At the height of the mutiny an officer was dispatched with the alarming tidings to the quarters of Colonel Mercer. The citizens of the town vainly implored him not to risk his life in this infuriated mob. Reckless of personal safety, he instantly repaired to the barracks of the mutinous band and directing a general parade of the troops, he ordered Gibson's company to be drawn up as offenders and violators of the law, and to be disarmed in his presence. The ringleaders were placed under a strong guard and in the presence of the whole army he addressed the offenders in an eloquent manner, impressing on them their duties as citizens and soldiers, and the certainty of death if they continued to remain in that mutinous spirit equally disgraceful to them and hazardous to the sacred interests they had marched to defend. Disorder was instantly checked and the whole company was ever afterward as efficient in deportment as any troop in the army. On June 5, 1776, Mercer was made Brigadier-General in the Continental Army. It was Mercer who suggested to Washington the crossing of the Delaware. Major Armstrong, Mercer's Aide-de-Camp, who was present at a council of officers, and who was with Mercer on that fateful night, is authority for this statement. We, somehow, see the army of the colonists poorly clad, many of them barefoot, without tents, with few blankets, and badly fed. In front of them is Cornwallis, with his glittering hosts, and we can almost hear the boast of General Howe, that Philadelphia would fall when the Delaware froze. He did not know Washington; and Mercer's daring was not reckoned with. We wonder if ever a Christmas night was so filled with history as that on which Washington, with the intrepid Mercer at his side, pushing through that blinding storm of snow and fighting his way through the floating ice, crossed the Deleware with the rallying cry of "victory or death," and executed the brilliant move which won for him the Battle of Trenton. Near Princeton, Washington's army was hemmed in by Cornwallis in front and the Delaware in the rear. After a consultation at Mercer's headquarters it was determined to withdraw the Continental forces from the front of the enemy near Trenton, and attack the detachment then at Princeton. The pickets of the two armies were within two hundred yards of each other. In order to deceive the enemy, campfires were left burning on Washington's front line and thus deceived, the enemy slept. [Sidenote: _Death on The Battlefield_]