Scoped number · Episodes 3
Contraction of Washington's army in 1776
about 90 percent lost from peak strength
- Scope
- Fischer uses two overlapping retrospective frames: roughly five months from the July independence crisis to the Christmas counterstroke, and twelve weeks for the New York campaign's loss of territory and about 90 percent of Washington's command.
- Uncertainty
- This is a retrospective campaign-level estimate, not a single return and not ninety percent killed. Strength figures depend on who was present, fit for duty, detached, or enrolled.
- Interpretation
- The estimate explains why Trenton was an institutional survival crisis as well as a battle.
The denominator matters more than the dramatic percentage. Fischer describes the broad decline across five months in one passage and compresses the New York campaign’s territorial and command losses into twelve weeks in another. Those are related frames, not interchangeable precision. The site always distinguishes deaths and wounds from capture, sickness, desertion, detachment, and expiring enlistments—the many processes by which paper and effective strength contracted.