English regiments, Donop's brigade of Hessian grenadiers and Waldeckers, a small battalion formed of the remnants of Rall's brigade, Köhler's battalion fresh from New York with its heavy artillery, eight hundred Highlanders, and a regiment of light dragoons, were moving against him. He might have passed beyond the Delaware; but he would not abandon New Jersey: he might have joined Cadwalader, whose force of eighteen hundred men held the strong post of Crosswicks, or Mifflin, who had returned from his recruiting mission and was at Bordentown with eighteen hundred volunteers; but such a retreat would have stifled the new life of the country. In the choice of measures, all full of peril, he resolved to concentrate his forces at Trenton, and await the enemy. Obedient to his call, they joined him in part on the first of January; in part, after a Jan. 2. night-march, on the second; making collectively an 1777. army of forty-eight hundred or five thousand men ; but, of these, three fifths or more were merchants, mechanics, and farmers, ignorant of war, and just from their families and warm houses, having rushed to arms in midwinter, inspired by hope and zeal to defy all perils and encounter battles by day and marches by night, with no bed but the frozen ground under the open sky. Leaving three regiments and a company of cavalry at Princeton, where Donop had thrown up arrow-headed earthworks, Cornwallis on the second led the flower of the British army to encounter Washington. Donop advised him to march in two divisions, so as to hold the direct and the roundabout road between Princeton and Trenton; but he refused to separate his forces. The air was warm and moist, the road soft, so that their march was slow. From Maidenhead, where they were delayed by skirmishers, and where one brigade under Leslie remained, Cornwallis pressed forward with more than five thousand British and Hessians. At Five Mile Run he fell upon Hand and his riflemen, who continued to dispute every step of his progress. At Shabbakong Creek, the annoyance from troops secreted within the wood on the flanks of the road embarrassed him for two hours. On the hill less than a mile above Trenton, he was confronted by about six hundred musketeers and two skilfully managed field-pieces, supported by a detachment under Greene. This party, when attacked by the artillery of Cornwallis, withdrew in good order. Each side met with losses during the day; of the killed and wounded no trustworthy Jan. 2. enumeration has been found. The British captured a faithless colonel of foreign birth, and probably some privates; the Americans took thirty prisoners. 1777. At four in the afternoon, Washington, placing himself with the rear, conducted the retreat through the town, and passed the bridge over the Assanpink, beyond which the main body of his army stood in admirable array, silent in their ranks, protected by batteries. The enemy, as they pursued, were worried by musketry from houses and barns; their attempt to force the bridge was repulsed. Cornwallis next sought to turn the flanks of the Americans; but the fords of the Assanpink could not be crossed without a battle. The moment was critical. The defeat of Washington might have crushed independence; the overthrow of the British army would have raised New Jersey in their rear, and have almost ended the war. Late as it was in the day, Simcoe advised at once to pass over the Assanpink to the right of "the rebels," and bring on a general action; and Sir William Erskine feared that, if it were put off, Washington might get away before morning. But the sun was nearly down; the night threatened to be foggy and dark; the British troops were worn out with skirmishes and a long march, over deep roads; the aspect of the American army was imposing. Unwilling to take any needless risk, Cornwallis sent messengers in all haste for the brigade at Maidenhead, and for two of the three regiments at Princeton, and put off the fight till the next morning. The British army, sleeping by their fires, bivouacked on the hill above Trenton, while their large pickets were pushed forward along the Assanpink, to keep a close watch on the army of Washington. Confident in their vigilance, the general officers thought their day's work done, and took their repose. Jan. 2. Not so Washington; for him there could be no rest. From his retreat through the Jerseys, and his long 1777. halt in the first week of December at Trenton, he knew the by-ways leading out of the place, and the cross-cuts and roads as far as Brunswick. He first ascertained by an exploring party that the path to Princeton on the south side of the Assanpink was unguarded.1 He saw the need of avoiding a battle the next morning with Cornwallis; and the need of avoiding it in a way to mark courage and hope. He was aware that there were but few troops at Princeton; and he reasoned that Brunswick could have retained but a very small guard for its rich magazines. He therefore developed the plan which had existed in germ from the time of his deciding to re-enter New Jersey, and prepared to turn the left of Cornwallis, overwhelm the party at Princeton, and push on if possible to Brunswick, or, if there were danger of pursuit, to seek the high ground at Morristown. Soon after dark, he ordered all the baggage of his army to be removed noiselessly to Burlington. To the council of officers whom he convened, he proposed the circuitous march to Princeton. Mercer forcibly pointed out the advantages of the proposal; Saint-Clair liked it so well that, in the failing memory of old age, he took it to have been his own; the adhesion of the council was unanimous. Soon after midnight, sending word to Putnam to occupy 1 Ewald's Beyspiele grosser Helden. Ewald, who was a man of uprightness, vigilance, and judgment, is a great authority, as he was present. 2 Saint-Clair's Narrative, 242, 243: "No one general officer except myself knew any thing of the upper country." Now, Sullivan knew it better; as did all the officers of Lee's division, and Stark, Poor, Patterson, the New England Reed, and all the officers of their four regiments. Another writer, Reed's Mercer Oration, 34, 35, is out of the way in the advice he attributes to Mercer: "One course had not yet been thought of, and this was to order up the Philadelphia militia," &c. Washington had long before ordered up the Philadelphia militia, and they were at Trenton on the first of January. Sparks's Washington, iv. 258. Washington, always modest, writes of the measure as his own. Ibid. 259. The statement in Ewald of Washington's having sent a party to reconnoitre the roundabout road is in harmony with this. Marshall, i. 131, assigns the design to Washington; so do Gordon, Ramsay, Hull who had a special command, and I believe every one till Saint-Clair, whom Wilkinson followed. 1777. Crosswicks, Washington began to move his troops in detachments by the roundabout road to Prince- Jan. 3. ton. The wind veered to the north-west; the weather suddenly became cold; and the by-road, lately impracticable for artillery, was soon frozen hard. To conceal the movement, guards were left to replenish the American camp-fires. The night had as yet no light in the firmament but the stars as they sparkled through the openings in the clouds; the fires of the British blazed round the hills on which they slumbered; the beaming fires of the Americans rose in a wall of impervious flame along the Assanpink for more than half a mile, throwing a glare on the town, the rivulet, the tree-tops, the river, and the background. The drowsy British officer who had charge of the night-watch let the flames blaze up and subside under fresh heaps of fuel, and saw nothing and surmised nothing. Arriving about sunrise in the south-east outskirts of Princeton, Washington and the main body of the army wheeled to the right by a back road to the colleges; while Mercer was detached towards the west, with about three hundred and fifty men, to break down the bridge over Stony Brook, on the main road to Trenton. Two English regiments were already on their march to join Cornwallis; the seventeenth with three companies of horse, under Mawhood, was more than a mile in advance of the fifty-fifth, and had already passed Stony Brook. On discovering in his rear a small body of Americans, apparently not larger than his own, he recrossed the rivulet, and, forming a junction with a part of the fifty-fifth and other detachments on their march, hazarded an engagement with Mercer. The parties were nearly equal in numbers; each had two pieces of artillery; but the English were fresh, while the Americans were weary from hunger and cold, the fatigues of the preceding day, their long night-march of eighteen miles, and the want of sleep. Both parties rushed toward the high ground that lay north of them, on the right of the Americans. A heavy discharge from the English artillery was returned by Neal from the American field-pieces. After a short but brisk cannonade, the Americans, climbing over a fence to con Jan. 3. front the British, were the first to use their guns; Mawhood's infantry returned the volley, and soon charged with their bayonets; the Americans, for the most part riflemen without bayonets, gave way, abandoning their cannon. 1777. Their gallant officers, loath to fly, were left in their rear, endeavoring to call back the fugitives. In this way fell Haslet, the brave colonel of the Delaware regiment; Neal, who had charge of the artillery; Fleming, the gallant leader of all that was left of the first Virginia regiment; and other officers of promise; Mercer himself, whose horse had been disabled under him, was wounded, knocked down, and then stabbed many times with the bayonet. Just then, Washington, who had turned at the sound of the cannon, came upon the ground by a movement which intercepted the main body of the British fifty-fifth regiment. The Pennsylvania militia, supported by two pieces of artillery, were the first to form their line. "With admirable coolness and address," Mawhood attempted to carry their battery; the way-worn novices began to waver; on the instant, Washington, from "his desire to animate his troops by example," rode into the very front of danger, and, when within less than thirty yards of the British, he reined in his horse with its head towards them, as both parties were about to fire; letting his faltering forces know that they must stand firm, or leave him to confront the enemy alone. The two sides gave a volley at the same moment; when the smoke cleared away, it was thought a miracle that Washington was untouched. By this time, Hitchcock, for whom a burning hectic made this day nearly his last, brought up his brigade; and Hand's riflemen began to turn the left of the English; these, after repeated exertions of the greatest courage and discipline, retreated before they were wholly surrounded, and fled over fields and fences up Stony Brook. The action, from the first conflict with Mercer, did not last more than twenty minutes. Washington on the battleground took Hitchcock by the hand, and, before his army, thanked him for his service. Mawhood left on the ground two brass field-pieces, which, from want of horses, the Americans could not carry |