had met with varying fortunes. They had been defeated in the
Battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776, and at White Plains,
October 28th. Forts Washington and Lee, defences of the
Hudson, were both lost, and the Americans retreated through
New Jersey. By a masterly return movement Washington
retrieved the situation, winning the Battle of Trenton,
December 26, 1776, and that of Princeton, January 3, 1777.
On August 16, 1777, Stark gained the Battle of Bennington,
but within a month (September 11th) Washington was beaten by
Howe on the Brandywine, and the Americans suffered defeat at
Germantown October 4th. In this state of affairs the
movements of Burgoyne, who had invaded New York from Canada,
were watched with deep concern on both sides.
The final operations between the Americans and Burgoyne's
forces included two engagements, which are often spoken of
as the Battles of Saratoga, also as the Battles of
Stillwater or of Bemis' Heights, from the local names.
The first of these actions, that of September 19, 1777, in
which Gates, with Morgan and Arnold under him, commanded the
Americans, was indecisive. Under the same commanders the
Americans (October 7th) won the decisive victory which
Creasy describes. His opening statement shows the modern
English sentiment concerning the American Revolution, and
this feeling finds its correlative in the gradual change of
tone on the part of American writers.
The war which rent away the North American colonies from England is, of
all subjects in history, the most painful for an Englishman to dwell on.
It was commenced and carried on by the British ministry in iniquity and
folly, and it was concluded in disaster and shame. But the contemplation
of it cannot be evaded by the historian, however much it may be
abhorred. Nor can any military event be said to have exercised more
important influence on the future fortunes of mankind than the complete
defeat of Burgoyne's expedition in 1777; a defeat which rescued the
revolted colonists from certain subjection, and which, by inducing the
courts of France and Spain to attack England in their behalf, insured
the independence of the United States, and the formation of that
transatlantic power which not only America, but both Europe and Asia,
now see and feel.
Still, in proceeding to describe this "decisive battle of the world," a
very brief recapitulation of the earlier events of the war may be
sufficient; nor shall I linger unnecessarily on a painful theme.
The five Northern colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
New Hampshire, and Vermont, usually classed together as the New England
colonies, were the strongholds of the insurrection against the
mother-country. The feeling of resistance was less vehement and general
in the central settlement of New York, and still less so in
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the other colonies of the South, although
everywhere it was formidably strong.
But it was among the descendants of the stern Puritans that the spirit
of Cromwell and Vane breathed in all its fervor; it was from the New
Englanders that the first armed opposition to the British crown had been
offered; and it was by them that the most stubborn determination to
fight to the last, rather than waive a single right or privilege, had
been displayed. In 1775 they had succeeded in forcing the British troops
to evacuate Boston; and the events of 1776 had made New York--which the
royalists captured in that year--the principal basis of operations for
the armies of the mother-country.
A glance at the map will show that the Hudson River, which falls into
the Atlantic at New York, runs down from the north at the back of the
New England States, forming an angle of about forty-five degrees with
the line of the coast of the Atlantic, along which the New England
States are situate. Northward of the Hudson we see a small chain of
lakes communicating with the Canadian frontier. It is necessary to
attend closely to these geographical points in order to understand the
plan of the operations which the English attempted in 1777, and which
the battle of Saratoga defeated.
The English had a considerable force in Canada, and in 1776 had
completely repulsed an attack which the Americans had made upon that
province. The British ministry resolved to avail themselves, in the next
year, of the advantage which the occupation of Canada gave them, not
merely for the purpose of defence, but for the purpose of striking a
vigorous and crushing blow against the revolted colonies. With this view
the army in Canada was largely reenforced. Seven thousand veteran troops
were sent out from England, with a corps of artillery, abundantly
supplied and led by select and experienced officers. Large quantities of
military stores were also furnished for the equipment of the Canadian
volunteers, who were expected to join the expedition.
It was intended that the force thus collected should march southward by
the line of the Lakes, and thence along the banks of the Hudson River.
The British army from New York--or a large detachment of it--was to make
a simultaneous movement northward, up the line of the Hudson, and the
two expeditions were to unite at Albany, a town on that river. By these
operations, all communication between the Northern colonies and those of
the Centre and South would be cut off. An irresistible force would be
concentrated, so as to crush all further opposition in New England; and
when this was done, it was believed that the other colonies would
speedily submit. The Americans had no troops in the field that seemed
able to baffle these movements.
Their principal army, under Washington, was occupied in watching over
Pennsylvania and the South. At any rate, it was believed that, in order
to oppose the plan intended for the new campaign, the insurgents must
risk a pitched battle, in which the superiority of the royalists in
numbers, in discipline, and in equipment seemed to promise to the latter
a crowning victory. Without question, the plan was ably formed; and had
the success of the execution been equal to the ingenuity of the design,
the reconquest or submission of the thirteen United States must in all
human probability have followed, and the independence which they
proclaimed in 1776 would have been extinguished before it existed a
second year.
No European power had as yet come forward to aid America. It is true
that England was generally regarded with jealousy and ill-will, and was
thought to have acquired, at the Treaty of Paris, a preponderance of
dominion which was perilous to the balance of power; but, though many
were willing to wound, none had yet ventured to strike; and America, if
defeated in 1777, would have been suffered to fall unaided.
Burgoyne had gained celebrity by some bold and dashing exploits in
Portugal during the last war; he was personally as brave an officer as
ever headed British troops, he had considerable skill as a tactician;
and his general intellectual abilities and acquirements were of a high
order. He had several very able and experienced officers under him,
among whom were Major-General Philips and Brigadier-General Frazer. His
regular troops amounted, exclusively of the corps of artillery, to about
seven thousand two hundred men, rank and file. Nearly half of these were
Germans.
He had also an auxiliary force of from two to three thousand Canadians.
He summoned the warriors of several tribes of the red Indians near the
Western Lakes to join his army. Much eloquence was poured forth both in
America and in England in denouncing the use of these savage
auxiliaries. Yet Burgoyne seems to have done no more than Montcalm,
Wolfe, and other French, American, and English generals had done before
him. But, in truth, the lawless ferocity of the Indians, their
unskilfulness in regular action, and the utter impossibility of bringing
them under any discipline made their services of little or no value in
times of difficulty; while the indignation which their outrages inspired
went far to rouse the whole population of the invaded districts into
active hostilities against Burgoyne's force.
Burgoyne assembled his troops and confederates near the River Bouquet,
on the west side of Lake Champlain. He then, on June 21, 1777, gave his
red allies a war-feast, and harangued them on the necessity of
abstaining from their usual cruel practices against unarmed people and
prisoners. At the same time he published a pompous manifesto to the
Americans, in which he threatened the refractory with all the horrors of
war, Indian as well as European.
The army proceeded by water to Crown Point, a fortification which the
Americans held at the northern extremity of the inlet, by which the
water from Lake George is conveyed to Lake Champlain. He landed here
without opposition, but the reduction of Ticonderoga--a fortification
about twelve miles to the south of Crown Point--was a more serious
matter, and was supposed to be the critical part of the expedition.
Ticonderoga commanded the passage along the lakes, and was considered to
be the key to the route which Burgoyne wished to follow. The English had
been repulsed in an attack on it in the war with the French in 1758,
with severe loss. But Burgoyne now invested it with great skill; and the
American general, St. Clair, who had only an ill-equipped army of about
three thousand men, evacuated it on July 5th.
It seems evident that a different course would have caused the
destruction or capture of his whole army, which, weak as it was, was the
chief force then in the field for the protection of the New England
States. When censured by some of his countrymen for abandoning
Ticonderoga, St. Clair truly replied "that he had lost a post, but saved
a province." Burgoyne's troops pursued the retiring Americans, gained
several advantages over them, and took a large part of their artillery
and military stores.
The loss of the British in these engagements was trifling. The army
moved southward along Lake George to Skenesborough, and thence, slowly
and with great difficulty, across a broken country, full of creeks and
marshes, and clogged by the enemy with felled trees and other obstacles,
to Fort Edward, on the Hudson River, the American troops continuing to
retire before them.
Burgoyne reached the left bank of the Hudson River on July 30th.
Hitherto he had overcome every difficulty which the enemy and the nature
of the country had placed in his way. His army was in excellent order
and in the highest spirits, and the peril of the expedition seemed over
when they were once on the bank of the river which was to be the channel
of communication between them and the British army in the South. But
their feelings, and those of the English nation in general, when their
successes were announced, may best be learned from a contemporary
writer. Burke, in the _Annual Register_ for 1777, describes them thus:
"Such was the rapid torrent of success, which swept everything away
before the Northern army in its onset. It is not to be wondered at if
both officers and private men were highly elated with their
good-fortune, and deemed that and their prowess to be irresistible; if
they regarded their enemy with the greatest contempt; considered their
own toils to be nearly at an end; Albany to be already in their hands;
and the reduction of the Northern provinces to be rather a matter of
some time than an arduous task full of difficulty and danger.
"At home the joy and exultation were extreme; not only at court, but
with all those who hoped or wished the unqualified subjugation and
unconditional submission of the colonies. The loss in reputation was
greater to the Americans, and capable of more fatal consequences, than
even that of ground, of posts, of artillery, or of men. All the
contemptuous and most degrading charges which had been made by their
enemies, of their wanting the resolution and abilities of men, even in
their defence of whatever was dear to them, were now repeated and
believed.
"Those who still regarded them as men, and who had not yet lost all
affection for them as brethren; who also retained hopes that a happy
reconciliation upon constitutional principles, without sacrificing the
dignity of the just authority of government on the one side or a
dereliction of the rights of freedmen on the other, was not even now
impossible, notwithstanding their favorable dispositions in general,
could not help feeling upon this occasion that the Americans sunk not a
little in their estimation. It was not difficult to diffuse an opinion
that the war in effect was over, and that any further resistance could
serve only to render the terms of their submission the worse. Such were
some of the immediate effects of the loss of those grand keys of North
America--Ticonderoga and the Lakes."
The astonishment and alarm which these events produced among the
Americans were naturally great; but in the midst of their disasters,
none of the colonists showed any disposition to submit. The local
governments of the New England States, as well as the Congress, acted
with vigor and firmness in their efforts to repel the enemy. General
Gates was sent to take the command of the army at Saratoga; and Arnold,
a favorite leader of the Americans, was despatched by Washington to act
under him, with reenforcements of troops and guns from the main
American army.
Burgoyne's employment of the Indians now produced the worst possible
effects. Though he labored hard to check the atrocities which they were
accustomed to commit, he could not prevent the occurrence of many
barbarous outrages, repugnant both to the feelings of humanity and to
the laws of civilized warfare. The American commanders took care that
the reports of these excesses should be circulated far and wide, well
knowing that they would make the stern New Englanders, not droop, but
rage. Such was their effect; and though, when each man looked upon his
wife, his children, his sisters, or his aged parents, and thought of the
merciless Indian "thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child," of
"the cannibal savage torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating the
mangled victims of his barbarous battles," might raise terror in the
bravest breasts; this very terror produced a directly contrary effect to
causing submission to the royal army.
It was seen that the few friends of the royal cause, as well as its
enemies, were liable to be the victims of the indiscriminate rage of the
savages; and thus "the inhabitants of the open and frontier countries
had no choice of acting: they had no means of security left but by
abandoning their habitations and taking up arms. Every man saw the
necessity of becoming a temporary soldier, not only for his own
security, but for the protection and defence of those connections which
are dearer than life itself. Thus an army was poured forth by the woods,
mountains, and marches, which in this part were thickly sown with
plantations and villages. The Americans recalled their courage, and,
when their regular army seemed to be entirely wasted, the spirit of the
country produced a much greater and more formidable force."
While resolute recruits, accustomed to the use of fire-arms, and all
partially trained by service in the provincial militias, were thus
flocking to the standard of Gates and Arnold at Saratoga, and while
Burgoyne was engaged at Fort Edward in providing the means of the
further advance of the army through the intricate and hostile country
that still lay before him, two events occurred, in each of which the
British sustained loss and the Americans obtained advantage, the moral
effects of which were even more important than the immediate result of
the encounters. When Burgoyne left Canada, General St. Leger was
detached from that province with a mixed force of about one thousand men
and some light field-pieces across Lake Ontario against Fort Stanwix,
which the Americans held. After capturing this, he was to march along
the Mohawk River to its confluence with the Hudson, between Saratoga and
Albany, where his force and that of Burgoyne's were to unite. But, after
some successes, St. Leger was obliged to retreat, and to abandon his
tents and large quantities of stores to the garrison.
At the very time that General Burgoyne heard of this disaster he
experienced one still more severe in the defeat of Colonel Baum, with a
large detachment of German troops, at Bennington, whither Burgoyne had
sent them for the purpose of capturing some magazines of provisions, of
which the British army stood greatly in need. The Americans, augmented
by continual accessions of strength, succeeded, after many attacks, in
breaking this corps, which fled into the woods, and left its commander
mortally wounded on the field: they then marched against a force of five
hundred grenadiers and light infantry, which was advancing to Colonel
Baum's assistance under Lieutenant-Colonel Breyman, who, after a gallant
resistance, was obliged to retreat on the main army. The British loss in
these two actions exceeded six hundred men; and a party of American
loyalists, on their way to join the army, having attached themselves to
Colonel Baum's corps, were destroyed with it.
Notwithstanding these reverses, which added greatly to the spirit and
numbers of the American forces, Burgoyne determined to advance. It was
impossible any longer to keep up his communications with Canada by way
of the Lakes, so as to supply his army on his southward march; but
having, by unremitting exertions, collected provisions for thirty days,
he crossed the Hudson by means of a bridge of rafts, and, marching a
short distance along its western bank, he encamped on September 14th on
the heights of Saratoga, about sixteen miles from Albany. The Americans
had fallen back from Saratoga, and were now strongly posted near
Stillwater, about half way between Saratoga and Albany, and showed a
determination to recede no farther.
Meanwhile Lord Howe, with the bulk of the British army that had lain at
New York, had sailed away to the Delaware, and there commenced a
campaign against Washington, in which the English general took
Philadelphia, and gained other showy but unprofitable successes. But Sir
Henry Clinton, a brave and skilful officer, was left with a considerable
force at New York, and he undertook the task of moving up the Hudson to
cooperate with Burgoyne. Clinton was obliged for this purpose to wait
for reenforcements which had been promised from England, and these did
not arrive till September. As soon as he received them, Clinton embarked
about three thousand of his men on a flotilla, convoyed by some
ships-of-war under Commander Hotham, and proceeded to force his way up
the river.
The country between Burgoyne's position at Saratoga and that of the
Americans at Stillwater was rugged, and seamed with creeks and
water-courses; but, after great labor in making bridges and temporary
causeways, the British army moved forward. About four miles from
Saratoga, on the afternoon of September 19th, a sharp encounter took
place between part of the English right wing, under Burgoyne himself,
and a strong body of the enemy, under Gates and Arnold. The conflict
lasted till sunset. The British remained masters of the field; but the
loss on each side was nearly equal--from five to six hundred men--and
the spirits of the Americans were greatly raised by having withstood the
best regular troops of the English army.
Burgoyne now halted again, and strengthened his position by field-works
and redoubts; and the Americans also improved their defences. The two
armies remained nearly within cannon-shot of each other for a
considerable time, during which Burgoyne was anxiously looking for
intelligence of the promised expedition from New York, which, according
to the original plan, ought by this time to have been approaching Albany
from the south. At last a messenger from Clinton made his way, with
great difficulty, to Burgoyne's camp, and brought the information that
Clinton was on his way up the Hudson to attack the American forts which
barred the passage up that river to Albany. Burgoyne, in reply, stated
his hopes that the promised cooperation would be speedy and decisive,
and added that, unless he received assistance before October 10th, he
would be obliged to retreat to the Lakes through want of provisions.
The Indians and Canadians now began to desert Burgoyne, while, on the
other hand, Gates' army was continually reenforced by fresh bodies of
the militia. An expeditionary force was detached by the Americans, which
made a bold though unsuccessful attempt to retake Ticonderoga. And
finding the number and spirit of the enemy to increase daily, and his
own stores of provisions to diminish, Burgoyne determined on attacking
the Americans in front of him, and, by dislodging them from their
position, to gain the means of moving upon Albany, or, at least, of
relieving his troops from the straitened position in which they were
cooped up.
Burgoyne's force was now reduced to less than six thousand men. The
right of his camp was on high ground a little to the west of the river;
thence his intrenchments extended along the lower ground to the bank of
the Hudson, their line being nearly at a right angle with the course of
the stream. The lines were fortified in the centre and on the left with
redoubts and field-works. The numerical force of the Americans was now
greater than the British, even in regular troops, and the numbers of the
militia and volunteers which had joined Gates and Arnold were greater
still. The right of the American position--that is to say, the part of
it nearest to the river--was too strong to be assailed with any prospect
of success, and Burgoyne therefore determined to endeavor to force their
left. For this purpose he formed a column of fifteen hundred regular
troops, with two twelve-pounders, two howitzers, and six six-pounders.
He headed this in person, having Generals Philips, Reidesel, and Frazer
under him. The enemy's force immediately in front of his lines was so
strong that he dared not weaken the troops who guarded them by detaching
any more to strengthen his column of attack. The right of the camp was
commanded by Generals Hamilton and Spaight; the left part of it was
committed to the charge of Brigadier Goll.
It was on October 7th that Burgoyne led his column on to the attack; and
on the preceding day, the 6th, Clinton had successfully executed a
brilliant enterprise against the two American forts which barred his
progress up the Hudson. He had captured them both, with severe loss to
the American forces opposed to him; he had destroyed the fleet which the
Americans had been forming on the Hudson, under the protection of their
forts; and the upward river was laid open to his squadron. He was now
only a hundred fifty-six miles distant from Burgoyne, and a detachment
of one thousand seven hundred men actually advanced within forty miles
of Albany. Unfortunately, Burgoyne and Clinton were each ignorant of the
other's movements; but if Burgoyne had won his battle on the 7th, he
must, on advancing, have soon learned the tidings of Clinton's success,
and Clinton would have heard of his.
A junction would soon have been made of the two victorious armies, and
the great objects of the campaign might yet have been accomplished. All
depended on the fortune of the column with which Burgoyne, on the
eventful October 7, 1777, advanced against the American position. There
were brave men, both English and German, in its ranks; and, in
particular, it comprised one of the best bodies of grenadiers in the
British service.