Volume 4, Chapter 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, Colonel Barry St. Leisure set off for Fort Oswego in the Mohawk Valley to Albany with a force of 1,700, including 1,000 Indians under the brilliant Mohawk Warchief Joseph Brandt.
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
Rotamontade. Burke ridiculed it, and the Whig rider Horace Walpole denounced the vaporing
Burgoyne, that pomposo and hurloth rumbo. 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 Shuler 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
Shuler 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
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 Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair with 3,200 men,
while Schuler 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 Mount Defiance, southwest of the fort, unfortified.
Gates, seeing the danger of the peaks falling to the British, had repeatedly urged its fortification during 1776, but Shuler paid no heed.
paid no heed. During his two months tenure in command in 1777, Gates and the brilliant Polish engineer, Colonel Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who had come to America to fight for the revolutionary cause, prepared to fortify Mount Defiance.
But Gates was replaced in May before he could get the project underway.
Even after May, he continued to pepper Shuler with warnings, but Shuler again paid no attention.
Seeing the possibilities, the British seized two of the three hills at once, and by July 5, British General William Phillips had transported several cannon to the top of Mount Defiance.
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 in its hills, Hoverton and Castleton
across the lake in Vermont, Skeensboro near Whitehall, New York, and Fort Ann. Colonel
Colonel Seth Warner and a rear guard carelessly dwindled, 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, totaling 200. Warner, leader of the American
rear guard, 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 the British
and others alike, it seemed that a complete victory for Burgoyne was inevitable.
Albany was only 70 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 Schuler.
On the brink of victory, once again, the British stopped to rest at Skeensboro instead of pressing
their advantage to a swift conclusion.
In drawing up his plans for the campaign, Burgoyne had specifically rejected the route
from Skeensboro to Fort Edward because it led through dense forest 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 Tory
Major Philip Skeen.
Skeen had obtained an arbitrary grant of over 30,000 acres in this region and was the owner
of the Skeensboro colony on that land.
Now he was eager to have purgoyne cut a road from Skeensboro to the Hudson, as this would
greatly raise the value of his property after the war.
By going to Fort Edward by land through the Skeensboro-Fort Ann area, instead of sailing
down Lake George, and by dragging over fifty guns with him on the march, Burgoyne greatly
slowed his own advance. Schuller astutely delayed him further by diverting creek water
with boulders and by sending axmen to fell thousands of trees across the line of march.
Vergoine took twenty days to traverse twenty miles to Fort 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 Battenkill.
Schuyler established American positions at Stillwater, twenty-five miles to the south
on the Hudson River.
As Shulow 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 General Benjamin Lincoln joined the force, and Daniel Morgan, released
in an exchange of prisoners the previous summer, had been given a hand-picked corps of five
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 23rd,
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
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.
For 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
for a much larger and more powerful army. Stopping at Fort Miller and suffering from over-extended supply lines, Burgoyne decided, upon the urging of the Hessian commander, Major General Baron von Riedesel, to detach a mixed force of only 700 under Lieutenant Colonel 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, Boehm accidentally encountered a body of 2,000 American militia under General John Stark. Stark had served brilliantly in the Continental Army from Bunker Hill to Canada to Princeton, but he, like Arnold, had been passing
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% of the enrolled voters of that state.
This force was joined at Bennington by 500 Massachusetts and Vermont militia.
General Schuler and Lincoln had ordered him to join Schuler'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 Lieutenant Colonel Henrik von Brehmann 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 shirt sleeves 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, Brehman's force appeared, having absurdly plotted along at one mile an hour
in parade ground formation.
At the same time, Seth Warner arrived with nearly four hundred men, and the combined
American force sent Brehman fleeing back to Burgoyne with well over two hundred casualties.
Not only did Burgoyne not get his supplies, but he had lost the huge chunk of nearly one
The Great Lesson to be Absorbed by All Counter-Revolutionary
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. Leisure, slicing east across the Mohawk.
St. Leisure, 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 in 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. Leisure.
The leading Indian ally of the British was the brilliant young Joseph Brandt,
War Chief of the Mohawk Nation.
Brandt had been raised as a member of the Johnson family and his sister was Sir William's wife.
Brandt had been restless to attack the settlers since 1775, but Carlton 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.
Brandt and the Iroquois rushed to join St. Leisure for the fray.
Marching east from Oswego, St. Leisure 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 Willet, a radical.
St. Ledger laid siege to the fort.
General Nicholas Herkimer, a German-American who commanded the Tryon Militia,
marched west along the Mohawk with nearly 800 militia men eager to defend their homes against the Indian menace.
Reaching Oriskany Creek, eight miles short of Stanwycks,
he realized that he could not attack St. Ledger'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. Leisure's army, was understandably sensitive.
On August 6, he was finally goaded into pressing on a few miles west, where Brandt, commanding 400 Indians and over 100 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 Ouellette
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 Brandt's urging, they began to desert and drift away by the
St. Leisure 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 Schuler 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. Leisure and
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. Leisure 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
The St. Leisure Threat was over, and Burgoyne was now completely alone. Burgoyne's misfortunes, moreover, were now aggravated by the 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 strength,
rates, 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 Shulersville, in mid-September to launch
a march to Albany. By this bold step, Burgoyne cut off any chance of retreat and came into
to 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 Schuler, and in early August it replaced Schuler with his old competitor Gates. Gates
Gates reached the American camp on August 19. The American's 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.
And then after, he exalted 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 in respect for the New England soldiers who formed the bulk of his
army, an outlook Shuler did not share.
Close to his men and sharing the rigors and dangers of his troops, Gates had great confidence
in the ordinary non-professional 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
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
in 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 plows, the smith his anvil, Cobbler
and Taylor 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
Schuler had stationed it, 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 advanced
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's left on the morning of
September 19, Gates sent Morgan's riflemen to meet them.
They were joined by a crack group of 300 musket men, 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
The British had three green 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.
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 fires 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
and thus ended the Battle of Freeman's Farm or the First Battle of Saratoga.
Burgoyne contended 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.
Six hundred casualties as compared to three hundred 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 guerrilla style, he compromised
as 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
Bergoin 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, Bergoin learned of a successful raid on Mount's independence and defiance
by Colonels John Brown and Seth Warner, which captured 300 men and a score of boats. But
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
Mises 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 exhilarated 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 Bremen'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 General Simon Fraser,
single-handedly 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 12th, he finally agreed to Baron von Rydessel'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 Essipus, 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 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 Howell, apparently over his objections, ordered him to evacuate Fort Clinton and to send reinforcements to Philadelphia.
in 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 Shuler 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 Schuler's loyalty after Ticonderoga was not entirely without foundation.