In fact, in the course of the night two of the men did freeze to death.
There was little light to see by. A few men carried lanterns, and torches were mounted on some of the cannon.
The entire 2,400 on the march kept together for five miles, as far as a little crossroads called Birmingham, where the army divided, Sullivan’s column keeping to the right on the River Road, while Washington’s and Greene’s force veered off to the left on the Pennington Road, both routes slick with ice and snow. The distance to Trenton was the same either way, about four miles. Men and horses kept slipping and skidding in the dark.
A Connecticut lieutenant, Elisha Bostwick, remembered Washington coming along on his horse, telling the men “in a deep and solemn voice” to keep with their officers. “For God’s sake keep with your officers.”
When his army had marched out of Boston heading for New York and their first field of battle, the commander-in-chief had traveled by coach. Much of the time since, he had conducted the war from established headquarters in elegant houses. And though he had been with the army the night of the escape from Brooklyn and through the retreat across New Jersey, until now he had never been with them as a field commander on the attack.
When handed a message from General Sullivan saying that the men had found their guns too soaked to fire, Washington answered, “Tell the general to use the bayonet.”
“None but the first officers knew where we were going, or what we were about,” John Greenwood wrote.
This was not unusual, however, as I never heard soldiers say anything, nor ever saw them trouble themselves, as to where they were or where they were led. It was enough for them to know that wherever the officers commanded they must go…for it was all the same owing to the impossibility of being in a worse condition than their present one, and therefore the men always liked to be kept moving in expectation of bettering themselves.
The two columns reached their assigned positions outside Trenton at about the same time, a few minutes before eight, an hour after daylight.
TRENTON WAS OFTEN REFERRED TO as a pretty village, which was an exaggeration. With perhaps a hundred houses, an Episcopal church, a marketplace, and two or three mills and iron furnaces, it was, in peacetime, a busy but plain little place of no particular consequence, except that it was at the head of navigation on the river and a stop on the King’s Highway from New York to Philadelphia. There was also a large two-story stone barracks built during the French and Indian War, and the bridge over Assunpink Creek below town.
The principal streets were King Street and Queen Street, which ran parallel toward the river, sloping downhill from the point above town where the Pennington Road and the King’s Highway converged. By Washington’s plan of attack, this point, the head of King and Queen streets, would decide the day.
But in the early light of December 26, in the white blur of the continuing storm, it was difficult to distinguish much of anything about Trenton.
Most of the townspeople had fled, taking as much as possible of their belongings. In the bare houses and the stone barracks were quartered the 1,500 Hessians who occupied the town. Their commander, Colonel Rall, had established himself in an ample frame house on King Street, the home of an owner of an iron furnace, Stacy Potts, who was happy to have the colonel as his guest.
Johann Gottlieb Rall was a sturdy, able career soldier, and at age fifty-six a senior among officers. The command at Trenton had been conferred in recognition of his valor at White Plains and Fort Washington. He was a man of limited imagination. He spoke little or no English and had only contempt for the rebel army. His pleasures were a game of cards, a good drink or two, and martial music, which he relished to the point of absurdity, marching himself with his military band at almost any excuse.
Rall would be roundly criticized later by some of his junior officers for being lazy, lax, indifferent to the possibility of surprise attack, and a drunkard. Captain Johann Ewald, as fair-minded as any Hessian officer who served in America, later wrote that many who criticized Rall after his death were not fit to have carried his sword.
Harassed by rebel patrols that kept coming over the Delaware, Rall had established outposts beyond the town and insisted that each night one company sleep with their muskets ready to be called out at a moment’s notice, and they were called out, it seemed to some, more often than necessary. If anything, the colonel was thought to be too much on edge. (An officer complained in his diary, “We have not slept one night in peace since we came to this place.”)
It was the size of the attack to come, and in such weather, that Rall did not anticipate, and in this he was not alone.
Before departing for New York, General Howe had put James Grant in overall command of the string of outposts in New Jersey. Grant was at Brunswick, twenty-five miles from Trenton. On December 24, he received “certain intelligence” that the rebels were planning an attack on Trenton. While he did not think them “equal to the attempt,” he alerted Rall, telling him to be on guard. Rall received the message at five o’clock the afternoon of the 25th.
Not long after, a dozen Hessians on guard on the Pennington Road beyond town were fired on in the dark by an American patrol, which had quickly withdrawn. Rall himself rode out through the storm to look things over and concluded that this was the attack he had been warned about. On such a night, he assumed nothing more would happen.
Later in the evening Rall attended a small Christmas gathering at the home of a local merchant and was playing cards when, reportedly, a servant interrupted to deliver still another warning message that had been delivered to the door by an unknown Loyalist, and this Rall is said to have thrust into his pocket.
It is not known what time he returned to his quarters or whether, as later said, he had had too much to drink.
***
THE ATTACK BEGAN just after eight o’clock. The Americans under Nathanael Greene came out of the woods and across a field through driving snow about half a mile from town. They were moving fast, at what was called a “long trot.” The Hessians on guard on the Pennington Road had trouble at first making out who they were and how many there were. “The storm continued with great violence,” Henry Knox wrote, “but was in our backs, and consequently in the faces of the enemy.”
The Americans opened fire. The Hessians waited for them to get closer, then fired and began quickly, smoothly falling back into town, exactly as they had been trained to do when retreat was the only choice. Washington thought they performed particularly well keeping up a steady retreating fire.
As Greene’s and Sullivan’s columns converged on the town, Washington moved to high ground nearby on the north where he tried to keep watch on what was happening.
His 2,400 Americans, having been on their feet all night, wet, cold, their weapons soaked, went into the fight as if everything depended on them. Each man “seemed to vie with the other in pressing forward,” Washington wrote.
In town the Hessians came rushing out of their houses and barracks into the streets. Drums beat, the band played, officers shouted orders in German, and as fast as the Hessians began forming up, Knox’s artillery were in position at the head of King and Queen streets.
The cannon opened fire with deadly effect down hundreds of yards on each street, and in minutes—“in the twinkling of an eye,” Knox said—cleared the streets.
When the Hessians retreated into the side streets, they found Sullivan’s men coming at them with fixed bayonets. For a brief time, a thousand or more Americans and Hessians were locked in savage house-to-house fighting.
It was all happening extremely fast, in wild confusion and swirling snow made more blinding by clouds of gunpowder smoke. “The storm of nature and the storm of the town,” wrote Nathanael Greene, “exhibited a scene that filled the mind during the action with passions easier conceived than described.”
When the Hessians rolled out a field gun midway on King Street, a half dozen Virginians led by Captain William Washington (a distant cousin of
the commander) and Lieutenant James Monroe rushed forward, seized it, and turned it on them.
Colonel Rall, who had been rousted from his bed and was quickly on horseback and in command in the midst of the fray, ordered a charge. Men were being hit all around him. The line faltered. He ordered a retreat into an orchard at the southeast edge of town. Then Rall, too, was hit and fell from his horse. Mortally wounded, he was picked up and carried to the Potts house.
The Hessians in the orchard, finding themselves surrounded, lay down their arms and surrendered.
It had all happened in forty-five minutes or less. Twenty-one Hessians had been killed, 90 wounded. The prisoners taken numbered approximately 900. Another 500 had managed to escape, most of them by the bridge over Assunpink Creek.
Incredibly, in a battle of such extreme savagery, only four Americans had been wounded, including Captain Washington and Lieutenant Monroe, and not one American had been killed. The only American fatalities were the two soldiers who had frozen to death during the night on the road.
“After having marched off the prisoners and secured the cannon, stores, etc.,” wrote Knox, “we returned to the place nine miles distant, where we had embarked.” Thus after marching through the night a second time, back to McKonkey’s ferry, the army crossed the Delaware once again back to the Pennsylvania side of the river.
***
NOT SINCE TAKING COMMAND the summer of 1775 had Washington ever addressed the army with such words of praise, affection, and gratitude as he did in his general orders for the following day, December 27. And never had he greater reason. It had been their triumph, he wanted them to know.
“The general, with the utmost sincerity and affection, thanks the officers and soldiers for their spirited and gallant behavior at Trenton yesterday,” he began. “It is with inexpressible pleasure that he can declare that he did not see a single instance of bad behavior in either officers or privates.”
In appreciation of such “spirited behavior” he would see that all who had “crossed the river” would receive, in cash, a proportionate part of the total value of the cannon, arms, horses, and “everything else” captured at Trenton.
Allegedly there had been some less-than-stellar behavior, which either Washington did not see or chose to ignore given the spirit of the moment. With the battle over, a number of soldiers reportedly broke into the Hessian rum supply and got roaring drunk.
Far more, however, would be said later and repeated endlessly of Hessians who supposedly, on the morning of the attack, were still reeling drunk or in a stupor from having celebrated Christmas in the Germanic tradition. But there is no evidence that any of them were drunk. John Greenwood, who was in the thick of the fight, later wrote, “I am willing to go upon oath that I did not see even a solitary drunken soldier belonging to the enemy.”
Major James Wilkinson, the young officer who had been present at the capture of General Lee and who also fought at Trenton and later wrote an account of the battle, made no mention of anyone being drunk.
What Wilkinson did record, memorably, was riding to Washington with a message just after the Hessians had surrendered. “On my approach,” he wrote, “the commander-in-chief took me by the hand and observed, ‘Major Wilkinson, this is a glorious day for our country.’ ”
They all felt something of the kind. They knew they had done something big at last. “The troops behaved like men contending for everything that was dear and valuable,” Knox wrote to Lucy. Nathanael Greene told his wife, “This is an important period to America, big with great events.”
Writing to Governor Trumbull earlier, Washington had prophesied that some “lucky blow” would “rouse the spirits of the people,” but he could hardly have imagined how stunning the effect of the news of Trenton would be on the morale of the country.
In a matter of days, newspapers were filled with accounts of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, the night march and the overwhelming success of the surprise attack, the numbers of prisoners taken, the cannon, arms, swords, horses, even the number of drums and trumpets from Colonel Rall’s military band. But fast post riders and word of mouth spread the story more rapidly still.
John Adlum, the seventeen-year-old private from York, Pennsylvania, who had been captured at Fort Washington and was among the fortunate prisoners—mostly officers—confined to houses in New York and allowed some freedom of movement, wrote later of how he heard the news of Trenton. The owner of a grocery store had pulled him into a back room and kept shaking his hand and trembling with such emotion he was unable to speak.
“I looked at him and thought him crazy or mad,” Adlum wrote, “but as soon as he could give utterance to his word he says to me, ‘General Washington has defeated the Hessians at Trenton this morning and has taken 900 prisoners and six pieces of artillery!’ ”
I did not wait to hear anything more said, but dropped the basket and ran out into the street and passed two [British] sentinels that I had given the countersign on my way to the store. Though they challenged me, I did not stop, but ran as fast as I could to my quarters…. By the time I got home I was quite out of breath and ran into the room where the officers were sitting around the table. Several of them asked what’s the matter, and as soon as I could recover breath to speak I spoke with considerable emphasis: “General Washington has defeated the Hessians at Trenton this morning and has taken 900 prisoners and six pieces of artillery.”
“Who told you so?”
I could not tell as I did not know the gentleman’s name, but I told them it was where I purchased the groceries…. At which some of theofficers laughed and asked me various questions, while others did not say a word and looked very serious, as if doubting the news, and others thought it too good to be true.
Washington was extolled as he had been at Boston, as a hero and savior. “It appears to us that your attack on Trenton was…[a] success beyond expectation,” wrote Robert Morris from Philadelphia on behalf of the Executive Committee of Congress, and this was entirely befitting “a character which we admire and which we have long wished to appear in the world with that brilliancy that success always obtains and which members of Congress know you deserve.”
From Baltimore, addressing Washington on behalf of the entire Congress, John Hancock said that the victory at Trenton was all the more “extraordinary” given that it had been achieved by men “broken by fatigue and ill-fortune.”
But troops properly inspired, and animated by a just confidence in their leader will often exceed expectation, or the limits of probability. As it is entirely to your wisdom and conduct, the United States are indebted for the late success of your arms.
To General James Grant, Howe’s commander of the New Jersey outposts, and thus the one who bore the responsibility for what had happened, Trenton was an “unlucky.”
“cursed” affair, quite beyond comprehension. “ ’Tis an infamous business. I can not account for the misbehavior of the Hessians,” Grant wrote to General Harvey. He had been sure, Grant told Harvey, that the Hessians at Trenton were “as safe as you are in London.”
How Colonel Rall could have failed to act upon the warning he had been given was more than Grant could understand. But then Rall had died of his wounds and would have no chance to speak in his own defense.
In New York, William Howe responded to the news of Trenton by taking immediate action. Cornwallis, his leave canceled, was ordered to return at once to New Jersey with an army of 8,000.
***
WASHINGTON HAD BEEN WEIGHING his next move and worrying over how possibly to keep his army together. His decision, given the way events had turned and his own nature, was not surprising. He would go after the enemy once again.
Thinking that Washington was still in New Jersey, General Cadwalader, in a bold move, had crossed the Delaware downstream at Bristol, and General Mifflin was joining him with more recruits.
On December 29, Washington, Greene, Sullivan, Knox, and their troops were on the move, marching through a six-i
nch snowfall, to cross the Delaware at McKonkey’s Ferry and nearby Yardley’s Ferry, an undertaking that was as harrowing as the crossing of Christmas night. At Yardley’s Ferry, where Greene’s troops crossed, the river was iced over, just thick enough for the men to pick their way warily across, but too thin for horses and cannon. At McKonkey’s, it was only with the greatest difficulty that Washington and the rest were able to get over. Amazingly, Knox and Glover succeeded this time in transporting some 40 cannon and their horses, twice what had been managed Christmas night.
At Trenton, Washington drew up his forces on a low ridge along the south side of Assunpink Creek, with the Delaware on their left flank, a patch of woods to the right. It was December 30. The following day, the last day of 1776, he made a dramatic appeal to the veteran troops of the Continental Army to stay with him.
Having no authority whatever to do so, he offered a bounty of ten dollars for all who would stay another six months after their enlistments expired that day—a considerable sum for men whose pay was six dollars a month.
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