Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/114

 96 retreated before him over the Assanpink bridge. According to Bancroft, the whole number who thus got off was one hundred and sixty-two. Washington, in his first report to Congress, gives the number of those who surrendered at twenty-three officers and eight hundred and eighty-six men. A few more afterwards found in Trenton raised this number to about one thousand. “Colonel Rahl [sic] the commanding officer, and seven others,” he writes, “were found wounded in the town. I do not exactly know how many were killed; but I fancy not above twenty or thirty, as they never made any regular stand. Our loss is very trifling indeed, only two officers and one or two privates wounded.”

Washington's force being inferior in numbers to that of the English and Hessians to the south of him, and a strong battalion of light infantry being at Princeton, he thought it prudent to retire across the Delaware the same evening with the prisoners and artillery he had taken.

The news of the victory of the Americans was received in New York with grief and indignation. Old Heister, already out of favor with Sir William Howe, may have seen in it the omen of his own recall. He wrote on the 5th of January to the Landgrave's minister, Schlieffen, announcing the event. According to his story, Rall's brigade had been surprised by ten thousand men, and the disaster was caused by that colonel's rashness in advancing to meet this superior force, instead of retiring at once behind the Assanpink.