by Jack Fernley
‘The Englishman expects you to do one of two things: retreat or hold out. In either case, he sees a victory for himself. So, why do as he expects – no, wants you to do? Why not do what he would never consider you capable of? Why not attack him?’
There was a theatrical gasp from the six generals and a mutter of ‘Madness’ from Sullivan.
‘Victories follow victories, General Sullivan. When one is achieved, you must act quickly to achieve another. Momentum is everything in a campaign. Once men have a taste for victory, they become greater and they want more victories. If you want to keep your enlisted men, show them victories. Victory has a far greater value than a few dollars. A great general does not rest on his laurels. A great general seizes the moment and strikes hard, strikes hard at the enemy. Maintain momentum. That is what you must do.’
‘Sir, how do you suggest we do that? Cornwallis’s forces outnumber us. Our men are exhausted, ill equipped and ill shod. They lack the tactical discipline of the British,’ protested Cadwalader.
‘You do not engage Cornwallis’s army in battle, that I agree is madness. Not the whole army. But you look for an engagement that will shatter his arrogant assumptions about this war. Sometimes an army can be defeated off the battlefield. You do something so audacious that it undermines Cornwallis’s supreme confidence in himself, and the confidence of his generals and men in him and their cause. So while Cornwallis comes here for you, you attack one of his prize assets, which will suggest nothing is safe any longer. You attack the garrison at Princeton.’
‘We attack Princeton!’ exclaimed Mercer. ‘How should we do that when he will be coming directly from Princeton towards us?’
‘We take the back roads. Look here,’ von Steuben planted his finger on the map. ‘These roads here, the one marked Quaker Bridge Road. You follow this stream—’
‘Stony Brook, we had it reconnoitred last month,’ added Cadwalader.
‘Stony Brook, which leads you to this unnamed road across what appears farmland and takes you directly to the town, through an area I would wager is unguarded. At best, there will be a few outlying sentries.’
‘As I said, we had this approach reconnoitred in early December. It is not easy. It passes through woods. Those woods are no more difficult than what you passed through the other night, and give the benefit of much cover. I daresay there will be treacherous parts, but this road on the farmland has the benefit of not being visible from the Post Road. If our forces could move swiftly and quietly, there is the possibility they would not be spotted.’ Cadwalader drew his line to the Post Road on the map, the main highway between Princeton and Trenton. Contemplating his work, he whispered: ‘It is not unfeasible.’
‘It uses some of the very skills we put into practice on the march to Trenton,’ said Knox. ‘The men managed those manoeuvres under the strictest quiet. We have learned how to muffle the sounds of moving cannon and infantry most effectively. We are masters at this subterfuge.’
‘But if we give up Trenton completely and march out, Cornwallis will soon become aware of our plan. We’ll either be slaughtered on these back roads or he will about-turn and see us off at Princeton,’ replied Mercer.
‘We do not give up Trenton. Or rather, we do not appear to give up Trenton. We immediately start preparing fortifications as if we are preparing for a defence and siege. Then we place Hand’s Pennsylvanians and my own Stormtroopers, who are well trained in the art of guerrilla warfare, to hold up Cornwallis’s advance.’
‘Guerrilla warfare?’ asked Knox, puzzled. ‘What’s that? I have read all the military textbooks and I’ve never heard of it.’
Von Steuben checked himself. Damn, he thought, of course they’ve never heard of it. It hasn’t been invented yet. To Knox he replied, ‘No, I would think not. It is a recent phenomenon. It comes from the Spanish word for a small war. It is perfect for the conditions we face. Indeed, many of your militia, with their apparently random attacks on the British these past few months, have been practising a form of guerrilla warfare.’
‘Tactically ill disciplined, they create more problems for our side than for the enemy,’ countered Mercer.
‘At times, yes, I am sure. The key is to embrace such tactics within an overall strategy. But that is for another day. Let us move back to this particular battle. Cornwallis will be coming down the Post Road, which, as I have witnessed, is surrounded by woods, ravines and many bends that make it easy to defend, but difficult for him to organise his men in battle formation. We continually fall back, until eventually we stand here at the Assunpink Bridge and the high ground on the other side of the creek.’ He planted his forefinger on the map. ‘Here General Knox’s artillery can start firing on the English, slowing them still further. It will allow Cornwallis little time to set up his positions. By then the night will be falling and the English will have little option but to fall back. Then comes our master stroke for the situation.
‘We leave at nightfall with the main body of our troops, which allows us to leave, say, five hundred men in Trenton. That will give the enemy the appearance of our full complement. Light enough lights, stoke enough fires, and they will believe the entire army is camped out, especially if occasionally we offer up cannon shot to keep up the pretence.
‘In the morning, as the English begin their attack, these five hundred men also slip away. We may keep a few sharpshooters here until the very last. By the time Cornwallis has entered and realises the ruse, we will have taken Princeton, scored another victory and seized all the stores that we can make off with.’
‘Their winter stores are at New Brunswick, I think,’ Hamilton interrupted. ‘I’m confident that’s where they are.’ He came to the map now. ‘New Brunswick is no more than, what, fifteen miles from Princeton. If we could seize those quarters . . .’
‘Your youthful enthusiasm is getting you too excited, Hamilton,’ replied Mercer.
‘No, perhaps the young gentleman is right. Why not make a raid on them? The stores are indeed at New Brunswick. My men and I passed through it on our march to join Rall at Trenton. It is very well stocked. If we seize it, we will create a crisis for them. They will be unable to push on, or even to give chase, and have no option but to retreat to New York for the winter. An excellent suggestion, Mister Hamilton. So along with the proposal I outlined, I add to it the thought that we send a raiding party on to New Brunswick and pick Cornwallis’s pocket. That, sir, is the plan I suggest.’
He stepped back from the table. There was silence around the room.
Washington nodded his head quietly. Greene, Knox, Sullivan and Cadwalader were taken aback by the detail, the precision and the sheer effrontery of the plan. Mercer attempted to find a flaw in von Steuben’s plan.
‘The baggage. Are we to take all our own supplies with us on this route march, Baron? I cannot imagine that we can strike camp and have all our necessary supplies following us through this backwoods.’
‘Ah, a good point, Your Excellency,’ replied von Steuben, temporarily lost for an answer, thrown by the peculiar question. He had outlined an astonishing, audacious plan and all Mercer could bring up was the baggage?
‘Burlington,’ Washington interrupted. ‘We shall send the excess baggage to Burlington and from there to Pennsylvania and our proposed winter camp at Morris Town.’
From the tone alone, Mercer understood the die was cast.
TWENTY
‘Here they come, boys! Shoulder your firelocks. Steady as they come. On my order, first volley. Hold yourselves just now!’
Hand and the Pennsylvanians lay nervously behind the low, muddy embankment they had thrown along the Five Mile Run. Some of the men had planted short wooden sticks along the edge to hold their rifles in place; all had loaded powder in their pan, flints sharpened, shot in the barrel, ready for the British. It was largely open on this part of the Princeton road, and the Colonists formed a V-shaped funnel some twenty yards behind the rutted track that passed for a highway. Down it, in a single column, came t
he British Army: mounted Hessian Jägers, followed by green-coated Hessian foot soldiers, drums banging to maintain a steady march, two troops of light dragoons, two battalions of British highland infantry and a number of six-pounder cannons. It was Cornwallis’s vanguard to his full complement, which was faltering behind, as the narrow road had been churned into a quagmire by the weight of men, horses and cannon passing along it.
Conze lay next to Hand. His Stormtroopers were not on the line. They were waiting in position in woods along the Shabakunk Creek, the fall-back position for when the Pennsylvanians could no longer hold Five Mile Run. He had suggested this part of the plan to Hand, who had eagerly embraced it, but had left the Stormtroopers there. Conze wanted to witness at first hand how ready, how able Hand and his Riflemen were.
The English came further down the line, the first few stepping into the mouth of the American trap.
The tension among the Riflemen was unbearable. Hand cast an eye up and down his line, looking at the faces of his boys, hoping to stop any of them from firing too early. Some of them had been with him since the forming of the Lancaster militia two years earlier, had been through the retreats in New York and New Jersey, were battle-weary, hardened and exhausted, their clothes ragged. How much more would they, could they, give to the cause?
The British drew further into the ambush. The mounted Hessians first, then the foot soldiers, finally the red British troops, Hand, waiting until the moment he thought his boys could maximise the impact, swivelled his head around to cast his eye over the bank. Immediately satisfied, he screamed, ‘Let them have it, boys!’ and as one the Riflemen raised themselves up the parapet, took aim and fired off a volley of shot. The crack of gunfire was loud and quick, scattering the vanguard, forcing the green and red jackets to flee back towards the main body of Cornwallis’s forces.
Within seconds the Colonists recognised the discipline and battle readiness of Cornwallis’s troops, for almost immediately, they lined up outside of the funnel in a line three deep, ready to return fire. Hand screamed out: ‘Second volley!’
Conze had no sooner heard that cry than the whistle of shot passed him. Battle had begun in earnest.
This was a different kind of fight to that which he had become accustomed in another age. The ponderous nature of loading and reloading of both the American long rifle and the English infantry rifle, created a strange, almost balletic atmosphere. Technology did not allow for the rapidity and brutality he had become accustomed to. Accuracy seemed rare. After the opening rounds of both sides, Conze could see no evidence that any men had been struck on either side. He reflected on the fighting he had undertaken in France, wounded by a sniper shot to his left leg, and the brutal hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of ruined Russian cities in an Eastern Front winter that was far more treacherous than the New Jersey winter of 1776. How different to what he was witnessing, how much easier, he considered, for this theatre to bend to his will.
Then he became aware that men were falling along the British line. As the Colonists got their range, so accuracy improved. Nevertheless, fearlessly, the British line started to advance, slowly, but confidently, returning fire.
It was something to behold, Conze thought. The manner in which the British and Hessians strode purposefully forward and stopped, the front row firing, the second row readying, the third row preparing, then the second row and the third replacing the first. Hundreds of men, shoulder to shoulder, elbow against elbow. Total discipline while under fire. Boom! A synchronised line of fire. Over the din, he heard a voice of authority: ‘Rear row – make ready! Second Row – load and prime! Front row – present, fire!’ Another volley, another boom. Then repeat commands and a further volley and that sharp boom again. Men moving expertly in front of the preceding line, a perfect rhythm, moving inexorably towards the Americans. Within a minute, each row had fired a volley. Now along the Colonists’ line came screams and shouts, followed by low moaning and a singular cry of ‘Mother!’ Wherever battle took place it was always to the sound of young men in pain screaming ‘Mother!’, Conze reflected.
‘Fire at will!’ shouted Hand, but the line had already started to do just that, as the different loading speed of the Riflemen began to undermine their synchronicity.
The British line halted. Hand understood what was happening. ‘Preparing for cannon, boys!’
Shot continued to pepper from both sides, wafts of smoke drifting dreamily together in the middle of the field. For an instant, the British were covered in a thin mist. Then came the whoosh of the canister. It flew over their heads and buried itself twenty yards further down the field. ‘Getting range, lads, they’re getting range. Keep your firing.’
Conze began to feel the heat of the battle, such as he had never experienced before, a different kind of brutality. The enemy here was closer than in the battlefield warfare he had known. Little more than fifty yards separated the two sides. Some of the smells – old sweated clothes worn for months on end, foul breath, nausea, shit and piss, fear itself – he recognised, but there was a different layer rising to the top, not the lubricated, mechanical stench of 1945, but the bad-egg stink of gunpowder. It pervaded everything, tickling his throat, making him gag. Conze gasped for something fresh in the air, but all he found was more sickly egg.
And his ears were burned by the din of the battle. The popping of the American muskets close by him, the drumming and thrumming of the cannon shot, shrieks and cries from the wounded, confused and contradictory shouts of command; he even thought he heard drum, bugle and pipes in the melange. The cacophony of hell itself.
A gust of wind raised the mist of spent gunpowder, the Redcoats appeared once again. Their line still held firm, the magnificence of the tomato-red coats shining brilliantly against the grey pallor of the day.
‘We keep holding! Daniel Jones, back to your post!’ Hand screamed at a young man, panic scribbled across his mud-lined face. The boy was no more than sixteen, Conze thought, his face smeared with dirt and grease, mouth black from chewing the wrap off his powder, ragged fingernails blackened by the powder, thumbs callused from constant cocking, checked himself, threw himself on to his back on the ground and shouted, ‘Fresh flint! My flint’s no good!’
Then an explosion to their right. The British guns had found their range from the embankment on the other side of the road. A huge tower of mud and water flew into the sky; in its midst the white blouse of a man, the torso detached from its legs. As the dirt fell back, Conze could see the explosion had taken at least three men with it. These primitive cannon, he thought, should not be underestimated.
The British line inched closer. Soon they would be near enough to use their bayonets, an advance over the Pennsylvanians whose long rifles could not hold a knife. Hand gave a quick look around to his far left; the English had slightly wheeled their line and already Redcoats were preparing to run, their bayonets at the ready. The Colonists were in danger of being overrun, so Hand cried out, ‘Fall back! Back to the creek!’
At that moment Hand was worried that he had left it too late, but the men were ready and as one they turned their backs, stooped low and ran away from their earthworks and towards the trees that marked the end of the Five Mile Run. They had the benefit of a few moments before the British would reach the top of the embankment and get a free view of the fleeing Colonists. Earlier that day, he had some of the men make the run, so he could have a good idea of how much time they needed to be safely within the woods before the grenadiers could open fire from the top of the constructed ridge. Had he timed it right?
His heart thumping, his rifle stretched out before him, Hand made it into the pine copse, and took sanctuary behind the second line of trees. Around him his Riflemen flew in. Conze was by his side once again. Hand had timed it well. As the Redcoats ascended the ridge, not one of his men, aside from those injured in the opening exchanges, was left in the field. The British troops stopped as they reached the top.
Their enemy had vanished into the woods. The
failure to engage in open combat frustrated the British. For a time there was quiet on the battlefield. The British began to reorder themselves into the single line they had held coming from Princeton. The wounded, including two Colonists, were taken to the back of the lines to be treated.
Hand and Conze watched all this from the edge of the copse.
‘A good start, Edward,’ said the German.
‘I’d rather not have lost those men to that cannon, and two others wounded by the looks of it. I thought I saw George McCarthy lying out; I don’t want to have to explain to his father the Brits have his boy. He may never see him again.’
‘But the tactics worked as planned. You held them back. They appear disorientated. Your men did well with their long rifles. Now we need to let loose Forrest’s artillery to hold them still longer.’
‘And then we’ll see if your Stormtroopers are as good as their name suggests, Werner,’ replied Hand. Looking about him, he saw Captain Thomas Forrest, his six guns ready. ‘Tommy Forrest, in your own time, open fire. Hold them here for a while yet and then fall back to Trenton. Don’t lose any of the bloody cannon. I’d rather you leave earlier than wait too long. Obergruppenführer Conze tells me his Stormtroopers can pick them off.’
‘Colonel Hand, we’re going to let them have a blast any moment now. We have them in range. We’re loaded and ready for ’em.’
‘What you waiting for then? Give ’em hell and now!’
And within seconds the American artillery was peppering the British line with howitzers. It had the immediate impact they had hoped for: further confusion in the British lines and a delay while Cornwallis called up his own guns to train and then fire back on the Colonists’ arsenal. As their shot came screaming through the woods, bringing down branches and trees, Forrest immediately gave an order to pull back. Thick ropes appeared and with them tough men from the Pennsylvanian coal mines, hauling the guns through ready-made tracks in the undergrowth.
