Conceived in Liberty (242 page)

Burgoyne was now bogged down and surrounded by an American force that grew rapidly larger as more and more New York and New England
militiamen poured into the camp. For more than two weeks, Daniel Morgan’s riflemen harassed the British unmercifully, as night-raiding parties attacked and attacked on the flanks, and snipers picked off any British emerging into sight. Again, scouts could not be sent out to provide vitally needed information. Furthermore, Burgoyne learned of a successful raid on Mounts Independence and Defiance by Colonels John Brown and Seth Warner, which captured 300 men and a score of boats. But even as supplies began to run out, as the morale of his men rapidly deteriorated and desertions multiplied, and as chilly weather heralded the onset of winter and the importance of reaching winter quarters at Albany, Burgoyne decided to attack in a desperate gamble for victory. Meanwhile, Washington, engaged in unproductive battles with Howe around Philadelphia, asked Gates to send him Morgan’s regiment—the crucial American unit at Saratoga. Gates declined the request, and thus thwarted a possible disastrous loss that might well have been inflicted on the American cause.

On October 4, Burgoyne held a council of war. General Clinton had proposed to come up from New York in an attempt to relieve Burgoyne, but nothing had been heard from him. Burgoyne’s generals urged him to retreat, but he regarded this as dishonorable, and instead determined on a probing attack on the American left wing, to be followed, if successful, by a general assault the next day.

On October 7, Burgoyne, still ignorant of the terrain and of American dispositions, led his probing attack with 2,100 troops on the American left at Bemis Heights, leaving fewer than 3,500 behind in his entrenched position. Gates again sent out Morgan, and pursued his shrewd, guerrilla-type strategy of keeping his main force deep behind fortifications. Denying the British the opportunity of a pitched battle, he continued to wear down Burgoyne’s forces. The tactics of the battle were devised by Morgan, who suggested simultaneous flanking attacks on Burgoyne.

Arnold had meanwhile been relieved of his command by Gates for insubordination after a violent quarrel; he did not think Gates had given him sufficient credit for the engagement at Freeman’s Farm. Sulking in his tent, Arnold saw that the Battle of Bemis Heights was still indecisive and inconclusive toward the end of the day; restless at the stalemate, he rushed forth without authorization to help Morgan, and assumed the lead of his exhilirated and cheering Connecticut Brigade. Shouting, “Now, come on boys, if the day is long enough, we’ll have them in hell before night!” Arnold led frontal assault after frontal assault on the British lines with the Connecticut and other brigades, without success. Finally, he led the Connecticut Brigade, Morgan’s men, and two other regiments that had been supporting Morgan, in a furious attack against Breymann’s Hessian redoubt guarding Burgoyne’s right flank. This attack succeeded, Arnold
falling wounded and permanently crippled at the moment of victory. One of the important ingredients of this victory was the deliberate mortal shooting of Gen. Simon Fraser, singlehandedly rallying the British lines, by Morgan’s brilliant rifleman Timothy Murphy. Burgoyne was forced to withdraw from the field and, his main position now indefensible, he retreated his army northward. The decisive battle of Bemis Heights, the Second Battle of Saratoga, was over. The Americans suffered only 150 casualties, the British nearly 700.

Arnold has generally received the credit for Burgoyne’s defeat, but his charge, while dramatic and romantic, was reckless and could well have lost the battle. The victory really belonged to Gates, whose patient strategy would inevitably have worn Burgoyne down, without the needless chances taken and extra blood shed in Arnold’s charge. Compared to the roles of Gates and Morgan, Arnold’s contribution to Burgoyne’s defeat, while real, was flashy and superficial.

Burgoyne’s retreat was slow. When he took up strong entrenched positions at Saratoga on October 9, he hoped that Gates would be rash enough to launch a frontal attack. Instead, Gates wisely sent out militiamen to encircle and entrap the British army, and also to seize their boats. Burgoyne knew that Clinton had begun to move north, but he was still too far away to influence results. By October 12, he finally agreed to Baron von Riedesel’s urging to flee northward, but he delayed another day, and by then it was too late: his once splendid army was a ragged force of 5,000 men, and surrounded by a force that had swollen to three times that number.

Gates demanded unconditional surrender; Burgoyne refused and held out for an agreement whereby the British force would be permitted to sail for England, provided that they would not fight again in America. Learning that Clinton’s force of 3,000 men had broken through Putnam’s defenses in the highlands and had reached Esopus (now Kingston) on October 15, Gates agreed to accept Burgoyne’s offer, or “convention.” On October 17, Burgoyne surrendered.

The repercussions of the Saratoga surrender would prove to be momentous; the move to split New York had failed and one-fifth of the British forces in America had surrendered in one fell swoop. The entire British strategy was shattered. And, as will be seen, France was to be led by the heartening victory to recognize American independence and to enter the war openly on the American side.

The surrender terms were violated immediately. The Americans, realizing that the British troops sent home would simply release other troops to serve in the war, refused to allow the prisoners to embark. Instead, they sent them to Virginia where they deserted in droves. There being little they could do in their isolated state, the British forces in New York
withdrew to Canada from Ticonderoga, now useless to them. As for Clinton, excessive caution had prevented him from racing up the Hudson to Albany after his breakthrough in the highlands, and also from taking with him the 2,000 soldiers uselessly stationed in Rhode Island. Apart from the losing Charleston expedition the year before, this was his first campaign as head of his own army, and it was certainly unsatisfactory.

The British might still have salvaged their fortunes, however, if Clinton had been allowed to keep control of the highland forts, cutting American communications and supply lines across the lower Hudson. But General Howe, apparently over his objections, ordered him to evacuate Fort Clinton and to send reinforcements to Philadelphia; Clinton was thereby forced to abandon the Hudson Valley and withdraw quickly to New York City.

Removed from his command and unfairly in disgrace, General Schuyler apparently toyed with treason and secretly told the British that he was ready to rejoin the British Empire if Britain would abandon its taxation of America. There is also some evidence that he was partially motivated by his hatred of the rebellious Vermonters and that he may have had St. Clair abandon Ticonderoga to smoke out the Vermont forces; their ardent fighting for the Americans may have led him to consider siding with Great Britain. Thus, the general American suspicion of Schuyler’s loyalty after Ticonderoga was not entirely without foundation.

*
Billias, “Horatio Gates,” pp. 90–93.

While Gates was greatly helping to win the war in the north, Washington and Howe were seemingly competing with each other to see who could best lose the war further south. Howe had finally embarked with his huge armada on July 23. The voyage was a slow and lackadaisical one; apparently he had no intention of finishing his business at Philadelphia quickly and then racing back to New York to help Burgoyne. He first sailed up the Delaware River on July 29, this being the shortest route to Philadelphia, where he could land just south of the city. But then, worried about Washington’s nonexistent river forts near Wilmington, he turned around, sailed all the way around the peninsula and up Chesapeake Bay, to land, finally, fifty miles from Philadelphia at Head of Elk, Maryland, on August 25. A full month had been consumed in this short voyage, and, after all this time and the suffering of men and horses aboard from heat, rough seas, confinement, and shortage of supplies, the British forces found themselves considerably further from that city than they had been in New Jersey!

Washington stationed himself at Wilmington and when Howe landed, he decided to abandon the uncongenial role of guerrilla chieftain for that of orthodox general. He chose open frontal battle with a far superior British army in order to defend Philadelphia—at all costs. His best strategy would have been to abandon Philadelphia to Howe, speed north to crush Burgoyne, and then lead the victorious army southward. In any event, he should not have courted terrible defeats by trying to keep Howe from a city which would do the British little good anyway.

With 15,000 men to Washington’s 11,000, Howe’s army was superior
in both firepower and manpower when the two forces met along Brandy-wine Creek, at Chad’s Ford, in Pennsylvania near the Delaware border. Howe attacked on September 11, sending Cornwallis with half the troops in a deft and silent flanking maneuver—reminiscent of Long Island—to the left to cross the stream and come behind the American right wing. General Sullivan, commanding the right wing, turned almost at the last minute to meet the assault. Cornwallis had almost broken through Sullivan, but Nathanael Greene brought two brigades from the center and raced four miles in forty-five minutes to save the American right from utter rout, and perhaps the entire army from destruction. In the meantime, Gen. Wilhelm von Knyphausen, commanding the center at Chad’s Ford, was able to crash through the American center, and Washington was forced to retreat north to Chester, where Greene brought back his brigades to join him. The American defeat had been severe indeed; Washington had lost over 1,000 casualties, while the British had lost 500. Again Howe failed to press ahead quickly and destroy the demoralized American troops, but this time there was perhaps the good excuse that the British forces were too weary.

Washington’s generalship had rarely been worse than at Brandywine. Apart from the strategic error of confronting the British in open battle, he failed to anticipate Howe’s favorite flanking maneuver with less excuse than at Long Island, and he failed to use his cavalry as scouts to find out what the British were up to. In his report on the battle to Congress, he displayed a severe lack of graciousness toward his best subordinates that was rapidly becoming characteristic, and he completely failed to mention the feat of Greene and his men in saving the American army.

Despite the severe defeat, Washington continued to be optimistic about massive encounters with the enemy. He tried a frontal attack again on September 16 at Warren Tavern west of Philadelphia, but a heavy storm halted the battle after fighting had begun.

On the night of September 20, young Gen. Anthony Wayne’s division, left behind at Paoli when Washington recrossed the Schuylkill to harass the enemy flanks, was surprised by a force under Gen. Charles Grey. The British bayonet charge, always effective against the Americans, routed Wayne’s forces and inflicted nearly 400 casualties at the expense of virtually none. In this nighttime attack, the British were aided by Wayne’s having formed his defense lines between the attacking Grey and their own campfires, the American silhouettes providing easy targets. Free of harassment, the British pushed north on September 22. In a clever maneuver, Howe seemed to be trying to trap Washington’s forces, to outflank him on the right, or to go westward to seize American stores at Warwick. In response, Washington moved north, falling for the ruse. With Washington
lured to the northward, Howe quickly turned southeast, crossed the Schuylkill unopposed, and marched easily toward Philadelphia. On September 26, Cornwallis and his column took occupation of Philadelphia, while the main British army camped north of the city at Germantown.

The easy taking of Philadelphia, coming after his string of victories, caused Howe to grow overconfident. He scornfully refused to build entrenchments at his camp at Germantown, and split his army by stationing considerable troops in Philadelphia and across the river in New Jersey to capture the fort at Billingsport. This left only 9,000 men in Howe’s force at Germantown; in response, the Americans decided to attack from their positions to the north.

In emulation of such ancient strategists as Hannibal and Scipio, Washington launched a concerted multipronged surprise bayonet attack on the night of October 3. But, in contrast to Hannibal and Scipio, Washington made several grievous tactical mistakes. He placed the bulk of his army in the center and weak militia columns on the flanks, while his ancient models had placed their strongest forces on the sides; he failed to realize there was a lack of communications between the four widely separated forces launching the simultaneous attack; and he ignored the roughness of the terrain, which was not conducive to bayonet charges.

Despite these errors, however, the Americans almost won. Sullivan’s column at right center was the first to engage the enemy on the morning of October 4. Greene took his force, including two-thirds of the army at left center, swiftly south and southwest to join Sullivan. Together the two, aided by the bayonet charge of Col. Peter Muhlenberg, broke through British lines and were on the point of victory. But fog was thickening rapidly, and soon the divisions could not see what was going on. A series of tragicomic errors ensued. Colonel Henry Knox, inspired by classical military lore, persuaded Washington to waste precious time trying—unsuccessfully—to level Justice Benjamin Chew’s house on the battlefield (several British companies were using it as a fortress) instead of pressing his advantage in the battle. Moreover, Gen. Adam Stephen detached himself from Greene’s column to bombard the house, gravely weakening Greene’s forces. As the fog thickened, Wayne got the idea that Sullivan, at his rear, was in trouble, and he abandoned the spearhead of the advance to effect a “rescue.” The two American divisions (Wayne and Stephen) thereupon fired upon each other, and both fled. Sullivan’s troops, remaining in right center, began to run short of ammunition, and fearing imminent encirclement, they too broke and ran. As for the American forces on the wings, Maj. John Armstrong’s column on the extreme right was repulsed, and Gen. William Smallwood’s force arrived on the scene after the battle was over. Neither man pursued his task very energetically.