Posted on 12/12/2019 11:53:47 AM PST by Perseverando
In June of 1777, British General "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne was marching from Quebec, Canada toward Albany, New York, with an army of 7,000 British and Hessian troops.
British General William Howe was supposed to be marching north, up the Hudson River Valley, from New York City to Albany in a "divide and conquer" entrapment plan.
Instead, without telling Burgoyne, General Howe abandoned the plan and left to capture Philadelphia - the capital of the new United States.
This was in accordance with European warfare, that when an enemy's capital was captured, the war would immediately end.
British General Burgoyne first recaptured Fort Ticonderoga, and in August of 1777, sent 500 Hessian troops to capture an American supply depot in Bennington, Vermont.
To his surprise, American General John Stark surrounded and captured them.
American General Philip Schuyler's army of 1,000 men gathered along the Mohawk River and blocked Burgoyne's route to Albany.
British General Barry Saint Leger was sent to scatter them.
Saint Leger set an ambush for the Americans coming to reinforce Fort Stanwix, but met bloody resistance at the Battle of Oriskany.
Saint Leger would have won had it not been for the American's mass courage, aided by a sudden torrential rain that soaked the priming of the muskets.
As General Burgoyne continued down the Hudson River Valley, individuals living in frontier New York settlements who were loyal to Britain joined his forces.
One such loyalist, living near Saratoga, was David Jones, who recently became engaged to his fiancée Jane McCrea.
Burgoyne made a treaty with the Mohawk Tribe to terrorize American settlements.
Indians would return to camp from their nightly raids, yelling and proudly displaying the scalps of their victims.
(Excerpt) Read more at myemail.constantcontact.com ...
Thems that loved their British so much, were called Tories. Thems were remainers, too.
Nowadays, at the east end of Long Island, NY, the youngins of those same Tories, celebrate the return of the British soldiers, complete with filled dories of redcoat wearing enactors!!
bkmk
This is the background for John Ford’s only movie set in the Revolutionary War, “Drums along the Mohawk”. As for specifying the Mohawks, they were only 1 of the 6 tribe Iroquois Confederacy; the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora (aka The Six Nations).
I thought all Indians were peaceful that is until you win at blackjack too often.....
An often overlooked aspect of this campaign is the role of the Colonial farmers. As the British Army marched down the Hudson, they followed the normal procedure of “foraging” for food (i.e, confiscating food from the local farmers). But Colonial farmers had guns, mostly rifles, and they knew how to use them. Soldiers sent out to forage were subject to sniping.
As the army went down the Hudson, farmers gathered to oppose them. The British knew that their 6000 troops outnumbered the American army of only 3000. They were surprised by the 7000 farmers with rifles.
During the battle, a farmer climbed a tree and killed one of the British officers … a 300 yard shot.
After the defeat at Saratoga, the British retreated towards Canada, and Washington requested the Saratoga troops back. The farmers said, “You mean you are going to just let them go?” So the farmers sniped the British retreat, and did not allow any foraging. The British starved and suffered such continuing casualties that they finally asked to surrender. But there were no soldier with the farmers who could accept the surrender, so the farmers sent a message to Washington to send someone to accept the surrender.
The farmers won the campaign, but the Army wrote the history.
Thanks for the info. I had not heard that.
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