The Americans, out-generaled and out-flanked, were taken by surprise and surrounded, Sullivan and his division were cut off, and then Lord Stirling.

There was some desperate fighting, and the Americans showed plenty of courage, but only a few forced their way out.

Most of them were killed or taken prisoners, the total loss out of some five thousand men reaching as high as two thousand.
From the redoubts, whither he had come at the sound of the firing, Washington watched the slaughter and disaster in grim silence.

He saw the British troops, flushed with victory, press on to the very edge of his works and then withdraw in obedience to command.

The British generals had their prey so surely, as they believed, that they mercifully decided not to waste life unnecessarily by storming the works in the first glow of success.