Mackesy P. The War for America, 1775-1783
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Right or wrong, the advance from Skenesborough proved very difficult. The winding trail had been blocked
systematically by felling trees, destroying bridges and damming and diverting streams. Innumerable trees were
cleared, forty bridges and causeways were built. In this way twenty miles swallowed twenty days. At last, on 30
July, the army emerged at Fort Edward. Schuyler withdrew his force to Stillwater, thirty miles above Albany, and
before Burgoyne stretched the wide valley of the navigable Hudson.
If the army could have advanced at once, Burgoyne could have driven the Americans before him and reached
Albany with scarcely a pause. Though the long toil from Lake Champlain had given the enemy time to collect
about 4,500 men, of whom three-fifths were Continentals, their morale was very low and desertions were
numerous. But Burgoyne could not move forward till he had collected thirty days' supplies at Fort Edward; and he
could not bring up enough to form his magazine. Time was needed to open the Lake George route; no Canadian
porters had materialised; and the Canadian contractors had furnished only a third of the horses they had promised.
And on this ill-found transport service he threw the burden of bringing up his artillery and batteaux. Twenty light
six-pounders with 124 rounds per gun could have moved with eighty horses, and marched as fast as the army. But
against an ill-equipped enemy and in a situation where mobility was everything, Burgoyne elected to bring a train
of fifty-two cannon. 'The artillery, after the light troops, is the important arm in the American War', he had written
in England; and he maintained afterwards that numerous and heavy guns were essential against an enemy who
could throw up wooden forts and abbatis in a matter of hours, as well as to defend the camp he intended to
entrench at Albany. As a result of this precaution he was never to reach his destination. 'All his wants', wrote an
eyewitness, 'were owing to his having too great an abundance.'1
Burgoyne, however, was far from despair. 'Nothing', he wrote to Germain on the day he reached Fort Edward, 'has
happened . . . to change my sentiments of the campaign.' The determination with which the rebels had driven off
the cattle and population 'seems to me an act of desperation and folly. The only purpose it can answer is to retard
me for a time, which it certainly does; it cannot finally impede me.' A week later, he wrote to Howe that he hoped
to move to Saratoga in a few days, though even if the enemy did not fight he could not get to Albany before 22
August.2 Unable to bring up his supplies from the rear, he intended to seize them from the enemy in front.
Riedesel had suggested a raid to the left into the Connecticut valley,
1 CO 42/36, f. 7; CL, Germain, 'Remarks' at end of 1778 volume.
2 CO 42/36, f. 386; CO 5/94, f. 352.
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to collect pack-horses which would free the army from its dependence on Canadian carts and increase its mobility.
Vital time had elapsed since the suggestion was made, but Burgoyne now resolved to adopt it.1 Then, hearing of an
enemy magazine thirty miles south-east of Fort Edward at Bennington, and on the near side of the Green Moutains,
he radically altered the plan and made this the object of the foray. The commander he chose was a brave German
dragoon called Colonel Baum, who qualified for marching through a country of mixed friends and foes by speaking
no English. His force was remarkable. He had fifty picked British marksmen and 100 German grenadiers and light
infantry; 300 Tories, Canadians and Indians; to preserve secrecy, a German band; to speed the column, 170
dismounted German dragoons in search of horses, marching in their huge top boots and spurs and trailing their
sabres. They were reinforced on the march by fifty Brunswick Jäger and ninety local Tories who brought Baum's
force to 800 men.
Burgoyne had been assured by Colonel Skene that the country was full of loyalists. He knew that the remains of a
militia regiment scattered at Ticonderoga had assembled north of Bennington at Manchester, but thought it highly
probable that they would retreat. If they did not, he left it to Baum's discretion whether to fight them, with the
warning that his force was too valuable 'to let any considerable loss be hazarded'. What Burgoyne could not know
was that a remarkable cross-grained fighter called John Stark had just reached Bennington with 1,500 New
Hampshire militia whom he had raised in a single week. At Bennington Stark found 500 militiamen from
Massachussets and Vermont; and on 16 August he fell on Baum's 800 men from all sides. Baum thought that the
shirt-sleeved farmers approaching his rear were loyalists coming to join him. His Indians fled at the first discharge;
the Tories were rushed and scattered. For two hours the regulars fought off their attackers till their ammunition ran
out. Then, leading his dragoons in a desperate sabre charge, Baum fell mortally wounded and the fight was over.
Back on the Hudson Burgoyne had received a call from Baum for reinforcements; and 600 Germans under Colonel
von Breymann were slowly approaching the battlefield as the fighting died down. Stark's men had scattered to loot,
and for a time the Americans' position was dangerous. But the arrival of a small reinforcement enabled them to
check Breymann's attack till he too had exhausted his ammunition, when he fell back into the night with the loss of
both his guns and two-thirds of his men. The two combats at Bennington had cost Burgoyne 900 men, and half of
them were regulars.
1 Riedesel, I, 24761.
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5
The Fatal Decision
The losses at Bennington were the more serious because Burgoyne had found himself unexpectedly forced to
garrison Ticonderoga. He had asked Carleton to find a garrison; but Carleton, still wearing the mask of civility,
had stood by the letter of his instructions. He had no authority outside the borders of Canada; the force to remain in
Canada had been prescribed; and he refused to help.1 Burgoyne's insistence on having his own way had recoiled
on him, and the force for the Hudson offensive was reduced by a further 900 men. His resources were rapidly
shrinking; and he knew that he could expect no immediate help from Howe, for he had received Howe's letter of
17 July, with the news of his embarkation for Pennsylvania.2 On the Mohawk, St Leger's miscellaneous
detachment had been held at Fort Stanwix and then scattered with the loss of guns and baggage by the mere
approach of a force under Arnold.
The prospect was rapidly changing. A diminishing force, vulnerable communications and a strained supply system
had reduced his thrusting power. From New York he had little to hope, on the Mohawk nothing. But more serious
than his own changing strength was the increasing power of the enemy. On his front, the long pause at Fort Edward
had enabled the Americans to collect their strength. Arnold returned from the Mohawk, and 300 picked riflemen
under Daniel Morgan arrived from Washington. By the middle of September Schuyler's successor, Gates, had six
or seven thousand men in the Hudson valley. The position on the flank was worse. Bennington had revealed that
the country towards the Connecticut was no loyalist stronghold but a hive of determined rebels.
Burgoyne was alive to the dangers. The moment he advanced, the New England militia on his left would close on
his communications; and if he failed to reach Albany and open a supply route from New York he could not
maintain himself on the Upper Hudson. All the premises of his plan had collapsed. His supply system had failed
him. The General whom he had elbowed out had denied him help. The loyalists of Vermont and the Upper Hudson
were a negligible force. He had a superior enemy strongly posted in front, and a swarming militia on his flank. To
advance was folly.
The choice which faced Burgoyne at Fort Edward was not a pleasant one. To halt where he was or withdraw to
Ticonderoga would be an admission that his plan had failed, and public opinion might not understand his
difficulties.
1 Fonblanque, 261, 276.
2 Burgoyne later argued in the House that this letter indicated an intention to co-operate with him, and that it
thus cancelled Howe's earlier warning to Carleton: but Howe only promised to pursue Washington if he turned
against Burgoyne.
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What, as he later asked the House of Commons, would the government, the army and the country have said of
him?1 To a man of Burgoyne's vanity and ambition, the humiliation would have been unbearable. To escape the
dilemma, he seized on a twisted reading of his instructions. 'Had I a latitude in my orders', he wrote to Germain
after Bennington, 'I should think it my duty to wait in this position . . . till some event happened to assist my
movement forward; but my orders being positive to ''force a junction with Sir William Howe" I apprehend I am not
at liberty to remain inactive.' This was his first complaint that the positive nature of his orders compelled him to
advance; and the words which he misquoted were 'to force his way to Albany'.2
'It is notorious', wrote Macaulay, 'that the great men who founded and preserved our Indian Empire treated all
particular orders which they received from home as mere waste paper. Had not these man had the sense and spirit
so to treat such orders we should not now have had an Indian Empire.'3 Burgoyne, two or three months distant
from England in the wilds of America, was asserting that though his own circumstances and Howe's had changed
utterly he was bound by the letter of his orders. After the final disaster he refined his theory still further. His
advance, he argued had been part of a closely interlocking plan. The Ministry had chosen to risk his force 'to assist
the great general arrangement of the campaign'. It was not his business to halt from motives of prudence. To do so
would leave Gates at liberty to turn against Howe; 'and I reasoned thus: the expedition which I commanded was at
first evidently intended to be hazarded; circumstances might require it should be devoted'.4
Not a syllable in Germain's instructions could justify this interpretation. But Burgoyne plunged forward to his fate.
By 13 September he had collected thirty days' provisions; and on that day and the next his regiments crossed the
Hudson on a bridge of rafts, and put the river between themselves and their base. And so Burgoyne advanced to
meet the very difficulties he had foreseen, and to surrender his army to the enemy.
6
The Last Scenes on the Hudson
Scarcely had Burgoyne crossed the Hudson when the enemy fell upon his communications. General Lincoln had
been sent across the Hudson from
1Parl. Hist. XIX, 1189.
2 Fonblanque, 2746. See above, p. 115.
3 Quot. Richmond, Navy in India, 110.
4 Sandwich, I, 307; Fonblanque, 2912. If anyone urged that Burgoyne's advance was vital to Howe's
operations, it was Howe himself in his letter of 5 April to Carleton.
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Stillwater to collect the militia of Vermont; and 1,500 of these were detached to raid the British rear. On 18
September they captured the British shipping at the head of Lake George, and the three companies of infantry
guarding it; and even Ticonderoga was threatened for a time. But of this Burgoyne knew nothing as he closed with
the main American force on his front. On the 19th he assaulted Gates's position on Bemis Heights. He was ignorant
of the ground and the enemy dispositions, for his Indians and scouts had been driven within his lines by American
irregulars. Groping forward to outflank Gates's position, he was checked and counter-attacked by Arnold. His
failure cost him 600 men. The loss of officers to American marksmen was very severe; and three weak British
battalions which bore the brunt of the action lost 350 men out of 800. Two days later Burgoyne was ready for a
second attempt; but that morning he at last heard news from the south. A message arrived from Clinton that he
intended to make a push against the forts in the Highlands about the 22nd. Hoping that the pressure would force
Gates to divide his force, Burgoyne called off his attack, and entrenched his position to await events.
Sir Henry Clinton had been left with a force to guard New York while Howe was operating in Pennsylvania. There
seems to be an ancient law of warfare that a general shall measure his own strength by the numbers fit for duty,
and his subordinates' by their total strength on paper. It was obeyed by Howe. To Germain he calculated his
strength by the numbers present and fit; but in his subsequent narrative he called Clinton's strength 8,500,
reckoning it by total effectives of all arms. Clinton's real strength in infantry fit and present was 6,900, of whom
3,000 were newly raised Provincials. With this force he could do no more than defend his own position as long as
Washington was in striking distance; for he had a perimeter of 100 miles with extensive works on three separate
islands and the Jersey shore. As for an offensive up the Hudson, it would remain out of the question, for
Washington had detached Putnam with 4,000 men to guard the passes of the Highlands, and if Clinton had been
able to spare every man of his garrison he could not have opened that strong and fortified country. Nor did Howe
suppose that he could; for he left him with no instructions to help Burgoyne.1
It was with some surprise that Clinton received a letter from Howe dated 30 July, reminding him of the usefulness
of any diversion in favour of Burgoyne's approach. Far from being able to take the offensive, he was being assailed
at several points by the enemy. The pressure on New York was eased when Washington crossed the Delaware to
follow Howe; but Clinton's force was still too small to crack open the Highlands. Nor did he fear for Burgoyne; for
he had his letter of 6 August, written at Fort Edward
1 Willcox, American Rebellion, 63, 83.
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before the reverse at Bennington, which indicated that he expected to reach Albany about the 23rd, and made no
mention of expecting assistance from New York. Early in September, however, recruits were due from England.
On the 11th Clinton learnt of the defeat at Bennington. He read it as a successful feint to open the road to
Albany1; and it was now that he sent his promise to make a push at the Highlands. The undertaking on which
Burgoyne built so much was to be a demonstration with 2,000 men when the reinforcements arrived from Europe.
Clinton had not designed a rescue operation, but a feint to assist success.
The expected fleet from England arrived on the 24th with 1,700 recruits. About the same time Clinton learnt that
Washington had drawn off a very large detachment from Putnam's force guarding the Highlands. He was now in a
better position to threaten the Highlands; and on the 29th an answer arrived from Burgoyne, that an attack or even
a demonstration would be of great help. The messenger said that Burgoyne's provisions were low and his
communications with Canada severed, and that he intended to form a junction with the southern army. Clinton
therefore hastened to strike his blow; and with the first suitable tide, on 3 October, he moved up the North River
with 3,000 men.
Surprise was complete. On the morning of the 5th the expedition appeared off Verplancks, whose garrison was not
in strength and fled in confusion. Clinton was preparing to land when an officer arrived from Burgoyne with news
which gave a new and unexpected turn to the situation. The position of the northern army was desperate. Losses
had reduced it to 5,000 men; the enemy had double that number strongly posted on its front, and another
considerable body hanging on its rear; while its provisions would not last beyond the 20th. Burgoyne said he had
no doubt he could force his way to Albany; yet being uncertain of supplies when he got there, he wished to know
before he tried it whether Clinton could open communications and supply him from New York. He demanded
Clinton's most explicit orders either to attack the enemy on his front or to retreat to Canada; 'hinting at the same
time', as Clinton was to recall, 'that he would not have relinquished his communication . . . had he not expected a
co-operating army at Albany'.2
Clinton was alarmed for Burgoyne, and resolved to do his utmost to relieve the pressure on him. He was also
angered by his message. Burgoyne had an independent command, and was now trying to climb out of his scrape by
asking orders of an officer who was separated from him by 100 miles of unknown enemy country. Nor was it
possible that Burgoyne believed Clinton could force a passage to Albany with the force he had
1 Willcox, American Rebellion, 70 n. 26
2Ibid. 73.
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promised to use. He sent off the messenger with a stiff letter in the third person:
Not having received any instructions from the Commander-in-Chief relating to the northern army, and
ignorant of even his intentions concerning its operations (except his wishes it may get to Albany), Sir
Henry Clinton cannot presume to send orders to General Burgoyne. But he thinks it impossible General
Burgoyne could really suppose Sir Henry Clinton had any idea of penetrating to Albany with the small
force he mentioned to him in his letter of the 11th September. What Sir Henry Clinton offered in that letter
he has now undertaken. He cannot by any means promise himself success, but hopes the move may be
serviceable to General Burgoyne, as his letter of the 21st intimates that even the menace of an attack will be
of use.1
Clinton's opponent, General Putnam, had indeed been weakened by detachments to north and south, the most
recent a reinforcement for Washington after the Brandywine battle; and he had now been reduced to 1,200
Continentals and 300 incompletely armed militia. The demonstration at Verplancks had induced him to withdraw
his force at Peekskill four miles inland and to summon part of the garrisons of the river forts. At daybreak on the
following morning Clinton flung his force across to the west bank of the Hudson. Leaving his cannon, he marched
his infantry twelve miles by a path through the hills, surprised the two main forts commanding the river, and
stormed them with the bayonet. Sixty-seven cannon and many stores fell into his hands; and the American flotilla
guarding the Hudson boom was caught by foul winds and destroyed. On the 8th he scribbled a short note to
Burgoyne: 'Nous y voila,2 and nothing now between us but Gates. I sincerely hope this little success may facilitate
your operations . . . I heartily wish you success.' But it never reached Burgoyne, for the messenger was intercepted
and hanged.
Clinton had intended to halt where he was, and keep the Highlands open by dismantling Fort Montgomery and
strengthening and holding Fort Clinton, with a force lower down the river which could either succour the fort or
fall back on New York as might be needed.3 But at that moment a letter arrived from the commander at Rhode
Island, offering to spare a thousand men from his garrison. Clinton leapt at the offer, and having returned
momentarily to New York he ordered three more regiments to the Highlands, and boats to be loaded with six
months'
1Ibid., 74, n. 35, 37880.
2 Sic in CL, Germain.
3 These forts were near the site of the modern Bear Mountain bridge. The West Point fortifications were
developed later, when Forts Clinton and Montgomery were abandoned. The main fort at West Point was also
named Clinton, ensuring future confusion. The military topography of the Highlands is lucidly described in
Nickerson.
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provisions for running up the river to Burgoyne. He then pushed General Vaughan up the Hudson towards Albany
with 2,000 men in transports, to feel his way to Burgoyne and do his utmost to assist him. Vaughan reached
Kingston1 on the 15th, destroyed it to secure his communications, and felt his way further up the river. But he was
still forty-five miles from Albany when the pilots refused to take the transports any further. The Americans had
taken post on both banks, and he was unable to communicate with Burgoyne. But all accounts agreed that his
position was desperate.
For eighteen long days Burgoyne had waited in his position below Bemis Heights. Sickness and a steady trickle of
desertions were daily reducing his force, while reinforcements were pouring in to Gates. Lincoln's militiamen
arrived from Vermont, and other armed men were appearing in their hundreds, enraged by carefully propagated
stories of Indian atrocities. On 5 October Riedesel and Brigadier Fraser urged Burgoyne to retreat while there was
still a chance; but in the teeth of their advice he hung on for two more days, and on the 7th launched a final attack
to turn the American left. Gates now had 11,000 men. The result was disaster: another 600 men and ten guns lost;
Fraser and Breymann dead; and the loss of a vital redoubt which made the British position untenable.
Burgoyne, in Clausewitz's memorable phrase on Waterloo, had thrown his last farthing. On the following day he
fell back to Saratoga, abandoning 500 sick and wounded. His exhausted men dropped to the ground as they came
into camp without cutting wood or making fires, and slept in the heavy rain. On the 9th the enemy were
entrenching the heights on the far bank of the river to prevent a crossing. Short of a great American blunder, only
one chance remained. Riedesel proposed to abandon guns and baggage and retire by forced marches to cross the
Hudson above Fort Edward. At first Burgoyne refused; but on the 12th he yielded, and agreed to march in the
darkness of the coming night. Rations for six days were distributed, and all was ready when Burgoyne cancelled
the march. He had learnt from his scouts that no movement was possible without instant discovery; and on a height
north of Fort Edward 2,000 New Hampshire militiamen were already posted to prevent his withdrawal. By the next
day the unpredictable Stark had joined the enemy with his militia and the camp was closely beset on every side.
Nothing now was left except to wait in hopes of Clinton. But even time was short. The encircled army was under
ceaseless fire. By day and by night the roar of cannon and the crack of rifle bullets continued, and the militia-
1 Actually to Esopus, which Ward identifies with the modern Kingston. The present Esopus in 8 miles
south of Kingston.
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men swarmed round the lines. The ground was covered with the corpses of shot or starved horses. For the wounded
there was no shelter from the bombardment even while the surgeons dressed their injuries. And for the unwounded
there was neither safety nor rest. They stood to their arms by day and night. With only 3,500 men fit for duty, the
fight could not continue long. On the 13th Burgoyne summoned his generals, field officers and captains
commanding units, and all agreed that he should seek a capitulation. The next morning negotiations were opened.
There was a brief moment when Burgoyne hoped that Vaughan's push for Kingston meant relief; but his officers
advised him that it was now too late to withdraw from the negotiations. Gates for his part was eager to hasten the
surrender. The capitulation became a convention and the beaten army was granted the honours of war and a return
to England on condition of serving no more in America.
On 17 October the army from Canada marched out. They had fought a splendid fight; and it is sad that Burgoyne,
who had retained their confidence to the last, should have blamed their courage among the reasons which he
published to the world for his failure. If the whole army, he wrote to Howe, had been in spirit for a hardy
enterprise, he could have cut his way through to Ticonderoga. But his Germans would rather be prisoners than
endure hard blows. 'In short, my army would not fight and could not subsist.' Yet it was the German General who
had begged him to try the retreat while there was still a slender chance.1
7
Conclusion
In round figures the British loss at Saratoga was not large. But it would be difficult to replace, and more serious
still was the proof of what the perceptive had long suspected: that the American country with its armed population
might be beyond the power of Britain to reconquer with any force which she could raise and sustain in America.
The grand design of 1775 lay in ruins. For two seasons the British counter-offensive had hammered the Americans;
and its failure marked the end of the private conflict between England and her rebel colonists. Saratoga was the
sign for which France had waited; and the Great Powers began to enter the arena.
There was blame to apportion. The Opposition wanted a scapegoat in the Cabinet, the generals to defend
themselves at the Ministry's expense. They joined forces in a general assault on Germain. But the generals'
1 Royal Institution, I, 140. There is some suggestion in the German memoirs that Burgoyne had lost the
confidence of General Phillips and other senior officers: he had never had Riedesel's (see Riedesel
Memoirs, I, 238; Lowell, Hessians, 1367; Eelking, 135; Madame Riedesel, 174, 176. The Brunswickers
resented the imputation in Burgoyne's despatch, and Riedesel wrote a long defence of their conduct to the
Duke of Brunswick.
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needs diverged. Burgoyne wished to show that Germain had interfered too much; Howe that he had not intervened
enough. 'The noble Secretary for the American Department', Howe was to declare to the House of Commons,1 'had
not used him well; had often left him without instructions, to shift for himself at the opening of a campaign,
without sending information how to act.' Burgoyne on the contrary complained that he had been tied by rigid
dictated instructions which left no latitude.
Burgoyne's complaint seems to be supported by a letter which Carleton sent after his surrender. It has often been
used against Germain.2 'This unfortunate event', it runs,
. . . will in future prevent Ministers from pretending to direct operations of war in a country at three
thousand miles distance, of which they have so little knowledge as not to be able to distinguish between
good, bad, or interested advices, or to give positive orders upon matters which, from their nature, are ever
on the change.
What was in Carleton's mind? Resentment, certainly. His conduct of the campaign of 1776 had been criticised, and
he had been deprived of the command of his own field force and the prospect of taking Howe under his command.
But it has been shown, and Carleton well knew, that the chief source of interested advice was Burgoyne himself.
The positive order to which Carleton most objected concerned the disposition of troops, and was dictated by
Burgoyne. It had precedents in the time of Chatham3; had military approval; and was forced on Germain by his
failure to remove Carleton, which obliged him to cast Burgoyne's requirements in the form of an order. The plan
itself was Burgoyne's. The deletion of his two suggested alternatives had no effect on the outcome of the campaign;
and the prescribed object of pushing through to Albany was not one which any commander at that distance in time
and space should have treated as absolute. It was Burgoyne's use of this defence which convinced at least one
contemporary that he was in the wrong: 'Men of lively imagination', wrote Henry Ellis from Berlin, 'are not fit for
real business military or political, they make apt comparisons, ingenious metaphors and very probably fine
speeches or florid despatches, but they are neither statemen nor soldiers'.4
The weakness of Burgoyne's defence is clear. To Howe's, Germain gave this reply, which might have served for
them both5:
If the Hon. General had not immediate instructions when he called for them, it was because many things
depended upon unforeseen circumstances; and as it was im-
1Parl. Hist., XIX, 1395.
2 E.g. James, 61; Fortescue, III, 244.
3 See Whitworth, Ligonier, 241, 278, 286, 2978.
4 Add. MSS. 34415, ff. 37.
5Parl. Hist., XIX, 1397.
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