On This Day ... in 1776 & Others
During the American Revolution, General George Washington's retreating army crossed the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania
December 1776 was a desperate time for George Washington and the American Revolution. The ragtag Continental Army was encamped along the Pennsylvania shore of the Delaware River exhausted, demoralized and uncertain of its future.
The troubles had begun the previous August when British and Hessian troops invaded Long Island routing the colonial forces, forcing a desperate escape to the island of Manhattan. The British followed up their victory with an attack on Manhattan that compelled the Americans to again retreat, this time across the Hudson River to New Jersey.
The British followed in hot pursuit, chasing the Americans through New Jersey and by December had forced the Continental Army to abandon the state and cross the Delaware into Pennsylvania. With New Jersey in their firm control and Rhode Island successfully occupied, the British were confident that the Revolution had been crushed. The Continental Army appeared to be merely an annoyance soon to be swatted into oblivion like a bothersome bee at a picnic.
To compound Washington's problems, the enlistments of the majority of the militias under his command were due to expire at the end of the month and the troops return to their homes. Washington had to do something and quickly.
His decision was to attack the British. The target was the Hessian-held town of Trenton just across the Delaware River.
During the night of December 25, Washington led his troops across the ice-swollen Delaware about 9 miles north of Trenton. The weather was horrendous and the river treacherous. Raging winds combined with snow, sleet and rain to produce almost impossible conditions. To add to the difficulties, a significant number of Washington's force marched through the snow without shoes.
The next morning they attacked to the south, taking the Hessian garrison by surprise and over-running the town. After fierce fighting, and the loss of their commander, the Hessians surrendered.
Washington's victory was complete but his situation precarious. The violent weather continued - making a strike towards Princeton problematic. Washington and his commanding officers decided to retrace their steps across the Delaware taking their Hessian prisoners with them.
The news of the American victory spread rapidly through the colonies reinvigorating the failing spirit of the Revolution. The battle's outcome also gave Washington and his officers the confidence to mount another campaign. On December 30 they again crossed the Delaware, attacked and won another victory at Trenton on January 2, and then pushed on to Princeton defeating the British there on January 3.
Although not apparent at the time, these battles were a decisive turning point in the Revolution. The victories pulled the languishing Revolution out of the depths of despair, galvanized colonial support, shocked the British and convinced potential allies such as France, Holland and Spain, that the Continental Army was a force to be reckoned with
1914: Following the disaster at Coronel on 1 November, a powerful taskforce under Vice Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee, including the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, was dispatched to hunt down the Graf von Spee's Asiatic Squadron.
Sturdee's ships were re-coaling at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands when von Spee's squadron came into sight, planning a raid on the British facilities there. However, von Spee hesitated, probably upon seeing the distinctive tripod masts of the battlecruisers in the harbour. Furthermore, the elderly battleship HMS Canopus, which had been deliberately run aground by her captain to act as a harbour defence ship, opened fire, scoring a direct hit on Gneisenau with her first salvo. The hit did little damage since the shell was an inert practice round - Canopus had been about to start a gunnery training drill. But the hit may have contributed to von Spee's fatal decision to turn away and run.
Sturdee's ships gave chase, and the advantages in speed and firepower enjoyed by his battlecruisers soon told: this was precisely the type of action for which the much maligned battlecruisers were designed - the destruction of enemy raiders. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were destroyed by Invincible and Inflexible, von Spee going down with his flagship, whilst Sturdee's armoured and light cruisers dispatched the rest of the German squadron, only the light cruiser Dresden escaping. She was eventually tracked down at Juan Fernandez on 14 March 1915, whereupon she scuttled herself.
1917: During the advance on Jerusalem, a company of the London Scottish became pinned down by a pair of Turkish machine-guns. Corporal Train pressed ahead and managed to wipe out one of the machine-gun teams. He then succeeded in killing a soldier attempting to withdraw with the second weapon. He received the Victoria Cross.
1939: The USA protested against the British blockade of Germany, saying it interfered with the right of neutral nations to trade freely
1940: Churchill telegraphed President Roosevelt with his summary of the events of 1940, the current situation and what he believed that Great Britain would need from the United States in order to survive and attain victory.
Churchill requested that the US Navy extended its Neutrality Patrols much further out into the Atlantic and that the US bring pressure to bear on Eire to allow use of the western Irish ports by either US or Allied warships. In return Churchill promised to try to reunite Ireland after the war by asking the people of Ulster to join with the South.
The main problem in 1941, explained Churchill, was the lack of merchant shipping to bring the 43 million tons of supplies that Britain needed annually and lack of escort vessels to protect them from the U-boats and long-range anti-shipping aircraft
1941: The UK declared war on Japan following the invasion of Malaya and Thailand the previous day. Within 3 months this would lead within three months to the loss of Malaya and Singapore. This was the last occasion on which the UK has formally declared war.
For the first time, in Poland gas vans were used as a means of execution by the Nazis at the Chelmno extermination camp near Łódź.
1987: Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in Washington as a result of which, the USSR destroyed 1,752 nuclear missles and the USA 859
Comments
Dear Mr FM,
you might want to revise the "last declaration of war" above - I recall that the UK declared war on Finland in '44 because of pressure from our good buddy Stalin.
P
Posted by: P | December 8, 2008 8:47 PM
One of the units at Trenton was what is now Battery D, 1st battalion, 5th Artillery
which was then commanded by 19 year old Captain(later Lt Col)Alexander Hamilton after he raised it from among fellow college students in New York City and which fired down King and Queen Streets of the village to repel the Hessian counter-attack. "Merry Christmas - 1776" is from the official US Army in Action series
http://www.public-dominator.biz/CD%20Vari%20USA/Stampe%20Militari/Misc/Merry%20Christmas,%201776.jpg
Along with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Infantry, Battery D is the only surviving unit from the Continental Army still on the rolls of the US Regular Army.
Col Beausaber
PS: Several days after withdrawing into Pennsylvania, Washington recaptured Trenton, drawing Cornwallis forward to try to surround the town. Leaving a small rearguard to keep the camp fires burning, the Americans made a flank march and surprised the Britsih garrison at Princeton the next morning. With his communications threatened, Cornwallis withdrew to New York City, abandoning New Jersey. Washington went into winter quarters at Morristown NJ where he could cover both New Jersey and Philadelpia and the Hudson valley, while protected to his front by the Watchung Mountains. My home town, at the foot of a pass through the mountains, was garrisoned as an outpost by part of his army that winter and again in 1778-79 when the Continentals reoccupied Morristown after spending the previous winter at Valley Forge.
Posted by: Beausaber | December 8, 2009 3:58 AM
I wonder if GW did his intel on the Germans and found the best day to hit the Hessians was Christmas Eve.
Posted by: Yank in Germany | December 8, 2009 8:59 AM
John Honeyman was an American agent inside Trenton (Washington served as his own G2), but the idea that the Hessians were all drunk is a myth
"The Hessians were surprised and shocked by the sudden attack of the Americans, and it is commonly believed that they were intoxicated as a result of Christmas celebrations. Military Historian Edward G. Lengel said "The Germans were dazed and tired but there is no truth to the legend claiming that they were helplessly drunk."[63] Historian David Hackett Fischer said "It wasn't so," and points out that even an American Soldier, John Greenwood, who fought in the battle and looked after the Hessians after the battle said "I am certain not a drop of liquor was drunk during the whole night, nor, as I could see, even a piece of bread eaten."[64] However, an officer in Washington's staff wrote "They make a great deal of Christmas in Germany, and no doubt the Hessians will drink a great deal of beer and have a dance to-night. They will be sleepy to-morrow morning."[65]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Trenton_by_Charles_McBarron.jpg
Posted by: Beausaber | December 8, 2009 12:12 PM
After HMS Canopus was eventually scrapped some of her secondary six inch armament was removed and mounted just out side of Stanley for coastal protection. They are still there, not far from Stanley airport.
Posted by: St George | December 8, 2009 12:29 PM
Another factor influencing Washington's decision to attack was that many of his soldiers' enlistments would expire at the end of the year.
He had only a week left to use them, or many might well have gone home.
Posted by: Chas S. Clifton | December 8, 2009 8:17 PM
Hessians, my ancestors, start a fight in an empty room!
Yes it does mean that at least two starnds of my family are sausage siders, still we went back twice for a scrap last century even bombing the family home and possibly the local schnell imbis!
Posted by: TimC | December 8, 2009 10:20 PM
With the gratest of respect Sir, I think you will find that the Dresden was not scuttled, but fired upon by HMS Kent. My granies step-father was a Lieutenant on the Kent at that time and I have his diary which I believe states otherwise.
Posted by: Rod | December 11, 2009 11:44 AM
Check out the ice on the Delaware River.
The American Revolution took place during part of the Little Ice Age which also did in Napoleon's Army in Russia.
The globe has been warming ever since, but I doubt Washington's camp fires had anything to do with that.
BTW, you Brits are quite welcome to come back to Washington, DC and burn the Capitol and White House again. You get extra points if the President is home and Congress is in a joint session while you do it.
I'll provide the chains for the doors.
Posted by: POWinCA | December 18, 2009 4:52 AM