valry they would have been entirely cut off.
As it was, they were completely broken, and in this short but bloody
action they lost five hundred men in killed, wounded, and prisoners.
It was too late to strike the magazines at Brunswick, as Washington
had intended, and so he withdrew once more with his army to the high
lands to rest and recruit.

His work was done, however. The country, which had been supine, and
even hostile, rose now, and the British were attacked, surprised, and
cut off in all directions, until at last they were shut up in the
immediate vicinity of New York. The tide had been turned, and
Washington had won the precious breathing-time which was all he
required.

Frederick the Great is reported to have said that this was the most
brilliant campaign of the century. It certainly showed all the
characteristics of the highest strategy and most consummate
generalship. With a force numerically insignificant as compared with
that opposed to him, Washington won two decisive victories, striking
the enemy suddenly with superior numbers at each point of attack.
The Trenton campaign has all the quality of some of the last battles
fought by Napoleon in France before his retirement to Elba. Moreover,
these battles show not only generalship of the first order, but great
statesmanship. They display that prescient knowledge which recognizes
the supreme moment when all must be risked to save the state. By
Trenton and Princeton Washington inflicted deadly blows upon the
enemy, but he did far more by reviving the patriotic spirit of the
country fainting under the bitter experience of defeat, and by sending
fresh life and hope and courage throughout the whole people.

It was the decisive moment of the war. Sooner or later the American
colonies were sure to part from the mother-country, either peaceably
or violently. But there was nothing inevitable in the Revolution of
1776, nor was its end at all certain. It was in the last extremities
when the British overran New Jersey, and if it had not been for
Washington that particular revolution would have most surely failed.
Its fate lay in the hands of the general and his army; and to the
strong brain growing ever keener and quicker as the pressure became
more intense, to the iron will gathering a more relentless force
as defeat thickened, to the high, unbending character, and to the
passionate and fighting temper of Washington, we owe the brilliant
campaign which in the darke