Stephenson M. Patriot Battles. How the War of Independence Was Fought

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of the war) Charles James Fox that he would return victorious by the

following Christmas.

In prospect, the plan Burgoyne had proposed to Germain on 28

February 1777 was imaginative, ambitious, and bold. Certainly it seemed

to be worth a bet.

His army would bisect the rebellion by thrusting

down the linked waterways of the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain,

and Lake George, and then make a short hop (approximately ten miles)

overland from the southern tip of Lake George (“the most expeditious

and most commodious route” as Burgoyne described it to Germain)

to connect with the Hudson, and so on down to Albany. “These ideas

are formed,” wrote Burgoyne, “on the supposition that it be the sole

purpose of the Canada army to effect a junction with General Howe;

or, after cooperating so far as to get possession of Albany and open the

communication to New-York, to remain upon the Hudson’s-River,

and thereby to enable that general to act with his whole force to the

southward.”

A secondary force of 800 British regulars and Canadian volunteers

together with an equal number of Indians, all commanded by a veteran

of the French and Indian War, Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger,

would land at Oswego on east Lake Ontario, come up the Oswego

River, cross Lake Oneida, capture Fort Stanwix (present-day Rome,

New York), and finally come down the Mohawk River to make the

junction with Burgoyne at Albany.

Sir William Howe, however, had been sending conflicting signals.

Back in October of 1776 he had told Germain that his primary strategic

objective was to open “a communication with Canada” to control the

Hudson and attack New England, the heartland of the revolt, for

which he would need an additional 15,000 men. By 20 December, with

Washington close to defeat and miserably huddled east of the Delaware,

Howe changed his mind. An offensive in Pennsylvania would end the

war: “The principal Army should act offensively on that side, where the

enemy’s chief strength will be certainly collected.”

Consequently, on 2 April Howe responded to Burgoyne’s proposal

by informing Sir Guy Carleton, commander in chief in Canada and

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technically still Burgoyne’s immediate superior, that there could be

little hope of Howe being able to help Burgoyne: “[I have] but little

expectation that I shall be able, from the want of sufficient strength in this

army, to detach a corps in the beginning of the [Burgoyne’s] campaign

to act up Hudson’s River,” and therefore Burgoyne’s men “will, I fear,

have little assistance from hence to facilitate their approach, and as I

shall probably be in Pennsylvania when that corps is ready to advance

into this province, it will not be in my power to communicate [that

is, cooperate] with the officer commanding it so soon as I could wish;

he must therefore pursue such measures as may from circumstances

be judged most conducive to the advancement of his Majesty’s service

consistently with your Excellency’s orders for his conduct.”

Howe

glibly supposed that Loyalist support would be so strong that Burgoyne

would find it “no difficult task to reduce the more rebellious parts of

the province” (the opposite proved to be the case) and signed off with

a half promise of help later on: “I shall endeavour to have a corps upon

the lower part of Hudson’s River sufficient to open the communication

for shipping thro’ the Highlands.”

In response, Germain approved Howe’s Pennsylvania expedition

but stressed, “[It is to to] be executed in time for you to co-operate with

the army ordered to proceed from Canada and put itself under your

command.” Whatever the niceties of language, there is no doubt that

Burgoyne and his army expected a rendezvous with a British force at

Albany. On 6 May, for example, Burgoyne repeated the objective laid

out in his February plan. He wrote to General Simon Fraser, “The

military operations, all directed to make a junction with Howe, are

committed to me.”

Although in the end Howe would fulfill the letter of his “endeavour,”

he failed to support the spirit of Burgoyne’s enterprise. A more charitable

explanation might be that he felt he could serve Burgoyne’s mission by

keeping Washington tied up in Pennsylvania. That Burgoyne’s enter

prise had merit is reflected in George Washington’s astonished disbelief

and amazed relief that Howe refused to make a priority of linking with

Burgoyne. With his keen strategic eye he saw the danger. On 2 July he

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wrote to Jonathan Trumbull: “If it [Burgoyne’s expedition] is not merely

a diversion, but a serious attack, of which it bears strongly the appearance,

it is certainly the proof that the next step of General Howe’s army will be

towards Peekskill, and very suddenly, if possible to get possession of the

passes in the Highlands before this army can have time to form a junction

with the troops already there.”

He would write to General Gates on 30

July, after the fall of Ticonderoga (seen at the time as a catastrophe for

the cause), “General Howe’s in a manner abandoning General Burgoyne

[Howe had set sail for the Chesapeake on 23 July] is so unaccountable a

matter, that, till I am fully assured it is so, I cannot help casting my eyes

occasionally behind me.”

He could not believe his luck.

Burgoyne’s expedition embarked from St. Johns on the Richelieu on

17 June, and it was a fine sight. Almost 4,000 British regulars; just over

3,000 Brunswick and Hesse-Hanau troops, under Major General Baron

Friedrich Adolphus von Riedesel; 400 Indians (Iroquois, Algonquin,

Abenaki, and Ottawa, under the command of the seventy-year-old

French Canadian Pierre St. Luc de Lacorne, whose attitude as to the best

tactical use of his Indians—“Il faut brutaliser les affaires”—proves that

even scalping sounds chic in French); 300 Canadian woodsmen; and 300

Loyalists set off in a fleet that included the twenty-four-gun Royal George

and twenty-gun Inflexible, led off by the Indians in their birch canoes.

There was a sizable artillery train—too sizable for some critics back

in England—consisting of 138 pieces, including twenty-six 6-pounders,

seventeen 3-pounders, sixteen heavy and two light 24-pounders, and

fifteen 12-pounders along with howitzers and mortars. Its size was

justified, according to Burgoyne, because the fortress of Ticonderoga

was expected to be a tough nut to crack and he knew from James

Abercrombie’s disastrous failure to take it from the French in 1758 that

artillery would decide the issue. (It did, but only against a fraction of

the resistance he had expected.) He would also need to leave armament

in defense of various posts along the way and, of course, would want

to have sufficient left over to garrison Albany on his triumphal arrival.

As it turned out, after shedding artillery en route, Burgoyne had only

forty-two pieces for his final battles.

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Spirits were high, and Burgoyne felt moved to make a pontifical

proclamation of the kind that seems so often to be the necessary preface

for colonial invasions masquerading as “liberations.”

The army embarks tomorrow, to approach the enemy. We are to

contend for the King, and the constitution of Great Britain, to

vindicate Law, and to relieve the oppressed—a cause in which his

Majesty’s Troops and those of the Princes his Allies, will feel equal

excitement. The Services required of this particular expedition are

critical and conspicuous. During our progress occasions may occur

in which, nor difficulty, nor labour, nor life are to be regarded.

This Army must not Retreat.

“General Burgoyne shone forth in all the tinsel splendour of enlightened

absurdity,” wrote a perceptive commentator.

Early and easy victories for an invading army can often resemble

the first couple of drinks for an alcoholic. They tend to give a rosy glow

to an impending and inevitable disaster. And so it was for Burgoyne.

The capture of Fort Ticonderoga, practically on the first anniversary of

the Declaration of Independence, was seen at the time as a devastating

blow to the patriot cause. The fort, “a perfect Mouse Trap,” declared

General Arthur St. Clair, the hapless commander of the American

defenders of Ticonderoga, was on a peninsula at the confluence of Lake

Champlain, the outlet from Lake George, and the South Bay of Lake

Champlain, and was woefully undermanned: “Had every man I had

been disposed of in single file along the lines of defense, they would

scarcely have been in reach of each other’s voices,” wrote St. Clair. In

addition, the defenders “[are] miserably clad and armed . . . many are

literally barefooted, and most of them ragged.”

And once the British

had established a battery on Sugar Loaf Hill (which had been left

undefended, even though St. Clair had been warned of its potential

danger if occupied by the British)

overlooking both the fort and an

encampment on Mount Independence across South Bay, the game was

well and truly up for St. Clair. He had no option but to abandon the

works before he would have been completely overrun.

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The shock was profound: “The abandonment of Ticonderoga and

Mount Independence has occasioned the greatest surprise and alarm. No

event could be more unexpected and more severely felt throughout our

army and country. This disaster has given our cause a dark and gloomy

aspect,” wrote the surgeon James Thacher.

St. Clair and Philip Schuyler,

his commanding officer, were both roundly reviled, even accused of

treason, but St. Clair’s action had preserved a force that would, over the

following weeks, provide the essential core of an army that would turn and

totally destroy its once-invincible tormentor. As Dr. Thacher presciently

added. “It is predicted by some of our well-informed and respectable

characters, that this event, apparently so calamitous, will ultimately prove

advantageous, by drawing the British army into the heart of our country,

and thereby place them more immediately within our power.”

With the patriot army of the North on the point of collapse (“The

army is in danger of starving . . . The army have not a mouthful of fresh

provisions . . . We may be utterly ruined for lack of wagons,” bewailed

General Schuyler from his headquarters at Fort Edward), the way

seemed open for Burgoyne’s triumphal procession down to Albany.

However, one of those “well-informed and respectable characters”—

George Washington—saw things differently and gave heart to Schuyler

by emphasizing Burgoyne’s strategic dilemma. On 22 July Washington

wrote, “From your accounts he appears to be pursuing a line of

conduct, which of all others is most favourable to us; I mean acting

in Detachments.” Two days later he underscored the point: “As they

can never think of advancing, without securing their rear by leaving

garrisons in the fortresses behind, the force with which they can come

against you will be greatly reduced by the detachments necessary for

the purpose.”

The revised script Washington was describing would

not be to John Burgoyne’s liking, but it would become the new drama

he would be forced to play out.

It was as if Burgoyne had been standing at Washington’s elbow.

Only six days after Washington had written Schuyler, Burgoyne was

writing with foreboding, if not mounting panic, to Carleton back in

Canada that without his help in garrisoning Ticonderoga his manpower

would be dangerously reduced.

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The construction your excellency puts upon the orders of the

Secretary of State [Germain] is too full and decisive for me to

presume to trouble you further upon the subject of a garrison for

Ticonderoga from Canada, I must do as well as I can, but I am

sure your Excellency, as a soldier, will think my situation a little

difficult. A breach into my communication must either ruin my

army entirely, or oblige me to return in force to restore, which might

be the loss of the campaign. To prevent a breach, Ticonderoga and

Fort George must be in very respectable strength, and I must besides

have posts at Fort Edward and other carrying places. The drains

added to common accidents and losses of service, will necessarily

render me very inferior in point of numbers to the enemy.

Carleton let Burgoyne stew.

Like the witches in Macbeth, three actions were the evil portents

of what was in store for the Burgoyne expedition. On 7 July, during its

retreat from Ticonderoga, the American rear guard, about 1,000 men

under Seth Warner, was caught at breakfast “in a very unfit posture

for battle” by units of Simon Fraser’s advance corps. After the initial

shock, the Americans managed to form a battle line on Zion Hill at

Hubbardton. Accurate patriot fire began to take its toll. Major Robert

Grant of the 24th Foot was killed, and the regiment took heavy

casualties as it struggled uphill to engage Colonel Turbott Francis’s

11th Massachusetts and the 2nd New Hampshire under Benjamin

Titcomb. Fraser detached Major Lord Balcarres’ss light infantry and

the grenadiers of the 9th, 20th, 29th, 34th, and 62nd Foot under Major

John Dyke Acland to try a flanking move around the American left in

the hope of cutting off any retreat down the road to Castle Town, where

St. Clair and the main American force were resting. Fraser also sent

out an urgent appeal for von Riedesel’s Brunswickers to hurry to the

support of the now-weakened British left, which was in danger of being

surrounded. They duly came on (singing hymns to the accompaniment

of their regimental band, a psychological tactic the Germans employed

regularly) and delivered a bayonet charge against Titcomb’s 2nd New

Hampshires on the American right, driving them back.

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For the Americans there were to be no reinforcements. St. Clair

tried vainly to persuade militia units under Colonel Bellows to march

immediately to the aid of the embattled rear guard, but “not a man

made a move in the direction of the fighting. The troops simply refused

to obey.”

Francis, already wounded, was killed by a musket ball, and

the patriot defense disintegrated. Although there is some debate on

final casualties (The Toll of Independence states that 30 Americans were

killed, 96 wounded, and 228 captured, compared with 200 British and

German casualties, of whom 35 were killed), the British and Germans

knew they had been in a desperately hard fight.

The second witch turned up almost exactly one month later.

Burgoyne’s diversionary force under the newly promoted Brigadier

General Barry St. Leger had left Montreal on 23 June 1777 with a force

of 1,000 Iroquois under Chief Thayendanegea (also known as Joseph

Brant), 380 Loyalists under Sir John Johnson, 80 Hesse-Hanau jägers,

250 British regulars from the 8th and 34th Foot, and about 400 Canadian

bateaux-men for a total of approximately 2,000. By 2 August they

had begun their siege of Fort Stanwix (later renamed Fort Schuyler),

defended by Colonel Peter Gansevoort and about 550 men mainly from

his own regiment, the 3rd New York.

Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, the commander of militia in Tryon

County, set out to relieve the besieged fort but was ambushed on the way

by the Indians and Loyalists of Brant and Sir John Johnson. In brutal

hand-to-hand combat Herkimer, although wounded in the leg (he would

die ten days later from complications caused by its amputation), managed

to hold his force together, fighting in two-man teams that ensured one

was always loaded and able to protect the other from being rushed while

reloading. A sortie from Fort Stanwix that ransacked the Indians’ camp

relieved the pressure, and Herkimer was able to effect a retreat.

Although hard-pressed for men himself, Schuyler sent Benedict

Arnold with 950 Continentals to relieve the fort. Arnold used the

Loyalist Hon Yost Schuyler (no relation to the general), “a proprietor

of a handsome estate in the vicinity . . . taken as a spy,”

to spread word

among Brant’s Indians that a huge patriot force was on its way. The

Indians, already disaffected by the sacking of their camp, in their turn

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ransacked the British lines, forcing St. Leger to break the siege and

return to Canada. Triumphant, Arnold would be back with the main

army by the first week of September.

After Ticonderoga Burgoyne had a tough decision to make. Should

he stick to his original plan and transport his army by water across Lake

George, or should he strike out overland from Skenesborough and cut

across sixteen miles of virtual virgin woodland and swamp until he hit

the Hudson? He feared that a “retrograde motion” to take his army

back to Ticonderoga would encourage the enemy and dishearten his

own men and the local Loyalists. The overland route would also, he

argued (retrospectively), force the American garrison at Fort George (at

the southern tip of Lake George) to quit the place.

Howe had written to Burgoyne on 17 July not only to congratulate

him on taking Ticonderoga but also to disabuse him of any hope of an

imminent linkup: “My intention is for Pennsylvania, where I expect

to meet Washington, but if he goes to the northward contrary to my

expectations, and you can keep him at bay, be assured that I shall soon

be after him to relieve you. After your arrival at Albany, the movements

of the enemy will guide yours.” He ended his letter with a salutation

that must have felt to Burgoyne about as sweet as sucking on a lemon:

“Success be ever with you.”

Five days prior to receiving Howe’s letter Burgoyne had ordered

all excess baggage to be sent back to Ticonderoga. He was about to take

the great gamble, notwithstanding Howe’s warning, and abandon his

supply route and rear bases. He would make a push for Albany, even

though he knew full well that on the overland route “considerable

difficulties may be expected.” He was not the only one enthusiastically

rolling the dice. Back in London Germain, whose choice Burgoyne had

been to lead the invasion, anticipated a success against the odds: “I am

sorry the Canada army will be disappointed in the junction they expect

with Sir William Howe,” he wrote to his undersecretary, William

Knox, “but the more honour to Burgoyne if he does the business

without any assistance from New York.”

Neither was the army

unenthusiastic. Lieutenant William Digby was particularly gung-ho:

“In my opinion, this attempt showed a glorious spirit in our General,

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and worthy alone to be undertaken by British Troops as the eyes of all

Europe, as well as Great Britain were fixed upon us.”

The baggage,

artillery, and ammunition were to be sent back and transported over

Lake George. On 24 July the infantry began its overland journey, but

Burgoyne’s logistical situation was deteriorating quickly. Only half

of the transport wagons were operational. (They had been knocked

together of unseasoned wood back in Canada and were now falling to

pieces.) He was short of draft animals and fresh meat. In fact he was

advancing so quickly that he was simply outstripping his channels of

supply from Canada.

General Schuyler, although often lambasted for being away

from the front, and as a patrician forced to bear the mistrust of hoi

polloi (he would be replaced by Horatio Gates on 14 August, against

Washington’s wishes), had done an enormously effective job denying

Burgoyne forage and foodstuffs as he passed through the countryside.

Like Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov facing Napoleon’s invasion of Russia

in 1812, Schuyler was no swashbuckler, but his scorched-earth policy

and patient wearing-down of his enemy did as much as anything else to

bring Burgoyne to his knees on the final battlefield. A Hessian officer

described the efficacy of Schuyler’s strategy.

I have called it a desert country, not only with reference to its

natural sterility—and heaven knows it was sterile enough—but

because of the pains which were taken, and unfortunately with

all too great success, to sweep its few cultivated spots of all articles

likely to benefit the invaders. In doing this the enemy showed

no decency either to friend or foe. All the fields of standing corn

were laid waste, the cattle were driven away, and every particle

of grain, as well as morsel of grass, carefully removed; so that we

could depend for subsistence, both for men and horses, only upon

the magazines which we might ourselves establish.

The need for forage in an eighteenth-century army was as pressing

as the need for oil in a mechanized one. (Even a tactical master like

Erwin Rommel, after all, was defeated as much by the strangulation

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of his oil supplies as any other factor.) Burgoyne had intelligence that

a happy confluence of forage, cattle, “wheel carriages,” horses, and

Loyalists could be found at Bennington. Better yet, the market town

was defended only by a small contingent, perhaps 300, of militia.

Burgoyne therefore dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Frederich Baum

with 723 men, including three squadrons of Brunswick dragoons;

fifty

British corps of marksmen under Captain Alexander Fraser; 150 local

Loyalists under Francis Pfister, a retired British officer; and about 150

Indians, to make the raid to the east.

Baum was unlucky. Only a short time before he set off, John Stark

and over 2,000 New Hampshire militia and Vermont Rangers had

moved down to Bennington and now took up a position facing Baum

across the Walloomsac River. Stark, who had the tactical instinct

of a chain saw, decided to hit Baum from every direction possible,

simultaneously. Baum’s main force (primarily three companies of

Dragoon Regiment Prinz Lüdwig) was on a hill overlooking the

bridge across the river. It was a strong-enough position except that

Baum’s security was as porous as a sponge and patriots whom he

mistook for Loyalists began to infiltrate his position. Hit from the

front (east), north, and west, Baum’s position imploded. A Hessian

officer’s description of the patriot tactics eerily resembles Communist

attacks on isolated firebases during the Vietnam War.

The troops lining the breastworks replied to the fire of the Americans

with extreme celerity and considerable effect. So close and

destructive, indeed, was our first volley that the assailants recoiled

before it, and would have retreated, in all probability, within the

woods; but ere we could take advantage of the confusion produced,

fresh attacks developed themselves, and we were warmly engaged

on every side and from all quarters. It became evident that each of

our detached posts were about to be assailed at the same instant.

They were overrun. As the historian Brendan Morrissey has pointed

out: “Stark’s men are often depicted as inexperienced farmers, in