Chapter III: The War of American Independence (3)

It has been worth while to give at some length the details of this somewhat squalid incident, because it is a good illustration of the difficulties which may arise from one of the most valued and valuable of English principles, the independence of the judicature. In the distant possessions of Great Britain, even more than at home, a great safeguard and a strong source of confidence is and always has been that the judges are in no way dependent on the Executive; and yet the case of Livius is by no means the only case in which serious mischief to the public service has resulted from this very cause. There can be no doubt that on technical grounds the Privy Council were right in upholding Livius’ appeal. What weighed with them most of all was that Livius had not been dismissed for judicial misconduct; and short of such misconduct, flagrant and proved beyond all shadow of doubt, it would still be held that a judge should not be removed from office by the King himself, much less by the governor. Carleton, like other men cast in a large mould, did not sufficiently safeguard his action. A mischief-making adventurer was placed in high office for which he was clearly unfit. At a time of national crisis he used his powers of making mischief, and feeling secure in the independence of his judicial position, sought to undermine the authority of the Government. Unwilling to leave the difficulty for his successor to solve, the outgoing governor, fearless of responsibility, summarily dismissed the man, and contemptuously refused to justify the grounds of dismissal. He acted in the best interests of the public service, but, in doing so, he placed himself in the wrong, and the restoration of Livius to his office must be held to be justified, while his original appointment admits of no excuse.

[Sidenote: Carleton resigns.]

[Sidenote: Germain’s plan of campaign for 1777.]

In June, 1777, Carleton sent in his resignation, but a year passed before he was able to leave Canada, and a bitter year it was for the English cause in America. Germain’s letter to him of the 26th of March, to which reference has already been made, gave a minute account of the plans for the year’s campaign. Carleton was to remain behind in Canada with 3,770 men. He was to place under command of General Burgoyne 7,173 men, in addition to Canadians and Indians, and after providing him with whatever artillery, stores, and provisions he might require, and rendering him every assistance in his power, ‘to give him orders to pass Lake Champlain and from thence, by the most vigorous exertion of the force under his command, to proceed with all expedition to Albany, and put himself under the command of Sir William Howe.’ In an earlier part of the same letter the phrase is used that Burgoyne was ‘to force his way to Albany’, leaving no doubt of the writer’s intention that at all hazards Burgoyne was to effect a junction with Howe. Carleton was further to place under Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger 675 men, also to be supplemented by Canadians and Indians, to give him all the necessaries for his expedition, and to instruct him to advance to the Mohawk river, and down that river to Albany, where he was to place himself under Sir William Howe. St. Leger’s force was to be supplementary to Burgoyne’s: as phrased elsewhere in the same letter, he was ‘to make a diversion on the Mohawk river’.

[Sidenote: Minuteness of the instructions.]

[Sidenote: Germain fails to communicate with Sir W. Howe.]

It is noteworthy how this remarkable letter purported to settle all the details. The exact number of men for each service are counted, the particular regiments and companies of regiments are told off, no discretion is left to Carleton or to Burgoyne as to whom they should send forward to Lake Champlain or the Mohawk, and whom they should keep in Canada. No mention is made of the reinforcements which Carleton had written were necessary. Nothing is allowed apparently for sick or ineffectives. All is on paper, concocted by the man at a distance who persisted in knowing better than the far more capable man on the spot. But the most damning passage in the letter is as follows, ‘I shall write to Sir William from hence by the first packet, but you will nevertheless endeavour to give him the earliest intelligence of this measure, and also direct Lieutenant-General Burgoyne and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Leger to neglect no opportunity of doing the same, that they may receive instructions from Sir William Howe.’ Sir William Howe’s Narrative of his operations, given to a Committee of the House of Commons in April, 1779, states explicitly that the promised letter was never sent to him by Germain; that it was not until the 5th of June that he received from Carleton a copy of the letter which has been quoted above, unaccompanied by any instructions; and that, before Burgoyne left England, Germain had received Howe’s plans for the Philadelphia expedition, and had written approving them. Such was Lord George Germain’s conduct of the war in America.

Map to illustrate =THE BORDER WARS= _to face page 145_

B. V. Barbishire, Oxford, 1908
]

[Sidenote: Burgoyne and Carleton.]

On the 27th of March Burgoyne left London. On the 6th of May he arrived at Quebec. There was no friction between him and Carleton. He had made no attempt to supplant Carleton, and, bitterly as Carleton resented his own treatment by Germain, he gave Burgoyne the utmost assistance for the coming campaign. ‘Had that officer been acting for himself or for his brother, he could not have shown more indefatigable zeal than he did to comply with and expedite my requisitions and desires.’ Such was Burgoyne’s testimony to Carleton, in his Narrative of the ‘state of the Expedition from Canada’ as given to the House of Commons.[123]

[Sidenote: St. Leger’s expedition to the Mohawk river.]

[Sidenote: Oswego.]

Before following the fortunes of Burgoyne and his army, it will be well to give an account of how St. Leger fared in the ‘diversion on the Mohawk river’. As in the days of the French and English wars, the twofold British advance from Canada followed the course of the waterways. While the main army moved up Lake Champlain to strike the Hudson at Fort Edward and thence move down to Albany, St. Leger’s smaller force was dispatched up the St. Lawrence to Oswego on Lake Ontario, in order by lake and stream to reach and overpower Fort Stanwix on the upper waters of the Mohawk river, and then to follow down that river to the Hudson, and reach the meeting-point with Burgoyne’s troops at Albany. At Albany both Burgoyne and St. Leger were to place themselves under Sir William Howe’s command. Oswego, the starting-point of St. Leger’s expedition, owing to its geographical position always played a prominent part in the border wars of Canada and the North American colonies. From this point Count Frontenac started when, in 1696, he led his men to Onondaga, burnt the villages of the Iroquois, and laid waste their cornfields. The first fort at Oswego was built in 1727 by Governor Burnet of New York, who reported that he had built it with the consent of the Six Nations. It was built on the western bank of the mouth of the Onondaga or Oswego river, which here runs into Lake Ontario, and it was still the main fort in 1756, when Oswego was taken by Montcalm, although a subsidiary fort had also lately been built upon the opposite--the eastern side of the river. The effect produced both in England and in America by the French general’s brilliant feat of arms marked the importance which was attached to the position. The place was re-occupied by Prideaux and Haldimand with Sir William Johnson in 1759; and subsequently a new fort was constructed on the high ground which forms a promontory on the eastern side of the estuary. This fort, which after the War of Independence passed into American hands, was stormed and taken by Gordon Drummond in the war of 1812.

[Sidenote: The Six Nations.]

[Sidenote: Allies of the English.]

The Oswego river, or one branch of it, runs out of Lake Oneida: and into that lake, at the eastern end, runs the stream which was known as Wood Creek. From the Wood Creek there was a portage to the Mohawk river, and at the end of the portage stood Fort Stanwix, held by an American garrison, and barring St. Leger’s way to the Mohawk valley and the Hudson. All this was the country of the Six Nation Indians, Six Nations instead of Five since the early part of the eighteenth century, when the Tuscaroras, driven up from the south by the white men, had been admitted to the Iroquois Confederacy. The people of the Long House, as the Iroquois called themselves, had always been, in the main, allies of the English as against the French. From the time when the state of New York became a British possession, these Indians, who had had friendly trading relations with the Dutch, transferred their friendship to the English, and the chain of the covenant, though often strained, was never completely broken. When the War of American Independence began, and the English were divided, the Six Nations, though confused by the issue and by the competing appeals of the two parties, adhered as a whole to the Royalist cause. The majority of the Oneidas, and possibly the Tuscaroras, inclined to the American side, the Oneidas having come under the strong personal influence of a New England missionary, Samuel Kirkland, but the other members of the league were for the King. After the battle of Oriskany, where, among others, the powerful clan of Senecas suffered heavily, the enmity between these Indians and the colonists became more pronounced, and took the form of a blood feud, accompanied by all the horrors of militant savagery.

There were various reasons why the Iroquois should espouse the side of England against America. They looked to the Great King beyond the sea as their father and protector. The English colonists on their borders had shown little respect for their lands: and in 1774, in one of the inevitable conflicts between white men and red on the Virginian frontier, which was known as Cresap’s war, some of the Six Nation warriors had been involved, and the family of a friendly Cayuga chief had been murdered by the whites, bringing bitterness into the hearts of the western members of the Iroquois Confederacy. But, most of all, the Mohawks shaped the policy of the league, and they in turn were guided by the Johnson family, and by their famous fighting chief Thayandenegea, more commonly known by his English name of Joseph Brant.

[Sidenote: The Mohawks.]

[Sidenote: Sir William Johnson.]

The Mohawks had always been the leaders among the Six Nation Indians, though, by the time when war broke out between England and America, they were comparatively few in number, worn down by constant fighting, and by other causes.[124] Of all the Iroquois, they had been most consistently loyal to the English, and the most determined foes of the French. Their homes were at the eastern end of the Long House, in the valley of the Mohawk river, and they had therefore always been in close touch with the settlements at Albany, Schenectady, and along the course of the river to which they gave their name. They had mingled much and intermarried with their white neighbours; and for thirty-five years they had had living among them the Englishman, or rather the Irishman, who above all others won the confidence of the North American Indians, Sir William Johnson. They adopted him and he adopted them, taking to wife in his later years, a Mohawk girl, Mary or Molly Brant. If Johnson in large measure lived down to the Indians, he also endeavoured to make the Indians live up to the white men’s level. He encouraged missionary effort, and promoted education, sending, among others, Joseph Brant, brother of Molly Brant, to a school for Indian boys at Lebanon in the state of Connecticut. Johnson represented the authority of the King, and he used his authority and his influence for the protection of the Indians against the inroads of the white men into their lands. The Mohawks, from their position, were more exposed than the other members of the confederacy to white land-jobbers, whose aggressiveness increased after Johnson’s death in 1774. Accordingly, while their traditional sympathies had always been with the English, when the civil war came, they had no hesitation in attaching themselves to the King’s cause. It was the cause of their protector; it was the cause of the Johnson family; it was the cause to which both interest and sentiment bade them to adhere. When Sir William Johnson died, he left as his political representative, his nephew and son-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson: the heir of his estates was his own son, Sir John Johnson. Both the one and the other were pronounced Loyalists: they drew the Mohawks after them; and when, in the summer of 1775, after hearing of the fight at Bunker’s Hill, Guy Johnson left the Mohawk Valley for Oswego and crossed over to Canada, the majority of the Mohawks left their homes and followed him. In Canada, it was said, they received assurances from Carleton, which were confirmed by Haldimand, that they should not be allowed to suffer for their loyalty to the King.[125]

[Sidenote: Joseph Brant.]

The leader of these Mohawk friends of England was Joseph Brant, who was born, the son of a full-blooded Mohawk, in 1742. He was therefore a man of between thirty and forty years of age at the time of the American Revolution. In the period intervening between the British conquest of Canada and the battle of Waterloo, North America produced three very remarkable men of pure Indian descent. Pontiac was one, Joseph Brant was the second, the third was Tecumseh, who fought and fell in the war of 1812. Of these three, Joseph Brant alone sprang from the famous Iroquois stock. Pontiac was to a greater extent than the others a leader of the red men against the whites. So far as he had sympathies with white men, they were with the French as against the English. Brant, in the main, and Tecumseh played their parts when French rule had ceased to exist in North America; they were fast allies of the English as against the Americans or, to put it more accurately, of the English controlled from home as against the English installed in their own right in America. But all these three Indian chiefs had, in one form or another, the same main motive for action, to prevent what the red man had being taken from him by the white man. Of the three, Brant was by far the most civilized. He was an educated man and a Christian. He was, as has been seen, sent to school in Connecticut, he was a friend of the missionaries, he visited England twice, went to Court, had interviews and correspondence with Secretaries of State, made acquaintance with Boswell, was painted by Romney, and was presented by Fox with a silver snuff-box. He was poles asunder from the ordinary native inhabitant of the North American backwoods. He had known war from early boyhood, had borne arms under Sir William Johnson against the French, and had apparently fought against Pontiac. At the outbreak of the revolution he followed Guy Johnson to Canada, and seems to have taken part in opposing the American advance on Montreal. He paid his first visit to England towards the end of 1775, returned to New York in July 1776, and before the year closed made his way back up country to the lands belonging to or within striking distance of the Six Nations. Throughout the coming years of the war his name was great and terrible in the borderland, the main scene of his warfare being what was then known as the Tryon county of New York, the districts east of the Fort Stanwix treaty line, which were watered by the Mohawk river and its tributaries, and by the streams which flow south and south-west to form the Susquehanna. Once portrayed as the embodiment of ruthless ferocity, Brant was afterwards given a place in history as a hero. He was present at the Cherry Valley massacre, but in his fighting he seems to have been beyond question more humane than most Indian warriors, and at least as humane as some white men in these border wars, while his courage, his skill in bush-fighting, and his rapidity of movement were never surpassed. He was not a devil, and not an angel. Like other men, both coloured and white, he no doubt acted from mixed motives. His friendship for the English, and his patriotism for the native races, may well have been coupled with personal ambition. But he fought heart-whole and with no little chivalry for the cause which he espoused; and in war, as in peace, he was above and beyond the normal level of the North American Indian. After the war was over, he settled with his people in Canada, where he died in 1807, and the town of Brantford preserves his name.

[Sidenote: St. Leger’s force too small for the task.]

St. Leger’s expedition had been suggested to Germain by Burgoyne, while the latter was in England: indeed, some enterprise of the kind had been contemplated by Carleton. In view alike of past history and of the general plan of the summer’s campaign, it had much to recommend it; but the opposition which the English were likely to encounter, and actually did encounter, was under-rated, and the force was too small for the task imposed upon it. The total number has usually been given at 1,700 men, including Indians; but this seems to have been an over-estimate, at any rate when the fighting came. The white troops probably did not in any case exceed 650 in number. There were only 200 British regulars, half of whom were a detachment of the 8th, now the King’s (Liverpool Regiment), the same regiment which had furnished a company for the attack on the Cedars. There were a few German troops, who had just arrived in Canada, and some of whom did not reach Oswego until the expedition was over. The Germans, being wholly ignorant of the country, were quite unsuited for bush-fighting and bateau-work. There was a corps of New York Loyalists under the command of Sir John Johnson, and known as Johnson’s Royal Greens. Colonel John Butler led a company of the Rangers, and a small body of Canadians also took part in the expedition. The Indian contingent numbered over 800 men. Brant joined at Oswego at the head of 300 Indian warriors, mostly Mohawks, and the Senecas were much in evidence. The Indians, as a whole, were under the command of Colonel Daniel Claus, Johnson’s brother-in-law, who for many years was one of the officers charged by the British Government with the superintendence of Indian affairs. Thus St. Leger had with him most of the men whose names are best known on the British side in the annals of the border warfare in these troubled times. Guns were taken with the force, though of too small calibre to overpower a well-built fort; and, when the advance began towards the end of July, no precautions were neglected, a detachment was sent on a day’s march or so in front of the main column, and the latter was led and flanked on either side by Indians.

[Sidenote: Fort Stanwix.]

Fort Stanwix had at the time been renamed Fort Schuyler by the Americans, presumably in honour of General Schuyler, who commanded the American forces in the Northern Department. The older and better known name was subsequently restored. The fort stood on the Mohawk river, not actually on the bank of the river, but about 300 yards distant, guarding the end of the portage from Wood Creek. The length of the portage where the two rivers were nearest to each other, was rather over a mile.[126] The old blockhouse, Fort Williams, which had been the predecessor of the existing fort, and the ruins of which were standing at the time of St. Leger’s expedition, was destroyed by the English general, Daniel Webb, in 1756, as he retreated in hot haste on hearing of the capture of Oswego by Montcalm. Two years later General Stanwix built a new fort, which bore his own name. The town of Rome now covers the site on which Fort Stanwix stood. The fort was square in form. It had evidently been carefully designed by a trained soldier and strongly constructed, but during the years of peace, in this case as in those of the other border forts, the defences had fallen more or less into decay, and had not been fully repaired or rebuilt when the siege began. None the less, they proved to be too strong to be overpowered by St. Leger’s light guns. The garrison consisted of 750 men, 200 of whom came in, bringing stores and provisions, on the very day on which the forerunners of St. Leger’s force appeared on the scene. The commander of the garrison was Colonel Gansevoort, the second in command was Colonel Willett, both thoroughly competent men.

[Sidenote: The siege of Fort Stanwix begins.]

St. Leger’s advanced guard, consisting of a detachment of 30 men of the 8th Regiment, under Lieutenant Bird, with 200 Indians under Brant, arrived before the fort on the 2nd of August. They had been sent on, as is told in St. Leger’s dispatch, ‘to seize fast hold of the lower landing-place, and thereby cut off the enemy’s communication with the lower country.’[127] It had been hoped that they would be in time to intercept the reinforcements which were due at the fort, but they arrived too late for this purpose. They took up their position at the point named, below and due south of the fort, on the bank of the Mohawk river, athwart the road to Albany. On the following day, the 3rd of August, St. Leger came up himself, sent a proclamation into the fort, and began to invest it, fixing his main encampment about half a mile to the north-east of the fort, and higher up the river, which here runs in a curving course, so that a straight line drawn from the main British camp to the post at the lower landing-place would cross and recross the river, forming the base of a semi-circle. The Americans had blocked up Wood Creek with fallen timber, and St. Leger reported that it took nine days and the work of 110 men to clear away the obstructions, while two days were spent in making several miles of track through the woods in order in the meantime to bring up stores and guns. The siege, therefore, began long before the necessary preparations had been made, and long before the besieging force had been concentrated and duly entrenched. On the evening of the 5th of August there were not 250 of the white troops in camp, and at this juncture St. Leger was threatened by a strong body of Americans who had gathered for the relief of the fort.

[Sidenote: The fight at Oriskany.]

When news came to the New York settlements of the British advance, the militia of Tryon county were called out by their commander, General Nicholas Herkimer. The rendezvous was Fort Dayton, at the German Flatts, lower down the Mohawk valley than Fort Stanwix. The German Flatts were so named after settlers from the Palatinate, who had come out early in the eighteenth century, and from this stock Herkimer was himself descended. On the 4th of August he moved forward, the number of his force being usually given at from 800 to 1,000 men. St. Leger reported that they were 800 strong, and assuming that the total was between 700 and 800, the relief force and the garrison together equalled, if they did not outnumber, the whole of St. Leger’s army, the majority of which moreover consisted, as has been seen, of Indians. On the 5th Herkimer encamped near a place called Oriskany, about eight[128] miles short of Fort Stanwix, where a stream called the Oriskany Creek flowed into the Mohawk river. From this point he sent on messengers to the fort to secure the co-operation of the garrison. Meanwhile intelligence had reached St. Leger, sent it was said by Molly Brant, of the coming relief force, and at five o’clock on the evening of the 5th he dispatched 80 white troops, being all that he could spare, with 400 Indians, to intercept the advancing Americans before they came into touch with the fort, and ambush them among the woods. Sir John[129] Johnson was placed in command of the detachment, and with him were Butler and Joseph Brant. It was work for which Brant was eminently suited, and he seems to have been the leading spirit in planning the ambuscade. Very early on the morning of the 6th of August, urged on by his impatient followers, and against his own better judgement, Herkimer, without waiting for reinforcements or for a sign from the beleaguered fort, continued his advance. He reached a point between two and three miles beyond Oriskany, and within six miles of the fort, where the path descended into a semi-circular ravine, with swampy ground at the bottom and high wooded ground at the sides. Here the Americans were caught in a trap, which would have been more complete had not the Indians begun fighting before the plan of ambush had been fully developed. The American rearguard, which had not yet entered the ravine, broke and fled: the main body were surrounded, Johnson barring their way in front, Brant falling on their rear, while others of the Indians and Butler’s rangers fought on the flanks. There followed a confused fight among the trees, gradually becoming a hand to hand struggle, with a brief interlude caused by a heavy storm of rain. Herkimer was mortally wounded, many, if not most, of the other leading American officers were killed; while, on the British side, the Indians suffered heavy losses. In the end the remnant of the American force seem to have beaten off or tired out their assailants, and made good their retreat, but according to St. Leger’s report only 200 of them escaped. Butler estimated the total American casualties in killed, wounded, and prisoners, at 500, and, according to American accounts, the total was about 400. The white casualties on the British side were very small, but the casualties among the Indians seem to have numbered from 60 to 100.

While the engagement was going on, a sortie was made from the fort, and it was probably news of this movement, coupled with the Indian losses, which put an end to the fight at Oriskany. Bird, the commander of the post at the lower landing-place, had been misled by a rumour that Johnson was hard pressed, and led out his men to support him, leaving the post undefended. Meanwhile, Willett at the head of 250 men marched out of the fort, apparently in ignorance of the ambuscade and designing to join hands with Herkimer’s force. Willett found the post practically deserted, mastered it, and carried off its contents, eluding an attempt which St. Leger made to cut him off on his return to the fort.[130] This ended the day’s work. Herkimer’s force had been blotted out, but it must have become increasingly evident that St. Leger’s men and resources were hopelessly inadequate for the task which had been set him, to force his way to Albany.

[Sidenote: St. Leger fails to take Fort Stanwix and retreats to Oswego.]

After the battle of Oriskany, St. Leger summoned the fort to surrender, but without effect. He continued the siege, but made little or no impression upon the defences. On the night of the 10th of August Willett made his way out of the fort, reached Fort Dayton, and went on to Albany where he met Benedict Arnold who had been charged with the duty of relieving Fort Stanwix. Arnold gathered troops for the purpose and in the meantime, with his usual cleverness, contrived to send on rumours which caused alarm in the British camp. A thousand men were reported to be coming, then 2,000, then 3,000, and Arnold’s own name may well have been a potent source of apprehension. The Indians, already depressed by their losses at Oriskany, and by the prolonging of the siege, became more and more out of hand, deserting, marauding, and spreading exaggerated tales; and at length, on the 22nd or 23rd of August, St. Leger beat a hasty retreat by night, leaving behind him most of his stores and guns, and returned to Oswego, whence he went back to Montreal and on to Lake Champlain in the wake of Burgoyne’s army. Joseph Brant took a less circuitous route. When St. Leger retreated from Fort Stanwix, Brant made one of his marvellous flying marches down the Mohawk Valley: and, after passing for over a hundred miles through the heart of the enemy’s country, which was also his own, in two or three days’ time joined Burgoyne’s force on the banks of the Hudson river.

[Sidenote: Misconduct of the Indians.]

[Sidenote: Bad effects of employing them in the war.]

When he returned to Oswego, St. Leger, on the 27th of August, wrote a dispatch to Burgoyne, giving details of his expedition, but not punctuating his failure. The failure was due to insufficiency of numbers and artillery in the first place, and in the second, beyond question, to the misconduct of his Indian allies. The employment of Indians in this war with British colonists may have been inevitable, but it was certainly politically inexpedient, notwithstanding the fact that the colonists themselves were ready to avail themselves of similar aid. Indians had been engaged on the English side in the wars with the French, but sparingly and under strict supervision. Carleton, as long as he directed operations in the War of Independence, had been equally careful in using these savage tools.[131] In St. Leger’s expedition the disadvantages of enlisting Indian fighting men came fully to light. They became, St. Leger wrote to Burgoyne, ‘more formidable than the enemy we had to expect.’ Disappointed of looting the enemy, they plundered their friends and endangered, if they did not in some cases take, their lives. Unstable as friends, ferocious as foes, they were not fit helpmates for Englishmen in fighting Englishmen, even their value as scouts was diminished by their incurable habit of believing and exaggerating any report. As in the war with the French in Canada, the English gained ground by the scrupulous care which they took to prevent outrages on the part of the savages who accompanied their armies, so in the later war with their own countrymen, they distinctly lost ground through calling out the coloured men of America against colonists of British birth.

[Sidenote: Burgoyne’s address to the Indians.]

Burgoyne’s instructions from Lord George Germain included the employment of Indians under due precautions; and he formally addressed his Indian followers in his camp at the river Bouquet, on the western side of Lake Champlain, on the 21st of June, 1777. ‘The collective voices and hands of the Indian tribes over this vast continent,’ were, he told them, with a few exceptions, ‘on the side of justice, of law, and the King.’ He bade them ‘go forth in might of your valour and your cause: strike at the common enemies of Great Britain and America’. On the other hand, he sternly forbade bloodshed except in battle, and enjoined that ‘aged men, women, children, and prisoners must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict’. Compensation would be given for the prisoners taken, but the Indians would be called to account for scalps. His listeners replied, through an old chief of the Iroquois--‘We have been tried and tempted by the Bostonians, but we have loved our father, and our hatchets have been sharpened upon our affections.’ They promised with one voice obedience to the general’s commands.

[Sidenote: Burgoyne.]

At this date, in the year 1777, Burgoyne was fifty-five years of age, having been born in 1722, two years before Carleton was born. He was clearly a man of ability, and unusually versatile. He was also, as times went, an honourable man. In his relations to Carleton, at any rate, he seems to have been open to no reproach. But he tried too many things to be first-rate in anything; he was not adequate to a great crisis and to heavy responsibility: and because he was not of the first class, and also because he had much dramatic instinct, he seems to have had more eye for present effect than for the root of matters. He was educated at Westminster School, and, when he died in 1792, he was buried in the northern cloister of Westminster Abbey. He was a soldier, a politician, a dramatist, and a man of society. He entered the army in 1740, again two years before Carleton’s military service began. He became so involved in debt that he had to sell his commission. He rejoined the army in 1756, and in 1762 he distinguished himself in Portugal, where the English supported the Portuguese against Spain and France. A few years later, however, in 1769, Junius referred to him as ‘not very conspicuous in his profession’.[132] He went into the House of Commons in 1761 as member for Midhurst. In 1768, through the influence of his father-in-law, Lord Derby, he became member for Preston, and, in connexion with his election, was attacked by Junius for corruption and also for his gambling propensities. As a politician he was, before he went to America, more or less of a free-lance. He spoke on foreign and Indian questions, and in 1773 made a speech in the House of Commons, attacking Clive. After the catastrophe at Saratoga, and his return to England, he threw in his lot with the Whigs, having been befriended by Fox and his followers; he became Commander-in-Chief in Ireland under Rockingham; and in 1787 he managed the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Before the American war broke out, he produced in 1774 a play called _The Maid of the Oaks_, of which Horace Walpole wrote: ‘There is a new puppet show at Drury Lane as fine as scenes can make it, called _The Maid of the Oaks_, and as dull as the author could not help making it.’[133] At a later date, however, Walpole had to confess that ‘General Burgoyne has written the best modern comedy’.[134] This was _The Heiress_, which was brought out in the beginning of 1786, and achieved a great success. Walpole had no love for Burgoyne, at any rate at the time when the latter served in America. ‘You ask the history of Burgoyne the pompous,’ he wrote in October, 1777,[135] the month in which the surrender at Saratoga took place; and after describing him as ‘a fortunate gamester’, he continued, ‘I have heard him speak in Parliament, just as he writes: for all his speeches were written and laboured, and yet neither in them nor in his conversation did he ever impress me with an idea of his having parts.’ Burgoyne’s affectation and mannerism may have been due to the fact that he was essentially a man of society, as society was then. He had eloped in early life with Lord Derby’s daughter, and, like Charles Fox, was a confirmed gambler. The world of London was his world, and the standard by which he measured things was not the standard of all time. When he went out in 1777 to command the expedition from Canada, he was on the flowing tide of fortune, and the tone of his proclamations gave Walpole cause for sarcastic comment. ‘Have you read General Burgoyne’s rhodomontade, in which he almost promises to cross America in a hop, step, and a jump?’[136] ‘Burgoyne has sent over a manifesto that if he was to over-run ten provinces would appear too pompous.’[136] ‘I heard to-day at Richmond that Julius Caesar Burgonius’s Commentaries are to be published in an Extraordinary Gazette of three-and-twenty pages in folio to-morrow--a counterpart to the _Iliad_ in a nutshell.’[136] All these three passages were written in August, 1777, while Burgoyne’s expedition was proceeding. The writer of them did not like Burgoyne, and did not like the war in which Burgoyne was engaged; but, though Burgoyne lent himself to criticism and lacked the qualities which the time and place demanded, his story is by no means the story either of a bad soldier or of a bad man; it is rather the story of a second-rate man set with inadequate means to solve a problem of first-rate importance.

[Sidenote: Burgoyne’s advance against Ticonderoga.]

[Sidenote: The American position at Ticonderoga.]

Having completed his preparations, Burgoyne reached Crown Point on the 26th of June, preparatory to attacking Ticonderoga. The full control of the operations had passed into his own hands, for, by Germain’s instructions, Carleton’s authority was limited by the boundary line of Canada, and that line was drawn far north of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, cutting the outlet of Lake Champlain near the point of land named Point au Fer. The total force amounted to rather over 7,000 men, nearly half of whom were Germans under the command of Baron Riedesel. The advance was made on both sides of the lake, the Germans being on the eastern shore, the British on the western--the side on which were Crown Point and Ticonderoga. The Americans, too, held positions on both sides of the lake, for, over against the peninsula on which Ticonderoga stood, there jutted out another point of land, described in Burgoyne’s dispatch as ‘high and circular’, but in reality rather oblong in form, rising well above the level of the lake and skirted in part on the land side by a rivulet. It was called Mount Independence, and was strongly held and fortified. The lake, here narrowed to a river, is about a quarter of a mile across, and between Ticonderoga and Mount Independence a bridge had been constructed, consisting of sunken timber piers connected by floating timber, the whole being guarded in front by a heavy boom of wood strengthened by iron rivets and chains.

Reduced from the Map published in ‘A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, London, 1780’

London, published as the Act directs, Feb. 1st 1780, by WM. FADEN, Charing Cross

_To face p. 161_
]

The Indian name Ticonderoga signified the confluence of three waters. At this point the long narrow southern arm of Lake Champlain, coming in from the south-east, meets the stream which carries out the waters of Lake George into the third water, the main lake Champlain. The outlet of Lake George describes a complete semi-circle, and runs into Lake Champlain due west and east. The direct route therefore from Lake Champlain to Lake George runs well to the west of and inside the peninsula of Ticonderoga, cutting the semi-circular stream without touching the peninsula. In this consisted the weakness of the American position: unless the works were extended further afield than they had men to hold them, part of the attacking force could pass them by and invest Ticonderoga on the southern as well as on the northern side, blocking retreat by the line of Lake George. So it happened when Burgoyne’s army came on the scene.

[Sidenote: Burgoyne’s operations against Ticonderoga.]

[Sidenote: The Americans evacuate their position,]

After three days’ stay at Crown Point to bring up all his forces, the general on the 30th of June moved forward his leading corps on either side of the lake, and on the next day the whole army followed. On the 2nd of July the Americans were reported to have abandoned the post which guarded the bridge over the river from Lake George, to the west of Ticonderoga, where saw-mills stood and which was the starting-point of the ‘carrying place’ from Lake Champlain to Lake George. They abandoned it, in order to concentrate their strength against the English advance on the north-west. Burgoyne immediately moved forward his troops and, driving the enemy back, on the night of the 2nd occupied the high ground on the west which commanded the communications with Lake George, and thereby cut off the possibility of retreat in that direction. On the 3rd and 4th the attacking forces drew nearer to the two beleaguered forts, in spite of cannonade; and on the night of the 4th, a party of light infantry occupied a height called Sugar Hill, which stood on the southern bank of the outlet from Lake George, in the angle between that stream and the southern arm of Lake Champlain, overlooking and commanding both Ticonderoga and Mount Independence at an estimated distance of about 1,400 and 1,500 yards respectively. On the 5th guns were being brought up to the hill, but, when the morning of the 6th came, it was found that the American general, St. Clair, had carried his troops across by the bridge from Ticonderoga, and, having evacuated both that post and Mount Independence, was retreating by land and water.

[Sidenote: and are followed up by the English.]

By land and water Burgoyne’s men followed on the same day, the bridge and boom being broken for the gunboats to pass through. At Skenesborough, where the navigation of Lake Champlain ends, the enemy’s vessels were taken or destroyed by the British squadron, and the detachment of Americans who held the fort set fire to it and retreated to Fort Anne. Meanwhile, diverging to the east in the direction of Castleton on the road to Connecticut, General Fraser, commanding the van of the troops who pursued by land, followed hard throughout the 6th upon the American rearguard; Riedesel came up behind him with supports; but, by agreement between the two commanders, Fraser, when night fell, bivouacked three miles in front of his colleague. Early on the 7th he attacked the Americans, who outnumbered his own troops, near a place named Huberton, and was on the point of being beaten back when the arrival of Riedesel converted a repulse into a victory. The colonists were broken, their leader, Colonel Francis, and some 200 of his men were killed, about the same number were taken prisoners, and a large number of wounded were supposed to have lost their lives in the woods. Having completed the rout, on the 8th and 9th Riedesel and Fraser came into touch with the main army at Skenesborough.

[Sidenote: Fight near Fort Anne.]

At Skenesborough there was a portage from Lake Champlain to Wood Creek,[137] a stream which flows into the lake from the south. While boats were being dragged across from the lake to the river with a view to further advance, the 9th Regiment was sent on by land to Fort Anne, twelve miles distant in a due southerly direction. By the evening of the 7th the English drew near to the fort, and on the following day they were attacked and hard pressed by a stronger body of Americans. They took up a position on a hill, and held their ground resolutely, until the whoop of Indians told that reinforcements were coming up: the Americans then gave way, and, setting fire to Fort Anne, fell back to Fort Edward. The English in their turn returned to Skenesborough, in the neighbourhood of which, on the 9th and 10th of July, the whole army, excluding the troops required to garrison Ticonderoga, was concentrated, the line extending eastward from the head of Lake Champlain towards Castleton.

[Sidenote: Result of the operations.]

‘General Burgoyne has taken Ticonderoga, and given a new complexion to the aspect of affairs, which was very wan indeed,’ wrote Horace Walpole, when the news reached England.[138] So far the operations had been triumphantly successful. Hardly an attempt had been made by the Americans to hold their ground at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, although months had been spent in strengthening the positions, and the number of the defenders was variously estimated at from 3,000 to 5,000 men. Great quantities of stores, of boats, of guns had fallen into British hands: the enemy’s loss on the retreat had been heavy, and the rapidity with which the retreat had been followed up had caused widespread alarm. For the moment there seemed nothing to check the tide of British victory, but time, place, and insufficiency of numbers gradually told against Burgoyne’s enterprise. He, too, had suffered some losses, though small when compared with those of the Americans; and his army, already inadequate in numbers for the expedition, was further weakened by the necessity of garrisoning Ticonderoga with some 900 men. He applied to Carleton to supply the requisite number of soldiers for the garrison from the troops who, in accordance with the instructions from home, were retained for the defence of Canada, but Carleton felt himself bound to refuse the request. It was Germain who had given the orders, and yet the same man, writing from England in the following September, on receipt of Burgoyne’s account of the capture of Ticonderoga, stated that he presumed that the post would be garrisoned from Canada.[139]

[Sidenote: The two routes to the Hudson.]

[Sidenote: Burgoyne’s line of advance.]

[Sidenote: His object was to threaten the New England States.]

Burgoyne’s objective was the Hudson river and Albany. Fort Edward stood on the left or eastern bank of the Hudson, a little below the point where that river curves to the south, to flow direct to the Atlantic. It was twenty-six miles distant from Skenesborough, and due south of that place. The first twelve miles of the route from Skenesborough lay along Wood Creek, until Fort Anne was reached, and from Fort Anne to Fort Edward was an interval of fourteen miles. Three miles short of Fort Edward the road joined the road to Fort Edward from Fort George, previously known as Fort William Henry, at the head of Lake George, which was at much the same distance from Fort Edward as Fort Anne, viz., fourteen to sixteen miles. The more obvious route of advance towards the Hudson from Ticonderoga, and the one originally contemplated, was along Lake George, and Burgoyne was criticized for not taking that line--without good reason, because the American retreat had already determined the choice of routes. Having immediately followed the enemy up as far as Skenesborough, Burgoyne, as he justly pointed out, would have been unwise to make a retrograde movement in order to adopt the alternative line of advance by Lake George. Moreover, while the troops were moving forward from Skenesborough viâ Wood Creek and Fort Anne, supplies were being forwarded along Lake George in order to meet him when he reached Fort Edward. But there was a further reason, which in Burgoyne’s mind made for the more easterly of the two routes. His own scheme for the campaign had inclined to carrying war to the east into Connecticut and the New England states, in preference to a direct advance to the Hudson and Albany; and, though his instructions prevented his carrying out the plan which he preferred, he might yet, as he advanced, threaten New England, and at the same time gather supplies from a more promising country than would be found in the Adirondack region on the west of Lake George. Thus in a private letter to Germain, which accompanied his dispatch from Skenesborough, detailing the success of his recent operations, he wrote: ‘I a little lament that my orders do not give me the latitude I ventured to propose in my original project for the campaign, to make a real effort instead of a feint upon New England. As things have turned out, were I at liberty to march in force immediately by my left, instead of by my right, I should have little doubt of subduing before winter the provinces where the rebellion originated.’ It must be remembered that at this time British troops were in occupation of Rhode Island, and that Sir William Howe had originally planned a campaign in New England in 1777, only giving up the scheme when he found that sufficient reinforcements from Europe would not be forthcoming.

[Sidenote: Riedesel sent to Castleton.]

[Sidenote: The army arrives at Fort Edward on the Hudson river.]

It was with the object of keeping the New England States in fear of invasion, or, as he himself phrased it, ‘of giving jealousy to Connecticut, and keeping in check the whole country called the Hampshire Grants,’[140] that Burgoyne, while encamped at Skenesborough, detached Riedesel to occupy Castleton about fourteen miles to the east. Castleton was an important point, because through it ran a road which connected Skenesborough by land with the shore of Lake Champlain opposite Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Riedesel was absent for about twelve days, and in the meantime preparations were pressed forward for a further advance of the main army, the road to Fort Anne and the parallel waterway of Wood Creek being cleared of obstructions. Simultaneous preparations were made at Ticonderoga for forwarding supplies by Lake George. On the 23rd of July the advanced guard moved forward to Fort Anne: on the 25th the whole army had reached that point; on the 29th, the van arrived at Fort Edward, which the Americans had already evacuated, and on the 30th Burgoyne arrived at the same place. A large convoy of provisions sent by Lake George reached the head of that lake by the 29th, Fort George like Fort Edward having been abandoned by the enemy, who had carried off their stores. Thus the end of July found Burgoyne on the Hudson, well on his way to Albany; the main difficulties of the expedition seemed to be past; but as a matter of fact the most trying time was yet to come. His communications were insecure, for he could not spare men to guard them. His transport was inadequate, and so were his supplies. Delay in bringing up stores meant time to the Americans to recover their spirits and gather in his front: he had no tidings from Howe, and no sure knowledge of St. Leger’s progress. He only knew that at all hazards he was expected to make his way to Albany.

[Sidenote: The beginning of misfortunes. Murder of Jane McCrae by the Indians.]

While he halted at Fort Edward, two untoward incidents took place. The first was a brutal murder by Indians of a young white woman named Jane McCrae, who had remained behind at or near Fort Edward, when the Congress troops fell back before Burgoyne’s advance. The story went that she was engaged and about to be married to an officer in Burgoyne’s army. Falling into the hands of the Indians, she was murdered with purposeless, savage fury, and the tale of the outrage, embellished with horrors, was spread far and wide through the land. Colonists hitherto inclined to the loyal cause, felt that their homes and womenkind would not be safe, if they awaited the coming of the English and their savage allies: the opponents of England found additional justification for the stand which they had taken up; the sympathizers with the American cause in England were given a new text for denouncing the war; and Burgoyne lost Indian support by taking steps to prevent a recurrence of such enormities.

[Sidenote: The expedition to Bennington.]

[Sidenote: Objects aimed at by the expedition.]

The second misfortune which happened--a most grave misfortune--was an unsuccessful expedition in the direction of Bennington. Bennington is in the state of Vermont, to the south-east of Fort Edward, lying about twenty-four miles due east of the stretch of the Hudson river, between Saratoga on the north and the confluence of the Mohawk on the south, which was known as Stillwater. It is in the forks of the two streams which combine to form the Hoosick river, a tributary of the Hudson, flowing into the main river from the east. Burgoyne’s information was to the effect, quoting his own words, that it was ‘the great deposit of corn, flour, and store cattle’, intended for the use of the Congress troops, which he designed to secure for his own army in view of the difficulty and delay experienced in bringing up supplies from Canada. The German general, Riedesel, seems to have originally suggested such an expedition, from knowledge gained while he was stationed at Castleton. He was anxious to obtain horses to mount his men and to carry the baggage; there was evidence of a considerable Loyalist element in the population, and little reason to apprehend strong opposition from the colonial militia. Above all Burgoyne had constantly in his mind the object of threatening the New England states: and, having by this time received intelligence that St. Leger was before Fort Stanwix, he wished to make a diversion to the east, in order to prevent reinforcements being sent up the Mohawk river to the relief of that post. The instructions which he issued for the expedition show that he contemplated that the detached force, if things went well, would penetrate far beyond Bennington, up to the Connecticut river, and possibly not rejoin the main army until the latter had reached Albany.

[Sidenote: Strength and composition of the force.]

[Sidenote: Colonel Baum in command.]