Patriots

by A. J. Langguth

  He stepped over men to get to where Henry Knox was sitting and hailed him coarsely, at least in Knox’s version. Few men ever penetrated Washington’s careful reserve, and as his every word quickly went the rounds, it was usually touched up in the retelling. His troops enjoyed hearing that on this night Washington had nudged Knox with the toe of his boot and said, “Shift that fat ass, Harry. But slowly, or you’ll swamp the damned boat!”

  Though the river was only three hundred yards wide where the Americans were crossing, ice floes dashed against the oars and the poles and made progress slow. When Washington stepped out of the boat on the New Jersey side, he wrapped his cloak against the biting sleet and supervised the landing of the remaining troops. One officer thought he had never seen Washington as purposeful. His horse hadn’t yet made the crossing, and when Washington wanted to sit an aide pulled up an empty box that had been used as a beehive.

  The entire crossing took nine hours. It was 3 A.M. on Thursday, December 26, when the last American soldier stepped onto the New Jersey bank, and another hour before the army was ready to march and the order came, “Shoulder your firelocks.” At the head of the line, a captain checked his priming powder and found that hail had saturated the handkerchief he was using to keep it dry. That news was conveyed to General Washington, who sent his answer ahead to John Sullivan: “Then tell the general to use the bayonet and penetrate into the town. For the town must be taken and I am resolved to take it.”

  Washington halted the column at the village of Birmingham to let the men eat a hurried meal. Washington’s own plate was passed up to him on his horse. When the order was given to resume marching, many soldiers were found asleep in the snow. Rousing them was not easy, but when the men were on their feet Washington divided his column and sent them marching down two different roads that led the five miles to Trenton. John Sullivan took troops to the right, Nathanael Greene to the left. Night began to lift, and Washington saw that he would no longer be able to launch his surprise attack under a cover of darkness. Neither could he retreat. If the Hessians learned that the Americans were on this side of the Delaware, they could set upon them in full strength and trap them with the river to their backs. Men riding alongside General Washington thought he was weighing his options, but in fact he had left himself no choice.

  Washington’s horse lost its footing struggling up one icy slope, and he was nearly thrown. But he grabbed the horse’s mane with both hands and saved himself the fall. To his cold and tired soldiers, he continued to call out, “Press on! Press on, boys!”

  Near the front of the ranks, a young captain, Alexander Hamilton, was now getting the war he had prayed for in the West Indies. Hamilton’s life since his days as a clerk had been a constant surprise. He was still a boy when he had experienced a hurricane in the islands and had written a vivid account of it. That had caused a group of wealthy men to seek him out and offer to send him to study in America. Hamilton had been enrolled at King’s College in New York when a crowd of patriots gathered early in July 1774 for speeches about the crisis facing their colony. Near sunset, a pale youth with a high forehead and glittering eyes spoke so fervently against the British that when he was done men shouted approval. At nineteen, Alexander Hamilton had made himself celebrated.

  Later, a company of artillery was raised in New York and Hamilton was chosen to command it. During the hectic retreat through New Jersey, Hamilton’s energy and skill had impressed George Washington, who had invited him to his tent. By the end of their interview the young captain had become one of Washington’s aides and soon afterward a favorite. On this morning, Hamilton had dismounted during the march and tethered his horse to one of the artillery pieces. He was slightly built but held himself very straight as he slogged along with his men. From time to time he reached out and patted the cannon rolling at his side as though it were a pet.

  When Nathanael Greene’s column came to an unexpected halt, Washington rode forward to find out why. Through the snow, he saw a group of American soldiers gathered in a lane off the main road. Washington rode to them and asked to see their commander. A captain came forward and identified himself as Richard Anderson of the Fifth Virginia, a brigade commanded by Brigadier General Adam Stephen III. Anderson said that General Stephen had sent him out to reconnoiter on Christmas Day. He had been ordered to spy out Hessian outposts as far as Trenton but was not to provoke an engagement. Anderson and his men had been returning from the town when they passed a German sentinel. Though the Hessian hadn’t seen them through the heavy snow, they had shot him, along with five other guards, and left them wounded in the road. Now they were heading back to report to General Stephen.

  All of Washington’s meticulous planning was ruined. The gunfire must have alerted the Hessians and guaranteed that they would be waiting to cut down the Americans as they approached Trenton. As Anderson was reporting to Washington, General Stephen rode up. Washington had a low opinion of Stephen’s military judgment from their time together in the French and Indian War, and they had been political rivals in Virginia. Washington turned on him with his full anger and frustration. Stephen had no authority to send a squad across the river the day before the assault, Washington said. How had he dared to do it? “You, sir,” Washington concluded bitterly, “may have ruined all my plans by putting them on their guard.”

  Adam Stephen said nothing.

  Washington quickly recovered himself. He turned back to Captain Anderson and became quiet and solicitous. Anderson was hardly to blame for the impending disaster.

  —

  Washington’s fears seemed justified. At the sound of gunfire about 7 P.M. on Christmas Day, Colonel Rall had broken off a game of checkers and ordered the Hessians to fall out. The regiments waited in Trenton while scouting parties discovered the wounded men but no trace of their American attackers. Rall suspected that the incident had involved only a few local farmers trying to annoy him. Earlier that day, before the Christmas festivities, one of Rall’s majors had suggested sending away all troop baggage since it would only encumber the Hessians if the Americans attacked. “Fiddle sticks!” Rall had replied. “Those clodhoppers will not attack us! And should they do so, we will simply fall on them and rout them.”

  Colonel Rall returned to the Trenton Tavern without leaving an outpost to guard the river. He switched from checkers to cards and prepared to go on drinking late into the night. When an officer recommended sending heavy patrols down all the roads and to every likely crossing on the Delaware, Rall said there would be time enough for all that in the morning. The Hessians blessed their luck in having such an unflappable commander and kept on celebrating.

  Colonel Rall went for a late supper to the house of Abraham Hunt, a rich Trenton merchant who was trying to remain neutral in the struggle. While Rall was there, a loyalist farmer who had seen the American army on the New Jersey side of the Delaware rode into town and traced him to Hunt’s house. It was already well past midnight, but Hunt didn’t want to interrupt the drinking and the cards and told his servant not to let the farmer in.

  The man scribbled out a note of warning, and the servant delivered it to Rall, who stuck it unread into a vest pocket.

  At 4 A.M. on December 26, Lieutenant Friedrich Fischer of the German artillery, following his usual routine, ordered horses to be hitched to two brass guns in front of the guardhouse and went to inform Colonel Rall that his men were ready for their early patrol along the Delaware. Rall had gone to sleep, but the officer of the day told Fischer that the patrol was canceled because of the bad weather. The horses were untied and sent back to their stable.

  At about 7:45 A.M., Andreas Wiederhold, another German lieutenant, was sitting in an outpost at Pennington Road that had once been a barrelmaker’s shop. Throughout the night, small patrols had ventured out and returned to report that all was quiet. Now Wiederhold stepped out the shop door and spotted dark shapes moving toward him from the woods. When his men saw them, they shouted, “Der Feind! Heraus! Heraus!” The enemy! Tu
rn out! Turn out!

  As the Germans opened fire at the approaching figures, Jacob Piel in town ran to Rall’s headquarters and found that the colonel was still sleeping deeply. Piel shook him, told him about the gunfire and went outside to help ready the troops. When Rall didn’t come out, Piel rushed back to his bedroom and found him in his nightshirt.

  “What’s the matter?” Rall asked.

  Piel asked whether he hadn’t heard the shooting.

  The colonel didn’t answer, but he said, “I will be out in a minute.”

  The emergency seemed to sober him, and he was dressed and downstairs quickly. By then, American shells were exploding down his street.

  —

  It was already broad daylight when George Washington reached a house with a man chopping wood in front. Washington asked where the Hessian guards were posted. In these days of tangled loyalties, saying too much could mean death, and the man hesitated until one of Washington’s aides said, “You need not be frightened. It is General Washington who asks the question.”

  With that, the man brightened and pointed up the road to the house the Germans were occupying.

  Struggling through the blizzard on the road to Trenton had been an ordeal. Washington’s men kept slipping on the ice, and soldiers marching barefoot or with old rags tied around their feet left trails of blood in the snow. During halts in the column, men sometimes sat on tree stumps and fell asleep. If they weren’t shaken awake, they would freeze to death. Yet there had been no complaining, and a warming excitement was passing through the ranks as the men drew closer to Trenton. Washington heard a cannon shot in the distance and recognized it as coming from one of General Sullivan’s guns. He began to think that the mission might succeed, after all.

  As the Americans moved toward the center of town, they saw a confused rush of Hessian artillerymen trying to harness their horses and officers attempting to line up their troops. John Sullivan’s men pushed into the town from one side while Nathanael Greene’s forces entered from the other. The Hessians managed to fire off six shots from each of two cannon, but soon the crews were killed or wounded and the guns were in American hands. The Americans had also taken control of Trenton’s main intersection, the crossing of King and Queen Streets, and by installing their own guns could rake relentlessly down the center of town. Captain Alexander Hamilton’s company was sent to join the bombardment. Between firings, they held their hands over the touchholes of their weapons to keep out the freezing sleet.

  The town was in turmoil. John Sullivan’s troops were seizing the southern section, rushing with their bayonets upon the Germans so furiously that the Hessians ran at the sight of them. Some Americans shouted, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

  In the midst of the chaos, one Hessian major pressed the commander for any decisive action: “Colonel Rall, there is yet time to save the cannon!”

  Rall didn’t answer. Instead, hearing the shots coming from Sullivan’s troops, he muttered, “Lord, Lord, what is it?”

  His officers repeated that they could still save the cannon, but Rall was hardly listening.

  “Never mind,” he said. “We’ll soon have them back.”

  The major urged Rall either to charge forward toward the center of town or permit a retreat. From atop his horse, Rall got elements of two regiments into line for a direct assault.

  “Forward march!” he cried. “Attack them with the bayonets!”

  The line moved out in good order, but sniping from neighboring houses and fences and the sharp fire from the American artillery cut the Hessians down in the street or sent them rushing to a nearby apple orchard. As their band began to play to encourage them, Colonel Rall took a slight wound. He assured his aides that he was more annoyed than disabled and urged the men to advance. “Alle wer meine Grenadiere sind, vorwärts!” he called to his men. All who are my grenadiers, forward! But Rall’s loss of blood seemed to have weakened him.

  The Americans were continuing their charge down King Street toward Colonel Rall’s headquarters, though the storm made it hard for either side to tell friend from enemy. Rall’s bravest men made a brief stand but took fifteen casualties without hitting a single American. The Hessian adjutant advised a retreat over the Assunpink Creek bridge, but by the time Rall authorized him to see whether the bridge was safe the Americans had captured it. Rall had no more ideas. When the Americans began firing from two cannon at the corner of Second Street, he decided that his men must rush down Third and Fourth Streets and head for cover in the orchard. He had barely given the command when he was directly hit, and two gaping wounds opened in his side. For a few minutes Rall lay on the ground. Then he rose with great effort. Supported by two Hessian soldiers, he walked slowly to the Methodist church at Fourth and Queen Streets.

  Picking his way to shelter in the church, Rall found one of his lieutenants lying near a house. Rall asked whether the lieutenant was wounded. Yes, the man said. “I pity you,” Rall said.

  The surviving Hessian officers were divided over their next move. Some wanted to try to escape across a shallow spot in Assunpink Creek. Others wanted to surrender. A corporal tied a white handkerchief to a spontoon and led a badly wounded major to John Sullivan to give up his sword. Officers of a six-gun American battery at the head of Queen Street called to the two Hessian regiments trapped there to throw down their weapons or be shot to death.

  Rall’s adjutant had been learning English, and he interpreted the ultimatum for the others. The American line had moved within sixty feet of the Germans. A Hessian lieutenant colonel called out that they would surrender, and the Germans lowered their arms and their battle standards. Their officers put their hats on the points of their swords and held them aloft. The Hessians who were against surrendering threw their guns toward the woods instead of laying them down in front of them. Some managed to escape across the stream, but three were caught in the current and drowned.

  When the commander of the third German regiment tried to hold out, Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair sent a message to him: “If you do not surrender immediately, I will blow you to pieces.” The German captain asked that his officers be allowed to keep their swords and baggage, and he and St. Clair shook hands on it.

  George Washington had been notified that the first two regiments had surrendered. Now St. Clair informed him that the last regiment had also given up. His messenger was Major James Wilkinson, the aide who had conveyed Horatio Gates’s regrets to General Washington before the battle. Washington was in better spirits than he had been earlier, and he greeted Wilkinson with almost the same words that Samuel Adams had used in welcoming the sound of gunfire at Lexington. Pressing him by the hand, Washington said, “This is a glorious day for our country, Major Wilkinson.”

  Two of his generals were also exultant. John Sullivan and Lord Stirling had captured the same Hessian soldiers who had taken them prisoner during the battle for Long Island.

  —

  Colonel Rall was dying. He had been carried on a church bench back to his headquarters on King Street. As men cut away his clothes to treat his wounds, they found the note from the loyalist who had tried to warn him a few hours earlier. Rall looked over the message and said, “Hätte ich dies zu Herrn Hunt gelesen, so wäre ich jezt nicht hier.” If I had read this at Mr. Hunt’s, I would not be here.

  Washington and Nathanael Greene sought out Colonel Rall at his headquarters and spoke briefly with him through an interpreter. Rall pleaded with the American commander to treat his men kindly, and Washington promised that he would. Colonel Rall endured another thirty hours of pain and died.

  Rall was the highest-ranking casualty, but twenty-two other Hessian officers and men had been killed during the ninety-minute battle. Survivors hid in the houses of sympathetic Tories; most were soon discovered. By December 29, George Washington estimated that he had taken one thousand Hessians prisoner. Another four hundred had escaped because Washington’s strategy had once again been overly ambitious. John Cadwalader ha
d not been able to get his artillery across the rushing Delaware and had called back the infantrymen who had managed to make the crossing. James Ewing hadn’t been able to launch a single boat.

  Even so, the extent of Washington’s success was evident in the small number of American losses—two officers wounded, along with two privates. Another two Americans may have frozen to death as they waited at the ferry for the last of the boats, but Washington’s report to the Congress made no mention of them.

  The American spoils included forty horses, six brass cannon, a thousand weapons, four wagons of baggage, three wagons of ammunition, and twelve drums. There were also twenty-one wagonloads of goods the Germans had looted from American homes. Washington invited the residents of Trenton to come and recover their property, but many civilians found that their mahogany furniture was missing because Rall had let his men heat their quarters by burning chairs and tables rather than tire them with cutting wood.

  As word of the surrender spread through Trenton, American soldiers danced and yelled and threw their hats in the air. Some turned away sadly from the sight of Germans dead and dying. Others rifled the Hessian corpses; German swords were the most popular souvenirs. The Americans also discovered forty hogsheads of rum that the Germans had abandoned and were warming and rewarding themselves liberally before General Washington could stop them. Nathanael Greene and Henry Knox recommended chasing the Germans who had escaped, but when Washington convened his council of war the majority voted to return to Pennsylvania. Theirs had been a brilliant stroke, but Cadwalader and Ewing were still across the river, the enemy was strong both below Trenton and above it, the weather remained severe and the American army was drunk.

  George Washington at left, General Hugh Mercer at right