Downtown Trenton was the setting for two key Revolutionary War engagements that helped turn the tide against British and Hessian forces. In the first, on December 26, 1776, fighting swept through the streets from the site of the Battle Monument to Assunpink Creek after Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night, ending with the surrender of Hessian troops near this spot, where Captain von Biesenrodt yielded the von Knyphausen Regiment to Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair. In the second, the Battle of the Assunpink, fought in part across what is now Mill Hill Park on January 2, 1777, Washington repelled a British thrust into Trenton by placing troops on the south bank of Assunpink Creek as more than 5,000 soldiers under Lord Cornwallis tried at least three times to force the bridge and creek before retreating under heavy American fire. Earlier that day, roughly 6,000 Americans and close to 10,000 British and Hessian troops faced each other between Trenton and Princeton, while British and Hessian forces marching from Princeton were repeatedly delayed by American snipers, pickets, and Colonel Edward Hand’s men at Shipetaukin Creek, Maidenhead, Five Mile Run, Shabakunk Creek, and Stockton’s Hollow. As the attackers finally entered Trenton near sunset, the Americans withdrew over the Assunpink bridge, and John Rosbrugh, an armed Presbyterian chaplain with the Pennsylvania militia, was bayoneted to death at the foot of King Street after leaving the Blazing Star tavern too late. Repeated evening assaults across the Assunpink were then beaten back by American artillery and small arms fire, leaving about 350 British and Hessian soldiers killed, wounded, or captured and around 50 Americans killed or wounded before Cornwallis halted the attack. That night, while Cornwallis prepared to renew the assault, Washington and his officers decided to march secretly to Princeton under cover of darkness, leaving New Jersey militia to keep campfires burning along the south bank; on January 3, with temperatures near 20 degrees Fahrenheit, the Americans set off by back roads for the attack that brought another victory over the British rearguard at Princeton.
