Battle of Trenton
Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night 1776 and captured a garrison of Hessians in about forty-five minutes. The situation before it was close to terminal. The army had been driven out of New York, across New Jersey and over the Delaware, losing perhaps 90 per cent of its strength to casualties, capture, desertion and expiring enlistments; Thomas Paine wrote about the times that try men's souls in a pamphlet Washington had read to the troops. Most of what remained had enlistments ending on 31 December. The crossing was made in a sleet storm with Durham boats, ferrying 2,400 men, horses and eighteen guns across a river full of ice, and took three hours longer than planned; two of the three columns never got over at all. They marched nine miles to Trenton in the dark and arrived after dawn, and the surprise held anyway. The Hessians were three regiments of professionals under Rall, who had dismissed the possibility of an attack and had not built the redoubts he was advised to. American artillery was set at the head of the two main streets, and the town was taken with about 900 prisoners for two American combat deaths. The story that the Germans were drunk from Christmas is later invention. Washington then beat British forces at Princeton a week later and went into winter quarters at Morristown. The recruitment that followed, and the French interest in a cause that could still win, both date from those ten days. Washington's own contribution was less tactical than institutional. He kept an army in existence through a winter in which it had every reason to dissolve, and an army in existence was the whole of the American position until France came in.
- Year: 1776 CE
- Category: Military
