Princeton

The British general Cornwallis reached Trenton at dusk with 5,500 men, failed three times at the Assunpink bridge, and decided to finish the job at daylight. Overnight, behind burning campfires and the noise of digging, the army he had trapped wrapped its gun wheels in rags and marched around him.

Two columns spotted each other across frozen fields at dawn. A bayonet charge broke Mercer's brigade and left Mercer dying in the orchard, and Washington rode out between the firing lines to drag the army back into the fight. It ended with cannon outside the college.

In ten days a beaten, dissolving army won two battles and took back the initiative. Mercer died at the Clarke farmhouse, the army marched into the hills at Morristown, and the British gave up most of New Jersey for the winter.