sanpink was unguarded.* He was aware that there were but few troops at Princeton, and that Brunswick had retained but a small guard for its rich magazines. He therefore followed out the plan which had existed in germ from the time of his deciding to re-enter New Jersey, and prepared to turn the left of Cornwallis, overwhelm the party at Princeton, and push on if possible to Brunswick, or, if there were danger of pursuit, to seek the high ground on the way to Morristown. When it became dark he ordered the baggage of his army to be removed noiselessly to Burlington.†

Soon after midnight, sending word to Putnam to occupy Crosswicks, Washington "marched his army round the head of the creek into the Princeton road." The wind veered to the north-west; the weather suddenly became cold; and the by-road, lately difficult for artillery, was soon frozen hard. Guards were left to replenish the American camp-fires which flamed along the Assanpink for more than half a mile, and the drowsy British night-watch surmised nothing.

Ewald's Beyspiele grosser Helden. Ewald, who was a man of uprightness, vigilance, and judgment, is a great authority, as he was present.

+ The Narrative of Major-General St. Clair, written in 1812, must be tested by the laws of historical criticism. Washington settled his plan on the first of January 1777, and did but adhere to it on the second and third. St. Clair's Narrative was written after many years, in his extreme old age, is self-laudatory, has no voucher but its author, and contains a statement which is certainly exactly opposite to the truth. Saint-Clair's Narrative, 242, 243: "No one general officer except myself knew anything of the upper country." Now, Sullivan knew it better; as did all the officers of Lee's division, and Stark, Poor, Patterson, the New England Sargent and Gilman, and all the officers of their regiments. St. Clair's story is not supported on any one point by contemporary writers, and the contemporary writers are very numerous and careful. St. Clair professes to remember a council of war held on the evening of January second. There exists no account of any such council by any one else of the time. The council of officers known to have been summoned nearest that time was held early in the morning of the third of January at Princeton, at which council the opinion of each of the general officers was given on the point, whether to go forward to Brunswick or at once take the road that led toward Morristown. Another writer, William B. Reed's Mercer Oration, 34, 35, is out of the way in the advice he attributes to Mercer: "One course had not yet been thought of, and this was to order up the Philadelphia militia,” etc. Washington had long before ordered up the Philadelphia militia, and they were at Trenton on the first of January. Sparks's Washington, iv., 258. Mistakes like this of St. Clair are very common.

Cæsar Rodney to George Read, 23 January 1777. MS.

Arriving about sunrise in the south-east outskirts of Princeton, Washington and the main body of the army wheeled to the right by a back road to the colleges, while Mercer was detached toward the west, with about three hundred and fifty men, to break down the bridge over Stony brook, on the main road to Trenton. Two British regiments were already on their march to join Cornwallis; the seventeenth with three companies of horse, under Mawhood, was more than a mile in advance of the fifty-fifth, and had already passed Stony brook. On discovering in his rear a small body of Americans, apparently not larger than his own, he recrossed the rivulet, and, forming a junction with a part of the fifty-fifth and other detachments on their march, hazarded an engagement with Mercer. The parties were nearly equal in numbers; each had two pieces of artillery; but the English were fresh from undisturbed repose, while the Americans were suffering from a night-march of eighteen miles. Both parties moved toward high ground that lay north of them, on the right of the Americans. A heavy discharge from the English artillery was returned by Neil from two New Jersey field-pieces. After a short but brisk cannonade, the Americans, climbing over a fence to confront the British, were the first to use their guns; Mawhood's infantry returned the volley, and soon charged with their bayonets; the Americans, for the most part riflemen without bayonets, gave way, abandoning their cannon. Their gallant officers, loath to fly, were left in their rear, endeavoring to call back the fugitives. In this way fell Haslet, the brave colonel of the Delaware regiment; Neil, who stayed by his battery; Fleming, the gallant leader of all that remained of the first Virginia regiment; and other officers of promise; and the able General Mercer, whose horse had been disabled under him, was wounded, knocked down, and then stabbed many times with the bayoJust then Washington, who had turned at the sound of the cannon, came upon the ground by a movement which intercepted the main body of the British fifty-fifth regiment. The Pennsylvania militia, supported by two pieces of artillery, were the first to form their line. "With admirable coolness and address," Mawhood attempted to carry their battery; the way-worn novices began to waver; on the instant, Washing

net.

ton, from "his desire to animate his troops by example," rode within less than thirty yards of the British, and reined in his horse with its head toward them. Each party at the same moment gave a volley, but Washington remained untouched. Hitchcock, for whom a burning hectic made this day nearly his last, brought up his brigade; and the British, seeing Hand's riflemen beginning to turn their left, fled over fields and fences up Stony brook. The action, from the first contact with Mercer, did not last more than twenty minutes. Washington on the battle-ground took Hitchcock by the hand and thanked him for his service. Mawhood left two brass field-pieces, which, from want of horses, the Americans could not carry off. He was chased three or four miles, and many of his men were taken prisoners.

The fifty-fifth British regiment, after resisting gallantly the New England troops of Stark, Poor, Patterson, Reed, and others, retreated with the fortieth to the college; and, when pieces of artillery were brought up, escaped across the fields into a back road toward Brunswick. The British lost on that day about two hundred killed and wounded, and two hundred and thirty prisoners; the American loss was small, except of officers.

At Trenton, on the return of day, the generals were astonished at not seeing the American army; the noise of cannon at Princeton first revealed whither it was gone. In consternation for the safety of the magazines at Brunswick, Cornwallis roused his army and began a swift pursuit. His advanced party from Maidenhead reached Princeton just as the town was left by the American rear. It had been a part of Washington's plan as he left Trenton to seize Brunswick, which was eighteen miles distant; but many of his brave soldiers, such is the concurrent testimony of English and German officers as well as of Washington, were "quite barefoot, and were badly clad in other respects;" all were exhausted by the service of two days and a night, from action to action, almost without refreshment; and the army of Cornwallis was close upon their rear. So, with the advice of his officers, after breaking up the bridge at Kingston over the Millstone river, Washington made for the highlands, and halted for the night

at Somerset court-house. There, in the woods, worn-out men sank down on the frozen ground and fell asleep.

The example and the orders of Washington roused the people around him to arms. On the fifth, the day of his arrival at Morristown, a party of Waldeckers, attacked at Springfield by an equal number of the New Jersey militia under Oliver Spencer, were put to flight, losing forty-eight men, of whom thirty-nine were prisoners. On the same day, at the approach of George Clinton with troops from Peekskill, the British force at Hackensack saved their baggage by a timely flight. Newark was abandoned; Elizabethtown was surprised by Maxwell, who took much baggage and a hundred prisoners.

The eighteenth, which was the king's birthday, was chosen for investing Sir William Howe with the order of the Bath. But it was become a mockery to call him a victorious general; and both he and Germain had a foresight of failure, for which each of them was preparing to throw the blame on the other.

In New Jersey all went well. On the twentieth, General Philemon Dickinson, with about four hundred raw troops, forded the Millstone river, near Somerset court-house, and defeated a foraging party, taking a few prisoners, sheep and cattle, forty wagons, and upward of a hundred horses of the English draught breed. Washington made his head-quarters at Morristown; and there, and in the surrounding villages, his troops found shelter. The largest encampment was in Spring valley, on the southern slope of Madison Hill; the outposts extended to within three miles of Amboy; and, though there was but the phantom of an army, the British in New Jersey were confined to Brunswick, Amboy, and Paulus Hook.

Under the last proclamation of the brothers, two thousand seven hundred and three Jerseymen, besides eight hundred and fifty-one in Rhode Island, and twelve hundred and eightytwo in the rural districts and city of New York, subscribed a declaration of fidelity to the British king; on the fourteenth of January, just as the period for subscription was about to expire, Germain, who grudged every act of mercy, sent orders to the Howes not to let "the undeserving escape that punishment which is due to their crimes, and which it will be expedient to inflict for the sake of example to futurity." Eleven days

after the date of this order, Washington, the harbinger and champion of union, was in a condition to demand, by a proclamation in the name of the United States, that those who had accepted British protections "should withdraw within the enemy's lines, or take the oath of allegiance to the United States of America." To this order Clark, a member of congress from New Jersey, interposed the objection that "an oath of allegiance to the United States was absurd before confederation;" for as yet it was reserved to each state to outlaw those of its inhabitants who refused allegiance to itself. The indiscriminate rapacity of the British and Hessians, their lust, their unrestrained passion for destruction, united the people of New Jersey in courage and the love of liberty.

The result of the campaign was inauspicious for Britain. New England, except the island of Rhode Island, all central, northern, and western New York except Fort Niagara, all the country from the Delaware to Florida, were free. The invaders had acquired only the islands that touched New York harbor, and a few adjacent outposts, of which Brunswick and the hills round King's Bridge were the most remote. Whenever they passed beyond their straitened quarters they met resistance. They were wasted by incessant alarms; their forage and provisions were purchased at the price of blood.

The contemporary British historians of the war have not withheld praise from Washington's conduct and enterprise. His own army blamed nothing but the little care he took of himself while in action. Cooper of Boston bears witness that "the confidence of the people everywhere in him was beyond example." In congress, which was already distracted by selfish schemers, there were signs of impatience at his superiority, and an obstinate reluctance to own that the depressed condition of the country was due to their having refused to heed his advice. To a proposition of the nineteenth of February for giving him the nomination of general officers, John Adams objected vehemently, saying, as reported by Rush: "I am sorry to find the love of the first place prevail so very little in this house. I have been distressed to see some of our members disposed to idolize an image which their own hands have molten. I speak of the superstitious veneration which is paid