On September 22, 1778, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Clinton ordered Major-General Charles Grey, Major-General Lord Cornwallis, and Brigadier-General Edward Mathew to mobilize troops with the dual purpose of provoking Continental Army commander George Washington into a battle and serving as a diversion for a raid against a Patriot privateering base in southern New Jersey. This strategic operation reflected British efforts to maintain military pressure on American forces while pursuing secondary objectives against American naval commerce operations.
The attack took place on September 27, 1778, when Major-General Charles Grey led British forces in a surprise assault against Colonel George Baylor's 3rd Regiment of Continental Light Dragoons, which was quartered in barns on farms along Over Kill Road near present-day River Vale, New Jersey. The British forces successfully executed a night attack against the Continental cavalry unit consisting of 12 officers and 104 enlisted men, catching them in a vulnerable position while sheltered in farm buildings rather than in a defensive military formation.
The engagement resulted in a decisive British victory with significant casualties inflicted on the Continental forces. The American losses included 15 soldiers killed and 54 more wounded or captured, while the British sustained only one soldier killed in the action. This disparity in casualties reflected the surprise nature of the attack and the advantageous position from which the British forces struck. The raid demonstrated the vulnerability of Continental Army detachments when dispersed in quarters and highlighted British capability to conduct effective night operations against American forces during the middle phase of the Revolutionary War.
The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) grew from colonial resistance to British taxation without parliamentary representation — a dispute that radicalized through the Stamp Act (1765), the Townshend Acts (1767), and the Boston Massacre (1770). Fighting began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775; the Continental Congress declared independence on July 4, 1776. The Continental Army under George Washington faced severe shortages of supplies and troops, enduring the brutal winter at Valley Forge (1777–1778) before French alliance and French financing turned the military balance. Major engagements included Bunker Hill (1775), Trenton (1776), Saratoga (1777) — which secured French intervention — and Yorktown (1781), where British General Cornwallis surrendered to Washington. An estimated 25,000 American soldiers died in service, from combat, disease, and captivity. The Treaty of Paris (1783) recognized American independence and ceded British territory east of the Mississippi, though it left unresolved questions about Indigenous land rights and the status of Loyalists.
15 Continental Army soldiers killed; 54 Continental Army soldiers wounded or captured; 1 British soldier killed
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