, New York and a few near-by villages, and held there
inexorably by a phantom army which never was more than half the size of
that it held in check! The results of the six months' campaign were to
be seen in the possession of the city of New York by the British army.
That army, which had won, practically, all the battles in which it had
engaged, which had followed the Americans through six months of
disastrous defeat and retreat, and had overrun two colonies, now had
nothing to show for all its efforts but the ground upon which it stood!
And this was the result of the genius, the courage, the audacity of one
man,--George Washington! The world was astounded, and he took an
assured place thenceforward among the first soldiers of that or any age.

Even the English themselves could not withhold their admiration. The
gallant and brave Cornwallis, a soldier of no mean ability himself, and
well able to estimate what could be done with a small and feeble force,
never forgot his surprise at the Assunpink; and when he congratulated
Washington, at the surrender of Yorktown years after, upon the
brilliant combination which had resulted in the capture of the army, he
added these words: "But, after all, your excellency's achievements in
the Jerseys were such that nothing could surpass them!" And the witty
and wise old cynic, Mr. Horace Walpole, with his usual discrimination,
wrote to a friend, Sir Horace Mann, when he heard of the affair at
Trenton, the night march to Princeton, and the successful attack there:
"Washington, the dictator, has shown himself both a Fabius and a
Camillus. His march through our lines is allowed to have been a
prodigy of generalship!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

_The British Play "Taps"_

The day after the battle Washington sent his nephew, Major Lewis, under
protection of a flag of truce, to attend upon the wounded General
Mercer; the exigency of his pursuit of the flying British and their
subsequent pursuit of him having precluded him from giving to his old
friend that personal attention which would have so accorded with his
kindly heart and the long affection in which he had held the old
Scotchman. Seymour received permission to accompany Lewis, in order to
ascertain if possible what had become of Talbot.

The men of Mercer's command reported that they had seen the two
officers dismounted and fighting bravely, after having refused to
retreat. The two young officers were very melancholy as they ro