accidentally_ on Trenton. It was the very object for which General
Washington crossed the Delaware in the dead of night, in the midst of
snow, storms, and ice: and which he immediately re-crossed with his
prisoners, as soon as he had accomplished his purpose. Neither was the
intended enterprise a secret to the enemy, imformation [_sic_] having
been sent of it by letter, from a British Officer at Princeton, to
Colonel Rolle, who commanded the Hessians at Trenton, which letter was
afterwards found by the Americans. Nevertheless the post was
completely surprised. A small circumstance, which had the appearance
of mistake on the part of the Americans, led to a more capital and
real mistake on the part of Rolle.

The case was this: A detachment of twenty or thirty Americans had been
sent across the river from a post a few miles above, by an officer
unacquainted with the intended attack; these were met by a body of
Hessians on the night, to which the information pointed, which was
Christmas night, and repulsed. Nothing further appearing, and the
Hessians mistaking this for the advanced party, supposed the
enterprize disconcerted, which at that time was not begun, and under
this idea returned to their quarters; so that, what might have raised
an alarm, and brought the Americans into an ambuscade, served to take
off the force of an information, and promote the success of the
enterprise. Soon after day-light General Washington entered the town,
and after a little opposition made himself master of it, with upwards
of nine hundred prisoners.

This combination of equivocal circumstances, falling within what the
Abbe styles, "_the wide empire of chance_," would have afforded a fine
field for thought; and I wish, for the sake of that elegance of
reflection he is so capable of using, that he had known it.

But the action of Princeton was accompanied by a still greater
embarrassment of matters, and followed by more extraordinary
consequences. The Americans, by a happy stroke of generalship, in this
instance, not only deranged and defeated all the plans of the British,
in the intended moment of execution, but drew from their posts the
enemy they were not able to drive, and obliged them to close the
campaign. As the circumstance is a curiosity in war, and not well
understood in Europe, I shall, as concisely as I can, relate the
principal parts; they may serve to prevent future historians from
error, and recover from forgetfulness a sce