Burgoyne was annoyed, but not discouraged. So the Americans knew his plan—so what? That didn’t mean they could stop him.
The basic idea of the plan was simple: slice the United States in two. This would be done by attacking the centrally located state of New York from the north and south at the same time. Once the British controlled New York, all of New England would be cut off from the rest of the United States. The different regions wouldn’t be able to help each other by sending soldiers or supplies back and forth. It would be like having an enemy’s hands around your neck. The Revolution could be strangled.
Benedict Arnold to the Rescue
Like everyone else, George Washington knew about Burgoyne’s plan. But there was very little he could do. The British still had their main army, under the command of General William Howe, camped in and around New York City. Washington was worried that Howe would try to capture Philadelphia that year. So he had to keep his army nearby to prevent it. You can’t just let the enemy capture your capital city, can you?
A separate American army, known as the Northern Army, would have to stop Burgoyne’s invasion. Washington couldn’t send many soldiers to the Northern Army, but he could at least send one of his top generals. He picked a former merchant from Connecticut named Benedict Arnold.
Arnold had already fought in many of the war’s fiercest battles, and he was known for his attacking style and reckless bravery. Here’s how one American soldier described Arnold’s reputation in 1777: “He was our fighting general, and a bloody fellow he was. He didn’t care for nothing; he’d ride right in … . . He was as brave a man as ever lived.”
True, Arnold was also known as perhaps the most annoying man in America. His loud, bossy style made him almost impossible to work with. But this was no time to worry about personality conflicts. Washington needed a fighter in northern New York, so he sent his best one. “We have one advantage over our enemy,” Arnold said as he headed north. “It is our power to be free, or nobly die in defense of liberty.”
Franklin’s Secret Mission
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin packed up a lunch, climbed into a carriage with his two grandsons, and set off on a picnic. A picnic, Ben? At a time like this? Don’t worry—it was part of a secret plan to help win the Revolution.
The plan was based on a simple fact, sad but true: the United States could not win this war without help. George Washington might win a small battle here and there, but the Continental army did not have enough soldiers, guns, and ships to defeat mighty Great Britain. What the Americans needed was a powerful ally. So Congress decided to try to persuade France to join forces with the United States. And Congress believed that seventy-one-year-old Ben Franklin was the man to do the convincing. Franklin was famous and highly respected in France—they just might listen to him.
But first Franklin had to actually get to France. And with British spies snooping around every corner in Philadelphia, this was going to be a dangerous trip. If the British found out about Franklin’s plans, they would chase down his ship as it crossed the Atlantic Ocean. That would be the end of Ben Franklin.
So Franklin and his two grandsons (William, age seventeen, and Benjamin, seven) rode out of town on an innocent little picnic. Then, when they saw they hadn’t been followed, they drove the carriage to a small port on the Delaware River. All three of them climbed onto a waiting ship.
Six weeks later, they were safely in France.
We’ll Think About It
Battered and exhausted by the rough sea journey, Franklin had no time for rest. He and the boys jumped into a carriage and hurried toward Paris, the French capital. “The carriage was a miserable one,” Franklin remembered, “with tired horses, the evening dark, scarce a traveler but ourselves on the road.” And the dark road was far from safe.
“The driver stopped near a wood we were to pass through, to tell us that a gang of eighteen robbers infested that wood, who but two weeks ago had murdered some travelers on that very spot.”
Benjamin Franklin
Luckily, Franklin managed to avoid the French bandits. But the British spies spotted him right away. David Stormont, the British ambassador to France, rushed a report to his bosses in London. “I learnt yesterday evening that the famous Doctor Franklin is arrived,” wrote Stormont. “I cannot but suspect that he comes charged with a secret commission from the Congress … . . In a word, my Lord, I look upon him as a dangerous engine.”
A few days later, young William Franklin went on an errand for his grandfather. He went to the French foreign minister’s office and delivered a letter stating that Benjamin Franklin was here in Paris to negotiate a treaty of friendship between the United States and France.
The official French reply was basically “Well … we’ll think about it.” Sure, King Louis XVI and friends were still bitter about losing the French and Indian War to their old enemy Britain. The French were definitely hungry for a little revenge. They didn’t want to join this new war, though, unless they were sure the Americans could actually win it. And so far, the Americans had lost most of the big battles. French leaders decided to wait and see how the fighting went in 1777.
Franklin settled in for a long stay in France. He couldn’t accomplish much until there was some good news from home.
The News from Home
At first, there was no good news to report. Unless you were rooting for the British.
In July, General Burgoyne accomplished the first part of his plan: he captured Fort Ticonderoga from the Americans. This news delighted King George, who skipped into Queen Charlotte’s bedroom, clapping and yelling, “I have beat them! Beat the Americans!”
The next step for Burgoyne’s big army was to march about thirty miles from Fort Ticonderoga to the Hudson River. Things were going smoothly.
Baroness Frederika von Riedesel, for one, was having a wonderful time. Wife of the German general Friedrich von Riedesel, the baroness was one of hundreds of women who were traveling with Burgoyne’s army (wives often went to war with their husbands in the 1700s). The baroness even brought her three young daughters along! As she wrote, this was an exciting opportunity for the family to see the world:
Baroness von Riedesel
“When the weather was good we had our meals out under the trees, otherwise we had them in the barn, laying boards across barrels for tables. It was here that I had bear meat for the first time, and it tasted very good to me.”
Then, just when everyone was having a fine time, the British started running into trouble. John Burgoyne (nicknamed “Gentleman Johnny” by his troops because he treated them well) insisted on living in luxury, even in the middle of a war. He needed thirty wagons just to haul all his champagne and fancy foods! This really slowed down the march, especially since the army was traveling over narrow paths through muddy, mosquito-filled forests.
And the Americans were doing a great job of making their British visitors feel unwelcome. American soldiers destroyed bridges and rolled boulders and logs into the road. They dammed up streams, causing them to flood the forest paths. Local farmers even burned their own crops, just to make sure the British wouldn’t find anything to eat in New York.
Burgoyne was able to advance only one mile a day. By the beginning of September, his army was down to just a month’s supply of food. And there was more bad news. You’ll remember that Burgoyne’s plan called for General William Howe to lead a second British army north from New York City. Now Burgoyne learned that Howe’s army wasn’t coming. General Howe had decided that he would rather attack Philadelphia than cooperate with Burgoyne’s plan. (Howe didn’t like Burgoyne. And since he outranked Burgoyne, he could do whatever he wanted.)
Gentleman Johnny was starting to sweat.
“When I wrote more confidently, I had not foreseen that I was to be left to pursue my way though such a tract of country and host of foes, without any cooperation from New York.”
John Burgoyne
The leaves on the trees of northern New
York were just starting to change from green to yellow and orange. To Burgoyne, the colorful leaves were a painful reminder that it was getting late in the year. If he was going to turn and march his army back to safety in Canada, he had to do it right then, before winter weather made the trip impossible.
Burgoyne thought about it … and decided to continue the attack. His army would try to fight its way south to Albany, where it could spend the winter indoors. “This army must not retreat,” he told his men. Was he thinking about that bet he had made back in London?
A Little Help from Poland
The Americans knew that Burgoyne was coming. It was time to pick a spot and get ready for the showdown.
Benedict Arnold and a Polish military engineer named Thaddeus Kosciusko got on their horses and started looking for the perfect place to fight. Kosciusko, or “Kos,” as the Americans called him, was a new addition to the Continental army. Back in Poland, he had tried to elope (or run off to be married) with his girlfriend. But the woman’s father caught the young couple and gave Kosciusko two choices: fight him in a duel or get out of Poland. Kos didn’t want to kill the old guy, so he decided to leave his country. And as so many people have done since, he traveled to the United States in search of new opportunities. He met George Washington, and their conversation went like this:
Washington: What do you seek here?
Kos: I come to fight as a volunteer for American independence. Washington: What can you do?
Kos: Try me.
Washington liked this guy’s attitude (though he had terrible trouble spelling the name “Kosciusko”—he spelled it eleven different ways during the war). Washington sent Kos north to join the Northern Army.
An expert at designing and building forts near rivers, Kos was exactly what the Americans needed in September 1777. Kos and Arnold found a hill above the Hudson River near the town of Saratoga. This looked like a good place to try to stop Burgoyne. Kos took out his notebook and started sketching ideas for forts. They would have to be simple forts—the British army would be there in just a few days.
Pa-Pa Franklin
Back in France, Franklin eagerly opened every letter from home, hoping to read about a great American victory. But there had been no great victories yet. And to make things worse for poor Ben, he had to decode the letters before reading them. One letter began like this: “I am very glad that 105 is going to 156, and I am sure it will please 38 of 68.”
This was a simple code, using numbers to stand for important people and places. Codes were necessary because Franklin was absolutely surrounded by British spies. He didn’t know it at the time, but even his own personal secretary was selling information to the British! Still, Franklin hated working with codes. He found it boring.
Why were the British so interested in Ben Franklin’s secrets? They were worried Franklin might be in France to do more than just work out a treaty. Franklin was world famous for his experiments with lightning and electricity, and there were wild rumors that Franklin was now in France to build some secret electrical machine that could destroy all of Britain. One British secret agent actually described Franklin’s plan like this:
“He proposes to have a chain carried from Calais [France] to Dover [England].
He, standing in Calais, with a prodigious electrical machine of his own invention, will convey such a shock as will entirely overturn our whole island.”
The truth is, Franklin was spending most of his time eating and drinking. The fancy people of Paris invited Franklin to parties every night, and he was too polite (and hungry) to refuse.
Everyone in France, it seemed, wanted to get a close-up look at Franklin’s simple American clothes and his beaver-fur hat. Artists and sculptors gathered around to paint and sculpt his famous face. Young women lined up to kiss his cheek and call him “Pa-pa Franklin.” Then they rushed to their wig makers and asked for wigs shaped like Franklin’s fur hat. (This was called wearing your hair “à la Franklin.”)
Franklin knew that most of this stuff was pretty silly. But he also knew that he wasn’t wasting his time. Franklin’s fame and popularity were actually powerful tools. One dinner party at a time, he was winning the French people over to the American cause.
If only the American army could help him out a little.
The Battle of Saratoga: Part One
Now back to New York.
After a week of sweaty work under a killer summer sun, the Americans completed a fort at Saratoga. And just in time, too—Burgoyne’s army attacked the American fort on September 19, 1777. The battle of Saratoga was on.
Just before the attack began, a general named Horatio Gates arrived at Saratoga to take command of the Northern Army. Gates was a careful commander, a guy who didn’t like to take chances. (Soldiers nicknamed him “Granny Gates” because the way he wore his glasses on the end of his nose made him look like an elderly woman.) Gates wanted to keep his army inside the fort and fight from behind the walls of earth and logs.
General Benedict Arnold disagreed. Arnold, who was second in command, wanted to charge out of the fort and fight in the woods and fields. As always, Arnold made his opinions known to everyone. So he and Gates argued for a while. Finally, Gates got so annoyed that he gave Arnold permission to take some soldiers out to fight.
This turned out to be a very important decision, because it ruined the British battle plan. Burgoyne had been planning to roll his cannons right up to the American fort. Instead, the two armies crashed into each other in a field surrounded by forests. The Americans used the trees to their advantage, climbing up to high branches and firing their rifles down on the British with deadly accuracy.
The deafening blasts of guns and cannons continued all afternoon, making soldiers on both sides feel like they were stuck in the center of a nonstop thunderstorm. “Such an explosion of fire I never had any idea of before,” said a young British lieutenant named William Digby. An American officer named Roger Lamb agreed: “Both armies seemed to be determined on death or victory.”
As usual, Benedict Arnold was out in front of his men, charging right at the enemy guns. “Arnold rushed into the thickest of the fight with his usual recklessness, and at times acted like a madman,” reported an American general named Enoch Poor. Arnold’s fellow soldiers weren’t sure if Arnold was very brave or very insane. Some thought he must be drunk. (There’s no evidence that he was.)
Back in the British camp, Baroness von Riedesel listened to the battle with horror. “I shivered at every shot,” she said, “for I could hear everything.” She watched as the wounded men were carried back to camp, terrified that her husband would be among them. He wasn’t.
Only darkness ended the fighting that day. Though more than one thousand men had been shot, neither side had won the battle. The exhausted armies collapsed and rested.
The Battle of Saratoga: Part Two
This battle left Burgoyne in serious trouble. He lost many of his best officers, and his army was nearly out of food. He wanted to try attacking the Americans one more time, but his soldiers were too tired. Still, he absolutely refused to retreat.
Meanwhile, in the American camp, the uneasy relationship between generals Gates and Arnold exploded. Gates wrote his official report to Congress on the battle of September 19. Even though Benedict Arnold had led much of the fighting that day, Gates didn’t bother mentioning Arnold’s name in the report.
Arnold stormed into Gates’s tent, accusing Gates of jealousy and disrespect. Gates calmly responded by removing Arnold from command. Gates ordered Arnold to go to his tent and stay there.
Now a series of tense days and nights followed. By day, the Americans kept a constant watch for the attack they knew must be coming. By night, they were haunted by the barks and cries of hungry wolves that gathered in packs to scratch up the shallow battlefield graves. Wolves dragged out the bodies and … . well, you can imagine. It was a rough three weeks.
Then, on October 7, the British attacked again. The top American officers ra
ced to General Gates to get his battle orders. When Gates started naming the soldiers he wanted to send into battle, Benedict Arnold (who was supposed to be in his tent) interrupted with his opinion:
Arnold: That is nothing. You must send a stronger force.
Gates: General Arnold, I have nothing for you to do. You have no business here.
Arnold spat out a series of unprintable curses as he walked back to his tent. He paced back and forth for a while, listening to the sounds of the gunfire. Then he just couldn’t take it anymore. He jumped on his horse and rode toward the battle, shouting,
“Victory or death!”
Gates ordered him to come back. But Arnold was already gone.
Out on the battlefield, American soldiers cheered when they saw Arnold coming. Arnold rode all over the battlefield, leading charges and driving British and German soldiers backward. During one charge, he was shot in the leg and fell from his horse. “Rush on, my brave boys!” he called from the ground.
And the Americans did rush on. This time they won a clear victory over the British.
Benedict Arnold
Johnny Loses the Bet
Now Burgoyne’s only hope was to try to escape before the Americans attacked again.
King George Page 8
