39. The Burgoyne Disaster

General Burgoyne arrived back in Quebec from England on May 6; by mid-June he had assembled a force of 9,500, including 7,200 British and German regulars, and Tory and Indian auxiliaries, and a mighty fleet to sail down the Richelieu River and Lake Champlain. On June 14, he set sail from Fort St. John’s in Canada. At the same time, Col. Barry St. Leger set off for Fort Oswego and the Mohawk Valley to Albany with a force of 1,700, including 1,000 Indians under the brilliant Mohawk war chief, Joseph Brant. Burgoyne accompanied his launching with a flamboyant and preposterous proclamation to the Americans and his Indian allies, denouncing the Americans and proclaiming that Britain was fighting for the “general privileges of mankind.” Even in an age accustomed to high-flown rhetoric, this bombast was a ready subject for satire and ridicule. Numerous parodies appeared, and in England, Lord North laughed heartily at Burgoyne’s rodomontade. Burke ridiculed it, and the Whig writer Horace Walpole denounced “the vaporing Burgoyne,” that “Pomposo” and “Hurlothrumbo.”

Burgoyne overran Crown Point on June 27 and then advanced upon Fort Ticonderoga, that “American Gibraltar,” where the American army was supposed to make its decisive stand. The condition of the American army at Ticonderoga had deteriorated considerably from the previous autumn. Not only had the northern army dwindled away during the winter to only 5,000 men, of whom half were militia; but the problem of command was acute. Gates and Schuyler had both lobbied in Congress for the post of commander of the army, and Congress had taken the worst course by vacillating between the two of them. In March 1777, overall command was given by Congress to Gates, but was handed back to Schuyler in May. The quarrel between the two exacerbated the friction between New England and New York soldiers in the northern army, the radical Yankees admiring Gates and hating Schuyler, and the Yorkers loyal to their leader. When Burgoyne appeared before Ticonderoga on June 30, 1777, the northern American army was split in two. In command of the Fort was Brig. Gen. Arthur St. Clair with 3,200 men, while Schuyler maintained a force of 2,000 to the south.

Ticonderoga was surrounded by three steep hills, and St. Clair’s troops were not sufficiently numerous to garrison them. The major American error was to leave Mt. Defiance, southwest of the fort, unfortified. Gates, seeing the danger of the peak’s falling to the British, had repeatedly urged its fortification during 1776, but Schuyler paid no heed. During his two months’ tenure in command in 1777, Gates and the brilliant Polish engineer, Col. Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who had come to America to fight for the revolutionary cause, prepared to fortify Mt. Defiance. But Gates was replaced in May before he could get the project under way. Even after May, he continued to pepper Schuyler with warnings, but Schuyler again paid no attention. Seeing the possibilities, the British seized two of the three hills at once, and by July 5, British Gen. William Phillips had transported several cannon to the top of Mt. Defiance.

Now directly under the big guns, St. Clair decided on immediate withdrawal; and in dead of night, the Americans sped out of the fort, fleeing down the opposite shore. In pursuit, the British seized, in rapid succession: Ticonderoga and its hills, Hubbardton and Castleton across the lake in Vermont, Skenesboro (near Whitehall, New York), and Fort Anne. Colonel Seth Warner and a rear guard carelessly dawdled, and the British caught up to them on July 7, resulting in a slashing defeat and about 400 casualties for the American forces. The British also suffered heavy casualties, totalling 200. Warner, leader of the American rearguard, fled with the rest of his men to the Vermont mountains; the rest of the American army met and regrouped at Fort Edward, on the east bank of the Hudson River. Meanwhile, Burgoyne’s navy had destroyed and captured over 200 boats on Lake Champlain, and he had seized an enormous supply of arms and ammunition, including powder and more than 100 cannon, which the fleeing Americans had left behind at Ticonderoga. To Americans and British alike, it seemed that a complete victory for Burgoyne was inevitable; Albany was only seventy miles away. King George exclaimed: “I have beat the Americans,” and John Adams talked angrily of making an example of a general leaving his post by having him shot. Actually, this was unfair to St. Clair, who did well considering the position he was in; his retreat was skillfully executed and saved his army. The common soldiers were better at pinning the blame where it truly belonged, and desertions multiplied as many men refused any longer to serve under General Schuyler.

On the brink of victory once again, the British stopped to rest at Skenesboro instead of pressing their advantage to a swift conclusion. In drawing up his plans for the campaign, Burgoyne had specifically rejected the route from Skenesboro to Fort Edward because it led through dense forests and marshlands. Instead, he planned to return to Ticonderoga and sail to Fort Edward down Lake George, even though that route, including the captured Fort George, was now used only for transportation of supplies. His enormous blunder in finally choosing the land route was made at the advice of the Tory Maj. Philip Skene. Skene had obtained an arbitrary grant of over 30,000 acres in this region, and was the owner of the Skenesboro colony on that land. Now he was eager to have Burgoyne cut a road from Skenesboro to the Hudson, as this would greatly raise the value of his property after the war. By going to Ft. Edward by land (through the Skenesboro-Ft. Anne area), instead of sailing down Lake George, and by dragging over fifty guns with him on the march, Burgoyne greatly slowed his own advance. Schuyler astutely delayed him further by diverting creek water with boulders and by sending axemen to fell thousands of trees across the line of march. Burgoyne took twenty days to traverse 20 miles to Ft. Edward which he captured on July 29, the Americans retreating before him. He proceeded another seven miles down the east bank of the Hudson, stopping at Fort Miller at the Batten Kill. Schuyler established American positions at Stillwater, twenty-five miles to the south on the Hudson River.

As Schuyler retreated, the American army began to gain strength. Six hundred Continentals joined the army from Peekskill, and masses of New England militia slowly marched west to guard America from the British threat. General Arnold and Gen. Benjamin Lincoln joined the force, and Daniel Morgan, released in an exchange of prisoners the previous summer, had been given a handpicked corps of 500 riflemen by Washington and sent north. Morgan’s men came from the frontier areas of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and included such noted frontier fighters as the celebrated Timothy Murphy.

One army that was not sent north but which should have been was Washington’s. As General Howe’s mighty fleet sailed out of New York Bay on July 23, Washington, understandably, could not bring himself to believe that he would really desert Burgoyne and sail south. He naturally expected the British fleet to sail up the Hudson to join Burgoyne. Howe’s interminable delays and dithering on the voyage sent Washington into an agony of indecision, and he marched up and down New Jersey, and from New York to Pennsylvania, trying to see if Howe was engaged in an elaborate feint and would yet sail up the Hudson. But while Washington’s tactics were understandable, the strategy was abysmal. Instead of trying to counter Howe wherever he went, Washington should have abandoned Philadelphia to Howe (which Howe was to conquer in any case), to swing north to join the northern army and crush Burgoyne. The combined victorious forces could then have swung down to meet Howe; in any case, Washington’s considerable force would not have been wasted hanging around Howe’s much larger and more powerful army.

Stopping at Fort Miller and suffering from overextended supply lines, Burgoyne decided, upon the urging of the Hessian commander, Maj. Gen. Baron von Riedesel, to detach a mixed force of only 700, under Lt. Col. Friedrich Baum, another Hessian, on a raid to the southeast on Bennington, Vermont, which he knew to be richly stocked with food, ammunition, oxen, and horses, and therefore the answer to his supply problems. Reaching Bennington on August 14 and picking up eager bands of Tories on the way, Baum accidentally encountered a body of 2,000 American militia, under Gen. John Stark. Stark had served brilliantly in the Continental Army, from Bunker Hill to Canada to Princeton, but he, like Arnold, had been passed over for promotion, and he had left the army. The New Hampshire legislature, the previous month, had voted to raise a brigade of militia to defend against the advancing enemy, and he was able to raise an enormous force of 1,500 New Hampshire men, no less than 10 percent of the enrolled voters of that state. This force was joined at Bennington by 500 Massachusetts and Vermont militia. Generals Schuyler and Lincoln had ordered him to join Schuyler’s main army, but Stark flatly disobeyed, declaring that he was responsible only to the New Hampshire General Court; instead, he decided to harry Burgoyne’s lines of communication.

Baum saw that, being heavily outnumbered, he should not attack; but he did not have the wit to retreat quickly. Instead, he asked for reinforcements and Burgoyne imprudently sent German Lt. Col. Henrich von Breymann with nearly 650 men. On the morning of August 16, Stark struck at the British, aided by a ruse in which the Americans encircled the Germans in shirtsleeves, pretending to be Tories. The ensuing battle was extremely bitter, the Germans fighting desperately despite the flight of the Indians and Tories; finally, Baum was killed and over 350 Germans captured. Too late, Breymann’s force appeared, having absurdly plodded along at one mile an hour in parade-ground formation. At the same time Seth Warner arrived with nearly 400 men, and the combined American force sent Breymann fleeing back to Burgoyne with well over 200 casualties. Not only did Burgoyne not get his supplies, but he had lost the huge chunk of nearly 1,000 men at the Battle of Bennington. Since he had been forced to leave a large garrison to guard Fort Ticonderoga, he now had only 6,300 men in his main army. Before him were gathering an ever larger patriot army, and to the east American militia were forming and threatening to cut his supply lines. In this revolutionary war, the British were learning the great lesson to be absorbed by all counter-revolutionaries; the formal army of the rebels is not the full extent of their might. Behind them lay the people, and now the people were rising up in arms all around Burgoyne to crush him.

Neither could Burgoyne expect any help from St. Leger slicing east across the Mohawk. St. Leger, with about 700 British Tories and over 800 Indians, sailed down the St. Lawrence and reached Fort Oswego, on Lake Ontario, in mid-July, where he was joined by battalions of Tories and Iroquois. This particular fight was also part of a struggle for the soul of Tryon County, the vast, thinly populated frontier county of New York west of Schenectady. Tories were powerful in this frontier domain; Sir William Johnson, the wealthiest landowner in the county, had been the British agent to the Indians, and he was regarded as a hero by the Iroquois nations. In the spring of 1776, his son Sir John Johnson had been forced to flee to Canada, with his faithful Highlanders and other active Tories of the region; the remaining Tories had their property confiscated, and were imprisoned, flogged, tarred and feathered, and even shot and hanged, often at drumhead courts-martial. Families and relatives of suspected Tories were seized by the Americans and taken as hostages. Zeal for battle was intense on both sides, and now Sir John led the Tory contingent under St. Leger.

The leading Indian ally of the British was the brilliant young Joseph Brant, war chief of the Mohawk nation. Brant had been raised as a member of the Johnson family, and his sister was Sir William’s wife. Brant had been restless to attack the settlers since 1775; but Carleton discouraged Indian raids on the Americans. On the one hand, this lost him a golden opportunity to terrorize the American frontier. On the other, the American invasion of Canada had cut off the St. Lawrence—and hence possible supplies—from the Indians. The arrival of Burgoyne changed all this: now the Indians were to be encouraged to aid the British in fighting the Americans. Brant and the Iroquois rushed to join St. Leger for the fray.

Marching east from Oswego, St. Leger reached Fort Stanwix on the Mohawk River, the gateway to the Mohawk Valley on August 3. Stationed at Stanwix was the main American force in the west, about 700 men ably commanded by two young Dutch-American colonels, Peter Gansevoort and Marinus Willett, a radical. St. Leger laid siege to the fort. General Nicholas Herkimer, a German-American who commanded the Tryon militia, marched west along the Mohawk with nearly 800 militiamen eager to defend their homes against the Indian menace. Reaching Oriskany Creek, eight miles short of Stanwix, he realized that he could not attack St. Leger’s overwhelmingly larger force on his own. When he failed to make contact with the besieged fort, he refused to go on. But his restive officers denounced him, not only for cowardice but also for treason, a charge to which Herkimer, with several Tory relatives in St. Leger’s army, was understandably sensitive. On August 6 he was finally goaded into pressing on a few miles west, where Brant, commanding 400 Indians and over a hundred Tories, had set a cunning ambush. It seemed at first that Herkimer’s surrounded troops would be decimated, and the Indians eagerly pressed their advantage in one of the bloodiest engagements in the war. Despite the mortal wounding of Herkimer, the untrained farmers almost miraculously banded together to survive in bitter close fighting with Indians and Tories. They retreated hastily in deep and fearful conviction that they had lost the battle and that the worst was at hand. It is true the Americans suffered a staggering total of 400 casualties out of their 800-man force, but the Indian and Tory force had suffered almost as greatly. The Battle of Oriskany had also succeeded in breaking the morale of the Indians; they were not used to heavy losses, and these they had suffered. Furthermore, Colonel Willett had seized the opportunity of the battle to lead 250 men on a successful raid on the Indian camp. These setbacks were coupled with Indian rancor at bearing the brunt of the battle and the losses. Despite Brant’s urging, they began to desert and drift away by the score. St. Leger was losing a major portion of his force.

No longer the happy warrior, confident of an imminent march into Albany, he redoubled his siege of Stanwix, but now Schuyler detached 1,000 Continentals under Benedict Arnold to go to the relief of Fort Stanwix. Reaching Fort Dayton, east of Oriskany, on August 21, Arnold was able to deceive St. Leger and particularly his Indians about the size of his force. The approach of the renowned Arnold was the last straw for the Indians, who now fled en masse. Deprived of a large part of his troops, St. Leger was forced to abandon the fort on August 23, and he staggered back to Oswego and thence to Canada. Arnold’s force, victorious without firing a shot, sped back to rejoin the main American army. The St. Leger threat was over and Burgoyne was now completely alone. Burgoyne’s misfortunes, moreover, were now aggravated by desertions of over 400 of his original 500 Indians, disgruntled at British restrictions on their terror tactics and adept at gauging the changing tides of the fortunes of war.

Increasingly isolated and in worsening straits, Burgoyne should now have hightailed it back to Ticonderoga and abandoned the Albany campaign. But rather than retreat and abandon his exuberant plans for military renown, he crossed the Hudson to the west bank at Saratoga (now Schuylersville) in mid-September to launch a march to Albany. By this bold step, Burgoyne cut off any chance of retreat, and came into position to attack the American force, now stationed southward on the same bank at the mouth of the Mohawk. It was to be all or nothing for Burgoyne in a final confrontation with the enemy.

In the meanwhile, the loss of Ticonderoga had disgusted Congress with General Schuyler, and in early August it replaced Schuyler with his old competitor Gates. Gates reached the American camp on August 19; the Americans’ most able general was now on hand to wage their most decisive battle.

His arrival had an electrifying effect on the morale of the American troops. A week before he came, one officer despaired of the “miserable state of despondency and terror” among the men. “Would to God Gates would arrive,” he exclaimed. Soon after, he exulted that from that woeful state, “Gates’ arrival raised us, as if by magic. We began to hope, and then to act.” He uplifted the American forces not only by his superior ability in battle, but also by his administration and respect for the New England soldiers who formed the bulk of his army, an outlook Schuyler did not share. Close to his men, and sharing the rigors and dangers of his troops, Gates had great confidence in the ordinary nonprofessional soldier, and he understood his needs and problems. His announced policy, for example, was never to call up the militia until virtually the very moment that they were needed. And as soon as they finished their short terms of duty, he did not berate them (as did Washington and others) for “traitorously” not reenlisting; instead, he thanked them courteously and sent them quickly and punctiliously home. In short, he understood that this was essentially a people’s war, a popular revolution which depended for its success on mass uprising and mass support, not on European training and the European military system. Hence, the flocking by the militia of all New England to Gates’ side for the forthcoming battle. A British officer reported, “The farmers left their ploughs, the smith his anvil, cobbler and tailor followed... the militia came marching from all the provinces of New England.”* By the final battle, indeed, the American militia outnumbered the regular troops.

On assuming command, Gates moved the American army north from the mouth of the Mohawk, where Schuyler had stationed it, and where the American force would be subject to defeat in European-style warfare on an open plain. Gates marched the army north and stationed it on Bemis Heights—a strategic bottleneck to Albany, just south of Burgoyne at Saratoga—which Gates proceeded to have well fortified by Colonel Kosciuszko. As Burgoyne advanced south upon the Americans, Daniel Morgan’s picked regiment of riflemen did a brilliant guerrilla job of preventing the British from sending out any advance scouts to discover enemy positions. Even though deprived of knowledge of the terrain and of American positions, Burgoyne nevertheless decided to attack.

As Burgoyne’s column advanced down through the woods on Gates’ left on the morning of September 19, Gates sent Morgan’s riflemen to meet them. They were joined by a crack group of 300 musketmen, also under Morgan’s command. The two forces collided with Burgoyne near Freeman’s Farm. Morgan’s men, long skilled at forest fighting, used mobile guerrilla tactics in thin, shifting skirmish lines, from which they could cut down the orthodox, bulky, and plodding linear formations of the British. At the clearing on Freeman’s Farm, reinforcements came up on both sides, and Arnold, commander of the left wing, sent several Continental regiments to join Morgan. The heavy fire drove the British out of the clearing, but Arnold’s Continentals were themselves driven out of the clearing by a British bayonet charge. Morgan’s riflemen, unable to wield bayonets, continued to stay hidden in the woods, subjecting the British to devastating fire. Furthermore, Morgan instructed his sharpshooters to concentrate their fire on the weakest links in the British chain: the officers, the skilled artillerymen, and the Tory auxiliaries. Tory morale was far lower than that among British regulars; the officers and artillerymen were, of course, key figures in the army’s structure. Morgan was criticized for his “ungentlemanly tactics” of centering fire on the military elite, for in traditional European warfare it was the custom to send out the common soldiery to slaughter in bulky linear formation on the open field. A tacit gentleman’s agreement usually spared the officers on both sides. Open field fighting, however, would not have been so attractive to the military elite if their own lives had been placed in jeopardy, and Morgan’s sharpshooters began driving this lesson home.

At the end of the day, Gates pulled back the American force from the furious battle, and thus ended the Battle of Freeman’s Farm, or the First Battle of Saratoga. Burgoyne contented himself with a claim of technical victory, since the British force held the field; but the de facto victory belonged to the Americans. Burgoyne’s losses were extremely severe, especially those suffered at the hands of Morgan: 600 casualties as compared to 300 for the American force. The American losses were caused primarily by Arnold’s reckless insistence on open frontal attack upon the enemy lines. Arnold had urged Gates to abandon his protected positions and sally forth to attack the enemy, a move that would have been ruinous to the American cause. While Gates allowed Morgan’s force to fire upon the enemy in gurrilla style, he compromised by allowing Arnold his futile attack on the clearing at Freeman’s Farm. Even so, Arnold was furious because he had not been given more men.

Burgoyne was now bogged down and surrounded by an American force that grew rapidly larger as more and more New York and New England militiamen poured into the camp. For more than two weeks, Daniel Morgan’s riflemen harassed the British unmercifully, as night-raiding parties attacked and attacked on the flanks, and snipers picked off any British emerging into sight. Again, scouts could not be sent out to provide vitally needed information. Furthermore, Burgoyne learned of a successful raid on Mounts Independence and Defiance by Colonels John Brown and Seth Warner, which captured 300 men and a score of boats. But even as supplies began to run out, as the morale of his men rapidly deteriorated and desertions multiplied, and as chilly weather heralded the onset of winter and the importance of reaching winter quarters at Albany, Burgoyne decided to attack in a desperate gamble for victory. Meanwhile, Washington, engaged in unproductive battles with Howe around Philadelphia, asked Gates to send him Morgan’s regiment—the crucial American unit at Saratoga. Gates declined the request, and thus thwarted a possible disastrous loss that might well have been inflicted on the American cause.

On October 4, Burgoyne held a council of war. General Clinton had proposed to come up from New York in an attempt to relieve Burgoyne, but nothing had been heard from him. Burgoyne’s generals urged him to retreat, but he regarded this as dishonorable, and instead determined on a probing attack on the American left wing, to be followed, if successful, by a general assault the next day.

On October 7, Burgoyne, still ignorant of the terrain and of American dispositions, led his probing attack with 2,100 troops on the American left at Bemis Heights, leaving fewer than 3,500 behind in his entrenched position. Gates again sent out Morgan, and pursued his shrewd, guerrilla-type strategy of keeping his main force deep behind fortifications. Denying the British the opportunity of a pitched battle, he continued to wear down Burgoyne’s forces. The tactics of the battle were devised by Morgan, who suggested simultaneous flanking attacks on Burgoyne.

Arnold had meanwhile been relieved of his command by Gates for insubordination after a violent quarrel; he did not think Gates had given him sufficient credit for the engagement at Freeman’s Farm. Sulking in his tent, Arnold saw that the Battle of Bemis Heights was still indecisive and inconclusive toward the end of the day; restless at the stalemate, he rushed forth without authorization to help Morgan, and assumed the lead of his exhilirated and cheering Connecticut Brigade. Shouting, “Now, come on boys, if the day is long enough, we’ll have them in hell before night!” Arnold led frontal assault after frontal assault on the British lines with the Connecticut and other brigades, without success. Finally, he led the Connecticut Brigade, Morgan’s men, and two other regiments that had been supporting Morgan, in a furious attack against Breymann’s Hessian redoubt guarding Burgoyne’s right flank. This attack succeeded, Arnold falling wounded and permanently crippled at the moment of victory. One of the important ingredients of this victory was the deliberate mortal shooting of Gen. Simon Fraser, singlehandedly rallying the British lines, by Morgan’s brilliant rifleman Timothy Murphy. Burgoyne was forced to withdraw from the field and, his main position now indefensible, he retreated his army northward. The decisive battle of Bemis Heights, the Second Battle of Saratoga, was over. The Americans suffered only 150 casualties, the British nearly 700.

Arnold has generally received the credit for Burgoyne’s defeat, but his charge, while dramatic and romantic, was reckless and could well have lost the battle. The victory really belonged to Gates, whose patient strategy would inevitably have worn Burgoyne down, without the needless chances taken and extra blood shed in Arnold’s charge. Compared to the roles of Gates and Morgan, Arnold’s contribution to Burgoyne’s defeat, while real, was flashy and superficial.

Burgoyne’s retreat was slow. When he took up strong entrenched positions at Saratoga on October 9, he hoped that Gates would be rash enough to launch a frontal attack. Instead, Gates wisely sent out militiamen to encircle and entrap the British army, and also to seize their boats. Burgoyne knew that Clinton had begun to move north, but he was still too far away to influence results. By October 12, he finally agreed to Baron von Riedesel’s urging to flee northward, but he delayed another day, and by then it was too late: his once splendid army was a ragged force of 5,000 men, and surrounded by a force that had swollen to three times that number.

Gates demanded unconditional surrender; Burgoyne refused and held out for an agreement whereby the British force would be permitted to sail for England, provided that they would not fight again in America. Learning that Clinton’s force of 3,000 men had broken through Putnam’s defenses in the highlands and had reached Esopus (now Kingston) on October 15, Gates agreed to accept Burgoyne’s offer, or “convention.” On October 17, Burgoyne surrendered.

The repercussions of the Saratoga surrender would prove to be momentous; the move to split New York had failed and one-fifth of the British forces in America had surrendered in one fell swoop. The entire British strategy was shattered. And, as will be seen, France was to be led by the heartening victory to recognize American independence and to enter the war openly on the American side.

The surrender terms were violated immediately. The Americans, realizing that the British troops sent home would simply release other troops to serve in the war, refused to allow the prisoners to embark. Instead, they sent them to Virginia where they deserted in droves. There being little they could do in their isolated state, the British forces in New York withdrew to Canada from Ticonderoga, now useless to them. As for Clinton, excessive caution had prevented him from racing up the Hudson to Albany after his breakthrough in the highlands, and also from taking with him the 2,000 soldiers uselessly stationed in Rhode Island. Apart from the losing Charleston expedition the year before, this was his first campaign as head of his own army, and it was certainly unsatisfactory.

The British might still have salvaged their fortunes, however, if Clinton had been allowed to keep control of the highland forts, cutting American communications and supply lines across the lower Hudson. But General Howe, apparently over his objections, ordered him to evacuate Fort Clinton and to send reinforcements to Philadelphia; Clinton was thereby forced to abandon the Hudson Valley and withdraw quickly to New York City.

Removed from his command and unfairly in disgrace, General Schuyler apparently toyed with treason and secretly told the British that he was ready to rejoin the British Empire if Britain would abandon its taxation of America. There is also some evidence that he was partially motivated by his hatred of the rebellious Vermonters and that he may have had St. Clair abandon Ticonderoga to smoke out the Vermont forces; their ardent fighting for the Americans may have led him to consider siding with Great Britain. Thus, the general American suspicion of Schuyler’s loyalty after Ticonderoga was not entirely without foundation.

*Billias, “Horatio Gates,” pp. 90–93.