11:08 AM EDT on Monday, June 12, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Lord Charles Cornwallis wanted to sail home to England to visit his wife, Jemima, whom he truly loved. His superiors said he could go.

Cornwallis was close to walking up the gangplank for that ocean voyage on Dec. 31, 1776, when he received an urgent command from his boss, the newly knighted Gen. Sir William Howe. Cornwallis could not go home. Washington had emerged from a blizzard and taken Trenton by storm; now Howe needed Cornwallis to take command of the forces in New Jersey and use them to stop Washington.

Cornwallis was an aggressive general, a trait that Nathanael Greene would later use, judo-style, against him. He mounted a horse in New York and pushed across New Jersey, 50 miles in a day.

While Washington was planning to rid New Jersey of the British, Cornwallis was bent on ridding New Jersey of Washington. The odds were with Cornwallis: he had 8,000 men, well-trained, well-equipped, well-fed; Washington had about 4,600 men, mostly untested militia. His 1,200 regular soldiers, about half of them Rhode Islanders, were worn out after a hard year.

True to his style, Cornwallis quickly rolled his troops and 28 cannon south toward Trenton; Washington anticipated this move and then -- thanks to a good spy and the daring capture of a dozen British dragoons -- he knew with dread certainty that many men and much metal were moving his way. So he started to dig in.

Washington made his stand on the banks of the Assunpink River, a waist-deep river that marked the town's southern border. The river could slow the advance of Cornwallis' troops, but it wasn't deep enough to stop them.

To Washington's left was the Delaware, wide and deep, cutting off all hopes of retreat. When the British came across the Assunpink, his men -- outnumbered and outclassed -- were going to have to stand and fight.

Capt. Stephen Olney of North Providence recalled, "It appeared to me then that our army was in the most desperate situation I had ever known it."

'Push on, boys'

The new year 1777 began with a bang. On Jan. 2, Washington sent an advance party of riflemen to scout the progress of 8,000 British troops known to be moving on Washington's entrenched troops of 4,600.

The riflemen were under the command of Col. Edward Hand, 32, an Ireland-born Pennsylvanian. His riflemen wore loose white hunting shirts and carried long rifles with bored barrels instead of the muskets most soldiers carried. Compared to muskets, the rifles fired with deadly accuracy; they were good for skirmishing or guerrilla warfare, but they fouled after repeated firings, making them unsuitable for protracted battle.

About 10 a.m. of a mild morning, Hand's men spied Cornwallis' vanguard outside Maidenhead, 5 miles north of Trenton.

For the next five hours, Hand's Pennsylvania riflemen did what they could to slow the advancing British, firing from behind walls and woods, then dropping back.

Washington sent Nathanael Greene and a division of Greene's men to buttress Hand. Rhode Islander John Howland recalled in his old age: "I remember [Greene] dashing up to the company I was in and calling out in a clear, loud voice, 'Push on, boys! Push on!' "

But a division of soldiers, including Rhode Islanders led by the consumptive Daniel Hitchcock, could not long hold the field against Cornwallis' army. Hand's riflemen fell back through the streets of Trenton to the bridge crossing the Assunpink to the American lines.

With the early sunsets of January, Hand's men had done their job. Darkness was falling now, as Hitchcock's men parted to let the Pennsylvanians cross. Then they re-formed the line; here Henry Knox had cannon ready for the British assault.

Sgt. Joseph White, working with the artillery, recalled, "We let them come on some ways, then by a signal, we fired all together." After three blasts from Knox's artillery, "The bridge looked red as blood, with their killed and wounded and red coats."

Flames from muskets and cannon barrels flared against the darkness, and Cornwallis decided to postpone his attack on Washington's position until the next morning. This was a reasonable decision: his men were worn out from an 11-mile march over miry roads that filled their boots and bogged down their cannon. He did not need to contest the bloody bridge -- the next morning, when they could see the unfamiliar ground, his troops could ford the waist-deep Assunpink, attack Washington's right flank and push the Americans into the Delaware River.

"We've got the old fox safe now," Cornwallis told his officers at a council of war. "We'll go over and bag him in the morning."

Still, Cornwallis' quartermaster, Sir William Erskine, felt they should attempt a nighttime attack. "If Washington is the general I take him to be, his army will not be found there in the morning."

Brilliant maneuver

All that night of Jan. 2 and into the next day, the American campfires burned brightly, fed by the kilned wood of dismantled split rail fences stolen from the local farmers.

All that night, too, the sounds of hundreds of soldiers digging trenches spilled over from the American lines.

The bright fires, the sounds of shovel and pickax: these were all part of an elaborate ruse. For at a war council that night, Washington had studied the horns of his dilemma -- fight a superior enemy or suffer a demoralizing retreat -- and he'd found a third option.

A map hastily drawn with the help of a spy and the local knowledge of Gen. Arthur St. Clair revealed that a new road from Trenton to Princeton had recently been cleared. This road ran east, around the town well to the left of Cornwallis' troops. In fact, it was so new that where it passed through the pine barrens, the short stumps of the trees felled for the road had not yet been dug out.

Washington, with the concurrence of his generals including Greene, decided to stealthily march his 4,600 men along this road past the log huts of Sand Town, away from Cornwallis' reach.

A crew of 500 stayed behind to keep the campfires burning, while the rest marched under strict orders to hold their tongues. The "baggage train" -- wagons filled with belongings and blankets -- was sent south to Burlington; the wheels of Knox's artillery were wrapped in rags to muffle their heavy roll. By luck a brief January thaw broke that night, and the temperatures fell far below freezing, giving the wheels good ground on which to roll.

With a last heaping of rail fence to flare the campfires the final 500 silently stole off into the gin-clear night.

On Jan. 3, 1776, the sun rose into a cloudless New Jersey sky. An American soldier (quoted in Richard Ketchum's The Winter Soldiers ) noted the morning was "bright, serene, and extremely cold, with a hoar frost which bespangled every object."

When Cornwallis and his officers surveyed the American lines they saw fresh earth works, smoldering campfires -- and nothing else.

The old fox had fled the trap.

Hunted to hunter

The cold, nighttime march to Princeton was a tough one -- 11 miles on a dark, dirt road studded in places with tree stumps too short to see by starlight but tall enough to bruise shins. The artillery horse moved slowly, holding up columns of stumbling men, many wearing rags and hides for shoes; some fell asleep standing, until the order came again to march.

Capt. Benjamin Frothingham told a sergeant: "You are the first person I ever see sleep while marching."

At sunrise an advance party of Americans neared a hill outside Princeton. Col. James Wilkinson, then on Nathanael Greene's staff though later a personal enemy of Greene's, saw a flash along the ridge, sun striking on the burnished steel of musket barrels.

Wilkinson believed, "It must be the enemy, for the muskets of our poor fellows have no burnish to them."

It was indeed the enemy -- two regiments, 50 cavalrymen and 150 wagons led by Lt. Col. Charles Mawhood.

And was Mawhood ever surprised to see Washington's army at the door to Princeton, when he supposed that Cornwallis had them pinned down at Trenton. As Henry Knox later put it: "I believe they were as much astonished as if an army had dropped perpendicularly upon them."

Mawhood had just ridden out of Princeton with his two spaniels trailing his brown horse. He was leading troops to reinforce Cornwallis at Trenton; he left behind about 500 men to guard that town.

An advance party of Americans led by Hugh Mercer was the first to fight with Mawhood's troops, in a winter-bare orchard on a snow-covered hill.

After a skirmish the British troops charged downhill through the orchard, bayoneting the outmanned Americans, who turned and ran. Mercer's gray horse took a ball in leg and fell thrashing to the ground. Now dismounted, Mercer swung wildly with his sword. British troops surrounded him, cracked his head with a musket butt and seven times they ran him through with a bayonet. Before he passed out Mercer heard them say, "Damn him, he is dead. Let us leave him."

Mercer's men ran, and Gen. John Cadwalader's untested militiamen saw them coming, panicked and ran with them. Nathanael Greene saw the beginnings of a panicky retreat as he approached the hill from the back side. According to one anecdote told to his grandson, as Greene charged, an officer at his side reined in his own horse to avoid a dead man.

"On sir," Greene said, "this is no time for stopping."

Greene ordered Capt. Joseph Moulder to haul his two, four-pound cannon to the left of the hill, in an attempt to anchor the line of militiamen before they broke ranks.

Moulder set up his cannons and blasted away. Though the militia did desert him he stayed with his guns, staving off the charging British long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

Washington saw the fighting in the orchard and galloped over to calm the panicked militia. As Moulder blasted away Washington yelled, "Parade with us my brave fellows! There is but a handful of the enemy, and we will have them directly."

Behind Washington came Hitchcock, leading two brigades of Rhode Islanders flanked by regiments from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In 10 days Hitchcock would be dead of fatigue and tuberculosis; today, following Washington's orders, he formed his men in a wide line next to the Virginians who stood next to the Pennsylvania militia now under Washington's direct command.

Washington rode out in front of the line and waved his hat, a signal to come on. He rode uphill, toward the line of British, brick red against the snow in the morning sun.

About 30 yards from the British lines Washington turned in his saddle. "Halt!" he said. "Fire!"

From both sides muskets thundered, cloaking Washington in a fog of gunpowder. His aide, John Fitzgerald, literally could not watch; he pulled his hat over his eyes. When the cloud cleared he saw Washington, again waving his hat to advance.

Hitchcock's New Englanders pushed the left flank of the British lines. Captain Olney recalled: "our column displayed and marched in line; at this instant the enemy made a full discharge of musketry and field pieces loaded with grape shot, which made the most horrible music about our ears. . . .

Captain Moulder, still where Greene had directed him to set up, continued his cannon fire on the British right.

The British broke and ran. From being the hunted at Trenton, Washington was now the hunter. As his army took off after the retreating British troops Washington followed on his horse. He yelled: "It's a fine fox chase boys!"

Temporary respite

Walking the ground where the battles were fought, Dr. Benjamin Rush saw dozens of dead, and heard the moans of many more wounded. A college student noted "a number of pale, mangled corpses," 36 of which were buried the next day in a common grave.

For two hours the American forces plundered the town. Some had marched a night to reach Trenton, then, with no sleep, marched 16 miles again at night to Princeton. All were hungry.

By early afternoon they were on the march again. Washington wanted to march on New Brunswick, capture that post, and take the British warchest of 70,000 pounds; now he knew his plan was beyond human endurance. New Brunswick was a 17-mile march away, and Cornwallis was again on his heels.

Nathanael Greene, riding a horse that was literally on its last legs ( I am miserably off for want of a horse, he wrote two weeks later), led an advance column northeast toward Morristown; after a night at Somerset Courthouse, where troops spent the night on frozen ground with no wagons or blankets, the American army straggled into Morristown.

Morristown was meant to be a temporary camp, but the more the American officers saw of the place, the better they liked it. The village was nestled in a natural castle: the sharp hills of the Watchung range threw up a wall toward New York; behind it the Passaic River acted as a moat between Morristown and a possible British invasion. War had not yet torn up the countryside here, so the foraging was good. Washington decided to pass the rest of the winter here.

From his headquarters Greene wrote to his wife, Caty, about the sad effects of the Battle of Princeton:

I forgot to mention in my last the death of poor Col. Hitchcock [Daniel Hitchcock, his former Rhode Island commander] who dyed of the Pleurisy at this place. He was buried with all the honnors of War as the last mark of respect we could show him. Poor General Mercer [Hugh Mercer, bayoneted and left for dead] is also dead of the wounds he receivd in the Princetown action. He was a fine companion, a sincere friend, a true patriot and a brave General. May Heaven bless his spirit with Eternal peace. Several more brave officers fell that day. Particularly one Capt [Daniel] Neale of the [New Jersey] Artillery. The Enemy refusd him quarter after he was wounded. He has left a poor Widow overwhelmed with grief. She is as fine a woman as I ever I saw; her distress melts the hearts of all around her. . . . . Such instances paints all the horrors of war -- beyound description.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

EXTRA: Keep up with all installments in the series, Rise, and Fight Again, at:

http://projo.com/extra/2006/greene/

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources used for today's installment:

Boatner III, Mark M. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, Pa., 1994.

Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse. Buchanan; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: New York, Chichester, Weinheim, Brisbane, Singapore, Toronto, 1997.

Greene, George Washington. The Life of Nathanael Greene, Vol. 1. New York: Hurd and Houghton. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1871.

Ketchum, Richard M. The Winter Soliders. Copyright 1973. Henry Holt and Co. New York. Owl Books Edition, 1999.

Scheer, George F., and Rankin, Hugh F. Rebels & Redcoats. Da Capo Press Inc.: United States of America, 1987. copyright The world Publishing Company, 1957.

Showman, Richard K., ed. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, Vol. II. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1980.

Williams, Catharine R. Biography of Revolutionary Heroes. Published by the author: Providence, 1839.

Wood, W.J. Battles of the Revolutionary War. Da Capo Press: United States of America, 1995.

A continuing series.