Christmas Day was big news for William the Conqueror - and Washington.
What do you expect to be doing on the evening of Christmas Day?
Some version of sleeping off the turkey in front of the telly, most likely. Setting aside the birth of the Christ child himself (which, yes, probably didn’t happen on Christmas Day anyway), it’s tempting to think that, for one day at least, history might also put its feet up on the sofa.
Not necessarily. Two of the most consequential coronations in European history happened on Christmas Day: Charlemagne’s at Aachen in 800, and William the Conqueror’s at Westminster Abbey in 1066. In both cases, the Christmas crownings set the seal on the defeat of Saxons, though only in Charlemagne’s case was he also proclaimed an emperor.
In time of war, the most famous Christmas episode is the informal truce on the Western Front in 1914, which commanders on both sides made sure was not repeated in subsequent years. But the most significant Christmas Day moment in world-historical terms happened more than a century before that.
The night of 25th December 1776 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, was a bitterly cold one. It came when the forces of the General of the Continental Army, George Washington, were in a bad way. In November, the Americans had been chased out of New York by General Howe, and harried through New Jersey before crossing over the Delaware river into Pennsylvania.
The river was barely passable, full of ice. It seemed that campaigning season was over. Howe wintered in New York, leaving a detachment of Hessian mercenaries on the New Jersey side of the river at Trenton, under the command of Colonel Johann Rall.
The British and their German auxiliaries would have been happy to get into winter quarters. It seemed that after the humiliations of Bunker Hill and Boston, the war had turned in their favour, and the offer of a general pardon in New Jersey to those who came over to their side was widely taken up.
For his part, Washington was contending with a force reduced by defeat, capture, disease and – the abiding problem of the first part of the war for the colonial side – the shortness of enlistment times, which were only a few months, meaning that turnover in his army was high.
The situation was dire enough that the Continental Congress, the civilian force directing the war against the British, decamped from Philadelphia south to Baltimore – but not before they had conferred upon Washington ‘extraordinary powers for the conduct of the Revolutionary War’, as a plaque on the tavern where the Congress met puts it.
One of his officers wrote to Washington, ‘Our affairs are hastening fast to ruin if we do not retrieve them by some happy event.’ Washington agreed.
Rather than using his power merely to regroup and try again in the new year, he conceived of a daring counter-attack. He had never lacked self-belief, from the time he had been appointed, at the age of 20, to a command in Virginia, and subsequently led bold – if not always successful – forays against the French.
Those early experiences had also taught him that the British officer class tended to hold their irregular colonial counterparts in contempt. If Washington was motivated by high ideals of independence, mixed in was a good deal of determination to show his opponents what they had missed.
So it was that on the night of 25th December, Washington mustered his remaining forces, numbering about 2,400 men fit for duty, at McConkey’s Ferry on the west bank of the Delaware.
‘The night was sleety,’ according to the account of one of Washington’s officers. Hoped-for further reinforcements would not arrive. As night fell, Washington and his men launched their flotilla over the icy river. The crossing lasted hours in total. Landing unopposed, the General divided his forces and marched on the Hessians at Trenton, taking them completely by surprise, capturing 918 and killing 30. Washington’s force suffered only five wounded.
Another victory days later at Princeton confirmed that the Continental Army would not be swept aside. Their positive showing at the end of the year encouraged the French to throw in their lot with the Americans, perhaps the decisive moment in the fight for independence.
In the mid-19th century, a German painter who had spent his formative years in the United States recognised the powerful message of the night when Washington led his army across the freezing river. Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, painted in 1851 at a time when Europe’s own revolutionary moment seemed to have melted away, was eagerly adopted by the Americans, becoming perhaps the nation’s best-known historical image.
We don’t know if Washington really did stand recklessly but gloriously in his boat, but his miraculous ability to avoid injury despite taking great risks makes it perfectly believable. It must be the most memorable way a Christmas present has ever been delivered.
The Oldie January 2024
