[1] Cadwalader seems to have done all in his power to cross his troops in the first place. His infantry mostly got over, but on finding it impossible to land the artillery--ice being jammed against the shores for two hundred yards--the infantry were ordered back. Indeed, his rear-guard could not get back until the next day. This was at Dunk's Ferry. The next and successful attempt took from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon, when 3,000 men crossed one mile above Bristol. [2] Thomas Rodney's letter. [3] Heath was ordered to make a demonstration as far down as King's Bridge, in order to keep Howe from reenforcing the Jerseys. It proved a perfect flash-in-the-pan. [4] Part of Donop's force fell back even as far as New Brunswick. [5] Stark made a personal appeal with vigor and effect. His regiment had come down from Ticonderoga in time to be given the post of honor by Washington himself. [6] In a letter to his wife Knox gives the credit of this suggestion to Washington, without qualification. [7] These were the Seventeenth, Fortieth, and Fifty-first. [8] The hostile columns met on the slope of a hill just off the main road, near the buildings of a man named Clark, Mercer reaching the ground first. [9] The Seventeenth regiment, Colonel Mawhood, carried off the honors of the day for the British. [10] The position at Morristown had been critically examined by Lee's officers during their halt there. Washington had therefore decided to defend the Jerseys from that position. XII AFTER PRINCETON It had taken Cornwallis a whole week to drive Washington from Brunswick to Trenton; Washington had now made Cornwallis retrace his steps inside of twenty-four hours. In the retreat through the Jerseys there had been neither strategy nor tactics; nothing but a retreat, pure and simple. In the advance, strategy and tactics had placed the inferior force in the attitude menacing the superior, had saved Philadelphia, and were now in a fair way to recover the Jerseys without the expenditure even of another charge of powder. While Washington was looking for a vantage ground from which to hold what had been gained, everything on the British line was going to the rear in confusion. Orders and counter orders were being given with a rapidity which invariably accompanies the first moments of a panic, and which tend rather to increase than diminish its effects. What was passing at Brunswick has fortunately found a record in the diary of a British officer posted there when the news of Washington's coming fell like a bombshell in their camp. It is given word for word: