George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Most importantly and in dramatic fashion, the two arms of Washington’s envisioned pincer movement now tightly closed shut on King Street, with the double envelopment finally becoming a long-awaited reality in this crucial sector at the most critical moment to hurl back Rall’s most determined counterattack of the day.31 At long last in a most significant merger of the First and Second Divisions, the two Massachusetts regiments surging north up King Street now met face-to-face the Stirling’s Virginia soldiers pushing south down King Street from the north.

  Private Jacob Francis, the resilient African American soldier of the Sixteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment, which advanced north up King Street just behind Paterson’s regiment, described this timely uniting that ensured the winning of the battle of Trenton and the final verification of the tactical wisdom of Washington’s risky double envelopment, when the surging troops of Greene’s Second and Sullivan’s First Divisions finally came together in King Street in what was perhaps the most dramatic meeting of the American Revolution: “General Washington [who] was at the head of that street [King] coming down towards us and some of the Hessian between us and them [and] We had the fight,” before driving the last Rall’s grenadiers out of King Street.32

  Even those Hessians who had secured relatively good defensive positions were pushed out of their King Street hiding places by fast-moving units like Paterson’s Fifteenth Massachusetts from the south and Stirling’s Virginians from the north. As Knox penned in a letter, “The backs of the houses were resorted to for shelter [but] These proved ineffectual: the musketry soon dislodged them.”33

  Running the flaming gauntlet, the battered Rall and von Lossberg Regiments continued to limp east through Trenton, maintaining good order under the circumstances, as if instinctively understanding that safety in numbers—as learned during ceaseless training—meant staying close together, especially when seemingly surrounded by a howling tide of Washington’s encroaching attackers. As throughout the day, Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer, who had taken command as the brigade’s senior commander after Rall’s fall, now led not only what was left of his own von Lossbergers, but also the Rall Regiment’s bloodied remains during the withdrawal east toward the little apple orchard. Sensing the kill, the emboldened Americans pursued the battered grenadier and fusilier regiments east through the smoke-filled streets, firing and loading on the run. Keeping up heavy pressure, Washington’s cheering troops chased Rall’s survivors as close as only fifty feet away, leaving a trail of Hessian bodies in the snow along Fourth Street and its environs as a bloody testimonial to their superior marksmanship and aggressiveness.

  After reaping success on King Street and leading the way, Paterson’s elated Massachusetts soldiers pursued the hard-hit Rall’s grenadiers relentlessly through the palls of drifting smoke. Wisely, with the Hessians on the run, the hard-charging Continentals possessed the good sense—or simply obeyed Washington’s astute orders—not to stop to engage in the time-consuming job of rooting out individual or small groups of exhausted Germans who had taken shelter in houses, basements, and cellars. Instead, Washington’s surging troops simply bypassed these defensive positions, continuing onward in fast pursuit with cheers.

  Wrapped in civilian clothes and dirty blankets, the pursing veterans of Bunker Hill, Long Island, and Harlem Heights instinctively knew that they had to keep the pressure up to secure a complete victory this morning. Through the dropping snowflakes, consequently, the animated Americans closely pursued Rall’s legendary professional soldiers in fancy blue and red uniforms in a life-and-death race in which the winner would take all.34 As in no previous battle, Washington now had the Hessians beaten and on the run. But the commander-in-chief’s challenges were far from over. Most of all, Washington understood what yet had to be achieved in full: Napoleon’s key to achieving decisive success in the art of war, which was the psychological destruction of an opponent’s will to resist to force complete submission and capitulation.35

  On this day of destiny 180 miles northeast of his stately Mount Vernon on the Potomac, to fulfill the requirements of his first battlefield success of the American Revolution, one of Washington’s best tactical decisions had been to order the German Regiment and Hand’s First Pennsylvania Continental Regiment, of Fermoy’s brigade, to “about face” and advance upon Trenton’s northeastern outskirts to thwart Rall’s earlier bid to gain the Trenton-Princeton Road. Therefore, situated to the left of Stephen’s Virginia Brigade, these two fine infantry units, mostly a Pennsylvania attacking force, of Fermoy’s brigade were yet in a perfect position to intercept the retiring Hessians struggling east toward the apple orchard. In another case of good timing, Fermoy’s troops, with the little-known, aristocratic French general at its head, surged off elevated ground from the northeast in a bid to intercept the withdrawing Hessian troops moving east to escape Trenton’s surreal tempest.36

  No one could have been better chosen for this vital mission of closing the trap on the reeling von Lossberg and Rall Regiments from the north than the tactically astute Colonel Hand. With Fermoy’s liabilities in never having led a brigade in combat before, Hand was an experienced commander of outstanding ability. He now fully compensated for what the newly appointed French general, his rookie brigade commander, lacked at this crucial moment. Therefore, Major Wilkinson was not guilty of exaggeration in lavishly praising the key role played by “the brave Colonel Hand” and “his distinguished rifle corps” of expert marksmen, who primarily hailed from the wilds of Pennsylvania’s western frontier.37

  In timely fashion, Hand played a pivotal tactical role in closing the door not only to the escape route to the Princeton-Trenton Road, but also in tightening the noose around the Hessians retiring toward the leafless trees of the apple orchard. In his typical hard-hitting style, Hand led his Pennsylvanians down the snow-covered slope on the double, toward Petty’s Run, and straight toward the Hessians streaming out of Trenton and out into the expanse of open ground east of town: exactly where Washington most desired this combative, dependable commander and his veteran Pennsylvania riflemen to be situated at this time.38

  Meanwhile, as during the arduous night crossing of the Delaware and on yet another one of his finest days as a hard-hitting brigade commander of outstanding tactical ability, Colonel Glover continued to excel southeast of where Rall’s final counterattack was repulsed on King Street. After having led his four Massachusetts regiments and one Connecticut unit southeast and parallel to the river in surging through the lower town, he continued to firmly hold onto the little stone bridge across the Assunpink: a tight grip that would not be relinquished today. Not satisfied simply with the bridge’s capture to effectively block Rall’s southern escape route, Glover had early foreseen what an essential next tactical step was in order to secure a complete victory at Trenton.

  Pushed rearward as if with a giant broom by Sullivan’s swarming attackers, with Stark and his New Hampshire Continentals yet leading the way, after the Knyphausen Regiment had marched by mistake back down Queen Street and into the lower Trenton, Major Dechow led several hundred Knyphausen Regiment fusiliers and its two three-pounders south in a final attempt to reach the stone bridge to escape Washington’s closing trap and Sullivan’s wrath. But thanks to Glover’s timely initiative of securing the Assunpink bridge, the Knyphausen fusiliers received their second nasty surprise of the day when thwarted by the presence of a good many of Glover’s Continental veterans, backed up by Captain Sargent’s Massachusetts artillery, ready to greet them at the bridge.

  Here, the tactically astute colonel from Marblehead had placed an ample number of veterans in good defensive positions before the bridge and across the elevated terrain along the Assunpink’s south bank. Consequently, the thwarted Knyphausen soldiers were forced to turn away from the stone bridge and Glover’s sturdy roadblock bolstered by artillery. Major Dechow’s fusiliers then pushed straight east, following the Assunpink’s north side in an attempt to find a way across the overflowing waterway, hoping to
escape by a ford higher up the creek. All the while, the desperate Knyphausen soldiers were raked by scorching fires from two directions: from the west by Washington’s relentless pursuers and from the south by Sargent and Glover’s mostly New Englanders across, or on the south side of, the tidal creek.

  To head off the withdrawing Knyphausen Regiment and acting without orders, Glover hurried the largest part of his Massachusetts and Connecticut brigade eastward on the double quick and parallel to the broad, dark-colored creek. Glover’s troops followed the Assunpink’s frozen, brush-covered south bank of the rain-swollen watercourse. With keen foresight, Colonel Glover also ordered twenty-three-year-old Captain Sargent, the gifted Harvard graduate (Class of 1771), to hurry two six-pounders east with his onrushing infantry to provide “long-arm” support. Most importantly, Glover was yet in the process of filling a crucial tactical gap for the realization of Washington’s double envelopment, accomplishing what Ewing’s Pennsylvania militia had failed to tactically achieve by not crossing the Delaware at Trenton Ferry. With his usual skill, Glover extended the southern arm of Washington’s pincer movement eastward to broaden the grip of the ever-tightening noose around the Rall brigade.

  By this time around five hundred yards below, or south of, the apple orchard just below Petty’s Run northeast of town and east of Queen Street, Sullivan ordered his foremost troops, St. Clair’s three regiments with Stark still leading the way, to continue advancing east toward the Knyphausen Regiment’s rear guard, which now protected Dechow’s retreat eastward. Firing and inflicting punishment from the west, these rejuvenated soldiers drove the Knyphausen Regiment’s survivors farther toward where the dim winter sun tried in vain to poke through the dark bank of snow clouds. Keeping up heavy, relentless pressure, these onrushing attackers literally herded Major Dechow’s troops into a low swampy and underbrush-choked area, now covered in ice and snow but also muddy after having been churned up by soldiers’ feet, along the creek’s north side east of the stone bridge: a natural trap for these weary, half-beaten fusiliers, who had seen everything turn against them.39

  All the while, the elated Continentals continued to converge on their outgunned Knyphausen victim, applying steady pressure and inflicting additional damage, both physical and psychological, to steadily erode Hessian combat capabilities and, most importantly, the will to resist, while Washington’s net drew tighter. Rall’s dying hope of revering the day’s fortunes faded even further away, along with the white haze of battle-smoke blowing off and eventually slipping away into nothingness like the loftiest Hessian ambitions for reaping victory and winning glory at the small river town of Trenton.

  Running the Deadly Gauntlet

  Meanwhile, the battered troops of the Rall and von Lossberg Regiments continued to stumble east through the driving snow between King and Queen Streets. They yet suffered from multiple fires unleashed by Washington’s soldiers, including troops advancing on a parallel course through adjoining streets and alleys, and a few emboldened Trenton civilians, ensconced in houses, who continued to blast away at finely uniformed officers. Running the blazing gauntlet of fire, the surviving Hessians eventually gained Queen Street, whose icy openness became the next shooting gallery, proving as lethal as King Street. From the higher ground along the northern part of Queen Street, Hamilton’s New York six-pounders belched a blistering fire on the Hessians’ left flank, while Captain Moulder’s barking four-pounders that had been imported all the way from France fired northward from the corner of Queen and Second Streets into the German’s right flank on the south.

  Combined with bursts of musketry erupting from Stirling’s left from the north and Sullivan’s troops from the south and southwest, this sweeping artillery cross fire sandwiched the German grenadier and fusilier regiments in yet another bad fix when they attempted to pass across Queen Street’s open expanse. Grenadier Reuber described the horror of attempting to get across Queen Street: “The Americans had seven artillery pieces in position there [but] We had to get through. It was very hard for us, very costly” in attempting to reach the relative safety of the apple orchard.40 In a jubilant letter to his wife, Knox described the success, writing how, “Finally they were driven through the town and into the open plain beyond.”41 Displaying a sense of empathy for the crack fighting men whom Americans had only recently feared as no other troops on the North American continent, Knox even felt a bit sorry for the plight of the “poor fellows” of the Rall brigade.42

  Indeed, after streaming east out of Trenton primarily by way of Fourth Street, but also through dark, bullet-swept alley ways, especially Church Alley, which ran perpendicular to Queen Street, the Rall and von Lossberg Regiments followed their three remaining field officers east, after crossing projectile-swept Queen Street and heading toward the final north-south road on Trenton’s eastern outskirts, Quaker Lane that intersected Dark Lane above Petty’s Run. With the mortally wounded Rall left behind in his agony, the highest ranking surviving Hessian officers yet hoped to move their hard-hit troops back to where Rall’s ill-fated counterattack had begun with so much promise among the bare trees of the apple orchard. All the while, Rall’s surviving Germans ran a perfect gauntlet of fire pouring forth from Knox’s blazing cannon, positioned on high ground just north of Petty’s Run, which had been pushed farther south to close Washington’s trap. The fact that these two hard-hit Hessian regiments yet retained even a small measure of discipline and cohesion, not to mention fighting spirit, was a high testament to the fusilier and grenadier’s high level of experience, resolve, and discipline.

  At last, the battered Hessian force of two regiments finally gained a much-needed, but brief, respite upon once again reaching the apple orchard where “they formed in an instant,” penned an impressed Knox, after having pushed north a short distance up Quaker Lane. Here, just south of Petty’s Run, Rall’s survivors soon realized that they were almost as vulnerable as if they had remained in the smoke-filled town. Therefore, with their esteemed brigade commander and so many capable company leaders already having been cut down, the highest ranking surviving trio of the two regiment’s field officers met in a hasty conference under the brown branches of a leafless apple tree that offered scant protection from American bullets. By this time, however, the overall situation could not have been worse for the Rall and von Lossberg Regiments: repeatedly repulsed in town, brigade commander Rall now dying a slow, agonizing death, and Washington’s advancing soldiers closing in and now descending upon the outnumbered Rall and von Lossberg Regiments in a sweeping, giant “half-moon” that promised to soon engulf, if not destroy, them. Clearly, Washington’s double envelopment and the fatal vise of the two pincer arms could be neither slowed nor stopped by this time.

  After a hasty conference, therefore, Lieutenant Colonel Scheffner and Major Ludwig von Hanstein of the von Lossberg Regiment, and Major Johann Jost Matthaeus of the Rall Regiment, who was taller than his fellow senior officers and known for his exceptionally “long legs,” decided to attempt a break out to escape Washington’s tightening noose. They now prepared “to make a hole” through the advancing American formations by pushing northeast and then farther up the Assunpink in a desperate attempt to gain an upper ford and eventually gain the Princeton-Trenton Road by which they could reach the British garrison at Princeton. At this time, Major Matthaeus, nearly age sixty and a professional soldier since a teenager, was yet haunted by the fact that he had in vain urged Rall of the urgent tactical necessity of patrolling Johnson’s Ferry to prevent a surprise crossing of the Delaware and attack upon Trenton.

  Hoping for the best after having gained the apple orchard, meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer walked down the diminishing fusilier ranks, getting ready to lead the von Lossbergers northeast in a final bid to escape Washington’s tightening tactical trap. However, the von Lossberg fusiliers were now out of both time and luck, as an unkind fate was fast catching up with the surviving Hessians. Swarms of Washington’s advancing infantrymen and cannon seemed to be every
where, unleashing additional musketry and doses of death to young men and boys from across Germany.

  Even before they could undertake their last bid for freedom, the fusiliers and grenadiers were blocked by the relentless advance of Stirling and Stephen’s troops and especially Fermoy’s brigade, Hand’s Pennsylvania riflemen and the sizeable German Regiment, from the northeast, from right to left, respectively. Most importantly, this powerful array of onrushing veteran infantrymen was backed up by the considerable firepower of Captains Forrest’s Pennsylvania, and Hamilton’s and Baumann’s New York artillery on the north. These well-manned field pieces, mostly three-pounders and six-pounders, were shifted to point a menacing row of iron and bronze barrels toward the southeast, targeting the floundering Hessians in the open space of the apple orchard. Now in advanced positions to complete the process of entrapping the Rall brigade, these experienced American units had extended not only farther south, but also east and closer to the Assunpink’s west bank, which turned north from the town’s southern end, to ensure that there would be no escape for the two Hessian regiments this morning.