Washington [192]
This preternatural composure, coming in the heat of battle, made Washington a living presence to his men.
The British made three courageous attempts to take the bridge, and each time American artillery repulsed them, strewing many cadavers in their wake. “The bridge looked red as blood,” wrote Sergeant Joseph White, “with their killed and wounded and red coats.”45 Several hundred British and Hessian soldiers died in vain attempts to storm the American positions. Nevertheless, the patriots were heavily outnumbered by Cornwallis’s army and had no clear escape strategy. In the dying light of a winter day, Cornwallis and his officers conferred about whether to postpone the main attack. “If Washington is the general I take him to be,” Sir William Erskine said, “he will not be found in the morning.” An overly confident Cornwallis disputed this assertion. “We’ve got the old fox safe now,” he supposedly said. “We’ll go over and bag him in the morning.”46
Washington worried that his men might be encircled by the superior British force—they were cooped up like a flock of chickens, in Henry Knox’s colorful phrase—and knew that any retreat across a Delaware River chock-full of ice floes could be costly. Convening his generals on this frosty night, he stated that the loss of the corps he commanded “might be fatal to the country,” and, under these circumstances, he asked for advice.47 Once again a single misstep could be devastating. The war council decided to have the army slip away during the night, much as it had disappeared across the East River. Still better, it would convert a defensive move into an offensive measure, circling around the left flank of Cornwallis’s army and heading north along unfrequented back roads to confront the British at Princeton. Washington again hid a political strategy behind his military strategy. “One thing I was sure of,” he remarked afterward, was “that it would avoid the appearance of a retreat, which was of consequence.”48 This supremely risky strategy meant penetrating deep into enemy territory and possibly being entrapped. Nevertheless, Washington and his generals, who now operated with exceptional cohesion, embraced the course unanimously.
To camouflage the nighttime retreat, which would start after midnight, Washington reprised the same repertoire of tricks he had applied on Long Island. The wheels of the artillery were wrapped in rags to deaden sounds. Campfires were kept burning to foster the illusion of an army settled in for the night. Loud noises were broadcast with entrenching tools, as if the Americans were digging in for violent reprisals the next day. Again the troops were kept unaware of their destination. In fact, Washington stole away with such artful stealth, wrote one officer, that “the rear guard and many of his own sentinels never missed him.”49 In marching twelve miles through the night toward Princeton, Washington pushed his long-suffering men almost beyond human endurance. It was a long, harrowing march down dark country lanes congealed with ice. The weary men, wrapped in a numb trance, some barely awake, padded against stinging winds; many fell asleep standing up whenever the column halted.
The troops arrived at the college town later than scheduled, shortly after an exceptionally clear, beautiful dawn that James Wilkinson remembered as “bright, serene, and extremely cold, with a hoarfrost that bespangled every object.”50 The men rapidly repaired a bridge over Stony Brook, south of town, before the army divided into two groups: Sullivan’s division veered northeast while Greene’s moved due north. The first spirited fighting erupted unexpectedly.