point of making an assault on the evacuated camp of the Americans,
wheeled about, and in a fit of consternation marched for Princeton.

This retreat is one of those extraordinary circumstances, that in
future ages may probably pass for fable. For it will with difficulty
be believed that two armies, on which such important consequences
depended, should be crouded into so small a space as Trenton; and that
the one, on the eve of an engagement, when every ear is supposed to be
open, and every watchfulness employed, should move completely from the
ground, with all its stores, baggage and artillery, unknown and even
unsuspected by the other. And so entirely were the British deceived,
that when they heard the report of the cannon and small arms at
Princeton, they supposed it to be thunder, though in the depth of
winter.

General Washington, the better to cover and disguise his retreat from
Trenton, had ordered a line of fires to be lighted up in front of his
camp. These not only served to give an appearance of going to rest,
and continuing that deception, but they effectually concealed from the
British whatever was acting behind them, for flame can no more be seen
through than a wall, and in his situation, it may with some propriety
be said, they came a pillar of fire to the one army, and a pillar of a
cloud to the other: after this, by a circuitous march of about
eighteen miles, the Americans reached Princeton early in the morning.

The number of prisoners taken were between two and three hundred, with
which General Washington immediately set off. The van of the British
army from Trenton, entered Princeton about an hour after the Americans
had left it, who, continuing their march for the remainder of the day,
arrived in the evening at a convenient situation, wide of the main