Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
Trenton's great historical feature is the Revolutionary battlefield,
now completely built upon. Washington, having crossed the Delaware on
Christmas night, in the early morning of December 26, 1776, marched
down to Trenton, and surprised and defeated the Hessians under Rahl,
who were encamped north of Assunpink Creek. A fine battle-monument
stands in a small park adjoining Warren Street, at the point where
Washington's army, coming into town from the north, first engaged the
enemy. Here Alexander Hamilton, then Captain of the New York State
Company of Artillery, opened fire from his battery on the Hessians,
who fled through the town, along Warren, then called King Street. The
monument is a fluted Roman-Doric column, rising one hundred and
thirty-five feet, surmounted by a statue of Washington, representing
him standing, field-glass in hand, surveying the flying Hessians, his
right arm pointing down Warren Street. The elevated top of this
monument gives a grand view over the surrounding country, the course
of the Delaware being traced for miles. The subsequent fortnight's
campaign ending in the battle of Princeton revived the drooping
spirits of the Americans, and was said by as accomplished a soldier as
Frederick the Great to be among "the most brilliant in the annals of
military achievements." Trenton is at the head of tidewater on the
Delaware, the stream coming down rapids, known as the "Falls." On the
Pennsylvania side is Morrisville, called after Robert Morris, who
lived there during the Revolution. His estate subsequently became the
home of the famous French General Jean Victor Moreau, the victor at
Hohenlinden, who was exiled by Napoleon in 1804. He returned to Europe
afterwards at the invitation of the Czar Alexander, and devised for
him a plan for invading France. They were both at the battle of
Dresden in 1813, and were consulting about a certain manoeuvre when
a cannon ball from Napoleon's Guard broke both Moreau's legs, and he
died five days afterwards.
PRINCETON BATTLE AND COLLEGE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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