The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (82 page)

cal intrigue realized that the government had pushed it so fiercely because Germain was a part of the Leicester House crowd.
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When the young George III assumed the throne, Germain was slowly rehabilitated through appointment to minor posts and service in Parliament. The American war was of course well under way when he joined North's ministry. He proved his worth by his unyielding attitude toward colonial claims.

But Germain never felt quite at ease in the government and may have shrunk before the unpleasant business of giving the Howes direct orders. The Howes, after all, were well connected; they were favorites of the king. Taking a firm stand on colonial issues was one thing; ordering around William Howe -- telling him that he must cooperate with Burgoyne coming from Canada -- was another. Germain did not issue such orders.

The designer of a part of British strategy for 1777, General John Burgoyne, returned to America from a London winter on May 6. The HMS Apollo carrying him sailed into Quebec that day, a Quebec enjoying spring sunshine and, with the general's arrival, the warmth of optimism. For Burgoyne, who always had dash, now had what he most craved: an independent command and, not incidentally, an opportunity to exercise it. He came to his army after a heady winter at home which included at least one horseback ride with the king in Hyde Park and meetings at which he convinced the king that a thrust from Canada down the Hudson would lead to the destruction of the rebellion.
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Sir Guy Carleton, still in command in Canada, met Burgoyne with at least surface cordiality and proceeded to give him all the cooperation he desired. The army was assembled in the next few weeks and moved to St. Johns on the Richelieu River. The army was a varied but formidable force -- slightly more than 8300 men in total, composed of 3700 British regulars, 3000 Germans, mostly Brunswickers, 650 Tories and Canadians, and 400 Iroquois. Burgoyne also had a train of 138 howitzers and guns and around 600 artillerymen to service them. He could also look with confidence on his subordinates, in particular Major General William Phillips, his second in command, Brig. General Simon Fraser, who would

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lead an important striking force, and Baron Friedrich Adolph von Riedesel, who commanded the Germans. Baron von Riedesel, accompanied by his baroness, three daughters, and their two maids, was an especially able and energetic officer, quick to sense an enemy's weakness on the battlefield and eager to take advantage of every opening. Good troops and fine senior commanders pleased Burgoyne, already pleased with himself and with what apparently lay ahead.
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Had Burgoyne known of the disarray of his enemy, he would have felt even more optimism. General Philip Schuyler commanded the Northern Department, but his hold was anything but secure and he knew it. Many of his troops were New Englanders and they despised him. Schuyler had not covered himself with glory in the earlier Canadian campaigns, and his men remembered his performance. They also disliked him for other reasons: Schuyler was a Dutch patroon, a proud man suspicious of what he took to be Yankee egalitarianism; his soldiers from New England resented his aristocratic bearing, his obvious distaste for them, and his remote manner.

The attitude of the troops from New England would not have loosened Schuyler's grip on his army had he not had a popular rival, a former officer in the British army, Horatio Gates, now a Virginian who owned a plantation and cultivated tobacco and Congressmen. Gates looked to be, and was, the polar opposite of Schuyler. Born to an English servant, Gates was a plain-looking, even homely, and comfortable man. Not a severe disciplinarian as Schuyler was, he did not conceal his admiration of the New England militia, a feeling it more than returned. Gates, moreover, was a veteran and a professional army officer who had fought with Braddock in the French and Indian War and had left the service as a major to settle in the Shenandoah Valley. His plainness and apparent lack of guile were deceptive, as George Washington, who was responsible for his appointment as brigadier general in the Continental army in 1775, came to recognize. For Gates had ambitions -- in 1777, to head the northern department. Late in the winter he got his wish, after assiduous lobbying in Congress, only to have Congress once more place Schuyler in command. This change in command occurred in May, just as Burgoyne was beginning to gather himself for the plunge southward.
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Unaware of the divisions within his enemy's camp, Burgoyne set his army in motion in a mood approaching cocksureness.
He had moved

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his troops into position from Montreal in late May and early June. The soldiers shared their commander's certainty that victory awaited them. As an officer remarked of the prevailing conviction, the army began the campaign convinced that it was "attended with every Appearance of Success."
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A few days into the drive, delusions of grandeur would replace this conviction: "We had conceived the Idea of our being irresistible."
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It was a beguiling idea and reinforced by Burgoyne himself, who on June 20 issued a proclamation replete with threats and false piety, alternately calling upon the Americans to greet his warriors with loving embraces and summoning up hellfire for them if they did not. His intentions were to "hold forth Security and Depredation to the Country." He acted to restore "the Rights of the Constitution," in contrast to the "unnatural Rebellion" which sought to establish "the compleated System of Tyranny." Faced with this native-born oppression, the colonists must allow him and his army to protect them. The last thing they should do was to break up bridges and roads, and to hide their corn and cattle. But trust him, he who extended this invitation to join him "in consciousness of Christianity, my Royal Master's Clemency and the honour of Soldiership. . . . And let not people be led to disregard it by considering their distance from the immediate situation of my Camp. I have but to give stretch to the Indian forces under my direction, and they amount to thousands, to overtake the hardened enemies of Great Britain and America. I consider them the same wherever they may lurk. If not withstanding these endeavours, & sincere inclinations to effect them, the Phrenzy of hostility should remain, I trust I shall stand acquited in the Eyes of God and Men in denouncing the executing the vengeance of the State against the willful outcasts -- The Messengers of Justice and of Wrath await them in the field; and devastation, famine and every concomitant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military duty must occasion, will bar the way to their return."
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Burgoyne could not have adopted a more inappropriate tone or issued a message more damaging to himself and his troops. His pretensions to constitutionality, patriotism, and Christianity coupled to the barbarism of threatening to unleash the Indians aroused anger and scorn. Like so many British leaders before him, he had a talent for creating opposition.

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His countrymen at home saw his blunder as soon as they read his bombast: to Horace Walpole, he of the viper's tongue, Burgoyne was henceforth "vaporing Burgoyne," "Pomposo," and finally "Hurlothrumbo."
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In America, Burgoyne drew disdain and bred a feeling more serious: a passion to stop him.

Burgoyne may have appeared "Pomposo" to clever men like Walpole, but to his soldiers he was a commander who combined flair with professional competence. He Howed his professional side to his soldiers with the laconic injunction to rely on the bayonet, for "the bayonet in the hands of the Valiant is irresistible."
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It was an order often tested and often proved.

The expedition of irresistibles set out on June 20 from Cumberland Head on Lake Champlain and sailed to Crown Point, eight miles north of Ticonderoga. There Burgoyne established a magazine, set up a hospital, and issued stores. A week later he was on the move again, and by the end of the month his troops were within striking distance of Fort Ticonderoga.
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The fort lay on both sides of the lake, but its principal works, in sad repair, were on the west side. Across the lake to the east there were defensive works on Mount Independence, a quarter of a mile away. A floating bridge connected Ticonderoga and Independence. Burgoyne, resolved to strike both sides, divided his forces: the British regulars on the west bank of the lake, the Germans under Riedesel on the east.

A little more than a mile to the west of Ticonderoga, heavily forested, Sugar Loaf Hill rose to a height of 750 feet and clearly commanded the fort. It took Burgoyne's men until July 5 to cut through the maple and pine on Sugar Loaf and emplace cannon on its summit. When the guns on the hill spoke that day, General Arthur St. Clair, commander at Fort Ticonderoga, knew he would have to abandon the fort. In the darkness of the next morning he marched his men, around two thousand effectives, across the bridge to Mount Independence. Before he made this move, he loaded his sick and as many supplies as he could get aboard into bateaux. They were to sail to Skenesboro at the head of the lake. From Independence he marched his army to Hubbardton, some twenty-four miles to the southeast.
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The British learned of this evacuation almost immediately and set out in pursuit. The pursuers, an advance party of about 850 men, were led by General Simon Fraser, an able and hardened officer. Around five o'clock the next morning, July 7, Fraser's command ran into the American rear guard, around 1000 strong, under Colonel Seth Warner. St. Clair with the main body had advanced six miles farther to Castleton. Surprised though they were, Warner's men "behaved" as the British commander of light infantry, the Earl of Balcarres, later said, "with great gallantry."
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The battle was vicious, with neither side fully aware of where the enemy was and with the lines consequently scrambled. At the end of three hours, Warner's men were gaining the upper hand. Fraser, who had begun his pursuit the day before without waiting for Riedesel, now yearned for the sight of his German colleague -- and in a stroke of good luck Riedesel, with a chasseur company and around eighty grenadiers, appeared. Their firepower and weight broke Warner's resistance, and within a few more minutes the Americans were in flight.
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