George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  He was the son of a black slave mother and a white father, who was very likely her owner, in the little town of Amwell, around fifteen miles north of Trenton, which had been founded by idealistic German Baptists. After having served five different masters of varying dispositions—some good, some bad—who he had carefully gauged for survival under slavery, Francis had only recently gained his long-coveted freedom. Consequently, the young black Continental soldier from Hunterdon County, where Trenton served as the county seat, now charged up King Street with flintlock in hand amid the fast-moving ranks of Sargent’s old Massachusetts regiment to preserve not only his infant nation’s independence, but also his own precious freedom. Private Francis was determined that no whites—British, Hessian, or American—would ever dare attempt to take his freedom away again.19

  Colonel Rall Cut Down

  Amid the choking smoke and deafening noise engulfing King Street, Rall was haunted not only by the loss of his two prized three-pounders for the second time on the same ill-fated avenue of death, but also by Lieutenant Piel’s earlier searing words that the Assunpink bridge was now held by far too many American soldiers and artillery to push aside. What Washington and his troops were now demonstrating most convincingly was that the Hessians’ glory days, as witnessed for one and all to see at Long Island, White Plains and Fort Washington, were no more. Consequently, Rall might well have known that it was all but over by this time, especially after the left, or southern end, of his own grenadier regiment crumpled from the combined pressure of close-range volleys, the spirited charge up King Street by Paterson’s Massachusetts Regiment, and especially after having seen so many grenadiers, the best and brightest, cut down in the roaring tempest.

  And worst of all for Rall, his surviving men were now even less able to return fire because of their wet muskets and powder, leaving them all but defenseless except for steel bayonets. Meanwhile, after the collapse of grenadier resistance in King Street’s southern sector, the tactical situation worsened even more for the northern end of Rall’s regiment on King Street, with increasing numbers of soldiers breaking rearward, or east, on their own. Quite simply, these punished grenadiers were no longer able to face the terrible fires of musketry streaming from the open windows of houses, whose second stories, filled with lethal marksmen, overlooked Hessian positions in the snow-covered King Street below.

  Nevertheless, the mounted Colonel Rall continued to defy the ever-fickle hands of fate, tough luck, and death all morning. Rall already had been hit by an American bullet, which “annoyed him very much” and “weakened him” with each passing minute. But the bloodstained colonel ignored the pain and blood loss to keep encouraging his grenadiers to fight on against the American tide, while battling against the odds in the bullet- and canister-swept northern sector of King Street. Finally, with so many von Lossberg troops having retired to leave his northern flank on King Street more vulnerable to a blistering enfilade fire and with large numbers of his own southernmost grenadiers likewise retiring east from King Street that left what relatively little remained of the grenadier regiment which was sandwiched by ever-increasing pressure—a deadly closing vise—from north and south, Rall had no choice but to reluctantly give the anguished order for the northernmost grenadier survivors to move east off King Street by way of sheltering Church Alley.

  What had been truly amazing was the fact that Rall had come so close to snatching a sparkling victory away from Washington almost at the last minute. Accepting his fate because no hope remained, Rall now sought to retire safely eastward along Fourth Street, one block south of Perry Street, leading to the town’s opposite end. With bullets whizzing around him amid the falling snow, Rall planned to escape Trenton and regain his former relatively secure position on the open ground of the little apple orchard. Here, away from gunfire-spitting houses full of American sharpshooters and the nightmarish swirl of urban combat, he believed that he could once again organize and realign his battered units for either a defensive stand or perhaps another counterattack.20

  Not long after the southern portion of his own grenadier regiment broke from the rippling volley fire and determined charge of Colonel Paterson’s Massachusetts troops roared up King Street and north along the lengthy slope, Rall ordered everyone, including just under two hundred remaining fusiliers of the von Lossberg regiment just to the northeast immediately above Church Alley to escape the urban cauldron that had become a hellish deathtrap. While growing weaker from blood loss, Colonel Rall was now largely on his own by this time, after additional experienced officers had been cut down, and with some unnerved subordinate officers having failed to do their duty. But this leadership failure among an increasing number of Hessian officers was understandable given the soaring casualties, especially since the German officer corps which had been cut to pieces by sharpshooters and salvoes of canister and grape. Clearly, both the Rall and von Lossberg Regiments had paid a high price for briefly recapturing the two lost Rall Regiment cannon and regaining their honor. Without the Knyphausen Regiment’s much-needed assistance, Rall’s final attack all the way to King Street had only resulted in getting a good many excellent soldiers and officers shot down with impunity by expert Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia riflemen.

  By gaining a precious toehold on body-strewn King Street in the day’s most determined counterattack and briefly recapturing his regiment’s artillery, Rall had battled against far too many handicaps to possibly overcome, including too few troops, the Knyphausen Regiment’s absence, and the lack of the timely support of his brigade’s remaining artillery—the von Lossberg Regiment’s two cannon now with Dechow’s regiment. Rall’s determined bid to not only reclaim the two lost three-pounders and cherished battle flags but also his regiment’s reputation, as well as that of his hard-fighting grenadiers, had nearly succeeded. But Rall had not been adequately supported or assisted in his desperate counterstroke to reverse the day’s fortunes. In a letter, Richard Henry Lee, Virginia Congressman from Westmoreland County, merely concluded how the “Hessian officers in general behaved infamously in this battle,” letting Colonel Rall down at Trenton.21

  Despite his best efforts, Colonel Rall simply could not keep the tightening arms of Washington’s pincers from closing just in time to thwart his most determined offensive effort of the day. In addition, Rall’s no-win situation stemmed from the inherent complexities of a bloody battle of attrition amid the chaotic nature of urban warfare for which the Hessians were not trained. Lieutenant Wiederhold, whose Knyphausen Regiment had been mercifully spared, quite by accident, from participating in Rall’s desperate counterattack all the way of King Street, fully realized as much. Although guilty in exaggerating Washington’s numbers by more than double and in exhibiting personal prejudice against Rall, the hard-fighting lieutenant wrote in his diary how in regard to Rall’s final all-out offensive effort to King Street: “What nonsense this was! To try to retake, with 600 to 700 men, a city which was of no value and which had been left ten or fifteen minutes previously, which was now filled with 3,000 to 4,000 enemy, in houses, and behind the walls and fences.”22

  But the high price for Rall’s audacious decision to attack straight back into Trenton’s fiery center in a desperate bid to reverse the battle’s course was not yet paid in full. Not long after Rall gave the painful final order for his surviving grenadiers to retire east, Washington’s marksmen increasingly focused their special attention upon the finely uniformed, mounted figure—obviously a high-ranking officer and the most active Hessian leader—before his surviving men just across from his headquarters at Stacy Potts’s house. At this time and despite his own pain and blood loss from an earlier wound, Rall offered solace to yet another fallen officer cut down by the incessant bursts of musketry that exploded around him. A sharp-eyed sharpshooter, very likely a western Virginia or Maryland frontiersman of Lieutenant Colonel Moses Rawlings’s Maryland Rifle Battalion, Mercer’s brigade, took careful aim with a Kentucky, or Pennsylvania, Long Rifle, at the thoroughly exp
osed Colonel Rall on horseback.

  Ironically, in a strange twist of fate, Rall had already earlier defied a good many bullets of these same lethal Maryland marksmen, including western frontier sharpshooters, in leading the sweeping attack up Mount Washington at Fort Washington. In a striking paradox that now came back to haunt him, the veteran colonel had long held American riflemen in contempt. When he had led his grenadiers to victory at Fort Washington, Rall had seemingly possessed with a death wish, which had caused Lieutenant Wiederhold to wonder how he possibly “came off [the field] without being killed or wounded” on that mid-November day along the Hudson. And now, Colonel Rall, riding before his troops, was even more in the open and completely exposed to Washington’s sharpshooters, while the jaws of Washington’s ever-tightening pincers closed tighter around him. He, consequently, became the top priority of keen-eyed American marksmen, who had long made shooting down Hessian officers their favorite pastime. By his actions, shouted orders that were obeyed instantly, and resplendent uniform, it was clear that the officer mounted on a white horse was indeed the dynamic leader of the Rall brigade.

  Somehow yet defying the odds and the hail of projectiles as if wearing an ancient Teutonic charm or amulet to ward off the stream of bullets, Rall yet remained in the open expanse of King Street with the northern section of his hard-hit grenadier regiment. Especially while mounted, the colonel now presented an ideal target, especially from veteran marksmen ensconced in nearby houses, where they had kept their weapons, flints, and powder dry, on both sides of King Street. Peering through the dense flurries of snow and with cold-numbed fingers, an unknown American rifleman slowly squeezed the trigger of his Long Rifle carefully aimed at his prominent mounted target at close range. Sparks from the rifle flint flew just before the marksman’s face when it struck the frizzen pan, igniting the powder in a delayed flash. A small burst of flame then flashed through the tiny hole in the breech of the barrel to ignite the powder charge, resulting in a smooth firing of the bullet, which was accompanied by the musket’s sharp kick that was cushioned by the sharpshooter’s shoulder. Fortunately, the marksman’s powder stayed dry.

  A round, lead ball from a small-caliber hunting rifle, very likely one fashioned by an enterprising German immigrant gunsmith from Pennsylvania, whistled into Rall’s side from close range. With the direct hit, Rall immediately buckled in the saddle in the body’s natural response, which indicated to Washington’s experienced hunter-marksmen that a serious wound had been inflicted in the colonel’s midsection. But Rall did not go down. In excuriating pain, he reeled in the saddle, with his well-trained horse neither plunging nor rearing in fright to throw its rider on the icy ground. Somehow Rall maintained his balance while losing more blood, which mixed with the flow of his earlier wound. Only the colonel’s ornate saber dropped on the snowy ground: a symbolic fall of the sword from Rall’s hand that seemed to foretell how both the elite Rall brigade and its revered commander were now doomed. Rall cried out to nearby grenadiers that he was been hit. After his many years of experience, Rall, age fifty, most likely knew that his wound was fatal.23

  As usual, Rall was yet gamely inspiring his grenadiers to the very end. In Major Wilkinson’s words, the colonel was struck while “exerting himself to form the dismayed and disordered corps.”24 In a letter, Knox merely penned how, “A Colonel Rawle commanded, who was wounded” in the lead storm.25 While yet mounted, Rall continued to present a fine target while riding before his grenadiers and dripping blood. Not surprisingly, he was shortly hit by another bullet in the same side. The mortally wounded Rall, who possessed the yet unread note from the German farmer warning of Washington’s impending attack in his uniform coat pocket from the previous night, now slumped lower in the saddle. Nearby grenadiers reached up to keep the reeling colonel from tumbling off his horse. Rall was caught in mid-fall before he hit the ground. He was then gently assisted off his steed, which was grabbed by Captain Altenbockhum, who continued to serve with bandaged and bloody head. The captain shortly mounted the colonel’s horse to eventually reach his withdrawing von Lossberg comrades.

  After lying in pain on the ground for a few minutes, Rall was then assisted up by two grenadiers. Rall was then carried east by his grieving men, who knew a mortal wound when they saw one, toward the haven of the Methodist Church on Queen and Fourth Streets. In passing a fallen, blood-splattered Lieutenant Zoll who possessed a dozen years of faithful service, Rall’s compassion rose to the fore when he asked if the handsome lieutenant was badly injured. When Zoll, age twenty-nine, replied that the wound appeared mortal, Rall said, “I pity you.”

  Here, in the wood-frame church, the suffering colonel was gently laid on a wooden bench, where devout worshipers had only recently prayed for peace on earth. Rall might have felt a certain sense of comfort by the fact that he was now safely in a peaceful house of God, where the cold silence and the relative calm seemed to mock the folly of the battle roaring just outside and the brutal reality that additional Hessians were dying for no gain. King Street had been transformed into a bloody avenue of broken dreams and ambitions for the mortally wounded Colonel Rall and his brigade, which had never before known defeat.26

  After having suffered heavy losses, faced by multiple blistering fires, especially from the nearby houses on both sides of King Street, and with their inspirational commander cut down, the remaining grenadiers marched for the relatively safety of the apple orchard outside of Trenton.

  But the surviving Hessians had to first run yet another gauntlet to escape this urban hell. Rall’s westward penetration was so deep into town and so time-consuming that Washington’s men to the east had been busy attempting to make sure that Rall’s two regiments never escaped the town. In a letter to his wife, Colonel Knox described how “During the contest in the streets measures were taken for putting an entire stop to their retreat by posting troops and cannon in such passes and roads as it was possible for them to get away by.”27

  However, Rall’s surviving troops now possessed one remaining open avenue east down Fourth Street (about half way between Front Street and the head of Queen Street), which led out of town and to a country lane (Quaker Lane), parallel to and east of Queen Street and below Dark Lane, that led a short distance north to the orchard. As could be expected, Rall’s fall from his horse before his troops eroded morale, signaling the end of all efforts in attempting to hold onto any embattled sector near ill-fated King Street. Grenadier Reuber lamented that the bitter struggle for King Street’s possession had to be forsaken. He attributed this final bloody repulse to Rall’s mortal wounding and the failure of many junior officers to rise to the challenge of the swirling urban combat: “If he had not been severely wounded they would not have been able to take us prisoners . . . his three regiments of brave men would have disputed every foot of the land. But when he was shot there was not an officer who had the courage to take up the half-lost battle” this morning.28

  As a respected aide to General St. Clair and not far from Paterson’s Massachusetts Regiment on King Street, teenage Major Wilkinson described Rall’s mortal wounding that finally broke the back of the last grenadier and von Lossberg fusilier resistance in the King Street sector, when the colonel was “shot from his horse, the main body retired” out of the smoking town that had become a hell on earth.29

  But in truth the repulse of the final Hessian offensive effort was due much more to a host of factors rather than to the loss of a single man. Most of all, combined with the fact that the hard-fighting grenadiers and fusiliers were unable to return fire because of wet powder and muskets, both regiments had taken a more severe beating, suffering higher losses than in any previous battle. One von Lossberg soldier lamented with anguish how his crack fusilier command suffered more casualties than any Rall brigade regiment, and “lost in this affair 70 men killed and wounded [during] Our whole disaster” at Trenton.30

  Meanwhile, the fusilier and grenadier’s sullen retreat east toward the apple orchard was hampered by the loss of
leadership, escalating casualties, and a growing sense of defeatism. However, the vast majority of these withdrawing troops yet maintained a surprising degree of discipline, despite their inability to fire muskets and the severe beating that they had suffered at Washington’s hands. However, rather than run the gauntlet of fire in tight formations, some Hessians obeyed the higher calling of natural survival instincts. Therefore, these individuals, dazed by the surreal urban combat, broke out of ranks to seek shelter inside houses, basements, and churches to finally escape the wrath of so many deadly American marksmen.

  Most of all, the true reason for Rall’s repulse at King Street was the fulfillment of Washington’s bold tactical vision of a double envelopment, the closing of the two arms of the pincer movement. Among the onrushing soldiers of the Fifteenth Massachusetts Continental Regiment, of St. Clair’s brigade, Fifer Greenwood never forgot how the elated troops charged “after them pell-mell,” after the last remaining Rall Regiment grenadiers broke eastward. In pouring north up King Street in a sweeping charge led by Major Shelburne and then eastward in pursuit of the defeated Germans, Greenwood described how: “Some Hessians took refuge in [the Anglican] church at the door of which we stationed a guard to keep them in, and taking no farther care of them for the present, advanced to find more, for many had run down into cellars of the houses. I passed two of their cannon, brass [three-] pounders [of the Rall Regiment that had been momentarily recaptured during the counterattack], by the side of which lay seven dead Hessians and a brass drum [and] I stopped to look at it, but it was quickly taken possession [one of a dozen drums captured this day] by one of our drummers, who threw away his own instrument. At the same time I obtained a sword from one of the bodies, and we then ran on to join the regiment, which was marching down the main [King] street. . . . General Washington, on horseback and alone, came up to our major and said, ‘March on, my brave fellows, after me!’ and rode off.” Finally and most importantly, Greene’s troops (the right of Stirling’s brigade) from the north and Sullivan’s troops (Paterson’s Fifteenth Massachusetts, St. Clair’s New Hampshire and Massachusetts brigade, and the Sixteenth Massachusetts, Sargent’s brigade) from the south met on King Street, gaining permanent possession of Trenton’s main street now littered with the carnage of hardest fought battle in recent memory.