sixteen and eighteen miles, and difficult because the frost had turned the mud on the roads into hummocks. But at sunrise on the third of January the head of the column had crossed Stony Brook by the bridge on the Quaker road, and stood about a mile and three-quarters from Princeton, awaiting the result of a council of war. They were masked by the piece of woods which is still standing behind the Quaker meeting-house. It was determined that Washington with the main column should march across the fields, through a kind of depression in the rolling land intervening between the meeting-house and Princeton, in order to reach the town as quickly as possible. Mercer, with three hundred and fifty men and two field-pieces, was to follow the road half a mile farther to its junction with the King's Highway, and there blow up the upper bridge over Stony Brook, that by which Cornwallis's reserve, marching to Trenton, must cross the stream. This would likewise detain Cornwallis himself on his return in pursuit.
There were three actions in the battle of Princeton. Two of the three English regiments left in reserve at Princeton were under
