When the army moved onward the sun was rising, dashing Washington’s hopes of attacking under cover of darkness: that hadn’t stopped him at Trenton, and neither did it now. But Washington’s plan soon unraveled when a column of British infantry was spotted marching south on the main road toward Trenton, in keeping with Cornwallis’s orders for two of the brigade’s three regiments to rejoin him that day. Sighting the main body of Washington’s army, these redcoats swiftly turned “to the right about.”38 The column commander was Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood of the 17th Foot. Sending his wagons back to Princeton, where the 40th Foot remained to guard the stores, and posting the 55th Foot and most of his artillery in a defensive position outside the town, Mawhood boldly advanced the rest of his little force against the rebels that he had seen in the distance across the frosted landscape. He was unaware that Mercer’s column, masked by the undulating terrain, was between him and his objective. Mercer was likewise innocent of Mawhood’s move forward.
Although the British brigade at Princeton numbered about 1,500 men, just a quarter of the size of Washington’s army, the force under Mawhood’s immediate command was far smaller. Besides about 250 of own 17th Foot, he led a motley contingent of mounted and dismounted men of the 16th Light Dragoons, gunners of the Royal Artillery, and drafts and convalescents for other units, including grenadiers, light infantry, and Highlanders: in all, perhaps 650 men with two brass six-pounder cannon. While some 1,100 of Cadwalader’s militia were advancing behind him, Mercer had no more than 350 men and a pair of iron three-pounder cannon in his own denuded spearhead brigade of Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and Marylanders. Despite the heavy overall odds against Mawhood’s redcoats, Washington’s decision to split his own force meant that the British would initially have numbers on their side.39
Passing a farmhouse and barn, Mercer’s men emerged from an orchard to find Mawhood’s regulars arrayed behind a rail fence, just fifty yards off. Sergeant Root recalled kneeling and loading his musket with ball and buckshot—“Yankee peas” in the redcoats’ slang. He and his comrades unleashed a devastating opening volley. Ensign George Inman of the 17th Foot believed that it accounted for most of the 101 rank and file of his battalion killed or wounded during the battle; he was the sole officer on the right wing to escape serious injury, “receiving only a buckshot through my cross belt which just entered the pit of my stomach and made me sick for the moment.”40
Despite their heavy casualties the British gave a volley of their own, clambered over the fence, and immediately charged with the bayonet. Mercer’s men recoiled through the orchard, leaving him unhorsed and surrounded by baying redcoats. When the stubborn Scot refused to surrender, lashing out with his sword, he was clubbed to the ground with a musket butt, bayoneted repeatedly, and left for dead. As the victorious British surged forward, capturing the enemy’s abandoned cannon, the survivors of Mercer’s broken brigade collided with the Philadelphia Associators coming up behind them. Deploying from column into line, the militiamen were thrown into confusion and fell back, too. Crucially, two more American field pieces, under Captain Joseph Moulder, were now unlimbered and brought into action. Manned bravely and efficiently, they stemmed the British advance with blasts of canister.
At this crisis, when the battle’s outcome hung in the balance, Washington spurred up. Sergeant Root remembered that he “appeared in front of the American army, riding toward those of us who were retreating, and exclaimed, ‘Parade with us, my brave fellows! There is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly!’” The sergeant and his comrades rallied, but the militia had been badly shaken and were still disinclined to face the British bayonets. In his attempts to halt their flight Washington “exposed himself very much, but expostulated to no purpose.” It was only after the Philadelphians had retreated another 100 yards that Brigadier Cadwalader managed to steady them. Now, as New England Continentals from the rear of Sullivan’s column turned back to help, the emboldened militia rejoined the firefight, and the lengthening odds against Mawhood’s men began to tell. After making what Washington acknowledged to be “a gallant resistance,” they finally broke and ran for it. The exultant Virginian galloped after them, urging on his own men by shouting: “It’s a fine fox chase, my boys!” Major Wilkinson reported these words at second hand, but, given Washington’s love of the hunt, they sound characteristic enough to be credible. Wilkinson observed: “Such was the impetuosity of the man’s character, when he gave rein to his sensibilities.”41
While some of his scattered soldiers fought their way through to the west, Colonel Mawhood headed north, toward Princeton, accompanied by about twenty men. The very epitome of gentlemanly nonchalance, he trotted across the front of the astonished Americans, with two spaniels frisking about his pony’s hooves.42 During the savage fighting at the orchard, the 55th Foot outside Princeton had been confronted by units from Sullivan’s strong division; heavily outnumbered, it fell back in a series of delaying actions. A group of redcoats prepared to defend the college buildings but soon surrendered after artillery opened up on them with round shot. Having played little part in the action—despite Mawhood’s pointed orders to support him—most of the 55th and 40th retreated to Brunswick; the bloodied survivors of the 17th eventually rallied at Maidenhead.43
Some two-thirds of Mawhood’s brigade, along with its supplies and most of its guns, escaped. Yet without doubt Washington had notched up another stunning victory, albeit one that had come perilously close to defeat. This time, as Washington conceded, the militia had played their part alongside the Continentals; indeed, the Philadelphia Associators had “undergone more fatigue and hardship” than he would have expected at such an “inclement season.” Nathanael Greene, who like Washington, was typically critical of militia, proved far more unstinting in his praise of the Philadelphians: their conduct at Princeton was “brave, firm and manly,” he reported. Although broken, they had rallied and reformed “in the face of grapeshot, and pushed on with a spirit that would do honor to veterans.”44
Reporting the outcome to John Hancock, Washington tallied the enemy’s losses in killed, wounded, and prisoners at 500, with “upwards of one hundred of them left dead” on the ground: only a slight exaggeration. His own casualties were far less numerous—about twenty-five to thirty privates killed, with the wounded yet to be reckoned up—although some “brave and worthy” officers had been lost: besides Mercer (who died of his wounds a week later), they included Colonel John Haslet, the stalwart commander of the old Delaware Continentals, shot through the head.
Thrusting himself into the thick of the fighting, Washington had been lucky to escape a similar fate. Several of his officers and men expressed relief at his survival, mingled with disapproval at his rashness. James Read, a sailor who volunteered for service with the Philadelphia Associators, told his wife that he would never forget the concern he felt for Washington, seeing “him brave all the dangers of the field, and his important life hanging as it were by a single hair with a thousand deaths flying all around him.” Major Samuel Shaw of the artillery observed that, while the army loved Washington “very much,” they had one thing against him: “the little care he takes of himself in any action.” The major added: “His personal bravery, and the desire he has of animating his troops by example, make him fearless of any danger. This, while it makes him appear great, occasions us much uneasiness.” Shaw attributed Washington’s deliverance to the “shield” of “Heaven.”45 Judged by his reaction to the Monongahela and other fights, he may have thanked Providence instead.
Under his original plan, Washington had hoped to push on to Brunswick, on the Raritan River, and deal another devastating blow by destroying Howe’s stores there. But his troops were now exhausted, “many of them having had no rest for two nights and a day.” After once again canvassing his officers, and mindful of the danger of squandering what had been gained by “aiming at too much,” Washington wisely decided to fall back to the north. With a British brigade just five mil
es off at Maidenhead, more redcoats were soon converging upon Princeton. But Washington’s precaution of demolishing the bridge over Stony Brook delayed their pursuit until he had got clear. By the time Cornwallis’s own force arrived from Trenton that afternoon, the “fox” was long gone, although the evidence of his handiwork was all too apparent. Captain Ewald noted: “We found the entire field of action from Maidenhead on to Princeton and vicinity covered with corpses.” Unaware that Washington and his exhausted men had camped overnight at Rocky Hill, just two hours from Princeton, the anxious Cornwallis immediately marched to Brunswick to safeguard his supply depot. Washington meanwhile retired to the wooded hills of Morristown in northern New Jersey, where Greene had already identified a promising site for the Continental Army to finally march into winter quarters.
The ten day Trenton-Princeton campaign of December 1776 to January 1777 was the highpoint of Washington’s military career. War with Britain would drag on for another six years, during which time Washington faced, and overcame, many other crises. But he never again displayed such control over men and events, and with such momentous consequences. Although Washington’s official and personal correspondence was characteristically restrained, the spectacular success of his whirlwind winter campaign must surely have given immense personal satisfaction. Some hint of this, and also the extent to which the twin victories were complementary, is revealed in Charles Willson Peale’s famous painting George Washington at Princeton, in which the Hessian standards captured at Trenton lie spread at his feet and his subject betrays the hint of a smile. Here, at long last, was a true taste of the military glory that Washington had craved since his youth.
Taken together, the victories at Trenton and Princeton swept away the lingering stigma of the defeats at Long Island and Fort Washington just months before. The decisive and aggressive leadership that underpinned them couldn’t have been more different from the dithering that had led to disaster at New York. In a matter of days, and by following his warrior’s instinct to fight back, George Washington had redeemed his battered reputation, silencing, for the moment at least, those critics who were starting to question his capacity to lead the military struggle against Britain. For congressmen who had just granted Washington his enhanced powers, reaching their decision before news of the first victory at Trenton arrived, here was swift confirmation that they’d acted for the best. Above all, given the nadir of the revolutionary cause at Christmas 1776, Washington’s offensive could not have been better timed. As Nathanael Greene expressed it to Tom Paine from the new camp at Morristown, “The two late actions at Trenton and Princeton have put a very different face upon affairs.” Greene, for whom the campaign had likewise delivered badly needed redemption, told his cousin Christopher that adversity had brought out the best in his revered commander: “His Excellency General Washington never appeared to so much advantage as in the hour of distress,” he wrote.46
Washington’s resilience had indeed been remarkable. During those crucial days, his leadership and generalship were also exemplary, a fact recognized by contemporaries and later commentators alike. In his history of the American war—published in 1780 while it was still being fought—one serving British officer praised Washington as a general “capable of great and daring enterprise.” His night march to Princeton was “conducted in a masterly manner,” deserving a place among “distinguished military achievements”—worthy indeed “of a better cause.” Writing at the height of the Edwardian empire in the early twentieth century, the British Army’s historian, Sir John Fortescue, gave ungrudging praise, acknowledging that “the whole cause of the rebellion in America was saved by Washington’s very bold and skillful action.” More recently, the Howe brothers’ biographer, Ira D. Gruber, agreed that the campaign “had an immediate and decisive influence on the war,” restoring “the spirits of thousands of languishing patriots and damping the rising hopes of loyalists.” Not only had Washington guaranteed the rebellion’s survival, but, after Princeton, “the British government had very little chance of winning the war and retaining its colonies.”47
For the British Army in America, the impact of Princeton was both immediate and long-term. While the high command had sought to minimize the destruction of Rall’s brigade at Trenton, Washington’s subsequent strike could not be dismissed so lightly. It convinced Howe to pull back his outposts from the Delaware River to the Raritan and on a drastically constricted line from Brunswick to Perth Amboy. This not only meant that his army relinquished a rich foraging region, but ensured that any future campaign against Philadelphia via New Jersey must first regain the ground that had been lost. In broader strategic terms, however, Washington’s spectacular double blow did nothing to deflect Howe from his intention to focus on Pennsylvania in 1777. Sir William’s growing obsession with capturing Philadelphia and destroying the main rebel army under Washington reversed the cautious strategy that he had followed in 1776. Crucially for the outcome of the war, Howe’s “fixation” would ensure that cooperation with the scheduled British advance from Canada that spring would become even less of a priority than it already was.48
Having given full rein to his aggressive instincts, and with devastating results, Washington now reverted to defensive mode as he sought time to build his new army. In February he took a farsighted step that was to prove vital to his unending search for manpower. Smallpox had erupted among the troops. According to Sergeant Root, who fell sick himself at Morristown camp, “many of our little army died there of that disease.” Faced with a repetition of the epidemic that had culled the regiments ejected from Canada in 1776, Washington introduced systematic inoculation of all soldiers who’d not yet had smallpox. Not only were the doctors busy at Morristown and Philadelphia, but, to keep his army “as clean as possible of this terrible disorder,” Washington had recommended that every state contributing men to the army should ensure that their recruits were inoculated immediately. The mass operation was kept as secret as possible, with patients inoculated in “divisions” at intervals of five or six days to ensure their phased return to active duty.49
Meanwhile, in their cramped and cheerless billets Howe’s redcoats and Hessians endured a grim and sickly winter. They were soon embroiled in a frustrating and costly guerrilla war as expeditions to gather forage in the surrounding countryside encountered the region’s reinvigorated militia and Continentals from Morristown. Resistance was so stiff that British wagon trains required substantial escorts. For example, on February 23, 1777, a column sent out from Perth Amboy under Colonel Mawhood was accompanied by a battalion of light infantry, another of grenadiers, the entire 3rd Brigade of three regiments, and several artillery pieces. Even this substantial force was roughly handled when it skirmished with Continentals near Woodbridge. In his diary, Lieutenant Peebles of the 42nd reported that the column returned “much fatigued” with the loss of sixty-nine men killed and wounded and another six missing. Peebles’s own grenadier company had been heavily engaged, suffering twenty-six casualties. Visiting his wounded, Peebles considered it a pity to throw away such fine men on “shabby ill managed occasions.” With the Scottish Highlands already scoured of military manpower by intensive recruitment in 1775 and steady emigration to North America during the previous decade, the loss of a veteran grenadier like William McIntosh, who died of his wounds on March 11, was a high price to pay for a few cartloads of hay.50
From Morristown, Washington was well placed to monitor Howe’s movements, whether into Pennsylvania or up the Hudson River. In spring 1777, the direction in which Sir William would strike was hard to predict. In April, a British raid on Danbury, Connecticut, which burned munitions that might have been used to contest the expected advance from Canada, suggested that Howe intended to cooperate with Burgoyne’s northern army. That same episode had given Benedict Arnold another chance to enhance his reputation as one of the bravest officers in the Continental Army. When Arnold’s horse was shot dead, he extricated himself from beneath its carcass and in the face of the enemy
coolly retrieved his pistols from their holsters. John Adams was so impressed by an exploit sufficient to make Arnold’s “fortune for life” that he wanted to commemorate it with a medal.51 Washington held an equally high opinion of the famed Connecticut fighting man. Supporting Arnold’s claim for the date of his promotion to major general to be adjusted to give him greater seniority, Washington wrote: “It is universally known, that he has always distinguished himself, as a judicious, brave officer of great activity, enterprise and perseverance.”52
Despite the boldness of his Christmas and New Year offensive, Washington was now coming under criticism for failing to quit his Morristown fastness and make another assault on Howe’s army. Writing to Nathanael Greene, John Adams’s cousin and fellow congressman Samuel Adams suggested that, while “Europe and America seem to be applauding our introduction of the Fabian method,” such classical comparisons were misleading. After all, he continued, Fabius’s foe—the great Carthaginian general Hannibal—was hamstrung by a lack of supplies from his own state; under those circumstances, Fabius was wise to grind his opponent down by “frequent skirmishes.” In contrast to Hannibal, General Howe was kept well provisioned by the Royal Navy and had “the fullest assurances of early reinforcements from Britain.” If Fabius had been in Washington’s place, Adams asked, would he not have sought a decisive result, by destroying Howe’s army at Brunswick? The loyal Greene was quick to set the Bostonian straight. True, there was a difference between the situations of Hannibal and Howe, but it was not so great as to justify Washington “taking a resolution to attack the troops at Brunswick,” particularly as they were fortified, and his own army was inferior in both numbers and discipline.53
George Washington Page 33
