George Washington's Surprise Attack
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All of these enterprising junior officers except Washington’s senior commanders, such as Mercer and Stirling who were in their early fifties, were younger than most of Rall’s officers, who were in their forties and fifties. At the time of the battle of Trenton, Greene was thirty-four, Knox twenty-six, Hamilton nineteen, and Captain John Fleming, another rising star, twenty-one. Fleming commanded the First Virginia Continental Regiment at Trenton until killed at Princeton.
This highly motivated, energetic officer corps represented the development of something special: an elite officer corps, which had subtly occurred without anyone quite fully realizing it, and just in time for the Trenton challenge. Without a standing army or professional military tradition as in Prussia and England, a good many gifted, talented American civilians, including men with little or no prior military experience or training and from all walks of life, had come together in a people’s revolution to lead mostly untrained, ill-equipped troops to prevail over veteran professional soldiers under European military-educated leaders. Most importantly, they demonstrated that older, more experienced Hessian leaders, who fought by the rule book in a traditional manner, could no longer so easily dominate this new generation of America’s revolutionary leaders, who had relied upon flexibility, innovativeness, and suppleness, rather than revered European military educations and convention, to overcome their opponents at Trenton: the rise of the American way of war.
Washington, five years younger than Colonel Rall, had persevered amid the greatest adversity and series of defeats which had allowed him the opportunity to evolve, adapt, and mature until he emerged as a flexible, masterful orchestrator of brilliant innovative tactics at Trenton literally at the last minute. Washington had been thoroughly tempered by the almost unbearable weight of military and political uncertainties, lack of support on every level, and embarrassing defeats (a harsh tactical and leadership school of hard knocks that forced the commander-in-chief to more thoroughly appreciate the wisdom of the distinct, inherent tactical advantages of the unconventional tactics of partisan, or insurgency, warfare) to set the stage for the timely creation of his tactical masterpiece at Trenton.
By relying upon a masterful blend of mobility, stealth, and surprise to strike an overpowering blow to break an opponent’s will to resist, Washington in essence emulated Napoleon’s most successful tactics and a dynamic leadership style that inspired his troops to achieve the impossible during the most adverse situation and conditions. America’s nearly fatal, illusionary, and badly misplaced faiths—too much reliance placed upon militia instead of a professional army and the folly of defending fortified positions (the “war of posts”) against a vastly superior and better-trained opponent, an overeagerness to replace Washington as the Continental Army’s commander, and the myth of Hessian invincibility—vanished forever, when hundreds of stunned Rall brigade grenadiers and fusiliers raised their hands to surrender at Trenton: an unbelievable sight never imagined or seen before.
Like Washington himself, so the young men and boys in Washington ranks were likewise transformed and rejuvenated into something entirely new (winners, not losers) by the multiple challenges of crossing the ice-clogged Delaware, the grueling nighttime march through a blinding snowstorm, and engaging in the close-range, urban combat that raged through Trenton’s snowy streets. Because of this searing process that was in essence a character-building forge, they evolved into real professional soldiers who were suddenly were made more formidable by a heightened level of discipline, morale, and determination, thanks to Washington’s leadership skill in honing a keener edge in his men’s abilities, skills, and attitudes that rose to the fore during the Trenton challenge: a most timely development that was necessary to reap the war’s most surprising victory at Trenton. A yet amazed Washington, therefore, warmly praised his men in his official report “for their gallant and spirited behavior [as] he did not see a single instance of bad behavior in either officers or privates.”23
America and the revolutionary struggle’s darkest hour and lowest ebb had finally passed after Washington’s sparkling victory at Trenton, vanishing like Howe and Great Britain’s loftiest imperial ambitions in the snows of Trenton. Nevertheless, the battle of Trenton had been a very close thing, and much more so than generally recognized by historians. The impetuous, infant American republic came precariously close to succumbing to an early, agonizing death, until Washington gambled everything on one throw of the dice by unleashing the carefully calculated and most audacious surprise attack in American history.
Less than a quarter century after the battle of Trenton and long after more than three thousand Hessians, including those Germans captured at Trenton and George Armstrong Custer’s ancestor—a Hessian sergeant captured at Saratoga—either settled in America or returned to Germany, Washington departed his stately Mount Vernon mansion on horseback in softly falling snow. This gentle snowfall might well have reminded him of that unforgettable December 26 morning along the Delaware in western New Jersey so long ago. As was his custom, Washington rode out into the biting cold to survey the sprawling lands, covered in bare trees and brown fields, of his Mount Vernon estate on December 12, 1799, which was possibly on the anniversary of the very day some twenty-three years before when he had decided to assault Trenton.
Preoccupied with the upkeep of his extensive properties, Washington remained out longer in the cold, windy weather than was prudent. All the while, the snow and sleet steadily fell across the farming lands that bordered the wide Potomac, covering the landscape in a blanket of white. But Washington simply ignored the incessant deluge just like during the nightmarish, December 25-26, 1776 march upon Trenton through a swirling snowstorm that seemed to have no end. Washington was about to catch a nasty cold and a “very sore” throat from a severe bacterial infection, while snowflakes dropped softly around him like on that cold, unforgettable December morning so long ago, when it had seemed that America’s republican experiment in nationhood was doomed to certain annihilation.
Instead of returning to a warm fireplace at his Mount Vernon mansion to change his wet clothing, Washington, age sixty-seven, continued to gallop over the winter-hued land that he loved. Amid the gently falling snow that descended over the Virginia Tidewater, perhaps he once again felt a certain sense of exhilaration with the fond memory of his most brilliant tactical achievement of the war when he had been in his prime. After all, Washington’s remarkable success at Trenton was in part due to the fierce snowstorm that had served as an effective screen for his attackers, demonstrating that such inclement conditions favored a guerrilla-like offensive strike even in winter, while good weather conditions always favored regular troops and conventional warfare.
Therefore, if such comforting thoughts of past glory were in mind, Washington might well have even savored nature’s wintertime beauty and the serene, calm silence of the cascading snow, which shortly piled up to several inches. But any such invigorating thoughts about that all-important late December morning in 1776, when he won his most audacious gamble of the war to revive the faith of a fast-fading people’s revolution, had dimmed considerably by the time that Washington lay dying in his bed. Ironically, partly because of a physician’s excessive ill-advised bleeding that resulted in a much greater loss of Washington’s blood than he had shed on that cold Thursday morning at Trenton, Washington’s last day of life, when he was bled four times and lost five pints of blood that devastated his massive body and left him near hemorrhagic shock, came on December 14: the anniversary of when he had been planning his surprise attack on Trenton nearly a quarter century before.
Ironically, Washington’s end came as swiftly and as unexpectedly as when he had delivered his tactical masterstroke and surprise attack that doomed an entire Hessian brigade to inglorious defeat at Trenton. Perhaps, in his final hour with his life slowly fading away thanks in no small part to so-called remedies and medicines of his physicians, Washington yet heard the cold, winter wind howl outside Mount Vernon’s windows as wh
en it had raged so fiercely in sweeping through his thin column of ragged soldiers, while they toiled relentlessly through the snow toward Trenton and a rendezvous with destiny. Therefore, Washington now might well have thought back upon or dreamed one final time about that unforgettable December 26 morning and his remarkable success, when he was never prouder of the splendid performance of his long-suffering, stoic men, who rose so magnificently to their greatest challenge.24
While Mount Vernon lay under a white shroud of snow like the little Delaware River town of Trenton so long ago when he was a much younger man, Washington also might have found a measure of solace in perhaps recalling his best leadership decision of that memorable campaign that had made his surprise of the Trenton garrison possible, when he issued his December 1, 1776 order for his men to secure “particularly . . . the Durham Boats which are very proper” for crossing the Delaware to make possible the most audacious and unexpected success of the American Revolution.25
Ironically, and most symbolically, Washington had also ordered the assembly of “all vessels to ferry the armies [American and French in August 1781] across the Delaware” on the march to Yorktown and the final decisive victory against his old antagonist, Cornwallis, who had chased him across the Delaware in early December 1776, just before he reversed the tide at Trenton.26
Clearly, in his final hours, Washington possessed ample good reason to have reflected with fondness on what he had accomplished against the odds at Trenton, and how he had confounded all of the leading military experts. The revolution’s course could not have been reversed at Trenton without the Virginian having first employed the most appropriate tactical lessons from both sides of the Atlantic which combined—a most timely fusion and fortuitous synergy—at a time, when Washington had desperately needed to do something radically different in tactical terms to rescue America’s struggle from the jaws of defeat. Indeed, the insightful words of Sun Tzu, written around 500 BC, which emphasized the importance of a military commander having the uncanny ability to evolve and change his outdated thinking and obsolete, failing tactics, adopting to more fluid, innovative, and flexible tactics to achieve victory, demonstrate the true secret to Washington’s remarkable success at Trenton. The philosophic Chinese war theorist wrote how “Military tactics are like unto water, for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. So in war, the way to avoid what is strong is to strike what is weak . . . He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.”27
At Trenton, Washington mastered these fundamental ancient truths, timeless lessons, and secrets of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to reap his first real battlefield success in dramatic fashion. As revealed in an editorial in the January 21, 1777 issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post and that hinted of Sun Tzu’s ancient axioms of war: “Gen. Washington, perceiving this favourable [sic] opportunity, on a sudden resolves to take advantage of it. In one of those dark and dismal nights, which the greatest masters in the art of war recommend for an enterprise of this kind, he passes over the Delaware with only twenty-four hundred men and quick as lightening falls on the astonished and surprised enemy [and] He wins an almost bloodless victory. . . .”28
“Nowhere in the annals of warfare can be found a counterpart of the winter campaign of Washington and his army,” wrote historian William S. Stryker. America was fortunate to have had exactly the right man, at the right place, and at the right time to reverse a new nation’s destiny in late December 1776. Victory at Trenton was simply not possible without Washington’s “incredible ability to persist in the face of uncertainties, agonizing betrayals, frustrations and prolonged desperate physical demands that would have stopped almost any other man.”29 In fact, never in the history of nations was a people’s revolution closer to the brink of certain extinction and dark oblivion than immediately before Washington struck with an unexpected blow at Trenton to reverse the course and fortunes of war.
However, in the unforgettable story of Trenton, other leading players and architects of this most dramatic of Washington’s victories have been doomed to obscurity. Even the irrepressible, can-do brigade commander who had made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware, John Glover, was not only soon forgotten, but also wreaked emotionally, physically, and financially by the war’s demands and horrors. Glover’s large family, without a main provider while the patriarch served for years under Washington and at a time when Marblehead’s economy was wrecked by the British blockage of the Grand Banks, suffered most severely. While battling for a new nation’s liberty, Glover lost much of what was most precious to him, including his eldest son, who had marched beside him during the stormy descent upon Trenton, and his wife Hannah, who died of disease at Marblehead in 1778. As Glover penned to Washington of his sad personal situation in 1778 less than two years after the battle of Trenton: “When I entered the service in 1775 I had as good a constitution as any man of my age, but it’s now broken and shattered to pieces,” thanks in no small part to his leading role in orchestrating the Delaware crossing, leading his New England Continentals into the raging battle at Trenton, and achieving significant tactical gains in the lower town.30
At the war’s conclusion and after having obtained a general’s rank, Glover returned “home a Beggar” to his motherless family, failed business, and modest wooden Georgian gambrel, two-story house that faced the sea, which had once provided his family with prosperity. Tragically, Glover described how years of faithful service to his country under Washington came at “the expense of my Little fortune, earned by hard labor and industry; to the sacrifice . . . and total ruin of a family of [eight] young children. . . .”31
Like the irrepressible Glover, Washington’s common soldiers also paid a high price in order to reap their unforgettable victory at Trenton. While no Americans had been killed and only six wounded at Trenton, the final tally of the sacrifice was actually much higher among these tried veterans in the months and even years after the battle. Exactly how many of Washington’s soldiers eventually died of exhaustion, disease, and exposure from the winter campaign’s harsh rigors will never be known, but this number was almost certainly higher than the total Hessian casualties of more than one hundred. One of Washington’s typical Trenton veterans who paid a high price for this all-important victory on that late December morning was Ireland-born soldier Private William McCarty, of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Ware’s First Maryland Continental Regiment, which was part of Mercer’s brigade.
Crippled by the arduous 1776 winter campaign and plagued with worthless Continental money from spiraling inflation while his Maryland family suffered from his lengthy absence, this forgotten hero of the battle of Trenton finally deserted out of an urgent need to at long last go home, but only after the revolution’s fortunes had been successfully reversed. In a February 1777 Maryland Gazette newspaper ad, placed by his captain, Alexander Murray, that offered a four dollar reward for his capture, William McCarty was described as “an Irishman, about forty years old, [and he] had on when he deserted, a blanket over-coat, round hat, and his shoes tied with strings, his feet have been frost-bitten. He says he was an old soldier in the British service, he has something of the [Irish] brogue in his language.”32
Although Private McCarty’s sacrifice was never listed in his official army service records, McCarty’s tragic case revealed the high hidden and tragic costs that continued to be paid in full by Trenton veterans long after the battle. These were Washington’s forgotten, untabulated casualties of the perilous river crossing, the nightmarish march to Trenton, harsh winter conditions, and the bitter street fighting: true losses that were in striking contrast to the mythical, much-embellished, and endlessly repeated story of the two never-identified American soldiers who supposedly froze to death during the snowy trek to Trenton.33
Even General Stirling, who had been relatively well-clothed for winter’s harshest offerings compared to the threadbare enlisted men, became �
��very ill . . . owing to what I suffered on our Expedition to Trenton,” as penned in a January 8, 1777 letter.34 All that Washington’s common soldiers received for their supreme efforts and high sacrifices, except for considerable personal satisfaction, was sincere thanks from Congress: although these young men and boys from across America had been “broken by Fatigue & ill-Fortune” on December 26, they nevertheless were “inspired, and animated by a just Confidence in their Leader,” and greatly “exceed[ed] E[x]pection [and] the Limits of Probability.”35
Paradoxically, even a good many Hessians captured at Trenton were more fortunate than Washington’s victors, like Private McCarty, even as prisoners. German soldiers, both before and after their capture, fell in love with America, which they viewed as an “earthly paradise” and “the land of promise—the land where milk and honey flows,” as one Hessian captain wrote in a letter.36 Another Hessian officer marveled about America’s seemingly endless promise: “Here a man, even of the meanest [lowest] station, provided he will only do something, can live as well as the richest.” Therefore, a large percentage of the captured Hessians, including Lieutenant Wiederhold, eventually became good, faithful American citizens after their parole and release. In this new land of endless bounty and promise so unlike impoverished Hesse-Cassel, many of Rall’s veterans gained liberal land grants and found loving American wives, raising families and blending in with the young nation’s melting pot population after the war’s end. In a strange twist of fate, a large percentage of surviving grenadiers and fusiliers eventually became part of what they once had fought so hard against on that late December morning in Trenton’s snowy streets.37