George Washington's Surprise Attack
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The scope of Washington’s most dramatic victory was breathtaking. During the surrender, Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick and his Connecticut comrades of Glover’s brigade could hardly believe their eyes because “about nine hundred all Hessians with 4 brass field pieces [were taken while] the remainder crossing the bridge at the lower end of the town escaped [and T]heir Commander Col Rhale [sic] was Mortally Wounded & perhaps 15 or 20 kill’d[, while] our loss [was] only two men kill’d & 2 officers & a few Soldiers Wounded.”12
Another member of Sullivan’s Division, David How, who hailed from the little farming community of Methuen, Massachusetts, located in Merrimack Valley of Essex County and situated on the Merrimack River, of Sargent’s New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts brigade, described in a letter how “we Toock 1000 of them besides [we] killed Some.”13 In a rare letter that revealed a mixture of glee and humor, General Stephen described how “We had a Christmas frolick at Trenton [and] We have killd [sic] & wounded the most of three Regimts [sic] of Hessians” on a day that he would never forget.14 More specifically, William Hull penned in a letter how in regard to the numbers of Hessian killed and wounded: “1 Col. [Rall] wounded since dead, 2 Lieut. Cols taken, 3 Majors, 4 Capts, 8 Lieuts, 12 Ens’ns, 92 Serg’ts, 9 Musicians, 12 Drums, 25 Servants, 842 Privates, 2 Capt’s killed, 2 Lieut’s killed, 50 privates, Six Brass Field Pieces, One Mortar and about 1500 Stand of Arms. A large Number of Horses and a vast Quantity of Plunder of every kind.”15
The hard-fought field of Trenton, especially the town itself, now presented a scene of carnage, destruction, and death. Sickened by the sight, young Orderly Sergeant White, far from his New England home and family, described “my blood chill’d to see such horror and distress, blood mingling together—the dying groans, and ‘garments rolling in blood’ [and] The sight was too much to hear; I left it soon” to escape the battlefield’s surreal horrors. Clearly, Washington’s cannon, rifles, and smoothbore muskets had reaped a grim harvest from the Rall brigade’s ranks on this New Jersey morning.
In total, the Rall brigade lost at least twenty-two men killed and another eighty-three seriously wounded, while a good many Hessian soldiers suffered lesser wounds. Three Hessian officers lay dead on the field beside their fallen enlisted men. And along with Colonel Rall, two other officers, Major Dechow and the brave captain shot down in Rall’s final counterattack through the town’s center by the anonymous lady rebel of Trenton, were mortally wounded. Sixteen Hessian enlisted men and one noncommissioned officer likewise lay dead in the streets, alleys, and fields covered in a soft, white blanket of snow and the scattered debris of a once-invincible brigade and lost opportunities.16
Perhaps no soldiers in the ranks were more elated by Washington’s one-sided success than the disproportionate number of Irish and Scotch-Irish soldiers, who had been part of the Irish diaspora. A respected member of Washington’s staff, Ireland-born Colonel Fitzgerald was one such elated Son of Erin. He eventually took pride in being the cousin of future Irish revolutionary Edward Fitzgerald, an Ireland-born member of a leading aristocratic family, who now served in a British regiment: a painful remainder that, like the Germans, the Irish were also engaged in battling against their fellow countrymen in what was a forgotten Celtic-Gaelic civil war on American soil.17
And in regard to both planning at Washington’s headquarters and fighting on the field, Scotland-born General Mercer, the former Jacobite rebel, had played a leading role in vanquishing a full German brigade of elite troops. He had already witnessed a Celtic people’s revolt crushed at Culloden by superior British discipline, firepower, and generalship. With Irish ancestors on his mother’s side, Lieutenant Tilghman, Washington’s faithful personal secretary and staff member, wrote in an understated December 27, 1776 letter to his Loyalist father, who he yet addressed as “Honored Sir,” how: “About 600 [of the Hessians] run off upon the Bordentown Road the moment the Attack began, the remainder finding themselves surrounded laid down their Arms. We have taken 30 Officers and 886 privates among the former Col. Rahls the Commandant who is wounded.”18
As an esteemed member of Washington’s headquarters “family,” Lieutenant Tilghman’s tabulation was quite accurate. Indeed, some 653 of the 1,586 total under Rall’s command just narrowly escaped Washington’s masterful double envelopment. Therefore, more than 40 percent of the Trenton garrison slipped away to fight another day. This wild flight south included entire detachments: the British light horse, the Assunpink bridge guardians, the green-uniformed jaegers commanded by Lieutenant Grothausen, who was destined to receive his death stroke in only a few days, Lieutenant Engelhardt and his surviving Rall Regiment cannoneers, the Trent House detachment under Lieutenant Zimmerman, and a good many German soldiers who had been quartered south of the Assunpink. A number of Hessian musicians—unlike the nine captured musicians who soon formed Philadelphia’s first brass band that played patriotic music on the first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing—also escaped the battle along with the Rall brigade’s chaplains, who now acquired more reason to give thanks, and medical corps. This flight south had also included a heavy flow of noncombatants: the town’s citizens, Hessian wives and children, camp followers, no doubt including ubiquitous prostitutes, and refugee Tory families, who escaped Washington’s clever tactical trap to tell their tales of woe to the British upon reaching safety.19
Witnessing the incredible sight of Great Britain’s most formidable allies humbled at Trenton was an exhilarating, unforgettable experience for Washington’s victors. The only regret, if any, for the many Emerald Islanders in Washington’s ranks was that these conquered foes were not British soldiers. After the surrender and despite their exhaustion and sore shoulders from the kick of muskets in having fired so many rounds, Washington’s men now received their first close-up views of these legendary German professionals, who had spread so much fear across America.
Especially after a hard-fought battle, something strange, but not entirely unexpected, now happened on the field of Trenton. Victorious soldiers suddenly turned into gaping spectators, curious about their vanquished opponent. Groups of Washington’s men, with faces smeared in black powder, especially right cheeks, ambled forward in a friendly manner to get a close look at these finely uniformed Hessians, whose reputations for ferocity had proceeded them. In a surprising development, all past bitterness that had been considerably built up within the hearts of these young American soldiers, especially after so many bitter 1776 defeats, faded away like the rising smoke of battle that was gradually diffused northeastward by the winter breeze, leaving no sense of vengeance.
Instead, an unexpected friendliness developed among the Americans toward the vanquished Hessians. An easy flow of conversation even opened up between the prisoners and the German-speaking men of Haussegger’s German Regiment. The zealous Irish volunteer with a good many years of British Army experience, Major Apollos Morris, never forgot how the American soldiers “after satisfying their curiosity a little, they began to converse familiarly in broken English and German.”20
Curious about these tough Teutonic fighting men, New Englander Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick never forgot his first close-up view of these legendary soldiers from so far away: “They are of a Moderate Stature rather broad Shoulders [and] their limbs not of equal proportion[,] light complexion with a b[l]ueish tinge[d] [and long] hair cued [behind their heads] as tight to the head as possible [and] Sticking straight back like the handle of an iron Skillet. Their uniform blue with black facings [,] brass drums which made a timbling sound [, and] their flag or Standard of the richest black silk & the devices upon it & the lettering in gold leaf.”21
Likewise, the Hessians were similarly surprised by the sight of the ever-aggressive commander of the New York cannon that had roared so much fury at them this morning, because “at their head was a boy, and I wondered at his youth,” wrote one observer about Captain Alexander Hamilton.22 But certainly most shocking to Rall’s defeated men was the sight of so ma
ny ill-clad Americans, including soldiers in their thigh-length hunting shirts, the traditional “rustic uniform” of the Continental Army. 23
Here, about a quarter mile to the south of the apple orchard near the Assunpink where the Knyphausen Regiment had surrendered in an open, snow-covered field, Washington’s men were surprised to see that these German soldiers were quite ordinary-looking individuals, and not as they had imagined. They were also shocked to learn that many Hessians were in fact lowly and humble tillers of the soil, carpenters, blacksmiths, and cobblers like themselves. Even the famed blue-uniformed grenadiers of Rall’s Regiment were not the much-feared giants as long portrayed by legend and lore to enhance their fearsome reputations. Instead, they were quite ordinary men of only average, and even below average, height, especially when compared to the generally taller Americans. And Rall’s grenadiers possessed no lengthy, waxed mustaches of the grenadier tradition. Ironically, the men of the Rall Regiment were clean-shaven like Washington’s Continentals, although now with stubbled faces from having had no time for their early morning shaves, thanks to the success of the surprise attack.24
Perhaps no one was more delighted in viewing so many captured Hessians than Colonel Glover and his barely 175 Marblehead seafarers. After all, these mariners had earlier played a leading role in making Washington’s remarkable success at Trenton possible by performing as magnificently on water as on land. Of course, these versatile Massachusetts fishermen, who knew the Grand Banks as well, if not better, than their own home port of Marblehead, had no idea that these captured Germans had seen their prime fishing grounds more recently than themselves during the Hessians’ summer 1776 journey across the Atlantic. Not surprisingly, Glover was proud of what he and his Marblehead boys had accomplished against the odds within the past twenty-four hours, especially in regard to the perilous crossing of Washington’s entire strike force across the rampaging Delaware. This stocky, pious, and short former ship captain and righteous holy warrior especially detested these Teutonic “mercenary tools of Britain” and the coercive imperialistic powers that they now represented by serving in the British Army.25
Unfortunately, surviving Hessians left few first-person accounts of their views of the surprisingly humble, even respectful, American victors at Trenton. However, Rall’s men very likely were equally astounded by their first close-up look at these unorthodox Americans, now streaked with black powder stains, thin from malnourishment, and haggard from loss of sleep. However, the sight presented of Washington’s men to the Rall brigade’s survivors might well have been comparable to the opinions of Hessians who surrendered at Saratoga.
Describing the October 17, 1777 surrender in a letter, one Hessian closely analyzed these hard-fighting New World men from the forests, small towns, and urban centers across America, who risked their lives in the name of liberty, God, and country: “Not a man of them was regularly equipped [and] Each one had on the clothes which he was accustomed to wear in the field, the tavern, the church, and in everyday life. No fault, however, could be found with their military appearance, for they stood in an erect and a soldierly attitude . . . all the men who stood in array before us were so slender, fine-looking, and sinewy, that it was a pleasure to look at them.”26
But on this freezing morning under the dark, menacing skies, Washington’s victors now looked far more like the vanquished than the winners. America’s finest soldiers were exhausted, diseased, sickly, and covered with grease, lice, and dirt. Private Greenwood, the spunky, teenage soldier-musician from Boston, “had the itch then so bad . . . and there were hundreds of vermin upon me. . . .”27
In part because they were so well-treated and in a gentlemanly manner, especially by Stirling, the cowed Hessians demonstrated relatively little arrogance or excessive pride so common with British soldiers, especially officers, who naturally despised rebels. Not long after the surrender, Greenwood never forgot how the Hessians “seeing some of our men were much pleased with the brass caps which they had taken from the dead Hessians, our prisoners . . . pulled off those that they were wearing, and, giving them away, put on the hats which they carried tied behind their packs. With these brass caps on it was laughable to see how our soldiers would strut” in their new trophies.28
Expecting unbearable arrogance and harshness from their captors, the captive Hessians were amazed by the good treatment that they received. As revealed in his diary, Adjutant Piel described how “the rebel Colonel [George] Weedon [who led the Third Virginia Continental Regiment]. To say a little about this man—His lowly origins spoke to his advantage, and thus he won all of our hearts through his friendly treatment toward us [and] General Lord Stirling [also] conducted himself in a very friendly manner toward us [and even] General Washington . . . received us very politely [on December 28]. . . .”29
During this dinner held by at his personal headquarters only two days after the battle and attended by the captured Hessian officers, Washington also paid a nice compliment to Lieutenant Wiederhold, a sensitive lover of nature who marveled at the majesty of God’s creations and bemoaned the sad plight of African Americans in bondage, in regard to his tenacious delaying action with his band of advanced pickets on the Pennington Road at the battle’s beginning. As he recorded in his diary: “With the seventeen men I had with me [on the morning of December 26], I did all that was possible and all that an honorable man could be responsible for doing. Even the enemy, and especially Lord Stirling, who commanded the advance guard, and as a result was engaged with me, added his praise an acknowledgment, which is of special worth [and] When I dined with General Washington he made the pleasant compliment, and expressly asked to meet me in order, as he said, to get to known such an excellent officer in person. He had asked about my name and character and noted such. . . .”30
Almost as if entertaining upper-class guests back in his sprawling dining room at Mount Vernon, Washington’s sense of Southern chivalry and magnanimity toward the vanquished was manifested in other ways. In his diary, Lieutenant Wiederhold recorded how Washington ordered the captured swords of Hessian officer returned to their rightful owners after they had been eagerly snatched by souvenir seekers in violation of the surrender pact’s stipulations. A thoroughly pleased Wiederhold explained in his diary how General Sullivan “had taken one of our swords and gave his in exchange.”31
With an uncanny ability to circumvent the military regulations and proper protocol to his officer’s consternation, Orderly Sergeant White, the feisty teenage New Englander, was not about to relinquish his most coveted prize from Trenton: “I saw a field officer laying dead on the ground and his sword by him, I took it up [and] It was an elegant sword, and I wore it all the time I staid in the army. . . .”32
Astounded by the widespread displays of American generosity and overall decency, Adjutant Piel wrote in his diary how General Stirling “conducted himself in a very manner toward us [and at Washington’s formal dinner on December 28] he received us with the words, ‘Your General von Heister treated me like a brother when I was a prisoner [when captured at the battle of Long Island], and so, Gentlemen, you shall be treated by me in the same manner’.”33
What has been overlooked about the story of Trenton was the fact that Washington’s amazing success was also a victory of sorts for Ireland and Scotland in the eyes of leading Continental commanders from Ireland and Scotland: Scotland-born Mercer, the survivor of Culloden’s slaughter on a grassy Moor; Ireland-born Stark, the resourceful frontier fighter of countless wilderness fights against the French, Canadians, and Indians as the top lieutenant of Major Rogers of Rogers’ Rangers fame; Ireland-born Haslet, the former Presbyterian minister, who commanded the elite Delaware Continental troops and one of the few American heroes of the battle of Long Island; the urbane, popular Colonel Hand, likewise born on the Emerald Isle and who had held the advance of Howe’s Army at bay at Throg’s Neck with only a mere handful of his Pennsylvania frontier marksmen; and the hard-fighting, New Hampshire-born General Sullivan, the son of
lowly Irish indentured servants and who had been captured by Hessians at the battle of Long Island.34
Most of all, the world, especially England but also Germany, was shocked by the news of Washington’s surprising victory and conquest of a full Hessian brigade of legendary warriors. A stunned editor of the Annual Register, London, England, was incredulous, reflecting the common prevalent view across Europe and around the world. No one could believe that “three old established regiments, of a people who make war their profession, had laid down their arms after inflicting only twelve [actually less than half that number] casualties on the hitherto contemptible Americans.”35
With his plans for his long-awaited return to England and his sickly wife now dashed by the success of Washington’s brilliant surprise attack at Trenton, Cornwallis was thunderstruck with the news of the Trenton disaster. The aristocratic lord of outstanding military ability wrote with sadness and regret, “I did not think that all the Rebels in America would have taken that brigade prisoners.”36 Even the ever-ambitious Bostonite and president of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, was equally incredulous. Of Irish ancestry, he marveled how Washington’s “extraordinary” success at Trenton had been achieved by a motley band of ragged revolutionaries, even though they were “broken by fatigue and ill-fortune.”37
Ironically, Washington’s tactical brilliance that reaped such a remarkable victory has been minimized because of the standard explanation that the Hessian garrison was drunk and hungover from a wild Yuletide celebration: one of the oldest stereotypes and most persistent myths of the American Revolution. Young fifer Greenwood revealed the truth: “It was likewise asserted at the same time that the enemy were all drunk [but] I am willing to go upon oath that I did not see even a solitary drunken soldier belonging to the enemy.”38