the cold air before fading silently away like Washington’s chances for success, or so it seemed. However, as yet not a shot had been fired from a single Hessian picket or Gefreiter (private) to sound the alarm. Not a single early morning songbird, after having found shelter from the storm in oak thickets, clumps of darkgreen cedars, and thorny bushes, had heralded the dawn’s arrival with a melody. Like a late Christmas gift presented to Washington, a vulnerable Trenton yet lay in the quiet serenity of a false security, hubris, and complacency. Hardly believing his good fortune after all had been seemingly lost with so many delays in crossing the Delaware and during the long, agonizing march on Trenton, Washington ordered the advance to move faster down the road during the final approach.

  After pushing out of the black woodlands northwest of Trenton and with open ground, blanketed in snow, bordering each side of the Pennington Road, Washington then quickly deployed Greene’s Second Division into three separate assault columns. Mercer’s brigade, the lead brigade just before Stirling and to Stephen’s rear, formed in a column on the right and Stephen’s Virginia vanguard brigade, while Lord Stirling’s brigade moved ahead and formed a center column. Most importantly, the farsighted Washington issued orders for Fermoy’s 638-man Pennsylvania brigade, a third assault column on the left, on a vital mission: to eventually shift east to gain the strategic Princeton-Trenton Road northeast of town. Around 8:00 a.m. the three columns of Greene’s Second Division were set firmly in place across the snow-covered landscape, and prepared for their respective assignments as deemed by Washington.

  On Washington’s eagerly awaited signal, lengthy files of Continental soldiers then pushed off on the double with a new bounce in their step and in high spirits. The usual clattering of gear of large numbers of troops was now muffled by multiple layers of winter clothing and blankets wrapped around bodies of young men and boys fortunate enough to have even this meager extra covering. On the double and with flintlocks on shoulders, hundreds of soldiers of the German Regiment and Colonel Edward Hand’s Pennsylvania rifle regiment pushed across the snowy fields to the east. Fermoy’s Pennsylvanians, and also Marylanders in the German Regiment’s ranks, of these two fine Continental regiments raced over the wintery landscape in the hope of gaining their key tactical objective of aligning aside the Princeton-Trenton Road to the east. Determined men with plenty of combat savvy, the 254 sharpshooters of Hand’s First Pennsylvania Continental Regiment provided the combat experience that the German Regiment lacked.

  Not far from the busy commander-in-chief, meanwhile, Captain Washington’s and Lieutenant Monroe’s Virginians, the vanguard, surged forward with their Long Rifles in hand before the advance of Stephen’s Virginia vanguard brigade, swarming down the Pennington Road at the center column’s head. Shouting and out in front as usual, an animated Washington encouraged his troops of the center column onward at the long trot. As long trained as if just for this moment, hundreds of Continentals, with trusty smoothbore flintlocks on shoulders, raced through the snow on the double, knowi
ng that no additional precious time could be wasted on this cold New Jersey morning.

  Leading the way in company with his young staff officers like a Moses leading his people to a new day, Washington rode forward on his “noble horse” in the forefront of Stephen’s surging Virginians, who basked in having been at last unleashed to demonstrate their worth. With a tight discipline seldom seen in this war, hundreds of American soldiers pushed forward on the double and with enthusiasm, heading toward their preassigned objectives with alacrity, while adrenaline pumped through their bodies and warded off the terrible cold.

  Less than an hour after the first signs of dawn on this ill-lit morning and with the wrath of the snow storm yet to their backs, Washington’s reinvigorated troops surged toward Trenton’s northwestern outskirts with renewed confidence in broad daylight. Fortunately, omnipresent dark skies and a light ground fog, hugging the terrain as far as the eye could see, compensated for the suddenly increased visibility from the faint winter light of early morning, providing a lingering measure of concealment for Washington’s fast-advancing Continentals. With his troops already having exceeded even his high expectations, Washington was encouraged by the sight of his energized soldiers swarming onward with a renewed vigor and enthusiasm. Marveling at the encouraging spectacle that bestowed greater hope for the success of “his brilliant encircling movement,” the Virginian never forgot how his resurgent men now “seemed to vie with the other in pressing forward” in a bid to reap the desperately needed victory that might just save an infant republic from a premature death.

  All the while, the three Hessian regiments of the Rall brigade were not yet aroused, and Colonel Rall remained in a comfortable, deep sleep at Stacy Potts’s large, white frame house near Trenton’s center. Then, while Trenton yet remained perfectly quiet, the foremost Virginians, panting and breathless, under Captain Washington, who led the way, finally reached Trenton’s northwestern outskirts. General Washington galloped forward on his large chestnut sorrel, staying much closer to the front ranks than was prudent for safety’s sake. In surging down the snowy Pennington Road, the fast-moving vanguard of the foremost Virginia Continentals reached the vicinity of an isolated, lone house wrapped in solitude and a wintry shroud. Here, ignoring the nasty weather but knowing he needed more fuel, an early-rising civilian was outside chopping wood for a morning fire to cook breakfast and to warm his house. Fortunately for Washington and his men, he was not a Tory.

  Washington knew that in order to achieve a complete surprise, the foremost German pickets guarding Trenton’s northwestern outskirts needed to be captured or eliminated before they spread the alarm to arouse the garrison. Fortunately, the commander-in-chief now possessed sound intelligence from the vigilant Lanning as to the presence of the Hessian Pennington Road picket post about a half mile before the town. Realizing that he had not yet reached the most advanced Hessian picket post and in order to confirm the prior intelligence, Washington boldly rode right up to the man and asked, “Can you tell me where the Hessian picket is?” Amazingly, in continuing to seemingly do everything on his own, Washington was now performing much like a low-ranking reconnaissance or staff officer in gathering accurate information verified by his own eyes and ears that he could trust unfailingly.

  Thinking that this approaching force was a British column dispatched to reinforce Trenton, the civilian was initially hesitant to reply to the towering figure of obvious authority on horseback. Then Captain Thomas Forrest, who had managed to keep his six-pounders and howitzers in their assigned place at the Second Division column’s head after much effort and as Washington had ordered, said: “You may speak for that is General Washington.” With his face suddenly brightening, the farmer was now eager to assist the liberators of his own hometown. He pointed to the nearby cooper house of Richard Howell, where the most advanced Hessian pickets were located.

  In the pale winter light of early morning when all hell was about to break loose just northwest of Trenton, even though unrealized by him at the time, Lieutenant Andreas Wiederhold felt an inexplicable sense of uneasiness. A fine officer of ability, Wiederhold had been commended for gallantry on the battlefield as early as fourteen years before. He now trusted his veteran’s instincts. Even though the experienced lieutenant was an intellectual scholar-solder of the Knyphausen Regiment, Wiederhold had never quite lost either his common touch or common sense. Although holding no bitterness, he had been unfairly denied a captain’s rank because he, like Colonel Rall, lacked noble blood and priviledged background that meant everything in his hierarchical eighteenth-century society.

  Wiederhold was a commoner of humble origins like his enlisted men, and every blueblood officer, in the proud tradition of the Prussian officer corps, was aware of that fact and never allowed him to forget it. Because this atypical German lieutenant so closely identified with his men, including the lowest private in the ranks, and led his troops by example, they in turn respected him. Partly reflecting his common roots, Wiederhold was also a man of compassion and faith, duly writing “God be praised” in his diary. Therefore, as a true Christian who was color blind, Wiederhold felt a deep, Quaker-like sympathy toward African Americans in bondage, lamenting their sad plight, while their owners, including men in Washington’s Virginia regiments, paradoxically now fought for the liberty of whites, not blacks.

  Here, at Howell’s cooper house, located just south of the icy intersection of the Pennington and Scotch Road about a half mile northwest of Trenton, Wiederhold’s creeping sense of uneasiness grew even stronger: a sixth sense well-honed and heightened in this hardened veteran whose instincts could not have been sharper this early morning. After having been dispatched on the previous evening, or Christmas Day, in answering the alarm upon the outburst of firing from the strike of Captain Wallis’s Virginia patrol on the most advanced Hessian pickets located on the Pennington Road, having been up half the night in organizing his defensive ring of pickets, and after having sent out patrols for added security, Wiederhold now commanded Trenton’s most advanced picket post. This duty-minded lieutenant felt a solemn responsibility in commanding “my little picket house,” which was located along “the road to John’s [Johnson’s Ferry],” in Wiederhold’s words.

  As the senior officer in overall command of seven advanced picket posts on both the Pennington Road and the River Road, to the south and upon which Sullivan’s First Division now marched, and in the intervening ground between the two snow-bound roads, he recalled how so many past successes had bestowed an abundant amount of “Hessian glory which could be shared by every good man with honor” in the Rall brigade. And Wiederhold had won his own fair share of this coveted glory during the New York Campaign.

  For instance, to gain the American’s exposed right flank, he had won widespread recognition for leading the cheering Knyphausen Regiment soldiers across the Bronx River while a hail of American bullets splashed around him. Lieutenant Wiederhold had then encouraged his attacking troops up Chatterton Hill to help win the day at White Plains only last October. Then, in mid-November, he had commanded the regiment’s vanguard in the “very spearhead” during the “suicidal” attack up the open slopes of Mount Washington, “a hard nut to crack,” in his own words. Here, at Fort Washington, he took over the leadership of his fusilier company when all senior officers had been cut down by the deadly rifle fire of Colonel Moses Rawlings’s Maryland marksmen.

  Demonstrating those sterling qualities that had allowed him to rise from private to sergeant major in 1760 and to earn an officer’s rank for distinguished service during the Seven Years’ War, Wiederhold now ventured forth from the warmth of the wooden cooper’s house to verify for himself that all was safe and sound along the eerily quiet Pennington Road. He also now eagerly looked for the return of his early morning picket patrol with “bright daylight” having now begun to illuminate the snowy landscape. The conscientious lieutenant now half-expected to see his last patrol of weary men come trudging down the Pennington Road in returning through th
e snow.

  However, Wiederhold was not completely trusting of what the cold-numbed, young members of his first returning patrols had told him—that everything was perfectly quiet—when they had staggered back to his snowy picket outpost about an hour before dawn. Born in Spangenberg, Hesse-Cassel, Wiederhold was one of the Knyphausen Regiment’s best officers at age forty-four. He possessed more than a quarter century of solid military experience, including years of service as a tough sergeant major who brooked no indiscipline. Most importantly, as a seasoned warrior, he was now once again relying upon his own well-honed instincts, which sometimes had caused him to boldly question his superiors to their dismay and endless irritation.