Battle of Trenton, 1776: Washington's Christmas gamble

Anniversary 26 December 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Trenton; see the whole campaign in The Ten Crucial Days.

Sleet was driving into their faces, and many of the men had no proper shoes. For hours they had waited on the Pennsylvania bank while sailors poled heavy cargo boats through the ice, and now, long after midnight, they were marching south through snow and hail toward a town held by German professional soldiers. Their commander knew the plan was already hours late. He decided to push on anyway, because there was no way back across the river without being discovered.²

By December 1776 the American Revolution was dying. Washington had lost New York, been chased across New Jersey, and watched his army shrink as enlistments ran out. He needed a victory, and he was willing to gamble everything on one desperate stroke across a frozen river on Christmas night.³

Part of The greatest battles of the American Revolution · Before: The Fall of Fort Washington · Next: The Battle of Princeton

Background: the darkest hour

The campaign of 1776 had gone badly for the Americans almost from the start. General William Howe landed a large British army at New York, beat Washington on Long Island in August, took the city in September and drove him north to White Plains. On 16 November Howe stormed Fort Washington on Manhattan, taking nearly 3,000 prisoners, and Fort Lee across the Hudson fell days later.⁴ › Battle of Long Island, 1776

What followed was a long retreat across New Jersey, with Lord Cornwallis on Washington's heels. Early in December the Continental Army crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania, taking or destroying every boat it could find so that the British could not follow. The Continental Congress fled Philadelphia for Baltimore. Rather than chase further, Howe put his army into winter quarters, strung out in a line of posts across New Jersey, and left a Hessian brigade under Colonel Johann Rall at Trenton, on the river itself.⁵

Washington's army was in a desperate state. Its soldiers were ragged, many without shoes or blankets, and the enlistments of a large part of the army would run out at the end of the year. Washington knew he needed a victory or the revolution might be over. On 19 December Thomas Paine published The American Crisis, whose first line, “These are the times that try men's souls,” was read to the troops in their camps. Reinforcements arrived from New England, and Washington chose his target: the Hessians at Trenton.⁶

Armies and commanders

The garrison at Trenton was made up of three Hessian regiments, Rall's own, Knyphausen and von Lossberg, with a small troop of British light dragoons. Washington put their strength at about 1,500 men in his report to Congress, as do the American Battlefield Trust and the park at Washington Crossing; Britannica gives about 1,400. They were German professionals hired to serve the British crown.⁷

Their position was weaker than it looked. For weeks New Jersey and Pennsylvania militia had raided the garrison's pickets and patrols, and Rall's soldiers were worn out by repeated alarms. Rall had been warned that an attack was possible, but according to Britannica he believed the winter weather would rule out any serious assault.⁸

Washington's plan called for three crossings on Christmas night. Colonel John Cadwalader, with Philadelphia militia and Continentals, was to cross downstream and pin the garrisons near Burlington; General James Ewing's Pennsylvania militia was to cross at Trenton Ferry and seize the bridge over Assunpink Creek, the Hessians' escape route south. The sources differ on their strength: Britannica gives some 1,800 and nearly 1,000 men, the Battlefield Trust about 2,000 and 800. Washington himself would lead about 2,400 Continentals over the river upstream at McConkey's Ferry, with Generals Nathanael Greene and John Sullivan commanding his two divisions and Colonel Henry Knox the artillery.⁹ › Nathanael Greene

The battle in phases

The crossing

The troops paraded behind McConkey's Ferry on the evening of Christmas Day and began to cross as soon as it grew dark. Most of the men went over in Durham boats, long, high-sided freight boats built to carry iron ore and pig iron down the Delaware, handled by Colonel John Glover's Marblehead sailors from Massachusetts. The eighteen cannon and the horses crossed on flat-bottomed ferries.¹⁰

The weather turned against them. Rain gave way to a nor'easter of driving snow, sleet and wind, and ice floes slowed the boats. Washington had hoped to have everything across by midnight; instead, as he reported to Congress, it was three o'clock before the artillery was over and nearly four before the troops could march. Downstream it was worse. Ice piled against the shore stopped Ewing from even attempting the crossing, and Cadwalader, who got part of his force over, had to bring it back. Washington would have to take Trenton alone.¹¹

The march

The road to Trenton was about nine or ten miles long, and the army covered it through snow and hail. Partway along, Washington split the column in two. Greene's division took the upper road, by way of Pennington, to strike the town from the north; Sullivan's division took the lower road along the river to come in from the west and cut off the retreat south.¹²

Into the town

Both columns struck the Hessian outposts at about eight o'clock, almost at the same moment. The Hessian pickets fell back fighting from house to house. Knox's gunners unlimbered on the high ground at the head of King and Queen Streets and fired straight down the two main streets of the town, while the infantry closed in.¹³

The Hessian regiments formed in the streets, but the American guns tore into them and their own artillery was soon silenced and captured. Rall tried to lead his own regiment and the Lossberg regiment back up the streets, then out into the fields east of the town, and was struck down, mortally wounded. When the Hessians tried to slip away by the road to Princeton, Washington threw troops across it.¹⁴

Turning point

The battle was decided in the minutes after the Princeton road was closed. With Americans on three sides and Assunpink Creek behind them, Rall's and Lossberg's men saw that further resistance meant being cut to pieces, and they grounded their arms. The Knyphausen regiment, trying to escape over the Assunpink bridge, was cut off by Sullivan's men and surrendered soon after. Because Ewing had never crossed, the bridge itself stayed open long enough for the British dragoons and some Hessians to escape toward Bordentown.¹⁵

How many died at the Battle of Trenton?

Very few. The American Battlefield Trust counts 22 Hessians killed and 83 wounded, and Britannica more than 20 killed and about 80 wounded. Around 900 more were taken prisoner. No American was killed in the fighting; about five were wounded, among them Lieutenant James Monroe, the future fifth president.¹⁶

The numbers show how one-sided it was. Washington himself counted 23 officers and 886 men taken prisoner, and he reported two officers and one or two privates wounded on his own side. Monroe, then 18, was badly wounded in the shoulder.¹⁷

Aftermath

Washington did not try to hold the town. With only part of his planned force across and British troops at Princeton and below Trenton, he took his prisoners and the captured guns and crossed back into Pennsylvania the same day. The sources differ on what else was taken: Britannica describes a sizable store of guns and ammunition and the Battlefield Trust food and clothing, while Washington's own report says the army found no stores of any consequence in the town.¹⁸

He was back in New Jersey within days. Facing the end of so many enlistments on 31 December, he persuaded a bare majority of the men whose service was expiring to stay another six weeks for a bounty of ten dollars in hard coin. On 2 January 1777 Cornwallis arrived at Trenton with a large army and attacked the American line along Assunpink Creek, but his assaults failed at the bridge by nightfall. That night Washington slipped away from Cornwallis and on 3 January defeated the British force at Princeton before marching into winter quarters at Morristown.¹⁹ › The Ten Crucial Days

Why was the Battle of Trenton important?

Trenton was Washington's first success in the open field, won when the Revolution seemed lost. With the victory at Princeton a week later, it restored American morale and confidence in Washington, persuaded many soldiers whose enlistments were ending to stay on, and brought new recruits into the Continental Army.²⁰

In numbers Trenton was a small action, and historians weigh its effect with care. Lindsay Chervinsky, writing for the Miller Center, concludes that Trenton and Princeton did not change the course of the war, but that they gave powerful encouragement to a disheartened people.²¹ › Washington vs Cornwallis

The crossing became one of the founding images of the United States, above all through Emanuel Leutze's huge painting Washington Crossing the Delaware of 1851. Trenton also ranks among the classic American victories against the odds.²²

In Trenton itself, the Trenton Battle Monument stands on the spot where Knox's artillery commanded King Street (today Warren Street) and Queen Street (today Broad Street). The granite column, designed by John H. Duncan and topped by William O'Donovan's statue of Washington with his arm outstretched, was dedicated on 19 October 1893. Its height is given as 148 feet by the Crossroads of the American Revolution heritage area and as 150 feet in its National Register file. Bronze reliefs on its base show the crossing, the opening of the battle and the surrender of the Hessians.²³

Visiting today

The Pennsylvania bank of the crossing is preserved as Washington Crossing Historic Park, a state park. Every December it stages the crossing, with reenactors in Continental uniform boarding replica Durham boats for the New Jersey shore, and its Christmas Day crossing opens the week of commemorations in Trenton.²⁴

In Trenton, Patriots Week fills the days from 26 to 31 December, with the Old Barracks Museum among its partners, and its highlight is a reenactment of the Battles of Trenton on the original streets, starting at the Battle Monument.²⁵ › 26 December in military history