By this unexpected, or rather unthought of turn of affairs, the country was in an instant surprised into confusion, and found an enemy within its bowels, without any army to oppose him.  There were no succours to be had, but from the free-will offering of the inhabitants.  All was choice, and every man reasoned for himself.

It was in this situation of affairs, equally calculated to confound or to inspire, that the gentleman, the merchant, the farmer, the tradesman and the labourer, mutually turned out from all the conveniencies of home, to perform the duties of private soldiers, and undergo the severities of a winter campaign.  The delay, so judiciously contrived on the retreat, afforded time for the volunteer reinforcements to join General Washington on the Delaware.

The Abbe is likewise wrong in saying, that the American army fell accidentally on Trenton.  It was the very object for which General Washington crossed the Delaware in the dead of night, in the midst of snow, storms, and ice:  and which he immediately re-crossed with his prisoners, as soon as he had accomplished his purpose.  Neither was the intended enterprise a secret to the enemy, imformation [sic] having been sent of it by letter, from a British Officer at Princeton, to Colonel Rolle, who commanded the Hessians at Trenton, which letter was afterwards found by the Americans.  Nevertheless the post was completely surprised.  A small circumstance, which had the appearance of mistake on the part of the Americans, led to a more capital and real mistake on the part of Rolle.

The case was this:  A detachment of twenty or thirty Americans had been sent across the river from a post a few miles above, by an officer unacquainted with the intended attack; these were met by a body of Hessians on the night, to which the information pointed, which was Christmas night, and repulsed.  Nothing further appearing, and the Hessians mistaking this for the advanced party, supposed the enterprize disconcerted, which at that time was not begun, and under this idea returned to their quarters; so that, what might have raised an alarm, and brought the Americans into an ambuscade, served to take off the force of an information, and promote the success of the enterprise.  Soon after day-light General Washington entered the town, and after a little opposition made himself master of it, with upwards of nine hundred prisoners.

This combination of equivocal circumstances, falling within what the Abbe styles, “the wide empire of chance,” would have afforded a fine field for thought; and I wish, for the sake of that elegance of reflection he is so capable of using, that he had known it.

But the action of Princeton was accompanied by a still greater embarrassment of matters, and followed by more extraordinary consequences.  The Americans, by a happy stroke of generalship, in this instance, not only deranged and defeated all the plans of the British, in the intended moment of execution, but drew from their posts the enemy they were not able to drive, and obliged them to close the campaign.  As the circumstance is a curiosity in war, and not well understood in Europe, I shall, as concisely as I can, relate the principal parts; they may serve to prevent future historians from error, and recover from forgetfulness a scene of magnificent fortitude.