George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Mounted on his splendid charger before his surging ranks of cheering Continentals, Washington also briefly admired the discipline of the Hessian pickets, who had been well trained by Altenbockum and Wiederhold. Even in this crisis situation, the Germans continued to follow their officer’s orders and maintain discipline under Washington’s onslaught. Although having been surprised this morning and now facing overwhelming numbers, the Hessian pickets continued to resist Captain Washington’s advance down the Pennington Road with a fighting spirit that stirred a measure of respect among the attackers. At this time, the commander-in-chief felt an unexpected sense of admiration for these crack fighting men. As he later informed the Continental Congress with ample justification, these German pickets “behaved very well.”74

  To the hard-hit Hessian pickets, the situation became more precarious with each passing minute, with hundreds of Continentals charging out of a blinding snowstorm and screaming like Indians from the Ohio Valley. The fact that any Hessian soldiers now offered even the slightest resistance whatsoever was truly remarkable under these circumstances. Without orders or reinforcements while fighting a losing battle, these advanced Hessians gamely fought back. A perplexed Wiederhold grew frustrated because “no one came to see what was happening, or to reinforce and assist us. But [the pickets] did their duty” to the end.75

  However, Lieutenant Wiederhold also felt fortunate to some degree. He knew that if “I had not stepped out of the picket hut and seen the enemy, they would possibly have been upon me before I could take up arms” and buy time for the Rall brigade to form for action.76 But the relentless pressure and sheer weight applied by Captain Washington’s and Stephen’s Virginians was too much to bear. Captain Altenbockum and Lieutenant Wiederhold no longer had any choice. As written in his diary, Wiederhold described how it was now “necessary, in order not to be cut off from the garrison, to retreat toward the garrison as no one came . . . to reinforce and assist us, even though the Rall Regiment was the duty watch on this night.”77

  In the end, Lieutenant Wiederhold’s and Altenbockum’s pickets barely escaped Washington’s surging tide lapping at their flanks, threatening encirclement and entrapment. One fallen Hessian officer was left behind near the road. Lieutenant Georg Christoph, or Christian, Kimm, age thirty-three, was that unfortunate Hessian officer. He had been cut down by Captain Washington, a good shot with a Long Rifle, within fifty yards of the Calhoun House to rise no more. The mortally wounded Kimm lay prostrate in the snow with his life ebbing away in a pool of red. Meanwhile, Captain Washington’s elated Virginians surged past the fallen Hessian officer with victory cheers echoing through the cold, December air. Altenbockum and Wielderhold’s retreating pickets had no time to report the disastrous tactical situation to Colonel Rall because the foremost onrushing Virginians under Captain Washington “entered the [northwestern edge of] town with them pell-mell,” wrote Colonel Knox in a letter.78

  By this time, many of Greene’s Second Division troops already began to sense victory, especially with the intoxicating sight of Hessians fleeing before them. As if caught in a footrace beyond their control, both Americans and Germans now headed southeast for Trenton on the double. Captain Hull never forgot how “the first sound of the musquetry [sic] and the retreat of the guards animated the men and they pushed on with resolution and firmness” across the snowy ground. All the while, Washington led the way, waving his sword, shouting encouragement for his fast-moving boys, and imploring them to keep up the chase to apply an unrelenting pressure that equated to victory.79

  During the relentless pursuit southeast down the Pennington Road, a mounted Captain Samuel Morris, leading the Philadelphia upper class dandies and mostly former members of the Gloucester Fox Hunting Club of his hard-riding light horse company, was deeply moved by the sad sight of the dying Lieutenant Kimm. The handsome Hessian officer, only recently promoted to an officer’s rank, was sprawled out on the ground just beyond the Calhoun House. Here, he lay in a widening puddle of blood that stained the snow with a bright red. Swayed by the tragic sight, Morris suddenly departed the head of his mounted light horse company, cantering over to Lieutenant Kimm.

  In the time-honored cavalier tradition of warriors who still cherished old-fashioned concepts of honor and chivalry that were almost medieval, the Philadelphia-born Morris dismounted to offer assistance. Meanwhile, the captain’s troopers, such as Lieutenant James Budden, Cornet John Dunlap, and his own brother Ensign Anthony Morris, who would be shortly killed at Princeton, looked on in disbelief. The forty-two-year-old Morris then approached Kimm, who needed urgent medical assistance. With the Philadelphia cavalry company consisting of nearly one-half of Irish troopers, Morris’s young Celtic-Gaelic horsemen, who had paid for their fancy uniforms, arms, and equipment out of their own monies, also felt some empathy toward the fallen German officer.

  But the ever-practical General Greene, ignoring all of the lessons that he had been taught while growing up as a Quaker, would have none of it. With America’s most important battle having only fairly begun, this was no time for such humanitarian and chivalric niceties. Therefore, Greene shouted in a harsh tone to the aristocratic, forty-two-year-old cavalry captain, “No time for that, get back on your horse!” Clearly, the often-demonstrated etiquette of war was not to be played out at Trenton, where so much was at stake. As Greene fully realized, Morris’s valuable leadership was now needed because these young Philadelphia horsemen, including twenty members of the Gloucester Fox Hunting Club founded by Morris, were now engaged in their first engagement as a unit, even though they had been organized in 1774.

  Hoping to erase the rebuke by daring action and more clearly aware that he was no longer playing a game as when leading young Philadelphians on fox hunts through Pennsylvania’s farms and fields, Captain Morris then led his young troopers of the Philadelphia Light Horse in a thundering gallop down the icy Pennington Road. All the while, the company’s beautiful yellow flag of fine silk flapped at the head of the little column of fox hunting cavaliers, who were in the process of learning about the ugly realities of war. While the elated Americans continued to rush by, the Hessian lieutenant, who received no medical attention, lay helpless in the snow. Fated to die this evening, Lieutenant Kimm was the first man on either side to suffer a mortal wound at the battle of Trenton.80

  In the face of Washington’s relentless onslaught that was the antithesis of the fiasco at Kip’s Bay, the Hessian picket’s withdrawal never degenerated into a wild flight down the road, however. With plenty of fight left and unwilling to concede anything to American rebels, these Hessian veterans continued to turn and face their attackers, “keeping up a constant retreating fire from behind houses” along the embattled Pennington Road. In what seemed like an eternity, the panting German pickets under Altenbockum and Wiederhold finally reached the head of King Street, where Rall had been advised by Donop’s well-educated engineer to erect an artillery redoubt at this high point: sound advice that had been ignored. Especially at this time, these two enterprising officers now lamented Rall’s failure to follow these sage recommendations.81

  Under heavy pressure from the onrushing Virginians, Captain Altenbockum and his men turned to the right, or south, to gain King Street. With the ground sloping south through the town and all the way to the river, they then headed down the snowy slope, but only for a short distance, in the direction of their own regiment. These breathless von Lossbergers, with their energy expended but not their fighting spirit, smartly took cover in the town’s northernmost houses, modest wooden structures, just north of where their von Lossberg Regiment comrades were located. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Wiederhold and his pickets continued to retire farther east across the high ground and past King Street’s head. From this high ground perch, Wiederhold then yelled for his men to turn south and retire down Queen Street, which paralleled King Street. But exhausted from their long withdrawal and delaying action, they did not proceed all the way down Queen Street to rejoin their Knyphausen Regiment ne
ar the street’s southern end.82

  While Altenbockum and his men withdrew down King Street that descended the slope toward the heart of Trenton, Lieutenant Wiederhold, just to the east, was not finishing fighting, however. Knowing the importance of attempting to hold the dual heads of King and Queen Streets, vital high ground that yet must be contested because Colonel Rall needed to regain this perch and the most strategic crossroads in Trenton and in the hope of buying more time for the Rall brigade to organize, Wiederhold and his stubborn pickets “took a position in front of one of the first houses of the town and fired at the enemy who were forming in battle order on the upper side of town.” He then ordered his picket detachment to make yet another defensive stand in the wooden houses that stood on lower ground just below the northern end of Queen Street.83

  In his diary, the hard-fighting Knyhausen Regiment lieutenant described the setting for America’s most important armed clash to date: “Trenton is a small place, lying on the left bank of the Delaware River [and] is divided into two parts, the upper and lower city, by [Assunpink] creek [and] the parts are joined together however, by a stone bridge. It has nearly 100 houses, which had been abandoned by most of the residents.”84 A vital gateway leading to Philadelphia just to the southwest, this little but prosperous commercial community was about to become the very vortex of the storm in the upcoming struggle that would determine America’s fate and future destiny.

  Unknown to the Rall brigade troops, something entirely new was about to descend upon Trenton with a vengeance. A new kind of warfare, largely homegrown, highly irregular, and borrowed in no small part from Indian warfare and the western frontier experience, was about to suddenly envelope a well-trained conventional soldiery, whose traditional concepts for waging war were fast-becoming outdated and obsolete in America.

  Despite the Hessian’s legendary ferocity in combat, lengthy winning streak, overall military superiority, and iron discipline, nothing in the past military experiences of these orthodox European fighting men adequately prepared them for what they least expected at this time: a steamrolling tide of a large number of angry rebels suddenly descending upon them from the surrounding wooded countryside and a raging storm at a time when they believed that the war was all but over. Nothing could have possibly have readied Rall’s troops for what was about to happen to one of the best combat brigades, on either side, in America.

  So far, Washington’s battle plan was working to perfection in regard to the First and Second Division’s simultaneous advance, ensuring that the Trenton garrison was caught by surprise by a mere motley collection of “country clowns,” in Colonel Rall’s words. Rall’s professional arrogance was understandable because this highly respected commander from Hesse-Cassel had served with distinction in the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years War, and with the Russian Army with General Alexis Orloff and for Catherine the Great during the fourth Russo-Turkish War in 1771 to 1772, reaping success everywhere he had fought. But never in all of his vast military experience had Rall ever been the victim of a greater surprise than at Trenton.

  Absolutely nothing in Rall’s more than thirty years of military experience had prepared this hardened career officer for Washington’s unexpected asymmetrical challenge. In battling against the Islamic-inspired imperialism of the Ottoman Turks as a younger man, Rall had faithfully continued a German holy warrior tradition, extending back to the Crusades, of waging war against Islam’s relentless, dogged advance to spread the Koran by the sword. But now Rall was about to confront a sudden surprise attack from fellow Christians, who were imbued with the republican faith and belief that God was on their side, which combined to make them almost as fanatical this early Thursday morning as those Islamic holy warriors inspired by the Koran’s words to destroy the hated infidel.85

  As so carefully planned by Washington and relying on what became Napoleon’s primary means of reaping victory across Europe, the amount of shock delivered by a surprise blitzkrieg attack upon the Trenton garrison was considerable. In a letter to his wife Sarah, Lieutenant Joseph Hodgkins, a thirty-two-year old cobbler from the coastal fishing village of Ipswich in northeast Massachusetts, wrote how Washington’s sudden attack seemingly out of nowhere “gave the Enemy a grate [sic] shock.”86 This thorough shock delivered by Washington when least expected had not resulted primarily from a rude awakening from drunkenness or late night Yuletide revelry, but from the shattering of conventional wisdom to reveal the fallacy of the universal Hessian certitude (shared by the British), as recently expressed by Ireland-born and Oxford-educated Lord Francis Rawdon, who hailed from a ruling Anglo-Irish noble family, “that their army [Washington’s] is all broken to pieces.”87

  Unknown to the Hessians at this time, something subtle, but very significant, had changed since Washington’s string of humiliating setbacks and defeats. An unseen, stealthy transformation had taken place among the American soldiery in the cold darkness during the Delaware crossing and the arduous march on Trenton. Now emboldened as never before, Washington’s battle-hardened soldiers of the two assault columns were now exceptionally “in fine spirits.” And, most of all, these “Continental troops are really well disciplined” by the time of their greatest challenge to date. Therefore, they “will fight bravely,” accurately predicted one visionary Connecticut soldier, whose bold prophecy was now coming true at long last to the Hessians’ utter disbelief and shock.88

  In Washington’s words that described the sweetest sound that he had ever heard, “The upper Division [Second] arrived at the Enemys advance Post, exactly at Eight O’clock, and in three Minutes after, I found, from the fire on the lower Road, that that [First] Division had also got up.”89 Washington’s masterstroke of a double envelopment was becoming an amazing tactical reality as he had previously envisioned with clarity at his headquarters west of the Delaware. Therefore, Washington’s spirits soared to new, if not dizzying, heights, when he finally realized that his bold tactical plan of a “brilliant encircling movement” had succeeded when Sullivan’s First Division to the southwest suddenly struck.

  Fulfilling his fondest expectations, Washington now knew that he had won his audacious tactical gamble of launching a pincer movement with two divisions even amid a fierce northeaster by what he happily heard suddenly erupting to the southwest. Only three minutes after Stephen’s Virginians attacked the picket outpost at the Howell’s cooper house along the Pennington Road at 8:00 a.m. and although this eagerly awaited sound near the river was a bit muffled by the howling wind and veil of falling snow, Washington, mounted on the high ground north of Trenton, felt a surging, intoxicating sense of elation when he first heard firing from the direction of the River Road about a quarter mile to the southwest at 8:03 a.m.

  Sounding to Washington like the harbinger of the sweetest of successes and bestowing immeasurable relief to the anxious commander-in-chief long consumed with worry, this most joyous sound yet heard by Washington was a single cannon shot fired from thirty-one-year-old Colonel Paul Dudley Sargent’s mostly New England brigade, which surged down the River Road at the head of Sullivan’s column just behind Flahaven’s onrushing New Jersey vanguard.

  Booming over the wintery landscape like a distant thunder storm on a hot August afternoon, the First Division’s first shot echoing to the southwest was unleashed from a three-pounder from Captain Daniel Neil’s New Jersey artillery company. Most importantly, these Garden State gunners symbolically initiated the struggle for the liberation of a subjugated New Jersey town on Washington’s right wing. The New Jersey cannon of the Eastern Company of New Jersey State Artillery might have been fired from the young, handsome captain himself or one of his top lieutenants, either John Coughty, of Irish heritage, or Thomas Vandyke, of Dutch ancestry.

  At this most exhilarating of moments for the often-vanquished Washington, Sullivan’s fast-moving column of First Division troops continued to be led by Captain Flahaven’s New Jersey Continentals while Colonel John Stark’s hard-hitting New Hampshire regimen
t of rawboned New England veterans, Sargent’s brigade, followed close behind. Because of level terrain and adrenaline pulsated through their systems, Sullivan’s troops advanced at a good pace southeast along the River Road. Now unleashed, Sullivan’s men headed toward the town’s southwestern end. Most importantly, the vanguard of Sullivan’s First Division column rushed toward Trenton’s lower end at the exact time as planned by Washington, revealing a remarkably close coordination of multiple attack columns, especially under such adverse conditions that made footing treacherous. As indicated by the rattle of musketry from both divisions, Washington’s strike force were now attacking simultaneously, and exactly as originally envisioned by the commander-in-chief with a farsighted tactical clarity back in eastern Pennsylvania.

  In a timeliness that was almost miraculous under the circumstances, both assault columns of Washington’s right and left wings (the First and Second Divisions, respectively) of his well-designed pincer movement struck hard at almost exactly the same time. The gods of war, perhaps even Mars himself of the Roman people, now seemed to be on the American’s side this morning, smiling benignly on Washington and his ragamuffin revolutionaries, if only because they had persevered for so long against all manner of adversity. Clearly, even more than the precarious Delaware crossing, this was now Washington’s finest hour, and an unprecedented measure of personal and professional redemption.

  Waking up to a snowy nightmare in which he suddenly saw far more attacking Americans than ever imagined, the most advanced Hessian picket on the River Road and the farthest south of Captain Altenbockum’s string of pickets fired a belated return shot at the swarm of howling soldiers of Sullivan’s vanguard charging toward him. Frightened out of his wits, this lone Hessian picket then fled down the road and toward the picket headquarters. Here, duplicating the success of Captain Washington’s Virginia vanguard in sweeping aside Wielderhold and Altenbockum’s advanced pickets to the northeast, Captain Flahaven’s band of First New Jersey Continental Regiment soldiers, who were especially eager to liberate this occupied New Jersey town and its downtrodden patriotic citizens, poured down the River Road with loud cheers. Most likely now carrying antiquated Wilson-contract flintlocks marked “New Jersey” from the days of the French and Indian War, the hard-charging New Jersey Continentals surged through the snow flurries toward the main Hessian picket post at Philemon Dickinson’s home located about a half mile beyond Trenton’s southwestern outskirts, the Hermitage. Now leading the local New Jersey militia on the river’s west side, Colonel Dickinson was fortunate that this fine mansion had not been already burned down in retaliation for his guerrilla activities: an unexpected benefit of winter’s arrival since the Hessian occupiers had needed warm quarters, sparing the stately mansion.