George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  More of a localized militia unit, with relatively low standards in European terms, than a truly elite (a well-deserved renown earned on America’s battlefields) and professional combat command before reaching America’s shores, the Rall Regiment consisted of a good many “callow farm lads,” who had been conscripted. And contrary to the stereotype, the typical Rall Regiment grenadier lacked imposing height and brawny physicality. In fact, these grenadiers were even smaller in height and size then other soldiers of their own German division in America. Seventeen-year-old grenadier Johannes Reuber was barely five foot tall: the antithesis of the stereotypical fearsome image of the towering professional grenadier. However, Reuber was an average-sized Rall Regiment grenadier, who were even smaller and “much inferior” to other Hessian troops in size.10

  And, of course, another key ingredient in the equation of the Hessian brigade’s defeat along the Delaware was the thorough erosion of combat capabilities during the winter storm. On this bitterly cold morning, Rall’s men had been suddenly roused from their deep winter sleep without time to eat breakfast, warm up with coffee or tea, or even put on extra clothing over summer uniforms, which were entirely unsuited for winter conditions. The Hessians’ warm winter greatcoats were stored in New York City warehouses with other regimental baggage not yet forwarded to remote Trenton. By this time, even the Hessians’ collarless summer uniform coats were worn thin by the usual wear and tear of arduous summer and fall campaign.

  Consequently, the Rall brigade troops had attempted to defend themselves and wage a winter urban battle amid Trenton’s windswept, snow-covered streets in thin, worn-out uniforms. At the exact time that Washington struck with a vengeance, the German quartermasters were undertaking a belated mission to New York City to secure the brigade’s winter clothing. When the Rall brigade first formed up in the icy streets to meet Washington’s attack, therefore, the common soldiers of all three German regiments were “destitute of small clothes,” in Lieutenant Wiederhold’s words from his diary, and lacking in adequate “pants, shoes, [and] shirt[s].”11

  Every single narrative of the battle of Trenton has failed to take into account that the Hessians, except for officers, were in fact even more ill-clothed for winter combat than Washington’s troops in most cases. Ironically, because of so many past successes that had propelled Rall’s Hessians all the way to the Delaware, logistical challenges, and with the pesky New Jersey insurgency in full swing, an invaluable stockpile of winter clothing was never forthcoming to the isolated Rall brigade at Trenton from a lengthy train of quartermaster wagons. Washington’s soldiers had least made some necessary make-shift preparations and received some belated supplies, including shoes and blankets, from nearby Philadelphia before crossing the Delaware.12 In the end, what was most remarkable about the spirited performance of the Rall brigade was that it had in fact fought so well and for so long, even though these grenadiers and fusiliers were unable to adequately resist Washington’s onslaught with wet weapons and black powder and without winter uniforms.

  Washington’s Most Decisive Arm, the Artillery

  In a letter written to his wife Lucy not long after the battle of Trenton, Colonel Knox described how “His Excellency the General has done me the unmerited great honour [sic] of thanking me in public orders in terms strong and polite. This I would blush to mention to any other than to you my dear Lucy; and I am fearful that even my Lucy may think her Harry possesses a species of little vanity in doing [it] at all.”13 Neither Washington or Knox were guilty of exaggeration, because artillery was crucial to winning the battle.

  Thanks to Washington’s premeditated decisions, never have so relatively few artillery pieces played such a more important, disproportionate, or decisive role in winning a more crucial battle for American fortunes than at Trenton. Washington demonstrated the wisdom of massed artillery, concentrating all his guns of both divisions at the front, where they played a leading role in securing decisive victory. Quite simply, Washington’s “field guns were never better employed” in any battle of the American Revolution. In contrast to the dismal performance of the Rall brigade’s six cannon, Knox’s seventeen (originally eighteen) guns played a decisive role in forcing the surrender of all three German regiments. All in all, Washington would not have won the battle of Trenton without having brought so much artillery—his own farsighted decision—across the Delaware, or without his aggressive and masterful utilization of his artillery arm in the manner of Napoleon.14

  Quite correctly, Napoleon famously emphasized how: “It is the artillery that takes places; the infantry can only aid it.”15 This Napoleonic axiom well applied to Washington’s brilliant utilization of his artillery arm at Trenton. Perhaps Major George Johnston, second in command of the Fifth Virginia Continental Regiment, Stephen’s vanguard brigade, said it best in describing the battle’s primary turning point in a letter, when the Virginians attacked down King Street and “pursued to the very middle of the Town, where the whole Body of the Enemy, drawn up in a solid column, kept up a heavy fire with Cannon and Muskets, till our Cannon threw them into confusion.”16

  Another one of the central myths of the battle of Trenton was that the vast majority of the American’s rifles and smoothbores were wet and inoperable, and that the conflict that swirled through Trenton’s narrow streets and darkened alleys was waged in relative “silence” for a hard-fought contest. However, bayonets were in short supply in Washington’s Army, unlike in Rall’s brigade. Therefore, the bayonet had not decided the day in the tradition of eighteenth-century warfare. In truth, Washington’s soldiers, firing small-caliber balls from rifled bores and buck and ball ammunition from smoothbores, proved far more formidable than the bayonet during combat in a close-range, urban environment, especially after weapons, flints, and firing mechanisms were dried in houses.

  But most of all, the American artillery arm largely decided the day, thanks to the dynamic, highly effective leadership team of Washington and Knox and a host of young, capable artillery officers, who performed at their best on the morning of December 26. Washington’s aggressive, imaginative, and flexible tactics of early employing flying artillery were an often-overlooked key to his Trenton victory that astounded the world. Far from his native Irish homeland, feisty “Pat” Duffy, Forrest’s top lieutenant, and his Philadelphia cannoneers first advanced south down King Street and then east through the snowy streets as flying artillery to inflict greater damage. Likewise, all of Washington’s artillery units advanced over wide stretches of ground to play leading roles in applying heavy pressure and eventually forcing all three Hessian regiments to surrender. In a December 28, 1776 letter, Duffy marveled about the decisive role played by Washington’s artillery arm. He concluded with a sense of accomplishment how, “We made prisoner of about nine hundred together with the number killed which I cannot exactly ascertain, but we took six brass [bronze] field pieces and a small number of small arms which have been safely carried off.”17

  Irishman Lieutenant Duffy justifiably gloated about the American’s capture of the six three-pounders, which represented the largest capture of artillery on the battlefield by Washington’s citizen soldiers to date. The tactically gifted Knox, Washington’s irrepressible chief artillery commander, who saw his finest day at Trenton and soon garnered a well-deserved promotion to a general’s rank, was proven correct in his prophetic December 18, 1776 evaluation of the artillery’s supreme importance on the battlefield, which echoed the core elements of Napoleon’s tactical thinking, “Great battles are won by artillery,” including flying artillery: “In the modern mode of carrying on a war, there is nothing which contributes more to make an Army victorious than a well regulated & well disciplined Artillery, provided with a sufficiency of Cannon & Stores.”18

  From beginning to end, the Hessians were simply unable to withstand the wrath of Knox’s cannon during an artillery hell, which “rained Cannonballs and grapeshot,” in the words of one of Rall’s survivors, smashing morale, young German bodies, and t
he will to resist to the bitter end. As Napoleon well understood, and as masterfully demonstrated by Washington at Trenton, abundant and aggressive artillery support played a leading role in fortifying soldier morale and fueling fighting spirit, allowing even ill-trained citizen soldiers to exceed expectations.

  The Hessians’ own superior discipline and training resulted in close order ranks of a tight, linear formation, as so long demanded by officers according to the textbook and regulations in the Prussian tradition, proved to be their undoing in the end. Because of this well-honed proficiency, the Hessians continuously presented the most inviting of targets to Knox’s veteran artillerymen, especially when the guns were advanced closer as flying artillery, in all sectors throughout the morning. Thanks to Washington’s aggressive utilization of a disproportionate amount of artillery manned by highly motivated veteran gunners, he transformed the Hessians’ most celebrated asset into their greatest liability.19

  Paving the way to victory before the first shot was fired in anger at Trenton, Washington’s farsighted increase of his artillery ratio to infantry and his integration of his cannon at the head of brigades and columns to greatly enhance each individual brigade’s firepower and overall combat capabilities was all-important in achieving the final victory. The smooth-working and hard-hitting team of Washington-Knox proved highly effective in employing their cannon at the forefront as lethal assault weapons and maneuvering the artillery with unprecedented skill, aggressiveness, and precision. And like Washington, Knox inspired his “brave lads” to victory by personal example by remaining at the forefront, which provided a vital element to success. No wonder that Washington had earlier recommended Knox for a brigadier general’s rank to Congress. Like so many others, Dr. Benjamin Rush, now serving as a Continental Army surgeon, was greatly impressed by what he saw in the aggressive leadership style of this gifted, innovative Scotch-Irish commander, who possessed a distinguished Celtic-Gaelic lineage that extended back to Scotland’s ancient nobility. As he wrote to Virginia Congressman Richard Henry Lee: “I saw [Knox’s] behavior in the Battle of Trenton; he was cool, cheerful and was present everywhere” on the frozen field of strife, animating his young artillerymen to victory by example and displaying inspired leadership qualities.20

  As planned by employing so much of Knox’s artillery—three times more than possessed by the Rall brigade—especially along the high ground at the head of King and Queen Streets, Washington had early largely checkmated not only the Rall brigade’s artillery, but also the Hessians’ most potent weapon, the bayonet, and their most successful tactic, the bayonet charge. Devastating blasts from the lengthy row of Knox’s artillery pieces that Washington, who masterfully grasped the novel concept of massed “long-arm” firepower, had carefully aligned across the high ground ensured that the Hessians could never get close enough to King Street’s head to utilize their most effective weapon and inflict maximum damage of their own. In the end, the real key to victory at Trenton was Washington’s farsighted and tactically astute Napoleon-like decision to transport all of his artillery—eighteen guns—across the Delaware and then to divide his field pieces equally between each arm (or division) of the pincers of his masterful double envelopment.

  These wise, farsighted decisions, including having no artillery reserve that would have kept guns idle and useless at the battle’s beginning, allowed him the opportunity to early deploy all of his artillery into action, to mass his most effective guns on the most commanding terrain, to concentrate his artillery firepower to maximize his own strength, and to minimize his opponent’s strengths, both defensive or offensive, while also negating the firepower of the Rall brigade’s six artillery pieces. Throughout the morning with Washington’s troops striking from two directions, therefore, Rall was unable to concentrate all of his infantry and artillery at the most advantageous points for maximum benefit unlike Washington.

  Indeed, Washington’s artillery had been early and effectively placed in action in the best strategic positions along the high ground to maximize not only the element of surprise, but also to unleash a concentrated firepower to prevent a successful counterattack that might have swept the American guns off their commanding perch to reverse the battle’s entire course. Then, like the master artilleryman Napoleon and predating some of the finest artillery tactical lessons of the Napoleonic Wars that allowed the artillery arm to so thoroughly dominate the early nineteenth-century battlefield, the dual concepts of concentrated artillery and then flying artillery allowed Washington to not only strike early, but also to maintain heavy pressure with a forward, close-range fire in a modern way not previously seen on a Revolutionary War battlefield.

  To reap one of the war’s most unexpected victories in relatively short order, Washington had not only embraced classic tactics of insurgency and partisan warfare, but also some of the most successful Napoleonic concepts of aggressive artillery utilization on the battlefield, especially the novel concept of flying artillery: a masterful blend of both past and future ways of waging war, which played a decisive role in Washington’s remarkable success at Trenton.21

  With the irrepressible Knox by his side and playing a leading role not only in orchestrating the Delaware crossing but also in securing victory at Trenton, Washington could not have possibly benefitted more from the contributions of his able top artillery lieutenant. As he had prophetically written to his wife, the enchanting, Boston-born Lucy, after so many humiliating defeats around New York City, a philosophical Knox had been correct not only about the important role that his artillery shortly played at Trenton, but also about the fact that: “One or two drubbings will be of service to us; and one defeat to the enemy, ruin.”22 On the field of Trenton, the “entire course of the war had been changed [and]Knox and his gunners had contributed mightily, not only to two small victories, but also to the making of an army and a nation.”23 Most of all in tactical terms, Washington’s “victory demonstrated how effective the use of mobile field guns could be in leading an assault [as in] a modern war with guns ahead of columns [and] this strategy was the same one that Napoleon” depended upon for success across the breath of Europe.24

  And as part of his daring plan to attack Trenton, Washington had increased his artillery arm by one-fourth with the addition of the six captured cannon, thanks to victory at Trenton. These “double fortified Brass [bronze] three pounders” made a timely addition to Knox’s existing eighteen cannon, and in fact were the “most prized” new addition to considerably strengthen the army’s capabilities.25 Elated over what his Pennsylvania field pieces had accomplished this morning on New Jersey soil, Captain Forrest wrote with much pride in a letter of “defeating the Brass Caps and Crous coups” at Trenton.26

  Despite his success, Colonel Knox was not basking in his finest day to date. Instead, he was yet haunted by the savagery and horror of the urban combat that he had witnessed. In a letter to his wife, the sensitive “Harry” Knox described his innermost feelings that ran deep: “The attack of Trenton was a most horrid scene to the poor inhabitants. War, my Lucy, is not a humane trade, and the man who follows [it] as such will meet with his proper demerits in another world.”27

  Washington’s Improbable Victory

  Perhaps one of Washington’s staff officers best summarized Washington’s masterstroke at Trenton in only a few backwoods words as spoken by the common folk: “He pounced upon the Hessians like an eagle upon a hen” in a farmyard.28 But Washington’s broad strategic vision won the battle of Trenton long before the first shot had been fired in anger on New Jersey soil and long before crossing the Delaware: the combination of the utilization of so much artillery and the ordering of Griffin’s highly effective diversion to Mount Holly to ensure that Rall would not be reinforced. Such well-conceived ingredients for success set the stage for unleashing a surprise attack just after dawn, and reaping the most unexpected and improbable of victories.

  In addition, the Rall brigade was also doomed by its faithful adherence to its own much celebrat
ed skill in conventional tactics, especially the bayonet attack, that were made obsolete by the unprecedented challenges of urban combat and Washington’s foresight and tactical innovations and sound judgment. Most of all, Washington reaped his most dramatic victory by delivering a one-two punch: expertly planned and manned Knox’s artillery played first the long-range role (and then later a closer-range role) in stopping the counterattacking Hessian formations in the main streets of Trenton, while American muskets and rifles, especially weapons dried off in houses, won the close-range contest in Trenton’s alleys, backyards, and houses.

  Indeed, from beginning to end, the Rall brigade of three veteran regiments had been completely outgunned at Trenton not only by superior artillery firepower but also by veteran soldiers, especially western frontiersmen, whose superior marksmanship with both rifles and muskets dominated the fast-paced contest in the snowy streets and fields. Much of the engagement was ultimately decided by the showdown between the sharply contrasting inherent characteristics of two distinct bodies of soldiers, from vastly different cultural backgrounds, value systems, and military heritages who met face-to-face in a bitter urban conflict that determined which popular myth—the sharpshooting American soldier or the disciplined Hessian soldier with the bayonet—would prevail in the end. Therefore, what resulted at Trenton was the systematic destruction of the corresponding myths of the decisiveness of the Hessian bayonet attack, superiority, and invincibility. Most of all, the tenacious struggle for Trenton’s possession revealed that the real “secret of being formidable in battle [in this war or any other] depends not on looking ferocious, but on aiming correctly.”29