See Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer--the Hessians were probably not in fact drunk.

That allegation comes primarily from a "Diary of an Officer on Washington's Staff", now thought probably a forgery. Many of the cadences are anachronistic, and much of the vocabulary and syntax ring much more of the 19th Century, according to Fischer and others.

"Boston fifer John Greenwood was there and later wrote in his memoir 'I am willing to go upon oath, that I did not see even a solitary drunken soldier belonging to the enemy--and you will find, as I shall show, that I had an opportunity to be as good a judge as any person there."

The town had been attacked late on Christmas day, and the entire garrison was under arms.

There had already been several lightning raids on the Trenton area by various American militia groups and the garrison was tired from having been on continous alert for days.

The Hessian commander, Colonel Rall, had asked his British superiors for reinforcements many times, and been denied.

Also, other participants had reason to perpetrate the drunken Hessians story. Stephen Kemble, an American Loyalist, for instance, was among many who wanted to portray the Trenton affair as an abberation, and to that end sought to make a clear distinction between the Hessians and the British, and to put the blame on the former.

He therefore propagated the story of the drunken Hessians and "wrote of them as if they were entirely separate from the the British army."

"This idea grew rapidly into the legend that Rall was drunk when the Americans attacked, and that the entire Hessian garrison had been" drinking heavily.