A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal | Page 9

It runs in a rugged, natural-made ditch,
over which a person may pass with little difficulty, the stream being rapid and shallow.
Evening was now coming on, and the British, believing they had all the advantages they
could wish for, and that they could use them when they pleased, discontinued all further
operations, and held themselves prepared to make the attack next morning.
But the next morning produced a scene as elegant as it was unexpected. The British were
under arms and ready to march to action, when one of their light-horse from Princeton
came furiously down the street, with an account that General Washington had that

morning attacked and carried the British post at that place, and was proceeding on to
seize the magazine at Brunswick; on which the British, who were then on the point of
making an assault on the evacuated camp of the Americans, wheeled about, and in a fit of
consternation marched for Princeton.
This retreat is one of those extraordinary circumstances, that in future ages may probably
pass for fable. For it will with difficulty be believed that two armies, on which such
important consequences depended, should be crouded into so small a space as Trenton;
and that the one, on the eve of an engagement, when every ear is supposed to be open,
and every watchfulness employed, should move completely from the ground, with all its
stores, baggage and artillery, unknown and even unsuspected by the other. And so
entirely were the British deceived, that when they heard the report of the cannon and
small arms at Princeton, they supposed it to be thunder, though in the depth of winter.
General Washington, the better to cover and disguise his retreat from Trenton, had
ordered a line of fires to be lighted up in front of his camp. These not only served to give
an appearance of going to rest, and continuing that deception, but they effectually
concealed from the British whatever was acting behind them, for flame can no more be
seen through than a wall, and in his situation, it may with some propriety be said, they
came a pillar of fire to the one army, and a pillar of a cloud to the other: after this, by a
circuitous march of about eighteen miles, the Americans reached Princeton early in the
morning.
The number of prisoners taken were between two and three hundred, with which General
Washington immediately set off. The van of the British army from Trenton, entered
Princeton about an hour after the Americans had left it, who, continuing their march for
the remainder of the day, arrived in the evening at a convenient situation, wide of the
main road to Brunswick, and about sixteen miles distant from Princeton. But so wearied
and exhausted were they, with the continual and unabated service and fatigue of two days
and a night, from action to action, without shelter and almost without refreshment, that
the bare and frozen ground, with no other covering than the sky, became to them a place
of comfortable rest. By these two events, and with but little comparitive force to
accomplish them, the Americans closed with advantages a campaign, which but a few
days before threatened the country with destruction. The British army, apprehensive for
the safety of their magazines at Brunswick, eighteen miles distant, marched immediately
for that place, where they arrived late in the evening, and from which they made no
attempts to move for nearly five months.
Having thus stated the principal outlines of these two most interesting actions, I shall now
quit them, to put the Abbe right in his misstated account of the debt and paper money of
America, wherein, speaking of these matters, he says,
"These ideal riches were rejected. The more the multiplication of them was urged by
want, the greater did their appreciation grow. The Congress was indignant at the affronts
given to its money, and declared all those to be traitors to their country, who should not
receive it as they would have received gold itself.

"Did not this body know, that possessions are no more to be controuled than feelings are?
Did it not perceive, that in the present crisis, every rational man would be afraid of
exposing his fortune? Did it not see, that in the beginning of a Republic it permitted to
itself the exercise of such acts of despotism as are unknown even in the countries which
are moulded to, and become familiar with servitude and oppression? Could it pretend that
it did not punish a want of confidence with the pains which would have been scarcely
merited by revolt and treason? Of all this was the Congress well aware. But it had no
choice of means. Its despised and despicable scraps of paper were actually