It was at this darkest hour of the Revolution that Washington struck his brilliant blows at Trenton and Princeton, reviving the hopes and energies of the nation. Howe, believing the American army would soon totally dissolve, retired to New York, leaving strong forces in Trenton and Burlington. Washington at his camp west of the Delaware planned a simultaneous attack on both posts, using his whole command of 6,000 men. But his subordinates in charge of both wings failed him, and he was left on the night of Christmas day, 1776, to march on Trenton alone with some 2,400 men. He completely surprised the unprepared Hessians, and after confused street fighting killed the commander, Rahl, and captured i,000 prisoners, with arms and ammunition. The im mediate result was that General Cornwallis hastened with 8,000 men to Trenton, where he found Washington strongly posted be hind the Assumpink river, skirmished with him, and decided to wait overnight "to bag the old fox." During the night the wind shifted, the roads froze hard, and Washington was enabled to steal away from camp, leaving his fires deceptively burning, march around Cornwallis's rear, and fall at daybreak upon the three British regiments at Princeton. These were put to flight with a loss of 500 men, and Washington escaped with more cap tured munitions to a strong position at Morristown, N.J. The effect of these victories was threefold; they heartened all Amer icans, brought recruits flocking to camp with the spring, and en couraged foreign sympathizers with the American cause.
Thus far the important successes had been won by Washington; now they fell to others, while he was left to face popular apathy, military cabals, and the disaffection of Con gress. The year 1777 was marked by the British capture of Phil adelphia and the surrender of Burgoyne's invading army to Gates at Saratoga, followed by intrigues to displace Washington from his command. Howe's main British army of 18,000 left New York by sea on July 23, 1777, and landed on Aug. 25 in Delaware not far below Philadelphia. Washington, despite his inferiority of force, for he had only 1 I,000 men, mostly militia and in Lafayette's words "badly armed and worse clothed," risked a pitched battle on Sept. 11 at the fords of Brandywine creek, about 13 m. north of Wilmington. While part of the British force held the Amer icans engaged, Cornwallis with the rest made a secret 17 m. de tour and fell with crushing effect on the American right and rear, the result being a complete defeat, from which Washington was fortunate to extricate his army in fairly good order. For a time he hoped to hold the Schuylkill fords, but the British passed them and on Sept. 26 triumphantly marched into Philadelphia. Con gress fled to the interior of Pennsylvania, and Washington, after an unsuccessful effort to repeat his stroke at Trenton against the British troops posted at Germantown, had to take up winter quarters at Valley Forge. His army, twice-beaten, ill-housed, and ill-fed, with thousands of men "barefoot and otherwise naked," was at the point of exhaustion; it could not keep the field, for in side of a month it would have disappeared. Under these circum stances, there is nothing which better proves the true fibre of Washington's character and the courage of his soul than the un yielding persistence with which he held his strong position at Valley Forge through a winter of semi-starvation, of justified grumbling by his men, of harsh public criticism, and of captious meddling by a Congress too weak to help him.
Washington's enemies seized the moment of his greatest weakness to give vent to an antagonism which had been nourished by sectional jealousies of North against South, by the ambition of small rivals, and by baseless accusations that he showed favouritism to such foreigners as Lafayette. The intrigues of Thomas Conway, an Irish adventurer who had served in the French army and had become American inspector-general, enlisted Thomas Mifflin, Charles Lee, Benjamin Rush and others in an attempt to displace Washington. Gen. Horatio Gates appears to have been a tool of rather than a party to the plot, expecting that the chief command would devolve upon himself. A faction of Con gress sympathized with the movement and attempted to paralyze Washington by reorganizing the board of war, a body vested with the general superintendence of operations, of which Gates became president, his chief-of-staff, James Wilkinson, the secretary, and Mifflin and Timothy Pickering members. Washington was well aware of the hostility in Congress, of the slanders spread by Dr. Rush and James Lovell of Massachusetts, and of the effect of forgeries published in the American press by adroit British agents. He realized the intense jealousy of many New Englanders, which made even John Adams write his wife that he was thankful Burgoyne had not been captured by Washington, who would then "have been deified. It is bad enough as it is." But Washington decisively crushed the cabal when, the loose tongue of Wilkinson having disclosed Conway's treachery, he sent the latter officer on Nov. 9, 1777, proof of his knowledge of the whole affair.
With the conclusion of the French alliance in the spring of 1778 the aspect of the war was radically altered; and the British army in Philadelphia, fearing that a French fleet would blockade the Delaware while the militia of New Jersey and Pennsylvania in vested the city, hastily retreated upon New York city. Washing ton hoped to cut off part of the enemy, and by a hurried march with six brigades interposed himself at the end of June between Sir Henry Clinton (who had succeeded Howe) and the Jersey coast. The result was the battle of Monmouth on June 28, where a shrewd strategic plan and vigorous assault were brought to naught by the treachery of Charles Lee. When Lee ruined the at tack by a sudden order to retreat, Washington hurried forward, fiercely denounced him, and restored the line, but the golden op portunity had been lost. The British made good their march to Sandy Hook and Washington took up his quarters at New Bruns wick. Lee was arrested, court-martialed and convicted on all three of the charges made against him; but instead of being shot, as he deserved, he was sentenced to a suspension from command for one year. The arrival of the French fleet under D'Estaing in July, 1778, completed the isolation of the British and Clinton was thenceforth held to New York city and the surrounding area; Washington making his headquarters in the highlands of the Hud son, and distributing his troops in cantonments around the city and in New Jersey.