Rupert Furneaux - Saratoga: The Decisive Battle

ROUTLEDGE LIBARY EDITIONS: HISTORICAL SECURITY

Volume 4

SARATOGA

SARATOGA

The Decisive Battle

RUPERT FURNEAUX

First published in 1971 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd

This edition first published in 2021

by Routledge

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1971 Rupert Furneaux

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ISBN: 978-0-367-61963-3 (Set)

ISBN: 978-1-00-314390-1 (Set) (ebk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-65042-1 (Volume 4) (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-00-312760-4 (Volume 4) (ebk)

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SARATOGA

The Decisive Battle

RUPERT FURNEAUX

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1971

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights are reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers.

Rupert Furneaux 1971

ISBN 0 049 73005 3

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

in 11 point Baskerville type

BY BILLING & SONS LIMITED

GUILDFORD AND LONDON

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge with many thanks the assistance of the staff at Saratoga National Park, who conducted me over the battlefield, which they are endeavouring to recreate fully in conformity with the battles fought on September 19th and October 7th, 1777. During my visit, at the time of year of these battles, I toured the area, visiting also the battlefields at Bennington, Hubbardton, and Fort Ticonderoga.

Section from a painting by John Trumbull (1756-1843) now in the Yale University Art Gallery.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I. London

II. Montreal

III. St Johns

IV. Fort Ticonderoga

V. Mount Defiance

VI. Hubbardton

VII. Fort Edward

VIII. New York

IX. Fort Stanwix

X. Bennington

XI. The Hudson

XII. Swords Farm

XIII. Freemans Farm

XIV. Neilsons Barn

XV. The Highlands

XVI. Bemis Heights

XVII. Saratoga

XVIII. Cambridge (Mass.)London

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Illustrations

Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga frontispiece

1. General John Burgoyne

2. Daniel Morgan

3. Horatio Gates

4. Philip Schuyler

(a) Fort Ticonderoga, with Lake Champlain and Lake George

(b) Fort Ticonderoga and Lake Champlain

(a) Major-General Arthur St Clair

(b) Major-General Benedict Arnold

(a) American riflemans uniform

(b) North American soldier

(a) C.O. Washingtons Life Guard

(b) Uniform of 62nd British Regiment

(c) Uniform of a Brunswick Dragoon

9. Panorama of the battlefield, October 1777

(a) Looking eastward from the Visitors Centre, Saratoga

(b) Looking eastward from the Great Redoubt

11. View eastwards to Freemans Farm

(a) Panoramic view of the battlefield

(b) John Neilson House

(a) Storming of Breymann Redoubt

(b) Morgan rallies his riflemen

14. Death and burial of General Fraser

MAPS

1. The Invasion of New York State

2. The Battle of Freemans Farm

3. The Battle of Bemis Heights

I London

Leaving his army in Canada on the pretext that he needed to deal with his private affairs and to take his seat in Parliament, Lieutenant-General Sir John Burgoyne came to London in mid-December 1776 to advocate a plan whereby the rebellious American colonists might be dealt a decisive blow, and his own ambition furthered. His ability to talk well made his plan sound easy of accomplishment, especially to the ears of men who were eager to grasp a solution to an annoying difficulty: Sir William Howe, the Commander-in-Chief in America had unexpectedly changed his plan of campaign. Howes letters, which by the slow communications of the period took two months to cross the Atlantic, placed Lord George Germain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in a quandary to which Burgoyne supplied the answer. He did far more than that, for he offered Germain the best of both possible worlds.

The correspondence shows how the Grand Strategy, the imaginative plan to end the war by one decisive blow, was allowed to deteriorate into an ineffective sideshow, which culminated in one of Britains greatest military disasters.

The question Who blundered? is not easy of solution, for it requires the somewhat tedious examination (without which the campaign is incomprehensible) of the letters that passed between the three men: the secretive and taciturn Howe; the ebullient and ambitious Burgoyne; and the allegedly indolent and maladroit minister who is supposed to have stranded Burgoyne alone and unaided in the American wilderness, the long-discredited Germain. The last of these became the victim of the malice of his political enemy, Lord Shelburne, who concocted the ludicrous story of the pigeon-holed despatch, which made him the laughing-stock of several generations.

The war for American independence (which Germain proverbially lost) was two years old.

The rebellion of Britains American colonists began in 1775. Their desire for independence dated back to 1763, when, relieved from fear of French aggression by Britains great victory in the Seven Years Warthe decisive campaigns of which had been fought at their back door and in which they had played a conspicuous partthey sought freedom to run their lives without interference from the mother country.

Today, we find the colonists attitude is understandable, and the coercive policy pursued by the government of King George III indefensible. Some Americans wanted what we would now call dominion status, the device by which a Commonwealth of independent nations is held together by common allegiance to the Crown. But, in 1774, there was no constitutional means by which such a desire could be satisfied, and no inclination to adopt it. The English had won a great empirewhich they had not yet learned to administerat enormous cost, to which they asked the Americans, the chief beneficiaries of the war, to contribute. The colonists recognized their indebtedness but, on good constitutional grounds, refused to be taxed without representation. When Parliament imposed duties, the angry Bostonians tossed a cargo of tea into the sea.