The Americans under Nathanael Greene came out of the woods and across a field through driving snow about half a mile from town

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 280.

The attack began just after eight o’clock. The Americans under Nathanael Greene came out of the woods and across a field through driving snow about half a mile from town. They were moving fast, at what was called a “long trot.” The Hessians on guard on the Pennington Road had trouble at first making out who they were and how many there were. “The storm continued with great violence,” Henry Knox wrote, “but was in our backs, and consequently in the faces of the enemy.”

The Americans opened fire. The Hessians waited for them to get closer, then fired and began quickly, smoothly falling back into town, exactly as they had been trained to do when retreat was the only choice. Washington thought they performed particularly well keeping up a steady retreating fire.

As Greene’s and Sullivan’s columns converged on the town, Washington moved to high ground nearby on the north where he tried to keep watch on what was happening.

His 2,400 Americans, having been on their feet all night, wet, cold, their weapons soaked, went into the fight as if everything depended on them. Each man “seemed to vie with the other in pressing forward,” Washington wrote. 

In town the Hessians came rushing out of their houses and barracks into the streets. Drums beat, the band played, officers shouted orders in German, and as fast as the Hessians began forming up, Knox’s artillery were in position at the head of King and Queen streets.

The cannon opened fire with deadly effect down hundreds of yards on each street, and in minutes—“in the twinkling of an eye,” Knox said—cleared the streets.

When the Hessians retreated into the side streets, they found Sullivan’s men coming at them with fixed bayonets. For a brief time, a thousand or more Americans and Hessians were locked in savage house-to-house fighting.

It was all happening extremely fast, in wild confusion and swirling snow made more blinding by clouds of gunpowder smoke. “The storm of nature and the storm of the town,” wrote Nathanael Greene, “exhibited a scene that filled the mind during the action with passions easier conceived than described.”

When the Hessians rolled out a field gun midway on King Street, a half dozen Virginians led by Captain William Washington (a distant cousin of the commander) and Lieutenant James Monroe rushed forward, seized it, and turned it on them.

Colonel Rall, who had been rousted from his bed and was quickly on horseback and in command in the midst of the fray, ordered a charge. Men were being hit all around him. The line faltered. He ordered a retreat into an orchard at the southeast edge of town. Then Rall, too, was hit and fell from his horse. Mortally wounded, he was picked up and carried to the Potts house.

The Hessians in the orchard, finding themselves surrounded, lay down their arms and surrendered.

It had all happened in forty-five minutes or less. Twenty-one Hessians had been killed, 90 wounded. The prisoners taken numbered approximately 900. Another 500 had managed to escape, most of them by the bridge over Assunpink Creek.

Incredibly, in a battle of such extreme savagery, only four Americans had been wounded, including Captain Washington and Lieutenant Monroe, and not one American had been killed. The only American fatalities were the two soldiers who had frozen to death during the night on the road.

“After having marched off the prisoners and secured the cannon, stores, etc.,” wrote Knox, “we returned to the place nine miles distant, where we had embarked.” Thus after marching through the night a second time, back to McKonkey’s ferry, the army crossed the Delaware once again back to the Pennsylvania side of the river.