At eight in the morning, the Americans rushed into the town. "The enemy! the enemy!" cried the Hessians. Their leader, Colonel Rahl, fell, mortally wounded. A thousand men laid down their arms and begged for quarter. Washington recrossed the Delaware with his whole body of captives, and the American nation took heart once more. That fearful crossing of the Delaware, in the blinding storm, and the sudden yet marvellous victory which followed, will always live among the most pathetic and stirring scenes of the Revolution. A few days later, January 3, 1777, with five thousand men, Washington defeated Cornwallis at Princeton, exposing himself so constantly to danger that his officers begged him to seek a place of safety. The third year of the Revolutionary War had opened. France, hating England, sympathizing with America in her struggle for liberty, and being encouraged in this sympathy by the honored Benjamin Franklin, loaned us money, supplied muskets and powder, and many troops under such brave leaders as Lafayette and De Kalb. The year 1777, although our forces were defeated at Brandywine and Germantown, witnessed the defeat of a part of Burgoyne's army at Bennington, Vermont, and, on the 17th of October, the remaining part at Saratoga; over five thousand men, seven thousand muskets, and a great quantity of military stores. Two months later, France made a treaty of alliance with the United States, to the joy of the whole country. On December 11, Washington went into winter-quarters at Valley Forge, on the west side of the Schuylkill, about twenty miles from Philadelphia. Trees were felled to build huts, the men toiling with scanty food, often barefoot, the snow showing the marks of their bleeding feet. Continental money had so depreciated that forty dollars were scarcely equal in value to one silver dollar. Sickness was decreasing the forces. Washington wrote to Congress: "No less than two thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight men are now in camp unfit for duty, because they are barefoot and otherwise naked." From lack of blankets, he said, "numbers have been obliged, and still are, to sit up all night by fires, instead of taking comfortable rest in a natural and common way." A man less great would have been discouraged, but he trusted in a power higher than himself, and waited in sublime dignity and patience for the progress of events. Martha Washington had come to Valley Forge to share in its privations, and to minister to the sick and the dying.