Onward to Princeton

After Trenton, Washington recrossed the Delaware and, on the night of 2 January 1777, slipped his army around Cornwallis's camp by a back road, leaving campfires burning to cover the move. At sunrise on 3 January the columns ran into two British regiments outside Princeton. The American advance broke, and Washington rode forward to rally it, by some accounts to within thirty yards of the British muskets. The line held, the British gave way, and in ten days the army had won back most of New Jersey.

Jacques-Louis David painted Napoleon Crossing the Alps in 1801, and five versions exist; the first hangs at Malmaison, outside Paris. The horse rears against a mountain sky, the cape whips across the frame, and the rider points up the pass with perfect calm. It is the founding image of the commander as force of nature, and it was designed to be exactly that.

Washington takes the saddle on a white horse rearing against a broken winter sky, right arm thrown forward toward the crest, his blue and buff coat and a cape lined in red streaming behind him. The blue sash and gold epaulettes catch what light there is. Below at the left, a gun crew heaves a cannon up the frozen slope, a column of infantry with fixed bayonets behind them and a stone farmhouse in the distance. Bare trees, snow on the ridge and a bank of storm cloud do the rest.

David built the pose for a future emperor. It sits more comfortably on a man who, having won, went home and gave the army back.