by Ron Carter
Mixed with Glover’s fishermen, Stark’s command surged around the Old Barracks, into King Street, and plowed headlong into the Hessians who were still standing there, confused, waiting for orders that never came. The Americans ran over the top of them, hot on the heels of Grothausen and Bauer and those who were trying for the Assunpink bridge and freedom. They cut them off, turned them left, back into the lower end of town. Stark’s command surged right behind them, firing, charging into the side streets, routing them out of houses and barns and from behind sheds and trees, clearing the streets, pushing them further and further to the east.
Glover turned his command right, across the Assunpink bridge, and at a high run his men wheeled their cannon two hundred yards down the creek before Glover shouted, “Stop. Set them up here!” Two minutes later the cannon were pointed north, across the Assunpink Creek, where they could command a field of fire at the bridge, the south end of the town, and the fields and orchard east of town.
Back in the middle of King Street, Eli shouted to Billy, “Stark and Glover got the south end of town sealed off. We got ‘em in a pocket. Let’s drive ‘em out in the open on the east side of town.”
Instantly they reloaded their weapons and shouted to the Americans around them, “Let’s go! Push them east!” They charged into Third Street and the Hessians crouched there behind trees and houses took one look and struck out east, legs driving as hard as they could go.
More than forty Hessians took cover in an alley, Rall among them still on his horse, floundering, disoriented, not yet able to grasp what was happening all around him. Then suddenly the mouth of the alley was filled with shouting Americans as Billy and Eli led the charge, firing as they tore into the nearest Hessians, Billy with his bayonet and Eli with his tomahawk. Fifty men were right behind them, firing, shouting, swarming all over the Hessians.
Rall shook himself and for the first time gave a clear, rational order.
“East!” he shouted. “Out to the orchard. To the Princeton Road. We can fight our way out on the Princeton Road.” Instantly he reined his mount east and jammed the spurs home. The horse broke into a run up the alley while Hessians from every command in Trenton ran to follow him, ignoring Knyphausen, Lossberg, Wiederhold, and Grothausen who were shouting at their men to break off and form with their own companies.
With Rall leading anyone who would follow eastward through the streets of Trenton, Knyphausen’s command at the south end of town sprinted north to join him. John Stark saw them streaming past him running east on Second Street, paying him no attention. Instantly Stark shouted to one of his officers, “Frye, go get ‘em.”
Captain Ebenezer Frye was a huge, beefy man with a face round as a melon. He didn’t hesitate. “Follow me,” he shouted to the nearest New Hampshiremen, and sixteen of them fell in behind him as he lumbered straight into the side of Knyphausen’s regiment in their headlong plunge east on Second Street. He was swinging his sword over his head while his men had their muskets blasting, bayonets working. In less than five minutes Frye emerged back out of Second Street with sixty Hessians before him, their hands high, his prisoners captured so fast most of them did not yet know what had happened.
Despite himself, tough old Johnny Stark grinned when Frye made his report.
Rall galloped across Queen Street, then Quaker Lane, out into the open field next to the orchard on the east side of town with Hessians running to follow him. At the head of Queen Street, Captain Joseph Moulder was in command of two of Knox’s cannon. As the Hessians came surging across Queen Street in their desperate run to follow Rall, Moulder shouted, “Fire!”
The American cannon blasted grapeshot the length of Queen Street and cut a swath through the fleeing Hessians. As fast as they could load, they fired again, and again Hessians were knocked rolling.
Billy and Eli burst out of the alley behind Rall’s men, leading parts of Mercer’s men mixed with Sullivan’s command into the field after Rall when Billy raised an arm and shouted in alarm, “They’re going to try for the Princeton Road.”
At that moment, on high ground at the north end of town, General Washington stood in his stirrups and watched as the Hessians stampeded into the open field to rally around Rall, and suddenly Washington saw the weakness. Instantly he shouted to Generals Stirling, Stephen, and de Fermoy, who he had held in reserve to his right, and pointed.
“Cut off the Princeton Road! Throw up a double line clear across to the Assunpink Creek.”
Five seconds later the three generals had their men running due east. Minutes later a double line of infantry formed across the road and ten minutes later they were at the Assunpink Creek. Washington blew air and settled back into his saddle. With the Princeton Road cut off, and the double line just formed by the three generals, and with Glover and Stark covering the south end of town, the Hessians were surrounded. Washington sat tall, intense, studying every move, waiting to see what the Hessians would do when they saw there was no way out.
When Rall realized the Princeton Road was now cut off and Americans were on all sides pouring musket fire and cannon shot into his command, he once again sat his saddle slumped, disoriented, groping to understand what he should do. One of his officers shouted, “We have to retake the town or we’ll all be killed where we stand.”
Rall blinked and then shouted the order. “Form into ranks. Ranks. Prepare for a bayonet charge to the west, back into Trenton.”
Knyphausen heard the order and shouted to Rall, “Shall I march my command about left?”
Rall shouted back, “Yes.”
Whatever Knyphausen meant, or whatever he understood Rall to have said in the howling wind and the thunder of muskets and cannon, Knyphausen did exactly the wrong thing. He did not march his command about left, west, rather, he marched them off to the south, towards the Assunpink bridge and within two minutes St. Clair’s command stormed into them, cut them off from Rall, surrounded them, took them clear out of the battle.
Once again Rall lapsed into indecision. He had been trained his entire life in the classic European theory of battle: form your men into ranks, march them into the enemy, and annihilate them by brute force. From the moment he stepped out the front door of his headquarters into the raging storm where the American cannon had thundered to clear King Street of his command, he had been given no quarter, no moment to form his command, or any command, into ranks. In a world where wild, screaming, scarecrow Americans were shooting from every house, alley, street, tree, and bush, there had not been one minute for him to do the only thing he understood. And now, sitting his horse in the middle of an open field with his men dropping on all sides from a world filled with American musket fire, he was unable to break his mind out of the mold.
He simply sat bewildered.
To the southwest, Eli jerked the ramrod out of his rifle barrel, held the pan close to his chest out of the wind, loaded it with powder from the powder horn, slapped the frizzen shut, and squinted into the storm, the wind in his face while he sought to find Rall in the chaos before him. Billy glanced at him and understood, and ten seconds later Billy shouted, “There, Eli! There!” He raised an arm and Eli followed his point. Two hundred ten yards away, far out of musket range, in the midst of the Hessians, with half a dozen officers still mounted around him, Eli recognized Rall.
He spread his feet slightly to steady the long rifle, instinctively made adjustments for distance and the head-on wind, and squeezed off his shot. The wind whipped the rifle smoke away and Eli held his breath.
Rall jolted as the big .60-caliber ball punched into his right side. He sagged and grabbed for the horse’s mane to stay mounted, and started to tumble when men around him reached to hold him up.
Major von Hanstein saw and heard the hit and was instantly at Rall’s side. “Are you hit, sir?”
“Not bad. I’m all right.”
“Sir, you’re bleeding.”
“I’m all right. Get these men moving.”
“Where, sir?”
Lieutenant Piel, white-faced, shouted, “Sir, the only way out is the bridge. We’ve got to try for the bridge.”
Rall was incapable of forming his own decision, and nodded. “Go see if it’s clear.” He turned to von Hanstein. “Move these men to follow Piel. We’ve got to cross the bridge.”
At that moment Eli was slamming the ramrod down his rifle barrel, seating another musket ball against the patch, his eyes never leaving Rall.
Piel sprinted away, certain that Knyphausen’s command had reached the bridge and was holding it. He was thirty paces away before he could make out some of the details of the men dug in beside the creek and he tried to stop, sliding to one knee in the wind and snow, eyes wide in disbelief as he stared at St. Clair’s command.
Those are Americans! Not Knyphausen’s men.
Piel turned and sprinted as the musket balls came whistling. He ran across the open field to the Hessians clustered about Rall, and he pushed his way through, panting, wild-eyed.
“Sir, the bridge is held by Americans.”
Two hundred yards southwest, for the second time, Eli shook gunpowder into the pan of his rifle and slapped the frizzen to close it.
Beside him, Billy shouted, “There,” and once again Eli followed his point to locate Rall, and went to one knee to steady the long rifle.
The right side of Rall’s coat was black with blood and he was beginning to ride too loose in the saddle. He licked his lips and gave one more order to Piel and von Hanstein. “Turn the men around. We’ll have to take cover in the orchard. We can fight from the orchard.”
As the words left Rall’s mouth Eli squeezed off his second shot and watched as the ball ripped into Rall, inches from the first hit. Rall’s head dropped forward and he pitched headlong from his horse. Strong hands caught him and set him on his feet but he could not stand and they lifted him to carry him west through the hail of gunfire. The American lines opened to let the two men carry him through, towards the Methodist Church on Queen Street.
The remaining Hessian officers turned their swords on their own troops, slapping them on the back with the flat of the blade as they shouted, “To the orchard! Take cover in the orchard! We can ford the creek above the orchard!”
Slowly the devastated Hessians moved north until they reached the orchard where they stopped. Their shoulders slumped as they peered into the raging storm. Americans were appearing from every tree, every ditch, running, firing, shouting, and musket balls were tearing into the Hessians from the entire northern quadrant of the compass. Generals Stirling, Stephen, and de Fermoy were mounted, leading their men forward, swords pointed, coming at them shooting. And as they came, they were shouting for the Hessians to surrender, first in English and then in very bad German. Crushed, beaten, the Hessians stood where they were until the Americans were forty paces away and charging them with bay-onets.
Then Scheffer raised his hands, sword held high, one hand clutching each end in the universal sign of surrender, and the Americans leading the charge slowed and stopped. The firing slackened and then stopped, and a hush fell over the battlefield, save for the shrieking storm.
“Quarter! We ask quarter!” Scheffer shouted. “I request to speak with an American officer.”
Billy exchanged a glance with Eli. The Americans lowered their muskets, waiting, watching, struggling to grasp the fact that more than two-thirds of the Hessian garrison was surrendering. And in that moment, in their minds, the Americans were once again seeing these Hessians as they had seen them four months earlier, on August 27, 1776, on Long Island. In their hearts and souls the unspeakable horror once again came surging at the remembrance of being surrounded, and trying to escape the bloody chaos by retreating through the Gowanus swamp and the woods. These Hessians had caught then waist deep in the muck of the swamp, unable to move, to load their muskets, to defend themselves. The Americans had raised their hands and shouted out their surrender, but with cold precision, the Hessians had shot them and bayoneted them like cattle.
Now, with these same Hessians surrounded in a frozen field, helpless, at the mercy of the Americans and their cannon and muskets and bayonets, Billy and Eli and eight hundred of the Continental army struggled with the overpowering need to turn their cannon and muskets loose on them, and to bayonet those who tried to break out of the trap—to watch the terror in their eyes and hear it in their screams. They struggled, and then they slowly realized they could not slaughter defenseless men, no matter the justification, and they rose above it. They waited for the officers to come to terms of surrender.
George Baylor, one of Washington’s aides with General Stirling’s command, smacked his spurs home and brought his horse in at a run, hauling him to a skidding stop before the beaten German officers. “I’m an American officer.”
“I am surrendering my command.”
“You will wait here while I inform the general.”
Baylor loped his horse back to General Stirling. “Sir, the German officers wish to surrender.”
Stirling nodded. “I accept. Let’s go.” Stirling reined his horse beside Baylor and the two of them cantered back to Scheffer and von Hanstein and stopped.
Stirling spoke. “I am informed you wish to surrender.”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Lower your colors. I shall accept your swords.”
With military flourish, Scheffer and von Hanstein handed their swords to Stirling, hilt first. They turned and shouted orders for the Rall and Lossberg standards to be lowered; several Hessian officers removed their hats and stuck them on the tips of their swords and held them high to signal the surrender.
Stirling watched, then said to Scheffer, “Your men will ground their arms.”
Scheffer gave his last order and the Hessians began stacking their arms in the snow.
Billy wiped his soaked coat sleeve across his bearded mouth and turned wide eyes to Eli. “They surrendered. The Hessians surrendered.”
Eli nodded once, said nothing, and reached for his powder horn. “There’s still some down by the creek.”
Without a word Billy reached for a fresh paper cartridge as they both started south towards the Assunpink Creek. Twenty yards to their right, Joseph Moulder and his cannoneers were moving his two cannon at a trot down towards the creek, and Billy and Eli angled over. The cannon crews made room for them and they grasped the trails with their free hands to help.
Six hundred yards ahead they saw the remnants of the Knyphausen regiment under the command of Major Friederich Dechow moving slowly towards the bridge, muskets blasting. A few of the men were up to their knees in muck, struggling with a cannon that had sunk nearly to the axles in snow and sleet and freezing mud that bordered the creek. The cannon’s muzzle pointed to the sky, cocked at a crazy angle.
At the bridge, Glover’s fishermen waited patiently behind rocks and trees, and bridge pilings until the Hessians were fifty paces away and then Glover shouted, “Fire!” Fifty musket balls slammed into the Hessians. Dechow twisted sideways in his saddle, his hip shattered, and the huge musket ball lodged in his bowels. He slowly slipped from his horse, unable to remain mounted. His men helped him to a fence and he leaned against it, feeling the first hint of light-headedness as he shouted to Captain von Biesenrodt.
“Take command. Rall has surrendered. You surrender these men to save them.” Then he sagged and a corporal grabbed him and started back towards Trenton half-carrying him while another soldier hastily tied a white handkerchief to an eight-foot spontoon and thrust it into his hand for safe passage. They nearly reached King Street before Dechow’s head tipped forward and his body went limp; the corporal gently laid him in the snow and covered his face.
Biesenrodt saw Dechow go down and turned to the few remaining officers, most of them wounded. “I dispute the order to surrender. I say we go upstream and find a place to ford the stream and fight our way to freedom on the Bordentown Road. Are you with me?”
They started east along the bank of the Assunpink, and a few of them were
seized by panic and plunged into the half-frozen, fast running creek. With water to their chins they battled to get across. Some succeeded, some did not, and those who did clamber up the far bank, water spraying, ice forming in their long overcoats, were last seen staggering south in the storm, looking for the Bordentown Road.
The bulk of the Knyphausen survivors broke into a trot upstream, desperately looking for a shallow ford that would give safe passage across the swollen creek. They had not gone fifty yards when the officers in the lead came to a dead stop. They were facing Glover’s fishermen, who had gone up the far bank of the creek, crossed, and were waiting for the Hessians behind rocks and trees and bushes, muskets cocked and aimed.
Biesenrodt stood bolt upright, white-faced, groping for what to do next, and only then did he look to his left to see Joseph Moulder forty paces distant, standing in the driving snow. One pace behind Moulder were the two cannon he had used to clear Queen Street, loaded, with the crew waiting, the linstock smoking. Billy and Eli cocked their weapons and steadied them against a cannon wheel and brought them to bear on the third large button of Biesenrodt’s great overcoat.
Biesenrodt’s breathing constricted for a moment when the realization struck into him. We are surrounded. All sides.
Then suddenly Major James Wilkinson walked out of the storm and Biesenrodt shouted at him, “Do not come closer or we will shoot.” His Hessians cocked their muskets and brought them to bear on the Americans as Biesenrodt turned to Lieutenant Andreas Wiederhold. “Go talk with the American.”
Tension was nearly a physical thing as Wiederhold walked steadily across the open ground between the cocked muskets of the Hessians and Americans, and Wilkinson came to meet him. Every man on both sides was breathing lightly, hair on their necks straight up as they waited for someone—anyone—to make the mistake that would set all the muskets thundering in an instant.
Wilkinson stopped and Wiederhold stopped facing him.
“I am Major James Wilkinson. General St. Clair is behind me with our cannon. He has instructed me to inform your commanding officer that he is to surrender.”