Lafayette had chosen his position in a region he had carefully examined. But the English were able to send bodies of troops up all the traveled approaches to the hill. While Lafayette was planning to send a spy to Philadelphia to find out, as Washington had directed, what preparations were there being made, the cry suddenly arose in his camp that they were being surrounded. It was a terrible moment. But Lafayette had this great quality--the power of being self-possessed under sudden danger. He did not lose his head, and he instantly thought of a plan of escape.
There was a dilapidated road that his keen eye had detected leading along beneath a high bank which protected it from observation. He directed the main body of his men to pass down that old road, while a small number were commanded to make a pretense of a demonstration near the church; others were to show some false heads of columns along the edge of the forest by the stone houses. These were withdrawn as the main body of soldiers disappeared down the hidden road and began to dot the surface of the river with their bobbing heads as they swam across. Lafayette and his loyal aid-de-camp, Major de Gimat, brought up the rear with the remainder of the men, whom they transferred across the river without loss. Then they formed on the farther bank and determined to contest the ford if the British followed. But the British had marched up the hill from the two opposite sides, simply meeting each other at the top; they then marched down again and did not seem to be in any mind to pursue their enemy further.
The only real encounter of that serio-comic day's adventures took place between the band of Iroquois and a company of Hessians in the pay of the British. The Indians were concealed in the brush at the side of the road when the Hessians, with waving black plumes in their tall hats and mounted on spirited horses, came along. The Indians rose as if from under the ground, giving their war whoop as they sprang. The horses, unused to this form of war cry, started back and fled far and wide; and the Indians, never having seen soldiers so accoutered, were as frightened as if confronted by evil spirits, and swiftly made good their escape from the impending "bad medicine."