aggage
would make his triumph complete; but, on the other hand, his troops
were excessively fatigued by their rapid march all night and hard
fight in the morning. All of them had been one night without sleep,
and some of them two, and many were half-starved. They were without
blankets, thinly clad, some of them barefooted, and this in freezing
weather. Cornwallis would be upon them before they could reach
Brunswick. His rear-guard, under General Leslie, had been quartered
but six miles from Princeton, and the retreating troops must have
roused them. Under these considerations, it was determined to
discontinue the pursuit and push for Morristown. There they would be
in a mountainous country, heavily wooded, in an abundant neighborhood,
and on the flank of the enemy, with various defiles by which they
might change their position according to his movements. Filing off to
the left, therefore, from Kingston, and breaking down the bridges
behind him, Washington took the narrow road by Rocky Hill to
Pluckamin.

His lordship had retired to rest at Trenton with the sportsman's vaunt
that he would "bag the fox in the morning." Nothing could surpass his
surprise and chagrin when at daybreak the expiring watchfires and
deserted camp of the Americans told him that the prize had once more
evaded his grasp; that the general whose military skill he had decried
had outgeneralled him. For a time he could not learn whither the army,
which had stolen away so silently, had directed its stealthy march. By
sunrise, however, there was the booming of cannon, like the rumbling
of distant thunder, in the direction of Princeton. The idea flashed
upon him that Washington had not merely escaped but was about to make
a dash at the British magazines at Brunswick. Alarmed for the safety
of his military stores, his lordship forthwith broke up his camp and
made a rapid march towards Princeton. As he arrived in sight of the
bridge over Stony Brook, he beheld Major Kelly and his party busy in
its destruction. A distant discharge of round shot from his
field-pieces drove them away, but the bridge was already broken. It
would take time to repair it for the passage of the artillery, so
Cornwallis in his impatience urged his troops breast-high through the
turbulent and icy stream, and again pushed forward.

Without further delay he hurried forward, eager to save his magazines.
Crossing the bridge at Kingston, he kept on along the Brunswick road,
supposing W