ce, upon the unready line of
the Americans. The German and British troops, we are told, "vied with
each other in fury" as they ran forward in a superb and irresistible
bayonet charge. The struggle began about four o'clock: it lasted perhaps
half an hour. As the enemy advanced they were fired upon by a body of
outposted riflemen in an orchard near the road on which the attacking
column moved; whereupon, says Joseph Townsend, who was near by watching
the movement, the Hessians ran up the bank by the roadside, and,
levelling their guns through the fence, returned the fire.

Overwhelmed by the attack, the Americans broke on the right. This was
the post of honor which Deborre, an old French officer, had obtained for
his brigade. Conway, in a letter written a few weeks later to support
Sullivan's defence, says the latter, though entitled to the right, took
the left in order to save time, and that Deborre, though the ground was
much more favorable for the quick formation of his line, was not in
order when the enemy attacked. It is agreed that Deborre's brigade broke
first, and that then the left, Sullivan's men, gave way, though Sullivan
struggled bravely to hold them. "I saw him," says De Fleury, "rallying
his men with great ardor," but unsuccessfully; and he then came to
Stirling's division, which was fighting on the hill, braving the thick
of the fire until the centre too gave way, when, at the last, he was
striving to rally the fugitives and encourage them to form a new line
behind the fences. Had Sullivan shown vigilance and discretion equal to
his courage, the day's history might have been totally different.

Thirty minutes completed this epoch of the battle. The first line was
destroyed. Those who had formed it were stretched on the sere pastures
or hurrying to the rear. Stirling and Conway, as well as Sullivan, had
shown great bravery and coolness, but the resistance, practically, had
been totally ineffective. The beaten and demoralized troops streamed
into the woods, and sought shelter or escape until they met the
reinforcements under Greene.

As the sound of Sullivan's encounter reached him--possibly
sooner--Greene had moved from his reserve position to the support of the
right flank. He marched, it is asserted, four miles in forty minutes.
Washington himself left Chad's Ford, giving the command there to Wayne,
and hurried off to the more perilous quarter of the field. Joseph Brown,
a resident of the vicinity, was