Princeton Battlefield

The battle where Washington personally rode into British musket fire to rally his wavering troops, capping the 'Ten Crucial Days' campaign that turned the Revolution's momentum after a string of American defeats.

Fresh off his famous Christmas night crossing of the Delaware River and victory at Trenton, George Washington marched his army toward Princeton in early January 1777, hoping to press his advantage before British reinforcements could respond. On January 3, his forces met British troops under Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood on the outskirts of town, and early fighting went badly for the Americans, whose front line began to break under British fire.

As his troops wavered, Washington personally rode his horse forward into close range of the British line to rally them, an act of physical exposure to danger that became one of the most celebrated moments of his military career. American forces regrouped and drove the British from the field, but General Hugh Mercer was mortally wounded in the fighting after refusing to surrender, bayoneted repeatedly by British soldiers who mistook him for Washington himself; he died several days later at the nearby Thomas Clarke House, which had been pressed into service as a field hospital.

The victory at Princeton, following so closely on Trenton, restored flagging American morale after a string of defeats in late 1776 and effectively ended British efforts to conquer New Jersey that winter. The Thomas Clarke House still stands on the battlefield as a museum, and the grounds also display the Ionic Colonnade, architectural remnants relocated from an earlier building associated with the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.