George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Consequently, even if their aim was off, Mercer’s Continentals and Connecticut state troops could yet hit lucrative targets with blasts of buck and ball, especially at close range, from smoothbores: a distinct advantage during a snowstorm when visibility was so severely hindered and limited. Some of the hottest fire now streamed from behind Rall’s quarters just west of King Street, pouring from Mercer’s riflemen, especially Rawlings’s lethal sharpshooters of the First Regiment of Maryland Continentals, now under the able command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Ware. These sharp-eyed Marylanders continued to demonstrate exactly why they recently had been the Hessians’ nemesis at Fort Washington.

  While hurriedly reloading their muskets in small, sulphurous smoke-filled rooms of darkened houses bordering King Street’s west side, perhaps some of Mercer’s soldiers now took a moment to marvel at the sight of the Hessians’ splendid discipline and fancy uniforms. Contrary to myth, not every Hessian soldier wore the standard Prussian blue uniforms, only troops of the Rall and Knyphausen Regiments. The von Lossbergers of all six companies wore scarlet coats, like their British allies. Meanwhile, Rall’s grenadiers were donned in the short blue coat patterned after the Prussian uniforms that had long distinguished the troops under Frederick the Great, who early understood that his soldiers fought more effectively if unhindered by the traditional long waist coats worn by other European soldiers.

  Rall’s battle-hardened grenadiers also looked more formidable because they wore tall “mitre” hats, with large decorative brass front-plates but yet light, instead of the broad tricorne infantry hat, which had been traditionally deemed impractical for grenade throwing (the source of the word grenadier). However, at the head of their respective grenadier and fusilier companies, Rall’s officers wore stylish bicorn hats as in the days of Frederick the Great, revealing their rank to Washington’s marksmen. Men in such brightly colored Hessian uniforms made ideal targets for veteran American soldiers, now wearing dirty, nondescript homespun, especially when displayed against a white background. For Mercer’s Maryland veterans, the systematic killing of exposed Hessian soldiers, especially officers, was almost like shooting down grazing turkeys and white-tailed deer in the Catoctin, Sugar Loaf, and South Mountains of Frederick County in western Maryland.

  Swept by multiple blistering fires, Rall’s counterattack floundered and front lines buckled, after having advanced more than fifty yards and about halfway up King Street, that had become a killing field, to nearly reach Petty’s Run. The Rall Regiment’s Christmas night and morning “watch-guard,” of around thirty men, under Lieutenant Johann Heinrich Sternickel, leading the assault column forward into the eye of the storm was literally cut to pieces. Exposed in the lonely open expanse of King Street, that had become little more than a shooting gallery, just below Petty’s Run, Sternickel’s vanguard was almost entirely swept away by Mercer’s blistering flank fire and Forrest’s canister and grapeshot simultaneously striking them from the front. Along with a good many of his ill-fated men, Sternickel fell with a mortal wound. What little remained of the elite “watch-guard” survivors escaped from the nightmarish carnage of King Street, heading east toward Queen Street to seek shelter from the artillery storm. The respected lieutenant’s fall into the snow and his vanguard’s systematic decimation was an unnerving sight, but the grim-faced grenadiers continued to stoically push onward up the body-strewn slope with fixed bayonets and grim determination to take the high ground.

  To the west, meanwhile, Mercer’s rapidly firing men no doubt took some grim satisfaction in seeing the amount of devastation that they inflicted among such a feared adversary, who had beaten them so often in the past. After all, these marksmen benefitted from hitting German targets not only at close range, but also from the advantage of the higher terrain west of King Street that gradually ascended to a high point at King Street’s head. The snow-covered ground on King Street’s west side, which sloped gently eastward, was higher than at street level, providing Mercer’s marksmen with an elevated firing position from which to deliver a plunging fire that unmercifully raked the Hessians’ left flank.

  After having just witnessed the disturbing sight of the thorough decimation of Lieutenant Sternickel’s vanguard, a mounted Lieutenant Colonel Balthasar Brethauer halted his hard-hit grenadier ranks to restore order. Shouting directives amid the screaming hail of projectiles, he straightened the grenadier’s shredded ranks as best he could. Brethauer wisely realized that continuing to advance any farther up the slope and the open street beyond Petty’s Run in the face of Forrest’s artillery fire was simply suicidal. Then, in a desperate effort to slow the blistering fire pouring off the high ground at King Street’s head and with Sternickel’s vanguard troops no longer in his front, Brethauer ordered Rall’s grenadiers to realign ranks and then unleash their first volley of the day. This first eruption of musketry exploded from the grenadier’s ranks, roaring through the falling snow and up King Street.

  However, this initial volley from Rall’s formation proved entirely ineffective for a number of reasons. First, despite the fact that the grenadiers were now deployed on open ground just south of Petty’s Run, the distance and range was too great to do any damage to Washington’s infantrymen and cannoneers on higher ground. And visibility was obscured with the wind, snow, and ice whipping into Hessian faces, ensuring an inaccurate fire by the Germans. The grenadier’s first volley was also inconsequential because so many Hessian muskets were wet and black powder changes compromised by this time. Many Germans, therefore, were surprised that upon pulling triggers, the striking of flint on steel produced no flash in the firing pan as priming powder failed to ignite, resulting in no chain reaction of black powder charges necessary to fire muskets.

  Therefore, because of these combined factors, not a single American soldier on the high ground fell dead or wounded from the first concentrated Hessian volley of the day. However, exposed in the open at the top of the heights near King Street’s head, a mounted Washington experienced a close call. With raised sword and in the open, the commander-in-chief, wearing a tricorn hat and sitting tall in the saddle, which made him an excellent target, was shouting orders to his men when a Hessian bullet passed between the fingers of his raised hand. Washington, remaining calm as usual and even somewhat invigorated by the excitement of combat as since his youth when he had first discovered that “there was something charming” in the “whistle” of bullets, merely sardonically responded to a nearby staff officers with the reassuring words, “That has passed by.” He then continued to inspire his soldiers to fire faster, as if nothing had happened.

  Meanwhile, in contrast to the Hessians’ impotent fire, the Americans, who relished the German’s transition from a moving mass to a more inviting stationary target, continued to hit exposed Hessians with an accurate fire, while the crackle of gunfire echoed higher over Trenton. Then, Lieutenant Colonel Brethauer went down before the ranks of his grenadiers not long after issuing the order to fire when his horse was hit with grapeshot from the Pennsylvania field pieces. He fell hard, tumbling in the snow and ice lining King Street just below Petty’s Run. Combined with the number of Hessian muskets that failed to fire, the alarming sight of Brethauer falling at the formation’s head was yet another factor that shook the grenadier’s confidence and morale. Nevertheless, the proud grenadiers of Rall’s Regiment defiantly stood their ground amid the swirls of smoke and bloodstained snow just below little Petty’s Run, continuing to put up a good fight. Then, all of a sudden, Brethauer, unlike the stricken Lieutenant Sternickel who lay in the snow, seemingly rose up from the dead. Demonstrating considerable composure amid the hail of lead, meanwhile, those grenadiers with yet operable weapons quickly reloaded them like they had practiced on a hundred drill fields, while other Hessians sought frantically to dry flints and priming pans and remove wet paper cartridges loads from flintlocks with bullet exacters that had been attached to ramrod tips. Despite his throbbing wound, hard fall from his horse, and illness of the past severa
l days, Brehauer was suddenly back on his feet and once again in command. Gamely ignoring the pain and shaking off his lingering sickness, Brethauer roared for his grenadiers to unleash a second volley.

  Another explosion of gunfire rippled down the Hessian ranks like a bolt of lightning, with a sheet of flame erupting down the line. After the grenadiers fired their second volley, Brethauer somehow managed to remain standing amid the falling snow, inspiring his troops to even greater exertions. After losing more blood and growing faint, he was soon assisted rearward by a strong-armed grenadier to seek a physician and a fresh mount to continue the fight. With a wife back in Germany, Major Johann Jost Matthaus, age fifty-eight and born in Schwarzenberg, Saxony, now took charge of what remained of the battered Rall Regiment after Brethauser’s departure down body-strewn King Street. In a seamless transference of regimental command, the experienced major rose to the challenge amid the storm of projectiles that had transformed King Street into a hell on earth for the hard-hit Rall and von Lossberg Regiments. Hoping to rush the two three-pounders into action as soon as possible especially now that the infantrymen were faltering, Major Matthaus and Rall continued to implore Lieutenant Engelhardt to get the guns up in a hurry to provide support.

  All the while, Haslet’s Delaware soldiers, now situated in houses north of Mercer’s troops, raked the head of Rall’s formation, while Mercer’s Maryland, Connecticut, and Massachusetts soldiers, just to the south of the Delaware Continentals, riddled the Hessians’ left flank from the west. Nothing diminished the volume of galling musketry streaming from Washington’s veterans because the Hessians’ return fire was directed north instead of west. Like the first volley, the second volley unleashed by Rall’s grenadiers, aligned just below Petty’s Run, proved nothing more than a waste of ammunition.

  Not one of Washington’s men were hit by either volley that either sailed too high overhead, or slammed into the snow before them. But most likely, the Hessian volley struck too low, with German soldiers not aiming smoothbore muskets well above their high ground targets in failing to adjust their aim to compensate for higher elevation firing. With snow and sleet blowing into their faces, the Hessian soldiers could barely see Washington’s elevated position, except for the muffled muzzle-flashes from too many American rifles and cannon to count. However, local “tradition” has it that Washington’s chestnut sorrel horse, which was not frightened under him despite the roar of cannon- and gunfire, was hit by a musket ball. If so, then it was most likely from the grenadier’s fire at this point. Sitting tall in the saddle with his imposing height of more than a “full six feet, erect and well proportioned,” Washington was vulnerable because he was determined to remain at the forefront beside his men along the blazing firing line.

  Rall’s hard-hit formations began to recoil under the relentless pounding, with more blasts of canister and grape loosed by the row of Knox’s field pieces. Hundreds of grenadiers and fusiliers, exposed in King Street’s deadly expansiveness, could no longer endure this brutal punishment, while delivering no damage in return during an inequitable duel from a vulnerable lower position. Rall’s troops, therefore, continued to suffer under the torments of several distinct manifestations of concentrated firepower: large caliber smoothbore muskets hurling loads of buck and ball ammunition; Long Rifles unleashing a hail of small caliber balls; and explosions of canister and grapeshot from Forrest’s artillery salvoes.

  Ensign Carl Wilhelm Kleinschmidt, the Rall Regiment’s adjutant, was stunned by the havoc wrought from the fire erupting from the roaring six-pounders and five and a half-inch howitzers, worked rapidly by expert Philadelphia gunners, who seemingly made every shot count as if they held a sadistic grudge or special desire for revenge. With the hard-hit Hessians disoriented by the combined effect of multiple fires and the snow and sleet hurled into faces, the counterattack of Rall’s grenadier regiment finally broke up near Petty’s Run and less than halfway from its intended target at the head of King Street.

  Additional shaken grenadiers, with the screams of wounded comrades ringing in their ears, headed south down King Street with a hail of cannonballs, canister, and grapeshot escorting them rearward. Some unnerved Hessians made haste for the stone bridge across Assunpink Creek to the south. Other stunned grenadiers sought cover behind houses on the east side of King Street or down the dark, narrows alleys and backyards of houses toward Queen Street, just to the east, to escape the incessant fires. After retiring back down King Street, the vast majority of grenadiers headed to the relative safety of Pinkerton’s Alley, where they had earlier formed, however. Likewise, the appropriately named Church Alley, which led to Queen Street and the Methodist Church that stood opposite the alley’s west end, offered refuge a block north of Pinkerton’s Alley for the northernmost grenadiers, who had not continued to retire a block south to Pinkerton’s Alley.

  Obeying officers’ orders, the largest number of Rall’s grenadiers finally began to rally where they had originally formed before the attack—along Pinkerton’s Alley between King and Queen Street and just below Petty’s Run. Other grenadiers continued to withdraw even farther south down King Street, passing through the supporting fusilier ranks of the von Lossberg Regiment’s left wing. This flight south of some Rall’s grenadiers disrupted the von Lossberger’s straight line of their once-tight left wing formation on King Street.

  Not deterred by the sharp setback on King Street, the feisty Rall was only beginning to fight this morning, however. Rall now ordered the well-trained fusiliers of the von Lossberg Regiment—the finest fighting men of the brigade—onward and straight up projectile-swept King Street, after Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer had restored cohesion and quickly realigned his regiment’s left wing into a solid formation once more. Rall’s desperate bayonet attack up King Street was continued by the crack von Lossberg fusiliers, almost as if the Rall Regiment’s repulse had been a unbelievable aberration from some surreal Hessian nightmare too horrible to bear.

  Just below Petty’s Run and the small wooden bridge, the red-uniformed fusiliers of the von Lossberg Regiment likewise took a severe pounding during their relentless advance farther up King Street. Fusilier ranks were flailed by sheets of flame leaping from small arms and Knox’s field pieces. Like the repulsed Rall’s Grenadier Regiment, this punishment delivered upon the von Lossbergers came from the deadly crossfire of musketry, streaming from the west and north, and blasts of artillery-fire from the north. Indeed, Mercer and Haslet’s riflemen and Forrest’s gunners had redirected and concentrated their aim on the steadily advancing von Lossberg Regiment, after Rall’s grenadiers were stopped in their tracks. Now it was the turn of the Lieb (first) Company—the elite Body Guards, who protected the regimental commander with their lives and was a specifically designated company of each regiment—to receive its fair share of punishment. Located on the regiment’s right wing, Captain Johann von Riess commanded this elite company that now suffered severely under the pounding. Not intimidated by barking American Long Rifles in the past or present, Captain Riess had distinguished himself at the battle of White Plains in leading his cheering troops up Chatterton Hill to reap victory.

  On and on up King Street came the brave fusiliers until they advanced beyond the northernmost point reached by Rall’s hard-hit grenadiers. With the snow now strewn with debris, discarded equipment, and red-splattered German bodies, King Street had been transformed into a grim killing field by Knox’s artillerymen, whose salvoes swept the open avenue with a ruthless, deadly efficiency. Like its earlier Rall Regiment victims, this murderous fire caught the crack fusiliers of the Lieb Company in the open. Consequently, these fusiliers now found themselves in an awfully bad fix. Blasting away at targets that they could not miss after having verified the exact range and precise trajectory in earlier smashing the neat grenadier formations to pieces, Forrest’s Pennsylvania cannoneers continued to inflict damage on the hapless von Lossberg fusiliers amid the awful openness of King Street.

  Additionally trusty German officers w
ent down, perhaps including Captain Riess at this point. Under the pounding, the hard-hit right wing of the von Lossberg Regiment fell back, reeling in shock and pain like a wounded beast. As only recently seen, this same destructive formula was repeated, with the left wing of the von Lossberg Regiment wavering from the incessant flank fire, after the battered right wing had been hurled back. Led by Captain Friedrich Wilhelm von Benning, the von Hanstein Company now occupied the von Lossberg Regiment’s left wing, after having belatedly just reached their fusilier regiment because it had been quartered in houses on the Assunpink’s south side.

  Hoping to live to fight another day, some shell-shocked von Lossbergers sought cover to escape the leaden storm while additional comrades were cut down in the body-strewn snow of King Street. Clearly, no matter how well trained or disciplined, any frontal attack with the bayonet by either grenadiers or fusiliers straight up the ascending ground along King Street was suicidal. Rall had learned the hard way that King Street was nothing more than a death trap, and the brutal lesson that not the slightest chance of scoring a breakthrough to disrupt Washington’s closing vise had ever existed in the first place.

  After having only recently lost so much of his own artillery arm thanks partly to the heroics of these same Hessian soldiers during the New York Campaign, Knox never forgot the invigorating sight of the systematic breaking up of the once-magnificent counterattack of both Rall and Lossberg Regiments. Young Captain Wilkinson believed that Rall’s counterattack would have achieved significant gains except for the devastating salvoes of the “six-un battery opened by Captain Forrest under the immediate orders of General Washington.” To escape this punishing artillery fire from the north and musketry from the west, Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer ordered his mauled fusiliers to withdraw south.