In his diary, Lieutenant Wiederhold recorded how General Stirling told him that Washington secured his victory because of an ample number of Continental infantry regiments and “fourteen cannon and two howitzers [two guns short of the actual total and] This was enough to surround 1,000 men as they were not in the best disposition . . . Our fame and honor, earned at White Plains and Fort Knyphausen [Fort Washington] suffered a severe blow here” at Trenton.30
Not long after the surrender when the rows of Knox’s artillery stood silent with smoking barrels yet hot from firing so long and fast, the victorious Americans discovered new things about not only their vanquished opponents, but also about themselves. After all, this was the first experience of Washington’s soldiers in winning a complete battlefield victory of such wide-ranging political, strategic, and psychological consequences in the American Revolution. Like so many other young soldiers in Washington’s tattered ranks, Cadet Joseph Stricker, Jr., the high-spirited teenager who served faithfully and with distinction in the German Regiment, and his lieutenant-colonel father, George, from the forested hills of Frederick County, Maryland, never forgot the intoxicating thrill of victory.
Like no other single event since the Declaration of Independence’s signing on July 4, 1776, the Rall brigade’s demise at Trenton was widely celebrated across America. Rall’s defeat was viewed by the war-weary American people as a miraculous victory sanctioned by a just God’s favor that verified the moral righteousness of America’s struggle for liberty. The popular myth of Hessian drunkenness (the stereotypical Old World decadence and depravity) as paving the way to their own defeat at Trenton was embellished by generations of American historians to explain Washington’s sparkling, one-sided success in order to vindicate American righteousness and moral superiority. But the truth of the dramatic story of the battle of Trenton was very different.
As penned by a Hessian officer, Captain Johann von Ewald, who had been born in Kiel, on the Baltic Sea, summarized the overall German experience in America with a measure of well-deserved pride untainted by hyperbole and with refreshing insight so often ignored by American historians: “Few people know the brilliant part played by our Hessian corps in America, and history has failed to do them justice. The outcome of that war [and the battle of Trenton] was the result of the bad management of the British government, and not the fault of British soldiers, or their allies, the Germans.”31
When the unbelievable news of Rall’s defeat first reached the main Hessian headquarters in New York City, it was widely reported, as revealed in a letter from one of Washington’s delighted officers, that “the Hessian general Scratched out one half of his hair, on hearing the news at Trenton.”32 This anguished Teutonic commander was none other than the overall commander-in-chief of Hessian forces in America, General Leopold Philip von Heister. He was an aristocratic blueblood who had recently won glory at Long Island. He had even accepted General Stirling’s sword in surrender and treated him with extreme kindness as a captive. On November 19, 1777 and after having been replaced by Baron von Knyphausen, Heister’s anguish and shame finally ended forever. According to the Baroness von Riedesel, he died in his beloved Hesse-Cassel “of grief and disappointment” because of the shameful Trenton debacle.33 At last finding a measure of peace in death not found on American soil, perhaps General Heister can be properly considered as the last Hessian officer fatality of the battle of Trenton. In this sense, the name of Heister might well be added to a deceased officers’ list that included Colonel Rall, Major Dechow, Captains von Benning and Riess, and Lieutenants George Christoph Kimm and Kuehne.
But even capture by Washington’s ragamuffins at Trenton was no guarantee of survival for the Rall brigade’s officers. An unkind fate awaited some of the highest ranking and best officers of the von Lossberg Regiment, including men who had played inspired leadership roles during the showdown at Trenton: born in Fischbeck near Rinteln in 1737 and with twenty-three years of experience by the time of the battle of Trenton, Captain Adam Christop Steding, a bachelor who had first joined the von Lossberg Regiment at age sixteen; Ensign Heinrich Carl von Zengen and Lieutenant Wilhelm Christian Muller, born in Ziegenhain in the Rhineland, in 1749 and a soldier since age sixteen; and Major Ludwig August von Hanstein. Having escaped the salvoes of Washington’s cannon, sharpshooting riflemen, and captivity after taken at Trenton, all of these von Lossberg Regiment officers were lost at sea on the same ship, the Adamant, during an October 1778 hurricane off the east coast.34
This ignominious ending in the Atlantic’s cold waters was an especially ironic and tragic fate for these fine German officers, who had been key players in Trenton’s defense. After all, they had rallied and then skillfully led the von Lossberg fusiliers, who performed with more distinction than any other Rall brigade troops at Trenton. Consequently, the von Lossberg Regiment suffered the lion’s share of the Rall brigade’s losses, with twenty-two killed and eighty-four wounded, a total of 106 casualties. Of this total, seven Lossbergers were killed, while another fifty-nine fusiliers fell wounded. In compiling a distinguished record on the morning of December 26, the von Lossberg Regiment suffered more than 60 percent of the Rall brigade’s total casualties at Trenton.35 In his December 27 report to John Hancock and the Continental Congress, Washington merely concluded in regard to Hessian losses: “I dont exactly know how many they had killed, but I fancy not above twenty or thirty. . . .”36
Washington’s victory at Trenton was not only one of the most one-sided and unexpected of the American Revolution, but also the first real American battlefield success—and Washington’s first after a year and a half in the field—after the battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. Incredibly, only six Americans fell wounded on the morning of December 26. And even more remarkably, none of Washington’s casualties were fatalities, despite the popular Trenton myth of two soldiers—who have conveniently never been identified by either name or regiment—who allegedly froze to death on the march to Trenton.37 In a letter, an incredulous William Hull wrote accurately how Washington had suffered “only the Loss of six [the correct number] or seven on our side, this is no Exaggeration but simple fact. . . . “38
Washington himself was a forgotten casualty of not the battle, but of the march upon Trenton. By December 28, the night march’s ordeal had left him with a “lame hand” that disabled Washington from writing his usual prolific amount of correspondence. Therefore, General Stirling penned Washington’s battle report to Governor Livingston, while praying that “I hope it [Washington’s hand] will soon be well enough to give them another drubbing soon.”39
In a letter evidently written by an aide or Stirling, Washington described his minuscule losses from his two divisions at Trenton as “very trifling indeed.” He informed the Continental Congress that two officers and “one or two privates [were] wounded” and none killed. But Washington in fact had six officers, who were leading the way, wounded during the battle. Captain Washington and Lieutenant Monroe were the best known casualties. Captain Charles Mynn Thruston was another officer who was wounded on December 26. This gentry-class Virginian from the Shenandoah Valley was a soldier-scholar of promise, having attended College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Thurston had studied theology on the distant Albion nation that he now waged war against with righteous zeal at Trenton. He was a popular Episcopal minister, who also served as an inspirational militia officer in the 1750s. Doing his dual Godly and patriotic duties, Thruston raised a volunteer company in the America Revolution’s beginning during the exciting spring of 1775, including men from his own liberty-loving congregation. At Trenton, this hard-fighting “warrior parson” led his Virginians forward until “badly wounded.” Thruston recovered from his Trenton wound, gaining a colonel’s rank before the revolution’s conclusion.40
Young Ensign James Buxton, Fourth Virginia Continental Regiment, was also wounded while playing his part in securing the most improbable of victories at Trenton with his Virginia comrades of
General Stephen’s vanguard.41 Wounded in the defense of Breed’s Hill, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Blatchey Webb, who had served capably as Washington’s aide-de-camp since June 21, 1776, took his second wound of the war at Trenton.42
In addition, Lieutenant Richard Clough Anderson, born in Virginia in 1750, was another one of Washington’s officers who fell wounded at Trenton. Anderson led a company of Colonel Scott’s Fifth Virginia Continental Regiment of Stephen’s vanguard. Anderson was second in command of Captain Wallis’s company that struck the Hessian pickets on the Pennington Road, before the arrival of Greene’s Second Division column. He was also the father of Richard Anderson, a Mexican War veteran and future commander of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, when Confederate artillery opened fire on the masonry fort in Charleston harbor on the morning of April 12, 1861 to spark the Civil War’s fratricidal horrors. Both father and son later laid their muskets and sabers aside to settle on fine country estates of the same name, Soldier’s Retreat.43 In total, consequently, Washington’s loss at Trenton was only six officers wounded and not a single enlisted man killed or wounded can be explained by the Hessians’ reduced firepower because of wet powder and weapons. Most importantly, this relatively small sacrifice among Washington’s attackers soon paid off when hundreds of American prisoners in New York City were soon exchanged for Rall’s captured soldiers.44
Ironically, in a forgotten tragedy of the story of Trenton, far more of Washington’s veterans of the battle of Trenton died in the weeks, months, and sometimes even years after America’s most fortunate day (December 26, 1776), falling victim to disease, exhaustion, and more from the combined effect of the arduous river crossing, the long night march, and the intense urban combat than from all the Hessian bullets, cannonfire, and bayonets combined.45 After his dual strikes—Trenton and then Princeton in early January 1777—east of the Delaware, Washington’s Army withdrew to the small town of Four Lanes End (now Langhorne, Pennsylvania across the Delaware from Trenton), where more than 150 men died of disease, battle wounds, and winter’s ravages at four houses-turned-hospitals.46
While no injured American soldiers immediately succumbed to their Trenton wounds, the severely suffering Colonel Rall died in his own headquarters, Stacy Potts’s house on King Street’s west side, on the night of December 27, the same day that Major Dechow perished. Dying with Rall was his considerable own personal anguish for having lost Trenton and his entire brigade to Washington’s ragtag rebels, who almost never won a battle. After having been cut down, Rall had been carried west through the debris-strewn Church alley from the Methodist Church in a wooden pew and then placed back at his headquarters at Potts’s house by his mourning grenadiers. At age fifty, far from home, and lamenting the recent course of events, Rall’s final thoughts, while suffering from the pain of two agonizing stomach wounds, might well have been upon fond memories of his distant Hesse-Cassel homeland and the soft voice and loving ways of his affectionate mother, Catharina Elisabeth Dreyeich-Rall.
But before the colonel died, Rall felt some solace in the proud memory of how his prized grenadiers had recovered magnificently from Washington’s greatest surprise and then fought courageously against a cruel fate and too many disadvantages to possibly overcome at Trenton. Such final fond memories might have well blotted out some of the pain of losing his fine combat brigade and horror of the screams and moans of his dying men, who had fallen in vain far from home. During Rall’s “last agony, he yet thought of his grenadiers and entreated General Washington that nothing might be taken from them but their arms.”47
The much-acclaimed victor of every battle in which he fought on American soil until Washington and the Gods of War had seemingly turned against him and united as one to vanquish his crack brigade was laid unceremoniously in a lonely grave at Trenton. Today, the exact location of Colonel Rall’s grave is known only to God. Rall shared the same fate—a general obscurity—with his dead officers and enlisted men, who met their untimely deaths at Trenton.48
In his diary, the Knyphausen Regiment’s Lieutenant Wiederhold, of humble origins and a reflective nature, merely recorded how Rall “was twice fatally wounded because of making the ill-considered attack [into Trenton], died the same evening, and lies buried at the Presbyterian Church in this place which he made so famous. Sleep well, dear commander! The Americans reportedly erected a marker on his grave later, and wrote the following words, ‘Here lies Colonel Rall. His life is over.’”49
An introspective, sensitive Lieutenant Piel presented a more human portrait of his hard-fighting commander, who died for the honor of his beloved grenadier regiment and his Germanic state and people. Piel described how Rall was “a generous, magnanimous, hospitable, and polite to everyone; never groveling before his superiors, but indulgent to his subordinates. To his servants [perhaps black as well as white], he was more friend than master. He was an exceptional friend of music and a pleasant companion.”50
For whatever reason, Washington’s victors had not ordered the Hessian prisoners to dig the graves for their comrades. Instead American soldiers themselves dug a mass grave, in ground not yet frozen solid, near the Presbyterian Church. Then, they unceremoniously deposited the bodies of bloodstained grenadiers and fusiliers, who only recently had been the most feared troops from Europe on American soil. Perhaps an American chaplain—ironically the first chaplain to die “in the service of America” was later buried at this same Presbyterian Church cemetery—or even a sympathetic common soldier, perhaps a former minister, offered a final prayer for these young men and boys, at least twenty Hessians, who died so far from their Teutonic homeland. Filling the shallow burial pit were the bodies of three excellent officers of the von Lossberg Regiment: Lieutenant Georg Christoph, or Christian, Kimm, born in 1743; Captain Johann Friedrich, or Kasper, von Riess; and Captain Friedrich Wilhelm von Benning. Thirty-three-year-old Kimm had been appointed to lieutenant of the von Lossberg Regiment in 1773 at only age twenty because of his demonstrated leadership abilities. Like Colonel Rall’s grave, the exact location of this Hessian burial pit has remained unknown to this day. However, it has been generally assumed by historians and students of the battle of Trenton that the Hessian bodies lay in the cemetery of the First Presbyterian Church.51
Like a Teutonic phoenix rising, Rall’s body resurfaced quite by accident in 1839. At that time, the new 1805 church, which had been built over the site of the old 1726 Presbyterian Church, was torn down. And “in the middle of the sanctuary floor a tomb was discovered that contained the body of a soldier buried with flag.” According to a knowledgeable Pastor John R. Allen, “What better place to bury the colonel [Rall] than under the floor of the church [so] that it could not be desecrated.”52
Then Colonel Rall’s earthly remains were either reburied at some unknown location—perhaps deliberately unmarked—to avoid discovery, or perhaps even returned to Germany by family members. However, other evidence has been found that the worst indignity eventually befell the remains of the Hessian dead, including Colonel Rall. In 1916 and two years after the “guns of August” initiated the horrors of the First World War, the rising tide of anti-Germany feeling, fueled by vigorous program of American and Allied propaganda, reached new heights across America, including at Trenton.
In a misguided and rather perverse demonstration of American “patriotism,” the marked Hessian graves, thanks to past efforts of relatives and Germans in America, were dug up by indignant New Jersey citizens. Then, the bones of the Teutonic warriors, and most likely including Colonel Rall, were unceremoniously tossed into the slow-moving drift of the Delaware flowing south since time immemorial. Symbolically and in a strange twist of fate, therefore, Rall evidently found his final resting place in America’s December 1776 river of destiny, so far from his Hesse-Cassel homeland, which had played such a central role in his own ultimate downfall. This especially ugly incident by outraged Trenton citizens explained why the location of Hessians’ final remains, including Rall who might have well become King Georg
e and the British Army’s greatest military hero for having all but crushed the revolution, if he had beaten Washington at Trenton perhaps if only his troops had possessed dry muskets and powder, cannot be located today.53
But the most bizarre fate of any Hessian soldier captured at Trenton occurred at Newton, Pennsylvania, only around a dozen miles from the battlefield. The unfortunate German died of disease while held a prisoner at Newton. A Continental surgeon, Pennsylvanian James Tate, exhumed the German corpse in order to learn more about anatomy by way of dissection. He then buried what was left of one of Rall’s proud fighting men in the basement of his stone house.54
As shabbily as this individual Hessian and Colonel Rall’s last remains were treated by angry Americans, circumstances, and the unpredictable hands of fate, Rall’s reputation suffered even greater abuse and indignity. The popular image (post-Trenton rather than pre-Trenton) of Rall’s alleged military incompetence rose to truly monumental heights from the prolific pens of generations of American historians—based upon the military kangaroo court findings of a self-serving court of inquiry that “investigated” the Trenton fiasco—including the twentieth century and beyond. The creation of this most popular myth of Trenton historiography was all but inevitable, because Rall was the loser of the battle of Trenton and lost his life, paying the ultimate price.
When Colonel Rall died and as could be expected in such a monumental fiasco that stunned the British Army, he immediately became the most convenient scapegoat for the British command structure. After all, Howe, Cornwallis, and Grant were largely responsible for the Trenton debacle, and Hessian commanders, Heister and Donop, who also had bungled badly, had been responsible for setting the stage for the Rall brigade’s demise at Trenton. However, all responsibility for the disaster was conveniently assigned to Rall, who obviously could not defend himself from the charges in what was a classic case of “piling on.” But in truth, this highly respected Hessian colonel had been a center stage player of more tactical successes in America in 1776 than any other German or British brigade commander. Nevertheless, he has become widely demonized as a drunkard, an incompetent buffoon, and an outright fool, who lost Trenton all by himself.
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