The last days of an American hero

Hugh Mercer and the Battle of Princeton.

By: William Myers
   "Every battle has a victor: Those who won and those who lost," Flaubert wrote in his satire of bourgeois stupidity.
   He could have penned this line about the Battle of Princeton. To this day, many British insist that the victory at Princeton belongs to them. A small British force repulsed three assaults by Washington’s army, mortally wounding one of his most valuable commanders, General Hugh Mercer.
   Mercer was a Scotsman. Born in 1726, he served as a surgeon’s mate with the Jacobite rebels during the Battle of Culloden. He later immigrated to Pennsylvania. He fought with distinction in the French and Indian Wars, during which he befriended George Washington. Mercer moved to Fredericksburg, Va., where he established an apothecary’s shop. (It is now a museum.) Mercer later bought Washington’s boyhood home, Ferry Farm, but the outbreak of the Revolution interrupted his move.
   Mercer enlisted in the Continental Army and attained the rank of brigadier general. Mercer’s potential as a military commander was never fully realized. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman believed that Mercer could have outshone Nathanael Greene if not for his death at Princeton.
   In examining Mercer’s life and death, various difficulties confront the aspiring historian.
   First-hand accounts of the Battle of Princeton are scarce and contradictory; published histories of the Battle of Princeton are almost invariably a confused jumble of misinterpretation, myths and errors.
   The imperfect preservation of the Battlefield poses another obstacle; indeed, the site where Mercer’s Brigade faced off with the 17th Regiment has been largely obliterated by the Princeton Pike (Mercer Street), which cuts a trench directly through the American position. William Clarke’s farm, where the fiercest fighting took place, is long gone. And it’s less than helpful that Mercer’s letters are a nearly illegible scrawl, somewhat resembling shorthand.
   As Washington lay trapped on the south side of Trenton, facing a vastly superior British force, he called a council of war. No written record survives, so details rely on subsequent, conflicting accounts.
   Someone suggested turning the British left flank. Portions of the back road to Princeton were new and unfamiliar to the British. To various individuals has been attributed this suggestion, Mercer among them.. Greatest credit must be given to Joseph Reed, who had reconnoitered the road several days earlier with the 1st Troop, Philadelphia Light Horse. Word was likely passed from Reed to General Arthur St. Clair. The plan was to deceive the British into believing that Washington had encamped in Trenton by lighting fires and leaving a small force behind while the Continental forces quietly slipped out the back roads to attack Princeton before dawn.
   The Battle of Princeton was fought in two segments: Washington against the 17th, and General John Sullivan against the 40th, billeted in the town and occupying Nassau Hall. Washington intended a pre-dawn surprise attack similar to Trenton, but arrived late.
   Most histories of the battle state that Mercer’s Brigade was dispatched to destroy the bridge over Stony Brook and to delay the expected British counterattack. This is incorrect: He was not equipped with the necessary artillery, and the most reliable accounts unanimously state that Mercer was heading directly for Princeton and turned left, not right, when the British column was spotted south of the town. The 17th Regiment was already marching to Trenton when it spotted the American columns, wheeled about, and ambushed Mercer’s Brigade.
   Mercer had turned left in an attempt to gain the Princeton-Trenton road and cut off the British force rushing back toward Princeton. The British outmaneuvered Mercer, ambushing and routing his brigade. After two unsuccessful counterattacks, Washington broke the British line. The battle caused the deaths of more American officers in a shorter time than any other action in the war.
   At the same time, Sullivan’s attack followed the original plan: He rapidly overwhelmed the 40th, capturing most of the regiment and driving the remainder from the town without the loss of a single man.
   Mercer was left nearly alone when his brigade was routed. Surrounded by British soldiers, he refused to surrender. Drawing his sword, he cut and slashed until he was smashed in the face with the stock of a 10-pound Brown Bess musket and several British bayonets — 18 inches of double-edged steel — were plunged into him. The British left him for dead.
   Following the battle, Major John Armstrong discovered Mercer writhing insensibly in a pool of his own blood. Armstrong covered Mercer with his cloak to warm him. Four men, including Armstrong, carried the General to a warm room in Thomas Clarke’s house. The General soon recovered his senses and instructed the men to prepare a poultice of bread and milk. The poultice was about to be applied to the lower part of his face when he shook his head and pointed to his abdomen, where two or more bayonet wounds were uncovered.
   At this time, they were informed that a party of British were approaching. Mercer ordered the men to leave him and rejoin the army. These details were related by Armstrong to Hugh Mercer, Jr., 60 years after the battle.
   The significance of the Battle of Princeton has often been unfairly diminished by writers and historians. Major Armstrong’s most memorable description of the battle, "it was, for about fifteen minutes, as hot as any amateur of the game could wish for," was written in response to a newspaper reporter who compared Princeton unfavorably to Hannibal’s destruction of the Romans at Cannae and Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo — as if a battle’s importance were to be judged entirely by the number of combatants.
   Princeton was diminutive to many battles in history, but its significance lay in Washington’s escape from certain annihilation as well as his ability to outmaneuver the British commanders. It was the first time British regular troops were defeated by Americans. (The enemy troops at Trenton had been Hessians.) Prior to Princeton, the British had regarded the American Rebellion as finished.
   Dying of his wounds, Mercer became a prisoner upon parole by the British. He was treated by Dr. Wynne Stapleton of the 22nd Regiment, until Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, arrived on Jan. 6, three days after the battle. Washington had been falsely informed of Mercer’s death. Dr. Rush treated the wounds, of which one tiny puncture under Mercer’s arm proved to be fatal.
   Following his death at Princeton, Mercer was interred in Philadelphia’s Christ Church cemetery. In 1843 his remains were moved to Mount Laurel Cemetery in Philadelphia’s Germantown section. Mercer’s name adorns streets, towns and counties throughout America; Princeton’s Mercer Street is one example, as well as Manhattan’s. In 1837 the county in which the Princeton Battlefield is located was named for Mercer. His descendants include General George Patton, whose intrepidity in battle has often been compared to Mercer’s. For many years, the spot where Mercer fell was marked by an American flag; later a pyramid of cannonballs marked the spot.
   Any claim that the British were victorious at Princeton can be dismissed as absurd, but the American loss in that short, decisive battle — the loss of Mercer — was as severe as any action in the American Revolution.
William Myers of Highland Park, writer and translator, is a 10th-generation descendant of Henry Greenland, the Princeton area’s first settler.