There was severe
fighting. The casualties of the British were nearly five hundred,
but they took the huge fort with its three thousand defenders and
a great quantity of munitions of war. Howe's threat was not
carried out. There was no massacre.
Across the river at Fort Lee the helpless Washington watched this
great disaster. He had need still to look out, for Fort Lee was
itself doomed. On the nineteenth Lord Cornwallis with five
thousand men crossed the river five miles above Fort Lee. General
Greene barely escaped with the two thousand men in the fort,
leaving behind one hundred and forty cannon, stores, tools, and
even the men's blankets. On the twentieth the British flag was
floating over Fort Lee and Washington's whole force was in rapid
flight across New Jersey, hardly pausing until it had been
ferried over the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
Treachery, now linked to military disaster, made Washington's
position terrible. Charles Lee, Horatio Gates, and Richard
Montgomery were three important officers of the regular British
army who fought on the American side. Montgomery had been killed
at Quebec; the defects of Gates were not yet conspicuous; and Lee
was next to Washington the most trusted American general.
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