The next day, General Cadwallader crossed the Delaware, with orders to harass the enemy, but to put nothing to hazard until he should be joined by the continental battalions, who were allowed a day or two of repose, after the fatigues of the enterprise against Trenton.

General Mifflin joined General Irvine with about fifteen hundred Pennsylvania militia, and those troops also crossed the river.
Finding himself once more at the head of a force with which it seemed practicable to act offensively, the General determined to employ the winter in endeavouring to recover Jersey.
{December 30.} With this view, he ordered General Heath to leave a small detachment at Peekskill, and with the main body of the New England militia, to enter Jersey, and approach the British cantonments on that side.
General Maxwell was ordered, with all the militia he could collect, to harass their flank and rear, and to attack their out-posts on every favourable occasion, while the continental troops, led by himself, recrossed the Delaware, and took post at Trenton.

On the last day of December, the regulars of New England were entitled to a discharge.
With great difficulty, and a bounty of ten dollars, many of them were induced to renew their engagements for six weeks.
{1777} {January 1.} The British were now collected in force at Princeton under Lord Cornwallis; and appearances confirmed the intelligence, secretly[52] obtained, that he intended to attack the American army.
[Footnote 52: In this critical moment, when correct intelligence was so all important, Mr.Robert Morris raised on his private credit in Philadelphia, five hundred pounds in specie, which he transmitted to the Commander-in-chief, who employed it in procuring information not otherwise to have been obtained.] Generals Mifflin and Cadwallader, who lay at Bordentown and Crosswix, with three thousand six hundred militia, were therefore ordered to join the Commander-in-chief, whose whole effective force, with this addition, did not exceed five thousand men.
{January 2.} Lord Cornwallis advanced upon him the next morning; and about four in the afternoon, the van of the British army reached Trenton.

On its approach, General Washington retired across the Assumpinck, a creek which runs through the town.

The British attempted to cross the creek at several places, but finding all the fords guarded, they desisted from the attempt, and kindled their fires.