Like the battles of Trenton and Princeton nine months earlier, Saratoga had the effect of elevating the American cause in the eyes of potential European allies. One problem erupt- ing at Saratoga was the matter of what to do with 5,000 prisoners over the coming winter.

     The  Americans on  the  Delaware  had problems of their own. Their numerous galleys and floating batteries, long engaged against the British in the lower river, were now to be trapped in the upper river -- and even getting there, to find haven in numerous creeks and coves, presented difficulty. By night the boats moved stealthily along the east bank. Some of them made it past Cooper's Ferry and on to Burlington, Bristol, and Bordentown.

     Others were sighted by the night watch in British craft off Philadelphia. including enemy seamen manning the sometime American frigate Delaware, taken earlier by the British - and the guns of the Delaware and other enemy craft, as well as British shore batteries, were brought to bear against the American vessels. In a running river battle ranging past Cooper's and Penn- sauken Creeks, the enemy guns sank several American gunboats against the shoreline of Gloucester and Burlington Counties.

     Eventually the remaining American vessels took refuge near Trenton. Bordentown, and White Hill; several being stripped and sunk on Washington's instructions, and others serving as quarters for American troops throughout the period of British occupation.

     In the third week of November, 1777, Generals Greene and  Lafayette ferried to Burlington with 3.000 men, their intention
being to reinforce Fort Mercer. Greene was impatiently waiting in Burlington on November 21 "for scows to bring our wagons across" when word came that Fort Mercer had fallen. His division moved on to Mount Holly, where on the 22nd Greene and Lafayette joined forces with the heroic defenders of the fort, just arriving  with  a  horse-drawn  procession  of baggage wagons.

     Greene's  kinsman,  Colonel  Christopher Greene of Rhode Island, was in command of the 400 men evacuated from the fort. It was fully expected that Cornwallis and his superior numbers would move north from Woodbury in a sweep up the Jersey side of the Delaware. General Greene placed a defensive line of 2.000 men along the Rancocas Creek, and sent a large
patrol under Lafayette on the 25th to explore the enemy position south of Haddonfield. Included in Lafayette's force were almost two hundred of Morgan's famed riflemen, newly returned from the field at Saratoga, and two companies of New Jersey militia under Colonels Hite and Ellis.

     Lafayette struck fire a few miles north of Gloucester, where a picket force of Hessians appeared. Pursuing the Hessians, Lafayette's patrol ran into a series of sharp skirmishes with British outpost units from Cornwallis' army. Fighting and backing away, the Americans took a toll of fifty enemy casualties. Returning to Mount Holly, Lafayette reported that the performance by the riflemen and the Jersey Militia was "above all expectations."

     Cornwallis  did  not  march  to encounter Greene. After raiding the Gloucester County countryside he ferried back to Philadelphia and reported to General Howe - then comfortably ensconced in a liaison with his commissary's wife,  Betsy  Loring - and the British army settled into winter quarters in the Ouaker City.

     Greene's army likewise ferried to Pennsylvania at the beginning of December, from Burlington, taking along the men, cannon and supplies from Fort Mercer - to winter quarters at Valley Forge.

     In January of 1778 an inventor from New England combined his efforts with patriots of Bordentown in floating a squadron of explosive-filled   barrels   downstream,   toward British shipping in the harbor at Philadelphia. On impact, the barrels were primed to detonate and a few of them did - bringing on a comic episode described by Bordentown's Francis Hopkinson in his poem The Battle of the Kegs.

     The enemy in Philadelphia and the Americans at Valley Forge were hard-pressed for food, and foraging parties ferried the Delaware in search of cattle - among the parties being a 500-man force of Americans under General Anthony  Wayne.  His  force circumvented Philadelphia and crossed the river at Wilming- ton on February 19, to buy up cattle with Continental currency.

     The Salem County farmers were anything but willing; however 130 cows were finally rounded up. It then became necessary to drive the herd north to an upper Burlington County ferry to get around the British outposts. Near Haddonfield a Jersey militiaman galloped into Wayne's camp with the warning that a much larger British foraging party was crossing the river "to take Wayne's cows."

     Wayne sent a rider to Trenton to seek aid from Count Pulaski, wintering in that vicinity with a newly-formed company of cavalrymen; and meanwhile his drovers urged the cattle deep into the forest toward Evesham and Mount Laurel. Pulaski and his cavalry rode post haste via Mount Holly on February 27 to join Wayne, and in a snowstorm the two made a dashing frontal attack on the vanguard of the British force.

     Rising like spectres in the blinding snow, Pulaski's  horsemen  and  Wayne's  infantry appeared to the British to be an army of madmen. The enemy promptly retreated, back to its ferries and to Philadelphia.

     The British had not lost interest in Wayne's cattle, however. When American drovers moved the first eighty cows across the river a few days later  they were  immediately beset by an ambuscade of enemy troops who took the cattle without delay on the Pennsylvania side, while Wayne raged on the Burlington County shore over the loss of his hard-earned herd.

     All were not lost. By driving the remaining fifty cows to a more northerly ferry, Wayne's gallant officer John Lacey herded the cattle -  now much thinner than when the drive began - to Valley Forge, where the cows became three days' rations for Washington's army. Thus ended at last the "battle for the cattle."

     General  Wayne  remained  in  Burlington County with part of his force through March, contracting with a leather dealer for shoes for his division, and buying up horses as remounts for American cavalrymen.

     Hardly had Wayne left when one of the County's own warriors, Colonel Israel Shreve, appeared in Mount Holly with a segment of his Second New Jersey Regiment. A surprise attack on Shreve's position at Haddonfield, by a greatly superior force of 1,400 British, had been frustrated by a hard-riding horseman carrying a dispatch of warning; and Shreve's men escaped an intended massacre by a forced march on familiar Burlington County roads in the month of April, 1778.

     During the same month a hard decision was being forced on the British: to evacuate Philadelphia entirely. An American alliance with France was now formalized. A French fleet was destined for the Delaware, with a view to bottling up the British in the valley.

     The enemy had no choice but to leave.

     In early May the British, in a final sortie up the Delaware, pillaged and burned homes in Bordentown, and bombarded Burlington from their ships in the river. During the same period General Howe, relieved of the command in Philadelphia, made his departure; and in June a miles-long train of wagons and other equipment accompanied the British army in a cavalcade
across Burlington County.