To complete this brief _resume_ of one of the remarkable campaigns of history, Washington strongly fortified himself on Cornwallis' flank at Morristown, menacing each of the three depots held by the British outside New York; Putnam advanced from Philadelphia to Trenton, with the militia; and Heath moved down to the highlands of the Hudson. The country people of New Jersey rose and cut off scattered detachments of the British in every direction, until the whole of the field was eventually abandoned by them, except Amboy, Newark, and New Brunswick. The world witnessed the singular spectacle of a large, well-appointed army of veteran soldiery, under able leaders, shut up in practically one spot, 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.