On this date in 1777, George Washington and his troops won the Battle of Princeton.

Washington and his men had just won a surprising and decisive victory over British General Cornwallis at Trenton a week before. Cornwallis, stung by his loss, assembled 8,000 British soldiers to attack Washington’s smaller army.

Cornwallis left an additional 1,200 men behind to defend Princeton, and they departed on January 2, intending to crush Washington at Trenton. The British and the Continentals engaged in a few skirmishes, but darkness fell not long after Cornwallis arrived at Trenton, and so the battle was postponed until the following day.

But in the night, Washington and his troops sneaked around behind Cornwallis’s army and made their way to Princeton. He told 500 of his men to hang back, and they lit campfires and made noise so that Cornwallis wouldn’t realize that most of the colonials had stolen away from their encampment. As for Washington and his men, the going was icy, and although the frozen ground made it easy to move the artillery, the horses and men kept losing their footing. As a result, they didn’t arrive at Princeton until after daybreak, later than they’d planned.

The British viewed this and the Battle of Trenton as minor American victories, but even so, they abandoned many of their posts in New Jersey, and ceded control of the region. The Continental army’s morale was high after the Battle of Princeton, and they began to believe they would actually win the war.