TICONDEROGA; HUBBARDTON.
Notwithstanding all that Sir Guy Carleton had accomplished in driving
the American army from Canada, and regaining control of Lake Champlain
as far as Ticonderoga, his management of the campaigns had not fully
satisfied the ministry. He was blamed for dismissing his Indian allies
when he found it impossible to prevent their killing and scalping of
prisoners; and he was blamed that, with a well-appointed army of
invincible Britons, he had not in one campaign utterly destroyed or
dispersed the rabble rout of colonial rebels. Consequently the command
of the army in Canada, designed for offensive operations, was given to
Sir John Burgoyne, a court favorite; while Carleton, the far abler
general, was left in command only of the 3,700 troops reserved for the
defense of the province.
In June, Burgoyne's army of more than 7,000 regular troops embarked at
St. John's, and made undisputed progress up the lake to the mouth of the
Bouquet. Here it encamped on the deserted estate of William Gilliland,
who had bought an immense tract in this region and made a settlement at
the falls of the Bouquet in 1765, but was obliged to abandon it during
the war. At this place the Indians were assembled, Iroquois and
Waubanakees gathered under one banner, and alike hungry for scalps and
plunder. Burgoyne addressed them in a grandiloquent speech, modeled in
the supposed style of aboriginal eloquence, exhorting them to deeds of
valor, to be tempered with a humanity impossible to the savages, and was
briefly answered by an old chief of the Iroquois.
Moving forward to Crown Point, the army briefly rested there before
advancing upon Ticonderoga. The general issued a proclamation to the
inhabitants, inviting all who would to join him, and offering protection
to such as remained quietly at their homes, and in no way obstructed the
operations of his army, or assisted his enemies; while those who did not
accept his clemency were threatened with the horrors of Indian warfare.
Having delivered himself of speech and proclamation, Burgoyne continued
his advance on Ticonderoga.
The post was not in the best condition for defense, as General Schuyler,
now commanding the Northern Department, discovered when visiting it
while Burgoyne was airing his eloquence at the Bouquet. The old French
lines had been somewhat strengthened, and block-houses built on the
right and left of them. More labor had been expended on the defenses of
Mount Independence, a water battery erected at the fort, and another
battery half way up the declivity. Communication between the forts was
maintained by a bridge thrown across the lake, consisting of twenty-two
piers, connected by floats fifty feet long and twenty wide. On the lower
side, this bridge was protected by a boom of immense timbers fastened
together by double chains of inch and a half square iron. To garrison
these extensive works, General St. Clair, now the commander of
Ticonderoga, had but few more than 2,500 Continental troops, and 900
poorly armed and equipped militia. He had been unwilling to call in more
of the militia, for fear of a failure of supplies.
But a danger more potent than the weakness of the garrison lurked in the
silent heights of Sugar Loaf Hill, now better known as Mount Defiance,
that, westward from Ticonderoga, and overlooking it and all its
outworks, bars the horizon with rugged steeps of rock and sharp incline
of woodland. Colonel John Trumbull, of Revolutionary and artistic fame,
had suggested to General Gates the advisability of fortifying it, saying
that it commanded both Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. The idea was
ridiculed, and he obtained leave to test the truth of his assertion. A
shot from a twelve-pounder on Mount Independence struck half way up the
mountain, and a six-pound shot fired from the glacis of Ticonderoga
struck near the summit. Yet the Americans did not occupy it then, nor
now, though a consultation was held concerning it. It was decided that
there were not men enough to spare for the purpose from the
fortifications already established. St. Clair hoped, moreover, that
Burgoyne would choose rather to assault than besiege his position, and
an assault he thought he might successfully repel.
The General Convention now sitting at Windsor sent Colonel Mead, James
Mead, Ira Allen, and Captain Salisbury to consult with the commander of
Ticonderoga on the defense of the frontier. While this committee was
there, General Burgoyne advanced up the lake, and during his stay at
Crown Point sent a force of 300, most of whom were Indians, to the mouth
of Otter Creek to raid upon the settlers. The committee was refused any
troops for the defense of the frontiers, but Colonel Warner was allowed
to go with them, and presently raised men enough to repel this invasion.
On the 1st of July Warner wrote from Rutland to the convention that the
enemy had come up the lake with seventeen or eighteen gunboats, two
large ships, and other craft, and an attack was expected every hour;
that he was ordered to call out the militia of Vermont, Massachusetts,
and New Hampshire, to join him as soon as possible, and desired them to
call out the militia on the east side of the mountain, and to send forty
or fifty head of beef cattle for Ticonderoga. "I shall be glad," he
writes in conclusion, "if a few hills of corn unhoed should not be a
motive sufficient to detain men at home, considering the loss of such an
important post might be irretrievable." In view of the impending
invasion of the British, the convention appointed a day of fasting and
prayer, but this pious measure had no apparent effect on the movements
of the enemy, and Burgoyne continued to advance.
His army moved forward on either side of the lake, the war-craft to an
anchorage just out of range of the guns of Ticonderoga and Mount
Independence. The Americans abandoned and set on fire the block-houses
and sawmills towards Lake George, with which the communications were now
cut off.
On the 2d of July a British force of 500, commanded by Frazier, attacked
and drove in the American pickets, and, the right wing moving up, took
possession of Mount Hope. St. Clair expected an assault, and ordered his
men to conceal themselves behind the breastworks, and reserve their
fire. Frazier's force, not perceiving the position of the Americans,
screened as it was by bushes, continued to advance till an American
soldier fired his musket, when the whole line delivered a random volley,
followed by a thunderous discharge of artillery, all without orders, and
without effect but to kill one of the assailants, and raise a cloud of
smoke that hung in the hot, breathless air till the assailants had
escaped behind it out of range.
The possibilities of Mount Defiance had not escaped the eyes of the
British engineers, and they were at once accepted. General Phillips set
himself to the task of making a road up the rocky declivities, over
which heavy siege guns were already being hauled. When, on the morning
of the 5th of July, the sun's first rays shot far above the shadowed
valley, they lighted to a ruddier glow the scarlet uniforms of a swarm
of British soldiers on the bald summit, busy in the construction of a
battery.
St. Clair called a council of his officers, and it was decided that it
was impossible to hold the place, and the only safety of the army was in
immediate evacuation. This was undertaken that night. The baggage,
stores, and all the artillery that could be got away, embarked on 200
batteaux, set forth for Skenesborough under the convoy of five galleys.
The main army was to march to Castleton, and thence to Skenesborough. At
two o'clock on the morning of the 6th of July, St. Clair moved out of
Ticonderoga. Sorrowfully the Green Mountain Boys relinquished, with
almost as little bloodshed as two years before they had gained it, the
fortress that guarded the frontier of their country.
The troops fled across the bridge in silence to the eastern shore, and
an hour later the garrison of Mount Independence began moving out. So
far, the doleful work of evacuation had progressed with such secrecy
that the British were unaware of any movement. Just then a French
officer of the garrison, zealous to destroy what he could not save, set
fire to his house. The sun-dried wooden structure was ablaze in an
instant, lighting up with a lurid glare all the works of the place, the
hurrying troops, the forest border with ghastly ranks of towering
tree-trunks, the bridge still undulating with the tread of just-departed
marching columns, and the slow throb of waves pulsing across the empty
anchorage and breaking against deserted shores.
All was revealed to the British on the heights of Mount Defiance, and
this sudden discovery of their movements threw the Americans into great
confusion, many hurrying away in disorderly retreat. But about four
o'clock Colonel Francis of Massachusetts brought off the rear in good
order, and some of the other regiments were soon recovered from the
panic into which they had fallen.
At Hubbardton the army halted for a rest of two hours, during which time
many stragglers came in, then St. Clair with the main body pressed on to
Castleton, six miles distant. On that same day Hubbardton had already
been raided by Captain Sherwood and a party of Indians and Tories. Of
the nine families that composed the entire population of the town, most
of the men had been taken prisoners, and the defenseless women and
children left to whatever fate might befall them in their plundered
homes, or to make their forlorn way through the wilderness to the
shelter of the older settlements. To Warner was again committed the
covering of a retreat. He was here put in command of the rear-guard,
consisting of his own, Francis's, and Hale's regiments, with orders to
remain till all stragglers should have come in, and then follow a mile
and a half in the rear of the main army.
When the retreat of the Americans was discovered, General Frazier set
forth in hot pursuit with his brigade, presently followed by General
Riedesel with the greater part of the Brunswickers. Frazier kept his
force on the march all through the hot summer day, in burning sunshine
and breathless shade of the woods till nightfall, when, learning that
the American rear was not far in advance, he ordered a halt till
morning. Pushing forward again at daybreak, he came up with his enemy at
five o'clock, and advanced to within sixty yards of the American line of
battle, formed across the road and in the adjacent fields. Colonel Hale
of New Hampshire, with Falstaffian valor, had prudently withdrawn his
regiment, leaving Warner and Francis with not more than 800 men, to bear
the brunt of the impending battle.
The action began at seven with a volley delivered by these two regiments
upon the British, who returned it as hotly. The men of the Massachusetts
border and the mountaineers of Vermont had no lead to waste in aimless
firing, and held rifle and musket straight on the advancing columns of
the enemy. Trained to cut off a partridge's head with a single ball at
thirty yards, they did not often miss the burly form of a Briton at
twice the distance, and their volleys made frightful gaps in the scarlet
line. It wavered and broke. Warner and Francis cheered on their men,
Francis still leading his regiment after a ball had struck him in the
right arm. The British line closed up, and charged upon the Americans,
throwing them into disorder till Warner rallied them, and checked the
British advance. While the fluctuating chances of the fight favored the
Americans, Francis fell, pierced by a bullet in the breast, and, seeing
him fall, his men faltered and began to retreat. When Warner saw them
scattering in disorderly flight, he was overcome with wrath. He dropped
upon a log, and poured forth a storm of curses upon the fugitives.[71]
But it did not stop them, nor, if it had, would it have availed to avert
defeat. Riedesel came up with his Brunswickers, who had toiled onward in
the burning heat for nine hours as bravely as if they were conquering
the country for themselves. They at once engaged in the action, and the
Americans were everywhere routed, fleeing across a little brook, and
scattering in the shelter of the woods beyond it.
Collecting most of his regiment, with his accustomed cool intrepidity,
Warner retreated to Castleton. The others made their way to Fort Edward.
Hale in his retreat had fallen in with a small detachment of the enemy,
to which he surrendered with a number of his regiment without firing a
shot. Learning that he was charged with cowardice, he asked to be
exchanged, that he might have an opportunity to disprove the charge, but
he died while a prisoner on Long Island. St. Clair sent no assistance
to his friends. Writing to General Schuyler of the affair, he said, "The
rear-guard stopped rather imprudently six miles short of the main body,"
when in fact Warner remained at Hubbardton as ordered, while St. Clair
himself advanced beyond supporting distance.
In this first battle of the Revolution on Vermont soil, the Americans
lost Francis, an officer whose bravery was acknowledged by friend and
foe, and whose early death was mourned by both. In killed, wounded, and
prisoners, their loss was 324. The loss of the British force,--about
2,000 strong,--in killed and wounded, was not less than 183. Ethan
Allen, in his narrative, sets the enemy's loss, as learned from
confessions of their own officers, at 300. Among these was the brave
Major Grant, who, while reconnoitring the position of the Americans from
the top of a stump, was picked off by a Yankee rifleman. "I heard them
likewise complain that the Green Mountain Boys took sight," Allen tells
us.
Meanwhile Burgoyne was busy on the lake. By nine o'clock on the morning
of the evacuation, the unfinished boom and the bridge were cut asunder;
the gunboats and the two frigates passed these obstructions, and, with
several regiments on board, went up the channel in rapid pursuit of the
American vessels. At three in the afternoon the gunboats got within
range of the galleys, not far from Skenesborough, and opened fire upon
them. This was returned with some warmth till the frigates were brought
into action, when the galleys were abandoned, three were blown up, and
the other two fell into the hands of the enemy. Having neither the men
nor defenses here to offer any effectual opposition, the Americans set
fire to the fort, mills, and batteaux, and fled up Wood Creek toward
Fort Anne. They were pursued by Colonel Hill with the Ninth British
Regiment, upon whom they turned, and attacked furiously in front with
part of their force, while the other was sent to assail his rear. Hill
withdrew to an eminence, whither the attack followed so hotly that his
complete defeat seemed almost certain, when a large party of Indians
came up. They made the woods ring with the terrible warwhoop, which the
British answered with three lusty cheers, and the uproar of rejoicing
convinced the Americans that a strong reinforcement was at hand;
whereupon they drew off, and, again marking the course of their retreat
with conflagration by setting fire to Fort Anne, retired to Fort Edward.
On the 12th, here also St. Clair joined the main army under Schuyler,
after a weary march over wretched roads.
England was exultant over the fall of famous Ticonderoga. The king
rushed into the queen's apartments, shouting, "I have beaten them! I
have beaten all the Americans!" and such was the universal feeling in
the mother country. In America was as universal consternation, which
only found relief in storms of abuse poured upon St. Clair and upon
Schuyler, who, as commander of the northern army, received his full
share of blame, though both had done the best their circumstances
permitted.
Yet it proved not such a disaster to the Americans, nor such an
advantage to the British, as it then appeared to each. Burgoyne was
obliged to weaken his army by leaving an eighth of it to garrison a post
that proved to be of no especial value to him, when, after a rapid and
an almost unopposed advance to the head of the lake, he began to
encounter serious hindrances to his progress.
For some days he continued at Skenesborough, and issued thence a second
proclamation to the people of the Grants, offering to those who should
meet Colonel Skene at Castleton "terms by which the disobedient may yet
be spared." Schuyler addressed a counter proclamation to the same
people, warning them that, if they made terms with the enemy, they would
be treated as traitors; and he continually urged them to remove all
cattle and carriages beyond reach of the enemy.
Schuyler had two brigades of militia and Continentals busily employed in
destroying bridges, and obstructing roads by felling huge trees across
them, and, in all ways that expert axemen and woodsmen could devise,
making difficult the passage of an army. Having accomplished this,
Schuyler abandoned Fort Edward, which was in no condition for defense,
and fell back to Stillwater, thirty miles above Albany.
When Burgoyne began to advance toward Fort Edward, his progress was
slow and tedious. The obstructed channel of Wood Creek was cleared to
Fort Anne, roads cleared and repaired, and forty bridges rebuilt,
before, at the snail's pace of a mile in twenty-four hours, he reached
Fort Edward. When, on the 30th of July, he established his headquarters
here on the Hudson, there was great rejoicing in his army; for now it
was thought all serious obstacles were past, and the safe and easy path
to Albany lay open before them.
The fall of Ticonderoga and the almost unchecked invasion of their
country created a panic among the settlers of western Vermont.
Burgoyne's threat of turning loose his Indian allies upon the obdurate
incensed most and alarmed all who were exposed to the horrors of such
cruel warfare. A few half-hearted Whigs, who became known as
Protectioners,--a name but little less opprobrious than Tory,--availed
themselves of his proffered clemency, and sought the protection of his
army; and a few Tories seized the opportunity now offered to take the
side to which they had always inclined.
All the farms in the exposed region were abandoned, the owners carrying
away such of their effects as could be hastily removed on horseback and
in their few carts and wagons, and, driving their stock before them,
hurried toward a place of refuge. The main highways leading
southward--at fords, bridges, and the almost impassable mudholes that
were common to the new-country roads--were choked with horsemen,
footmen, lumbering vehicles heavily laden with women, children, and
house-gear, and with struggling and straying flocks and herds.
FOOTNOTES:
[71] Chipman's _Life of Warner_.