Napoleon was the "Little Corporal,"
"Marlborough" "Corporal John," Wellington the "Iron Duke," Grant the
"Old Man," but there seems to have been something about the personality
of Washington that forbade any thought of familiarity, even on the part
of his trusty veterans. Yet their faith in him was such that, as
Wellington once said of his Peninsular army, they would have gone
anywhere with him, and he could have done anything with them.

THE CAMPAIGN OF TRENTON

NEW YORK THE SEAT OF WAR

[Sidenote: New views of the war.]

Upon finding that what had at first seemed only a local rebellion was
spreading like wildfire throughout the length and breadth of the
colonies, that bloodshed had united the people as one man, and that
these people were everywhere getting ready for a most determined
resistance, the British ministry awoke to the necessity of dealing with
the revolt, in this its newer and more dangerous aspect, as a fact to be
faced accordingly, and its military measures were, therefore, no longer
directed to New England exclusively, but to the suppression of the
rebellion as a whole. For this purpose New York was very judiciously
chosen as the true base of operations.[1]

In the colonies, the news of great preparations then making in England
to carry out this policy, inevitably led up to the same conclusions, but
as the siege of Boston had not yet drawn to a close, very little could
be done by way of making ready to meet this new and dangerous emergency.

We must now first look at the ways and means.

[Sidenote: The new Continental Army.]

A new army had been enlisted in the trenches before Boston to take the
place of that first one, whose term of service expired with the new
year, 1776. On paper it consisted of twenty-eight battalions, with an
aggregate of 20,372 officers and men. By the actual returns, made up
shortly before the army marched for New York, there were 13,145 men of
all arms then enrolled, of whom not more than 9,500 were reported as fit
for duty. These were all Continentals,[2] as the regular troops were
then called, to distinguish them from the militia.

[Sidenote: It marches to New York.]

Immediately upon the evacuation of Boston by the British (March 17,
1776), the army marched by divisions to New York, the last brigade, with
the commander-in-chief, leaving Cambridge on April 4.[3] This move
distinctly foreshadows the general opinion that the seat of war was
about to be transf