Attacking at night, during a snowstorm: genius or folly? For Gen. Richard Montgomery at Quebec on December 31, 1775, it was a fatal disaster, but for Gen. George Washington at Trenton, New Jersey on December 26, 1776, it was a stroke of tactical brilliance that resulted in a complete and game-changing victory. There were many […]
An internet search for Conrad Heyer will reveal that he was a Revolutionary War soldier who crossed the Delaware with George Washington. In fact, you’ll find a variation of this sentence repeated on page after page almost word for word: “He served in the Continental Army under George Washington during the Revolutionary War, crossing the […]
Good Revolutionary War commanders understood the value of intelligence on their adversaries. The great eighteenth century military theorist Marshal de Saxe, who was on every good general’s reading list, wrote that to win in battle “nothing more is required than to keep good intelligence, to acquire a knowledge of the country, and to assume the […]
Washington’s desperate situation in December 1776 and the critical victories at Trenton and Princeton have been described often and in great detail. His lack of support from the New Jersey militia is often highlighted, along with the fact that the few militiamen who turned out did not cross to Trenton on Christmas night due to […]
The famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 is permanently etched in many minds. It graces the covers of countless books and magazines often with great attention paid to the subsequent Battle of Trenton. But just how did Washington’s army cross the river? The collector’s print edition of Journal […]
The outcome of a war depends on far more than individual battles, but the battles are compelling to study; everyone has a favorite. The impacts of each one are numerous, and we can pontificate endless “what if” scenarios regarding the outcomes. There were, nonetheless, several battles that changed the momentum of the American Revolution – […]
