s, "and
considered ourselves a vanquished people." The indifferent populace of
New York and New Jersey came in crowds to swear allegiance to the
victorious army. No one doubted that Howe would cross the river and take
Philadelphia. The jubilant Loyalists of the capital city awaited their
deliverance. Congress, bundling its records into a farm wagon, scrambled
away to Baltimore. And even the steadfast Washington, with his
tatterdemalion army reduced to three thousand effectives, wrote that if
new troops could not be raised without delay "the game is nearly up."

Of Villeroi, a general in the army of Louis XIV, it was said that he
had "well served the king--William." It might be said of Howe that he
shares with Washington the merit of achieving American independence. He
never quite deserted the patriot cause; and now, at this critical
moment, instead of pressing on to Philadelphia, he retired his main
army, leaving only some Hessian outposts at Trenton and Bordentown. This
arrangement enabled Washington to revive the waning enthusiasm of the
country by executing one of the most daring and brilliant strokes of the
war. Amidst the snow and sleet of a bitter December night, he ferried
his forlorn little force through the floating ice of the Delaware, and
on Christmas morning of 1776 surprised and captured Colonel Ball and one
thousand Hessians. Cornwallis, on the point of departure for England,
was hastily recalled to recover the lost ground; but he was
out-generaled and defeated, and Washington occupied Morristown Heights,
where he would indeed have been "left to scuffle for Liberty like
another Cato," had he not been, to his great amazement, allowed by the
British commander to remain unmolested there until the next spring. "All
winter," he writes, "we were at their mercy, with sometimes scarcely a
sufficient body of men to mount the ordinary guards, liable at every
moment to be dissipated, if they had only thought proper to march
against us."

If the conduct of the British general in the winter of 1777 amazed
Washington, his management of the next campaign was even more
inexplicable. The army of Burgoyne was then moving slowly southward
from Canada by way of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. It was the
intention of the ministers that Howe should cooeperate with the northern
army; and Washington supposed that the purpose of the campaign was to
effect a complete separation of New England from the more Loyalist
Middle an