ers and entreaties of the
commander-in-chief, Lee did not reach Peekskill until the 30th of
November. In a letter of that date to Washington, who had complained
of his delay, he simply alleged difficulties which he would explain
_when both had leisure_. It was not until the 4th of December that Lee
crossed the Hudson and began a laggard march, though aware of the
imminent peril of Washington and his army--how different from the
celerity of his movements in his expedition to the South! [Lee
evidently considered Washington's star in the decline, and his own in
the ascendant. The loss of Fort Washington had been made a text by him
to comment in his letters about the "indecision of the
commander-in-chief." Instead now of heartily co-operating with
Washington he was devising side-plans of his own, and meditating, no
doubt, on his chances of promotion to the head of the American
armies.]

In the meantime, Washington, who was at Trenton, had profited by a
delay of the enemy at Brunswick, and removed most of the stores and
baggage of the army across the Delaware; and, being reinforced by
fifteen hundred of the Pennsylvania militia, procured by Mifflin,
prepared to face about, and march back to Princeton with such of his
troops as were fit for service, there to be governed by circumstances
and the movements of General Lee. Accordingly, on the 5th of December,
he sent about twelve hundred men in the advance to reinforce Lord
Stirling, and the next day set off himself with the residue. While on
the march, Washington received a letter from Greene, who was at
Princeton, informing him of a report that Lee was "at the heels of the
enemy." "I should think," adds Greene, "he had better keep on the
flanks than the rear, unless it were possible to concert an attack at
the same instant of time in front and rear.... I think General Lee
must be confined within the lines of some general plan, or else his
operations will be independent of yours." Lee had no idea of
conforming to a general plan; he had an independent plan of his own,
and was at that moment at Pompton, indulging speculations on military
greatness, and the lamentable want of it in his American
contemporaries.

While Lee was thus loitering and speculating, Cornwallis, knowing how
far he was in the rear, and how weak was the situation of Washington's
army, and being himself strongly reinforced, made a forced march from
Brunswick, and was within two miles from Princeton. Stirling