During the American Revolutionary War, on the evening of December 25, 1776, General George Washington led 2,400 Continental Army soldiers across the very icy Delaware River to attack the pro-British Hessian troops camped in Trenton, New Jersey. Our collective memory of this attack is strengthened by the famous oil painting by Emanuel Leutze, painted fifty years after the event. This painting (or the engraving of it that was published a few years later by M. Knoedler) is reproduced in nearly, every American history textbook.
