Two principal roads led from the landing-place to Trenton. One, following the course of the river, entered the town at its lower extremity; the other, called the Pennington road, made a circuit into the interior, and struck Trenton at its upper end. Dividing his force, Washington took the latter route with one detachment, while Sullivan, with the other, pursued the river road. The instructions of the commander-in-chief to the latter general were to push on until he had reached Trenton, which he would probably be the first to do, as his route was the shortest, and there wait until he heard firing at the upper end of the town, when he was to attack at once. By thus assaulting the British simultaneously on both sides, Washington hoped, in conjunction with the surprise, to render them an easy prey. The march had scarcely been renewed when the storm, which had been threatening all night, burst upon the army. The snow, at first coming in squalls, finally fell unintermittingly, accompanied occasionally with gusts of sleet and hail. The two divisions moved in company for nearly three miles before separating, and Sullivan, remarking that the wet might spoil the powder, asked his chief what was to be done in that emergency. “We must fight with the bayonet,” was Washington’s stern reply. The tempest now rapidly deepened. The thick-falling flakes nearly obscured the way; the cold became intense, and the wind, moaning across the landscape, seemed to wail over the approaching ruin of America. Many of the soldiers being scantily clothed, were soon wet through and almost frozen. Others had no shoes, and their feet, cut by the icy road, left at every step a mark of blood. History presents no parallel to that eventful march. When still some distance from Trenton, two of the Americans, exhausted and chilled, dropped from their ranks and died. Yet still the remainder toiled on. No martial fife was there, no banner flaunting on high, no squadrons of cavalry to guard their flanks with triple rows of steel; but in silence, like the Spartans bound to Thermopylæ, the little band pursued its way. The inhabitants of the farm-houses on the route, half waking from sleep, fancied for a moment there were strange sounds upon the breeze; but imagining that what they heard was but the intonation of the tempest, they turned and slept again, little thinking that the destinies of America quivered that hour in the balance.