The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [93]
He had been frustrated in Boston, where he had spent nine months as second in command to Howe and idled the time away writing plays, including The Siege of Boston. The general had returned to England and convinced Lord Germain to let him lead an attack from Canada into New York that would smash the rebels and end the war in a matter of weeks. He took command of Guy Carleton’s army of 7,863 regulars plus Indians and Canadian volunteers. He also led three thousand Hessians, under the command of Baron Friederich von Riedesel, who was accompanied by his young, attractive wife, three children, and two servants. The army moved southward on June 21, 1777.
Burgoyne’s plan to sail down Lake Champlain, conquer all before him, and seize Albany seemed foolproof. At the same time, part of his army under Colonel Barry St. Leger would travel the Mohawk River valley to Albany. Nothing went according to plan, however. There was no American navy; Arnold never rebuilt the ships that Carleton had battered and sank the previous year. The Americans had evacuated Ticonderoga and left an empty fort.
Burgoyne’s march east was impeded by hundreds of trees felled by Americans to slow down his progress. Bridges were destroyed so that the British had to spend precious time rebuilding them. Burgoyne only advanced twenty miles in twenty-two days. Then, when he was within sight of the Hudson River the British commander, in no hurry, halted and waited for his baggage to be delivered, wasting more time.
When he finished dallying, Burgoyne crossed the Hudson and headed for Bennington, in the newly declared state of Vermont, to confiscate supplies and find food for his large army. There, he was turned back by Massachusetts militia led by Colonel John Stark, one of the heroes of Bunker Hill.
Burgoyne was stunned by the fast mobilization of militia and the ferocious patriotism they exhibited. In a letter that showed a far deeper understanding of the Americans’ determination to win the war than any other British general exhibited, he wrote to Lord Germain, “The great bulk of the country is undoubtedly with the Congress in principle and in zeal, and their measures are executed with a secrecy and dispatch that are not to be equaled. Wherever the King’s forces point, militia to the amount of three or four thousand assemble in twenty-four hours. [They are] the most rebellious race . . .”8
Burgoyne was worried about his loss at Bennington, but he knew that he would soon hook up with St. Leger’s army of two thousand men, half of them Indians, further south. The British forces of Sir Henry Clinton would also join him. They had remained in New York after Howe took his larger army by boat to capture Philadelphia.
As Burgoyne pulled back from Bennington and headed south toward Albany, Barry St. Leger was stalled in the Mohawk Valley. An Indian chief placed within St. Leger’s camp by Arnold engineered a mutiny among the Indians, who left the British. St. Leger then retreated toward Canada, chased for miles by Arnold.
Ebenezer Wild had become a veteran by the time he and the men of the First Massachusetts pitched their tents in Saratoga. He had enlisted as an eighteen-year-old corporal in Colonel Jonathan Brewer’s Regiment in 1775 and was probably in the battle of Bunker Hill. He had seen much in his first tour of duty, which ended in December 1776. The company had been inoculated for smallpox in August 1776, when an epidemic of it hit the Boston area, an inoculation that may have saved his life.
Wild’s regiment stayed in Boston when Benedict Arnold led the expedition to Canada, but those soldiers were sent to Fort Ticonderoga after that invasion failed. That trip, Wild’s first excursion outside of the Boston area, was plagued with problems. One town, upon hearing that the men had been inoculated for smallpox and that one man