SARATOGA
The surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga, though not, perhaps,
properly classed among battles, is, nevertheless, properly classed
among events momentous in their influence upon the destinies of
nations. Looking upon the American Revolution as a whole and from
a dispassionate distance, Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga is seen
to be the fateful turning of the tide which rolled from crest-wave
English victory back to slow but sure English discomfiture and
ultimate defeat.
As a result of the Colonial victory at Saratoga came recognition
of _the Independent United States of America_, first from France,
later from Spain, and still later from Holland. Confidence was
established; untried troops had stood breast to breast against
veterans of the British army, against skilled Grenadiers, and these
untried troops had won; they had caused the proud British general
to retreat from place to place, they had surrounded him at last on
Saratoga Heights and forced him to capitulate. The independence
of the thirteen original states and all evolutionary Republican
America lay potential in the victory of Generals Gates and Arnold
over Burgoyne and his veterans at Saratoga.
PLAN.
“The best laid plans of mice and men
Gang aft agley.”--_Burns._
Burgoyne’s plan was good; and had not General St. Leger failed to
capture Fort Stanwix and then to proceed along the Mohawk to its
confluence with the Hudson and there join his force to that of
Burgoyne; and had not General Baum failed to win the battle of
Bennington and so secure the magazines of provisions so sorely
needed by the British army; and had not Lord Howe considered
it more advantageous to cross over to the Delaware and attack
Philadelphia, rather than remain at New York ready for emergency;
and had not General Clinton been retarded in his victorious advance
up from Albany; if all, or perhaps any one of these conditions
had been the reverse of what they were, why, history might be the
reverse of what it is.
Momentous little things--so seeming trifling, inconsequential,
negligible--and yet potential of cataclysmic calamity! An insect
bores into the heart of an oak, and the forest monarch falls: a
tiny trickling rill freezes in the rock and the mountain is rent
asunder; a pine twig breaks under its weight of snow and the
awful avalanche comes crashing down. In the moral world, too, the
results seem altogether out of proportion to the cause: a glance
of suspicion and the bloom of perfect trust is gone from the heart
forever; an unkind word and love withers, a deed--it dies; one lie,
one little wormy lie, and the fair integrity of character has in it
the boring insect with which it may, indeed, flourish full foliage
for a season, but by which, in the end, it must, being hollow
hearted, succumb to the storm and fall and die.
Perhaps when Burgoyne sent for the Indians and made them part of
his fighting force, he then admitted into his moral makeup, as well
as his military, the mighty _little thing_ which should silently
yet forcefully work disaster. For many men who were irresolute as
to which side to join, being indeed loyal at heart to the mother
country and hesitating to strike against her, boldly threw in
their fortunes with the Colonists when they heard that the Red Man
formed part of the force of the advancing army. They knew what
savage warfare meant even better than Burgoyne knew. Many are
inclined to excuse Burgoyne on the plea that he knew nothing of
the horrible atrocities of the Indians when intoxicated with the
blood of battle: but fate did not excuse him. His Indians never
knew the intoxication of victorious battle--thanks to the stern
resolution of men who fought in defence of mothers, sisters, wives,
and children shuddering in nearby homes: and as defeat came and
ignominious retreat from post to post before the enraged advance
of a conquering foe, the Indians deserted the army and slunk away
through the western wilds back to their native tribes.
BENEDICT ARNOLD.
Strange that history remembers only Arnold the Traitor and not
Arnold the hero of Ticonderoga, Quebec, and Saratoga. Too bad he
didn’t die in that brilliant charge upon Burgoyne’s intrenchments,
where after overcoming all obstacles and apparently just on the
point of victory he was wounded in the same leg that had been
painfully injured in the assault on Quebec--and carried fainting
and profusely bleeding from the field. To be twice wounded for a
cause and then to betray it--perverse human heart, who shall know
its depths of perversity!
And yet the events since that time, which Arnold could not foresee
or foreknow, rather than the concomitant circumstances of that
time, which Arnold saw and knew, have proclaimed him Traitor. And
had the results been otherwise, had not his own mad efforts helped
turn the tide at Saratoga, Arnold might now be known as a shrewdly
diplomatic young officer who, influenced by a beautiful Tory
wife and seeing the cause of the Colonists desperate, had timely
transferred his allegiance to the British army and bravely helped
along the conquering cause of the mother country.
And Major Andre sleeps in honored rest in old Westminster Abbey;
while the man twice wounded in battle, the hero of Ticonderoga,
Quebec, and Saratoga sleeps in an unhonored grave having as
epitaph indelibly traced upon surrounding air and earth and water
and sky--Arnold the Traitor.
GENERAL FRAZER.
General Frazer was mortally wounded in the engagement which took
place October 7th. He died in camp the following day. The Italian
historian Botta gives the following account of his burial. “Toward
midnight, the body of General Frazer was buried in the British
camp. His brother officers assembled sadly around while the
funeral service was read over the remains of their brave comrade,
and his body was committed to the hostile earth. The ceremony,
always mournful and solemn of itself, was rendered even terrible
by the sense of recent losses, of present and future dangers, and
of regret for the deceased. Meanwhile, the blaze and roar of the
American artillery amid the natural darkness and stillness of the
night came on the senses with startling awe. The grave had been dug
within range of the enemy’s batteries; and while the service was
proceeding, a cannon ball struck the ground close to the coffin,
and spattered earth over the face of the officiating chaplain.”
There is something painfully pathetic in the scene thus presented
to the imagination. War has no respect for the rights of the living
or the dying or the dead.
SURRENDER.
On the 13th of October, 1777, General Burgoyne, besieged by
overpowering numbers on the heights of Saratoga and seeing that his
army was facing disease and famine, and being unable to establish
communication either with Lord Howe or with General Clinton--opened
negotiations with General Gates as to conditions of surrender.
At first General Gates demanded that the royal army should
surrender themselves prisoners of war. Burgoyne refused.
It was later agreed upon that “the troops under General Burgoyne
were to march out of their camp with the honors of war, and the
artillery--of the entrenchments, to the verge of the river, where
the arms and the artillery were to be left. The arms to be piled
by word of command from their own officers. A free passage was to
be granted to the army under Lieutenant General Burgoyne to Great
Britain upon condition of not serving again in North America during
the present contest.”
These conditions having been formally accepted, an army of weak and
wounded men laboriously descended the heights and marched out to
the place appointed for the laying down of arms. General Gates was
on this occasion extremely courteous, and the Colonial troops were
soon fraternizing with the English soldiers and striving in every
way to supply their many needs and wants.
General Clinton, who was but fifty miles down the river with
supplies and men, heard with dismay of Burgoyne’s surrender. Lord
Howe’s plans were all broken up by this sudden change of fortune.
And the far away, sleepily stubborn British Parliament felt the
first cold intimation that it might possibly be _wrong_ and Burke
might possibly be _right_ in their respective estimates of the
rebel children in the wide awake, wonderful New World.
And so the failure of the New York plans, culminating in Burgoyne’s
surrender at Saratoga, proved to be one of the mighty _little
things_ potential of results that change the destinies of nations.