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. and his army. Should the agreeable news reach” him before he left town, he promised, he would forward it to Washington.13 It was a bizarre situation: after one week, the outgoing president of the Continental Congress and the commander in chief still hadn’t heard from Horatio Gates about the war’s single most important development. When Washington received the articles of capitulation, signed by Burgoyne, they came via Israel Putnam. “As I have not rec[eive]d a single line from Gen[era]l 1 Gates, I do not know what steps he is taking with the army under his command and therefore cannot advise what is most proper to be done in your quarter,” Washington told Putnam, betraying considerable pent-up frustration.14 Two days later he expressed to Richard Henry Lee his bitterness about Gates’s snub and said that, for a time, he actually began to doubt that the Saratoga victory had taken place.

During this period Washington was camped at a farmhouse in Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, a place so cramped that his aides slept on the floor before the fireplace and shared one tin plate. On November 2 Gates at last deigned to send him a short note, saying he was returning Colonel Morgan and his band of marksmen. Clearly, Gates had heard through the grapevine that Washington was agitated about not having heard from him and disposed of the matter in a cavalier line: “I am confident Your Excellency has long ago received all the good news from this quarter.”15 Never one to react on the spot, Washington bided his time to take his revenge upon Horatio Gates.

If he was elated by Burgoyne’s capture, Washington also believed that many circumstances had favored Gates. The mid-Atlantic states, where Washington operated, was rife with Tories, while thousands of militiamen in upstate New York had harassed Burgoyne as his doomed soldiers struggled down the Hudson Valley.

“How different our case!” Washington complained, noting “the disaffection of [a] great part of the inhabitants of this state [and] the languor of others.” 16 Washington had also never faced an enemy in Burgoyne’s vulnerable situation of being dangerously cut off from supply lines. General Howe had never ranged far from his base in New York or other seaboard ports where he could fall back on British naval superiority, depriving Washington of a chance to strike a lethal blow. Still licking his wounds, Washington told Patrick Henry that he had been forced to defend Philadelphia “with less numbers than composed the army of my antagonist,” even though popular opinion had wrongly attributed to him twice as many men.17 Even Martha Washington heaved a weary sigh at the rank injustice of it all. Although she expressed “unspeakable pleasure” at Burgoyne’s surrender, she added, “Would bountiful providence aim a like stroke at Gen[era]l Howe, the measure of my happiness would be complete.”18

The Saratoga victory had a powerful resonance in European courts. Horace Walpole said that George III “fell into agonies” when he absorbed the terrible news.19 Among the opposition party in Parliament, the defeat hardened resistance to approving more money and troops for a costly, faraway war. The repercussions were no less momentous in France. When Jonathan Loring Austin, fresh from America, rode up to Benjamin Franklin in Paris in early December, the elderly statesman gazed up at the young man on horseback and asked, “Sir, is Philadelphia taken?” “Yes, sir,” replied Austin. Crestfallen, Franklin started to lumber off with a heavy heart. “But, sir, I have greater news than that,” Austin shouted after him. “General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war!”20 An ecstatic Franklin used this unexpected news as his most potent argument in luring France into the war on the American side.

Since Washington believed there was a significant numerical imbalance between his forces in Pennsylvania and those of Gates in upstate New York, he sent Alexander Hamilton streaking off toward Albany to request—and if necessary, demand—that Gates direct a portion of his troops southward to bolster Washington’s army. Washington