We lay upon our arms that night and at daybreak moved forward to within cannon-shot of the enemy, where we strengthened our camp by cutting down large trees, which served for breastworks. We threw our dead together into wide, shallow pits, and scarcely covered them with clay; the only tribute of respect allowed to fallen officers was to bury them apart from their men. Among the Massachusetts dead were found one or two young women, who, from the fact of one of them having a cartridge clasped in her hand, had no doubt accompanied their husbands or brothers on service in order to load spare firelocks for them in the line of battle. General Fraser shook his head when this circumstance was brought to his notice. ‘When women are brought into this damned business,’ he said, ‘it argues a resolution that will take some beating down.’
Taking all the results of this battle, our advantages from it were few indeed. We kept the field, but the possession of it was all that we could boast, for we were so much weakened that we could not at present press the attack. The Loyalists had nearly all gone off with the Indians. Their disappearance left us at a loss, from their having evinced a wide knowledge of this district and served us in the capacity of guides. Such levies are always precarious assistants to regular troops; they shrink from blows and scanty subsistence and their untrained condition gives them a temper easily dispirited by reverse. It needs the training of years and the tradition of former battles before a regiment can gain that cool presence of mind which will carry it forward unguardedly, to destroy itself if necessary in the cause to which it is devoted.
Two days later a letter reached General Burgoyne from Sir Henry Clinton at New York, confirming Thayendanegea’s ill news. This was the first messenger from the South that had arrived since the campaign began in earnest, nor had a single one of General Burgoyne’s own ten messengers succeeded in passing safe through hostile territory. The letter, written in cipher, ran merely: ‘You know my poverty; but if with 2,000 men, which is all that I can spare from this important post, I can do anything to facilitate your operations, I will make an attack upon Fort Montgomery: if you will let me know your wishes.’ Fort Montgomery, on Hudson’s River, lay eighty miles to the south of Albany.
This placed General Burgoyne in a predicament. Now, if he decided to extricate our army from the difficult position in which it was caught and, disobeying orders, retired to Canada, he would be behaving very shabbily towards General Clinton, who counted on him to advance. Yet the longer he waited, the more insecure his position. He had that very day been informed that the American General, Lincoln, had successfully attacked our posts and depots about Ticonderoga and the northern end of Lake George; and that he had captured nearly three hundred of our men, several gunboats and the whole of our remaining batteaux, with their crews, rescued a thousand prisoners and possessed himself of Mount Defiance, Mount Hope, and other outworks of the fortress. We were thus cut off from Canada.
General Burgoyne sent the same messenger instantly back to General Clinton, with a reply written small on thin paper, and screwed inside a silver bullet. The messenger reached Fort Montgomery, which, by General Burgoyne’s account, he expected to kind in British hands, and there inquired of two soldiers, whom he took to be Loyalists, for General Clinton. Such incredibly ill luck attended this expedition that the person before whom he was taken was not Sir Henry Clinton, but a distant relative of Sir Henry’s in the American service, who was then Governor of the State of New York. No sooner had the messenger discovered his error than he turned aside and swallowed the silver bullet: which was, however, recovered by means of an emetic. Upon its being unscrewed, the message was found and General Burgoyne’s intentions discovered: which were to hold General Gates in play while Sir Henry made a diversion below Albany to draw away his troops. But General Burgoyne revealed that our supplies would not last beyond October 12th.
The messenger was immediately hanged as a spy. ‘Out of thine own mouth shalt thou be condemned’, was the jest that hurried him into eternity.
We kept within our fortifications for the next few days, not having sufficient strength to attack the Americans, but being most averse from retreat. We hoped also that our continued presence at Saratoga would serve the obscure and perplexing strategy that had fixed us in our present situation, at least by preventing General Gates from marching with his fourteen thousand men to the aid of General Washington. General Burgoyne could not have guessed that he was the victim of a monstrous blunder; but it was so. The story is as follows. Lord George Germaine had in May drafted a dispatch to General Howe, ordering him to march up Hudson’s River. This dispatch was in reply to one from General Howe, who did not agree to the plan for co-operating with General Burgoyne in this manner, but favoured instead an attack upon Philadelphia, as the enemy’s capital city. However, upon calling at the War Office one morning, on his way to Sussex for a holiday, and funding the draft not yet copied fairly out, Lord George Germaine could not wait to sign it, but continued on his journey. The dispatch was therefore not signed, and therefore not sent, and his Lordship either clean forgot about it or assumed that it would take care of itself. Unfortunately, in another dispatch Lord George had, it seems, approved of the attack upon Philadelphia as a subsidiary enterprise; and General Howe was therefore unaware that he was still expected to assist in the attack upon Albany, or that our army had already set forth single-handed upon this project.
The American General, Charles Lee, who often hit the right nail upon the head, remarked of General Howe, not altogether unkindly: ‘He shut his eyes, fought his battles, drank his bottle, had his little whore, received his orders from North and Germaine (one more absurd than the other), shut his eyes, and fought again.’
Though we did not yet know it, the battle had brought out much bad blood in the American camp. General Gates, ‘that man-midwife’, as General Burgoyne privately named him for his sneaking and unctuous ways, made no mention whatever, in his report to Congress, of General Arnold’s presence upon the held of battle; and the chief colonel of his staff spread the absurd story that General Arnold had avoided the fight and spent the whole day in camp, drinking. By this means the single person who prevented us from storming the Heights and breaking through to Albany, and who had therefore saved General Gates’s reputation, if not his life, was teased and provoked into mutinous rage. He resigned his command. Every Northern general but one, General Lincoln, then signed a memorial entreating General Arnold to remain with them for one more fight at least; but General Gates withdrew his command from him, and allowed him to remain in the camp only in the capacity of a private person.
The war-like feeling of New England was intense at this time, largely because of the indignation and alarm that had been inculcated in the various provinces by reports of Indian savagery. The militia mustered in enormous numbers and for once paid attention to their officers; deserters were whipped and returned to duty by the Selectmen of their townships – one father even sent back his two recreant sons in chains to the General commanding a Provincial division with the Roman request, ‘Deal with them as they deserve.’
Chapter XXIV
ON OCTOBER 6th our rations were diminished by one-third, because of a great shortage of provisions, but without exciting any murmur or complaint in the camp. We were already reduced to salt pork and flour, with a little spirits; not even the officers being able to procure tea, coffee, or fresh meat. Our regimental clothes were in a sad state, not having been renewed that year: they had become rotten from the great variety of weather in which we had worn them and ragged from the briars and rough country through which we had fought our way. Our horses also went hungry; for the river-side pastures were soon exhausted, and covering-parties to protect our foragers could not be spared. Most of all we felt the want of sleep, for the forests around us were alive with the enemy, who kept us continually upon the alert and compelled us to lie upon our arms for a great part of each night. The Americans even had the assurance to bring down a small field-piece to fire as their morning-gun, and so close to our
quarter-guard that the wadding from its discharge flew against our works.
We had heard a great concerted howling two nights before from the right of our position, which disturbed our sleep; and the same noise arose again on the night following. General Fraser believed that it proceeded from dogs belonging to our officers, who had gone off by night to hunt; he ordered them to be confined, under pain of any stray dog being hanged by the Provost of the Division. However, upon the noise continuing and scouts going out to investigate, it was found that great packs of wolves had assembled and were howling as they scratched at the shallow graves of our poor comrades; nor would they be balked of their banquets, but continued their horrid cries until they had dug up the flesh and consumed it.
On this same night General Burgoyne called his chief officers to a Council of War. He told them, that our army had evidently been intended from the first to be hazarded and that it might now require to be devoted. He asked their advice. Generals Fraser and Riedesel were for retiring at once to Canada, General Phillips gave no opinion, General Burgoyne himself was for making one last attempt to force a passage to Albany. There being no objection raised to his view, about noon of the next day, October 7th, he took out fifteen hundred of us with ten guns, against the enemy’s left, in an attempt to turn them off Bemis Heights. The Generals above named commanded the three divisions. What was left of our army stayed in the camp, except the batmen who went out for forage under cover of this advance. Before we set out we were given our last issue of rum, to hearten us.
We advanced in good order to within a short distance of the enemy’s works, where we halted in a large field of uncut wheat and shook out along a zigzag fence, posting our cannon in rear. We were inviting an enemy attack, hoping to cause them heavy losses and then to press victoriously upon a rout with the bayonet. We of the Light Infantry held the right of the line, and my company, being the eldest there, held the extreme point. At four o’clock the battle began with an attack upon our left by many thousands of the enemy. There our Grenadiers sustained the attack with great firmness; but the Americans broke the Brunswick regiment to the Grenadiers’ right, and General Riedesel and his staff used their swords among the fugitives to rally them behind the guns. We were then quickly recalled from our position, where we were already hotly attacked by Colonel Morgan’s force, to save the Grenadiers from destruction. They were fighting hand to hand now against odds of ten to one, and some of our field-pieces had been taken and retaken five times.
To break off an action against superior numbers without loss is a matter of great difficulty; General Fraser accomplished it for us by ordering a charge-bayonet which sent the riflemen running. But, alas, to twelve marksmen had been consigned the task of aiming at the person of General Fraser and none other. Dressed in the full uniform of a general, with laced furniture upon his iron-grey charger, he presented a most conspicuous target. One bullet grazed the horse’s crupper, another passed through the mane, but a third pierced the General’s body, passing in close under the breastbone and out near the spine. He was carried away, mortally wounded, and the command of the right wing devolved upon Lord Balcarres.
This was the first occasion that I saw General Benedict Arnold in action. He had been forbidden by General Gates to leave camp, but had struck with his sword at an officer sent to restrain him, wounding him; and then galloped into the fray with oaths of fury. He was in an ecstasy of enthusiasm, to which resentment of General Gates, natural courage, and a great deal of hard liquor contributed perhaps in equal measure. He rode in undress, and bare-headed, directly across our front, waved a sword about his head, shouted in a cracked voice and grimaced in high excitement. The New England militia troops were inspired by him to unusual valour wherever he led. He carried three whole regiments of Massachusetts infantry with him in a dense body against the centre, where the remainder of the Germans broke before him at the second charge. A comic aspect of this heroism was provided by an aide-de-camp of Gates, who had orders to arrest General Arnold and bring him back to camp. The unfortunate man was made to play follow-my-leader throughout the day and led into some mighty hot spots, but never came near enough to lay his hand upon the angry man’s collar.
General Gates himself was not seen by his troops during this action: he spent the greater part of the day in discourse with a wounded prisoner, Sir Francis Clark, whom he was trying to persuade, by political argument, of the righteousness of the American cause. Sir Francis, who was dying, did not budge from his convictions, and, says General Gates to one of his aides, ‘Did you ever hear such an impudent son of a bitch?’
It was a stiff rear-guard action that we fought, some companies retiring while the others faced about and fired volleys with precision and effect. We were now covering the retreat of the centre and the left, but were sufficient to the task and came safe back at last into the camp, where we hurriedly refilled pouches and cartouche-cases. All the guns had been lost, by the shooting down of the teams: without these it was impossible to haul them back. Twenty-five officers had been killed and wounded in the space of less than an hour, and several experienced sergeants, including my friend and benefactor Sergeant Fitzpatrick, who died very easily, shot in the lungs. ‘Well, Gerry,’ he said panting, as I bent over him, ‘I believe I have got my furlough – to the Promised Land. The Rev. Charles Wesley always bade us build our hopes of what God might do for us hereafter on what He has done for us here. I trust to that. My loving duty to poor Mrs Fitzpatrick, my affectionate wishes to my niece Jane, my compliments to the Captain, and God bless you!’ Soon after, he expired.
General Burgoyne had escaped unwounded, though shots had pierced his hat and his waistcoat. The batmen had been surprised in the act of cutting fodder and came back empty-handed.
This was not the end of the day. General Arnold next rode against our camp with a brigade of Continental troops. He unwisely chose the position held by the Light Infantry and supported by heavy pieces of artillery. We gave his Americans musket-fire and grape as they tried to rush the open space in front of Freeman’s Farm; and repulsed them with great loss. Even this did not daunt General Arnold: in the fading daylight he effected a combined assault on the horseshoe redoubt which covered the right of our position. Here the German reserve was stationed, and his attack this time did not miscarry, for he broke through the weak Canadian companies that lay between the Germans and ourselves and took the position in rear. The Brunswick colonel was killed; his men fired a last volley and then surrendered. General Arnold was entering the sally-port, sword in hand, when his horse rolled over, stone dead. As he was pitched from the saddle, a wounded German fired at him point-blank and shattered the thighbone of the same leg that had been broken below the knee at Quebec. General Arnold prevented an American soldier from bayoneting his adversary, swearing that the German was a fine fellow and in the way of his duty. The pursuing aide-de-camp here finally caught up with General Arnold. ‘General Gates’s compliments,’ he gasped. ‘You are to do nothing rash, but return at once to the camp.’
General Arnold called a surgeon, who shook his head on examining the wound and recommended amputation. ‘Goddam it, sir,’ cried this remarkable man, ‘if that is all that you can do with me, I shall see the battle out on another horse.’
As for our people, they were greatly fatigued, and even the sentinels found it hard to keep their eyes open. I was busied with the wounded, until late that night, when an order came to us to abandon our post and take up a new position half a mile in the rear, on the height above our general hospital. This natural fortress lay close to the road and the river and was protected by a deep ravine. The order was obeyed with the greatest regularity and silence. We could hear the Americans bringing up their artillery for an attack at dawn, and thus the wisdom of the withdrawal became apparent, for our camp was not cannon-proof and the enemy had outflanked us by the capture of the horseshoe redoubt from the Germans.
Early in the morning General Fraser, who had dictated and signed a last Will, breathed his
last: his request was to be buried by us without any parade within the great redoubt. All that day we offered battle, and several brigades of the enemy formed against us in the plain with the evident intention of assault. However, a howitzer shell from our batteries, bursting in the middle of a column, caused such carnage that they all ran off into the woods and showed no further inclination to attack. An assault across a level meadow against so strongly entrenched a force as ours was too much to expect of irregular troops; and it was a mistake on our part to discourage them by howitzer fire before the attack was well launched. To have met them in the open would have been a most agreeable change from the continual wood-fighting and skirmishing in which the advantages of our discipline had been lost. In a dense thicket every man is his own general, and subordination to orders where combined movements are impossible of execution becomes a vice rather than a virtue, for the most obedient soldier is at the greatest loss.