Prelude to Glory Vol, 3

by Ron Carter

  The little band scattered behind anything they could find to hide, studying everything to the north that moved, and suddenly from out of the storm they saw the black shapes of men one hundred yards ahead running at them. In two seconds they realized there were hundreds of them, and Bauer swallowed, terrified, unsure of whether he should try to reach Grothausen to support him, or stand fast where he was, or retreat to save his ten men.

  At that moment the ground shook and the world was filled with thunder. Flame leaped from half a dozen places around him and the air was filled with smoke and frozen dirt and snow and ice. Tiny fragments came whistling, stinging his face, and he threw his arms over his eyes and dropped to the ground, and then the sound of blasting cannon came rolling across the Delaware to echo in the woods.

  With debris still falling, Bauer raised his head, dazed, unable to understand whose artillery was blasting, and whether they were trying for him or the Americans. The third barrage came ripping and once again the world was filled with sound and flame and whistling pieces, and this time Bauer could make no mistake.

  The river! The Americans are firing from across the river! They intend killing all of us!

  He leaped to his feet, shouting, “Fall back. Fall back. Save your-selves.”

  All ten of his men broke cover at the same time and ran as hard as they could south, heading for Trenton. Behind them, Grothausen and his twelve men came sprinting past the Hermitage, stopping for nothing as they caught up with Bauer’s command and passed them in their headlong run for Trenton.

  Across the river, Philemon Dickinson lowered his telescope, then raised it again and studied what movement he could make out among the trees around his home. He saw the Hessians in their long dark overcoats break for Trenton, and he turned the glass north slightly, and again studied the movement until he saw the Americans running down the road two hundred yards behind the Hessians.

  Shivering, soaked to the skin, he wiped a hand across his mouth as he lowered the glass. He turned to the men who had helped him move six cannon south from the main camp in the middle of the stormy night and set them up opposite his own home. They were men declared too sick for active duty and were under doctor’s orders to remain in camp. With their help, Dickinson had planned to blast his own home to rubble if necessary, to drive the Hessians out into the open.

  “Men, I believe we did it. The Hessians are on the run and Flahaven is past the Hermitage.”

  He reached to shake the hand of the man in command of the crew who had moved the first, and heaviest gun, set it up, and led in the firing order. “Sergeant Pratt, thank you.”

  Sergeant Bertram Pratt of Connecticut, with his small command of sick and disabled men from Connecticut, bobbed his head. “No thanks necessary.”

  Across the river, past the River Road, at the Pennington Road, riding at the head of Mercer’s regiment with Wiederhold’s routed command in sight ahead and Stephen’s men right behind them, Washington heard the first faint sound of musket shots from Flahaven’s command as they stormed the Hermitage, and then the far distant boom of two volleys from heavy cannon, and the thought flashed in his mind:

  Flahaven took the Hermitage right on time—we’ll hit both ends of Trenton at the same time. The cannon were too far—across the river—had to be ours.

  There was no time to ponder it. Ahead, Wiederhold’s terrified men sprinted past a tiny outbuilding where a company of Hessians under the command of General Lossberg were quartered. Inside the building, Captain von Altenbockum turned his head quizzically to listen to the sound of gunfire, then barged out the door to recoil in shock at the sight of Wiederhold’s Hessians in full, panic-driven retreat past his building. Altenbockum squinted into the wind-driven sleet and gasped at the sight of hundreds of Americans in full battle cry, wet hair streaming, wind whipping their tattered rags, feet bound like bundles of meat, charging headlong. Instantly he turned and shouted orders to his men and they spilled out of the building struggling into overcoats as they ran to join Wiederhold’s men in their run for Trenton. A few men paused behind a tree or a shed or a house to fire their muskets when they could to try to slow the rout to a controlled retreat.

  It was ten minutes before eight o’clock. The heavens were sealed by the thick, dirty gray storm clouds, and the wind was whistling, driving the snow and sleet and hail nearly horizontal as the men leading Mercer’s column first caught sight of the outskirts of the north end of the village of Trenton.

  Billy broke into a trot, Eli beside him, and without realizing it he raised a fist into the air and shouted, “There it is! Come on.” He broke into a full run and behind him the voices of the entire regiment rose above the storm with their battle cry as they surged forward. Altenbockum’s and Wiederhold’s terrified commands reached the main junction of Pennington and Princeton Roads and King and Queen Streets and sprinted around the corner down King Street without looking back. Thirty seconds later Billy and Eli hit the corner and pulled up short, and Mercer’s regiment stopped to wait for the cannon. Colonel Knox was right on their heels, jerking his mount to a stiff-legged stop as his deep, resonant voice boomed orders to his cannoneers.

  “Halt! Turn those guns! Two down King Street, two down Queen, and fire!”

  His men hauled the horses to a sliding stop, swarmed to the cannon to unhitch them from the teams, and swung the trails to the north, gun muzzles to the south. In five seconds they lined up the guns down King and Queen Streets, point-blank, and in ten seconds they had forty-eight pounds of grapeshot jammed down the muzzle of the two covering King Street just as the door to General Rall’s headquarters burst open and Rall walked out, facing Lieutenant Jacob Piel who had wakened him five minutes earlier.

  Rall stood rooted to the spot, head turning, first up the street to Altenbockum’s and Wiederhold’s commands running like rabbits down past him, then down the street to see his command, one hundred fifty yards south, come boiling out of their billets buttoning their overcoats. Others soldiers were running up the street leading draft horses to hitch them to the cannon near his headquarters. Then Rall jerked his head around to look up the street one more time and through the raging storm made out the shapes of Americans and horses at the head of the street, and he froze, mind swamped, unable to comprehend what was happening.

  At the head of the street, the American cannon loaders reached to whack the man with the linstock on the shoulder, and dove clear as he smacked the smoking punk onto the touchhole and the big guns bucked and roared. Flame leaped ten feet out the muzzles as each blew twentyfour pounds of American grapeshot screaming down King Street, shredding shrubbery and shattering trees and windows, and leaving great black streaks on the buildings as it tore past Piel and Rall into the Hessians running south, and beyond them, into the oncoming horses and the men from Rall’s command running north, up the street. Two huge draft horses stuck their noses into the ground and cartwheeled, hindquarters coming high over their heads, and they did not get up as the grapeshot slammed into Hessians who grunted and staggered and went down.

  Before the smoke cleared, Billy broke into King Street and dodged down the right side at a run, while Eli sprinted to the left side, both men using doorways and trees and shrubs for cover, staying away from the center of the street to give Knox’s cannon a full field of fire. The ranks leading Mercer’s column didn’t hesitate. In full-throated battle cry, they followed at a run, waiting to come within point-blank musket range before they fired. At the same moment, the men at the rear of Mercer’s column came swarming off Pennington Road one hundred yards above the road junction where Knox’s cannon were reloading, in behind Fourth Street and Rall’s headquarters, where bewildered Hessians had taken cover from the deadly cannon blasts and the insane Americans charging down King Street. Too late the Hessians turned to see them and one second later the American muskets ripped loose. Before the storm blew the smoke past the Hessians, the Americans were on top of them, bayonets lowered, screaming, running like wild men. For one stunned moment the Hessi
ans hesitated, then turned and broke for King Street, back into the bedlam, the Americans right behind them.

  On the street, Billy and Eli fired, and then the Americans behind them fired their first full volley and a dozen of the nearest Hessians tumbled. Instantly the Americans grabbed fresh paper cartridges and ripped them open with their teeth, reloading. Billy saw Rall mount his horse and start south down King Street, towards his own command, shouting to his men, trying to rally them.

  “Form ranks! Form ranks!”

  Eli’s eyes narrowed as he saw Rall, and while he slammed the ramrod down his rifle barrel to seat the .60-caliber ball, he marked in his mind how Rall was dressed, his horse, how he sat the saddle.

  Rall’s men formed in the center of the street and Rall met them and turned his horse to lead them back up King Street, to the north, towards Knox’s deadly cannon. Eli tapped powder into the pan of his rifle, slammed it shut, and raised his head, looking for Rall.

  At that moment the Americans who had come in behind Rall’s headquarters came swarming past the building onto King Street driving the Hessians before them. In one glance they saw the dead horses and Hessians felled by Knox’s first cannon blasts, and Rall’s command starting north, up the street, and instantly understood what had happened. They didn’t hesitate. From doorways and behind trees and bushes and barrels and anything they could find, they cut loose with their first full volley at point-blank range into the side of Rall’s startled command and Hessians all up and down the line staggered and went down.

  The Hessians still on their feet slowed and turned to look at the Americans, scarcely fifteen yards away, and they gaped in astonishment, unable to conceive where they had come from. Dumbstruck, they understood but one thing: King Street had become a scene from purgatory. Some of them broke ranks and started east on Third Street, towards Queen Street, away from the holocaust.

  Billy saw it and turned to look up the street, desperately hoping the cannon were reloaded, just as the deafening blasts came roaring. Grapeshot kicked ice and snow up and down King Street, and once again Hessians and horses toppled and went down as Rall’s command began to dissolve, men running both south and east, not heeding Rall’s shouted commands.

  Miraculously still mounted, Rall looked back to see only one of his cannon was still able to function. Scheffer, the lieutenant colonel in charge of that gun opened his mouth to shout an order when his horse screamed and dropped from under him, dead. Scheffer, sick for the past five days with a fever of one hundred three degrees, called for another horse and turned command of his men over to Major Johann Matthaus.

  Matthaus shouted to Lieutenant Engelhardt. “Clear out those guns at the head of the street.”

  With American musket balls spanging off the cannon and knocking splinters from the carriage and tearing into his crew, Engelhardt got off one shot, then shouted orders to hitch two of the horses still on their feet to move the cannon closer, and he started north, up King Street to fire back at Knox.

  Eli studied the cannon crew for one split second, then lowered his rifle and got off his shot. The man carrying the linstock went over backwards and did not move. Eli reloaded, once again looking for Rall.

  It was then Billy heard the gunfire from the south end of King Street and he rose to a crouch, hoping, peering through the storm to see who was shooting at the south end of town as the Hessians spilled onto King Street.

  Grothausen and Bauer had pounded from the River Road into the south end of town with their terrified men following and barged through the back door of the Old Barracks shouting for reinforcements, only to find the barracks nearly empty. They grabbed what men they could and ran back out to meet the oncoming Americans coming hot behind them from the River Road and stopped in their tracks, transfixed. They had thought the Americans were only a large patrol. What they now saw sweeping at them through the storm were hundreds upon hundreds of them in a swarming mass with their bayonets lowered, shouting like fiends. Without a second look every man with Grothausen and Bauer, and every man they had just commandeered from the Old Barracks turned on their heels and ran up King Street only to be raked with musket fire from the north and west. They stopped, confused, and ran east into Front Street and Second Street.

  Billy turned to his men and pointed. “They’re running! Come on!”

  On the other side of King Street, Eli caught the signal and shouted to those behind him, “Move up! Move up! They’re breaking ranks!”

  Both men started forward, staying away from the center of the street to avoid the grapeshot coming from Knox. They fired their muskets and leaped over the Hessians that were down, charging with bayonets into those running, giving them no quarter, no chance to collect their wits or get set. With no bayonet on his long Pennsylvania rifle, Eli was waving his tomahawk as he shrieked out the Iroquois battle cry and plowed into them, face-to-face, hand-to-hand. No Hessian had ever seen a man dressed in a wolf skin coat and wolf skin moccasins, screaming like a madman, knocking men left and right with a black tomahawk. In terror they turned on their heels and threw down their muskets and sprinted east through yards, past houses, down the streets, headed for the open field and orchard on the east side of town.

  Behind them, Lieutenant Engelhardt moved his cannon forward to get a clear shot at Knox at the head of King Street. He had to run back to get the linstock from the man Eli had shot, then returned to open fire, loading and firing as fast as his crippled crew could work.

  Knox, enraged at the thought of someone trying to damage his beloved cannon, was watching like a hawk and when Englehart’s gun began blasting he turned and shouted orders. “Weedon! Can you get some men down to that gun?”

  Colonel George Weedon was not a soldier by trade—he had been a tavern owner in Fredericksburg, Virginia—but he took one look at the cannon and bobbed his head. Pivoting, he shouted to Captain William Washington, Lieutenant James Monroe, and Joseph White, a tough Massachusetts sergeant. “Let’s go!”

  With General George Washington watching from the high ground behind Knox, holding the regiments commanded by Stirling, Stephen, and Fermoy in reserve, Weedon, Monroe, William Washington, and Joseph White broke cover and sprinted down King Street with White shouting in the wind, “Run right on over the gun. Get that crew!”

  Billy and Eli saw them coming and both broke cover from their side of the street to join them, running, dodging, shouting. Engelhardt’s crew kept loading and firing as they came and what remained of Rall’s confused command fired their muskets at them at nearly point-blank range.

  Monroe felt the hammer blow on his left shoulder and spun out of control, went down, and bounded back up, his left arm numb, useless as he stormed on. William Washington felt the hit and the burn, first on the back of his right hand, then the palm of his left, as Hessian musket balls drew blood from both hands. He ran on. Billy and Eli fired at the same moment and two Hessians with muskets staggered backwards and went down and did not move as Billy and Eli charged on, Billy with his bayonet, Eli with his tomahawk swinging over his head. Lieutenant Engelhardt’s eyes widened and he could take no more. He turned on his heel and sprinted south, then turned to run east into an alley.

  Joseph White had no musket, only his sword, but at a dead run he leaped the cannon with the sword raised over his head, clutched in both hands, aimed at the head of the lone Hessian still standing behind the big gun. The Hessian had had enough. All White saw of him was his back as he sprinted headlong east, looking for anything he could find to hide behind.

  “Come on,” Eli shouted. The six of them lifted the trails and turned the cannon muzzle east, up the nearest alley where Hessians had disappeared, and James Monroe picked up the smoldering linstock with his good right hand. He slapped it onto the touchhole and the gun roared. The cannonball ripped into the alley, bounded off the wall of a home and exploded among the running Hessians.

  Billy grabbed the eight-foot-long handle of the sponge and had it halfway down the cannon barrel to reload when from his right came
the sustained blasting of muskets and the feral sounds of men’s voices raised in mortal combat. He and the other five men surrounding the cannon stopped to look.

  At the south end of town, Grothausen and Bauer and the survivors of their men from the Hermitage were still on Front and Second Streets in full, disorganized chaos, trying for the Assunpink Bridge in a futile hope to break free of a world filled with Americans and blasting muskets and bayonets.

  Eli started down the street at a run, Billy beside him, when they both saw the Americans right behind the Hessians, swarming, shooting, shouting.

  “Glover!” Billy shouted, and stopped. “Glover’s got them.”

  Eli squinted in the driving snow. “No, that’s Stark!”

  Tall, broad-shouldered, large hawked nose, chin like granite, Colonel John Stark of New Hampshire was leading, sword raised high, voice booming. At the battle of Bunker Hill eighteen months earlier it was Stark who had stood atop the breastworks with British cannonballs ripping everything around him to shreds while musket balls tore into the dirt and whistled past. He had paced back and forth, cursing the redcoats, waving his sword, shouting orders to his New Hampshiremen to load and fire, and nothing the British could do gave him the slightest concern. His fellow officers begged him to get into the trenches, and he had ignored them. No soldier in the Continental army equaled his bravery and no officer equaled his iron nerve when the air was filled with flying cannonballs and musket fire.

  Coming into Trenton, Stark’s command had been just behind Glover’s, who was in Sullivan’s column, but when the first sounds of heavy fighting reached them as they came in from the west on River Road, there was no power on earth that could hold Stark and his wild New Hampshiremen back.

  “Follow me,” Stark had shouted, and broke out of line in the column and came storming past Glover’s command without even looking sideways.