On October 1, 1777, eight days after their quarrel, Arnold wrote again to Gates, repeating that he had been badly treated and not sufficiently consulted. He couldn’t resist appealing to Gates once more to launch an immediate offensive. If they sat idly for another two weeks, Arnold was sure the Americans would lose four thousand men to sickness and desertion. That would also give Burgoyne time either to reinforce his position heavily or to stage a successful retreat. “I hope you will not impute this hint to a wish to command the army, or to outshine you,” Arnold concluded, “when I assure you it proceeds from my zeal for the cause of my country, in which I expect to rise or fall.”
Gates read John Burgoyne and his intentions differently. Burgoyne could not stay where he was. With his men already on half rations, it was his troops, not the Americans, who were suffering from disease and desertion. Sir Henry Clinton was reportedly pushing up from New York with reinforcements, but Burgoyne probably couldn’t hold out long enough for them to reach Albany. As Arnold kept warning, it was certainly possible that Burgoyne would admit failure and retreat to Ticonderoga. But Gates doubted it. “He is an old gambler,” he said. “Despair may dictate to him to risk all upon one throw.”
General Gates would do what came naturally to him: wait behind his barricades and let John Burgoyne take up the dice.
General Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga, October17, 1777
YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
Saratoga
1777
AT 11 A.M. on Tuesday, October 7, 1777, General Burgoyne disregarded the advice of his generals and led out a reconnaissance force of fifteen hundred of his best men. He wanted to locate the position of the American line in the woods around Freeman’s Farm. If the Americans looked vulnerable on their left, Burgoyne intended to return the next day with the rest of his men—the forty-five hundred he had left in camp. The British could then run roughshod over the Americans and break free for Albany. As his soldiers moved through a field of uncut wheat, Burgoyne climbed onto a cabin roof for a better look at Gates’s defenses. With the British position so badly exposed, he couldn’t advance farther. While his officers continued to estimate the placement of the American left flank, some British soldiers ventured out to cut down wheat for bread. The rest formed double ranks in the field and sat down to await instructions.
On Bemis Heights, General Gates had been watching the activity through spyglasses. When a scout returned to headquarters, Gates asked him to describe the terrain and give his opinion about launching an attack. The British front was entirely open, the scout said. One flank bordered the woods and might be attacked from among the trees. On the right they were hemmed in by a high slope. Since the British seemed to be offering themselves so obligingly, the scout concluded, “I would indulge them.”
With those odds, even Gates was willing to risk sending men outside his fortress. “Well, then,” he said, “order Morgan to begin the game.”
—
General Burgoyne’s reconnaissance party had been lingering in the open field for an hour and a half when the Americans struck in three simultaneous assaults—right, left and straight ahead. Daniel Morgan had taken his hunters through the wooded rise on the British right and from there poured down torrents of fire. Gates’s first instinct was to send only Morgan’s riflemen, and he brushed away Benedict Arnold when he argued for a larger force: “General Arnold, I have nothing for you to do. You have no business here.”
But General Lincoln persuaded Gates to send at least three regiments. In the end, he committed troops lavishly, holding back fewer than one thousand men to secure his base. When the battle was at its height, the Americans outnumbered the British and German soldiers six to one. Each of Burgoyne’s men was determined to save only himself, and the entire British left wing charged into the brush.
For an hour, Benedict Arnold sat on a bay charger, seething that the assault was going forward without him. When he finally could stand it no longer, he spurred his horse toward the sound of gunfire. He knew Gates would again send an aide to order him back, but Arnold outrode him. At about 4 P.M. he arrived at the scene and spotted a British brigadier general, Simon Fraser, attempting to round up his men and lead them back to fight. Arnold pointed him out to Dan Morgan, who nodded and rode to a group of his riflemen. “That gallant officer is General Fraser,” Morgan told them. “I admire him, but it is necessary that he should die. Do your duty.”
Tim Murphy was renowned from his days as an Indian fighter, and he climbed a tree and took aim. His first shot cut the crupper of Fraser’s horse, a second grazed its mane behind the ears. Fraser’s men were calling to him to fall back out of range when a third bullet struck his heart. Two men led him back to his tent, still slumped over his horse. General Fraser asked a surgeon who was dressing his wounds, “Must I die?” The young doctor said yes, he would not live another day.
Fraser was taken to the house of a Hessian general’s wife, who had been expecting him as a guest at dinner. Amid his dying groans, she heard Fraser call for his wife and then cry out, “Poor General Burgoyne! Oh, fatal ambition!”
As Fraser lay dying, Benedict Arnold was galloping across the lines so boldly that the troops were sure he was drunk. He made one wild thrust with his sword and struck an American infantry captain. The captain raised his musket and was going to demand an apology, but Arnold was already far across the field, charging into battle with a different company. With his former troops from Connecticut shouting encouragement, Arnold seemed to be dashing everywhere with commands for everyone. He dared one unit to overwhelm a Hessian redoubt, which was easily accomplished because the Germans hated their autocratic commander and shot him dead during the attack. Then a wounded German soldier on the ground raised his rifle and shot Arnold’s charger as it was riding down on him. The horse stumbled and rolled over, and Arnold’s leg was broken again, as it had been at Quebec. An American was about to strike the German with his bayonet, but Benedict Arnold stopped him. “Don’t hurt him! He is a fine fellow! He only did his duty!”
A surgeon looked at Arnold’s leg and said it might have to be amputated. “Damned nonsense,” said Arnold. If that was all the doctors could do for him, they should hoist him back on another horse so that he could watch the battle end. As dusk fell on the field, Arnold was carried back to headquarters on a litter.
Horatio Gates sent down orders that overnight the Americans were to hold the ground they had taken. In the morning, during brisk exchanges of gunfire, Gates moved out enough men to keep the British trapped with the Hudson River at their backs. Burgoyne’s decisive battle had come and gone the day before he had expected it. At sunset, as quiet in defeat as George Washington, Burgoyne buried Simon Fraser, struck the British tents, left his campfires burning and slipped north on the road away from Albany. He abandoned his field hospital and three hundred wounded men. By withdrawing in two stages, he came to rest in the hills above Saratoga. Burgoyne could have sunk his baggage and cannon and led a forced march to safety on Lake George. Instead, he gambled on digging in and waiting for an attack in which he would have the advantage of defending a raised position.
But General Gates was also content to wait. If Henry Clinton was coming up from New York, Gates didn’t want to leave the American rear undefended. Burgoyne seemed to have lost half his men in the last engagement and had limited rations for the survivors. Gates dispatched artillery and marksmen to annoy the British but went on postponing a battle that was beginning to seem avoidable. By October 14, Burgoyne’s army was surrounded, and he had provisions for only the next twenty-four hours. Oxen and horses had already died of starvation. The air over Saratoga was thick with the stench of their carcasses. By now it was too late even to jettison the artillery and break for Lake George.
Burgoyne convened his generals and put the question to them: Did national dignity and military honor ever justify an army of thirty-five hundred fighting men, who were well provided with artillery, in capitulating? His generals, British and German alike
, agreed to offer their lives once more if Burgoyne saw an opportunity to attack. But if such a sacrifice would lead to nothing, it was wiser to conserve Britain’s manpower and capitulate on honorable terms.
When the council adjourned, a British soldier carrying a flag of truce stepped from the tall pines along the American lines. He had come to say that Lieutenant General Burgoyne wanted to send a field officer to meet with Major General Gates “on a matter of high moment to both armies.” What time tomorrow morning would the general be available? Gates pondered his response into the evening. Then he sent word that his aide would receive the British emissary at the American advance post the next morning at ten.
When the hour arrived, James Wilkinson went to Fishkill Creek, where he blindfolded the British officer and led him back to a room in Gates’s headquarters. General Burgoyne, knowing that his letter would be read critically by George Germain in London, wrote that he had been determined to wage a third battle. Only the Americans’ superior numbers and his own humanity were leading him to propose a cessation of fighting while terms could be established.
Colonel Wilkinson was surprised when General Gates fished in his pocket and took out terms he had already prepared. His note was short and brutal: “General Burgoyne’s army being exceedingly reduced by repeated defeats, by desertion, sickness, etc., their provisions exhausted, their military horses, tents and baggage taken or destroyed, their retreat cut off, and their camp invested, they can only be allowed to surrender as prisoners of war.”
Both sides agreed to an armistice until sunset while General Burgoyne and his council considered the demand for unconditional surrender. The British reply came with a flourish: “Lt. General Burgoyne’s army, however reduced, will never admit that their retreat is cut off while they have arms in their hands.”
Burgoyne was demanding that his defeated troops be allowed to surrender with full honors of war.
The next morning, Gates agreed to generous terms and spelled out the hour they should go into effect—3 P.M. that same day for the capitulation, 5 P.M. for the laying down of arms. The American generosity and haste made Burgoyne suspicious. Did Gates have better information than his own about Henry Clinton’s progress to Albany? To delay the surrender, Burgoyne added new requirements: His men must be allowed to march out with their weapons and must be permitted to return to England; they would promise only that they would not come back to America to fight.
Again, Gates quickly agreed.
Burgoyne now demanded that the word “capitulation” in the surrender document be changed to a more neutral term.
Gates agreed.
Further stalling seemed impossible. On behalf of the British, a captain named Craig signed a letter accepting the terms. It was now 11 P.M. on Wednesday, October 15.
During the night, a British spy slipped into Burgoyne’s camp to report that Henry Clinton’s troops had reached the town of Esopus, which meant that even as Burgoyne was surrendering, his reinforcements might have entered Albany. The general reconvened his officers and put three new questions to them: Could they honorably break their treaty? Was the news of Clinton’s approach reliable enough to justify sacrificing the advantageous terms they had negotiated? Was the army prepared to fight to the last man?
By a vote of fourteen to eight, Burgoyne’s council advised him that he could not renege on the treaty and that even if the information about Esopus was accurate, the reserves might still be too far from Saratoga to save them. Two thirds of the officers also said they doubted that their troops, if forced into another battle, would fight with much spirit. Burgoyne couldn’t accept that answer, and he went on inventing impediments to the signing. He informed Gates that he had heard that the Americans had broken the armistice by sending troops toward Albany, which meant he would be surrendering to a smaller army than the one that defeated him. He insisted that two British officers review the American ranks to determine whether the report was true.
Whether the rumor was correct hardly mattered to Burgoyne, but there was truth to it. A group of New York militia, whose term had expired, had packed their kit without Gates’s permission and were headed home. By now, General Gates also knew that Clinton had taken Esopus and set fire to it. He wanted Burgoyne’s surrender at once and sent Colonel Wilkinson to reject the latest demand about inspecting American troops. If the treaty was not signed at once, Wilkinson was to break off all further negotiation. But Burgoyne went on delaying, and Wilkinson was heading back to the American lines when a British officer overtook him and asked that he wait a little longer. General Burgoyne would deliver his final answer within two hours.
Wilkinson had waited those two hours and fifteen minutes more when he recognized a British lieutenant colonel named Sutherland across the creek and beckoned him over.
“Well,” Sutherland said as he drew nearer, “our business will be knocked on the head after all.”
Wilkinson asked why.
“The officers have got the devil in their heads and could not agree.”
Wilkinson tried to act cheerful about the prospect of more fighting. Early in the negotiations, Colonel Sutherland had asked, as a favor, that he be allowed to keep a firing device he had owned for thirty-five years. “I am sorry for it,” Wilkinson said now, “as you will not only lose your fusee but your whole baggage.”
Sutherland was clearly downcast about John Burgoyne going back on his word, but he said there was nothing he could do about it. As they stood commiserating, Wilkinson remembered the letter that Captain Craig had signed the night before. He pulled it from his pocket and read it aloud to Sutherland.
Sutherland hadn’t known about Craig’s letter, but he understood that it pledged the British in writing to accept the surrender treaty. If the other officers could see Craig’s signature, they would agree with him that Burgoyne must honor his commitment. Sutherland asked Wilkinson anxiously, “Will you give me that letter?”
Wilkinson said no, he would keep it as a demonstration of how much the good faith of a British commander was worth.
Sutherland grew excited. “Spare me that letter, sir, and I pledge you my honor I will return it in fifteen minutes.’
Wilkinson knew what Sutherland hoped to accomplish and handed him Craig’s letter. Sutherland ran the entire way to the British camp. As Wilkinson waited, a messenger from General Gates arrived with instructions to break off the negotiations if the treaty was not already ratified. Now it became Wilkinson’s turn to stall. He sent back a message to his commander that he was doing his best and would see him within half an hour.
As he had promised, Colonel Sutherland came bounding back, bringing Captain Craig with him. Craig handed Wilkinson the treaty, signed by John Burgoyne.
—
Horatio Gates’s first act after winning one of history’s great military victories was to send quantities of meat across Fishkill Creek to feed his starving enemies. The next morning, General Burgoyne called his officers together for the last time. Although he was almost too overcome to speak, he justified the decision he had made and left them to judge its wisdom.
At 10 A.M. the British troops paraded out with drums beating and the full honors of war, as Burgoyne had insisted. But the inspiring marches sounded shamefaced, and men fought their tears. James Wilkinson was escorting Burgoyne to Horatio Gates, and as they reached the Fishkill Burgoyne looked down doubtfully and asked whether the creek could be forded.
Certainly, sir, Wilkinson replied. Don’t you see the people on the opposite shore?
“Yes,” Burgoyne said, with resignation. “I have seen them too long.”
Accompanied by his adjutants and aides, Burgoyne crossed the creek and rode through the meadow to the front of the American camp, where General Gates was waiting for him. Burgoyne had not changed his clothes for more than two weeks before the armistice, even after bullets had torn his hat and waistcoat. But for today’s ceremony he had put on his richest scarlet uniform. Horatio Gates wore a plain blue coat. When Wilkinson introduced
the two generals, John Burgoyne raised his hat gracefully.
“The fortunes of war, General,” he said, “have made me your prisoner.”
Returning the courtly salute, Gates seemed to have prepared his remarks for the occasion. He said without hesitation, “I shall always be ready to bear testimony that it has not been through any fault of Your Excellency.”
At that, one of Burgoyne’s generals came forward. He had served with Gates in the British Army, and the two men saluted and shook hands warmly. The commanders then withdrew to Gates’s hut on the front lines. During the negotiations, there had been nothing but a mattress in one corner, but now the Americans had made a table by laying bare planks across empty barrels. There were only four plates, but there was plenty of roast beef, and two glasses for the opposing generals to offer toasts in rum and water. Burgoyne raised his glass to George Washington, Gates to the British king. Quips and joking soon began among the other officers, and within minutes the entire party was laughing hilariously with exhaustion and relief. Philip Schuyler, who had ridden up from Albany for the occasion, escorted the wife of the ranking German general to a separate meal of smoked tongue and beefsteak. He explained that it might be embarrassing for her to dine with so many gentlemen.
One British artillery major was unsettled by the contrast between the carnage of the past weeks and the merriment today, and he turned to an American captain at his side to share his musing. Here they were, the best of friends, and only a fortnight ago they had been enemies trying to kill each other. It was, the major reflected, an odd old world.
General Gates had put his underlings in charge of taking the weapons of the British and German soldiers. That humiliation occurred in a meadow north of the creek, out of sight of the American soldiers. When the vanquished men had stacked their arms, they crossed the creek for their ritual march between the American ranks. The Americans were intensely curious about the British prisoners, who included the finest of Britain’s fighting aristocracy. Besides Burgoyne, some dozen members of Parliament, English lords and Scottish knights had been taken, and, accompanying them, many of their ladies. In all, General Gates’s Northern Army had captured seven generals and three hundred other officers, plus 3,379 British soldiers and 2,412 Germans. At Saratoga, John Burgoyne had lost everything, including 1,429 men either killed or wounded.
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