26 December 1776, 8 am
Trenton: the attack
Trenton has about 100 houses on two main streets, King Street and Queen Street, and no fortifications, since Colonel Johann Rall refused to build them. His 1,500 Hessians form three regiments: his own, the Lossberg and the Knyphausen. At 8 am Greene’s column overruns the outpost on the Pennington road, and Edward Hand’s Pennsylvania riflemen and the German Battalion block the road to Princeton.
Sullivan enters the town from the River road, drives off the jägers at the Hermitage and sends a column to hold the bridge over the Assunpink. American guns at the head of King and Queen streets fire down both streets. Rall forms his regiment and part of the Lossberg regiment in lower King Street and advances, but the guns and Hugh Mercer’s men, firing from the houses on the left of the street, break the attack and take the Hessian guns. On Queen Street Thomas Forrest’s guns stop every attempt to advance.
Plan of the battle drawn by Andreas Wiederholdt, the Hessian officer commanding the outpost on the Pennington road, published 1884Wikimedia Commons, Andreas Wiederholdt, Public domain (The Hessians - Wiederhold's plan of the Battle of Trenton.jpg)
Sources
- David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing (2004).
- Richard M. Ketchum, The Winter Soldiers (1973).
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