George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Indeed, the Virginian’s sparkling success in capturing the two three-pounders resulted in a double psychological blow that deflated the morale of Rall’s soldiers, who had never known defeat at the Americans’ inexperienced hands. First, the sheer shock of Washington’s surprise attack—the one-two punch of the artillery bombardment and then the infantry attack down King Street—was enough to shake even the best trained troops, especially during a snowstorm. But the most devastating psychological blow suffered by the Hessians this morning was in losing their two artillery pieces, which was second only to losing a cherished battle flag painted with “the golden lion of Hesse.”

  Rall’s only real hope for successfully defending Trenton, especially against Washington’s seventeen artillery pieces that seemed never to cease roaring with authority, and resisting Washington’s infantry attacks had been only possible, if all of his brigade’s artillery, six guns, were earlier concentrated this morning. Combined with many Hessian muskets now unable to fire because of wetness, the loss of such a large percentage, or one-third, of Rall’s most dependable all-weather weapons, the Rall Regiment’s two three-pounders, took away even more of the German’s already limited capabilities to defend not only the town but also themselves, especially from two simultaneous assaults from different directions. Consequently, the Rall brigade was now less likely to foil any single arm of Washington’s double envelopment while the two arms of his pincer movement closed tighter.27

  Most importantly, Washington’s leadership ability and tactical skill continued to rise to the fore in splendid fashion. So far on this most inclement of mornings, Rall and his veteran brigade were simply unable to match Washington’s superior tactical flexibility and insight, mobility, firepower, fluidity, imaginative counter maneuvers, concentration of force, and quickness to exploit tactical opportunities and advantages. Washington’s formula for success that relied upon a combination of surprise, speed, stealth, and shock that simply could not be successfully countered by even the best efforts of the crack Rall brigade.

  In striking contrast to the ineffectiveness of the Rall brigade’s cannon with only one-third, now lost to American arms, having been brought into action, Knox’s artillery—now reduced to seventeen guns—was having its finest day this morning. From two directions, Knox’s artillery from both Greene and Sullivan’s columns continued to unleash a heavy volume of firepower that could not be either matched or withstood by the hard-hit Hessians in any sector. No one more than Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer, commanding the von Lossberg Regiment of fusiliers, who had already faced that awful storm of round shot and grapeshot pouring down King Street, fully realized as much.

  Washington’s astute wisdom in placing his best artillery units, especially Forrest’s Philadelphia company with its big six-pounders and five and a half-inch howitzers, close together across the high ground at King Street’s head to unleash an early concentrated fire had all but negated any possibility of an effective defense of Trenton in the King Street sector. Scheffer described the worsening dilemma faced by the reeling Hessians, who had so suddenly found themselves in a no-win situation in large part because of the vast superiority of Washington’s artillery firepower: “It rained Cannonballs and grapeshot here, and snow, rain, and sleet came constantly into our faces,” while more Hessians fell and their wet muskets could no longer fire.28

  Ironically, among the projectiles now unleashed upon Rall’s troops were those of their own captured artillery. Fulfilling their predesignated role thanks to spare artillery equipment brought along for this express purpose as directed by Knox, the foremost artillerymen assigned to manning captured guns now took over one of the captured three-pounders on King Street. Orderly Sergeant White and his New Englanders and Pennsylvanians, meanwhile, serviced the other captured field piece. Here, just north of Petty’s Run, he described how: “We put in a cannister of shot, (they had put in the [black powder] cartridge before they left it,) and fired” at the reeling Hessians, adding insult to injury.29

  With the tide having turned decidedly against Rall and his battered troops on King Street and knowing that the battle’s course had gradually shifted eastward, thanks to the gains achieved by Captain Washington’s successful attack down King Street, Mercer’s relentless application of pressure on the Hessians from the west and Sullivan from the southwest, Washington now felt sufficiently confident to make yet another well thought-out tactical move. Thinking ahead as if knowing that the battle would eventually shift eastward, he dispatched the trusty General Stephen and his three regiments, the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Virginia Continental Regiments, farther eastward to plug a gap between Stirling’s left, now extended farther east to cover the head of Queen Street with Stephen’s departure from this sector, and Fermoy’s right, adding more strength in blocking the Princeton-Trenton Road to more solidly eliminate a northwest escape route for the hard-hit Rall brigade.30

  Vicious Fighting Rages on Queen Street

  After the von Lossberg Regiment’s repulse and despite the capture of the Rall Regiment’s two three-pounders, Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer’s fusilier regiment, thanks in no small part to his inspired leadership, was yet in relatively good shape with around two hundred men in the ranks, and even in better condition at this time than the Rall Regiment in part because—besides out of the line of fire from Forrest’s Pennsylvania cannon—it had been positioned behind the grenadier regiment, or farther south, during Rall’s counterattack up King Street. In addition, the von Lossberg Regiment had been initially shifted out of harm’s way by way of Church Alley, and eventually a short distance farther south down King Street and behind the Anglican Church between King and Queen Streets, preserving more of its strength and cohesion while also suffering less from Mercer’s flank fire.

  Even more, the von Lossberg Regiment of fusiliers was now in overall better shape than its sister grenadier regiment because it consisted of more veterans than the Rall Regiment. For all of these reasons, the von Lossberg Regiment performed better and with more cohesion throughout this morning than any Rall brigade regiment; a fact later acknowledged in an official investigation and even appearing in British reports. Indeed, the von Lossberg fusiliers now possessed the silk colors of the Rall Regiment because the grenadier’s faithful color guard had been cut down during the ill-fated counterattack up bullet-swept King Street. After the bloody King Street setback, consequently, the von Lossberg Regiment was now more intact than the grenadier regiment, retaining more of its considerable combat capabilities and lofty esprit de corps. However, the von Lossberg Regiment had already met with two significant failures by this time: the failure of Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer’s initiative in having hurled a detachment of light troops northeast to eliminate the harassing fire from the east side of the northern end of Queen Street; and the failure to halt Captain Washington’s counterattack from pushing farther south down King Street, gaining more ground, and inflicting more damage.31

  In overall tactical terms, Captain Washington and his vanguard of Virginia riflemen had been fortunate to have proceeded so far south down King Street. After having escaped Captain Washington’s charge, a shaken Lieutenant Engelhardt reported to Colonel Rall, who had shifted the Rall Regiment farther east, near the corner of Church Alley and Queen Street. Here, Engelhardt appealed to Rall, who rode back and forth with drawn saber to realign his troops: “Colonel Rall, there is yet time to save the cannon.” But disoriented by the blinding snowstorm and the confused street fighting instead of the usual set-piece battle of neatly aligned formations facing each other on a broad, open field as in Europe, and while the rolls of musketry from Sullivan’s attackers crashed louder to the southwest, Rall gave no immediate answer. Caught in the most perplexing tactical dilemma of his career—facing what was evolving into “a grand melee” and gripped with indecision, this veteran commander, however, knew that the overall situation was now far more complex and grave than he had originally imagined, after having lost two cannon and with so much of King Street that was
now in Washington’s hands by this time.

  Two comparable urgent pleas, including from Lieutenant Gregorious Salzmann, a brave German Jewish officer of the Rall Regiment, who repeated Engelhardt’s initial request for assistance, were posed in no uncertain terms to the colonel. Both requests solicited no reaction from Rall, however. Nevertheless, the hard-fighting colonel from Hesse-Cassel was determined to regain all that he had already lost to the detested rebels and of all generals, Washington. The sharp sting of this unthinkable humiliation only fortified Rall’s resolve to somehow reverse the day’s fortunes. Despite hemmed in by houses and swirling battle-smoke in what had become a nightmarish urban “battle royal” in the icy streets amid the steadily falling snow that almost seemed to mock man’s folly of waging war on his fellow man, Rall solemnly promised his troops “we will soon have them [the two lost cannon] back.” Yet smarting from the blistering flank fire of Mercer’s infantrymen and the salvoes of Forrest’s canister and grape, only a relatively few of Rall’s grenadiers took heart at the thought of mounting yet another headlong offensive effort to retake the two lost three-pounders at this time, however.

  Once the alignment of his formations was complete, Rall attempted to implore his troops westward once again, toward hundreds of American soldiers, and into the vortex of the raging storm that had been manufactured so cunningly by Washington. But too many good Hessian officers already had been cut down and picked off by experienced American sharpshooters with deadly, small-caliber rifles. Many grenadiers were shell-shocked by the swirl and chaos of urban combat, Knox’s cannonade, the blinding storm, and Mercer’s withering enfilade fire. Some fainthearted Rall Regiment grenadiers, mostly conscripted peasants, fled the raging battle, heading south down Queen Street to escape the escalating combat.32

  While the Rall Regiment’s two three-pounders, now in the capable hands of Orderly Sergeant White and his New Englanders and Pennsylvanians and one of Knox’s extra gun crews, had been silenced on King Street, the von Lossberg Regiment’s two cannon had been moved southeast to unite with the Knyphausen Regiment. Here, at Queen Street’s lower end, these two von Lossberg guns were now manned by Knyphausen Regiment cannoneers, after having been hauled from the back yard of the Anglican Church and then southeast to the lower Queen Street sector to escape Captain Washington’s and Lieutenant Monroe’s steamrolling attack down King Street just to the west. Consequently, the von Lossberg Regiment’s three-pounders now roared defiance in opposing Sullivan’s advance, hoping to stem the onrushing American tide.

  But before the onslaught of Sullivan’s First Division, these von Lossberg cannon on the south proved as ineffective as the Rall Regiment’s guns on the north before Greene’s Second Division. Commanded by an artillery lieutenant who evidently was not aware how fast and far Sullivan’s foremost soldiers had already penetrated east toward the outer edge of the lower town, these guns fired too high. To the amusement of Sullivan’s First Division troops, the first Hessian cannon shots in the Knyphausen Regiment’s southern sector missed the onrushing tide of mostly New Englanders, who suddenly appeared like ghostly apparitions charging out of the snowstorm. Creating more noise than casualties, Hessian cannonballs in the southern sector arched west toward the River Road, where most of Sullivan’s troops continued to surge onward through the falling snow. With the German cannoneers’ aim also impeded by the rows of two-story houses that resulted in an over-elevation of cannon barrels, cannon shots continued to roar well over the heads of Sullivan’s foremost troops, under Stark, Sargent, and Glover, respectively. Instead of smashing into Sullivan’s leading attackers and inflicting damage, these cannonballs simply sailed high overhead to hit near the rear of St. Clair’s column, the reserve brigade of New Hampshire and Massachusetts troops, moving east down the River Road.

  By this time, Colonel John Paterson’s Fifteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment was the rearmost unit of St. Clair’s reserve brigade, consisting of four seasoned Continental regiments, now moving rapidly eastward down the River Road near the end of Sullivan’s column and descending toward Trenton’s southwestern edge. This veteran Massachusetts regiment, consisting of Continental troops from Middlesex, York, Worcester, Suffolk, Hampshire, and Berkshire Counties and Litchfield County, Connecticut, was the only Bay State unit in a fine brigade of three New Hampshire Continental regiments, including Stark’s regiment (the hard-hitting First New Hampshire), which now led the brigade’s advance. A relatively recent arrival from the disastrous Canadian Campaign, including duty in captured Montreal, and part of Gates’s northern army reinforcements, the Fifteenth Massachusetts, also known as “the 15th Foot,” had been assigned to St. Clair’s brigade in late November.

  Encountering a rude awakening upon nearing the town’s southwestern edge, Johnny Greenwood, the high-spirited fifer of the Fifteenth Massachusetts, described how amid the lengthy column, now enveloped in a haze of snow flurries and human breath from the panting New Englanders, “as we were marching near the town, the first intimation I received of our going to fight was the firing of a 6-pound [three-pound] cannon at us, the ball from which struck the fore horse that was dragging our only pieces of artillery, a three-pounder [of Captain Hugg’s Western Company, New Jersey State Artillery]. The animal which was near me [and] was struck in its belly and knocked over on its back [and] While it lay there kicking the cannon was stopped. . . .”33

  In striking contrast to the fire from the von Lossberg two bronze three-pounders from the defensive position of the Knyphausen Regiment in the lower town, Sullivan’s artillery proved more effective, especially Captain’s Neil’s New Jersey two iron three-pounders, which blasted away in the forefront with Sargent’s advancing Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut brigade. Additionally, the Knyphausen Regiment at Queen Street’s lower end also simultaneously took long-range punishment from primarily Captain Hamilton’s New York artillery-fire, the far-reaching long six-pounders that now barked loudly from not only the high ground at Queen Street’s head, but also from Sullivan’s foremost cannon to the southwest. Much like Colonel Rall in having earlier ordered both the von Lossberg and Rall Regiments to shift out of the middle of King Street to escape Forrest’s artillery fire by realigning in Church and Pinkerton Alleys, respectively, just east just off King Street, so Major Dechow ordered the Knyhausen Regiment to move out of the deadly line of fire of Captain Hamilton’s and Baumann’s New York artillery, that were likewise aligned across dominating terrain, firing down Queen Street, which ran down the wide, descending slope to the low-lying river like King Street just to the west.

  A veteran commander who was widely respected, Dechow led the bulk of his fusilier regiment farther south and then a short distance east of Queen Street toward the open ground around the suitably plain Quaker Meeting House. In addition, this new position offered the majority of Knyphausen troops protection from the fire of Mercer’s soldiers, who were now mostly located about two blocks to the west. Therefore, Dechow’s formation was now safely beyond the field of fire from two directions, including from the west, thanks in part to the intense snowstorm and the intervening two-story wooden houses that obstructed views.

  However, additional numbers of Stirling and Mercer’s soldiers continued to inch forward on their own hook, pushing east and crossing King Street in the town’s upper end. Larger numbers of these veterans were fighting by companies and squads, and even individuals, relying on their own flexibility, initiative, and fighting skill to drive the Hessians back. On the north, however, Lieutenant Wiederhold and his hard-fighting pickets, who fired with spirit from the first houses at Queen Street’s upper end, helped to deter the advance of the left of Stirling’s brigade, to the north, down Queen Street, before he eventually linked with his own Knyphausen Regiment to the south.34

  After having been swept off King Street, Lieutenant Engelhardt and his withdrawing artillerymen, without their two three-pounders, finally reached the Knyphausen regiment in the lower town, after having fled down the snow-filled alleys ea
st of King Street, before turning right, or south, on Queen Street. Here, near the Quaker Meeting House, where the British light horse detachment had been quartered before riding out of town in a great hurry, Engelhardt informed Major Dechow of the shocking loss of his two guns and Rall’s repulse on King Street. This disturbing news revealed that the deteriorating tactical situation was far more serious than Dechow realized.

  Stained with black powder, Engelhardt’s breathless report caused an alarmed Major Dechow, with nerves already severely strained amid the heat of combat, to snap, “For God’s sake, I understand!” Major Dechow now ordered troops west down east-west running Second Street, in the town’s low-lying commercial district near the river and perpendicular to Queen Street which it intersected, to confront Sullivan’s attackers head-on. After reporting his grim tidings, Engelhardt and his shell-shocked gunners continued their flight, heading south down Queen Street and making fast for the stone bridge across the Assunpink to escape what had become a surreal Hessian nightmare of epic proportions.

  Meanwhile, toward King Street’s lower end, the southernmost von Lossberg fusiliers were likewise surprised about this time after having escaped Captain Washington’s attack from the north by retiring farther south down the embattled street. After they had played a role in thwarting Captain Washington’s Virginians from pushing farther south down King Street, these experienced fusiliers then retired east from King Street’s lower end toward Queen Street. Both fusilier sections, the one east of King Street in Church Alley that had been outflanked by Captain Washington’s attack and the one at King Street’s southern end, of Scheffer’s von Lossberg Regiment was now united east of King Street. All of a sudden, Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer was shocked to receive a smart fire in his left-rear, to the southwest, from the most advanced of Sullivan’s swarming attackers, Captain Flahaven and his New Jersey Continentals, who were followed by the foremost of Stark’s onrushing New Hampshire troops, who were eager to meet the much-touted Hessians.