“It’s General Washington!” shouted Ben Cooper.
As he spoke the commander-in-chief dashed down the side of the hill, the white charger moving like the wind; with voice ringing with confidence, he called up Mercer’s broken force.
“Turn and at them, my brave fellows. Shall it be said that you ran with arms in your hands?”
Here and there a man paused; and no sooner had he done so than some others joined him; in a few moments the breathless officers were reforming them into lines and gasping out words of encouragement. Through a flight of bullets, Washington swept up and down, giving orders, shouting encouragement, waving his sword in circles of light. Never was there a plainer mark for the stray bullet which usually brings greatness down; but, as Providence willed, none found it then.
The Pennsylvanians, wavering under the cannon shot of Mawhood, saw this act of daring on the part of their chief, and steadied instantly. A battery of artillery now opened upon the British from a hilltop, and the grape-shot began to cut them down. And, as though this were not enough, a Virginia regiment broke from out the woods and charged furiously upon them.
Almost in a single moment Mawhood was plunged from the height of success to a situation of desperate danger. But he was skilful and brave, and not the sort to fail in any kind of action; with high courage he drove his men at the ring that had all but closed him in and fought his way back to the Trenton road.
Washington, as he dashed to and fro, as much endangered by the fire of his own men as that of the British, witnessed this gallant effort of Mawhood’s with admiration; nevertheless he sent a detachment of the Pennsylvanians in pursuit with directions to break down the bridge upon their return, in order that General Leslie, of Cornwallis’ rear guard, might be delayed should he advance to attack them before their task was done.
While this sharp encounter was in progress, another British regiment, the 55th, was met nearer Princeton by the American general St. Clair; a steep ravine was the scene of this struggle, which was brief but desperate; the British broke and fled across the fields toward Brunswick; seeing them in flight, the remaining regiment, which had not come up in time to be of assistance to their fellows, also broke; a part of them hurried in the direction of Brunswick, but a strong body threw themselves into the college building at Princeton and began a stubborn resistance.
They were firing from windows and from protected parts of the roof when Ben Cooper, bearing a dispatch from Washington to St. Clair, rode up. As St. Clair tore open the dispatch, he said grimly to one of his colonels:
“Bring up the guns; we’ll try if this student body can stand before a row of such schoolmasters.”