George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  But even after the regiment aligned and when initiative was most required to parry Washington’s multiple threats from two directions, leading Knyphausen officers had initially wasted too much precious time—at least fifteen minutes but certainly even more—in awaiting Rall’s orders about what to do next while Washington, Greene, and Sullivan rapidly maneuvered in attempting to close the trap around the entire Rall brigade with a double envelopment. Most of all, Rall had needed his top lieutenant, Major Dechow, to have quickly advanced north to support either one, or both, of his counterattacks, but the major had been in the King Street sector when Washington unleashed his assault. And, of course, Sullivan’s aggressiveness had also ensured that the Knyphausen Regiment remained in the lower town and fought on its own hook, keeping the command firmly in place. But at least half of Dechow’s fusilier regiment could have joined Rall with the other half conducting a holding action in the lower town to protect the Rall and von Lossberg Regiment’s rear during Rall’s counterattack northward and to keep Sullivan and Greene’s Divisions from closing their pincer movement.

  However, Major Dechow might have deliberately withheld his support from Rall in part because they were bitter enemies. Dechow had recently dispatched a letter of complaint against Rall to General von Heister at his New York City headquarters. Dechow’s report arrived at headquarters on Christmas Day: an insubordinate act that violated the proper chain of command to reveal the depth of the dissension and dysfunction within the Rall brigade’s highest leadership ranks. Additionally, both Rall and Dechow yet thought in conventional terms on the most unconventional of battlegrounds, viewing the Knyphausen Regiment as a strategic reserve: an unaffordable luxury.

  Therefore, when Lieutenant Wiederhold, one of the Knyphausen Regiment’s best officers and a skilled cartographer, rejoined Dechow’s fusilier regiment after he and his band of pickets were driven south and after having delayed the initial advance of the left of Stirling’s brigade down Queen Street, he was astounded by the lack of activity and initiative that he saw around him. As early ascertained by Wiederhold, the lethargic Knyphausen Regiment demonstrated far too little initiative when bold action was most needed.

  In dismay while the firing of American muskets and cannons reached a new crescendo to reveal to him that Washington’s troops were undertaking a sweeping encircling movement, a disbelieving Lieutenant Wiederhold screamed at regimental commander Dechow, “In God’s name! Why have we not occupied the bridge?” Wiederhold was also venting his mounting anger at his older and more aristocratic superior. After all, Dechow had cancelled the usual morning patrol that might have early detected Ewing’s attempt to cross at the South Trenton Ferry and alerted the garrison before Washington struck. Dechow had then only implored his eighteen fusiliers at the Assunpink bridge “to hold out as long as possible,” instead of sending reinforcements. But Dechow could have been excused for his unfortunate lack of initiative when Rall counterattacked northward, because he was now unfit for active duty. Attempting to do his best under the most difficult circumstances, Major Dechow had yet to recover from multiple wounds received during the headlong assaults up the bullet-swept slopes of Chatterton’s Hill and at Fort Washington.33

  America’s First Flying Artillery

  Meanwhile, in support of the onrushing infantrymen who were rising to the challenge, Washington’s artillery of both divisions continued to rule the streets, dominating the swirling combat. To fully capitalize on Captain Washington’s success of capturing the Rall Regiment’s two three-pounders, the general infantry advance down King Street, and the repulse of Rall’s two counterattacks, Washington continued to exploit his tactical advantage to the fullest. As demonstrated throughout this morning, he instinctively understood what would become one of Napoleon’s central axioms in the art of war: first break an enemy’s “equilibrium” or “balance,” and then “the rest is nothing,” and no single factor verified the wisdom of this key battlefield tenet more thoroughly than the aggressive employment of artillery.34

  Therefore, Washington understood the tactical wisdom of not allowing all of the artillery assigned Greene’s Second Division to remain poised idle on the high ground at the head of King and Queen Streets, after Rall’s dual repulses up both avenues. To exploit the long-arm tactical opportunity, Washington ordered artillery pieces forward, or south, to add more firepower pressure upon the reeling Hessians. Washington and Knox had already proved that they were innovative tacticians not only in the art of maneuvering artillery pieces at the heads of columns for quick deployment at a battle’s beginning and then concentrating their artillery en mass, but also in maximizing artillery mobility in the midst of battle to exploit newly developed tactical opportunities.

  With an increasing number of American muskets unable to fire because of wet powder, Washington and Knox continued to utilize the artillery’s wet-weather, or uneroded, capabilities and maximize their gunner’s soaring morale, now sky high after winning the duel against the Rall Regiment’s artillery on the King Street and the Knyphausen Regiment cannon on Queen Street. Washington now possessed the ideal ingredients, including an overabundance of artillery, for aggressively employing his guns in the most forward positions. Washington, consequently, ordered some of Forrest’s gunners to take their cannon down King Street and to follow in the wake of the advance of Captain Washington’s vanguard and the Third Virginia to exploit the tactical advantage to the fullest.

  Such forward-thinking modern tactical concepts of aggressively utilizing the artillery arm as a highly mobile and flexible form of firepower became a fundamental key to the battlefield successes of Napoleon, who began his military career as a none-too-promising artillery officer. The superior mobility and tactical flexibility of Napoleon’s horse, or flying, artillery ensured that his guns were almost always brought rapidly to the front and close to enemy formations, Austrian, Prussia, or Russian, to systematically smash them to pieces with superior firepower: in essence, Washington’s and Knox’s same artillery tactics utilized so effectively at Trenton, whose streets, despite the ice and snow, offered relatively easy mobility for both gunners and artillery horses compared to a traditional, non-urban or wooded battlefield, especially in rainy weather conditions.35

  Rising to yet another challenge with a combination of imagination and initiative, the dynamic Washington-Knox team now employed their novel tactical concept—fundamentally Napoleonic—of flying artillery, before it was developed in Europe, including France which experimented with the concept in the late 1770s. This aggressive tactic was now even more appropriate and timely because the cannon were essentially “waterproof” compared to soldiers’ muskets on this stormy morning. Washington’s timely exploitation of the artillery arm’s capability and mobility as a front-line weapon explained in part why Major Wilkinson, the ambitious Marylander of merit, marveled how the tactical flexibility of Forrest’s artillery “annoyed the enemy in various directions,” especially after Washington ordered a detachment of Forrest’s Pennsylvania guns to advance down King Street and the sloping ground in the manner of flying artillery.

  Forrest’s capable Irish lieutenant, Patrick Duffy, led his Pennsylvania gunners down King Street with a six-pounder, following Captain Washington’s and the Virginian’s successful attack south down the sloping ground. In the Irishman’s words from a December 28 letter: “I had the Honour of being detach’d up the Main [King] Street in front of the [Hessian] Savages, without any other piece,” and unlimbered in the middle of frigid King Street.36 But in fact in his eagerness, “Pat” Duffy, who had migrated from the Emerald Isle and still spoke with a thick Irish brogue, had deployed his lone six-pounder too far down the street. In this sector above Sullivan’s assault in the lower town, lingering Hessians, either the southernmost von Lossbergers, or Rall grenadiers, or the northernmost element of the Knyphausen Regiment fusiliers, unleashed a sharp fire from nearby houses lining King Street’s east side within easy range of Lieutenant Duffy and his strong-armed cannoneers. Neverthel
ess, these Pennsylvania state artillerymen remained out in the open on the snowy street, busily loading and firing at targets of opportunity. The bold Irish lieutenant wrote how he and his Philadelphia boys “sustained the fire of Several gunns [sic] from the Houses on each side without the least loss [and therefore I] must attribute my protection to the hand of Providence.”37

  While a hail of Hessian bullets whistled by, Lieutenant Duffy and his adrenaline-ridden gunners maintained discipline and their nerve under the hot fire, working their six-pounder with businesslike efficiency, firing first to the south down King Street and then east after the Germans were hurled off the body-covered street and driven east. With some understatement, therefore, Duffy later wrote how, “[I] can assure you the Artillery got applause” for what it accomplished this morning.38

  In addition just to the northeast of Duffy’s busy cannon, Hamilton’s New York guns were also employed by Washington as effective flying artillery, thanks to Stirling’s advancing infantrymen on the brigade’s left opening up the way south down Queen Street. Naturally, the aggressive Hamilton was in his element amid the swirling combat along Queen Street. On the snowy landscape north of Petty’s Run, the handsome New York captain led his guns a short distance down the sloping street with his usual combination of dash and skill. Once unleashed from Hamilton’s stationary defensive role on the high ground at Queen Street’s head, his battery of two six-pounders inched south to ease within better range of their opponent. Therefore, Washington’s northern arm of his pincer movement in gradually closing southward was considerably strengthened by the advance of flying artillery on both King and Queen Streets.

  In addition, Washington’s artillery firepower became more formidable on King Street by the added muscle of the two captured Rall Regiment guns. Loaded with canister by its former owners, one captured Hessian three-pounder was now manned by Sergeant White’s hard-luck artillery crew from the disabled field piece at King Street’s head. Meanwhile, the other Rall Regiment cannon was utilized by Knox’s predesignated gun crew, which had been equipped with rammers and primers to turn captured artillery upon the Hessians. In a hurry, young Orderly Sergeant White and his New England and Pennsylvania gunners opened up with canister on the Hessians, first south and then east of King Street. These roaring cannon, Hamilton’s New York and Duffy’s Pennsylvania’s guns—all six-pounders—and the two captured Hessian three-pounders, benefitted from dry, black powder ammunition, belching fire to inflict additional body blows upon Rall’s hard-hit brigade from multiple directions in the snowfall-diffused sunlight.39

  Yet mounted in defiance of canister fired from Captain Hamilton’s six-pounders, which were now closer to him than Baumann’s three three-pounders, and a stream of rebel bullets as he had braved at Long Island, White Plains, and Fort Washington, an anxious Rall awaited Lieutenant Piel’s return from his reconnaissance, as ordered by him, to ascertain if the stone Assunpink bridge was open to provide an escape route. Meanwhile, just east of Queen Street and yet fuming over his lost cannon, Rall tightened up his formations under the leaden storm. All the while, the disabled Knyphausen three-pounder, knocked out by Hamilton’s cannon fire, remained abandoned on Queen Street, standing useless and silent in the snow while low-lying clouds of dense smoke hung heavy in the frozen air.

  Engaged in urban combat for the first time, the young Philadelphia gunners, mostly hardworking men from the seedy rough waterfront, of Captain Moulder’s city battery, with its three French four-pounders aligned near Second Street and Neil’s two New Jersey three-pounders continued to unleash fire from the west on the Knyphausen Regiment. The scorching fire of Moulder’s guns of the Second Company of Philadelphia Associators from the east and the flying artillery, Hamilton’s two six-pounders, from the northwest was increasingly unbearable for Dechow’s fusiliers. In addition, the onrushing troops of Stark, Glover, and St. Clair brought greater pressure on the Knyphausen Regiment while surging closer to Queen Street to ensure that any chance for the Rall brigade to escape south grew slimmer with each passing minute. Meanwhile, additional hard-hit Hessians broke ranks, heading east and toward the only end of Trenton yet open and free from Washington’s tightening noose that was slowly squeezing the life out of the reeling Rall brigade.40

  The Knyphausen Regiment’s Dilemma

  Knowing that the stone bridge across the Assunpink had to be secured at all costs, Glover’s fast-moving Massachusetts and Connecticut troops continued to surge farther southeastward, heading rapidly toward the swollen Assunpink Creek to cut off the Hessians’ line of retreat. Glover was once again exhibiting a remarkable display of individual initiative, unlike what had been demonstrated by the Knyphausen Regiment’s leaders. Throughout the smoke-choked lower town, Sargent and St. Clair’s soldiers advanced relentlessly to gain more ground. Like a giant broom sweeping down Front and Second Streets from the west, Sullivan’s mostly New England attackers hurled the last remaining southernmost Knyphausen Regiment fusiliers eastward while expanding their already tight grip on the lower town. Colonel Paul Dudley Sargent, born in the fishing port of Salem, Massachusetts in 1745, and hailing from Hillsborough County, Massachusetts, was another hard-hitting brigade commander, like Glover, who now rose to the fore. Sargent led his more than eight hundred onrushing New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut troops through the wind- and bullet-swept streets of the south side of Trenton that had to be captured as soon as possible.41

  Out in front as usual and keeping up the momentum, meanwhile, Stark led the surging right wing of St. Clair’s brigade—three regiments—with his charging New Hampshire Continentals, who were sucking in air in the cold, pushing east to gain possession of almost all of Second Street that ran parallel to Assunpink Creek. Applying increasing pressure as when one of the most daring officer of Rogers’ Rangers so long ago, Stark succeeded in turning the left flank of the Knyphausen Regiment, which yielded more ground under the New Englander’s relentless pressure.

  The last of the finely uniformed soldiers in scarlet on the Knyphausen Regiment’s buckling left standing firm were finally uprooted from their lower Queen Street position. These stubborn fusiliers were then pushed across to the street’s east side with a flurry of bayonets, musket-butts, and bullets in ugly, close-range fighting around darkened houses. Farther north on the Knyphausen Regiment’s right, larger numbers of fusiliers withdrew northeast toward the vicinity of the little Quaker Meeting House to escape the wrath of Sullivan’s onrushing troops pouring through the cold streets with victory cheers that split the air. All the while, Dechow continued to hurriedly reposition additional fusiliers just south of the Quaker Meeting House and closer to the von Lossberg and Rall Regiments, from north to south, just east of Queen Street, to the north.42

  Like the rampaging soldiers of Stark’s New Hampshire Continental Regiment, other New Hampshire regiments of St. Clair’s brigade also continued to exploit their tactical gains as if determined to wipe out their opponent’s old Kip’s Bay stereotype that “without New-England rum” northeastern soldiers lacked the courage to face Hessian soldiers on the battlefield. Of English ancestry, Lieutenant Colonel Israel Gilman, who hailed from one of New Hampshire’s most respected families, now led around 135 Second New Hampshire Continental Regiment soldiers forward to redeem New England’s honor.

  Consisting primarily of Continentals from Rockingham and Strafford Counties, New Hampshire, the attacking troops of the Second New Hampshire Continental Regiment were inspired by the beautiful sight of their waving blue silk flag, which was embroidered with the motto “The Glory Not the Prey.” Fluttering in the icy wind sweeping across the regiment’s head, this colorful battle flag was distinguished by a circular design of interlocking chain links, which represented each new state and the nationalistic concept of strength through unity, in the center. Like their veteran commander from the small fishing town of New Market, Rockingham County, in New Hampshire’s southeast corner on the Lamprey River and located on an expansive inland bay near the Atlantic, Gilman�
�s New Hampshire boys were hard-nosed fighters. They had methodically cut down a good many attacking redcoat regulars on the long, grassy slope of Breed’s Hill when New Englander soldiery saw their finest day on June 17, 1775. A former respected member of the General Assembly and community leader, Lieutenant Colonel Gilman might have now wondered if he would ever again see his wife, Hannah Smith, while charging through the snow-covered streets—now dominated by a mixture of confusion, fear, courage, and death—and trying to catch his breath on a frigid morning in hell that he would never forget.43

  Capturing the Stone Bridge Across the Assunpink

  Moving fast through the flurries of snow as if they had not already rowed the Durham boats across the Delaware and marched all night to Trenton, Glover’s hard-charging soldiers, wheezing for air, neared their next objective after having played its part in hurling the Knyphausen Regiment aside. Glover was determined to secure the stone bridge across the Assunpink. To ensure that no Hessians were bypassed on the south that would make his right flank vulnerable, Glover extended right farther south across the snowy river bottoms and all the way to the Delaware.

  Ignoring their weariness and the strength-sapping cold, the Massachusetts soldiers on Glover’s right advanced across the level, open ground of the river’s windswept flood plain, meeting no natural or man-made obstacles. Demonstrating firm discipline by keeping their fast-moving line relatively straight despite slippery footing on the ice and snow, Glover’s Massachusetts and Connecticut troops swarmed onward on the double-quick “with their right to the Delaware, and with their left to the town, straight away to the bridge.”44

  Descending like locusts upon the stone bridge over the Assunpink’s high waters, Glover’s Massachusetts troops, with two battle flags waving in front and cheering wildly, pushed aside Sergeant Muller and his eighteen-man detachment of Knyphausen Regiment fusiliers, smashing through their thin line guarding the stone bridge. To the very end, the battle-hardened sergeant obeyed Major Dechow’s orders, recently barked out by their mounted commander, to “hold out as long as possible.” Facing far too many swarming New Englanders, Sergeant Muller and his guardian detachment never knew what hit them. In fact, Glover overwhelmed the bridge so easily that the Hessians believed that they had been attacked by “three battalions [or regiments] of the enemy.” Now with the strategic Assunpink bridge firmly in Glover’s capable hands, no additional troops of Rall’s diminishing garrison could escape south over the bridge while also eliminating the possibility of arriving Hessian reinforcements from Bordentown. But the fainthearted British cavalrymen of the Sixteenth Light Dragoons, Captain Grothausen’s jaegers, Captain Engelhardt and his shell-shocked cannoneers, and Sergeant Muller’s bridge guardians, respectively, had already slipped across the Assunpink before Glover’s elated Massachusetts soldiers, forgetting their fatigue but not their hard-won reputations, captured the bridge.