Lieutenant Grothausen, without sufficient time for his troops to reload for a second volley, had no choice but to order everyone rearward. On the double, the green-coated jaegers and barracks soldiers now made haste for the Assunpink Bridge to escape Sullivan’s screaming attackers before it was too late. However, the slight detour of Sullivan’s troops—Sargent and Glover—farther south and below the Knyphausen Regiment’s westernmost fusiliers around Second Street to the north in descending upon the barracks position and capturing the structure took precious time and slowed the closing of Washington’s pincer movement on the south.7
After sweeping through the barracks sector, the troops of Sargent and Glover’s brigades continued their seemingly unstoppable advance east down Front Street, a block south of Second Street. Meanwhile, on this frozen morning in the snowy lowlands along the Delaware, Stark demonstrated in the Second Street sector in the lower town that he was Washington’s best man to spearhead the lower arm of the double envelopment from the south. An ideal choice and a hardened veteran of winter warfare, he possessed hard-hitting qualities well suited for the many stern challenges of the urban warfare and close-quarter fighting now raging through the narrow streets. After pouring deeper into the town’s southwest outskirts, Stark and his New Hampshire boys continued to steadily push back the foremost, or westernmost, Knyphausen fusiliers in and around Second Street in the dark streets and narrow, snow-filled alleys of southwest Trenton while surging steadily east toward where the frozen sun had risen.
As if yet battling against the hated French, Indians, and Canadians in wintertime during the last war, the grizzled, former Rogers’ Ranger captain caught the foremost Hessians unready to muster an adequate defense against his surging attack that continued to gather momentum. Quickly ascertaining the tactical situation despite the confusion of fighting in the slick streets cloaked in limited visibility, Stark hurled a reliable officer, Captain Ebenezer Frye, and a lengthy line of New Hampshire skirmishers forward through the falling snow.
Now unleashed, these veteran New Englanders dashed ahead on Stark’s flanking mission, racing forward with flintlocks at the ready. With his sizeable girth made even larger by a bundle of winter garments, Frye presented a most unsoldierly-like appearance. But Frye was a dependable French and Indian War veteran with good tactical sense and sound judgment. Stark trusted these hard-hitting New Hampshire soldiers, including men from his own hometown, who fought well in Trenton’s snowy streets as if they were yet battling Abenaki warriors in the New England’s thick, virgin woodlands of summer. Stark’s faith was immediately rewarded.
Therefore, immediately upon spying a good tactical opportunity to out-flank Knyphausen troops, Stark dispatched Captain Frye and seventeen veterans from Derryfield (today’s Manchester), New Hampshire, and the Merrimack River country forward on the double for a new mission. Maneuvering rapidly to suddenly swoop down upon a party of around sixty Hessians from the flank, this “little ragged squad” of resourceful New Hampshire Continentals quickly captured every fusilier of the advanced detail.
Thanks in part to Captain Frye’s outflanking tactics, Stark’s New Hampshire soldiers now advanced at a more brick pace over the snowy landscape to easily overrun the foremost, or westernmost, Knyphausen Regiment troops. Fortunately for Stark, Frye, and Sullivan, the isolated fusilier regiment had wasted too much time in having initially formed in front of Dechow’s own headquarters and then around the lower end of Queen Street, near Second Street, just below the plain Quaker Meeting House and around two blocks southeast of Rall’s King Street headquarters. The indecision, confusion, and delinquency of the Knyphausen Regiment’s leadership allowed for Sullivan’s First Division’s troops to gain an early toehold on Trenton’s southwestern edge: a solid grip that would not be relinquished this morning. Playing a key role, the northernmost of Stark’s hard-hitting advance had also threatened the Rall and Von Lossberg’s Regiments from the rear to help disrupt Rall’s second counterattack while Stirling struck from the north, Haslet advanced from the northwest, and Mercer pushed forward from the west: the well-timed, hard-hitting combination of heavy pressure that had forced both the Rall and von Lossberg Regiments, and then the westernmost elements of the Knyphausen Regiment, to retire eastward to escape the closing jaws of Washington’s pincers.
Besides the effective support fire streaming from Captains Neil’s New Jersey, Moulder’s Pennsylvania, and Sargent’s Massachusetts blazing artillery pieces, Stark’s infantry attack was also bolstered by cannonfire from Ewing’s Pennsylvania militia brigade positioned on the Delaware’s west bank. Guns of seven batteries had earlier played a role in forcing the foremost Knyphausen soldiers rearward and away from the riverfront area. Then these Pennsylvania militia gunners turned their fire farther north, hurling projectiles across the river and causing consternation among the foremost Knyphausen Regiment members in the lower town. Caught in a low-ground position with limited visibility that was heightened by the falling snow, Major Dechow’s troops were astounded to hear a semicircle of unseen American artillery fire rumbling like thunder seemingly from an angry Hessian-hating god of war from three directions.
None of Washington’s colonels possessed a more lengthy record of punishing America’s enemies—from Indian, French, Canadians, and British to the equally despised Hessians—than Colonel Stark, the consummate Scotch-Irish frontier warrior. With Stark himself leading the way, the crack First New Hampshire Continental Regiment attacked not only as the vanguard of Sullivan’s First Division but also the advance of Sargent’s Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut brigade, which was the first brigade, followed by Glover’s and St. Clair’s brigades, in Sullivan’s assault column.
With well-honed tactical skill, Scottish General St. Clair had been educated at the University of Edinburgh. Like Stark and as if avenging the subjugation of his own Celtic homeland by the British regulars who were experts at crushing rebellion, he battled the enemy with a burning William Wallace-like intensity. Consisting of 110 soldiers of mostly Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties, Stark’s First New Hampshire Continental Regiment (now on paper officially the Fifth New Hampshire, but soon to be renamed the First New Hampshire on January 1, 1777) had been relieved from duty in Stark’s brigade, of the Northern Department, to join Washington’s Army on November 26, 1776.8 Like Stark, General Sullivan possessed a fine top lieutenant in St. Clair. This hard-fighting Celtic brigade commander was described by one highly impressed officer as having been “born in Scotland, where he has a family and property; he is esteemed a good officer, and . . . will certainly act a principal part in the army.”9
As in past savage, often no-quarter, skirmishes and battles against the French, Canadians, and Indians during the French and Indian War in the north country’s snowy wilderness lying above the most remote New England frontier settlements of mostly Scotch-Irish pioneers, Stark led his New Hampshire boys with the same abandon as when he had won legendary renown as one of the top leaders of Rogers’ Rangers who attacked his opponent with audacity and a distinctive “the Indian hollow.”10
Proud of his Celtic heritage, Colonel Stark was a tenacious Scotch-Irish holy warrior from the unmapped evergreen wilderness of the New Hampshire Grants, seemingly a righteous redeemer, with sword in hand, right out of the Old Testament. Battling with that same intensity across Trenton’s smoke-shrouded lower town, Stark now demonstrated that he was one of Washington’s hardest fighting regimental commanders. He possessed perhaps more frontier combat experience than any Continental officer in Washington’s Army. At the head of his rampaging New Hampshire troops, Stark’s mere physical presence inspired his Continentals to rise to their greatest challenge.
With typically prominent Scotch-Irish features, including a sharp nose and high cheek bones, some people believed that the swarthy Stack possessed Indian ancestry. Instead, Stark was an unprivileged son of lowly Irish immigrants from Ulster Province, northern Ireland. Stark’s fame as one of America’s authentic French and Indian War he
roes, second only to Major Rogers, had preceded him. He had earned widespread renown as Robert Rogers’ top lieutenant during some of the ranger’s most famous wilderness battles and skirmishes against enemies who long devastated the New England frontier. In the present war against the Mother country, he first served as a volunteer beside other rough-and-tumble frontiersmen of the Bennington Rifles. Like some ancient Scottish clan chieftain from the Highlands, Stark led a good many Scotch-Irish soldiers—the primary composition of Rogers’ Rangers and tough fighting men who had been members of his First New Hampshire when first organized in May 1775—against the foremost Knyphausen fusiliers in the lower town. In a name that evolved from his vanquishing and domination of so many German soldiers at Trenton, he later christened his war horse “Hessian.”11
Upon spying a good tactical opportunity, Stark descended upon the Knyphausen Regiment’s defensive line aligned in a neat formation before the Henry Drake’s Bull Head Tavern, the largest building on the block and where rum had often flowed late into the night, on Second Street near Queen Street. Like the snowstorm propelled by the howling northeast winds, seemingly nothing could now stop Stark from pushing deeper into the dark recesses of the lower town by way of Second Street, despite the fact that this was exactly where the Knyphausen Regiment resistance was most concentrated. Above all, Stark knew that whenever he had an enemy on the run, then his reeling opponent had to be pressed as hard as possible.
Therefore, and despite being subordinate in rank to Sullivan, Glover, and St. Clair, Stark was not only leading the way, but also making his own tactical decisions in the frontier tradition, striking his own selected targets, and fighting very much on his own hook. Supported by the fire of Moulder’s Philadelphia, Sargent’s Massachusetts and Neil’s New Jersey field pieces that were leap-frogged eastward to get within close range of the Knyphausen Regiment soldiers, Stark’s advance steadily gained more ground. Demonstrating a blend of typical Scotch-Irish combativeness and independent-mindedness, this New Hampshire frontiersman wasted no precious time waiting for specific orders when on the move in the heat of combat. Doing what he did best based upon his own instincts and tactical decision-making literally on the run, Stark continued to exploit the tactical advantage gained by his own aggressiveness and initiative, leading his Continental troops deeper through the icy streets of lower Trenton. With his hard-fighting First New Hampshire regiment, he charged anything and everything that he saw before him, gaining more vital ground for the First Division in the process, while spearheading the pincer movement of Washington’s southern arm.
At this time, Major Dechow’s responsibility was to protect not only Rall’s rear, but also the approaches to the Assunpink Bridge. Rall’s first order only recently reached the major who was in the lower town’s depths, directing Dechow to keep the approaches to the stone bridge over the creek wide open. Therefore, Dechow was forced to align troops facing north as well as west. While Stark’s First New Hampshire troops advanced east down Second Street and Sargent and Glover’s brigades, respectively, surged forward in the same direction down Front Street one block to the south, the vast majority of Dechow’s troops west of Queen Street faced mostly west to meet the First Division’s escalating threat southwest of town. Commissioned as a captain in the Second Continental Infantry, Major James Wilkinson never forgot how Colonel Stark, Washington’s most unorthodox, maverick Continental regimental commander, led his First New Hampshire soldiers in a “thundering charge” with the bayonet and wild cheers from the dense forests of the northwestern frontier.12
Fairly lusting after a most inviting tactical opportunity, Stark now took dead aim on the left, or southernmost, flank of the Knyphausen Regiment positioned west of Queen Street. If anyone could defeat the elite Knyphausen fusiliers, then the roughhewn Stark, age forty-eight, was that dynamic leader. Besides love of country and the struggle for liberty, this natural warrior, known for his audacity, was now in essence battling fiercely in defense of his New Hampshire farm on the Merrimack River near Amoskeag Falls. All the while, the magnetic power of Stark’s leadership inspired his 110 onrushing soldiers of the First New Hampshire Continental Regiment to charge deeper into the labyrinth of ice-crusted alleys and streets of darkened lower Trenton, and closer to the Knyphausen Regiment’s left flank. With their muskets and ammunition wet from melting sleet and snow of the incessant deluge, Stark had already implored his men to get as close as possible to the Hessians and then to rely upon the bayonet.
Most of all, Stark was now rising to the challenge in the narrow streets of the smoke-filled lower town, as so often during the French and Indian War. Even Major Rogers’s widely circulated journals, published in London in 1765 and immensely popular on both sides of the Atlantic, had applauded Stark’s leadership ability and skill as a natural guerrilla fighter. Gaining experience in conventional warfare, he had played a key role in leading his New Hampshire regiment, consisting of large numbers of Scotch-Irish, in saving the day at the battle of Bunker Hill. Here, on his own tactical initiative, Stark had wisely decided to extend the vulnerable defensive line northeast all the way to the Mystic River to protect the amateur revolutionaries’ exposed left flank of Breed’s Hill. When the rustic New England defender’s limited support of ammunition dwindled during the third British assault that overwhelmed the high ground defensive position, he had then formed an effective rear-guard against the charging British regular, buying invaluable time to protect the mob of New Englanders streaming out of the earthen fort atop Breed’s Hill to escape. Then in an equally skillful repeat performance, Stark also protected the army’s rear during the American withdrawal from ill-fated Canada, proving invaluable service and helping to save the day.
But overcoming the odds and doing the impossible, regardless of the opponent, was nothing new to Stark. He had even survived capture by the much-feared Abenaki, doing what few others have ever accomplished. In the beginning, Stark even gained the Indians’ rare respect for a white man by striking back at the largest, fiercest-looking warrior and threatening “to kiss all their women” when running the deadly gauntlet at the village of Saint Francois. Revealing depth of character and empathy for Native Americans, Stark had refused to participate in the devastating, early October 1759 raid of Rogers’ Rangers on his befriended former captors at Saint Francis.
When not battling America’s enemies and as could be expected, the ever-combative Stark often clashed with his fellow Americans. Stark had long demonstrated a typically Scotch-Irish hatred of arbitrary political and governmental authority. He had long openly denounced corrupt, abusive politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. Stark proclaimed that he didn’t “care a damn” for established legislative institutions, British or American, if not properly serving the people. Refusing to play the backdoor game of self-serving politics for personal advancement, Stark instead allowed his sparkling battlefield successes to speak for themselves. And now this irrepressible son of the New Hampshire Grants was fiercely battling Dechow’s Knyphausen fusiliers in the sulphurous smoke and snow blowing across the low ground of Second Street with a righteous intensity that was reflected in his personal motto of “Live Free or Die.”
In addition, Stark possessed a good many personal scores to settle this morning. Two of Stark’s nephews had already sacrificed their lives in America’s struggle for liberty, which only fueled his motivation. All the while, therefore, Stark continued to keep his First New Hampshire Continentals together and on the move while surging in the same direction in the blinding snowfall. Shouting orders in his booming voice that no one challenged, Stark’s words betrayed a recognizable Scotch-Irish brogue that reflected the rich Celtic cultural heritage of Ulster Province and the transplanted Scotch-Irish community of Londonderry, New Hampshire, which had been named after northern Ireland’s largest city.13
As so often in the past, Stark proved unstoppable in the bullet-swept streets of lower Trenton, brushing aside all initial Knyphausen Regiment resistance before the fusilier regiment’s i
ncreasingly vulnerable left flank. Most of all, he now sought to deliver a sledgehammer-like blow against Dechow’s veteran regiment “to prevent my country from being Ravaged and Enslaved by our cruel and unnatural Enemies” from England and Germany.14 Determined to capture the lower town to fulfill Washington’s lofty tactical vision of a double envelopment, Stark was also fueled by an undying contempt for his Hessian opponents because they were nothing more than mercenaries who had been “bought for seven pounds and tenpence a man.”15
Stark, consequently, was very much waging his own personal war, striking everything in sight. All the while, he continued to encourage his yelling New Hampshire boys, no longer feeling the late December cold in their adrenaline-infused excitement and thrill of success, onward through Second Street, pushing aside more fusiliers and surging past the little vacant shops and stores, now darkened and silent, of the once-thriving commercial district in a determined effort to strike and then roll up the Knyphausen Regiment’s left flank. As if avenging Gaelic-Celtic family members who had been fiery rebels on both sides of the Atlantic, Stark applied ever-increasing relentless pressure on Dechow’s vulnerable left. In awe, Major Wilkinson never forgot how “the dauntless Stark dealt death wherever he found resistance, and broke down all opposition before him.”16
Meanwhile, while Stark’s New Hampshire Continentals charged east through Second Street, low-lying on the river’s floodplain, and hurled back additional fusiliers toward the Knyphausen Regiment’s left flank, the remainder of Sullivan’s First Division maneuvered just below Stark to pour down Front Street, where the popular Black Horse Tavern had long satisfied thirsty patrons, only one block south and deeper into the smoke-laden maze of southwestern Trenton.
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