ctor's artillery raking the advancing Hessians
as they waded the stream until its placid waters ran crimson with their
blood. But while Knyphausen's column was itself too heavy for Wayne to
oppose successfully, the catastrophe at Birmingham followed so quickly
upon the beginning of the struggle there that the contest at the ford
was soon ended. Howe was rapidly gaining his rear when Wayne learned of
Sullivan's disaster, and there was now only one resource--to retreat
with all speed. Proctor's guns and other munitions were abandoned, and
the fragments of the left wing, like those of the right, went drifting
toward the Delaware.

As the friendly shades of night came down the British were pressing the
fugitive army off the field, though not with a hot pursuit. In the
Wilmington road, below Dilworthtown, at dusk, we have a view of
Washington riding hastily along and ordering the officers whom he met to
gather up the disorganized troops and hurry toward Chester. As the night
hid the retreat, the stars came out to shine upon the dead, the dying
and the wounded. Howe estimated the American loss at three hundred
killed, six hundred wounded and four hundred prisoners--figures which
Greene's report did not essentially contradict. The wounded were mostly
in Howe's hands: few had escaped, as one did in a "chair" hurriedly
driven over to the Black Horse tavern, on the road to Chester, by Robert
Mendinhall, a neighboring Quaker farmer. The British loss was reported
as five hundred and seventy-eight killed and wounded, including
fifty-eight officers. Even if these figures were too low, the day's
casualties aggregated fifteen hundred. The little meeting-house was
filled with the badly wounded, and Howe sent word to Washington that
more surgeons were needed, in response to which message several were
sent to the field. The dead, as usual, were hastily buried, and heavy
rains after the battle washed out many of the shallow pits, exposing
their ghastly occupants to the elements and prowling beasts. The
neighboring people were compelled to undertake the work of re-interment,
in which, Joseph Townsend says, "it would be difficult to describe the
many cases of horror and destruction of human beings" that they
encountered. The battle was over, the tide of war had swept past, but
these horrid evidences of its slaughter remained as the memorials of the
struggle by which, for a time, the British had captured Philadelphia.