chief, who again crossed the Delaware and marched to Trenton, where, at the beginning of January, he found himself at the head of 5,000 men.

The alarm was now spread throughout the British army. A strong detachment under General Grant marched to Princeton; and Earl Cornwallis, who was on the point of sailing for England, was ordered to leave New York, and resume his command in the Jerseys.

On joining General Grant, Lord Cornwallis immediately marched agains. Trenton. On his approach, General Washington crossed a rivulet named the Assumpink, and took post on some high ground, with the rivulet in his front. On the advance of the British army on the afternoon of the 2d of January, 1777, a smart cannonade ensued, and continued till night, Lord Cornwallis intending to renew the attack next morning; but soon after midnight General Washington silently decamped, leaving his fires burning, his sentinels advanced, and small parties to guard the fords of the rivulet, and, by a circuitous route through Allen town, proceeded toward Princeton.

It was the most inclement season of the year, but the weather favored his movement. For two days before it had been warm, soft, and foggy, and great apprehensions were entertained lest, by the depth of the roads, it should be found impossible to transport the baggage and artillery with the requisite celerity; but about the time the troops began to move, one of those sudden changes of weather which are not unfrequent in America happened. The wind shifted to the northwest, while the council of war which was to decide on their ulterior operations was sitting. An intense frost set in; and instead of being obliged to struggle through a miry road, the army marched as on solid pavement. The American soldiers considered the change of weather as an interposition of H-aven in their behalf, and proceeded on their way with alacrity.

Earl Cornwallis, in his rapid march toward Trenton, had left three regiments, under Lieutenant-Colonel Mawhood, at Princeton, with orders to advance on the third of the month to Maidenhead, a village about half way between Princeton and Trenton. General Washington approached Princeton toward daybreak and

shortly before that time Colonel Mawhood's detachment had began to advance toward Maidenhead, by a road at a little distance from that on which the Americans were marching. The two armies unexpectedly met, and a smart engagement instantly ensued. At first the Americans were thrown into some confusion; but General Washington, by great personal exertions, restored order, and renewed the battle. Colonel Mawhood, with a part of his force, broke through the American army, and continued his route to Maidenhead; the remainder of his detachment, being unable to advance, retreated by different roads to New Brunswick.

In this rencounter a considerable number of men fell on each side. The Americans lost General Mercer, whose death was much lamented by his countrymen. Captain Leslie, son of the Earl of Leven, was among the slain on the side of the British; and he was buried with military honors by the Americans, in testimony of respect not to himself merely, but to his family also. In this battle Colonel Monroe, who was afterward elected president of the United States, took an active part.

It was immediately after the sharp conflict at the fence, between the advance guard of the American army, led by General Mercer, and the British seventeenth regiment, and the retreat of the Americans through the orchard near to Clark's house and barn, that General Mercer, while exerting himself to rally his broken troops, was brought to the ground by a blow from the butt of a musket. He was on foot at this time-the gray horse he rode at the beginning of the action having been disabled by a ball in the fore leg. The British soldiers were not at first aware of the general's rank, for the morning being cold, he wore a surtout over his uniform. So soon as they discovered that he was a general officer, they shouted that they had got the rebel general, and cried, "Call for quarters, you d-d rebel !" Mercer to the most undaunted courage united a quick and ardent temperament; he replied with indignation to his enemies, while their bayonets were at his bosom, that he deserved not the name of rebel; and determining to die as he had lived, a true and honored soldier of liberty, lounged with his sword at the nearest man. They then bayoneted him, and left him for dead.

Upon the retreat of the enemy, the wounded general was conveyed to Clark's house, immediately adjoining the field of battle. The information that the commander-in-chief first received of the fall of his old companion in arms of the war of 1775, and beloved officer, was that he had expired under his numerous wounds; and it was not until the American army was in full march for Morristown that the chief was undeceived, and learned, to his great gratification, that Mercer, though fearfully wounded, was yet alive. Upon the first halt, at Somerset courthouse, Washington despatched the late Major George Lewis, his nephew, and captain of the Horse Guards, with a flag and a letter to Lord Cornwallis, requesting that every possible attention might be shown to the wounded general, and permission that young Lewis should remain with him to minister to his wants. To both requests his lordship yielded a willing assent, and ordered his staff-surgeon to attend upon General Mercer. Upon an examination of the wounds, the British surgeon remarked that, although they were many and severe, he was disposed to believe that they would not prove dangerous. Mercer, bred to the profession of an army surgeon in Europe, said to young Lewis, "Raise my right arm, George, and this gentleman will there discover the smallest of my wounds, but which will prove the most fatal. Yes, sir, that is a fellow that will very soon do my business." He languished till the twelfth, and expired in the arms of Lewis, admired and lamented by the whole army. During the period that he languished on the couch of suffering, he exonerated his enemies from the foul accusation which they bore not only in 1777, but for half a century

since, viz: of their having bayoneted a general officer after he had surrendered his sword, and become a prisoner of war-declaring that he only relinquished his sword when his arm had become powerless to wield it. He paid the homage of his whole heart to the person and character of the commander-in-chief, rejoiced with true soldierly pride in the triumphs of Trenton and Princeton, in both of which he had borne a conspicuous part, and offered up his fervent prayers for the final success of the cause of American independence.

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Thus lived and died Hugh Mercer, a name that will for ever be associated with momentous events in the history of the War of the Revolution. grateful posterity shall bid the trophied memorial rise to the martyrs who sealed with their blood the charter of an empire's liberties, there will not be wanting a monument to him whom Washington mourned as the worthy and brave General Mercer.

We shall give a single anecdote of the subject of the foregoing memoir, to show the pure and high minded principles that actuated the patriots and soldiers of the days of our country's first trial.

Virginia at first organized two regiments for the common cause. When it was determined to raise a third, there were numerous applications for commissions; and, these being mostly from men of fortune and family interest, there was scarcely an application for a rank less than a field officer. During the sitting of the house of burgesses upon the important motion, a plain but soldierlylooking individual handed up to the speaker's chair a scrap of paper, on which was written," Hugh Mercer will serve his adopted country and the cause of liberty in any rank or station to which he may be appointed." This. from a veteran soldier, bred in European camps, the associate of Washington in the war of 1755, and known to stand high in his confidence and esteem, was all-sufficient for a body of patriots and statesmen, such as composed the Virginia house of burgesses in the days of the revolution. The appointment of Mercer to the command of the third Virginia regiment was carried instanter.

It was was while the commander-in-chief reined up his horse, upon approaching the spot in a ploughed field where lay the gallant Colonel Haslett mortally wounded, that he perceived some British soldiers supporting an officer, and upon inquiring his name and rank, was answered, Captain Leslie. Doctor Benjamin Rush, who formed a part of the general's suite, earnestly asked, "A son of the earl of Leven?" to which the soldiers replied in the affirmative. The doctor then addressed the general-in-chief: "I beg your excellency to permit this wounded officer to be placed under my care, that I may return, in however small a degree, a part of the obligations I owe to his worthy father for the many kindnesses received at his hands while I was a student in Edinburgh." The request was immediately granted; but, alas! poor Leslie was soon past all surgery." He died the same evening, after receiving every possible kindness and attention, and was buried the next day at Pluckemin, with the honors of war; his soldiers, as they lowered his remains to the soldier's last rest, shedding tears over the grave of a much loved commander.

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The battle of Princeton, for the time it lasted and the numbers engaged, was. the most fatal to our officers of any action during the whole of our revolutionary war; the Americans losing one general, two colonels, one major, and three captains, killed-while the martial prowess of our enemy shone not with more brilliant lustre in any one of their combats during their long career of arms than did the courage and discipline of the seventeenth British regiment on the third of January, 1777. Indeed, Washington himself, during the height of the conflict, pointed out this gallant corps to his officers, exclaiming, "See how those noble fellows fight! Ah! gentlemen, when shall we be able to keep an army long enough together to display a discipline equal to our enemies ?"

The regular troops that constituted the grand army at the close of the campaign of '76, were the fragments of many regiments, worn down by constant and toilsome marches, and suffering of every sort, in the depth of winter. The fine regiment of Smallwood, composed of the flower of the Maryland youth, and which, in the June preceding, marched into Philadelphia eleven hundred strong, was, on the third of January, reduced to scarcely sixty men, and commanded by a captain. In fact, the bulk of what was then called the grand army, consisted of the Pennsylvania militia and volunteers, citizen soldiers who had left their comfortable homes at the call of their country, and were enduring the rigors of a winter campaign. On the morning of the battle of Princeton, they had been eighteen hours under arms, and harassed by a long night's march. Was it then to be wondered at that they should have given way before the veteran bayonets of their fresh and well-appointed foe?

The heroic devotion of Washington was not wanting in the exigencies of this memorable day. He was aware that his hour was come to redeem the pledge he had laid on the altar of his country when first he took up arms in her cause : to win her liberties or perish in the attempt. Defeat at Princeton would have amounted to the annihilation of America's last hope; for, independent of the enemy's forces in front, Cornwallis, with the flower of the British army eight thousand strong, was already panting close on the rear. It was, indeed, the very crisis of the struggle. In the hurried and imposing events of little more than one short week, liberty endured her greatest agony. What, then, is due to the fame and memories of that sacred band, who, with the master of liberty at their head, breasted the storm at this fearful crisis of their country's destiny? The heroic devotion of Washington on the field of Princeton is matter of history. We have often enjoyed a touching reminiscence of that ever-memorable event from the late Colonel Fitzgerald, who was aid to the chief, and who never related the story of his general's danger and almost miraculous preservation, without adding to his tale the homage of a tear.

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The aid-de-camp had been ordered to bring up the troops from the rear of the column, when the band under General Mercer became engaged. Upon returning to the spot where he had left the commander-in-chief, he was no longer there, and, upon looking around, the aid discovered him endeavoring to rally the line which had been thrown into disorder by a rapid onset of the foe. Washington, after several ineffectual efforts to restore the fortunes of the fight, is seen to rein up his horse, with his head to the enemy, and, in that position to become immoveable. It was a last appeal to his soldiers, and seemed to say, "Will give up your general to the foe?" Such an appeal was not made in vain. The discomfited Americans rally on the instant, and form into line; the enemy halt, and dress their line; the American chief is between the adverse posts, as though he had been placed there, a target for both. The arms of both lines are levelled. Can escape from death be possible? Fitzgerald, horror-struck at the danger of his beloved commander, dropped the reins upon his horse's neck, and drew his hat over his face, that he might not see him die. A roar of musketry succeeds, and then a shout. It was the shout of victory. The aid-de-camp ventures to raise his eyes, and oh, glorious sight, the enemy are broken and flying, while dimly amid the glimpses of the smoke is seen the chief, "alive, unharmed, and without a wound," waving his hat, and cheering his comrades to the pursuit..

Colonel Fitzgerald, celebrated as one of the finest horsemen in the American army, now dashed his rowels in his charger's flank, and, heedless of the dead and dying in his way, flew to the side of his chief, exclaiming, "Thank God! your excellency is safe," while the favorite aid, a gallant and warm-hearted son of Erin, a man of thews and sinews, and "albeit unused to the melting mood." gave loose to his feelings, and wept like a child for joy.