George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  By this time when the grenadiers and fusiliers had penetrated so deeply into the town’s darkened depths amid the suffocating palls of sulphurous smoke that hovered over King Street like an ominous cloud for German fortunes, some emboldened patriotic citizens of Trenton joined in the escalating fray to assist their hard-pressed countrymen in arms. Making the most of the opportunity, these townsfolk now blasted away with muskets from the shelter of their own homes.

  But the greatest punishment inflicted upon the exposed fusiliers was unleashed from the right of Stirling’s men, especially Virginia Continentals—who Washington had smartly held in place as a strategic reserve on King Street sector—armed with deadly Long Rifles, on the north. Here, on the north, the exposed right flank of Scheffer’s von Lossberg Regiment was cut to pieces, and the hard-hit ranks began to waver under the severe pounding, falling into some initial disarray. In record time, fourteen von Lossberg fusiliers were killed and wounded, dropping like autumn leaves on a windy October day in the Rhineland so far away. It was the unfortunate fate of the von Lossberg fusiliers to have earlier passed not only closest to Hamilton’s two six-pounders, now positioned just below Queen Street’s head, but also Forrest’s Pennsylvania guns, as they approached King Street. Unable to return fire, cursing, shrieking, and shouting fusiliers reached new levels of desperation in attempting to fight back as best they could in the noisy confusion.

  Ironically, after many Americans had only recently believed that the contest had been won by Washington’s surprise attack, the struggle for Trenton’s possession was only now beginning to reach its zenith on the grim, urban killing ground between King and Queen Streets. With choking battle-smoke continuing to reduce visibility along with low, dark clouds blotting out the sun, this surreal, close-quarter fighting amid such an overall darkened atmosphere under a poorly lit sky was the ultimate nightmare for highly disciplined professional soldiers. After all, the Hessians were neither trained nor familiar with the horrors of urban combat, the nastiest kind of warfare. While Continentals fired from standing, kneeling, and prone positions and with individualistic fighting men from across America darting about fleetingly like ghosts between houses and along alleys, expert American marksmen seemed to Rall’s soldiers to be blasting away from every point. While the snow continued to tumble down over fallen bodies, flashes of flame erupted from marksmen who blasted away from behind trees, outhouses, and fences and even out of cellars to cut down more Germans.

  As the relentlessly moving Hessian ranks pushed closer to King Street with flags waving, music blaring, and drums pounding in a regular cadence, as if waging war on a conventional European battlefield on the continent’s central plains, in the mistaken hope of intimidating Washington’s citizen soldiers, at least one Trenton woman picked up a trusty flintlock with deadly intent. She took careful aim at the most noticeable target that she could ascertain amid the drifting clouds of burnt-powder smoke and chaos that swirled below her. Then, this lady rebel pulled (most likely jerked rather than squeezed) the trigger, firing at one of the foremost foreign occupiers of her own hometown. Wearing bicorn hats, these finely uniformed Hessians, especially upper class, aristocratic officers, presented ideal targets against the white background of snow on the street below.

  Most of all, this daring American woman, of unknown age and background, could not resist the temptation to do her patriotic duty. Venting her anger at great risk to herself and perhaps Trenton family, this New Jersey patriot now reloaded her musket and again fired at Rall’s troops also because if married, then her husband might have been even now serving in Washington’s Army. As if facing the scorching fires of Washington’s men was not enough, Rall’s soldiers were shocked by the sight of this American woman firing at them from a window—something not seen by these German veterans during many years of military service on both sides of the Atlantic. For the more philosophical Hessians who witnessed firsthand her pent-up fury, these mostly Lutheran fighting men must have now realized that such spirited homespun resistance revealed that they were encountering a new kind of people—fanatical, diehard republicans—who were now waging a holy war against hated invaders.

  With Rall’s encroaching soldiers at close range to her own home, one of the woman’s shots mortally wounded a conspicuous Hessian “captain,” either thirty-one-year-old Johann Fredrich, or Kasper, von Riess or Friedrich Wilhelm von Benning, serving in the regiment since 1766, who were leading their troops bravely onward into the maelstrom. Described as a “brave and gallant officer,” Captain Riess, born on Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1745 and hailing from an upper-class Stallburg family, which owned the salt mines at Allendorf, on the Lumda River, amid towering, evergreen-covered mountains, was instantly killed. He fell near Captain Benning, who likewise was killed in the vicious cross fire raking the two exposed regiments without mercy.

  The name of this accurate-firing patriotic Trenton woman, who almost certainly deliberately targeted one of these Hessian officers, thanks to his fancy uniform, and as if instinctively knowing the urgent need to eliminate the most inspiring Hessian leaders in their final bid to reap victory by regaining King Street, has never been ascertained. A trustworthy officer, Benning commanded the Sixth Company, von Lossberg Regiment, when cut down in the body-littered street. He had served capably as a fusilier officer for at least a decade, and had been appointed Staff Captain of the von Lossberg Regiment in 1773. When Benning was killed, he was standing near the mounted Rall while the colonel continued to encourage his troops west toward King Street and a hail of bullets zipped by. In doing his duty, Rall ignored the sight of his fallen friend and his own slight wound. This sharp-shooting female patriot might well have been of German heritage, adding another unique dimension of the surreal civil war among Germans in America during this bloody showdown at Trenton.10

  Meanwhile, not long after the fall of Captains Riess and Benning while leading their troops onward into the face of the roaring musketry that seemingly was erupting from all sides, Lieutenant Ernst Christian Schwabe, who had served with distinction in the Lieb Body Guard Company, von Lossberg Regiment, since age fourteen, was hit in the thigh and went down on the snow-covered ground. While the bleeding Schwabe was carried to the shelter behind a nearby house not held by revenge-seeking Americans, nineteen-year-old Ensign Friedrich von Zengen, born in Bonenburg and recently promoted to an officer’s rank from the enlisted ranks, took command of the crack Lieb Body Guard Company, which continued to put up a good fight against Washington’s sharpshooting executioners who seemed all around the dwindling number of boxed-in von Lossberg fusiliers.11

  While the von Lossberg Regiment’s advance stalled among the houses immediately north of Rall’s grenadiers between Queen and Kings Streets just above Church Alley, where the distance between these two north-south main thoroughfares was narrower than farther south as the parallel roads gradually widened in descending south toward the foot of both arteries, the Rall Regiment grenadiers kept moving relentlessly west along Church Alley on the von Lossberger’s left just to the south. Boring a narrow hole through the cauldron of increasingly determined American resistance, these well-trained grenadiers forced Mercer’s foremost soldiers to withdraw west, finally opening the way up to King Street.

  Through the hail of lead projectiles, Rall’s grenadiers struggled onward with determination to finally reach their objective of King Street by way of Church Alley after running a deadly gauntlet of fire. Even though the Hessians could yet hardly see anything in the thick, swirling smoke and with wet muskets and powder which ensured that the American ring of fire could not be responded to in kind, the foremost Rall’s grenadiers at last managed to gain their coveted goal of King Street, wielding bayonets like pikes and expending more lives of German men and boys as if they no longer mattered to their concerned families back in Germany.

  Against the odds, the foremost surviving Rall Regiment grenadiers spilled into King Street near the town’s center and Rall’s headquarters, driving away supporting infantrymen
and a handful of American gunners, who operated the two captured three-pounders, which had been brought by the victors farther south from their original location just north of Petty’s Run. No doubt a Hessian victory cheer rang down body-strewn King Street when the two Rall Regiment guns were finally taken back into the grenadier fold after even more lives were lost: a remarkable tactical accomplishment under the circumstances, especially considering the fact that Trenton was held by a larger number (around a thousand more) of Americans.

  Teenage Grenadier Johannes Reuber, of the Rall Regiment, described with pride in only a few words of the turning point in the tenacious struggle for possession of King Street, when the unstoppable grenadiers descended upon the defenders and captured their two field pieces that they thought they would never see again: “We got them back.” Colonel Rall was elated by his most improbable tactical success that he had achieved on King Street near his own headquarters at Potts’s house. After all, he had accomplished much more than the recapture of two lost cannon. At long last and at least for the moment, Rall had wrestled away and regained the initiative, stealing the momentum from a seemingly already victorious Washington, while also wiping clean the dark stain upon his grenadier regiment’s spotless record and reputation in this war.

  Additionally, after more hard fighting in the embattled heart of Trenton, the colonel reclaimed the badly bruised honor of his entire brigade, the pride of Hesse-Cassel and other Germanic regions of the ancient Teutonic homeland, by regaining the two little three-pounders. After having stirred up a hornet’s nest deep within Trenton’s bowels, Rall’s sparkling tactical success of reaching King Street and recapturing his two cannon was short lived, however.12

  At this time, an increasing amount of pressure continued to be applied by Sullivan’s First Division troops south of Rall’s successful counterattack all the way back into King Street: Glover possessed the Assunpink brigade and Sargent’s New England and New York brigade continued to confront the feisty Knyphausen Regiment at Queen Street’s lower end. Meanwhile, Colonel Paterson’s Fifteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment, St. Clair’s reserve brigade, led the way north and straight up King Street and through the drifting smoke. A direct order had been issued to Paterson to intercept and parry Rall’s westward-lunging counterattack by either Sullivan, division commander, or St. Clair, brigade commander.

  Not long after Rall gained his precious toehold on King Street and the hard-fighting grenadiers reached their deepest penetration point west to gain an advanced point near Rall’s headquarters, these yet unbloodied New England troops, with full cartridge-boxes and plenty of fighting spirit, swarmed north up King Street at the most opportune moment; one regiment from St. Clair’s brigade, the Fifteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment, and the other from Sargent’s brigade, the Sixteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment, from north to south, respectively.

  Moving forward in the Sixteenth Massachusetts’s surging ranks, African American Private Jacob Francis described how, after first having pushed down the River Road, his regiment had then entered “into the town to the corner where it crossed the street running up towards [or north] the Scotch Road and [the regiment] turned up [King] street,” to advance behind Paterson’s Bay State regiment. And in the forefront of this timely counter stroke pouring north up King Street toward Rall’s headquarters, Sullivan now possessed a most capable commander and a battle-tested regiment for leading the counterattack from the south that now threatened Rall’s southern, or left, flank that had gained a toehold on King Street: Colonel Paterson and his Fifteenth Massachusetts. When needed the most to stem the crisis, this seasoned Continental regiment was about to make its presence felt far beyond its numbers and in a disproportionate manner, even though this Massachusetts regiment had been recently cruelly decimated by smallpox, until only the colonel and half a dozen soldiers had remained fit for duty as late as June 1776.

  Most importantly for meeting Rall’s counterstroke in King Street, Paterson’s Fifteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment had early gained a lofty reputation as “the flower” of New England’s Continentals. Paterson was a Yale College graduate (Class of 1762) and a sharp lawyer of Scottish ancestry. He looked back with pride to a rebellion-minded and British-hating grandfather, who had fled the native Celtic and Protestant homeland for political reasons. This capable Massachusetts colonel was versatile and tough-minded, having gained timely support, including “patriot” Indian volunteers, from the Stockbridge Tribe in the spring of 1775.

  Leaving his son a distinguished martial legacy, Paterson’s father had died of yellow fever in the same year that his promising son graduated from Yale, while serving in Havana, Cuba, not long after the Spanish port’s capture. Modest by nature, Paterson was a community and early revolutionary political leader from Lenox, Massachusetts. He was also the loving husband of Elizabeth Warren Lee after having married the love of his life in 1766. However, he missed their ten-year wedding anniversary because of his patriotism and this war’s stern demands, which somewhat soothed Elizabeth’s anger. At the risk of making them orphans so that he could lead his men to victory at Trenton, Paterson was also the father of three daughters—Hannah, Polly, and Ruth, respectively—and one son, Josiah.

  Most importantly in overall tactical terms, Colonel Paterson and his Massachusetts Continentals were now exactly in the right place at the right time: fresh troops, with full cartridge-boxes, now advancing north up King Street, just below Rall’s deepest westward penetration and most successful counterattack of the day, surging ahead on a direct collusion course with the Rall Regiment that had secured a tight grip on King Street from where more extensive gains could be reaped if exploited. At this critical moment, Greenwood described the charge of Colonel Paterson and 170 mostly “Berkshire [County, Massachusetts] men” of his seasoned Fifteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment—St. Clair’s brigade’s largest regiment—which included hard-fighting Scotch-Irish officers, like Lieutenants John and Thomas McKinstry, north up King Street and the gently sloping ground from the south: “As we advanced, it being dark and stormy so that we could not see very far ahead, we got within 200 yards of about 300 or 400 Hessians who were paraded, two deep, in a straight line with Colonel Roll (Rall or Rahl), their commander, on horseback, to the right of them.”13

  Not long after they regained King Street and recaptured their two three-pounders, this most advanced concentration of Rall’s foremost grenadiers who had reached a point near their commander’s headquarters on King Street was yet formidable, despite having suffered heavy losses. Meanwhile, just northeast of Rall’s Regiment and Church Alley and immediately east of King Street, the von Lossberg Regiment was now in more serious trouble than its sister regiment situated just to the southwest. Here, immediately above Church Alley, “the bravest men” of the von Lossberg Regiment made a defensive stand, after a good many fusiliers were already cut down by the flank fire sweeping down from the north from the right of Stirling’s troops that had remained in position—upon Washington’s orders—on commanding ground at the head of King Street. This von Lossberg defensive stand was primarily orchestrated by Captain Steding, age thirty-nine, who was yet full of fight despite repeated setbacks. He stubbornly refused to be denied on this hellish morning, mirroring the tenacity of his strong-willed brigade commander, who was now battling just to the southwest on bullet-swept King Street. Both Hessian leaders were determined not to relinquish any ground after it had been so hard won at the cost of some of the brigade’s best soldiers.

  Exhibiting the natural phenomena of hard-hit soldiers in an awfully bad fix under a scorching fire, some of Rall’s men began what was known as “bunching” out of instinct. Nevertheless, despite soaring losses, the Hessians continued “fighting as hard as they could” in the blood-soaked King Street sector. A hardened veteran and equally committed bachelor whose hard-earned cynicism mocked marriage and romantic notions, Captain Steding, and his top lieutenants, including twenty-two-year-old Ensign Christian August von Hobe,
born in Mecklenburg in northern Germany in 1754 and the Sixth Company’s commander, and Lieutenant Wilhelm Christian Muller, born in Ziegenheim in the Rhineland in 1749 and who had served in the Fourth Company since age sixteen, steadied the reeling Lossbergers, who suffered from a vicious flank fire from the north and a frontal fire from the west.

  Amid the din, veteran Hessian officers shouted barely audible orders, and the fusiliers attempted to return fire the best they could, blasting away at both concealed and stealthily-moving Americans darting in and out of the smoke and firing from houses and from behind fences. All the while, these well-trained soldiers stood vulnerable in formation in the open to be methodically shot down with relative ease. Leading the Sixth Company, Ensign von Hobe, age twenty-two and born in Mecklenburg like Ensign von Hobe, steadied his punished fusiliers amid the scorching fires, shouting encouragement in the tumult. Despite caught amid a confusing nightmare of urban combat that was utterly baffling, Lieutenant Colonel Scheffer’s feisty von Lossbergers yet possessed plenty of fighting spirit and gamely battled on against the odds.14

  Peering through the drifting layers of sulphurous smoke and hazy veil of snowflakes descending over King Street and its combatants locked in a mortal struggle, Rall suddenly spied the northernmost elements of the unexpected advance of St. Clair’s lone Massachusetts regiment surging up the street from the south just in the nick of time. He, therefore, barked out orders and hurriedly shifted his southernmost grenadiers on his left flank, after having been surprised once again on King Street. As if already facing a hot fire from two directions, north and west, was not enough, Rall was now forced to form his troops to face south in an entirely new direction in a last-minute attempt to parry the newest emerging threat. Out of urgent necessity and while Forrest’s cannon fired down King Street and toward their vulnerable rear, Rall’s grenadiers on the south now looked down King Street while bracing for the upcoming clash with the rapidly advancing Bay Staters.