John Burgoyne, in a measure a soldier of fortune, was the younger son of
an impoverished baronet, but he had married the daughter of the powerful
Earl of Derby and was well known in London society as a man of fashion
and also as a man of letters, whose plays had a certain vogue. His will,
in which he describes himself as a humble Christian, who, in spite of
many faults, had never forgotten God, shows that he was serious minded.
He sat in the House of Commons for Preston and, though he used the
language of a courtier and spoke of himself as lying at the King's feet
to await his commands, he was a Whig, the friend of Fox and others
whom the King regarded as his enemies. One of his plays describes the
difficulties of getting the English to join the army of George III. We
have the smartly dressed recruit as a decoy to suggest an easy life in
the army. Victory and glory are so certain that a tailor stands with his
feet on the neck of the King of France. The decks of captured ships swim
with punch and are clotted with gold dust, and happy soldiers play
with diamonds as if they were marbles. The senators of England, says
Burgoyne, care chiefly to make sure of good game laws for their own
pleasure. The worthless son of one of them, who sets out on the long
drive to his father's seat in the country, spends an hour in "yawning,
picking his teeth and damning his journey" and when once on the way
drives with such fury that the route is marked by "yelping dogs,
broken-backed pigs and dismembered geese."
It was under this playwright and satirist, who had some skill as a
soldier, that the British cause now received a blow from which it never
recovered. Burgoyne had taken part in driving the Americans from
Canada in 1776 and had spent the following winter in England using his
influence to secure an independent command. To his later undoing he
succeeded. It was he, and not, as had been expected, General Carleton,
who was appointed to lead the expedition of 1777 from Canada to the
Hudson. Burgoyne was given instructions so rigid as to be an insult to
his intelligence. He was to do one thing and only one thing, to press
forward to the Hudson and meet Howe. At the same time Lord George
Germain, the minister responsible, failed to instruct Howe to advance up
the Hudson to meet Burgoyne. Burgoyne had a genuine belief in the
wisdom of this strategy but he had no power to vary it, to meet changing
circumstances, and this was one chief factor in his failure.
Behold Burgoyne then, on the 17th of June, embarking on Lake Champlain
the army which, ever since his arrival in Canada on the 6th of May,
he had been preparing for this advance. He had rather more than seven
thousand men, of whom nearly one-half were Germans under the competent
General Riedesel. In the force of Burgoyne we find the ominous presence
of some hundreds of Indian allies. They had been attached to one side or
the other in every war fought in those regions during the previous one
hundred and fifty years. In the war which ended in 1763 Montcalm had
used them and so had his opponent Amherst. The regiments from the New
England and other colonies had fought in alliance with the painted
and befeathered savages and had made no protest. Now either times had
changed, or there was something in a civil war which made the use of
savages seem hideous. One thing is certain. Amherst had held his savages
in stern restraint and could say proudly that they had not committed a
single outrage. Burgoyne was not so happy.
In nearly every war the professional soldier shows distrust, if not
contempt, for civilian levies. Burgoyne had been in America before the
day of Bunker Hill and knew a great deal about the country. He thought
the "insurgents" good enough fighters when protected by trees and stones
and swampy ground. But he thought, too, that they had no real knowledge
of the science of war and could not fight a pitched battle. He himself
had not shown the prevision required by sound military knowledge. If the
British were going to abandon the advantage of sea power and fight where
they could not fall back on their fleet, they needed to pay special
attention to land transport. This Burgoyne had not done. It was only a
little more than a week before he reached Lake Champlain that he asked
Carleton to provide the four hundred horses and five hundred carts which
he still needed and which were not easily secured in a sparsely settled
country. Burgoyne lingered for three days at Crown Point, half way down
the lake. Then, on the 2d of July, he laid siege to Fort Ticonderoga.
Once past this fort, guarding the route to Lake George, he could easily
reach the Hudson.
In command at Fort Ticonderoga was General St. Clair, with about
thirty-five hundred men. He had long notice of the siege, for the
expedition of Burgoyne had been the open talk of Montreal and the
surrounding country during many months. He had built Fort Independence,
on the east shore of Lake Champlain, and with a great expenditure of
labor had sunk twenty-two piers across the lake and stretched in front
of them a boom to protect the two forts. But he had neglected to defend
Sugar Hill in front of Fort Ticonderoga, and commanding the American
works. It took only three or four days for the British to drag cannon to
the top, erect a battery and prepare to open fire. On the 5th of July,
St. Clair had to face a bitter necessity. He abandoned the untenable
forts and retired southward to Fort Edward by way of the difficult Green
Mountains. The British took one hundred and twenty-eight guns.
These successes led the British to think that within a few days they
would be in Albany. We have an amusing picture of the effect on George
III of the fall of Fort Ticonderoga. The place had been much discussed.
It had been the first British fort to fall to the Americans when the
Revolution began, and Carleton's failure to take it in the autumn of
1776 had been the cause of acute heartburning in London. Now, when the
news of its fall reached England, George III burst into the Queen's
room with the glad cry, "I have beat them, I have beat the Americans."
Washington's depression was not as great as the King's elation; he had
a better sense of values; but he had intended that the fort should hold
Burgoyne, and its fall was a disastrous blow. The Americans showed skill
and good soldierly quality in the retreat from Ticonderoga, and Burgoyne
in following and harassing them was led into hard fighting in the woods.
The easier route by way of Lake George was open but Burgoyne hoped to
destroy his enemy by direct pursuit through the forest. It took him
twenty days to hew his way twenty miles, to the upper waters of
the Hudson near Fort Edward. When there on the 30th of July he had
communications open from the Hudson to the St. Lawrence.
Fortune seemed to smile on Burgoyne. He had taken many guns and he had
proved the fighting quality of his men. But his cheerful elation had, in
truth, no sound basis. Never during the two and a half months of bitter
struggle which followed was he able to advance more than twenty-five
miles from Fort Edward. The moment he needed transport by land he
found himself almost helpless. Sometimes his men were without food and
equipment because he had not the horses and carts to bring supplies from
the head of water at Fort Anne or Fort George, a score of miles
away. Sometimes he had no food to transport. He was dependent on his
communications for every form of supplies. Even hay had to be brought
from Canada, since, in the forest country, there was little food for his
horses. The perennial problem for the British in all operations was this
one of food. The inland regions were too sparsely populated to make it
possible for more than a few soldiers to live on local supplies. The
wheat for the bread of the British soldier, his beef and his pork, even
the oats for his horse, came, for the most part, from England, at vast
expense for transport, which made fortunes for contractors. It is said
that the cost of a pound of salted meat delivered to Burgoyne on the
Hudson was thirty shillings. Burgoyne had been told that the inhabitants
needed only protection to make them openly loyal and had counted on them
for supplies. He found instead the great mass of the people hostile and
he doubted the sincerity even of those who professed their loyalty.
After Burgoyne had been a month at Fort Edward he was face to face with
starvation. If he advanced he lengthened his line to flank attack. As
it was he had difficulty in holding it against New Englanders, the most
resolute of all his foes, eager to assert by hard fighting, if need be,
their right to hold the invaded territory which was claimed also by New
York. Burgoyne's instructions forbade him to turn aside and strike them
a heavy blow. He must go on to meet Howe who was not there to be met.
A being who could see the movements of men as we watch a game of chess,
might think that madness had seized the British leaders; Burgoyne on
the upper Hudson plunging forward resolutely to meet Howe; Howe at sea
sailing away, as it might well seem, to get as far from Burgoyne as he
could; Clinton in command at New York without instructions, puzzled what
to do and not hearing from his leader, Howe, for six weeks at a time;
and across the sea a complacent minister, Germain, who believed that he
knew what to do in a scene three thousand miles away, and had drawn up
exact instructions as to the way of doing it, and who was now eagerly
awaiting news of the final triumph.
Burgoyne did his best. Early in August he had to make a venturesome
stroke to get sorely needed food. Some twenty-five miles east of the
Hudson at Bennington, in difficult country, New England militia had
gathered food and munitions, and horses for transport. The pressure of
need clouded Burgoyne's judgment. To make a dash for Bennington meant a
long and dangerous march. He was assured, however, that a surprise
was possible and that in any case the country was full of friends only
awaiting a little encouragement to come out openly on his side. They
were Germans who lay on Burgoyne's left and Burgoyne sent Colonel Baum,
an efficient officer, with five or six hundred men to attack the New
Englanders and bring in the supplies. It was a stupid blunder to send
Germans among a people specially incensed against the use of these
mercenaries. There was no surprise. Many professing loyalists, seemingly
eager to take the oath of allegiance, met and delayed Baum. When near
Bennington he found in front of him a force barring the way and had to
make a carefully guarded camp for the night. Then five hundred men, some
of them the cheerful takers of the oath of allegiance, slipped round to
his rear and in the morning he was attacked from front and rear.
A hot fight followed which resulted in the complete defeat of the
British. Baum was mortally wounded. Some of his men escaped into the
woods; the rest were killed or captured. Nor was this all. Burgoyne,
scenting danger, had ordered five hundred more Germans to reinforce
Baum. They, too, were attacked and overwhelmed. In all Burgoyne lost
some eight hundred men and four guns. The American loss was seventy.
It shows the spirit of the time that, for the sport of the soldiers,
British prisoners were tied together in pairs and driven by negroes
at the tail of horses. An American soldier described long after, with
regret for his own cruelty, how he had taken a British prisoner who had
had his left eye shot out and mounted him on a horse also without
the left eye, in derision at the captive's misfortune. The British
complained that quarter was refused in the fight. For days tired
stragglers, after long wandering in the woods, drifted into Burgoyne's
camp. This was now near Saratoga, a name destined to be ominous in the
history of the British army.
Further misfortune now crowded upon Burgoyne. The general of that day
had two favorite forms of attack. One was to hold the enemy's front and
throw out a column to march round the flank and attack his rear, the
method of Howe at the Brandywine; the other method was to advance on the
enemy by lines converging at a common center. This form of attack had
proved most successful eighteen years earlier when the British had
finally secured Canada by bringing together, at Montreal, three armies,
one from the east, one from the west, and one from the south. Now there
was a similar plan of bringing together three British forces at or near
Albany, on the Hudson. Of Clinton, at New York, and Burgoyne we know.
The third force was under General St. Leger. With some seventeen hundred
men, fully half of whom were Indians, he had gone up the St. Lawrence
from Montreal and was advancing from Oswego on Lake Ontario to attack
Fort Stanwix at the end of the road from the Great Lakes to the Mohawk
River. After taking that stronghold he intended to go down the river
valley to meet Burgoyne near Albany.
On the 3d of August St. Leger was before Fort Stanwix garrisoned by some
seven hundred Americans. With him were two men deemed potent in that
scene. One of these was Sir John Johnson who had recently inherited
the vast estate in the neighborhood of his father, the great Indian
Superintendent, Sir William Johnson, and was now in command of a
regiment recruited from Loyalists, many of them fierce and embittered
because of the seizure of their property. The other leader was a famous
chief of the Mohawks, Thayendanegea, or, to give him his English name,
Joseph Brant, half savage still, but also half civilized and half
educated, because he had had a careful schooling and for a brief day had
been courted by London fashion. He exerted a formidable influence with
his own people. The Indians were not, however, all on one side. Half of
the six tribes of the Iroquois were either neutral or in sympathy with
the Americans. Among the savages, as among the civilized, the war was a
family quarrel, in which brother fought brother. Most of the Indians on
the American side preserved, indeed, an outward neutrality. There was
no hostile population for them to plunder and the Indian usually had no
stomach for any other kind of warfare. The allies of the British, on the
other hand, had plenty of openings to their taste and they brought on
the British cause an enduring discredit.
When St. Leger was before Fort Stanwix he heard that a force of eight
hundred men, led by a German settler named Herkimer, was coming up
against him. When it was at Oriskany, about six miles away, St. Leger
laid a trap. He sent Brant with some hundreds of Indians and a few
soldiers to be concealed in a marshy ravine which Herkimer must cross.
When the American force was hemmed in by trees and marsh on the narrow
causeway of logs running across the ravine the Indians attacked with
wild yells and murderous fire. Then followed a bloody hand to hand
fight. Tradition has been busy with its horrors. Men struggled in slime
and blood and shouted curses and defiance. Improbable stories are told
of pairs of skeletons found afterwards in the bog each with a bony
hand which had driven a knife to the heart of the other. In the end the
British, met by resolution so fierce, drew back. Meanwhile a sortie
from the American fort on their rear had a menacing success. Sir John
Johnson's camp was taken and sacked. The two sides were at last glad to
separate, after the most bloody struggle in the whole war. St. Leger's
Indians had had more than enough. About a hundred had been killed and
the rest were in a state of mutiny. Soon it was known that Benedict
Arnold, with a considerable force, was pushing up the Mohawk Valley to
relieve the American fort. Arnold knew how to deal with savages. He took
care that his friendly Indians should come into contact with those of
Brant and tell lurid tales of utter disaster to Burgoyne and of a great
avenging army on the march to attack St. Leger. The result was that St.
Leger's Indians broke out in riot and maddened themselves with stolen
rum. Disorder affected even the soldiers. The only thing for St. Leger
to do was to get away. He abandoned his guns and stores and, harassed
now by his former Indian allies, made his way to Oswego and in the end
reached Montreal with a remnant of his force.
News of these things came to Burgoyne just after the disaster at
Bennington. Since Fort Stanwix was in a country counted upon as Loyalist
at heart it was especially discouraging again to find that in the main
the population was against the British. During the war almost without
exception Loyalist opinion proved weak against the fierce determination
of the American side. It was partly a matter of organization. The
vigilance committees in each State made life well-nigh intolerable to
suspected Tories. Above all, however, the British had to bear the odium
which attaches always to the invader. We do not know what an American
army would have done if, with Iroquois savages as allies, it had made
war in an English county. We know what loathing a parallel situation
aroused against the British army in America. The Indians, it should be
noted, were not soldiers under British discipline but allies; the chiefs
regarded themselves as equals who must be consulted and not as enlisted
to take orders from a British general.
In war, as in politics, nice balancing of merit or defect in an enemy
would destroy the main purpose which is to defeat him. Each side
exaggerates any weak point in the other in order to stimulate the
fighting passions. Judgment is distorted. The Baroness Riedesel, the
wife of one of Burgoyne's generals, who was in Boston in 1777, says that
the people were all dressed alike in a peasant costume with a leather
strap round the waist, that they were of very low and insignificant
stature, and that only one in ten of them could read or write. She
pictures New Englanders as tarring and feathering cultivated English
ladies. When educated people believed every evil of the enemy the
ignorant had no restraint to their credulity. New England had long
regarded the native savages as a pest. In 1776 New Hampshire offered
seventy pounds for each scalp of a hostile male Indian and thirty-seven
pounds and ten shillings for each scalp of a woman or of a child under
twelve years of age. Now it was reported that the British were offering
bounties for American scalps. Benjamin Franklin satirized British
ignorance when he described whales leaping Niagara Falls and he did not
expect to be taken seriously when, at a later date, he pictured George
III as gloating over the scalps of his subjects in America. The Seneca
Indians alone, wrote Franklin, sent to the King many bales of scalps.
Some bales were captured by the Americans and they found the scalps of
43 soldiers, 297 farmers, some of them burned alive, and 67 old people,
88 women, 193 boys, 211 girls, 29 infants, and others unclassified.
Exact figures bring conviction. Franklin was not wanting in exactness
nor did he fail, albeit it was unwittingly, to intensify burning
resentment of which we have echoes still. Burgoyne had to bear the odium
of the outrages by Indians. It is amusing to us, though it was hardly so
to this kindly man, to find these words put into his mouth by a colonial
poet:
I will let loose the dogs of Hell,
Ten thousand Indians who shall yell,
And foam, and tear, and grin, and roar
And drench their moccasins in gore:…
I swear, by St. George and St. Paul,
I will exterminate you all.
Such seed, falling on soil prepared by the hate of war, brought forth
its deadly fruit. The Americans believed that there was no brutality
from which British officers would shrink. Burgoyne had told his Indian
allies that they must not kill except in actual fighting and that there
must be no slaughter of non-combatants and no scalping of any but the
dead. The warning delivered him into the hands of his enemies for it
showed that he half expected outrage. Members of the British House of
Commons were no whit behind the Americans in attacking him. Burke amused
the House by his satire on Burgoyne's words: "My gentle lions, my humane
bears, my tender-hearted hyenas, go forth! But I exhort you, as you are
Christians and members of civilized society, to take care not to hurt
any man, woman, or child." Burke's great speech lasted for three and
a half hours and Sir George Savile called it "the greatest triumph of
eloquence within memory." British officers disliked their dirty, greasy,
noisy allies and Burgoyne found his use of savages, with the futile
order to be merciful, a potent factor in his defeat.
A horrifying incident had occurred while he was fighting his way to
the Hudson. As the Americans were preparing to leave Fort Edward some
marauding Indians saw a chance of plunder and outrage. They burst into a
house and carried off two ladies, both of them British in sympathy--Mrs.
McNeil, a cousin of one of Burgoyne's chief officers, General Fraser,
and Miss Jeannie McCrae, whose betrothed, a Mr. Jones, and whose brother
were serving with Burgoyne. In a short time Mrs. McNeil was handed over
unhurt to Burgoyne's advancing army. Miss McCrae was never again seen
alive by her friends. Her body was found and a Wyandot chief, known as
the Panther, showed her scalp as a trophy. Burgoyne would have been a
poor creature had he not shown anger at such a crime, even if committed
against the enemy. This crime, however, was committed against his own
friends. He pressed the charge against the chief and was prepared to
hang him and only relaxed when it was urged that the execution would
cause all his Indians to leave him and to commit further outrages. The
incident was appealing in its tragedy and stirred the deep anger of the
population of the surrounding country among whose descendants to this
day the tradition of the abandoned brutality of the British keeps alive
the old hatred.
At Fort Edward Burgoyne now found that he could hardly move. He was
encumbered by an enormous baggage train. His own effects filled, it is
said, thirty wagons and this we can believe when we find that champagne
was served at his table up almost to the day of final disaster. The
population was thoroughly aroused against him. His own instinct was
to remain near the water route to Canada and make sure of his
communications. On the other hand, honor called him to go forward and
not fail Howe, supposed to be advancing to meet him. For a long time he
waited and hesitated. Meanwhile he was having increasing difficulty in
feeding his army and through sickness and desertion his numbers were
declining. By the 13th of September he had taken a decisive step. He
made a bridge of boats and moved his whole force across the river to
Saratoga, now Schuylerville. This crossing of the river would result
inevitably in cutting off his communications with Lake George and
Ticonderoga. After such a step he could not go back and he was moving
forward into a dark unknown. The American camp was at Stillwater, twelve
miles farther down the river. Burgoyne sent messenger after messenger
to get past the American lines and bring back news of Howe. Not one
of these unfortunate spies returned. Most of them were caught and
ignominiously hanged. One thing, however, Burgoyne could do. He could
hazard a fight and on this he decided as the autumn was closing in.
Burgoyne had no time to lose, once his force was on the west bank of the
Hudson. General Lincoln cut off his communications with Canada and was
soon laying siege to Ticonderoga. The American army facing Burgoyne was
now commanded by General Gates. This Englishman, the godson of Horace
Walpole, had gained by successful intrigue powerful support in Congress.
That body was always paying too much heed to local claims and jealousies
and on the 2d of August it removed Schuyler of New York because he was
disliked by the soldiers from New England and gave the command to Gates.
Washington was far away maneuvering to meet Howe and he was never able
to watch closely the campaign in the north. Gates, indeed,
considered himself independent of Washington and reported not to the
Commander-in-Chief but direct to Congress. On the 19th of September
Burgoyne attacked Gates in a strong entrenched position on Bemis
Heights, at Stillwater. There was a long and bitter fight, but by
evening Burgoyne had not carried the main position and had lost more
than five hundred men whom he could ill spare from his scanty numbers.
Burgoyne's condition was now growing desperate. American forces barred
retreat to Canada. He must go back and meet both frontal and flank
attacks, or go forward, or surrender. To go forward now had most
promise, for at last Howe had instructed Clinton, left in command at New
York, to move, and Clinton was making rapid progress up the Hudson. On
the 7th of October Burgoyne attacked again at Stillwater. This time he
was decisively defeated, a result due to the amazing energy in attack
of Benedict Arnold, who had been stripped of his command by an intrigue.
Gates would not even speak to him and his lingering in the American camp
was unwelcome. Yet as a volunteer Arnold charged the British line madly
and broke it. Burgoyne's best general, Fraser, was killed in the fight.
Burgoyne retired to Saratoga and there at last faced the prospects of
getting back to Fort Edward and to Canada. It may be that he could have
cut his way through, but this is doubtful. Without risk of destruction
he could not move in any direction. His enemies now outnumbered him
nearly four to one. His camp was swept by the American guns and his
men were under arms night and day. American sharpshooters stationed
themselves at daybreak in trees about the British camp and any one
who appeared in the open risked his life. If a cap was held up in view
instantly two or three balls would pass through it. His horses were
killed by rifle shots. Burgoyne had little food for his men and none for
his horses. His Indians had long since gone off in dudgeon. Many of
his Canadian French slipped off homeward and so did the Loyalists. The
German troops were naturally dispirited. A British officer tells of the
deadly homesickness of these poor men. They would gather in groups of
two dozen or so and mourn that they would never again see their native
land. They died, a score at a time, of no other disease than sickness
for their homes. They could have no pride in trying to save a lost
cause. Burgoyne was surrounded and, on the 17th of October, he was
obliged to surrender.
Gates proposed to Burgoyne hard terms--surrender with no honors of war.
The British were to lay down their arms in their encampments and to
march out without weapons of any kind. Burgoyne declared that, rather
than accept such terms, he would fight still and take no quarter. A
shadow was falling on the path of Gates. The term of service of some of
his men had expired. The New Englanders were determined to stay and see
the end of Burgoyne but a good many of the New York troops went off.
Sickness, too, was increasing. Above all General Clinton was advancing
up the Hudson. British ships could come up freely as far as Albany and
in a few days Clinton might make a formidable advance. Gates, a timid
man, was in a hurry. He therefore agreed that the British should march
from their camp with the honors of war, that the troops should be taken
to New England, and from there to England. They must not serve again
in North America during the war but there was nothing in the terms to
prevent their serving in Europe and relieving British regiments for
service in America. Gates had the courtesy to keep his army where it
could not see the laying down of arms by Burgoyne's force. About five
thousand men, of whom sixteen hundred were Germans and only three
thousand five hundred fit for duty, surrendered to sixteen thousand
Americans. Burgoyne gave offense to German officers by saying in his
report that he might have held out longer had all his troops been
British. This is probably true but the British met with only a just
Nemesis for using soldiers who had no call of duty to serve.
The army set out on its long march of two hundred miles to Boston. The
late autumn weather was cold, the army was badly clothed and fed, and
the discomfort of the weary route was increased by the bitter antagonism
of the inhabitants. They respected the regular British soldier but at
the Germans they shouted insults and the Loyalists they despised as
traitors. The camp at the journey's end was on the ground at Cambridge
where two years earlier Washington had trained his first army. Every day
Burgoyne expected to embark. There was delay and, at last, he knew
the reason. Congress repudiated the terms granted by Gates. A tangled
dispute followed. Washington probably had no sympathy with the quibbling
of Congress. But he had no desire to see this army return to Europe and
release there an army to serve in America. Burgoyne's force was never
sent to England. For nearly a year it lay at Boston. Then it was marched
to Virginia. The men suffered great hardships and the numbers fell by
desertion and escape. When peace came in 1783 there was no army to take
back to England; Burgoyne's soldiers had been merged into the American
people. It may well be, indeed, that descendants of his beaten men have
played an important part in building up the United States. The irony of
history is unconquerable.