of musketry left him unscathed, the men stood firm, the other divisions came rapidly into action, and the enemy gave way in all directions.  The two other British regiments were driven through the town and routed.  Had there been cavalry they would have been entirely cut off.  As it was, they were completely broken, and in this short but bloody action they lost five hundred men in killed, wounded, and prisoners.  It was too late to strike the magazines at Brunswick, as Washington had intended, and so he withdrew once more with his army to the high lands to rest and recruit.

His work was done, however.  The country, which had been supine, and even hostile, rose now, and the British were attacked, surprised, and cut off in all directions, until at last they were shut up in the immediate vicinity of New York.  The tide had been turned, and Washington had won the precious breathing-time which was all he required.

Frederick the Great is reported to have said that this was the most brilliant campaign of the century.  It certainly showed all the characteristics of the highest strategy and most consummate generalship.  With a force numerically insignificant as compared with that opposed to him, Washington won two decisive victories, striking the enemy suddenly with superior numbers at each point of attack.  The Trenton campaign has all the quality of some of the last battles fought by Napoleon in France before his retirement to Elba.  Moreover, these battles show not only generalship of the first order, but great statesmanship.  They display that prescient knowledge which recognizes the supreme moment when all must be risked to save the state.  By Trenton and Princeton Washington inflicted deadly blows upon the enemy, but he did far more by reviving the patriotic spirit of the country fainting under the bitter experience of defeat, and by sending fresh life and hope and courage throughout the whole people.

It was the decisive moment of the war.  Sooner or later the American colonies were sure to part from the mother-country, either peaceably or violently.  But there was nothing inevitable in the Revolution of 1776, nor was its end at all certain.  It was in the last extremities when the British overran New Jersey, and if it had not been for Washington that particular revolution would have most surely failed.  Its fate lay in the hands of the general and his army; and to the strong brain growing ever keener and quicker as the pressure became more intense, to the iron will gathering a more relentless force as defeat thickened, to the high, unbending character, and to the passionate and fighting temper of Washington, we owe the brilliant campaign which in the darkest hour turned the tide and saved the cause of the Revolution.

CHAPTER VII

“MALICE DOMESTIC, AND FOREIGN LEVY”