A squad of the Rangers was hurried forward to meet the enemy, with instructions to get between them and their main army, and make them prisoners. Before this could be accomplished the British came upon them. The enemy outnumbered the Rangers two to one, yet the latter would have charged them but for orders to halt and fire. So quickly was the order obeyed that the crack of their rifles rang out together with the British officer’s command to fire. The British fired blindly into the smoke, whereas the riflemen had taken quick, accurate aim. But one among the Rangers was hit, and that was Rodney, he receiving a slight flesh wound in the left arm.
“I thought a bee had stung me,” he said, later, when Zeb discovered the blood on his friend’s sleeve.
The enemy, being uncertain as to the number of the Rangers, fell back in good order, carrying their dead with them. They were pursued by the Rangers until a larger body met them, when the Americans retreated.
Skirmishes like this were of daily occurrence, and Cornwallis, finding that Washington was not disposed to accommodate him by rashly engaging in battle under disadvantageous conditions, retreated to New Brunswick, with the Rangers dogging his flanks.
Quite a number of deserters were picked up. Benjamin Franklin had devised a shrewd scheme for encouraging desertions. Learning the brand of tobacco specially liked by the Hessians, he had offers concealed in packages of this tobacco, which was distributed where the Hessians would get them. These hired troops had no love for the cause for which they were fighting, and many of them had little for the tyranny with which they were treated when at home in Germany. When they read these offers, printed in German, of money and land, they were sorely tempted to change masters, especially if they did not happen to be of those who loved fighting for the privilege it gave them to loot and ravage.
How the country people, all the Americans, indeed, except the Tories, despised and dreaded the Hessian! In fact he was no more brutal than many of the British, but he was trained to loot and thus was held in disrepute. On several occasions he had bayoneted the American soldier after the latter had surrendered.
“Why didn’t our men serve ’em a like turn at Trenton?” was a question some had asked.
Zeb well expressed the matter once when the subject was being discussed around the camp-fire.
“I reckon that job at Trenton was most complete. Thar’s nothing about it to be ashamed of, an’ everything to be proud of. If we’d butchered the pig-stickers when they were whinin’ on their knees it wouldn’t hev looked well in history.”