Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/249

 Rh up with military books. For instance, the ‘Instructions of the King of Prussia to his Generals,’ Thielke's ‘Field Engineer,’ the partisans ‘Jenny’ and ‘Grandmaison,’ and other similar books, which had all been translated into English, came into my hands a hundred times through our soldiers. This was a true indication that the officers of this army studied the art of war while in camp, which was not the case with the opponents of the Americans, whose portmanteaus were rather filled with bags of hair-powder, boxes of sweet-smelling pomatum, cards (instead of maps), and then often, on top of all, some novels or stage plays.”

The British kept permanent possession of two or three places on the western side of the Hudson. One of these places was Paulus Hook, now Jersey City. The Hook was a peninsula made up of steep, rocky hills, and surrounded in part by the Hudson and in part by a marsh intersected by creeks and ditches. The position, strong in itself, was fortified with palisades, block-houses, and redoubts. It was occupied by a battalion of New Jersey Tories, under Lieutenant-colonel Bushkirk.

On the 18th of August, 1779, a party of forty Hessians, with two officers, were brought over to reinforce the garrison of Paulus Hook, and at nine in the evening of that day Bushkirk started on an expedition towards the new bridge over the Hackensack, some fourteen miles distant. Meanwhile, Major Henry Lee, of Virginia, with about three hundred men, supported by Lord Stirling with about five hundred more,