From the Battlefield to the Stage: The Many Lives of General John Burgoyne 9780228015635

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From the Battlefield to the Stage

From the Battlefield to the Stage The Many Lives of General John Burgoyne

Norman S. Poser

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

© Norman S. Poser 2022

ISBN 978-0-2280-1453-9 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-2280-1563-5 (ePDF) ISBN 978-0-2280-1564-2 (ePUB) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2022 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: From the battlefield to the stage : the many lives of General John Burgoyne / Norman S. Poser. Names: Poser, Norman S., 1928– author. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220219826 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220219931 | ISBN 9780228014539 (cloth) | ISBN 9780228015635 (ePDF) | ISBN 9780228015642 (ePUB) Subjects: LCSH : Burgoyne, John, 1722-1792. | LCSH : Generals— Great Britain—Biography. | LCSH : Dramatists, English— Biography. | LCSH : Saratoga Campaign, N.Y., 1777. | LCSH : United States—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—British forces. | LCSH : Great Britain—Politics and government—18th century. | LCGFT : Biographies. Classification: LCC DA 67.1.B 8 P 67 2022 | DDC 973.3/41092—dc23

Set in 11/14.5 Adobe Caslon Pro Book design & typesetting by Garet Markvoort, zijn digital

To Judy and Suzy

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction 3

1 Early Days

10

2 Army, Elopement, Exile

3 Raiding the French Coast

17

27

4 Belle Île: Blood and Champagne 5 Portugal: Making a Reputation

6 A Soldier in Peacetime 7 The Preston Election

8 Politics and India

64

46

31

39

58

9 The Maid of the Oaks 71

10 A General without a Command 11 How to Plan a Disaster

95

80

12 The Saratoga Campaign: Before Crossing the Hudson 13 Dangerous Allies

122

15 The Captive Army

140

17 Man of the Theatre

164

14 The Saratoga Campaign: After Crossing the Hudson 16 The Politics of Saratoga 18 Last Days Epilogue

175

184

Notes 189 Bibliography Index 241

231

155

105 131

Acknowledgments I am enormously grateful to the librarians who assisted me with cheerful efficiency in the research for the book. They include Jean Davis at Brooklyn Law School Library, Moira Goff at the Garrick Club Library, Barbara Bieck at the New York Society Library, and Mary Painter of the Blackburn (UK) with Darwen Library and Information Service. I also wish to thank the librarians at the New York Public Library, British Library, J.P. Morgan Library, New York Historical Society, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. The members of the writing group at the Lotos Club gave me helpful criticism of several chapters of the book. They are Diana Benet, Peter Friedman, Steve Greenwald, Yvonne Korshak, Rick Petersen, Paula Powell, Robert Ravitz, Ed Schiff, Gloria Shafer, and Renee Summers. Others who gave me valuable advice and assistance include Professor Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy of the University of Virginia Law School; Dr Stephen Lloyd, curator of the Derby Collection at Knowsley Hall; and Jim McIntyre, editor of the Journal of the Seven Years War Association. My niece Margaret Poser helped me find illustrations for the book, and my longtime friend Jeffrey Knight gave me useful and interesting information about the clubs on St James’s Street, including Brooks’s and its betting book. Above all, I thank my daughter, Susan Poser, and my wife, Judy Cohn, both of whom maintained a continuous and active interest in my research and writing. They both read drafts of every chapter, some of it more than once, and gave me many helpful and perceptive comments and suggestions. Our discussions of the book as it progressed were wonderfully productive. Words cannot adequately express how much I appreciate their patience and devotion to the project.

From the Battlefield to the Stage

Introduction No British general has been more written about than John Burgoyne, not even the great commanders Marlborough or Wellington, who won victory after victory.1 By contrast, most people have heard of Burgoyne for one critical event in his life, the surrender of his army at Saratoga, New York, in 1777, regarded as the turning point in the American Revolutionary War. This humane, ambitious, patriotic, sensual, sociable, proud, brave, and sometimes reckless man deserves to be remembered for more than being the cause or scapegoat of one of Britain’s worst military disasters. My purpose in this book is to paint a full and convincing picture of Burgoyne in the context of the culture and politics of eighteenthcentury Britain. He was an active member of Parliament for thirty years and a playwright whose works, successfully produced at Drury Lane, London’s leading theatre, took a humorous but penetrating look at the social life of which he was a part. The mildly erotic verse he enjoyed writing must have delighted his friends. He proved his bravery and leadership ability on European and American battlefields, and he socialized in London’s elite gambling clubs and fashionable drawing rooms. Although his formal education ended at the age of fifteen, he had the easy familiarity with classical literature expected of an English gentleman. My interest in Burgoyne began by accident. I was doing research at the J.P. Morgan Library in New York for a book on the eighteenth-century London stage when I came across a letter Burgoyne wrote to David Garrick, manager of the Drury Lane Theatre, about a play he had written. Was the author some minor playwright with the same name as the well-known general, who was trying to persuade Garrick to produce his play? But no: it soon became clear to me that the writer of the letter – and the play – was indeed General Burgoyne of Saratoga.

4 From the Battlefield to the Stage

The letter, which to my knowledge has never been published, came from the pen of no ordinary general or, for that matter, no ordinary playwright. It shows a generous character: he wanted his share in the profits to go to a theatrical charity. Nor did he desire any personal publicity, unless it would help the play’s popularity. The play, The Maid of the Oaks, was performed that year (1774) at Drury Lane and was followed by three more of his plays, also produced there successfully. Political power in eighteenth-century Britain was held by an oligarchy of about two hundred immensely wealthy landowning families. A man could hardly rise to the top in politics or the military unless he belonged to, or married into, one of these families. Burgoyne’s connection with the Stanley family – the earls of Derby – shaped his life and career. Burgoyne, who came from a military, not aristocratic, family, joined the Stanleys in a dramatic fashion: he eloped with Charlotte, the Eleventh Earl’s youngest daughter. Although he was ambitious and gained immeasurably by the connection, it would be a mistake to be too cynical; it was a love marriage that lasted for twenty-five years until Charlotte’s death. Once the earl became convinced of Burgoyne’s good character, impeccable manners, formidable ambition, and high intelligence, he enthusiastically welcomed him into his family and provided him with the influence and money required to further his career. After Burgoyne died, the young Twelfth Earl of Derby (Burgoyne’s nephew by marriage) provided his son with the care and education that enabled him to become, like his father, a British army general. A noble connection gave Burgoyne the means necessary for success; to this he added his own talents and ambition. As a young colonel commanding a cavalry regiment in Portugal in the Seven Years War, he proved his bravery and returned home a national hero. As a military leader he was far ahead of his time. Unlike most other commanding officers of the day, Burgoyne believed soldiers should be treated humanely; he hated flogging, the punishment of choice in the armies of Europe, including the British. He shaped the men under his command into an efficient fighting force. He treated the officers and men he led with firmness, tempered by kindness and understanding, and so earned their love, even in defeat.

Introduction 5

Burgoyne’s devotion to his men was not just talk. When he and his army were held captive by the Americans after the surrender at Saratoga, an American officer made an unprovoked attack on one of Burgoyne’s soldiers with a bayonet. Burgoyne persuaded the American general in charge of the prisoners to court-martial the officer. Instead of delegating the prosecution to a junior officer, Burgoyne took on the task himself. As a member of Parliament, Burgoyne supported the rule of law, fought the corruption of the East India Company, and advocated religious toleration. He voted with the government on most matters, but on issues that he regarded of great importance to his country he voted his conscience. In peacetime Burgoyne made a tour of Prussia, Austria, and France to study the military situation of these countries – and it seems he did a little spying on the side. The report he made to the prime minister when he completed the mission reveals the wide range of his interests, from mundane (though not unimportant) matters such as the soldiers’ clothing, to issues of international concern such as the possibility of a new war in central Europe. Burgoyne’s London was the unmatched centre of the Western world. It was said at the time that “the parallelogram between Oxford-street, Piccadilly, Regent-street, and Hyde Park encloses more intelligence and human ability, to say nothing of wealth and beauty, than the world has ever collected in such a space before.”2 In London, Burgoyne was in his element. He loved its theatres, taverns, clubs, and fashionable drawing rooms. He would have agreed with Samuel Johnson’s dictum that “when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”3 Burgoyne was the most sociable of men. He counted among his friends many leaders of Britain’s political, artistic, and intellectual life, including philosopher-statesman Edmund Burke, political leader Charles James Fox, portrait painter Joshua Reynolds, actor-manager David Garrick, historian Edward Gibbon, playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, biographer James Boswell, and architect Robert Adam. His friendship with the Duc de Choiseul, one of France’s greatest

6

From the Battlefield to the Stage

statesmen, lasted for thirty years, even while their two countries were at war with each other. Burgoyne was ambitious, perhaps to a fault: like many others in eighteenth-century Britain, he used his family connections shamelessly to obtain preferment. His other personal flaws were those common to many upper-class Englishmen of this time. In an era when gambling was a national passion, he frequented Brooks’s Club on St James’s Street, which has been called the “greatest gambling den” in London.4 He was not only a skilled card player but was willing to lay a wager with a friend or acquaintance on almost any contingent event. Despite his close and loving relationship with his wife, he had a reputation as a womanizer, which he confessed to in a private memorandum and in his will.5 He loved wine, especially champagne, if that can be called a weakness, but there is no evidence that he overindulged to an extent that it affected his judgment or behaviour. He was a proud man who could act with barely suppressed fury if he detected an insult. During a hotly contested election campaign, he appeared in the hustings carrying two loaded pistols and paid a large fine for inciting violence. And of course, there was Saratoga. The problem here is that there is almost too much information rather than too little. The main facts are not seriously in dispute. Burgoyne led an army of 7,400 British and German soldiers and Native American warriors from Canada into the rebellious North American colonies in June 1777; and four months later he surrendered the exhausted remnants of his army to the overwhelming forces of American general Horatio Gates at Saratoga in upstate New York. Who should be blamed for the defeat? Historians on both sides of the Atlantic have debated this question for the past 250 years. Was Burgoyne the man who lost America by his recklessness or his lack of the skills and experience required of a general, or was he a scapegoat for the incompetence and bad decisions of others? Should the principal blame for the British defeat be pinned on General William Howe, who abandoned Burgoyne’s army in upstate New York, leaving it to face overwhelming American forces alone? Or should it rest on Lord

Introduction 7

George Germain, the secretary of state for the colonies, who allowed Burgoyne and Howe, commanding the only two sizable British armies fighting the American colonists, to be separated and out of touch with each other? Howe and Germain, both of them younger sons of noblemen, escaped unpunished after Saratoga; Burgoyne, connected by marriage to a noble family but not himself a nobleman, was effectively ostracized by the king and his ministers. Finally, was this a war that Britain could not win even if all the generals and government ministers involved in planning and fighting the war had been totally competent? Given the difficulty of suppressing a largely hostile population spread out over more than 1,100 miles of mostly wilderness; the problems of conducting a war at a distance of 3,000 miles; the lack of Loyalist support; and, not least, the tactical skill and ideological zeal of the colonists, Britain might well have lost the war even if it had won all the battles it fought. As indicated above, Burgoyne has been much written about. There are at least seven biographies and one novel.6 The first biography, by the journalist Edward De Fonblanque, written at the request of his granddaughters, was published in 1876.7 While it has the drawback, common to many authorized biographies, of glossing over or ignoring his subject’s flaws, it has proved invaluable to Burgoyne’s later biographers, including this one, because it reprints many letters he wrote and received, the originals of which have since disappeared. The next Burgoyne biography that I know of, by F.J. Hudleston, then librarian of the British War Office, came out in 1927.8 As to be expected, the author is knowledgeable on military subjects, and he spices up the book with numerous amusing and interesting digressions. The main problem with this highly readable book is that, although it contains a ten-page bibliography, it lacks footnotes or endnotes. Between 1973 and 1983 no fewer than five Burgoyne biographies appeared.9 There has been nothing since then, except for chapters devoted to Burgoyne in books on Revolutionary War generals, as well as many books and articles on the Saratoga campaign. Despite Burgoyne’s celebrity, there are large gaps in our knowledge about his ancestry, his childhood, his first days in the army, the years he

8 From the Battlefield to the Stage

spent as a socialite and gambler in London, and the five years he and his wife spent in France and Italy. And there is scarcely any information available about the actress and singer Susan Caulfield, with whom Burgoyne had four children out of wedlock after the death of his wife. One of his earlier biographers, James Lunt, notes that there is an “absence of any original letters and memoranda [by Burgoyne]. The most diligent search has failed to disclose anything of real value.” Lunt concludes that Burgoyne’s descendants, to suppress information about their illegitimacy, destroyed their father’s personal correspondence.10 The scarcity of source material has led Burgoyne’s previous biographers to offer differing – and sometimes inconsistent – versions of some of the important events of his life and even to serve up, as facts, conclusions that have no basis in contemporaneous sources. I note a few examples of these questionable assertions in the book, one of which I will mention here. More than a century after Burgoyne’s death, George Bernard Shaw invented the nickname “Gentleman Johnny” for the semi-fictional John Burgoyne he created in the play The Devil’s Disciple, having first discarded “Frosty Fred.”11 But at least one Burgoyne biographer writes that Burgoyne’s soldiers called him that a hundred years earlier.12 As to Burgoyne’s character, his biographers disagree so much that it is hard to believe they are describing the same man. A twentiethcentury writer had this to say: “[H]is irresistibly charming manner; his genial, kindly nature, his unquestioned reputation for courage – were impeccable credentials in every circle.”13 On the other hand, the biographer Richard Hargrove concluded that Burgoyne had few gifts as a politician; lacked a brilliant mind; gave incoherent and pompous speeches; was an ineffective field commander; depended on his wife’s family connections; and appeared to the public as a buffoon.14 The lack of solid information posed a difficulty for someone writing a new life of Burgoyne. In my own research I found a few of Burgoyne’s hitherto unpublished letters, but Lunt was surely correct when he concludes that much valuable source material has been lost or, more likely, destroyed by his descendants. The difficulty cannot be ignored or glossed over; the reader is entitled to know what is known and what is not. In this book I avoid arbitrarily filling in the blanks where

Introduction 9

evidence is lacking or disputed. In such instances I make the problem clear and state my own view, based on the historical context and my judgment as to the reliability of the available sources. Burgoyne was an extraordinary man who led an event-filled life; the authentic story is worth telling; it needs no embellishment.

Chapter 1

Early Days John Burgoyne was born on 4 February 1723,1 supposedly in a house on Park Prospect, a street facing St James’s Park in Westminster, London, where all three branches of the British government, king, Parliament, and law courts, were within easy walking distance of each other.2 For most of his life, he would live, work, and play in that neighbourhood; and he would be buried in Westminster Abbey. Burgoyne was fortunate in the time and place of his birth. During his lifetime, Britain would become a global superpower, with an empire rivalling that of ancient Rome. The loss of the North American colonies, in which Burgoyne would play an unfortunate role, was the nation’s only major setback. Advances in science and technology fuelled British industry and brought the nation to the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Expanding commerce brought unparalleled prosperity to its people, making them the wealthiest in the world.3 Although Britain could scarcely be called a democracy – only onesixth of the males and none of the females had the vote – its population enjoyed more freedom, including freedom of the press, than any other in Europe. A constitutional monarchy that placed limits on the power of the king, equality under the law, and a degree of religious toleration – Roman Catholics still were under severe restrictions; and Protestant dissenters, such as Methodists and Quakers, experienced political disabilities – ensured political stability and provided a favourable climate for economic growth. Political power was divided between the monarch and Parliament, as it had been in previous centuries; but now the king’s power was becoming more circumscribed. He still had the power to choose his

Early Days

11

ministers, but he could no longer ignore the wishes of Parliament. In practice, an oligarchy of about two hundred enormously wealthy noble landowning families supplied most of Britain’s political leaders. One of these families was the Stanleys, the hereditary earls of Derby, with whom Burgoyne was to become closely linked in his personal and political life. These political and economic developments were accompanied by changes in British society. It was an age that valued the concept of sensibility, which is defined as “an openness to emotional impressions.”4 The historian Roy Porter celebrates the “British Enlightenment” as a period that saw “new mental and moral values, new canons of taste, styles of sociability and views of human nature.”5 In clubs, taverns, assembly halls, and other venues, politicians, writers, artists, lawyers, architects, philosophers, noblemen, and military officers gathered to converse, gamble, and eat and drink. Men dominated this world, though elite women played an increasingly important role in polite society.6 Burgoyne, an eminently sociable man, flourished in this environment, to which he contributed an urbane presence. Burgoyne’s family members did not belong to the nobility, but they were a far cry from being ordinary citizens. Legend has it that Burgoyne’s family could trace its ancestry back to the fourteenth century, when John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,7 granted John Burgoyne (many of the male Burgoynes were named John) property near London with these words: I, John of Gaunt, Do give and do grant, To Johnny Burgoyne, As the heirs of his loyne, Sutton and Potton Until the world’s rotten.8 A sixteenth-century ancestor named Robert Burgoyne was one of the commissioners who implemented King Henry VIII’s takeover of the monasteries when England left the Catholic Church in the sixteenth

12

From the Battlefield to the Stage

century. As his reward, he was given valuable country properties, which gave the family the social status of county magnates.9 The family’s fortunes received an additional lift in the seventeenth century, when King Charles I, badly needing money, gave Burgoyne’s great-great-grandfather the title of baronet. Burgoyne had to pay the king the substantial sum of £1,095 for the honour. A baronet had the right to put the title of “Sir” in front of his name; the title was hereditary, meaning that under the English system of primogeniture it passed down from generation to generation to the baronet’s eldest son. Baronets were not noblemen, but they ranked above ordinary commoners. Being the second son of a baronet, Burgoyne’s father, also named John, did not inherit the title; but even he, and his son, the subject of this biography, enjoyed some social standing because they were members of a baronet’s family. Many of the male members of Burgoyne’s family were army officers. While periods of peace were kind to much of the population, this was seldom true of military men, many of whom were placed on half-pay.10 Burgoyne’s father was said to have been an army captain, who married an heiress, Anna Maria Burneston.11 Addicted to gambling, he squandered a large part of his wife’s fortune and fell into debt. There is evidence that Burgoyne senior and Anna Maria separated in 1757 and that he died in a debtors’ prison eleven years later.12 In those days, a debtor could be committed to prison until his or her debts were paid – more on this later. We do not know whether Burgoyne was in touch with his father or gave him financial help at that time.13 Anna Maria Burgoyne was not just rich, she was said to be “exceedingly beautiful.”14 She attracted the attention of Robert Benson, a wealthy politician. For two years during the reign of Queen Anne (1711–13), he held the important office of chancellor of the exchequer, after which he was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Bingley. Bingley had several connections to the Burgoyne family. They rented their home from him; he lent money to Burgoyne’s father to pay his creditors; and Bingley was Burgoyne’s godfather when he was baptized in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, the day after his birth.15 When Bingley died in 1731, his will gave rise to much speculation and gossip. He left Burgoyne’s mother, Anna Maria, an annuity of £400

Early Days

13

(equivalent to about US $90,000 in 2021) for the rest of her life, an estate in the country, and the lease of the Burgoynes’ home in London; and he cancelled the debts that Burgoyne’s father owed him. He left the remainder of his considerable estate to Harriet, his only child born in wedlock; but if Harriet died unmarried, the remainder would go to the young John Burgoyne, on condition he change his name to Benson.16 Since the elder Burgoyne was still alive when Bingley died, it is highly likely that he was aware of Bingley’s relationship with his wife.17 As it turned out, Harriet did marry, preventing Burgoyne from receiving the remainder of Bingley’s estate; but rumours were started by Bingley’s widow and circulated by the gossipmonger Horace Walpole and others that Bingley was Burgoyne’s father.18 It is impossible to know the truth, but the contents of the will suggest that Bingley may have had an intimate relationship with Anna Maria and also that Burgoyne was Bingley’s son. Edward de Fonblanque, Burgoyne’s authorized biographer, while denying the rumour as a “calumny,” states that the story of Burgoyne’s illegitimacy was generally accepted at the time.19 If it is not true, it is difficult to understand why Bingley would have made such a generous provision in his will to Anna Maria and why he all but adopted her son posthumously, subject only to the claims of his one legitimate heir. Since Burgoyne was born while his parents were legally married, John senior was legally his father. Still, the contents of the will were known publicly at the time, and Burgoyne must have been aware of the question raised as to his paternity.20 Given the tolerant attitude towards illegitimacy that prevailed among the upper classes at the time, it is unlikely that it ever bothered him. As we will see, Burgoyne himself acknowledged the four children that he fathered out of wedlock after his wife died. When Burgoyne was ten, his parents enrolled him in Westminster School. After a year, for reasons that are unknown, they took him out of the school, but he returned there a year later. In all, he was a Westminster student for about five years.21 Since the school was close by their home, it is likely that he was a “day boy” who lived at home and walked to school. Although Westminster was eclipsed by Eton later in the century, in the early eighteenth century it was England’s leading

14

From the Battlefield to the Stage

boys’ school and the training ground of the elite. Westminster’s student body during this period included many who later distinguished themselves in politics, the arts, and the military, including poet William Cowper; politician and judge Lord Mansfield; historian Edward Gibbon; religious leader and hymn writer Charles Wesley; two prime ministers, the Duke of Newcastle and the Marquess of Rockingham; Warren Hastings, the ruler of colonial India; and numerous generals and admirals.22 When Burgoyne entered Westminster School the school had a new headmaster, forty-nine-year-old John Nicoll, who had been assistant headmaster for nineteen years. Nicoll was an extraordinary educator, especially for that era. A deeply religious clergyman, he was known for his humanity, scholarship, and urbanity.23 A former pupil called him “a Master not only of dead languages, but also of living manners.”24 Unlike most schoolteachers, he did not rely on corporal punishment to preserve discipline; it would be sufficient if a boy confessed to his misconduct and showed repentance. Richard Cumberland, a future playwright who attended Westminster School a few years after Burgoyne, wrote in his memoir: Dr. Nichols [sic] had the art of making his scholars gentlemen; for there was a court of honor in that school, to whose unwritten laws every member of our community was amenable, and which, to transgress any act of meanness that exposed the offender to public contempt, was a degree of punishment, compared to which the being sentenced to the rod would have been considered as an acquittal or reprieve.25 A historian of the school writes that, although some teachers stuck to the more traditional ways of disciplining boys, “Nicoll’s rule was a democracy tempered by affection.”26 The core of the Westminster curriculum was Greek and Latin literature.27 When Cumberland’s father took him to the school to be admitted as a student, Nicoll asked Cumberland then and there to translate texts by the Greek epic writer Homer and the Roman poet Horace. Nicoll was pleased with the boy’s performance but advised

Early Days

15

him not to speak in too declamatory a style because “my boys will call it conceited.”28 To supplement the classics, Nicoll introduced new subjects, including English grammar and composition. He supervised a system of private tutorials, under which the most accomplished of the older boys were paid to oversee the work of the younger ones. Some of these student tutors would return to the school to continue this work during their university vacations.29 All was not study at Westminster. The student body, numbering about five hundred, was known for hijinks, tomfoolery, and practical jokes. A few years after Burgoyne attended the school, a fashionable young lady arrived in a sedan chair and asked Nicoll to show her around the school. As Nicoll took her from classroom to classroom, they were followed by a bunch of boys barely able to suppress their laughter. A short time later, the headmaster was dismayed to see his visitor being doused by the boys under the pump in Dean’s Yard, the quadrangle where the students played football. It turned out the lady was actually one of the boys, the future Marquess of Rockingham, who was twice to become prime minister of Britain, dressed in a petticoat and hoop skirt.30 It would be a mistake to underestimate the influence of Westminster School on Burgoyne. This, his only formal education, gave him a command of the English language that served him well both as a politician, playwright, and army officer. While some of his speeches in Parliament were criticized as verbose, their style was in the fashion of the time. In any case, his military orders and reports were uniformly clear and to the point. And sometimes they exposed his classical education. In a report to the government describing one of the battles at Saratoga, he wrote tersely: “The darkness preventing a pursuit, the prisoners were few.”31 A sentence with that concise structure could only have been written by someone whose study of Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars as a boy still left an impression on his mind.32 Nicoll’s psychological method of motivating his students left a permanent stamp on the young Burgoyne. As a regimental commander, he rejected the savage discipline of soldiers that was standard in armies of the day and instead treated his men as human beings, not as automatons to be whipped even for minor offences. More fundamentally, a

16

From the Battlefield to the Stage

good argument can be made that Nicoll’s example and influence when Burgoyne was a boy played a major role in shaping his character as a man. Burgoyne did not stay long at Westminster School, nor did he distinguish himself there. He left at age fifteen, to follow a military career in his family’s tradition.

Chapter 2

Army, Elopement, Exile When Burgoyne left Westminster School to join the army, it was not as a lowly private soldier but as an officer. It was not unusual in eighteenth-century England for teenagers to hold army commissions.1 Time-honoured custom dictated that army commissions were a career of choice for the younger sons (and the sons of younger sons) of noblemen and baronets, while the army’s sergeants, corporals, and private soldiers came from the rest of the population.2 Besides, the Burgoynes were a military family: as noted earlier, his father reportedly had been an army captain; a cousin, Sir John Burgoyne, was an eighteenth-century army general who served in India; and Burgoyne’s own son and grandson continued the military tradition. To become an army officer, Burgoyne or his family had to purchase his commission. Under a system adopted from Spain in the sixteenth century and not abolished until 1871, about two-thirds of all British army officers up to the rank of lieutenant colonel purchased their commissions, the rest being obtained by seniority, patronage, or distinguished service.3 Because a commission had monetary value, a man who decided on a military career was making an investment in the same way as another man might invest in government bonds or a share in a business.4 To acquire a commission, a prospective officer had to find an officer who was about to retire or to be promoted, and pay him a sum of money for his commission.5 By Burgoyne’s time, a complex procedure had evolved: the officer who was promoted would pay the man he was replacing the difference between the value of a commission in his own rank and the next higher rank.6 An officer who wished to sell

18 From the Battlefield to the Stage

his commission was required to offer it first to the most senior officer in his regiment in the rank just below his own. The commission of an officer who was killed in battle expired along with its owner, except that the family of one who died heroically might be permitted to sell his commission.7 Despite regulations fixing the price of commissions, the actual prices paid depended largely on supply and demand. Commissions were expensive: only a wealthy man, or one with a wealthy relative or patron, could aspire to a career as an army officer. In the 1770s, a commission for the lowest officer rank in an infantry regiment cost £400 (equivalent to roughly US $90,000 in 2021); for a commission in the cavalry, the cost was three times as much.8 The cost of commissions in the higher officer ranks was considerably higher; for a lieutenant colonel, for example, it was £3,500 in the infantry and £4,700 in the cavalry.9 In addition, a new officer had to spend another £200 or so on clothing, weapons, and other equipment.10 Despite the expense, the purchase system was popular with officers: the price of commissions rose steadily during the eighteenth century – faster than the cost of living – and when the officer sold the commission at the end of his career the proceeds provided him a retirement fund.11 The purchase system undoubtedly kept some talented but not wealthy men from entering the army or, once in the army, from being promoted to a higher rank. Still, it worked better than one might expect. Many of the men who bought commissions came from a social class who were accustomed to command, were serious about their military duties, and were willing to invest substantial sums of money in their careers.12 The success of the British army in battle after battle in Europe’s eighteenth-century wars is some evidence that, despite its flaws, the purchase system had its merits. The available information about Burgoyne’s early military career is sketchy and to some extent contradictory. According to most accounts, he bought his commission in 1737 or 1738 in a regiment of Horse Guards, an elite unit whose official mission was to protect the royal family.13 Probably for this reason, the regiment’s barracks were located near the royal residence of St James’s Palace and the govern-

Army, Elopement, Exile

19

ment offices in Whitehall.14 The commission probably cost Burgoyne’s family about £1,000.15 The training he received was within his regiment; Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy, was not founded until 1741, and even then it trained only engineering and artillery officers. Most likely bored by the Horse Guards’ largely ceremonial duties and seeking more excitement and chance of promotion, Burgoyne was drawn to the cavalry, just as a young soldier today might be attracted by the mobility and glamorous reputation of an armoured or airborne unit. In 1743 or 1744 he exchanged his Horse Guards commission for a commission with the rank of cornet (the lowest officer rank) in a regiment of dragoons, cavalry soldiers who rode horses but usually fought on foot. He was promoted to lieutenant on 22 February 1745, and to captain five months later.16 It is unclear whether he had to purchase the promotions and, if he did, where the money came from.17 It may have come from his mother. It has been said that Burgoyne experienced his first taste of warfare as a junior officer fighting the French in the War of the Austrian Succession, a European conflict that lasted from 1740 to 1748, but there is no definite proof of this.18 In eighteenth-century England, an ambitious man without great wealth or a high position in society needed the help of a person or family as a patron or sponsor. Burgoyne found his in the Stanley family. As a student at Westminster School, Burgoyne may have met James Smith-Stanley, known as Lord Strange, the son and heir of Edward Stanley, 11th Earl of Derby.19 Even if they met as schoolboys, it is unlikely they became close friends at that time as some have asserted, since they were separated by an age difference of six years,20 Strange being sixteen when Burgoyne entered the school at the age of ten. But regardless of when Burgoyne and Strange first met or when they became friends, Burgoyne’s personal life and career were soon to be inextricably bound up with the Stanley family. The Earl of Derby was the head of one of the wealthiest and most influential families in England. Both the 11th Earl and his son, Lord Strange, increased the family’s wealth by marrying heiresses.21 The Stanleys’ country seat was Knowsley Hall, in Lancashire in the north of England, ten miles from the port city of Liverpool. Knowsley consisted

20 From the Battlefield to the Stage

of an enormous palace of mixed sixteenth- and eighteenth-century styles, surrounded by 2,500 acres of forest, meadowland, and a landscaped park with a large lake. The Stanleys also owned a townhouse in Preston, the administrative centre of the county, where they entertained their friends and neighbours, engaged in breeding race horses, and generally maintained their status as the dominant family of the region.22 The Earl of Derby held the post of lord lieutenant and tax collector for the county of Lancashire; he was also a justice of the peace and a member of the king’s Privy Council, a prestigious but mainly ceremonial position.23 While the earl stayed at Knowsley and contented himself with his pleasures and fulfilled his responsibilities in Lancashire, Lord Strange was an active member of Parliament. By the late 1740s, he had become the de facto head of the Stanley family.24 A traveller who visited Knowsley some years later described him as “generous, friendly and sincere,” adding that “his abilities in the House of Commons have been universally allowed.”25 Perhaps his regiment was stationed at Preston and Burgoyne decided to pay a visit to his old schoolmate, Lord Strange.26 The two men became close friends, and Burgoyne, inevitably, met Strange’s sister Charlotte.27 The youngest of the earl’s six daughters, she was about twenty when she first met Burgoyne. She was slim, attractive, with a sense of humour and a mind of her own.28 A few of her letters, as we will see later, provide some clues to her character and to what attracted Burgoyne. She seems to have been one of those gracious, quick-witted, self-assured, and perhaps a little straitlaced Englishwomen typified by Shakespeare’s Rosalind in As You Like It and Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing. After three years of courting, Burgoyne asked the earl for permission to marry her. It appears that he refused. The young army officer was intelligent, well-spoken, respectable, and handsome; but, with neither a title nor wealth, he hardly seemed a suitable husband for the daughter of an earl. Burgoyne and Charlotte, in love and headstrong, risked the earl’s wrath by taking the drastic step of eloping.

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They were married on 14 April 1751, at St George’s Chapel on Curzon Street in the fashionable Mayfair section of London.29 Burgoyne’s biographers state that Lord Strange, defying his father and supporting his sister and his friend, assisted the couple by providing them with a temporary home in London when they married, but there is no contemporary evidence that he was even let into the secret.30 Burgoyne was twenty-eight and Lady Charlotte twenty-three. The few surviving letters Burgoyne wrote to his wife suggest that their marriage, which continued until Charlotte’s death twenty-five years later, turned out to be happy and companionable.31 Soon after the wedding, Burgoyne sold his commission, reportedly for £2,600 (the equivalent of about US $585,000 in 2021), and he and Lady Charlotte – as the daughter of an earl, she kept her honorific title of “Lady” even after she married an untitled man – left for France.32 They lived in France and Italy for five years. It is safe to say that the earl was, at least for a time, furious at his daughter’s elopement; but we don’t know whether his anger stopped him from providing the couple with funds to augment their income during their long stay abroad.33 In an age that encouraged marriages that preserved or augmented family property, elopement was officially frowned on as a threat to public institutions, and fathers were urged not to forgive their errant daughters. The historian Amanda Vickery writes: The sponsors of [the] Marriage Act of 1753 … railed against paternal tenderness, deploring the fact that fathers were “too apt to forgive” their eloping daughters, unable to bring themselves to inflict the appropriate financial punishment. By this view, the father’s susceptibility to the influence of his girls was a social problem which threatened the preservation of property. The darling daughter was patriarchy’s Achilles heel.34 We cannot be certain why the newlyweds exiled themselves. They may have decided to leave England because they could not afford to live there in the style to which Lady Charlotte was accustomed, and

22 From the Battlefield to the Stage

that life was cheaper – and perhaps more interesting – on the Continent.35 On the other hand, we know that later in his life Burgoyne became an enthusiastic, perhaps compulsive, gambler; and it is possible that as a young man on the low pay of a junior army officer he ran up debts that he could not repay. If so, it made sense for him to leave the country to avoid being committed to debtors’ prison.36 Just as habitués of brothels feared venereal disease, eighteenthcentury gamblers feared debtors’ prison. Imprisonment for debt was one of England’s more cruel and illogical legal institutions, for jailing a debtor was likely to deprive him of the means to repay his debts. Nonetheless, more than half of England’s prisoners were debtors.37 Debtors’ prisons were fearsome places, overcrowded, filthy, and disease-ridden;38 in the summer of 1750 – a year before Burgoyne’s and Lady Charlotte’s elopement – an outbreak of typhus – known as “gaol fever” – at London’s Newgate Prison spread to the nearby courtroom and killed at least fifty judges, lawyers, jurors, witnesses, and spectators.39 It is also possible that Burgoyne wished to live on the Continent for a while to complete his education and become a man of culture and refinement, which would have been of special importance to him now that he was married to a nobleman’s daughter. The historian Brian Connell writes (of another man, but it could just as easily apply to Burgoyne): “Foreign travel, the ability to converse in continental languages and personal knowledge of the wonders of the antique world provided the basis for a reputation as a man of culture, and circumstances had so far deprived him of these qualities.”40 The Burgoynes lived in France and Italy for five years. For their living expenses they had the proceeds from the sale of his commission and perhaps a stipend from the earl. Burgoyne made the most of these years. We know he acquired a passable ability to read and write French, for the Derby Collection at Knowsley Hall contains drafts of several of his letters written in that language.41 French was the universally accepted international language, and it had a special importance for a soldier. France being Europe’s pre-eminent military power, the authoritative treatises on military matters were written in French. According to De Fonblanque, Burgoyne studied military literature during his time in France, which suggests that he planned to rejoin the army

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upon his return to England.42 We do not know which treatises he read during his exile; the best-known one was Mes rêveries, written by Marshal Maurice de Saxe, a renowned soldier and military theorist of the mid-century European wars; but it was not published until 1757, by which time the Burgoynes were back in England. Burgoyne’s knowledge of French was an important asset, for it enabled him to converse with virtually any educated person in the Western world. As a result, he was able to make the acquaintance of many members of the European intelligentsia during his five years abroad. Some became lifelong friends. The most significant of these were the Count and Countess Stainville, who became better known a few years later as the Duke and Duchess de Choiseul, which is how they will be referred to here. Choiseul and Burgoyne were both retired army officers when they met, but their experience and status were very different. Choiseul, four years older than Burgoyne, was a friend and protégé of King Louis XV’s politically influential mistress Madame de Pompadour. He had fought in several battles of European wars and had risen to the rank of major general at the age of twenty-eight, while Burgoyne had only attained the modest rank of captain. Choiseul was not handsome – he was short and baby-faced – but he was an intrepid and skilful officer, and his dynamic personality captivated his peers.43 Some years after Burgoyne first met him, when Choiseul had attained the position of foreign minister of France and one of Europe’s leading diplomats, Burgoyne described him in a report to his government as “a man of lively talents and sanguine temper – vigilant, secret, ambitious, enterprising.”44 The diarist and letter writer Horace Walpole wrote of Choiseul in less flattering terms: “His ambition was boundless, his insolence ungoverned, his discretion unrestrained; his love of pleasure and dissipation predominant even over his ambition.”45 But all agreed that Choiseul was delightful company.46 Choiseul was plainly a man who did not suffer fools gladly, and his ready acceptance of Burgoyne as a friend says something about the latter’s intelligence and ability to please whatever company he was in. Choiseul’s wife, twenty years old when Burgoyne and Lady Charlotte met her, charmed them both. In 1750, Choiseul had married Louise Crozat, the tiny, beautiful daughter of an immensely rich contractor;

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her fidelity to him, however, did not keep him from chasing other women. Everyone liked her.47 One lady wrote of Louise: “It is a pity she … is an angel; I had rather she was a woman; but she has only virtues, not a single weakness, not one fault.”48 Even Walpole, whose pen was often sharp and malicious, gushed that she was “the gentlest, amiable, civil little creature that ever came out of a fairy egg” and judged that she had more common sense and virtue than almost any human creature.49 It appears that the two couples became friends soon after the Burgoynes arrived in France. It was a friendship that was to continue for over thirty years, through times when their countries were at war with each other. Burgoyne may have carried a letter of introduction to Choiseul from Lord Strange or possibly from the earl himself; in any case, the daughter of a British earl and her urbane husband could expect to be welcomed into the highest reaches of French society. It is unclear where in France the Burgoynes lived; it may have been in the Loire valley in central France, where Choiseul later was to purchase Chanteloup, an enormous estate that rivalled Versailles; it is also likely they spent some of their time in Paris. In 1754, Choiseul was appointed France’s ambassador to the Holy See, and in September he and the duchess moved to Rome. Burgoyne and Lady Charlotte followed them there, but slowly.50 First they travelled to Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, where in the autumn of 1754 Lady Charlotte gave birth to their first and only child, a daughter whom they named Charlotte Elizabeth. They remained in Aix for a few months to allow the mother to recuperate from childbirth. While there, they socialized with the twenty-eight-year-old Scottish architect Robert Adam, who, with his brother James, was on a Grand Tour of Europe. Later, when Adam had become a prominent London architect, Burgoyne hired him to decorate his house in London and introduced him to his father-in-law, the Earl of Derby, who also became a client.51 In Aix, Burgoyne and Lady Charlotte were invited to supper by the Duke of Villars, the governor of Provence, and took the Adam brothers along with them.52 According to Adam, the only serious occupation of the French nobility, including the ladies, was gambling, which went on from six in the evening until two in the morning.53 Although

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Adam was too discreet to mention that his new friend Burgoyne spent the evenings at the card tables, it is likely that he did. In early 1755, the Burgoynes (now including baby Charlotte Elizabeth and presumably a nursemaid) and the Adam brothers took off for Florence, arriving there in time to celebrate carnival. Choiseul and his duchess joined them. At the festive balls, Lady Charlotte showed her independent spirit as well as some xenophobia: when she wasn’t dancing with her husband she chose to dance most frequently with Robert Adam because “she didn’t like the foreigners.” Years later, she wrote to her friend Lord Palmerston that she found Italian society “detestable,” not because they were foreigners but because they were immoral: “if one is so unfashionable as to have some notions of honour and virtue one has but a bad chance of passing one’s time the least agreeably. I have no idea how anybody can live in Italy that does not give themselves wholly to passion.”54 On the other hand, she had mixed feelings about the French: Though I love the French very well and like to live among them I own I am quite angry at our nobility spending so much money in the kingdom. We shall very soon enrich them and are absolutely furnishing them with arms against ourselves, for depend upon it as soon as ever they get up a little again, they will find a pretence for more quarrels and I expect war again in two or three years.55 From Florence, the Burgoynes and the Adam brothers travelled to Rome, where they remained for a year. An earlier biographer of Burgoyne suggests, without providing a source, that the Burgoynes became friends of a trio of young French artists who were studying and working in Rome: Hubert Robert, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, all of whom were destined the join the pantheon of famous French painters.56 In Rome, the Burgoynes joined a small social circle of British expatriates. One of them was Adam’s friend, the Scottish portrait painter Allan Ramsay. While in Rome, Ramsay painted Burgoyne in an elegant pose, wearing the dress uniform of an army officer, leaning against the ancient wall of the Roman Colosseum.57 It was a typical “Grand

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Tour portrait,” in which a visitor to Italy – often a Briton – “was shown standing in front of some celebrated monument of antiquity … in recognition of the cultured tastes which had drawn him to drink at the very fount of the liberal arts.”58 The Burgoynes were often invited to supper by a Scottish couple named Elliott, friends of Lady Charlotte, who lived near the fashionable Spanish Steps. Afterwards they would stroll together through the city along the banks of the Tiber, past ruins of ancient Rome, and then back to the Piazza, where they would eat “extremely good” ice cream and strawberries before retiring. Mrs Elliott became one of Burgoyne’s closest friends, but, in an uncharacteristic outburst of dislike, he said he considered her husband “a most insignificant trifling mortal, who constantly talked about the orders of the Knighthood, Stars, Garters and Ribbons.”59 The Burgoynes returned to England in late 1755 or early 1756. War threatened and Burgoyne was eager to resume his army career. Although there had been some skirmishes between Britain and France in North America since 1754, Britain did not declare war until 17 May 1756, in what became known as the Seven Years War. The Burgoynes probably made the decision to return before that date, for he was able to purchase a captaincy in a regiment of dragoons less than a month later.60 After five years, the earl’s anger at his daughter’s elopement had cooled. Although we don’t know exactly when he dropped his opposition to the marriage and welcomed Burgoyne into his family, this seems to have occurred around the time of the couple’s return to England. Perhaps Lady Charlotte hoped that the arrival of his new granddaughter would have a softening effect on the earl.61 Burgoyne returned to England a very different person from the young man who had eloped and departed with his bride five years earlier. Now approaching middle age, he had become more polished and intellectual. The working knowledge of French he acquired in these years enabled him to enjoy a relaxed familiarity with aristocrats, statesmen, and artists. Most important, with Britain at war, he now knew for sure that he wanted to resume his military career.

Chapter 3

Raiding the French Coast Europe was at peace during the five years Burgoyne and Lady Charlotte lived in exile. They returned to England shortly before war broke out between Britain and France in 1756. Known in Europe as the Seven Years War and in America as the French and Indian War, it was to expand into a world-wide conflict that brought in Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, and Portugal as belligerents. Its battles were fought in Germany, France, the Lowlands, North America, the West Indies, the Indian subcontinent, Africa, the Philippines, and on the high seas.1 The war provided Burgoyne with an opportunity to practise his profession and achieve promotion, recognition, and fame. Lord Derby and his son, Lord Strange, were willing to use their great wealth and influence to further Burgoyne’s military career. On the Burgoynes’ return from the Continent, it is likely that Derby enabled Burgoyne to purchase a captaincy in a regiment of dragoons. While he had been away, his fellow officers had been promoted, so he found himself in the humiliating position of that of a subordinate of former colleagues, some of whom he had commanded before he sold his commission five years earlier. But two years later the situation was again reversed: the opportunity arose to purchase a commission as a lieutenant colonel in the Coldstream Guards, a fashionable regiment with a distinguished history.2 At the age of thirty-five, he was the youngest lieutenant colonel in the army.3

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The Seven Years War was the largest war Britain had ever fought; France, as usual, was its main enemy.4 William Pitt, the dynamic secretary of state who ran Britain’s war effort, did not wish to spend the bulk of his country’s resources on the European continent, where its army was dwarfed by those of its main enemies, France and Austria.5 Instead, he preferred to use Britain’s naval strength to enlarge its empire in India, North America, and the West Indies; meanwhile, he would keep the French off-balance by coastal raids.6 It was on the beaches of France that Lieutenant Colonel Burgoyne saw his first combat and learned some practical lessons in the realities – and the horrors – of warfare. Burgoyne participated in three raids on the French coast in the year 1758. In May, an army of 14,000 men in newly invented flat-bottomed boats, along with 1,000 horses, landed at Cancale Bay, just east of the heavily fortified Normandy port of St Malo. The military justification for the raid was that St Malo was a base for French privateers who had been attacking British shipping. The landing force was commanded by the Duke of Marlborough, who had under him no fewer than seven generals.7 After several weeks camped on the coast, Marlborough, mistakenly believing that a large French force was approaching, ordered his troops to re-embark, having accomplished nothing except to burn a few French ships.8 Burgoyne had very little to do, since he was not in command of any troops. All we hear of him is that on 13 July he was given picket duty: he was in charge of a group that acted as sentinels at an outpost on the perimeter of the British camp.9 In August a second raiding force landed at Cherbourg on the Cotentin peninsula and destroyed a large number of ships in the harbour. The raiders were unable to demolish completely the forts guarding the port because the men assigned to the task discovered a large cache of wine and were too drunk to do much work.10 Nevertheless the raiders embarked without suffering many casualties, and the raid was adjudged a success.11 The third raid was the only one in which there was serious fighting. In early September the raiders landed a few miles west of St Malo, unaware of the strength or position of enemy forces. Burgoyne later

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wrote that two days after the landing a deserter came in from the enemy and informed the British that a large French army was less than six miles away, threatening to cut the raiders off from the sea. The admiral in charge decided to re-embark the troops early the next morning.12 What happened next is recounted in a journal of the campaign published a few weeks later: The enemy no sooner perceived our troops give way, then they fell in among them with their bayonets, and a considerable slaughter ensued. Our men were butchered both on the shore and in the water, and many in swimming were killed by the shot and shells thrown from the French cannon and mortars for that purpose.13 Burgoyne was one of the officers in command of the troops who covered the British retreat to their ships. At first they were successful in beating off the enemy, but they ran out of ammunition and “all was confusion.”14 But soon the French commander ordered the guns silenced. About one thousand British soldiers were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, a number that would have been greater had it not been for the French commander’s act. French casualties were about half that number.15 The British report of the battle stated: “The French officers and soldiers exhibited a noble instance of humanity and moderation, in giving immediate quarter and protection to the conquered. Such generosity we could hardly expect in return for marauding, pillaging, burning, and other excesses which our soldiers had committed.”16 One thread that runs through all three of these coastal raids was the shameful behaviour of the British troops, which their officers were unable to prevent, either by stern orders or severe punishment. When the troops landed near St Malo in the first raid, the rural farmers and their families fled, leaving behind the old or infirm. The invading troops stole or destroyed everything that fell in their path, and brutalized or even murdered the remaining inhabitants. The military command quickly convened a court martial, which found a soldier guilty

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of robbing and attempting to stab a Frenchwoman. The soldier was sentenced to death, and the Duke of Marlborough confirmed the sentence. Another soldier was sentenced to receive 500 lashes for mutiny. It is not known whether he survived.17 During the second raid, several soldiers were tried for dissolute conduct and at least one was hanged, the report stated, “in terrorem” (i.e., to deter others).18 A Frenchman was tried for murdering two British soldiers, perhaps to prevent them from pillaging his home. He was acquitted.19 Although Burgoyne, not having his own command, played only a minor role in the three raids on the French coast, his participation in the operations had an important effect on his thinking as an army officer. His observation of the damage done by undisciplined British soldiers, not only to civilians and their property, but also to army’s mission, was almost certainly in Burgoyne’s mind when he began training a regiment of his own. As we will see, the troops he led in Portugal in 1762 behaved very differently from those who raided the French coast.

Chapter 4

Belle Île

Blood and Champagne On 4 August 1759, with Britain engaged in a major war, King George II appointed Lieutenant Colonel John Burgoyne to be the commander of a new regiment of cavalry, the 16th Light Dragoons. It was unusual for an officer of his rank to be in command of a regiment – normally this would be a position for a colonel, the next higher rank. Moreover, Burgoyne was a very new lieutenant colonel; only fifteen months earlier he had held the junior rank of captain.1 His appointment was almost certainly due to the influence of the Earl of Derby, who had a close relationship with the king.2 The colonel of a regiment had a unique position, which an officer could hold regardless of his actual rank in the army. The colonel of a regiment could hold a rank as high as a general or as low as a lieutenant colonel. The regiment was the basic unit of the British army; it was also property of its colonel, who was usually a nobleman or a large landowner.3 Burgoyne was neither of these things. The colonel was not just the regiment’s commander but also its executive. Parliament voted money specifically for each regiment; the money would go to the regiment’s colonel, who used it to pay, clothe, and feed the troops; buy horses; and even recruit soldiers. (Procurement of arms and ammunition was allocated separately.) It was perfectly legal for the colonel to put in his own pocket any amount he could save in running his regiment.4 Burgoyne launched his colonelcy with a flourish, exercising his gift for marketing and self-promotion to the fullest. An advertisement for

32 From the Battlefield to the Stage

recruiting soldiers bordered on the outrageous: “You will be mounted on the finest horses in the world, with superb clothing and the richest accoutrements [i.e., equipment] … you are everywhere respected; your society is courted; you are admired by the Fair, which, together with the chance of getting switched to a buxom widow … or a rich heiress, renders the situation truly enviable and desirable … nick in instantly and enlist.”5 On 25 October, Burgoyne wrote to Lord Barrington, the war minister, brashly demanding a special dispensation for his regiment, which was within Barrington’s discretion to provide. He asked, first, that a chaplain be assigned to the regiment; second, he requested “hautboys,” probably meaning trumpeters; and third, additional money for each horse owned by the regiment. He apparently threatened the minister with political consequences if his demands were denied. Barrington’s prompt rebuff seethed with resentment at the preferential treatment that had been given to a relatively inexperienced officer, “who is allied to and protected by a noble person”: A regiment is a very great thing for any man who was a captain a year and a half ago … If an officer, by the length or merit of his services, has a claim to preferment, he should have it gratis; but when a young gentleman, who has no such pretension, is put over the head of older and better soldiers, he should buy it … You threaten me with the House of Commons, in case I am, what you call partial against you in respect to them. This is not the way to influence me.6 Having witnessed the marauding and plundering by undisciplined British troops during the 1758 raids on the French coast, Burgoyne turned to the matter of training the men in his regiment as soon as he gained its command. He issued a Code of Instructions for the officers serving under him, which he described not as orders of a commanding officer but as “the sentiments of a friend, partly borrowed and partly formed upon observation and practice.”7 Burgoyne’s code is remarkable for its humanity and pragmatism, which were a far cry from the

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brutal military discipline of the time, which often included flogging as punishment for even minor offences. Burgoyne advocated moderation. His code pointed out that while German officers discipline their men with the stick, like dogs, and French officers use an honour system instead of severity, “a just medium between the two extremes [is] the surest means to bring English soldiers to perfection.” The key, he wrote, is to treat them as thinking beings, “of getting into the character of each particular man, and proportioning accordingly the degrees of punishment and encouragement.”8 Burgoyne did not question the English class system, which existed as much in the armed services as in civilian life: he was against promoting enlisted men to become officers, but he wrote that “the ranks of corporal and sergeant [i.e., non-commissioned officers] should be considered as the most signal honour that a man from the ranks could attain.” Burgoyne treated his officers as social equals when off duty. He advised them to become fluent in French, not just because the best books on military subjects were written in that language but because “in foreign service gentlemen will find themselves at the greatest loss if they do not write and speak it readily”; to be able to write English with swiftness and accuracy; to be proficient in mathematics, because it is often necessary for dragoons to act as engineers, building fortifications, roads, and bridges; and, most important for a cavalry officer, to study horsemanship, which included not just riding but “the study of every article that concerns the horse or the rider.” Burgoyne insisted that every officer be able to perform, in case of need, any duty that he required his men to perform. For example, every cavalry officer should be able to shoe a horse.9 Belle-Île is a small rocky French island eight miles off France’s Atlantic coast. In the final years of the Seven Years War, Pitt’s Cabinet ordered an invasion of the island. A British base in that strategic location might keep the French continually alarmed and off-balance, disrupt France’s coastal trade, and provide a supply station for British warships.

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The amphibious attack against Belle-Île began on 7 April 1761. A fleet of fifty flat-bottomed boats, each carrying sixty soldiers, was repulsed after meeting strong French resistance and suffering heavy casualties. Two weeks later, a successful landing was made on another, relatively undefended, shore of the island.10 By the end of May, British troops had conquered the entire island except for the fortified citadel of Palais. Among the invading force of 8,000 soldiers and marines were two troops of Burgoyne’s dragoons, probably numbering fewer than 400 men. It was their first foreign service. Burgoyne was eager to lead his men in combat, but his rank of lieutenant colonel debarred him from commanding so small a detachment.11 He therefore travelled to Belle-Île not as a commanding officer but as a volunteer, with few if any duties. Before leaving England, he wrote his anxious wife Charlotte a poem to reassure her that God would protect him from harm: Safe in the shadow of that Power, I’ll tread the hostile ground; Though fiery deaths in tempest shower, And thousands fall around. And when the happy hour shall come (Oh! speedy may it be!) To love, content, and thee; Pure may our gratitude ascend To Him who guides our days, And whilst He gives with bounteous hand, Accepts our bliss for praise!12 As it happened, the successful but bloody British invasion of the island gave Burgoyne an opportunity to make use of the contacts and skills he had acquired during the five years he had spent in France and Italy. The civil treatment he received from French officers on a mission he performed during the short Belle-Île campaign gave him – as it may give the present reader – an appreciation of the civility that often accompanied eighteenth-century European wars. Just as opposing lawyers who attack each other mercilessly in court shake hands and enjoy

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a drink together after they leave the courtroom, enemy officers found no difficulty in being agreeable to each other once they were away from the battlefield. While the British were besieging the citadel of Palais – the siege was to last over a month – Major General Studholme Hodgson, the army commander of the expedition, gave Burgoyne a special assignment. During the fighting, each side had taken a number of prisoners, including a British general.13 The Duc d’Aiguillon,14 governor of Brittany, had asked Hodgson to send an emissary to the mainland to negotiate an exchange of prisoners, and Hodgson appointed Burgoyne to treat with d’Aiguillon. He was an excellent choice for the mission: he spoke fluent French and was on friendly terms with several highranking French army officers. The extreme courtesy – even friendliness – Burgoyne received from the French officers he met during his three-day visit to the French mainland shows that civilized intercourse between nations sometimes existed in the eighteenth century, even in the midst of a brutal war, and that class affinity could be a stronger bond than national citizenship.15 A warship took Burgoyne to within cannon fire of the coast, where he transferred to a barge flying flags showing that he had come to parley. A French guard halted the barge on the coast and allowed Burgoyne alone to step out onto French soil; the barge crew was told to wait there until his return. When Burgoyne informed an officer that he had dispatches for d’Aiguillon, the officer immediately ordered a horse, a sergeant, and six soldiers to accompany him to an army post ten miles away, where the officer thought the duke was staying. When they arrived there, he learned that the duke was another twenty miles farther away. The commander greeted Burgoyne with great courtesy but said he couldn’t send him forward until he knew the duke’s pleasure. After sending an officer to inform the duke of Burgoyne’s arrival, the post commander invited Burgoyne to have supper with him and his officers. Burgoyne was served foie gras, but since it was a Friday and the officers were Catholic, he was the only one served meat. But, he wrote to Charlotte when he returned on 11 May, there were many kinds of fish, which he and the French officers washed down with “very good” champagne. “As I had had no dinner,” he wrote to his wife,

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“you may conclude I supped well, & never more merrily.” In conversation with the post commander, Burgoyne learned that he was from Aix-en-Provence, where Burgoyne and Charlotte had stayed for several months during their sojourn in France a decade earlier, “and we immediately ran over all the characters of the society of that place.” Another officer at the supper table, recognizing Burgoyne from Aix, turned out to be the brother of a good friend of Burgoyne and Charlotte. So the evening turned out to be a convivial social occasion. Around eleven o’clock that evening the officer returned from the duke with a message inviting Burgoyne to spend the night in the duke’s quarters at the army post, and promising to send an aide to bring him to the duke the next morning. All the officers who had supped with Burgoyne accompanied him to the duke’s enormous apartment, where two footmen and a valet were assigned to serve him. After coffee the next morning, expecting just a couple of horses and an aide to take him to the duke, he found that d’Aiguillon had sent a luxurious carriage, accompanied by four footmen and drawn by six horses. Arriving at about noon, Burgoyne was taken immediately to the duke’s study, where they spent an hour on the business on which he had come to mainland France: negotiating the exchange of prisoners.16 That done, he was invited to dine with the duke and twenty-two of his officers. The warm welcome Burgoyne received may have been due in part to the fact that d’Aiguillon was a close friend of France’s foreign minister, the Duke de Choiseul, with whom Burgoyne had a friendship going back almost a decade.17 He wrote to Charlotte: I am charmed with the Duke d’Aiguillon … so truly a well bred man of quality I never saw. One of the strongest proofs to be given of his politeness is that in all our conversation he never asked one question relating to the situation of our camp, to our loss[es], to our advances, or any thing relating to the landing or the siege directly nor indirectly.18 After coffee with the duke, Burgoyne was taken back to the army post, where he spent a second night, and returned to Belle-Île the following day. The barge crew, expecting that he would return on

Belle Île: Blood and Champagne

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the evening of the day he left them by the shore, had had nothing to eat or drink that day, and none of them spoke a word of French. But about ten that evening, a French officer, guessing that it might be a day or more before Burgoyne returned, rescued them. He put the crew in a house and gave them food and drink and beds to sleep in. We don’t know the details of Burgoyne’s negotiation with d’Aiguillon over the prisoner exchange; but Burgoyne wrote, “I had the satisfaction to have my negotiation which was not a very easy one, approved of [by General Hodgson],” adding, “upon the whole I never spent more pleasant three days.”19 Burgoyne’s successful completion of his mission on mainland France may well have burnished his reputation as a sophisticated and effective officer. By the end of May, the British had captured the town of Palais, which lay below the citadel. In another example of the civilized way in which the war was fought, the French governor of Belle-Île sent word to General Hodgson that he had given orders not to fire into the town for fear of killing civilians.20 According to a British observer, the governor’s “brave defence” of the citadel “was the admiration of the British officers.”21 The siege of the citadel ended on 6 June, when British troops breached the walls of the fortress and the French garrison capitulated. Under the surrender terms, the 2,000 French troops who surrendered were not made prisoners of war but were transported, together with 400 women and children, to the French mainland on British ships.22 It was yet another example of civility that often accompanied European warfare. Burgoyne may have recalled it ruefully sixteen years later, when the army he surrendered at Saratoga received unexpectedly brutal treatment at the hands of the American Congress as well as from the inhabitants of Cambridge, Massachusetts. But the Revolutionary War, unlike most eighteenth-century European conflicts, was an ideological dispute in which emotions – including hate – ran high. Considering the limited size of the opposing forces that fought on Belle-Île and the brevity of the campaign, the casualties were high. The British suffered about 800 killed and wounded out of an invading force of 8,000. Among the dead was Captain Sir William Peers

38 From the Battlefield to the Stage

Williams, Burgoyne’s friend who in 1761 had enabled him to become a member of Parliament;23 Williams was killed by a sniper one evening while wandering out on his own to examine the enemy positions.24 Estimated French losses were close to half of the 4,400 defenders.25 Britain kept control of the island until the war ended two years later, when it was returned to France under the terms of the peace treaty.

Lady Charlotte Stanley, youngest daughter of the 11th Earl of Derby. Portrait by Edward Haytley, 1746. Burgoyne eloped with her five years later. Their happy marriage ended only with her death in 1776. Image courtesy of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Derby 2021. John Burgoyne. Copy of portrait by Allan Ramsay, 1755. Ramsay painted the original of this portrait when Burgoyne and Lady Charlotte were living in Rome. Although he had resigned his commission, he chose to pose in the uniform of an army officer. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Frederick William Ernest, Count of Schaumburg-Lippe. Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1767. Burgoyne served under him in the Portugal campaign and regarded him as his role model as a commanding officer. This portrait pays full respect to the dignity of a grandson of King George I. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

Colonel John Burgoyne. Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1766. Here is Burgoyne at the height of his reputation and popularity. He is shown as a proud, resolute army colonel; perhaps the dark clouds above his head portend trouble. Copyright The Frick Collection.

James Smith-Stanley, Lord Strange, son and heir of the 11th Earl of Derby. Portrait by Thomas Hudson, 1746. Lord Strange was Burgoyne’s brother-inlaw, friend, and political ally. An able public speaker and political organizer, he became de facto head of his family, but died before he could inherit the earldom. Image courtesy of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Derby 2021. Frances Abington. Portrait by Thomas Hickey, 1775. A temperamental actress, Abington was said to “play … the lady of fashion, both on and off the stage.” Here she is portrayed in the role of Lady Bab Lardoon in Burgoyne’s 1774 play The Maid of the Oaks. Courtesy of the Garrick Club, London.

General Sir William Howe. Portrait by Charles Corbutt (pseudonym of Richard Purcell), 1777. By his decision to attack Philadelphia instead of joining forces with Burgoyne in Albany, Howe left Burgoyne to face an overwhelming enemy force at Saratoga. Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library. John Burgoyne. Detail of portrait by John Graham, ca 1791. This image of Burgoyne on the battlefield of Saratoga shows the general’s grief and despair as his defeat becomes inevitable. © National Army Museum/Bridgeman Images. (overleaf) Edward Smith-Stanley, the 12th Earl of Derby. Portrait by George Romney, 1782. Burgoyne’s nephew and close friend, he took over the support of the general’s four children after his death. Derby’s name survives today because of the eponymous horse race he founded and its American counterpart, the Kentucky Derby. Image Courtesy of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Derby 2021. Photograph by Graeme Lycett.

Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. Portrait by Studio of Sir Thomas Lawrence, painted in 1829 after the original of 1790. A leading actress of comedy on the London stage, Farren may have been the first performer to marry into the nobility. Image courtesy of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Derby 2021. Photograph by Graeme Lycett.

Portrait of Lord George Sackville by Sir Joshua Reynolds (British, 1723–1792). Oil on canvas, 49 ¾ × 39 ¾ in. (126.4 × 101.0 cm). Brooklyn Museum, gift of Mrs Arthur Train in memory of Pell Coster, 50.134. Lord Sackville, who was known as Lord George Germain during the American Revolutionary War, was secretary of state for the colonies.

Chapter 5

Portugal

Making a Reputation Approaching the age of forty, Burgoyne had yet to lead troops in battle, but this was about to change. Although the Portuguese campaign was an unimportant sideshow in the Seven Years War,1 it was there that Burgoyne earned a reputation for personal bravery and inspired leadership. But for Portugal, it is doubtful whether he would have attained the rank of general or been given command of an army in North America. In early 1762 Portugal, an impoverished country with a small, poorly trained army, was in great peril. Urged on by France’s foreign minister, the Duke de Choiseul, Spain was preparing to invade; and Portugal lay virtually defenceless. The two Iberian countries were merely pawns in the Seven Years War, a world-wide conflict led by the two major contestants, Britain and France; Portugal was Britain’s ally, Spain France’s. For Portugal to fall under Spain’s domination would be a strategic defeat for Britain and would threaten its commercial interests, particularly in Oporto, Portugal’s second city, where British merchants owned warehouses full of valuable port wine. In Portugal’s hour of need the Marquis of Pombal, the head of its government, turned to Britain for help. It was in this sideshow of a world war that Burgoyne would make his reputation as a brilliant, aggressive military commander. Ironically, Choiseul, Burgoyne’s old friend from his exile in France, was to be the unwitting cause of Burgoyne’s day of glory.

( !

Kilometres

Map 1

Burgoyne’s campaign in Portugal 1762

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Britain promised to send 7,000 troops to Portugal and to provide the government with a subsidy of £200,000. The expeditionary force included Burgoyne’s light-cavalry regiment, the 16th Dragoons; a contingent of British grenadiers (foot soldiers); and two thousand Irish troops. Burgoyne was given the temporary rank of brigadier, a rank between that of a colonel and a general. By the time the dragoons began to arrive in Lisbon, units of the Spanish army had already crossed the border into Portugal.2 Fortunately for the Portuguese, their mountainous terrain made any Spanish advance into the country difficult and slow. Meanwhile, Pombal looked around for an experienced commanderin-chief of the armies that would oppose the Spanish invaders. He picked a German general who had strong ties to Britain. It was a wise choice. Count Wilhelm von Schaumburg-Lippe was the ruler of a small German state, but he was also an astute British-trained artillery and engineering officer with experience in the European wars and a gift for leadership.3 Lippe had an additional qualification that may have appealed to the British: he was a grandson of King George I by his mistress, the Duchess of Kendall.4 On 3 July Pombal appointed Lippe commander-in-chief of both the Portuguese army and the British troops sent to help Portugal.5 Lippe’s first experience as commander-in-chief must have been unsettling. At a banquet the Portuguese generals held in his honour upon his arrival in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, he found that captains and lieutenants of the Portuguese army were moonlighting as waiters.6 The army officially counted 31,000 soldiers, but it was able to call up only 16,500; the Spanish invading army numbered 40,000.7 A British officer described the Portuguese troops as “an army in buckram, unpaid, ill-proved, undisciplined and unorganized.”8 Despite these handicaps, Lippe decided on offensive action. The fortified city of Almeida (see map) in northern Portugal was in danger of falling to the Spanish, and Lippe decided to create a diversion to relieve the pressure on the city.9 The target he chose was the Spanish border city of Valencia de Alcántara (see map), an important depot of supplies, artillery, and ammunition. There were 1,200 Spanish troops in Valencia, whom Lippe wanted dispersed before they could be

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reinforced.10 He ordered Burgoyne to attack Valencia with a task force consisting of most of his dragoons and sixteen infantry companies.11 On 24 August, Burgoyne’s task force crossed the Tagus River from Lippe’s headquarters at Abrantes (see map) and set out for Valencia, forty-five miles away. The march on bad roads over the mountains was arduous and slow. The only transport available for supplies and ammunition was by oxcart; marching for hours in the sun, many of the soldiers suffered from sunstroke.12 Burgoyne’s plan was to arrive at Valencia early on 26 August and surprise the Spanish garrison before the sun rose, but his Portuguese guides had deceived him as to the distance to be covered: at dawn he was still a few hours’ march away.13 Burgoyne made a crucial decision. He would attack Valencia with 400 men on horseback, most of them his dragoons, leaving the bulk of the infantry to catch up with him. “By a brisk gallop,” he wrote later, he “might still possibly effect a surprise.”14 A few of the foot soldiers would ride behind a dragoon, two men to a horse.15 And so Burgoyne and his soldiers galloped to Valencia and, finding the entrance clear, pushed into the town, sword in hand. Burgoyne achieved the surprise he wanted. There was little resistance. As the dragoons rode through the town, a few desperate Spanish soldiers attempted a counterattack, but all were killed or taken prisoner. There was some firing from the windows of houses, but it stopped soon after the main force of grenadiers arrived in the town. Burgoyne reported to Lord Bute, the prime minister, that he “was obliged to treat the people who persisted in it without quarter.”16 He forced some Catholic priests to go through the streets announcing that he would set the entire town on fire unless all doors and windows were immediately thrown open. Before the priests had walked down one street, “the people had seen their error, and all was quiet.”17 Burgoyne sent parties of dragoons into the countryside to pick up any Spanish soldiers who had escaped from the town. They killed those who resisted and brought in a number of prisoners as well as horses.18 The British suffered few casualties at Valencia: five killed and twentythree wounded.19 They destroyed a Spanish regiment, taking many

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prisoners, including a Spanish general.20 They captured three “standards” – the flags of Spanish cavalry regiments, which were considered important trophies – and a large quantity of arms and ammunition.21 In contrast to the marauding by unruly British soldiers during the raids on the French coast four years earlier, the training Burgoyne’s troops had received and the good order Burgoyne enforced even during the attack ensured that civilians were not abused.22 Not that he left the Spanish civilian population off scot-free: in return for being left unharmed, he demanded a ransom of a year’s taxes, to be paid in crops.23 In purely military terms, Burgoyne’s victory at Valencia de Alcántara was unimportant: it neither prevented the capture of Almeida, which had fallen to the Spanish on 25 August, a day before the attack, nor did it end the Spanish threat to Lisbon.24 But Burgoyne’s feat had the practical effect of raising the morale and stiffening the resistance of the Portuguese. Burgoyne’s gallantry and generosity were praised even by the Spanish officers who opposed him.25 And Lippe, in his 29 August orders of the day, praised Burgoyne’s “glorious” conduct.26 Burgoyne himself reacted with modesty, writing that Lippe’s approval “gratifies my ambition, but at the same time I am conscious that the chief merit of the success was due to the admirable, though not uncommon, valour and activity of the troops I had the honour to command.”27 Because of the mountainous terrain, any attack on Lisbon would have to come down the River Tagus, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean near the Portuguese capital. Burgoyne’s mission after Valencia was to guard its south bank and approaches. The Spanish had taken the fortress of Vila Velha (see the map) on the north bank of the river a few miles from the Spanish border. Here his dragoons accomplished a second successful surprise attack. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lee was a British officer who served under Burgoyne in the Portuguese campaign. Fifteen years later he was to oppose Burgoyne, when Lee was a general in the American army fighting for independence in the Revolutionary War.28 In Portugal in 1762 Lee commanded a regiment of Portuguese grenadiers. In early October, Burgoyne ordered Lee to make a surprise attack on

44 From the Battlefield to the Stage

Vila Velha with fifty of Burgoyne’s dragoons and 200 of his Portuguese grenadiers. On the night of 5 October, Lee’s men and horses crossed the river without being observed. At dawn, they surprised the Spanish camp and, using their bayonets, killed a number of men, including a general, while still in their tents. They took a number of prisoners and sixty of the mules used for pulling artillery. They put a battery of guns out of action and then returned safely across the river. Like Valencia, it was a small victory, but one with important results: it discouraged the Spanish from any attempt to force their way down the Tagus to Lisbon.29 With the beginning of the rainy season in October, Spain lost its appetite for war against Portugal. In early November, the Spanish army, the capture of Almeida its only achievement in the war, withdrew from Portugal entirely. The Duke de Choiseul acknowledged his mistake in prodding Spain to attack its smaller neighbour: “Had I known what I now know, I should have been very careful to cause to enter the war a power which by its feebleness can only ruin and destroy France.”30 The larger war, of which the campaign in Portugal was only a minor part, was over as well. The Great Powers (Great Britain, France, Prussia, and Austria), war-weary and economically drained, signed a preliminary peace treaty in November 1762.31 For Burgoyne, the Portuguese campaign was a triumph. King Joseph I of Portugal awarded him a large diamond and the three Spanish standards that his dragoons had captured at Valencia de Alcántara.32 Burgoyne’s triumph was due not just to his audacity and personal courage but just as much to the training, both technical and moral, he had given his officers and enlisted men. He returned to England with his regiment in the autumn of 1763 with the reputation of a gallant soldier and a prudent and skilful leader.33 Burgoyne took from the campaign a high respect for the technical and leadership abilities of his commander, Count Lippe, whom he later described as a “great and generous man, [who] united the deepest political reasoning with exquisite military address.” Burgoyne recalled that Lippe told his subordinates that if they followed his orders they could be confident that he would always defend and protect them.34 It was a code that Burgoyne would follow throughout his military career.

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Undoubted success that the Portuguese campaign was for Burgoyne, it was not to be repeated. When he next led troops into battle, as a general commanding an army in America, more would be required of him than physical bravery, personal leadership, and tactical skill. His success at Valencia de Alcántara may have portended his failure at Saratoga.

Chapter 6

A Soldier in Peacetime Burgoyne returned to England a hero. His capture of Valencia de Alcántara may have been an inconsequential episode in a sideshow of the Seven Years War, but his bravery and dynamism were applauded at home. His heroism surely merited a promotion, but Burgoyne was not one to take chances when it came to achieving his ambitions: biographer F.J. Hudleston states that even before he left Portugal, he wrote to Charles Townshend, the secretary at war, asserting that if he were not promoted from lieutenant colonel to colonel, his brother-in-law and patron, Lord Strange, heir to the earldom of Derby, would take it as an insult.1 In an era of widespread nepotism, such a barefaced use of political influence was commonplace and perhaps expected. Burgoyne quickly received a favourable reply from Prime Minister Lord Bute, and he was promoted to the rank of colonel on 18 March 1763.2 Three years later, Sir Joshua Reynolds painted Colonel Burgoyne’s portrait. Confident, secure in the favour of King George III, and popular as the hero of the Portuguese campaign, he stood resolutely, his red jacket unbuttoned and his right hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Only in the black clouds scudding over his head might Reynolds have unwittingly hinted of a darker future.3 But now, with Britain at peace, Burgoyne faced an agreeable future. Tall and handsome with an engaging manner, he was the most sociable of men. Apparently, he also liked quiet relaxation, for he was a leading member of the Walton Club, a club named after Izaak Walton, the author of the 1653 book The Compleat Angler, which celebrates the pastime of fishing.4 He was also a gambler.

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Gambling was a mania that touched all levels of eighteenth-century English society. People laid wagers on horse races, cockfights, tennis matches, cricket games, rowing races on the Thames, swimming competitions, foot racing, and target shooting, among other things.5 A journalist complained in 1754 that “gaming is now become rather the business than the amusement of our persons of quality.”6 Public pressure to eliminate the sometimes devastating effects of gambling led to the passage of four anti-gaming statutes between 1739 and 1745, but, in the absence of a national police force, these laws were seldom enforced.7 The hub of high-stakes gambling lay in two clubs, White’s and Brooks’s, facing each other on opposite sides of London’s St James’s Street. The Connoisseur, a popular magazine, commented in 1754 that “persons of quality … are more concerned about the transactions … at White’s, than the proceedings of both houses of parliament.”8 Immensely rich noblemen and their sons won and lost large sums of money not only in card and dice games, but also on wagers on any unknown or contingent events they could think of: births, deaths, marriages, or even an earthquake. When a man collapsed on the pavement in front of White’s and was carried inside the building, club members, seeing the incident through the window, immediately laid bets on whether the man was dead. When it was proposed to bleed him, one of the bettors protested that this would affect the fairness of the bet.9 White’s was founded in 1736, Brooks’s in 1762.10 Although they were not overtly political clubs, White’s became the stronghold of the Tories, Brooks’s of the Whigs.11 Burgoyne was a member of both,12 but, in keeping with the Whig persuasion of the Stanley family, he was more the habitué of Brooks’s, which he joined the year it was founded. All bets at Brooks’s were entered in the club’s “betting book.” One such wager, made around 1773, records: “Mr. Burgoyne betts [sic] Mr. Charles Fox 50 guineas [a guinea was one pound plus one shilling] that four members of the club are married or dead before Charles Fox is called to the bar.”13 Charles James Fox, who was on his way to becoming the leader of the Whig party, was in his early twenties at the time. Another entry in the Brooks’s betting book, made a few years later: “Gen’l Burgoyne gives five guineas to Lord Edward Pembroke

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to receive one guinea for each night His Lordship shall sup in Vaux Hall the ensuing season.”14 The careful wording of the contract (it was hardly a wager) barely concealed its meretricious nature: the “dark walks” of Vauxhall Gardens were a well-known venue for assignations.15 Who won either of these two bets is a detail lost to history. Brooks’s was the “greatest gambling den” in London.16 The lowest stake was £50 (equivalent to about US $12,000 in 2021), but it was not uncommon for a player to win or lose the stupendous sum of £10,000 or more in an evening.17 Lord Robert Spencer, a member of the family that was to produce both Winston Churchill and Princess Diana, won £100,000 playing faro; he retired and never gambled again.18 And, of course, losses could be equally huge: Sir John Bland shot himself after losing his entire fortune at White’s; and a member of Brooks’s lost £70,000 as well as his carriages and horses, which he put up as his last desperate stake.19 Burgoyne was a competent, even an expert, card player.20 He may have acquired his skill during his years in France, where gambling was as much the rage as it was in England.21 A newspaper writer who used the pseudonym of “Junius” accused Burgoyne of “taking a stand at a gaming table, and watching with the soberest attention for a fair opportunity of engaging a drunken young nobleman at piquet [a card game].”22 This allegation has often been repeated but should be taken with a grain of salt.23 For one thing, its worth may be discounted because it was anonymous – the identity of Junius remains a secret to this day;24 for another, it is unlikely that the prominent politicians, artists, and other notables who ate, drank, and gambled with Burgoyne over three decades would have fraternized with a cardsharp.25 The passion for gambling had national and international ramifications, both good and bad. One view has it that British admirals and generals “drank and gambled – but they governed England from White’s and Brooks’s with such firm hand that they made her feared and respected in every quarter of the globe.”26 A contrary view, which became more commonplace at the time of the American Revolution, was that gambling had a degenerative effect on the British character. A member of Parliament blamed gaming for the loss of the colonies: “To this dreadful vice must every misfortune which has lately fallen on this

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country be attributed.”27 Mary Wollstonecraft, the eighteenth-century feminist and philosopher, wrote at the end of the century: “Our British heroes are oftener sent from the gaming table than from the plow; and their passions have been rather inflamed by hanging with dumb suspense on the turn of a die, than sublimated by panting after the adventurous march of virtue in the historic page.”28 It is easy to see why the optimistic view of gambling prevailed in the 1750s and ’60s, when British arms went from one triumph to another; and why the pessimistic one predominated at the time of Britain’s defeat in the American Revolution two decades later. Whether Burgoyne’s predilection for gambling played a part in the events that led to his surrender at Saratoga will be addressed in chapters 12 and 14. By most accounts Burgoyne was deeply in love with his wife, Lady Charlotte, whom he described in a private memorandum, probably written around the time he left for America in 1775, as “the tenderest, faithfullest, the most amiable companion and friend that ever man was blessed with – a wife, in whom during four and twenty years I never could find a momentary act of blame!”29 Burgoyne liked to write light verse, and his poems usually contained an element of eroticism. When a friend married a woman to whom he had been attracted before his own marriage, he presented the bridegroom with a poem: ’Twas mine to see each opening charm, New beauties rise – new graces charm; ’Twas mine to feel their power; Nature and morals just and pure, For that has made the fruit mature Since I adored the flower. After had conflict passion cool’d; Discretion, reason, honour ruled O’er the subsiding flame; Till Charlotte to my vacant breast, With kindred charms and virtues blest, A sweet successor came.30

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Burgoyne’s delight in feminine charms is not proof that he had love affairs with other women during the twenty-five years of his marriage. He evidently was discreet, for no specific information exists about any such affairs. Still, he gave strong hints that there were times when he cheated on his wife. He may have felt some guilt about it, for he wrote in a private memorandum around 1775: “To supply the requisites of [Lady Charlotte’s] rank, to reward the virtues of her character, I could only bequeath her a legacy of my imprudences.”31 Again, when he was in his sixties, he wrote in his will: “During a life too frequently blemished by the indulgence of one predominant passion, it has been a comfort to me to hope that my sensualities have never injured, nor interrupted the peace of others.”32 Whatever philandering he was guilty of, it does not appear to have disrupted their marriage. While Burgoyne was frequenting his clubs, Lady Charlotte enjoyed the life and privileges of a nobleman’s daughter. A good part of their social life was spent separately; this was not unusual among upperclass couples at the time; it did not signify a distant or hostile marital relationship. Although married women had few legal rights, all doors were open to the daughter of an earl and the wife of a popular war hero and member of Parliament. We know something about Lady Charlotte’s life at this time because of several letters she wrote to Henry Temple, Viscount Palmerston, an immensely wealthy member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. In the early 1760s, when Burgoyne and Palmerston were both newcomers to the House of Commons, he became such a close friend of the Burgoynes that he felt he could drop in and dine with them at their home on Chesterfield Street in fashionable Mayfair at any time without an invitation.33 In 1763, Palmerston left on a Grand Tour of Europe, an almost obligatory event for a young English nobleman (he was twenty-four at the time).34 An interlude of foreign travel was the basis for a reputation as a man of culture.35 Lady Charlotte kept Palmerston abreast of London gossip, as well as political news, some of which was of direct importance to him; and she continued writing to him after he returned to his country estate of Broadlands in Hampshire.36 She had a discerning interest in the information she learned from her husband or

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from her aristocratic connections, and she knew how to judge its importance. Her letters also show an acerbic wit and occasionally a touch of malice. “Is it not strange,” she wrote in August 1763, “that we must be so very fond of the French fashions that we must even imbibe their vices. I verily believe, in a very little time, we shall be as remarkable for gallantry as they are” (at the time “gallantry” was understood to be a synonym for immorality).37 She described one English duchess as “the most complete figure of affectation and absurdity I ever saw. [H]er rouge … is as deep coloured and thick laid on as e’er a Duchess in France.”38 She included political news in the same letter, writing: “Mr Pitt [Britain’s war leader in the Seven Years War] has behaved very insolently to His Majesty and has determined not to accept the post of Secretary of State.”39 When King George III’s sister Augusta married Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick in January 1764, Charlotte was invited to the wedding.40 Apparently, it was less fun going to the event than telling her friends about it later; she writes that “when the King and Queen came into the room with their attendants, I really thought we should have been suffocated.” She managed to get a good view of the wedding couple in the overcrowded drawing room where the ceremony was held, but she adds, “to be sure, I never repented anything more in my life than the going there.” Soon afterwards, Charlotte prevailed on her sister, Mary, to go to the opera with her because “the whole royal family were to be seen at once.” She also had promised to take her ten-year-old daughter, Charlotte Elizabeth, to an opera. Two months later, Charlotte Elizabeth was dead. We don’t know the cause of her death; but life-threatening childhood diseases, especially diphtheria and typhus, raged during the winter months.41 We know little about her short life and, in the absence of letters or diaries, we can only imagine her parents’ suffering at the loss of their only child. Although, like other upper-class families, the Burgoynes had a nursemaid to look after their daughter, this does not mean that Lady Charlotte was not close to her. The social historian Amanda Vickery writes of elite families of the time: “Nursemaids were seen as a supplement to the mother, not a replacement. Children

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were routinely described as companions and mothers took seriously their role as educators and entertainers.”42 Lady Charlotte’s promise of an opera to her ten-year-old daughter suggests that she was such a mother. Given Burgoyne’s active club life, it is less likely that Burgoyne spent much time with Charlotte Elizabeth. A year later, Lady Charlotte was sending more gossip to Palmerston. She told him that the Duke and Duchess of Grafton were splitting and gave the reasons: “First that his Grace declared the child she lay in of last was not his. Then that her temper was so bad he cannot dispense with it, and her Grace makes the same objection to her temper. I believe there can be no dispute that the Duke has taken Nancy Parsons into keeping.”43 In July 1765, Lady Charlotte gave Palmerston the important news that King George, five years after coming to the throne with a strong disposition toward the Tories, had been obliged to turn to the great Whig families – of which the Stanleys were one – to form a new government. She reported detailed information as to the make-up of the new ministry and passed on information she received from her husband that he – Palmerston – was about to be offered a government post, adding, “I suppose I may guess at your answer.” In the summer of 1766, Burgoyne spent three months on the Continent. His purpose was to study the military situation of three nations: Prussia, which had been Britain’s ally in the recently ended Seven Years War; and Austria and France, which had been Britain’s enemies. He went as an individual, not as an official representative of his government, but William Pitt, who was about to become prime minister, gave him a letter of introduction to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, the Prussian field marshal whose wedding in London Lady Charlotte had attended two years earlier.44 The man who set out to examine the military systems of three of Europe’s Great Powers was an urbane officer who could converse in French, the universally accepted international language, and was not intimidated by national leaders, royal princes, noblemen, or commanders of large armies. Whatever reasons Burgoyne may have had for exiling himself from England a decade earlier, it is unlikely he would have considered himself qualified to embark on his 1766 tour had he

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not spent those earlier years in France and Italy, learning the French language, socializing with political and artistic leaders, and studying French military treatises. It is not clear whether Burgoyne made the tour on his own initiative or on the request of the government. If the latter, he went willingly. He was ambitious, but the path to the next rank – that of a general – was not an easy one for an officer who was not of noble birth and had only limited battlefield experience. The tour would add to his credentials and establish him as a thoughtful officer who had a sure grasp of military matters on the highest level of strategic policy. Although not an official envoy, he was expected to provide his government with a report upon his return.45 Burgoyne’s first stop was the Prussian capital of Berlin, where he had discussions with army officers who had fought in battles of the recent war and “stayed … long enough to see the best of the Prussian army.”46 It is easy to see how the victor of Valencia de Alcántara must have enjoyed exchanging wartime experiences and observations with his former allies. At Dresden, the capital of the German province of Saxony, which Prussia had invaded in the recent war, Burgoyne met with Prince Ferdinand. He visited army camps in the neighbourhood and the town of Pirna, where Frederick the Great of Prussia had received the surrender of Saxony’s army in 1756. From Dresden, Burgoyne wrote to Pitt (who had just been ennobled as the Earl of Chatham, and will henceforth be referred to as Chatham) with diplomatic news. A meeting between Britain’s former enemy, Emperor Joseph II of Austria, and its former ally, King Frederick the Great of Prussia, had been proposed; but the Empress Maria Theresa, Joseph’s mother and co-ruler, who detested Frederick, prevented the meeting.47 This information must have made Chatham, the British prime minister, sigh with relief: if Prussia were to ally with Austria – and with Austria’s ally, France – Britain would be left without a friend on the Continent. Burgoyne’s next stop was the Austrian Empire, a vast territory that included Bohemia (the present Czech Republic). He was eager to see the Austrian army’s manoeuvres near Kolín, where a major battle of the Seven Years War had been fought; but when he arrived there he found that the Austrian emperor had prohibited all foreign officers,

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and even his own generals who were not on duty, from attending the manoeuvres. Furthermore, the order was being rigidly enforced. At this point, Burgoyne, the gambler and audacious cavalry officer, took over. From the headquarters of the Austrian army in Bohemia, he sent a letter to a British army colonel describing what happened: “To ask leave that had been refused to men of the first rank was in vain; but by a little intrigue, a good deal of perseverance, and perhaps more assurance than I ought to boast of, I have succeeded to be present incognito at the practice of the principal manœuvres.”48 He continued his letter with details about the Austrian emperor’s armies, some of which he must have learned from his unauthorized presence at the manoeuvres. Burgoyne’s effrontery is breathtaking. Clearly, the Austrian emperor was determined to have the manoeuvres conducted in secret; if Burgoyne had been discovered there, the consequences for him personally and for Britain’s international relations might have been disastrous. The episode is an example of his aggressiveness, sometimes bordering on recklessness, which he demonstrated on several other occasions, such as his elopement,49 his conduct in the Preston election,50 and perhaps in the Saratoga campaign. After a final stop in France, Burgoyne returned to England, where he wrote a report of his tour.51 He sent the report to Chatham, who invited him to a meeting to discuss it.52 The report not only consists of some surprising observations on the military establishment of the three nations he visited but, much like an ambassador’s dispatch, it includes matters of diplomacy and international concern. Burgoyne also takes the opportunity to suggest measures to improve the British military. A summary of a few of its main points will give the reader an idea of the report’s contrarian flavour and impressive scope. His opinion of the highly respected Prussian army was on the whole negative. Its discipline was the most formidable in the world, its purpose being to “reduce the man as merely as possible to mere machinery … the first maxim [is] ‘not to reason, but to obey.’” While the lieutenants and non-commissioned officers were the best in the world, those of higher rank were less capable. Officers who have been taught not to think for themselves, Burgoyne wrote, are apt to flounder when they are promoted to a rank where they have to use judgment and give, rather than take, orders.53

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One-third of the soldiers in the Prussian army were “strangers, deserters, prisoners and enemies, of various countries, languages, and religions, [who] have neither national spirit nor attachment to their prince, nor enthusiasm, nor hopes of fortune, nor even prospect of comfortable old age to inspire them.” As a result, one-fifth of the soldiers deserted every year in peacetime, and more in times of war. “The army is more harassed with precautionary guards against their own soldiers, than against the enemy.”54 Burgoyne’s assessment of the Austrian army was more favourable. The Austrians, he wrote, had all the natural advantages the Prussians lacked. Their soldiers had national spirit; “there is sufficiency and excellence in every part of the basis,” although “the troops have been ill paid, ill appointed, and ill disciplined.” Burgoyne gives a psychological and pragmatic explanation for the apparent inconsistency: “[Y]et with all these disadvantages, such is the force of native zeal and good will, the Austrian troops in the course of the late war were sometimes victorious, always respectable.” He points out that the nation’s army includes many Catholics of Irish origin: “high-spirited, intrepid, nervous youth”; and he adds a plug for what was then considered a radical proposal: Britain, which at the time placed substantial disabilities on its sizable Roman Catholic population, should allow men of that faith to enlist in its army.55 After discussing such minor – but not necessarily unimportant – details as the uniforms and equipment of the Austrian army (“They have adopted a cap, in the place of a hat … Its use is to let down and cover the ears and neck in inclement weather”), Burgoyne turns to international politics. He warns that another European war may be in the offing. The Austrians will be ready at all times “to sacrifice blood or fortune” to recover the province of Silesia, which Prussia had annexed in a previous eighteenth-century war. While the empress might not wish to do anything at that time, Burgoyne believed it unlikely that the then-existing peace between Austria and Prussia would be permanent.56 Burgoyne took a contrarian view of the army of France, Britain’s traditional enemy, which was generally considered the most powerful in Europe. “The greatest armies France has brought into the field have generally disappointed expectations; they have mouldered away

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without action, they have been defeated in their purposes by intestine [i.e., internal] dissension and personal pique, and they have frequently lost a victory they had in their hands by mistaken, rash or unpunctual execution of orders.” On the matter of discipline, Burgoyne calls it a mistake for France to have adopted the Prussian “free use of the stick.” The French soldier is “habituated to all the prejudices of punctilious honour [who regards] a blow as an irreparable disgrace.” Burgoyne praises the well-trained French cavalry as an appropriate strategic tool for that nation. France, with its long Atlantic and English Channel coastline stretching from the Spanish border to Belgium, is exposed to raids by a superior naval power (i.e., Britain), which may cause devastation before the infantry can arrive to check it. Cavalry has the mobility to counter the raids until the infantry can arrive.57 Burgoyne ends his report with a plea to the British ministry to bolster the army’s cavalry, his own branch of the service. He suggests that regulations be adopted to “keep the price of horses within the compass of regimental funds, to enable the cavalry of Great Britain not only to retain its present superiority, but to rise far beyond any strength it has yet shown.”58 Burgoyne’s report reveals the wide range of his interests, from the importance to a soldier of such details as his headgear to the strategic uses of cavalry. He saw that an army’s effectiveness could not be measured solely in physical terms; psychology, such as the presence or absence of patriotic zeal in the troops, must also be taken into consideration; and discipline that is appropriate in the army of one country may not be in the army of another. It was an easy jump for him to include in his report matters of great international concern, including the possibility of a new war in central Europe. And he used the opportunity presented by his report on foreign military systems to propose measures to improve his own country’s army. There can be little doubt that Burgoyne’s tour improved his chances of advancement; he could now plausibly claim to be an officer of intellect as well as one of action. Burgoyne was constantly on the lookout for a sinecure, which, along with his military compensation and his wife’s fortune, would enable him to live an active life in the clubs and places of entertainment

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where the political, social, and artistic leaders of the nation gathered.59 Eighteenth-century England was a land of sinecures – well-paid government positions whose holders were required to do little or nothing for their pay. If there were duties to perform, he could hire an assistant to perform them for much less pay. A parliamentary investigation later in the century found that at least 270 such positions existed.60 Burgoyne did not hesitate to put his name forward when he heard of an actual or prospective vacancy. In 1764, he proposed himself for the job of “secretary” to the Earl of Northumberland, who had recently been appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland. Ireland was a colony of Britain, and the lord lieutenant, appointed by the king, was its ruler. “I have received repeated intimations from various quarters,” Burgoyne wrote, “that I stood foremost in his Lordship’s inclinations to succeed [the previous secretary].”61 Aside from benefiting him financially, the sinecure would have given him social and political prestige.62 As it turned out, Northumberland was replaced the following year, and it does not appear that Burgoyne got the post. Eventually Burgoyne, while still an army colonel, did get a sinecure – this one probably more lucrative than being secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland. Until the debacle at Saratoga in 1777, Burgoyne was in great favour with King George III, who had been so delighted with the smartness and precision of Burgoyne’s brigade when he and Queen Charlotte reviewed it on Wimbledon Common that he renamed it “The Queen’s Light Dragoons.”63 In 1769, the king appointed Colonel Burgoyne commander of the garrison of the Scottish castle of Fort William, a post that had once been of military importance but had become a sinecure. The post, which he enjoyed for ten years, had seldom been given to an officer under the rank of general.64 It was the crowning achievement of the decade for a man who knew how to work the system. Burgoyne’s intellectual powers, social graces, physical bravery, and capacity for self-promotion, combined with the support he received from the Stanley family, had brought him very far. The future looked promising.

Chapter 7

The Preston Election John Burgoyne was a member of Parliament for the last thirty-one years of his life, which included the time he was an army officer on active duty. There was nothing unusual about this in eighteenthcentury England: at any given time, an average of seventy army and navy officers sat in the House of Commons.1 Parliament offered an officer prestige, an opportunity to participate in affairs of state, and a position from which he might be able to further his military career.2 In 1760, Sir William Peere Williams, a friend and officer in Burgoyne’s regiment, had offered him a seat in Parliament to represent the borough of Midhurst in southern England. In the nation’s undemocratic election system, Midhurst was a “burgage,” a privately owned election district where the right to vote was confined to a limited number of tenants who were beholden to the burgage’s owner.3 Burgages were bought and sold; Midhurst was just one of several Sir William owned. English election law permitted burgages until the passage of the 1832 Reform Act. In England, a country of roughly six million people, a mere 11,000 voters, all male, could elect the 257 members that constituted a majority of the House of Commons.4 Ancient precincts with tiny populations were represented by several members of Parliament, while growing industrial cities had no representation at all. The system was fearfully complex. According to a parliamentary report, the right to vote varied from borough to borough: in some places it was based on residence, in others on birth, servitude, marriage, and so on. The report continued: “The remaining rights of voting are of a still more complicated

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description. Burgageholds, leaseholds, and freeholds … inhabitants, householders, inhabitants at large, potwallopers,5 and commonalty, each in different Boroughs prevail, and create endless misunderstandings and litigation.”6 Burgoyne was duly elected to Midhurst without opposition.7 By 1768, when the next general election was held, Sir William was dead, and Burgoyne had to look elsewhere for political and financial support if he wished to remain in Parliament.8 The patronage he needed was provided by his father-in-law, the Earl of Derby, and the earl’s son, his friend and brother-in-law, Lord Strange. The Stanleys’ seat of power was Lancashire in northwestern England, where the town of Preston was located. Lord Strange had a home in a large mansion in Preston, where he wielded considerable political power. He held the office of chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, an important and lucrative government post and was himself a member of Parliament, representing the county of Lancashire but not the town of Preston.9 Preston was a prosperous rural town in the years before the Industrial Revolution transformed it into a busy textile manufacturing centre. Because Preston was the seat of the Lancaster courts, its population included many lawyers and notaries, but there were also physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, teachers, retailers, and watch- and clock-makers. Horse-racing and cockfighting were among the recreational activities – as well as opportunities for gambling – available in the town.10 In short, Preston was a thriving market town of preindustrial England. Preston was one of the few precincts in England where elections were contested. This was a source of frustration for the powerful Stanley family: they controlled the rest of Lancashire, but not Preston. The mayor and town council, known as the Corporation, had sent Preston’s two representatives to Parliament for nearly thirty years. In England’s two-party political system, the Corporation was Tory, while the Stanleys were Whigs. Hoping to unseat the Tories, Lord Strange tapped Burgoyne to be one of the two Whig candidates in the 1768 general

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election.11 To satisfy his own ambition and to assist his wife’s family, Burgoyne was eager to win the Preston seat. The other Whig candidate was Sir Henry Hoghton, a nephew of an earlier member of Parliament from Preston.12 The Corporation’s candidates were the two incumbent mps, Sir Peter Leicester and Sir Frank Standish. The key question in the Preston election of 1768 was who had the right to vote. More than a century earlier, in 1661, the House of Commons had ruled that this right belonged to “all the inhabitants” of Preston. Nevertheless, the Corporation had limited the franchise to “freemen,” a term meaning residents who possessed the freedom of the town, a privilege the Corporation had the power to grant or withhold.13 Non-freemen, comprising two-fifths of the residents of the town, were denied the vote. In the cautious opinion of one scholar, “a case can be made that … [the] Preston corporation was using the powers vested in itself … to bolster the electoral support of its preferred candidates.”14 Preston had a large population of Roman Catholics, who were not allowed to vote unless they took the oath of allegiance to the king and the Anglican Church, something most of them were unwilling to do.15 Campaigning for votes began in June 1767, nine months before the voting was to begin, an indication of the importance that both sides attached to the election.16 Burgoyne and the Whigs called on voters to liberate themselves from the “tyranny” of the Corporation; while the Corporation and the Tories, for their part, attacked Lord Strange as a tyrant who was trying to subjugate the independent borough of Preston to the interests of Lord Derby and the Stanley family.17 The Preston election was one of the most violent in English history. Burgoyne described the warlike scene he encountered when he arrived near the town in February 1768: [T]he place was … totally dark; the ground calculated and judiciously chosen for ambuscade and mischief; the assailants few in number, silent and desperate; the weapons, some of which were stone and bricks … and every circumstance conspired to prove premeditation … [T]he state of the town surpassed the description I received of it … the whole … seemed to manifest the total subversion of civil government.18

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Burgoyne recalled that he asked for a meeting “to consider and to establish effectual measures to restore the public peace.” While the meeting was going on, the known band of rioters, armed with bludgeons, delivered to them from the town hall, which was to become an arsenal for that purpose, stript to the waist, and every way prepared for mischief, paraded before the windows, instantly dispersed the peaceable defenceless few who had followed my steps, and walked the town, carrying triumph and terror where ever they appeared.19 Even allowing that Burgoyne was hardly an unbiased witness, there is no reason to doubt that violence and the threat of violence pervaded the town. Both parties brought thugs from the neighbourhood into the town to intimidate voters. A letter from Preston dated 21 February was published in Gentleman’s Magazine: The contest here is attended with imminent danger. I have just escaped, with many friends. The country is now up in arms. As the town is now abandoned by our men, the cry is, Leave not a freeman alive! God knows where this will end. I think to-night or to-morrow will be fatal to many. This is shocking work in a civilized country. A month later, the magazine published an even more brutal description of the situation: [V]iolences committed on account of the ensuing election at … Preston exceed belief: murdering, maiming, pulling down the houses, destroying places of public worship, and breaking the furniture and burning the effects of each other, are among the acts of the inflamed mob. The town was … at the mercy of hired bludgeonmen … Respectable inhabitants who interested themselves for either side were murderously assaulted.20

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The town was full of armed bands, and citizens were forced to barricade themselves in their homes. Burgoyne threatened to hire one hundred ruffians, purportedly to protect himself but more likely to prevent supporters of the Corporation’s two candidates from coming to the polls. He later admitted going to the polls with a loaded pistol in each hand and a guard of the dragoons from his regiment. The actual voting began in the town hall at 10:40 a.m. on 21 March. Guards were stationed at the entrance to protect voters from being intimidated or molested.21 Once there, prospective voters were taken to the mayor’s courtroom, where they were questioned by a kind of tribunal consisting of the mayor and his bailiff, and several lawyers representing both the Whig and Tory factions. Lord Strange, who was one of the tellers, and Burgoyne also were present. The other three candidates chose not to attend.22 The polling lasted for eleven days, from 21 March to 2 April. At first the voting went smoothly, but it soon became clear that the Corporation would reject as unqualified virtually any non-freeman resident who was likely to vote for Burgoyne and Houghton. On the eighth day of polling, the Corporation’s legal advisers rejected Preston’s vicar, Randle Andrews, presumably because he was expected to vote for Burgoyne and Hoghton, although he had been a resident of the town for many years.23 The Corporation also denied the franchise to another Preston inhabitant, the inventor Richard Arkwright. His spinning jenny was one of the inventions that would soon transform the textile industry and turn Preston and many other towns in northern England into important industrial centres.24 The Corporation’s denial of the vote to many Preston residents led to a “long and heated debate,” ending with the mayor’s ruling that only “freemen” were entitled to vote.25 Strange and Burgoyne’s lawyers argued, to no avail, that the 1661 Resolution of the House of Commons gave the vote to all inhabitants of Preston.26 Although both sides had agreed before the polling took place that the franchise was limited to “freemen,” Burgoyne and Hoghton, backed by Lord Strange, soon realized that they could not win the election unless they insisted on a literal interpretation of the 1661 resolution. It

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is unlikely they took this position out of any love of democracy: it was the only way they had a chance of defeating the Corporation, which could use its power to create new freemen to increase the size of the constituency to suit its own purposes.27 When the voting ended on 2 April the Corporation’s candidates, Leicester and Standish, had 289 and 276 votes respectively; while Burgoyne and Hoghton had 259 and 239.28 The losers challenged the result with a petition to the House of Commons arguing that a literal interpretation should be given to the term “all inhabitants” in the 1661 resolution, which would give Burgoyne 589 votes and Hoghton 558.29 On 2 November 1768, the Commons voted in favour of the petitioners, and Burgoyne returned to his seat as a member of Parliament. After the election, a criminal action was brought against Burgoyne, and several others, including soldiers in his regiment, for sanctioning brutal violence. Although Burgoyne claimed he was acting in selfdefence, a jury convicted him, and the court fined him £1,000, equivalent to about US $225,000 in 2021 currency. The fine was immediately paid into court, most likely by Lord Strange. Burgoyne was spared imprisonment, but the others were not so fortunate. Three were fined £100 each and sentenced to three months in prison; while four others, being too poor to be able to pay any fines, received prison sentences of six months.30 The sentencing accurately reflected how justice worked in eighteenth-century England. Despite the criminal conviction, the Preston election was a triumph for Burgoyne, made possible by the political and financial support of the Stanleys. He represented Preston in the House of Commons until his death in 1792. The election also had historic importance. Until that time, Westminster, in the centre of London, was the only election district in England that granted universal suffrage, except that women and Catholics were still excluded from the franchise. It was an early signpost in Britain’s journey to democracy.

Chapter 8

Politics and India During much of the time that Burgoyne was a member of the House of Commons, he was an army officer on active service. The dual role had two rather obvious drawbacks. First, it created a potential conflict of interest between the officer’s duty to obey the king, who was commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and his duty to his constituents and his conscience. Second, it defied the democratic principle of military subordination to the civil government. Burgoyne was fully aware of the conflict he faced from being both soldier and legislator. He explained to Lord North, the prime minister, that as a rule he would vote with the government, but “in great national points, where the vote in the House of Commons “might lead to important consequences … I would hold myself at liberty to maintain my own opinion.”1 His occasional decision to vote his own conscience, rather than “just as their leaders tell ’em to”2 did not always please King George III, who expected absolute loyalty and obedience from his army officers. Two instances in which the conflict arose illustrate the pressure to conform to the government’s wishes, as well as how he dealt with it. In 1764 Britain and France had separately established small garrisons of soldiers on the wind-swept, uninhabited Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Two years later the French ceded their settlement to Spain, but in 1769 the British asserted a claim to sole possession of the islands. Spain’s response was to invade the islands with an overwhelming force, compelling the British garrison to surrender. The Spanish commander did his best to humiliate the British soldiers: he removed

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the rudder of their only ship, so that they were unable to leave the island and were forced to remain in captivity for some time. When news of the invasion reached England, there were many who called for war against Spain, but Lord North was determined to defuse the crisis. In his protest to Spain he was careful to characterize the offence as one by the governor of the Spanish colony of Buenos Aires, not by the Spanish government itself. Spain, equally anxious to avoid a war, agreed to restore the British garrison on the islands. The question of who owned the Falklands was put off to the future.3 A majority of the House of Commons ratified the agreement, but Burgoyne voted against it. Military men, he said, do not always favour war: But there are motives for which a soldier may wish for war; these are a sense of satisfaction due for an injury inflicted; a desire to make a return to our country for the honours and rewards we receive at her hands: a zeal to be the forward instrument to battle for the honour of the Crown, and the rights of the people of Great Britain.4 The king, angered at any dissent by an army officer, wrote to North that “seeing Colonel Burgoyne’s name on the side of the minority appears so extraordinary that I almost imagine it was a mistake.”5 There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Burgoyne’s belligerence, but one can respect his patriotic fervour and still believe it unwise and even irresponsible for him to reject the prudent line taken by the prime minister. The king, on his part, clearly expected Burgoyne, as a military officer, to follow the government’s line. The Falklands episode illustrates the inherent inconsistency of permitting military men, who were bound to obey the civilian ministers of the government, to act as legislators representing their constituents. And since these officers depended on the king’s favour to advance their careers, it is hardly surprising that they usually voted the way the king wanted them to. Even on an issue where Burgoyne did support the king, there was tension between George III’s personal interests and legislative independ-

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ence. In 1772 the king was unhappy about the marriages contracted by two of his brothers: the Duke of Gloucester had married a woman who had been born out of wedlock; while the Duke of Cumberland had wed a commoner. Believing that these unions threatened the dignity of the royal family, the king demanded that Parliament adopt a measure, the Royal Marriages Bill, that would give him and future monarchs a veto over the marriages of their royal relatives. The bill prohibited any member of the royal family from contracting a valid marriage without first receiving the monarch’s consent.6 The Royal Marriages Bill passed the House of Commons over the protests of members of the Opposition, who attacked the ruling ministry as being too subservient to the Crown.7 In this instance, Burgoyne, who had great respect for custom and tradition, voted in favour of the measure. When North told the king of Burgoyne’s vote, the monarch replied that “had he failed to do so, I should have felt myself obliged to name a new Governor of Fort William.”8 He was referring to the valuable sinecure he had bestowed on Burgoyne three years earlier in recognition of his military success in Portugal. Here the king made clear he was willing to use his patronage power to influence the decisions of military officers and other government officials who were members of Parliament, and to punish those who defied his wishes. The one issue in which Burgoyne played a leading role in Parliament concerned India and the East India Company. “The Company,” as it was usually called, was created in 1600 and given a monopoly by Parliament to trade in the East. By the early eighteenth century, it had taken on many of the attributes of an independent state: it waged war with its own private army, collected taxes, minted coins, and administered justice in the territories it controlled in India.9 The government in London exercised very little control over the Company, even though the Company’s fortunes affected British life and culture in many ways. Its bonds were sold to British investors and traded on the stock market; any substantial fall in their price was felt throughout the country.10 Company employees amassed great wealth, much of it from bribes received from the nawabs (the Indian rulers). Demands by Company employees for “gifts” or other benefits became

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part of every transaction between the Company and the nawabs. According to the historian Nicholas Dirks, “Company employees vied with each other for the privilege of lending money to the nawab at usurious rates of interest.”11 Returning to England, the Company employees, who got the name of nabobs,12 used their riches to live in great luxury, marry into the nobility, and buy seats in Parliament.13 In the early 1770s, abuses by the Company and its employees became a matter of concern in England. A famine in Bengal, the most important Indian province, had resulted in the death of one-third of the province’s population. The famine was caused, at least in part, by manipulation of the price of rice by the Company’s officials.14 Horror over the human disaster, combined with misery over financial losses, led to a crash in the price of the Company’s bonds and a Europe-wide credit failure.15 Although both the ruling ministry and the Opposition were reluctant to get involved in the Company’s affairs, there was mounting pressure for reform. In early 1772 the government announced that it would propose legislation “designed to strengthen the control of the Company over its servants”;16 and two months later Laurence Sulivan, who was both the deputy chairman of the Company and a member of Parliament, announced that he would introduce a bill for that purpose. It was at this point that Burgoyne became involved in Indian affairs. On 13 April he stood up in the House of Commons and moved that, before the members were asked to vote on the bill, a “Select Committee” be set up to investigate “the most atrocious abuses that ever stained the name of civil government.”17 The House quickly and enthusiastically voted in favour of Burgoyne’s motion; the Select Committee was formed, with thirty-one members and Burgoyne as chairman. Sulivan’s bill was shelved.18 It is not clear what motivated Burgoyne to focus his attention on the activities of the East India Company. Like many in the House of Commons and among the public at large, he was genuinely dismayed by the Company’s abuses.19 Horace Walpole wrote: “The oppressions of India and even of the English settled there under the rapine and cruelties of the servants of the Company had now reached England and created general clamour there.”20 The abuses brought

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out Burgoyne’s sense of justice and his reformers’ instincts. It is also possible that, like his friend and political ally Edmund Burke, Burgoyne had invested in the Company’s bonds and was out to avenge his losses.21 The real target of the investigation was the man who had dominated Indian affairs for two decades: Robert Clive, the former de facto ruler of Bengal. Clive had two separate – but not necessarily conflicting – reputations. To many in England, and even to schoolchildren in the twentieth century, he was a great man, the conqueror of India and a founder of the British Empire.22 At the Battle of Plassey in 1757 he had led British-Indian troops of the East India Company that defeated a French-Indian army during the Seven Years War.23 As a result, the Company gained control of Bengal and eventually all of India, except for a few French and Portuguese enclaves. In 1762, Clive was raised to the British peerage as Baron Clive of Plassey. Along with the reverence – almost sanctification – with which Clive was regarded in England came a less savoury reputation. During his years in India he accumulated wealth of over £200,000; the right to draw from £27,000 a year for life from the Company’s Bengal revenues; and a lucrative land grant – assets equivalent to many millions of today’s dollars.24 Clive acquired this wealth through bribery or extortion from the Mughal rulers of India. He presided over a system of corruption that enriched Company employees to a degree that was mind-boggling to the English. His position in India was laced with conflicts of interest: he was the top representative of the Company in that country, and at the same time he had managed also to become a senior official of the Mughal Empire, the nominal rulers of Bengal.25 The king and his ministers were ambivalent about Clive. They respected his administrative ability and military prowess, and they were aware of his enormous popularity. But they knew that the impact of Indian affairs on British economic and political life required greater government control over the Company. The government applied the carrot and the stick. The king honoured Clive in 1772 by appointing him Lord Lieutenant of his native county of Shropshire, a post that was largely honorific but carried with it considerable prestige and patronage.26 And on 3 May 1773, Lord North introduced into the House of Commons a Regulating Bill, which would place limited government

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controls over the administration of Bengal and the Company’s governing structure.27 A week later, Burgoyne presented the Select Committee’s report to the House. Asserting that the report “revealed crimes that shocked human nature,”28 he asked the House to approve three resolutions that directly addressed the plundering of Bengal by the Company and its employees. Burgoyne’s resolutions were: first, “that all territorial acquisitions made by subjects belonged to the Crown”; second, “that it was illegal for private persons to appropriate the revenues of such possessions”; and third, “that there had been appropriation of such revenues.”29 Many members of the House, seeing the second and third resolutions as a direct attack on Clive and his associates, sympathized with him. Lord North and other members of the administration were embarrassed by Burgoyne’s resolutions, which went far beyond the measures proposed in the Regulating Bill. After a long and turbulent debate in which more and more members rallied to Clive’s side, the House decisively rejected the three resolutions and followed up by passing one of its own: “That Robert, Lord Clive did, at the same time, render great and meritorious services to his country.”30 On 3 July, the Regulating Bill was signed into law. Despite its limits, it was a significant step. According to historian Lucy Sutherland, it “gave the government for the first time a share in the responsibility for the administration of India and considerable powers of control over the Company.”31 Clive was exonerated and Burgoyne humiliated. Public opinion was with Clive. A London newspaper revelled in Burgoyne’s defeat: Gen. Burgoyne, though not a very bright Genius, has too much Experience to be imposed upon. Indeed his Way of Life must have furnished him with a competent knowledge of all the snares into which the unwary are often drawn by designing men. General Burgoyne was not only the instrument, but the conductor, and if we can believe himself, the contriver, of the whole persecution. He gloried in it, from the moment he took the road, to the moment in which all his public schemes of robbery expired under the voice of justice in the House of Commons. [Clive increased the revenue of his country by more than

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£4 million a year by serving his country], whilst the unfortunate Gen. Burgoyne, by prancing about the plains of Portugal, a few months, had obtained nothing for this country.32 Some of Clive’s biographers have attacked Burgoyne personally for his venture into Indian affairs. One of them calls him a “young dandified soldier” (he was fifty in 1773), repeats as fact the rumour that Burgoyne was born out of wedlock, and asserts without evidence that Burgoyne envied “Clive’s early success and wealth.”33 Another, a shade less vitriolic, simply describes Burgoyne as a “flamboyant political adventurer.”34 How Burgoyne reacted to the defeat of his attempt to fight the corrupt practices and abuses of the East India Company is unknown. Given the resilience he showed at other crises in his life, notably the surrender of his army at Saratoga four years later, he may have taken this setback philosophically, thinking he had acted for a worthy cause, and recognizing ruefully that attacking a national hero is seldom successful. Clive’s biographers assert that Clive was offered the command of British forces in North America, and that, when he declined, Burgoyne was sent instead.35 In a swipe at Burgoyne, one of them writes that Clive “would never have stooped to surrender.”36 It’s a pretty story, full of irony, but it makes no sense. Even if it is true that Clive was offered the American command, it has little to do with Burgoyne. Clive died in November 1774, five months before the American Revolution began. Burgoyne made three trips to America, the first in 1775; but it was not until 1777, nearly three years after Clive’s death, that he was given command of an army there. Clive retired a rich man, but he resented the passage of the Regulating Act as a personal rebuke that disparaged his service to his country.37 His health in decline, he committed suicide in his London home. Burgoyne’s venture into Indian affairs shows that he was telling the truth when he told Lord North that, on important matters, he would depart from the party line and follow his own judgment. A decade later, he would again be active in Parliament regarding the activities of the East India Company. But now family matters drew his attention.

Chapter 9

The Maid of the Oaks During the 1760s, Burgoyne’s connection with the Stanley family became closer. Even with his intelligence, military achievement, engaging personality, and talent for self-promotion, Burgoyne still could hardly have won a contested seat in the House of Commons or been promoted to the army rank of colonel without their financial and political support. By 1771, the Earl of Derby was eighty-two; and Lord Strange, his son and heir, had assumed the family’s leadership in all but name. He was well respected in Parliament as well in his home county for his ability as a public speaker and political organizer. It therefore came as a stunning blow to the family when, at the age of fifty-five, he suffered a fatal stroke while on a visit to the resort of Bath.1 Strange’s death made his eighteen-year-old son, Edward SmithStanley, a student at Trinity College Cambridge, the heir to the earldom. In view of the earl’s age, it seemed likely that Edward (who will now be referred to by the title of Lord Stanley, which he was given when his father died) would soon inherit the earldom and the great wealth, privileges, and duties that went with it. Strange’s death did not loosen Burgoyne’s ties to the Stanley family. Gladly accepted as a trusted uncle, he wholeheartedly took on the role of the young man’s mentor. With no son of his own, Burgoyne took genuine pleasure in guiding and helping his nephew. It was also a way to repay the Stanley family for making his military and political career possible.

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A year after Lord Strange’s death, Burgoyne suggested to Lord Stanley that he request the earl’s permission to take a two-month tour of the Continent with Burgoyne during Stanley’s two-month summer vacation from Cambridge. When the earl received the idea coldly, Burgoyne asked Lady Mary Stanley, Lady Charlotte’s sister, to intercede with her father. Perhaps thinking of his own five-year sojourn in France and Italy, Burgoyne wrote to his sister-in-law that “knowledge of the world can only be attained by an enlarged acquaintance with mankind … [and its] different climates, policies, laws, customs & manners.”2 This was knowledge, he mentioned, that one doesn’t get by reading books. Burgoyne suggested he would open Lord Stanley’s mind “to objects of worthy curiosity” and use this short trip to teach him “to make the proper use of travel whenever he shall undertake it upon a more enlarged plan.” Burgoyne added a second reason for the tour: thinking perhaps of his own youth, he pointed out that it would remove Edward from the dissipation that “almost every young man pursues in London.”3 Finally, he suggested that Edward’s younger brother, Thomas, be included in the tour, adding that he hoped the earl would provide financial assistance.4 We do not know whether the earl allowed his two grandsons to take the trip, but the easy familiarity expressed in Burgoyne’s letter is additional evidence of his closeness to the Stanley family. In these years of peace, Burgoyne devoted much of his time and thought to guiding and honouring Lord Stanley. In December 1773 he worked with the architect Robert Adam, who had first become his friend in Aix-en-Provence nineteen years earlier, on a lavish ball and supper to celebrate Lord Stanley’s coming of age. But Burgoyne was planning a much bigger affair. The young lord had become engaged to Lady Elizabeth “Betty” Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton,5 and Burgoyne was planning a prenuptial celebration. He had in mind something that had never before been done in England: an elaborate French-style garden party, known as a fête champêtre.6 He would write a masque for it, a two-act, light-hearted play that included singing and dancing. It would be Burgoyne’s first venture into playwriting. In the past he had tried his hand at light verse; but now he wanted to

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write something much more ambitious, a short play that would be the centrepiece of a grand extravaganza. The fête champêtre was held at The Oaks, a hunting lodge fifteen miles south of London that Burgoyne had acquired some time earlier and sold to Lord Stanley.7 The cost of the affair, which would be borne by the Stanleys, would be unconstrained. The diarist Horace Walpole estimated that the fete would cost £5,000, the equivalent of over a million dollars today.8 Burgoyne enlisted Robert Adam to design a temporary building to include an octagonal “vestibule,” a ballroom 120 feet long, and a supper room that would accommodate 300 guests.9 Burgoyne then asked David Garrick, manager of Drury Lane, London’s foremost theatre, to direct a troupe of amateur performers,10 for which Philip James de Loutherbourg, Garrick’s innovative set designer, would create the scenery and lighting,11 and Signor Lepy, ballet master of the Opera House, would supervise the dancers.12 The upcoming party was the talk of London for months. It was even covered – not in a friendly way – by newspapers in the soon-to-be openly rebellious American colonies.13 Guests began arriving at The Oaks at about six-thirty on 9 June 1774 and continued pouring in till past nine o’clock. They represented London’s elite, including Prime Minister Lord North, other members of the cabinet, and many members of the nobility.14 The ladies were dressed in “pastoral simplicity” appropriate for a garden party.15 At eight o’clock, Burgoyne, acting as master of ceremonies, led the guests through the house to what a reporter called “the voluptuous scene on the back lawn.”16 As they approached, they could hear the music of French horns hidden behind dense shrubbery. What they saw had a distinctly French flavour: a pastoral fantasy bearing the stamp of the years Burgoyne lived in France. Shepherdesses, “neatly attired,” were on swings, in the iconic style of the artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard (whom Burgoyne may have met in France).17 “Swains” (i.e., rustic youths or lovers) played at ninepins (a form of bowling) or with bows and arrows pretended to shoot at a fake bird perched on a maypole. A band, hidden behind a large planting of orange trees (it was said that Lord Stanley had bought up every orange tree in London for the fête

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champêtre)18 played while nymphs and wood fawns sang and danced.19 The entire scene, conceived and executed by Burgoyne, had an undeniably erotic aura.20 Lord Stanley and Lady Betty, as Lord and Queen of the Oaks, led the company into Robert Adams’s octagonal hall, where Burgoyne’s masque, The Maid of the Oaks, may have been performed.21 The guests then had a chance to dance minuets, quadrilles, and country dances. At eleven thirty, an explosion of rockets “put the whole lively group into a consternation … occasioned by a signal given for the curtains … to fly up and exhibit to the company a large supper room, with the tables spread with the most costly dainties, all hot and tempting.”22 It is interesting to speculate why Burgoyne used an explosion to announce supper. The historian Daniel O’Quinn offers the explanation that the explosion was “an apt allegory for imperial expansion: the general commands the explosion, territory is gained, and luxuries become suddenly available.” He follows up by pointing out that Burgoyne had brought a troop of his soldiers to the fete to prevent disorder, and suggesting that this presented “an ever-present but shadowy threat of physical force … It is confidence in physical force that undergirds the celebration’s certitude regarding Britain’s ability to retain the American colonies.”23 We will never know whether military and imperial considerations were in Burgoyne’s mind when he planned the fete, but the idea is consistent with his view that the American colonists should be brought to heel.24 At the very time of the fete, the crisis caused by the stubborn hostility of the American colonists was in full bloom. News of the Boston Tea Party reached England in January 1774; Burgoyne was one of those who, as a legislator, worked with Prime Minister Lord North to pass the punitive Coercive Acts. They were enacted into law during the spring of 1774, the last of them on 16 June, one week after the fete.25 According to the historian Gordon Wood, “These Coercive Acts were the last straw. They convinced Americans once and for all that Parliament had no more right to make laws for them than to tax them.”26 The threat the rebellious colonies posed to the British Empire must have been in the minds of many of the guests at the fete. After more dancing, many of the guests did not start for home until after three in the morning. The success of the party had depended on

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the weather, a fact that must have caused Burgoyne some anxiety. A joke went around that the weather “turned out so remarkably fine that it was observed that it seemed as if General Burgoyne had ordered it and Lord Stanley paid for it.”27 The marriage took place two weeks later; as we will see in a later chapter, it was to give rise to much scandal and gossip.28 After reading The Maid of the Oaks and seeing it performed at the fête champêtre, David Garrick decided that Burgoyne had talent as a playwright. This was a great compliment to an army officer and politician who had never before written anything for publication or performance. As manager of Drury Lane, Garrick was a severe critic who gave a careful reading to the many plays submitted to him by would-be dramatists. Having an astute sense of what his public wanted, he rejected most offerings, and he did not believe in the soothing rejection letter. “Unfit for the stage” and “radically defective” were typical comments. It made no difference if a person of importance submitted a play on behalf of a writer friend: the philosopher-statesman Edmund Burke and the former prime minister Lord Bute were among the recipients of Garrick’s brutally candid rejections.29 Garrick encouraged Burgoyne to turn his short masque into a fiveact play suitable for the Drury Lane stage. Burgoyne readily complied. He was already a devotee of the stage. He and his friend the artist Joshua Reynolds were habitués of the Drury Lane “green room,” the backstage area where the actors relaxed when not onstage and where congenial visitors were welcome.30 After submitting an expanded version of The Maid of the Oaks to Garrick, Burgoyne wrote to him about the forthcoming production. Burgoyne was beginning to have ambitions as a playwright, and it served his interest as well as his inclination to make a friend of Garrick, the man who dominated the London stage. And it may have pleased Burgoyne to be seen as an openhanded and disinterested gentleman, above such mundane considerations as money. Burgoyne’s letter to Garrick clearly came from the pen of no ordinary general or, for that matter, no ordinary playwright. He began light-heartedly, describing their situation as “something like that of

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two lovers who flutter at the thoughts of an interview where a proposal is to be made. They feel awkward, & hesitate, & procrastinate & always resolve to explain the next time they are alone.” Getting down to business, Burgoyne made clear that he had no interest in turning a profit from the play: [M]y poor efforts as a writer are greatly rewarded … if they have laid the foundation of a solid friendship between us … I will consent that [any profits] be given to the fund [that Garrick had established] for supporting decayed actors, or any other purpose you may judge more expedient for the encouragement of Theatrical merit … I leave it to your Discretion & friendship now to act in regard to the publick … I rather wish no mention was made of author’s benefits … Should you think at any period of the run that a declaration of an appropriation to the actor’s fund will help the popularity of the piece it may be made.31 The Maid of the Oaks opened at Drury Lane on 5 November 1774.32 Its plot was thin, but the play, enhanced by dances and songs, with Burgoyne’s lyrics, was a crowd-pleaser.33 The story line goes like this: Sir Harry Groveby is about to marry the beautiful Maria, the Maid of the Oaks and the ward of an older man named Oldsworth; Sir Harry’s uncle, Old Groveby, objects to the marriage because Maria is “without birth, or fortune, or without anybody knowing anything about her.” Old Groveby meets Maria for the first time but, unaware that she is Sir Harry’s intended bride, finds he is falling in love with her. It turns out that Oldsworth is Maria’s father, who for complex reasons had kept it a secret. Sir Harry and Maria marry, assured by Old Groveby that he will leave his fortune to them. There is a subplot involving Charles Dupely, Sir Harry’s friend, and Lady Bab Lardoon, whom Oldsworth describes as “the princess of dissipation.” Lady Bab is a lively product of Burgoyne’s imagination. She is a creature of London: after three days away from the city, she is “as uneasy as a mole in sunshine.” She is familiar with White’s and Almack’s (later renamed Brooks’s), although these gambling clubs did

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not admit women.34 Still, it is entirely believable that Lady Bab was a gambler: eighteenth-century elite women gambled in their own or their friends’ homes; for example, the Duchess of Devonshire, a compulsive gambler, turned her drawing room into a professional-looking gaming house.35 Even more interesting, Burgoyne portrays Lady Bab as a proponent of women’s rights, without in any way mocking or demeaning her. This is what she says: Our men and women are put more upon a footing together in London, than they ever were before in any age or country … Liberty is as well understood by our women as by our men; we have our Bill of Rights and our Constitution too, as well as they – we drop in at all hours, play at all parties, pay our own reckonings, and in every circumstance (petticoats excepted) are true lively jolly fellows. Although married women had few rights in eighteenth-century England, Lady Bab’s speech was by no means pure fantasy. The social historian Elaine Challus points out that “elite women [played] an increasingly important social role, particularly in the development of the new, mixed-sex, conversation-based polite society.”36 It was a social milieu that Burgoyne knew intimately. Throughout the play, Lady Bab delivers haughty witticisms, anticipating similar characters such as Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and “Granny,” played by Maggie Smith in the tv series Downton Abbey. Here are a few examples of Lady Bab’s bons mots: “No great measures can be effected without a contempt of popular clamour”; “Civility may be very proper in a mercer [i.e., textile merchant] when one is chusing [sic] a silk, but familiarity is the life of good company”; “The matrimonial comforts … are absolutely reduced to two; to plague a man, and to bury him; the glory is to plague him first, and bury him afterwards.” The part of Lady Bab was played by the celebrated Drury Lane actress Frances Abington, who was so temperamental in her behaviour that Garrick said he would have gotten rid of her if she had not been indispensable to him. It was said that “she played the lady of fashion,

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both on and off the stage.”37 A playgoer wrote: “I cannot say too much of Mrs. Abington’s Performance in this Piece.”38 In fact, Garrick told Abington that Burgoyne had written the part of Lady Bab especially for her.39 Whether or not he was telling the truth – he may have said this to persuade her to take the part – it is an additional sign that Burgoyne was well known in London theatrical circles even before he wrote his first play. While The Maid of the Oaks is by no means a great play, it deserves more attention than historians of the theatre or biographers of Burgoyne have given it. Aside from Lady Bab’s bons mots, it has other interesting features. A troupe of comic workmen (reminiscent of those in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) enter the stage periodically to exchange puns and wisecracks and to sing songs. And it would be a pity not to mention that one of the painters takes the name of Philip de Loutherbourg, Garrick’s celebrated lighting and set designer, in vain: “I would have put out Mr. Lanternbug’s stars with one dash of my pencil, by making them five times as bright.” Burgoyne was not above inserting into the play numerous thinly veiled references to his own life – not all of which were flattering to him – which must have raised a chuckle by knowledgeable audience members. There is the already-mentioned reference to the gambling clubs that Burgoyne frequented; Lady Bab, like Burgoyne’s wife, is the daughter of an earl; Sir Harry says that he expects Old Groveby’s “resentment [to Sir Harry’s marriage] will end with a dramatic forgiveness,” a probable allusion to Burgoyne’s father-in-law’s forgiveness of Burgoyne’s own elopement; Old Groveby says “I will have no Nabobs nor Nabobesses in my family,” reminding the audience of Burgoyne’s efforts as a member of Parliament to fight the corruption of the East India Company;40 Dupely, Sir Harry’s friend, touches on the bitterly contested Preston election when he says: “A province is better disposed of in a jewel at the breast of Cleopatra, than when it is melted down in the fat guts of mayors and burgesses of country corporations”; and Lady Bab takes aim at the much-travelled author who created her when she says: “It is a vulgar idea to think foreign accomplishments fit a man for the polite world.” There are also references to the fête

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champêtre, which, after less than five months, many in the audience would have known about, even if they had not been invited. In short, The Maid of the Oaks is a merry romp, a lighthearted musical comedy containing none of the pomposity that Burgoyne was sometimes accused of. The play gave him a reputation as a competent and professional playwright, although it was more popular with its audiences than with its critics. The Westminster Magazine opined that it would not have been tolerated had it not been intended as a spectacle for the fête champêtre.41 It played for twenty-four nights at Drury Lane, was revived four times, and was performed in Dublin.42 It ran into many editions and was translated into German as Das Madchen im Eichthalle.43 The Maid established Burgoyne so firmly in the mind of theatregoers as a playwright that when, a year later, Garrick produced a play but kept his own authorship secret, many thought it was by Burgoyne.44 As we will see, Burgoyne would write three more plays, one of which, The Heiress, was a critical success, as well as prologues and epilogues for plays written by others.45 The theatre was to occupy an important part of Burgoyne’s life during his later years. Lord Stanley, who inherited the earldom of Derby upon the death of his grandfather two years after the fête champêtre, would remain a close friend and loyal supporter. But meanwhile America beckoned.

Chapter 10

A General without a Command Unrest in Britain’s North American colonies began in 1765, when Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which imposed taxes on a variety of items in the colonies. According to historian Gordon Wood, “a firestorm of opposition … swept through the colonies with amazing force.”1 Under pressure from British merchants who were hurt by American boycotts of their goods, Parliament repealed the act in 1766.2 An inherently conservative-minded member of the House of Commons, Burgoyne supported the American policy of Prime Minister Lord North and King George III, which was to reject the demands of the colonists and, if necessary, to suppress the insurrection that they threatened. He voted against repeal of the Stamp Act and voted for the Declaratory Act, passed the same year, which asserted (or confirmed, depending on which side you were on) Britain’s authority to make all laws binding on the colonists.3 Of the new taxes that Britain had imposed on the colonies, only the duty on tea remained. In December 1773, a group of colonists, disguised as Native Americans, dumped 342 chests of imported tea into Boston harbour in a nighttime foray that became known as the Boston Tea Party.4 Burgoyne presciently feared that the colonists were not just objecting to a tax on tea; they were challenging Britain’s right to tax the colonists. Well before many others, he understood that what the colonists wanted was independence from Britain.5 On 19 April 1774, a year to the day before the first shots of the American Revolutionary

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War were fired, Burgoyne rose from his seat in the House of Commons to express his disdain for the increasingly defiant North American colonists. “I look upon America as our child,” he said, “which we have already spoilt by too much indulgence.”6 Still, Burgoyne remained cautious. He saw that suppressing the rebellion would not be easy. While he worked with Lord North to pass legislation punishing the people of Massachusetts for their resistance to the collection of taxes,7 he still hoped that an armed conflict might be averted. He asked to be dismissed from the army and sent to the colonies to negotiate a compromise, a proposal the government rejected. Burgoyne was not alone in wishing to avoid war: among them was the conservative philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke, who advised the House of Commons to agree to the colonists’ demands for a degree of autonomy.8 Even after hostilities began, two high-ranking military men who were to see service in the Revolutionary War, General Sir William Howe and his brother, Vice Admiral Lord Richard Howe, succeeded in being appointed as peace commissioners to try to settle the developing conflict.9 Nothing came of their efforts. As war seemed increasingly likely, Burgoyne’s prospects for high command improved. His reputation as a brave regimental commander, combined with the favour of the king and the sponsorship of the Earl of Derby, had brought about his promotion to the rank of major general in May 1772.10 It was natural, even inevitable, for this up-and-coming officer to be considered for a role in suppressing the looming rebellion. As Burgoyne was leaving the House of Commons one day in January 1775 after a debate on American affairs, Charles Jenkinson, a member who was a confidant of the king, grabbed his arm and hinted that he would soon be going to America. A few days later, Burgoyne was sent for by Lord Barrington, the war minister who fifteen years earlier had brusquely put Burgoyne in his place when, as a young lieutenant colonel, he had tried to use influence to get special favours for his regiment.11 Burgoyne relates how Barrington sat with him engaging in interminable “common chit-chat” before coming to the point. Burgoyne was to go to America, but without a command and in the company of

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two other major generals who were senior to him, William Howe and Henry Clinton.12 To be the junior member of what Burgoyne disdainfully regarded as a “triumvirate of reputation” did not attract him.13 As a major general, he saw no point – and no glory for himself – in going to America simply to inspect a brigade or to “see that the soldiers boiled their kettles properly.”14 When he asked Barrington whether he had any choice in the matter, Barrington replied that the king had himself picked these three generals for the assignment.15 Burgoyne felt it his duty as an army officer to go. Once in Boston, the three major generals were to place themselves under the command of General Thomas Gage, who had an army of 6,500 men, the only substantial British force in the American colonies. Before he left for America, Burgoyne again spoke in Parliament, this time to share with his fellow legislators his reluctance to fight against fellow Englishmen, but also his resolve to fulfill his patriotic duty as an army officer: Our bravery will be judged by the test of our compassion – Should we inevitably be made the instruments of punishment, let every action of the unhappy conflict be directed and marked by that temper … While … we are contending against fellow subjects and brothers, it must not be forgot we are contending … for the fate of the British empire … I am confident there is not an officer or soldier in the King’s service, who does not think the Parliamentary rights of Great Britain a cause to fight for, to bleed and die for.16 It is a mark of the friendship Burgoyne believed he had with King George that, before embarking at Portsmouth, he wrote to the king asking him to take care of Lady Charlotte should he die while overseas. If that happened, he wrote, she would have to contend with “a weak frame of body, very narrow circumstances, and a heart replete with those agonies which follow the loss of an object it has long held most dear … I received your Majesty’s commands for America with regret,

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the first sensation of that nature I ever experienced in a call for service, but I have not a less sense of duty.”17 The letter suggests not only that Charlotte was physically frail but that the Earl of Derby’s daughter would be short of money if Burgoyne were to die. Perhaps the expensive life that Burgoyne led, or gambling losses at Brooks’s Club, had seriously depleted his assets. Burgoyne, Howe, and Clinton were, at least on paper, an impressive military trio: all three had established reputations more than a decade earlier as commanders in the Seven Years War: Burgoyne in Portugal, Howe in Canada and France, Clinton in Germany.18 Their mission in America was to suppress the incipient rebellion, but they had no instructions as to how this was to be done or exactly what their role would be. The three generals arrived in Boston on the frigate hms Cerberus in late May. There they learned that fighting had broken out the previous month between British troops and American militiamen at Lexington and Concord near Boston. Gage’s force was now bottled up in Boston by George Washington’s army and a large number of militiamen; its only contact with the outside world was by sea, where a British fleet under the command of Admiral Richard Howe controlled the waterways. An irreverent American versifier saw humour in Britain delivering a package of three major generals to its besieged army: Behold the Cerberus, the Atlantic plough, Its precious cargo, Burgoyne, Clinton, Howe – Bow, wow, wow!19 As a trained soldier, Burgoyne was appalled that a British army could be neutralized by a bunch of rebels. “What! Ten thousand peasants keep five thousand of the King’s troops shut up!” he exclaimed.20 In a confidential letter to a friend, he was unrestrained in his criticism of two officers who outranked him. Although he liked and respected General Gage, he complained that the army commander lacked the mental resources required in the special circumstances of this war; of

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Richard Howe he asked, “What is the Admiral doing? … I can only say what he is not doing.”21 The disparagement was accurate – the British military leadership in North America lacked aggressiveness. In a letter to General Hervey, the military secretary of the Horse Guards, Burgoyne complained about the inefficiencies in supplying the army with many necessary items, including bread wagons and horses.22 Burgoyne found his own situation frustrating: he complained to Lord North that as a major general he now commanded fewer men than he had as a lieutenant colonel. Accustomed to a comfortable life, he found his situation in Boston intolerable. He wrote to a friend: I have been brought from the most interesting concerns, pleasures, duties of life, to partake of every inconvenience that can be supposed to exist in a town invested on one side, asleep on the other; and from both those and some other causes, destitute of fresh provision, money, and all those common comforts which habit makes almost necessaries, and with scarcely any other employment than to contemplate errors that I cannot redress.23 Less than a month after his arrival in Boston, Burgoyne asked the government for permission to return to England,24 and for the contents of his letter to be passed on to Lord North, as well as to Chief Justice Lord Mansfield, an unofficial but influential adviser to King George.25 Burgoyne had earlier described the rebel army as “a rabble in arms,” but three weeks after his arrival in Boston he was to change his opinion of its fighting qualities.26 Bunker Hill, the first major battle of the war, ended any thought of reconciliation between Britain and the colonists. On 17 June, Gage decided to drive the colonist forces from a hill that overlooked the British garrison in Boston. In Burgoyne’s words, the aim was to give the garrison some “elbow-room.”27 William Howe, now acting as Gage’s second-in-command, led the attack on the hill, while Burgoyne commanded a battery of artillery but was left out of the fight, except for one action: when American sharpshooters fired on Howe’s corps from nearby Charlestown, Howe ordered Burgoyne

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to fire incendiary shells on the town, which was immediately done, setting the entire town aflame. A week later, Burgoyne described the battle graphically in a letter to his nephew Lord Stanley: It was absolutely necessary we should make ourselves masters of these heights … And now ensued one of the greatest scenes of war that can be conceived … the hills round the country covered with spectators; the enemy all anxious suspense; the roar of cannon, mortars, and [musket fire]; the crush of churches, ships upon the stocks, and whole streets falling together in ruin, to fill the ear; the storm of the redoubts, with the objects above described, to fill the eye; and the reflection that perhaps a defeat was a final loss to the British empire in America, to fill the mind; made the whole a picture and a compilation of horror and importance beyond any thing that ever came to my lot to be witness to. [We were] out of danger; for, except two cannon balls that went an hundred yards over our heads, we were not on any part of the direction of the enemy’s shot … [T]he day ended with glory, and the success was most important, considering the ascendancy it gave the regular troops; but the loss was uncommon in officers for the members engaged.28 Although at the end of the day Gage’s army occupied Bunker Hill, it was a pyrrhic victory. The British casualties were catastrophic. Of the 2,500 officers and men in the attack, 226 were killed and 758 wounded.29 It was a sad collection of injured men, some without legs or arms, that sailed back to England on the ship named The Charming Nancy, with their wives and children – it was at that time quite common for British army officers to bring their families with them on tours of duty – who not long before had arrived in Boston full of hope and cheer. The stench of their wounds filled the ship.30 The American casualties were severe too – 160 killed and 271 wounded31 – but these losses could be quickly replaced, while British reinforcements would have to come from England.

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Bunker Hill was to have major consequences. Two months after the battle, Gage was dismissed as commander-in-chief in North America, to be replaced by Howe in the rebellious colonies and by Lieutenant General Sir Guy Carleton in Canada.32 The high casualties had a lasting impact on Howe; he would never again order troops to make a frontal attack.33 As for Burgoyne, the battle gave him greater respect for the skill, courage, and discipline of the rebel forces. He now realized that defeating the rebels would require a much greater commitment of British resources than he had previously thought. On the same day that he described the battle to his nephew, Burgoyne wrote soberly to his friend Henry Temple, Lord Palmerston, a member of the board that controlled the British navy: Our prospects on the side of the enemy are gloomy … The British Empire in America [will be lost] without great exertions on your side of the water. If the confederacy on this continent is general, as I am inclined to believe … and you determine to subdue it by arms you must have recourse to Russia or Germany; such a pittance as Great Britain and Ireland can supply will only serve to protract the war, to much fruitless expense, and ensure disappointment. You will hear by these dispatches of a victory of our troops and perhaps Government will be elated with the account … But our victory has been bought by an uncommon loss of officers, some of them irreparable … [A] complication of horrors rendered it the greatest scene that the imagination can conceive … [T]he private sorrows that followed upon looking round the field have been more than ordinarily numerous and affecting.34 While Burgoyne was expressing a natural reaction to the bloodshed he had witnessed at Bunker Hill, it was less an expression of defeatism or despair, as some writers have asserted,35 than a realistic prediction of the human and financial resources that would be required to suppress the rebellion.

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Even before Bunker Hill, Burgoyne had gained some understanding of the patriotic zeal that had captured the minds and hearts of many of the colonists. After Bunker Hill, he advised Gage to treat American prisoners of war, most of whom were wounded, with kindness and to give them their freedom.36 Throughout his career he saw warfare as a psychological as well as a physical battle. In early June, Burgoyne had received an unexpected letter from Charles Lee, who had served under him fifteen years earlier as a major in the British army in Portugal. The British-born Lee, once a figure in fashionable London society and, like Burgoyne, a friend of the artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, had defected to the American side and was now a general in Washington’s army.37 His letter to his old commander, while respectful, makes clear that he had not only shifted his allegiance to his new country but had also adopted the rhetoric of its countrymen: I most devoutly wish that your industry, valour, and military talents … not be wasted in ineffectual attempts to reduce to the wretched state of servitude, the most meritorious past of your fellow-subjects. You cannot possibly succeed … Not less than an hundred and fifty thousand gentlemen, yeomen, and farmers, are now in arms, determined to preserve their liberties or perish … The lords of St James’s … well know, that as long as the free spirit of this great continent remains unsubdued, the progress they can make in their scheme of universal despotism, will be but trifling. Hence it is that they wage inexpiable war against America. In short, this is the last asylum of persecuted Liberty. Here should the machinations and fury of her enemies prevail, that bright goddess must fly off from the face of the earth, and leave not a trace behind.38 A month later, Burgoyne replied to Lee’s harangue with a measured defence of the unwritten British constitution: I have, like you, entertained from infancy a veneration for public liberty. I have likewise regarded the British constitution as the

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best safeguard of that blessing to be found in the history of mankind. The vital principle of the constitution … is the supremacy of the King in Parliament – a compound, indefinite, indefeasible power, coeval with the origin of the empire and co-extensive over all its parts … [R]esistance, to be justifiable, must be directed against the usurpation or undue exercise of power; and … it is most criminal when directed against power itself inherent in the constitution. Finally, Burgoyne proposed that Lee meet with him in Boston to discuss their differences.39 Three days later, Lee replied from Cambridge, where he was with the American army besieging Boston, that he would like to meet his old commander, but since they had both made up their minds he saw no point in it.40 No meeting took place. If this had been a college debate, Burgoyne’s argument might have been persuasive: in the eighteenth century British subjects enjoyed more liberty than the population of any country in the world.41 But the interchange came in the midst of an emotionally charged political and military crisis. He had no chance of changing Lee’s mind, nor could Lee change his. Burgoyne did not realize (or possibly chose to ignore) that any contention based on the supposed excellence of the British political system and the sacredness of its unwritten constitution was unlikely to carry any weight with Lee or his fellow rebels. By July 1775 many, perhaps most, of the colonists thought of themselves as Americans, no longer as Britons. It wasn’t only that the British government and military establishment overestimated the Loyalist support they would get when they tried to put down the rebellion; they failed to understand the thinking of the colonists, who believed that King George III was at the centre of a conspiracy to deprive them of their liberty.42 Some Americans not only thought King George was a despot; they demonized Burgoyne. Two months after he arrived in Boston, Abigail Adams, who knew of him only from friends in England, wrote

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from her home in Braintree outside Boston to her husband, the future President John Adams, then heading the Massachusetts delegation to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. She had received a letter from Josiah Quincy, the colonists’ agent in London, that left me no room to think that [Burgoyne] is possessed either of Generosity, Virtue or Humanity. His character runs thus – As to Burgoyne I am not Master of Language sufficient to give you a true Idea of the Horrible wickedness of the Man. His designs are dark … not content with deceiving Mankind he practices deceit on God himself, by Assuming the Appearance … of great attention to Religious Worship when every action of his life is totally abhorant [sic] to all Ideas of true Religion, Virtue or common honesty. As if this were not enough, Mrs Adams depicted Burgoyne as a boor. She reported to her husband that a lady she knew had seen “raw meat cut and hacked upon [the] Mahogany tables” of the house where Burgoyne was staying in Boston and “her superb damask curtain and cushings [sic] exposed to the rain as if they were of no value.”43 Could the urbane general, a frequent guest in London’s noble mansions, be guilty of such ungentlemanly sins? Idled in Boston, Burgoyne turned to his new avocation, playwriting. Encouraged by the success of The Maid of the Oaks a year earlier, he decided to fill his idle hours by writing a farce for the amusement of the troops. The Blockade of Boston was performed in the city’s Faneuil Hall, which the British converted from an assembly room and market place into a theatre. It mocked the Puritan prudery of the Bostonians and made fun of the American Patriots, portraying General George Washington as a comic character, wearing an outlandish wig and an enormous sword.44 One performance of the play was interrupted by a sergeant who rushed in shouting that a battle had begun outside; the audience, thinking this was part of the play, enthusiastically applauded, only to learn that the firing was real.45 A song that the cast belted out at the conclusion of Blockade shows Burgoyne at his most patriotic – and flirtatious:

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Ye Ladies, who find the Time hang on your Hands While thus kept in a Cage by the Enemy’s Bands: Like me chuse a Mate from your numerous Crew, Be he brave as my Soldier, as tender and true. With such a Companion Confinement has Charms; Each Place is a Paradise clasp’d in his Arms: And only of Absence and Distance afraid, You’ll bless the small Circle of the Boston Blockade. … Come then ye Comrades of Honour and Truth, Experienc’d Age and high-spirited Youth; With Drum and with Fire make the Chorus must thrill, And echo shall wast[e] it on Washington’s Hill. All brave British hearts shall best. Time while we sing, Due Force to our Arms, and Long Life to the king. To the Honour of both of our banners display’d, And a glorious End to the Boston Blockade.46 Burgoyne also wrote a prologue and an epilogue for an English version of Voltaire’s play Zara, which was produced for the amusement of the soldiery in Boston. Two lines he wrote could be said to encapsulate his views on the rebellion: Unite the warrior’s with the patriot’s care, And whilst you burn to conquer, wish to spare.47 Still, he was finding his forced inaction frustrating. “It is hard to conceive so absolute a cypher in a military light as the youngest MajorGeneral in this army,” he wrote.48 Eventually he was allowed to return to England, landing at Plymouth in November 1775. The same month, Howe received an order from London to withdraw from Boston, where he was rendered ineffective and outnumbered by the American forces. His evacuation by sea to rebel-held New York City began in March 1776. By November Howe’s army had landed in Staten Island and Long Island and had driven the American forces

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out of New York. He failed, however, to engage Washington’s army or to defeat it in a decisive battle.49 Upon Burgoyne’s arrival in London, the cabinet asked him to make recommendations for future military operations to defeat the rebels. The paper Burgoyne submitted, Reflections upon the War in America, was a rough blueprint for the Saratoga campaign two years later. Assuming that New York would be in British hands by then, he proposed a pincer-like strategy involving British armies from Canada and New York meeting on the Hudson River. Although this strategy had been discussed earlier, this was the first time it was committed to paper to be formally considered by the cabinet. Burgoyne foresaw that the Americans would resort to guerilla warfare: “It is not to be expected that the rebel Americans will risk a general combat or a pitched battle, or even stand at all, except behind entrenchments as at Boston … The American militia, rebels as they are … will be found to be respectable even in flight.”50 With Britain engaged in its first major war since the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, Burgoyne, now in his fifties, was looking for a commanding role in quashing the American rebellion. His leadership of a brigade in Portugal during the earlier war established his reputation as a brave, aggressive commander; and a report he had submitted to the government on the military establishments of the Great Powers of continental Europe secured his standing as an officer of substance and acuity. But his battlefield experience was limited: the Portuguese campaign was the only time he had led troops in armed combat. He had never commanded a unit larger than a brigade, and when he did it was composed largely of poorly trained and armed Portuguese troops. Now, soon after he returned to England, he met with the king to plead his case for a command. But other generals with greater seniority stood in his way. In the winter of 1775–76 dramatic events were occurring on the other side of the Atlantic. Colonel Benedict Arnold of the Continental Army led a winter invasion of Canada, with the goal of making the British province the fourteenth state of the incipient American

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union. The expedition reached Quebec but failed to capture the heavily fortified city, owing partly to a blizzard and partly to General Carleton’s effective defence.51 By late June 1776, Carleton had driven the Americans out of Canada and was preparing to begin offensive operations to the south, with Burgoyne as his second-in-command. When Burgoyne left on his second visit to America in March 1776, family matters were on his mind. Lady Charlotte, his wife of twentyfive years, was seriously ill. King George had asked Lord George Germain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, about her condition; Germain advised Burgoyne: “I trust I did not inform him wrong when I said I had heard she was something better.”52 But Lady Charlotte died on 5 June 1776. The news reached Burgoyne in Canada, shortly before he embarked on the summer campaign. Writing to Charlotte’s uncle, the Reverend John Stanley, after he returned to England in December, Burgoyne lamented: “My ambition is gone – interest in life I have none – I throw myself into busyness of every kind as a resource, not as a pursuit.”53 He devoted much of his letter to an attempt to explain why he had left England when his wife was dangerously ill. He wrote that he knew she was near death, but, perhaps typically for couples at that time, she tried to conceal from him how severe her illness was, and he concealed his own sympathetic suffering from her: In this wretched state I was called upon by the King, &, as it was represented to me, by the Publick, for high trust & important service – Canada at that time being supposed to be lost, & circumstances & opinion having pointed me out as the most proper man to recover it. As my departure approached … my situation became so nearly insupportable that I was more than once upon the point of giving way – of renouncing every publick duty, to attach myself to her bedside, to administer unavailing cordials, to receive her last breath; & prostate before God, to endeavor to sanctify to myself the example of her patience & resignation.54

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From the time of their elopement twenty-five years earlier, Burgoyne and Lady Charlotte had been devoted to each other; but it was a basic tenet of a British army or navy officer that in times of crisis private feelings must always give way to public duty.55 The love of a fight and the ambition that had driven Burgoyne throughout his career reinforced his sense of responsibility. If he had chosen to remain with Lady Charlotte during her last hours, it is possible he would not have been asked to lead the expedition to Saratoga a year later, and he would be remembered, if at all, as an interesting and talented, but not especially important, eighteenth-century general. Burgoyne arrived in Canada in June 1776, to find Quebec still in British hands and the rebels fleeing southwards. If Carleton was to execute the northern part of the pincer strategy contemplated in Burgoyne’s Reflections report, involving a meeting of two British armies coming south from Canada and north from New York, his first task would be to take control of Lake Champlain, the waterway leading from Canada into New York State. Dominating the lake were two American fortifications, Fort Ticonderoga at the south end of the lake and Crown Point ten miles north of Ticonderoga. The Americans also had a considerable naval force on the lake. Ticonderoga, a stone fortress built by the French in 1755, controlled the invasion route from Canada; captured by the Americans from a small British garrison at the start of the war, Ticonderoga was a vital stronghold, essential for control of the Lake Champlain area. Impressed by the supposed strength of the American defences, Carleton took his time in assembling an amphibious force of nearly 10,000 British and German troops under Burgoyne’s command, and an armada of gunboats and bateaux. These latter were flat-bottomed boats, each of which could carry two tons of supplies or twenty-three men. Carleton was not ready to move south until 4 October, late in the season for campaigning. Meanwhile, the Americans under the command of General Horatio Gates used the time to good advantage; they laboured twelve hours a day to repair and improve the Ticonderoga fortifications. Crown Point, a smaller fort, was left virtually undefended.56

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The campaign culminated in a naval battle on 11 October, in which Carleton’s warships won an overwhelming victory on Lake Champlain, virtually destroying the American flotilla. Three days later, the British took Crown Point, whose small garrison offered little resistance. But instead of following up his victory by attacking Ticonderoga, the much more important and strategic fort, Carleton waivered for thirteen days. Burgoyne and other senior officers urged Carleton to make the attack; Carleton demurred, considering it too late in the season for further operations.57 Burgoyne’s fury at his commander’s caution was understandable. Carleton’s decision enabled the retreating American invaders to escape, and a golden opportunity to weaken or even destroy the rebel forces was lost.58 It also deprived Burgoyne, who had not played any significant role in the naval victory on Lake Champlain, of being acclaimed the hero of Ticonderoga. Burgoyne sailed for England on 9 November, arriving at Portsmouth a month later. He met the next day with Germain, who asked him to draw up plans for a 1777 campaign that would end the war that year. Suffering from gout, Burgoyne retreated to the spa of Bath in western England to drink and bathe in the healing waters and to undertake his new task, which would lead him to Saratoga less than a year later.

Chapter 11

How to Plan a Disaster The new year of 1777 looked auspicious for the British forces in North America. New York, the commercial centre and best port of the colonies was safely in British hands. Its well-trained army had defeated the rebels in most of their encounters, although some at heavy cost. King George III and his ministers were determined to subdue the colonists and finish the war by the end of the year. If George Washington’s army could be forced to engage in a pitched battle, Britain’s political and military leaders had little doubt it would be destroyed and the war ended. When Burgoyne set out on the expedition that led to his surrender at Saratoga, it was with blithe optimism. But this war was unlike any previous conflict Britain had fought. Its previous conflicts with other great nations, France in particular, were designed to gain territory or wealth, or to prevent an invasion of England. Victory in the war against the American colonists would require Britain to subdue a largely hostile population spread out over 1,200 miles from Georgia to Maine, much of it unmapped dense forest, criss-crossed by wide rivers. Many of the roads were mere trails. Transporting the army, with its supplies, ammunition, artillery, food for men, and fodder for horses, over this terrain was an arduous and logistically complex undertaking. Supplying an army that consisted on average of 34,000 men and 4,000 horses was an enormous undertaking, since much of it had to be shipped from England.1 America had few large population centres whose capture might end the rebellion; and it was uncertain how many Americans would remain loyal to the mother country.2 Meanwhile, the colonists were recruiting a force of

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200,000 militia to complement Washington’s tiny army, which usually numbered under 5,000.3 Fighting a war 3,000 miles from England created difficulties of supply and command. A sailing ship took up to six weeks going eastward and up to eight weeks westward.4 So it would take at least three to four months before a British general in America sending a dispatch to the government in London could expect to receive a reply. It might take even longer if the dispatch required extensive discussion and decision-making before a reply could be sent. Meanwhile, the military situation might have changed drastically, making previous communications irrelevant. Despite the difficulties, Britain had been largely successful in the first two years of the war. Although most of New England and parts of upstate New York remained in rebel hands, British General Sir William Howe had taken New York City and its surrounding area, General Henry Clinton had occupied Rhode Island, and General Guy Carleton had repelled an American attempt to capture Quebec. While there had been few battles in the four southern colonies (Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia), British planners believed they had enough Loyalist support there to defeat the rebels.5 When Burgoyne returned to London from Canada in December 1776, the government directed him to submit a plan to Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the colonies, for ending the war the following year. Germain was a proud, aloof man with a flawed history.6 That he was given the role of directing the effort to end the American rebellion astonished and dismayed many of his contemporaries.7 In fairness to him, it must be added that Richard Cumberland, who worked as a civil servant under Germain, praised him for his efficient dispatch of business and found, beneath his superficial coldness, a friendly and hospitable man.8 A single episode overshadowed Germain’s public career and embittered him for the rest of his life.9 The youngest son of Lionel Sackville, Duke of Dorset, Germain began his career as an army officer. In 1759 Germain commanded the British forces in the Battle of Minden in Prussia in the Seven Years War. At the climax of the battle, Duke Fer-

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dinand of Brunswick, the commander-in-chief of a British–Prussian army, called on Germain to order his cavalry to advance. For reasons that were unclear – Germain claimed the orders were confusing – Germain did nothing. As a result of his failure to obey orders, the allies were denied a decisive victory.10 Furious at Germain’s behaviour and concerned that any leniency towards him would create a rift with his valuable ally Duke Ferdinand, King George II ordered Germain dismissed from the army. Germain demanded a court martial in order to clear his name. His arrogant behaviour during the trial did not help him. Testifying on his own behalf, he did not try to hide his contempt for the officers who sat in judgment on him.11 After a month-long trial, the court martial convicted Germain of disobeying orders. Although the offence carried a possible death penalty, Germain, perhaps because he was the son of a duke, received the lightest sentence possible: he was simply judged unfit to serve in the military. King George, unsatisfied with the court’s mere slap on the wrist, had the court martial’s finding read publicly throughout the army.12 But after George II’s grandson, George III, ascended the throne, Germain’s influential friends persuaded the new king to restore the disgraced nobleman to royal favour. His appointment as secretary of state met with public criticism and severe condemnation in the press.13 Burgoyne handed Germain his report, entitled Thoughts for Conducting the War from the Side of Canada, on 28 February 1777. He proposed that a “Canada army” would advance southward from Canada and join with Howe’s army, which would advance northward up the Hudson River from New York City (which Howe had captured the previous year). The junction of the two armies would be the “sole purpose” of the campaign.14 That said, Burgoyne offered an alternative plan. The Canada army, “after cooperating so far as to get possession of Albany and open the communication to New York, [would] remain upon Hudson’s River, and thereby enable [Howe] to act with his whole force to the southward.”15 It is unclear what Burgoyne meant by “cooperating.” Was Howe to go north at all? The ambiguity invited disaster. If Howe took

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his army south (presumably to seize the colonial capital of Philadelphia), Burgoyne would find himself in a perilous situation, even if he were able to capture Albany without Howe’s help. Because American fortifications dominated the Hudson, Burgoyne would be cut off from the British base in New York City; his army would run the risk of being forced to retreat to Canada, under constant harassment by the Americans, perhaps in the snow and blizzards of winter.16 Such a result might be avoided if Howe, when he took his main army south, were to leave a large enough force behind in New York not only to defend that city from an American attack but also to take control of the Hudson between New York and Albany. Another possibility was that Loyalists in the Albany area might be numerous and strong enough to support and supply Burgoyne’s army during the winter. But neither of these two scenarios was more than wishful thinking when Burgoyne wrote his report. Unless Howe received substantial reinforcements from England, he would not be able to spare the men to engage in two campaigns at the same time; and the reports of Loyalist support in upstate New York were based on unreliable and incomplete information. These considerations aside, the worst defect of Burgoyne’s plan was that it did not say what the two armies would do once they met at Albany.17 While the report included details of the proposed campaign, it failed to outline an overall strategy that would result in a decisive battle to destroy the Continental Army and end the war. A summary of Burgoyne’s life and career published after his death supplies what might have been the divide-and-conquer strategic purpose for the campaign: “[I]t was hoped that all communication would be cut off between the northern and southern colonies, and that each of them, being left to its own means of defence, and attacked by superior numbers, would inevitably be reduced with little trouble.”18 It is not known whether or not this was the purpose that Burgoyne had in mind. It is certainly a plausible one. It is possible that Burgoyne avoided spelling out an overall strategy because the entire operation depended largely on what Howe would do, and Burgoyne may have thought it imprudent or inappropriate for him to advise Howe, his senior and the commander-in-chief in America, how to conduct

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the war. Or he may have believed that even if Howe decided to take his army, or a part of it, south there would still be time for him to return to New York and join Burgoyne on the Hudson before the 1777 campaiging season ended. Burgoyne was avowedly ambitious and, at the age of fifty-four, may well have believed this would be his last and only chance to lead an army in battle. He was audacious and he loved a fight. He was a gambler, with an instinct to shut his eyes and throw the dice, hoping that success would follow. And he took justified pride in the fighting ability of the well-trained British forces and in his own natural talent as a leader of men. It does not appear that anyone made a careful study of Burgoyne’s report, or that Burgoyne was asked to clarify it. At the time, the British army had no real staff system; strategic decisions tended to be made in a slapdash way.19 Ignoring the report’s shortcomings, George III quickly approved it. He wrote: “The outlines of the plan seem to be on a proper foundation … the force from Canada must join [Howe] at Albany.”20 From then on, things moved quickly. First, Germain had to choose a commander for the expedition. Although Burgoyne clearly hoped to be the commander (and may have pulled some strings to get the position),21 other generals senior to him had a better claim. Lieutenant General Carleton, the commander-in-chief in Canada, the most senior officer in North America, had a hot temper and nothing but contempt for Germain; while Germain, for his part, believed that Carleton had displayed too much caution in his 1776 campaign on Lake Champlain and was not the man for this campaign.22 Germain passed him over for the job. Major General Henry Clinton, Howe’s second-in-command in New York, was offered the command (he was in London at the time) but turned it down, not wishing to offend Carleton, who outranked him.23 So early in March, Germain appointed Burgoyne to be the commander of the expedition and wrote to Carleton, ordering him to supply Burgoyne with 7,000 British and German troops and as many Canadians and Native Americans “as may be thought necessary,” and to furnish him with stores and artillery. Burgoyne was to return to

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Canada and lead his army promptly to Albany. Once there, he was to place himself under Howe’s command.24 Howe, the commander-in-chief of all British land forces fighting the American colonists, was, like Germain, the younger son of a titled nobleman. He was a member of Parliament, but, unlike Burgoyne, he was not an active politician; for Howe, his political position was simply an avenue to military preferment. Charles Lee, the British officer who later went over to the American side, knew Howe well and wrote of him: He is naturally good-humour’d, and complacent, but illiterate and indolent to the last degree … [He] … was totally confounded and stupefy’d by the immensity of the task impos’d upon him. He shut his eyes, fought his battles, drank his bottle, had his little Whore, advised with his Counsellors, receiv’d his orders from North and Germain … shut his eyes [and] fought again.25 As a young officer Howe had proved his bravery and ability as the commander of an infantry regiment that captured Quebec from the French in 1759. When the American colonists threatened rebellion, he at first opposed the British policy of coercion and refused to accept a command in America. However, he changed his mind and, as we have seen, led the troops who assaulted Bunker Hill.26 The slaughter Howe witnessed in that battle reinforced his reluctance to commit his troops to an all-out frontal attrack. The strategy he preferred was aimed at conquering territory, not destroying the enemy’s army. He was a cautious man, who liked his comfort. Like many generals of his day, he declined to engage in winter campaigns; at the appearance of the first frost, he went into winter quarters. The Americans, not bound by this tradition, fought all year round, as shown by Benedict Arnold’s intrepid, though unsuccessful, attack on Quebec in a blinding snowstorm in December 1775. When Howe did fight, his method followed eighteenth-century military orthodoxy: manoeuvre

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for position, occupy strategic points, avoid engagements except when victory was guaranteed, and above all preserve his army intact. Skilled in military tactics but lacking judgment on overall strategy, he won every battle he fought in 1775 and 1776, without bringing the war any closer to a conclusion.27 The reader will recall that Howe, abandoning Boston, had invaded Long Island and New York City in the summer of 1776. Although he had driven Washington’s army out of the city and its surrounding area by the end of November, he failed to destroy it in a decisive battle. But he was already making plans for next year’s operations. On 9 October, he wrote to Germain proposing that, as his primary objective, he would force his way up the Hudson to open communication with Canada, a plan consistent with Burgoyne’s Thoughts report.28 Seven weeks later, he had changed his mind. On 30 November he proposed a far more ambitious plan, which depended on getting substantial reinforcements from England. He asked for 15,000 more men, which would bring his total force up to 35,000, to enable him to control the Hudson, attack Boston from British-held Rhode Island, and have sufficient troops in New Jersey to threaten Philadelphia and deter Washington from moving north from Valley Forge near Philadelphia. With this strong force, Howe believed he could end the war in a year.29 Three weeks later, on 20 December, Howe changed his mind again. Realizing that he would not get all the reinforcements he had asked for, he proposed that his sole offensive operation would be to march on Philadelphia, where he believed he would find strong Loyalist support.30 The proposed advance up the Hudson to meet Burgoyne’s army from Canada was tacitly abandoned. Before Germain received Howe’s letters of 30 November (proposing to advance up the Hudson to the north and to attack Boston), and 20 December (proposing to attack Philadelphia through New Jersey), the fortunes of war had changed. On 2 January 1777, Washington’s army defeated the British at Trenton, New Jersey, and the following day he had a second victory at nearby Princeton. As yet unaware of these defeats, on 14 January Germain replied to Howe’s 30 November

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letter, substantially paring down Howe’s request for reinforcements. But Howe had once more changed his mind. On 3 March, while Germain and the king were still studying Burgoyne’s Thoughts report, Germain replied to Howe’s 20 December letter, agreeing to his proposal to move south. Unbelievably, Germain did not inform Howe that at that very time plans were being made for an army from Canada to meet Howe at Albany.31 So, while Burgoyne would be fighting his way through the wilderness to Albany, Howe would be headed in the opposite direction, powerless to help Burgoyne or to attack the American forces in New England. Major General Henry Clinton, second-in-command to Howe in New York, may have been the only senior British officer with an overall grasp of the war. Like the other top generals in America, except Burgoyne, he was an aristocrat by birth, but, interestingly, he had spent his childhood in New York City.32 By nature he was an introvert, with few friends and many enemies. Lacking Howe’s lethargy and Burgoyne’s spirit of a gambler, Clinton was a better strategist than either of them. He understood that the war could only be won by destroying the American army, not by occupying territory.33 Clinton was in London in April and had a long, frustrating meeting with Germain in which he tried to persuade the war minister to order Howe to change his plans. The war, Clinton urged, would be won or lost in the north. Philadelphia, although the capital of the colonies, had no strategic value. Germain was unmoved. It has been suggested that no one listened to Clinton because his manner was so irritating.34 On 2 April Howe changed his mind for a third time. He wrote to Germain that his main army would attack Philadelphia not by land through New Jersey but by sea, under the protection of the naval vessels under the command of his brother, Admiral Richard Howe. In order to have a sufficient force for the invasion, Howe would withdraw the troops guarding New Jersey and leave a small garrison in New York.35 Replying on 18 May, Germain consented to the change of plans but now reminded Howe that he should execute his plan “in

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time to cooperate with the army ordered to proceed from Canada.”36 This vague, belated suggestion was totally unrealistic and ignored the fact that while Howe was at sea Burgoyne would be exposed to virtually all the American armed forces. By the time Germain’s dispatch reached America, Howe and his army were sailing to Pennsylvania.37 Back in New York in early July, Clinton learned for the first time of Howe’s plan to take his army on a cruise. For three weeks he tried to persuade Howe of the importance of coordinating his actions with Burgoyne’s and the disastrous consequences that would follow from his seaborne plan for capturing Philadelphia.38 Even supposing that Burgoyne could reach Albany without Howe’s help, by removing his main army from New York Howe would leave no large British force between the main American army and Burgoyne, enabling Washington to focus on destroying or capturing Burgoyne’s army. Furthermore, while Howe was at sea, he would be immobilized for a matter of weeks, out of touch with Burgoyne. But Clinton made as little impression on Howe, who now was obsessed with capturing Philadelphia, as he had made on Germain. On 23 July, when Howe and his army embarked for the sea trip south, he knew that he would not be able to end his campaign in time to co-operate with Burgoyne, who was already six weeks into his slow progress through the American forests to Albany.39 Howe’s voyage south left the two main British armies in America separated by over 300 miles and out of touch with each other. General Washington could hardly have asked for anything better. Meanwhile, we must go back to 27 March 1777, when Burgoyne, carrying Germain’s letter instructing Carleton to supply Burgoyne with troops and supplies for his campaign, left for Plymouth to take ship for Canada. Before he sailed, he handed a copy of the letter to the captain of a ship bound for New York, to be delivered to Howe. The copy, which reached Howe on 5 June, was not accompanied by any instructions to assist Burgoyne.40 Thus Germain’s inexplicable failure to give Howe any definite orders perpetuated the ambiguity of Burgoyne’s plan. Were the two armies supposed to join forces in Albany, or was Burgoyne to stay put in Albany while Howe marched (or sailed) south?

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Nor did the possibility of coordination with Burgoyne’s army play any part in Howe’s thinking or his plans. Each general was on his own, his movements uncoordinated by Germain, their chief in London. To recap, Howe’s letter informing Germain that he intended to go south arrived in London on 3 March. Burgoyne knew of Howe’s proposal and Germain’s approval of it before he left for Canada on 27 March. He arrived in Quebec on 6 May 1777.41 It was the first step of his fateful journey to Saratoga. Back in England after the Saratoga debacle, Burgoyne tried to justify his decision to go ahead with his own campaign in upstate New York despite Howe’s abandonment. He suggested that he believed at the time that Germain would withdraw his approval of Howe’s new plan: “I was to suppose that … [Howe] would receive orders from [Germain] respecting the junction, and also a timely reinforcement.”42 It was an unconvincing explanation. It seems likely that Burgoyne could not wait to embark on his campaign, with or without Howe’s co-operation. A year and a half after the surrender, Burgoyne described Britain’s overall strategy in one sentence: “The great points of the war in America that year [1777] were to divide the enemy’s force, and at the same time to direct the several operations with such concurrence, that, though separate and remote, they should assist each other.”43 If that strategy had been followed, Saratoga would not have happened. But it was foreordained by Howe’s single-minded focus on capturing Philadelphia, Germain’s failure to coordinate the movements of Howe and Burgoyne, and Burgoyne’s ambiguous planning. All of this had occurred – and, arguably, doomed the campaign – before Burgoyne left for America and Saratoga.

Chapter 12

The Saratoga Campaign Before Crossing the Hudson

When Burgoyne arrived in Montreal on 12 May 1777 to take command of the northern army, he found little had been done to prepare for his expedition into the rebellious American colonies. The problems began in London, where responsibility for directing and supplying the army was divided among three different ministers, none of whom had the army as his main concern. Aside from Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for America, three secretaries of state, with offices in Westminster, divided up most of the authority for running the government. Among the responsibilities of the secretary of state for the south was organizing the troops leaving England, but when they arrived in Canada they came under the direction of the secretary of state for the north. A third minister, the first lord of the treasury, had the last say because he controlled the money to pay for the supplies and other costs of the expedition.1 To make matters worse, the British army had no central service corps for procuring, transporting, and distributing food, clothing, and ammunition. These functions were performed by civilian contractors, a method of procurement that was subject to negligence and corruption.2 The army’s administrative system, inefficient even in peacetime, came under enormous strain when faced with the task of managing a war at a distance of 3,000 miles.3 In the case of Burgoyne’s expedition, contractors in Canada were unable to supply a sufficient number of carts strong enough to carry supplies and ammunition over the rough trails that passed for roads in North America, or the necessary horses

Map 2 Route of Burgoyne’s army 1777

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and drivers for the carts. As a result, when the army set out in June, it had enough transport to carry just fourteen days of provisions.4 Perhaps neither Burgoyne nor the ministry in London had thought through in advance the logistical problems of supplying an army on a long journey through the forests of North America; if they did think about it, they may have relied on Loyalist support or on the army’s ability to live off the country, both of which were doubtful. It is a truism that a commander must prepare for every conceivable contingency, but in this case wishful thinking took the place of careful preparation.5 Burgoyne was a strong believer in the effectiveness of artillery in battle against both fortifications and men.6 A battery of guns could have a devastating effect on a packed formation of soldiers, even at six hundred yards, while a battalion of infantry firing volleys would need to get within one hundred yards of the enemy to have a comparable effect.7 But hauling heavy guns through the wilderness vastly increased Burgoyne’s supply problem and slowed up the rest of the army. Each heavy field gun was drawn by four horses, lighter guns by three.8 Burgoyne’s expedition included 138 artillery pieces, requiring over 400 horses to haul them. A horse doing the heavy work of pulling guns needed, every single day, eighteen pounds of hay and eight pounds of oats and many gallons of water, particularly in hot weather.9 From the start of the campaign, Burgoyne’s army was short of horses not only for the artillery but also for carrying provisions, ammunition, supplies, and fodder for the horses themselves. When the army left Canada in June, it carried a supply of oats, but by the time it reached Fort Edward on the Hudson in late July the remaining oats didn’t fill one wagon.10 Burgoyne expected that Loyalists in upstate New York would help supply and reinforce his army, but this did not happen. The information he relied on came from General Carleton, who had heard that there were many Loyalists between Saratoga and Albany who would take up arms if Burgoyne’s army were able to get there. It is true that there was some Loyalist support: for example, on 20 July forty-six men from the Albany area, armed with muskets, joined the expedition.11 Yet help from Loyalists was never a significant factor in the campaign. The reports that there were many Loyalists in upstate New York were not wrong, but the Americans used threats and violence to in-

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timidate them. A month after the expedition set out from Canada, Burgoyne wrote to Lord Germain that the rebels “watch or imprison all suspected persons, compel the people in general to take arms, and to drive the cattle, and to burn the corn, under penalty of immediate death. Great numbers have been hanged.”12 Anticipating a brief summer campaign, Burgoyne ordered his officers and men to leave behind in Canada all clothes and other baggage that could be spared during the summer months.13 The instruction was not strictly enforced: his officers brought with them enormous quantities of personal possessions.14 And Burgoyne himself did not believe in forgoing comfort when on campaign: he was said to have used thirty carts to carry his personal baggage, including a large supply of champagne for evening festivities.15 Such reports were very likely an exaggeration, but it is clear that Burgoyne had an equipage that was ill-suited for a trek through a wilderness full of hostile forces. On 13 June, just a month after he arrived in Montreal, Burgoyne took command of the northern army at Fort St Jean, Canada, near Montreal; two weeks later the army marched into the American colonies. For Burgoyne, it was an ambition fulfilled: he was fifty-four and for the first time in command of a wartime army. He appeared well qualified to lead the expedition: as a young officer, he had proved his courage and leadership in battle; he had completed two recent wartime tours in America, where his observation of the rebel army at the battle of Bunker Hill gave him respect for its fighting ability; he had given much thought and practical application to the training and command of soldiers; and he had studied the military systems of the major European nations. In contrast to many British generals of that era who tended to err on the side of caution, Burgoyne’s inclination was to attack, even if it meant taking risks. Yet Burgoyne lacked command experience. Britain had not been at war since the end of the Seven Years War in 1763; while peace was a blessing for nearly everyone, for career army officers it meant not having a chance to practise their profession. Ideally, a commander should have obtained experience at all important levels of command before moving to the next higher level.16 Having successfully led a brigade in combat in the earlier conflict, Burgoyne was promoted to the rank of general

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without ever serving as a senior staff officer in a campaign. His only wartime experience since 1763 was as Carleton’s second-in-command in the brief inconclusive incursion into New York State in October 1776. He had never been forced to come to grips with the complexities of transporting, feeding, and equipping a large force. Nor did he have a senior staff officer with that kind of experience. Burgoyne shared the belief of the British military and civilian leadership that the American war could be brought to a victorious close in 1777.17 The force he led, though not large, was impressive, and international. It was not unusual in the eighteenth century for European nations to augment their armies with foreign troops. This was particularly true of Britain, where many feared that a large standing army might deprive them of their liberties. And Britain, being an island nation, relied principally on its navy rather than its army for protection against foreign invasion. The two most senior officers under Burgoyne, Major General William Phillips, his second-in-command, and Major General Friedrich von Riedesel, the commander of the German troops, were experienced, forceful leaders. The force of 7,400 who set out from Canada comprised about 3,700 well-trained members of elite British regiments and 3,000 equally professional German troops, the remainder being made up of artillerymen, Native American warriors, and Canadians.18 This was substantially short of the force Burgoyne considered necessary for the march to Albany: 8,000 British and German troops, 2,000 Canadians, and 1,000 “savages” (i.e., Native Americans).19 Burgoyne did his best to promote good understanding between his British and German troops; he treated them equally and saw that they enjoyed the same advantages, though sometimes he excluded Riedesel from the war councils of the British generals, where they discussed the expedition’s movements or instructions received from London.20 The British soldiers regarded the Germans as steady but slow, a drawback in a campaign that involved marching through the forests of North America.21 But, in general, the Germans fought bravely and effectively throughout the expedition. More than 300 women and children accompanied the expedition, also a common custom in eighteenth-century European wars.22 General Riedesel’s wife, the Baroness Frederika; her three daughters,

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Augusta, aged six, Frederika, aged three, and Caroline, just ten weeks old; two maids and a cook followed the army on foot and in carriages and suffered through the hardships of the campaign and its bitter aftermath.23 Similarly, the British Major John Acland, who commanded a regiment of grenadiers, was joined by his wife, her maid, and their dog.24 Enlisted men were permitted to bring women with them, to cook, launder, and gather fuel. Others were camp followers, some of whom were prostitutes.25 The women and children were fed out of the company stores, thus adding to Burgoyne’s logistical problems.26 While in Canada, Burgoyne issued an order limiting the number of women to three per company of about one hundred men, but the order was not rigorously enforced.27 The campaign began uneventfully. The troops travelled south on Lake Champlain in 30-foot bateaux, the Native American warriors accompanying them in canoes, while Burgoyne sailed in his flagship, a 26-gun warship named the Royal Savage.28 They reached Crown Point near the southern tip of Lake Champlain on 25 June (see map). There the army rested to allow its baggage and artillery to catch up, a sign that from the very beginning the supply problem slowed it down. Five days later, Burgoyne issued a General Order: The Army embarks tomorrow to approach the Enemy. We are to contend for the King and the Constitution of Great Britain, to vindicate the Law and relieve the Oppressed. A Cause in which His Majesty’s Troops and those of the Princes His Allies [i.e., the German soldiers] will feel equal Excitement. The Services required of this particular Expedition are critical and conspicuous. During our progress occasions may occur, in which nor difficulty nor labour nor life are to be regarded. this army must not retreat.29 Burgoyne’s language was high-flown but not unsuitable when addressing an army about to enter hostile territory; it was almost certainly received with enthusiasm by his troops.

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On 1 July the army reached Fort Ticonderoga, ten miles to the south. Ticonderoga was the fortress that guarded the entry to the rebellious American colonies, which Burgoyne believed to be the chief obstacle to achieving his goal of getting to Albany.30 Aside from its strategic value, Ticonderoga had a special importance for Burgoyne: as the reader will recall, it was the nut that Carleton had not let him crack the previous fall. Now he would. On 2 July, he wrote to General Howe that once he had taken the fortress it would be garrisoned by soldiers from Canada, so that “my force therefore will be left complete for future operations.”31 Very likely, Howe took this as an assurance that Burgoyne would need no help in getting to Albany. Fort Ticonderoga was situated on a promontory on the west bank of Lake Champlain. Burgoyne had expected the fortress to be vigorously defended, but now it fell without a battle.32 After Lieutenant William Twiss, Burgoyne’s army’s chief engineering officer, pointed out to Burgoyne that the Americans had not occupied Mount Defiance, a densely wooded hill that dominated the fortress, Burgoyne ordered two cannons to be lugged to the top.33 When a staff officer objected that only a goat could get to the top of the hill, General Phillips, Burgoyne’s second-in-command, replied: “Where a goat can go, a man can go and where a man can go he can drag a gun with him.”34 A work party accomplished the feat on 4 July, to the consternation of the fort’s defenders; for now the British artillery could freely bombard Ticonderoga, and the British soldiers could observe the Americans’ activities there and on the lake. The American commander, Major General Arthur St Clair, seeing that the presence of the British cannon placed him in an undefendable position and lacking a strong enough force to resist the British-led army, ordered his 3,000 men to abandon the fort and retreat on a pontoon bridge to the east side of the lake.35 Entering the fortress, the British–German troops were delighted to find a cache of artillery pieces, muskets, ammunition, clothing, and rich stores of wine, rum, sugar, rice, coffee, chocolate, butter, cheese, and the like.36 The fall of Fort Ticonderoga fed the optimism felt by most officials about the course of the war – and added to the dismay when

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they learned of the failure of the expedition three months later. More consequentially, the success filled Burgoyne with disdain for the ability of his American foes. A week after he captured Fort Ticonderoga, he wrote to a friend in England that the Americans’ failure to see the importance of Mount Defiance convinced him that they “have no men of military science.”37 Having conquered what appeared to him the biggest impediment to the success of his expedition, he seems to have believed that the road to Albany was clear. Perhaps he forgot the biblical injunction: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”38 As soon as Germain learned of Burgoyne’s capture of Ticondedroga, he congratulated King George on “a great and Glorious success.”39 The king, for his part, expressed his intention of offering Burgoyne a knighthood. Burgoyne turned it down. His reason for doing so is not known; Horace Walpole, who seldom had a good word for Burgoyne, speculated that he was miffed that he had not received the honour after his success in Portugal a decade earlier.40 Burgoyne stayed on the Royal Savage to supervise the portage of supplies and artillery past the falls that separated the south end of Lake Champlain from the north end of Lake George, and their dispatch in bateaux up Lake George.41 Meanwhile, he ordered Brigadier Simon Fraser, commanding a corps of 850 infantrymen, and Riedesel, with 1,100 German troops, to pursue the retreating rebels from New York State into the colony that was later to become the State of Vermont. They caught up with the rebels at Huberton (now Hubbardton, Vermont), an isolated community of nine farming families twenty miles to the southeast of Ticonderoga.42 Huberton was the first battle of the campaign. As the advance guard of Fraser’s corps approached shortly before dawn on 7 July, it ran into a hail of musket bullets. After a lethal exchange of fire that went on for over two hours, the Americans gave up in confusion and retreated when the British grenadiers rushed on them with their bayonets.43 The American resistance earned their opponents’ respect: according to a British officer, “the enemy … were very hard pressed in their retreat and they certainly behaved with great

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gallantry.”44 For Burgoyne, who learned of the battle later that day, it was a sharp reminder of what he had seen at Bunker Hill two years earlier: although the Americans gave ground, they fought with bravery, tenacity, and discipline for a cause that inspired them. For both sides, Huberton was costly. The British and Germans suffered 218 casualties: 70 dead and 148 wounded, none captured; while the Americans lost 375: 41 killed, 96 wounded, and 238 captured.45 After the battle, the British wounded lay on the battlefield with no appropriate equipment for moving them back to Ticonderoga. An officer of the grenadiers recalled: “Different propositions were made for the removing them, such as biers and hand-barrows, which were so very incommodious, that I remember to have been told that the wounded would rather be left where they were than move them in the then state of their wounds by such conveyances.”46 Despite their success in driving the Americans back and the favourable ratio of losses, Huberton was not a good result for the British. Their casualties, unlike those of the rebels, could not be replaced. A British officer asserted that, while the rebels suffered greater losses, “the rebel army was so numerous that their loss was not equally felt with ours.”47 Furthermore, the army was, in Burgoyne’s words, “very much fatigued.” Less than two weeks after the campaign began, they were short of provisions, and their tents and baggage had not caught up with them.48 These early losses suffered by Burgoyne’s army and its persistent logistical problems were harbingers of much worse to come. Riedesel’s force continued to pursue the Americans, who retreated to Skenesborough (now Whitehall, New York), eighteen miles to the south. The British troops followed, after attending to the wounded and burying the dead. They also took whatever they could find on the bodies of their prisoners, the wounded, and the dead.49 When Burgoyne and the rest of the army reached Skenesborough on 7 July, they found that the retreating Americans had burned down every house in the town, except for one stone dwelling, which he made his headquarters.50 A few days after he arrived at Skenesborough, Burgoyne wrote a revealing letter to Germain. The reader will recall that the king and his

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ministers had approved Burgoyne’s plan of the campaign, which called for Howe’s army to effect a junction with Burgoyne’s army at Albany, the northernmost navigable port on the Hudson River. This would have required Howe to fight his way from New York City past the American-held forts commanding the Hudson around West Point. As mentioned earlier, Howe showed no interest in joining forces with Burgoyne at Albany; perhaps he was confident that Burgoyne could fend for himself. Instead, on 23 July, three weeks after the Huberton battle, he sailed with his army south to capture Philadelphia, the capital of the nascent American nation. Although the approved plan for the 1777 campaign called for Burgoyne to place himself under Howe’s command once he reached Albany, Howe left for Philadelphia without giving Burgoyne any instructions. So now Burgoyne’s army, however many battles it might win, was making its way through the wilderness on an uncertain mission, with little likelihood of support. Even if he reached Albany, his army would not receive supplies or reinforcements coming up the Hudson from New York and would have to live off the countryside or depend on the uncertain help from Loyalists in the area. On 11 July Burgoyne wrote to Germain: Your Lordship will pardon me if I a little lament that my orders do not give me the latitude I ventured to propose in my original project for the campaign, to make a real effort instead of a feint upon New England. As things have turned out, were I at liberty to march in force immediately by my left, instead of my right, I should have little doubt of subduing before winter the provinces where the rebellion originated.51 Thus, although Burgoyne knew that the agreed-upon goal of his expedition – a juncture of his army with Howe’s army at Albany – was no longer a possibility, he believed – or professed to believe – that his orders required him to keep to the original plan.52 His orders were subject to interpretation: they said he should “act as exigencies may require.”53 Whether Howe’s decision to move south gave Burgoyne discretion to depart from his orders was later to become a point of

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contention when Burgoyne returned to London after the surrender at Saratoga.54 The difficulty of fighting a campaign 3,000 miles from home, in the era of sailing ships and before the invention of rapid communication, now became dismally apparent. If Burgoyne had requested permission from Germain in July to attack New England, no reply could have reached him before October. He might have persuaded himself that the circumstances gave him implied discretion. Why didn’t he act on that supposition, as General Napoleon or Admiral Nelson, audacious warriors of the next generation, might well have done in Burgoyne’s situation? He was sufficiently ambitious and bold, and enough of a gambler, to be tempted by the chance of victory and the lure of glory if he were to succeed. A politician as well as a soldier, he was perhaps too steeped in the British tradition of civilian control of the military to have acted with such independence. Burgoyne was fundamentally conservative in his thinking. He had risen to the rank of major general (he was to be promoted to lieutenant general on 29 August)55 and become a member of Parliament as a product and supporter of the British military, political, and social system, and one can speculate that he never seriously considered any act that would transgress it. In any case, he kept to the campaign plan that he had drafted and the king had approved, probably hoping that his army would eventually prevail in a pitched battle with the main American army and force the Americans to sue for peace. Burgoyne had originally planned to take his army by boat on Lake George to Fort George at the southern tip of the lake. Since the British controlled the waters, his plan was feasible and would have avoided a slow and arduous land journey. But now he changed his mind, later defending the decision mainly on the ground that the water journey would first require the army to return northwards to Fort Ticonderoga, an apparent retreat that might lower the morale of his troops and encourage the rebels.56 Of course, Burgoyne could have avoided the problem in the first place by not pursuing the enemy from Ticonderoga south to Skenesborough (or even to Huberton); his preoccupation with aggressive pursuit of a relatively small American force

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seems to have blinded him to the difficulties of the land route and the delays it would entail. Historians of the Saratoga campaign agree that it was a serious mistake.57 While the army waited at Skenesborough until 23 July for tents and other supplies to catch up, the American General Philip Schuyler took advantage of the sixteen-day delay to do everything possible to obstruct Burgoyne’s army and deny it support and sustenance from the countryside.58 To reach its next stop, Fort Edward, twenty miles to the south, on the east bank of the Hudson, the army had to cross terrain covered with thick forests and laced by streams and swamps inhabited by rattlesnakes.59 Schuyler sent 1,000 men with axes to cut down trees and lay them across the roads that the British would have to take, dam up streams, and destroy bridges.60 Before Burgoyne’s heavily equipped army could move, his men had to clear a road through the forest. Schuyler also pursued a scorched-earth policy of destroying dwellings, barns, and crops on the army’s path to Albany. On 26 August the army reached Fort Ann, the halfway point of the journey, and found it completely burned to the ground.61 The journey from Skenesborough to Fort Edward in midsummer heat was slow and exhausting even for seasoned troops. A foot soldier carried on his back a knapsack containing sixty pounds of clothing and equipment, including sixty rounds of ammunition, a blanket, a haversack with provisions, a canteen, and part of the equipment for a shared tent.62 Constant rain inundated the roads and brought on flies by day and mosquitoes by night to torment the soldiers.63 The army reached Fort Edward on 30 July and remained there for six weeks, waiting for his artillery and supplies to arrive.64 While the army sat there, American forces gathered around him. Burgoyne’s army was now alone, unable to act in unison, or even to communicate, with Howe while he was at sea on his way to Pennsylvania. The farming communities on the line of march were widely dispersed, and Burgoyne had scarce Loyalist support. On 20 August, before crossing the Hudson, he wrote to Germain: “The great bulk of the country is undoubtedly with the Congress, in principle and zeal; and their measures are executed with secrecy and dispatch that are not to

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be equaled.”65 Rebel control of the region made communication difficult between Burgoyne and the British garrison that Howe had left in New York under the command of General Henry Clinton. Burgoyne did not know whether any of the messengers he sent to New York arrived; two of them were captured by the rebels and hanged.66 In early August, Burgoyne, encamped at Fort Edward on the east bank of the Hudson, received information from an American Loyalist officer that the Americans had established at Bennington, forty-three miles to the east, a major supply depot guarded by only 300 or 400 soldiers.67 Burgoyne ordered Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, a commander of German dragoons, to take a German–British force of 800, along with 100 members of the Mohawk tribe, on a raid to Bennington and to send back to him, as soon as he could, “a large supply of horses for the use of the troops, together with cattle and carriages.”68 Colonel Baum was not the best choice to lead the raid: his training was in European-style fighting – pitched battles between armies – he did not speak a word of English, and he lacked coolness when the situation called for that quality.69 Baum’s force, partly composed of cavalrymen wearing heavy boots and carrying swords weighing ten pounds, got off to a slow start.70 The entire countryside was soon aware of the impending raid, foreclosing any possibility of its achieving surprise. By the time Baum reached the neighbourhood of Bennington, the American Brigadier General John Stark, a veteran of the French and Indian War, had collected 2,000 men there to oppose the raiders.71 When the next day Baum became aware of an increasing number of skirmishers in the surrounding forest, he seems to have lost his nerve. Instead of attacking, he sent word back to Burgoyne asking for reinforcements and deployed his 800 men in widely spread-out defensive positions outside the town. During the night of 15–16 August, a number of Americans approached Baum’s lines holding up white pieces of paper and announcing that they were Loyalists who wished to join the British forces. Although Burgoyne had warned him of the possibility of such deceptive tactics, Baum naively allowed them to come between the opposing lines. At dawn Stark attacked Baum’s forces, while the supposed

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Loyalists who had infliltrated Baum’s lines began firing at them at close range. As soon as the engagement began, the Mohawks accompanying Baum’s force hid behind trees and then fled into the forest.72 The result was a total American victory, with most of the British– German force killed or made captive. Dr Wasmus, a German army surgeon who accompanied Baum’s troops, was taken prisoner while attending to the wounded. As he was walking, under guard, to the nearby town of Bennington, he saw Colonel Baum, “[w]ho was lying completely naked on a cart. He had been shot in the abdomen and was crying and begging that the cart should go slow, but the men did not understand our language [i.e., German].” When they got to the town, the cart stopped at a house, where Baum was laid on the dirt floor.73 He died soon after. As soon as he got word of Baum’s difficulties, Burgoyne had sent a relief expedition under another German officer, Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich Breymann, with 650 German troops; but by the time it arrived at Bennington that afternoon, the battle was over. As soon as Breymann arrived, Stark’s men attacked. Breymann’s troops resisted until their ammunition ran low; Breymann was able to escape with two-thirds of his men; the rest were killed or taken prisoner. At a cost of 70 American casualties (30 killed and 40 wounded), Stark’s men killed 207 soldiers and officers of Burgoyne’s army and captured over 700.74 The casualties were heavy among the small number of Canadians who had joined the army; after the battle, only about 75 remained.75 Bennington was a stunning defeat for Burgoyne; it increased his supply shortages instead of relieving them and resulted in the loss of a substantial part of his army. At about the same time, Burgoyne suffered another reverse. The plan for Burgoyne’s expedition called for Lieutenant Colonel Barry St Leger to lead a mixed force of 2,000 British soldiers, Canadians, Loyalists, and Native Americans from Oswego on Lake Ontario and down the Mohawk River, and to join Burgoyne west of the Hudson. On his way there, St Leger laid siege to American-occupied Fort Stanwix.76 Many of St Leger’s Native Americans deserted, and when he got word that the American General Benedict Arnold was on his way with an army

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of 2,000 to relieve the fort, St Leger, finding himself outnumbered and outgunned, retreated to Canada. Misfortunes followed in rapid succession.77 At a council at Fort Edward on 4 August, Burgoyne was astonished to learn that the Native American allies from western tribes who had joined his army less than three weeks earlier had decided to return home.78 And then a week later, Burgoyne received a message from General Clinton in New York that Howe was out of reach, en route to Philadelphia, and that he, Clinton, lacked troops to make an effective diversion to help Burgoyne. It was in this context, after the calamitous defeat at Bennington, dwindling supplies, and a much-diminished army, that General Burgoyne made the fateful decision to cross the Hudson from Camp Edward and March toward Saratoga. In retrospect, the decision seems rash. There were good reasons not to cross the Hudson. Retreat to Canada, though difficult, was still possible. Burgoyne’s expedition, begun with about 7,400 men, had been reduced to about 4,500 from battle deaths and wounds, prisoners taken by the Americans, sickness, desertion, and the need to leave garrisons behind at Ticonderoga and the other forts in order to protect the supply line from Canada.79 (Although Burgoyne had assured Howe after the fall of Ticonderoga that the fortress would be garrisoned by troops from Canada, Carleton had denied Burgoyne’s request to supply the troops.)80 Meanwhile, as the army dwindled in size, the American forces gathered around it in increasing numbers. In any battle on the western side of the Hudson, Burgoyne’s army would be vastly outnumbered. Once the army crossed the Hudson, its supply line from Canada would be cut off and the army would have to fight without provisions or hospital supplies.81 And supposing Burgoyne was successful in defeating the Americans and reaching Albany, he had no orders as to what he was then supposed to do. Yet Burgoyne saw strong reasons to cross the Hudson. Despite Howe’s abandonment, there still was a small chance of help from New York. When Howe and his army set sail for Philadelphia in July, he left Clinton, his second-in-command, in New York with an adequate force to protect the city but not sufficient for an expedition up the Hudson,

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where the Americans occupied the fortified heights. Clinton was one of the few British generals who understood that Howe’s decision to move south gravely threatened Burgoyne’s army and the British ability to suppress the rebellion. Burgoyne knew that Clinton was expecting reinforcements from England, and as soon as he received them he might come to Burgoyne’s aid. Perhaps more immediately of concern was that for Burgoyne, to retreat to Canada without having fought a decisive battle with the Americans would be dangerous as well as humiliating for him personally. As he considered his next move, the fate of Admiral John Byng twenty years earlier may have crossed his mind. Byng, the commander of Britain’s Mediterranean fleet in the Seven Years War, was convicted by a court martial of negligence and executed by a firing squad on the deck of his flagship, after he retreated from Minorca, leaving the island in the hands of the French.82 Voltaire wrote: “In [England] it is useful to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others (pour encourager les autres).”83 Burgoyne needed no such encouragement; his nature and experience both called for him to attack. Several times during the campaign he had told his officers and troops that he would never retreat. Except for his brief foray into New York State under Carleton a year earlier, his only previous experience as a battlefield commander was in Portugal fifteen years earlier. It was a heady experience, not easily forgotten.84 Later, defending his decision to cross the Hudson, Burgoyne told Parliament: I am still convinced, that no proof that could have been brought from appearances, intelligence or reasoning, could have justified me to my country, have saved me from the condemnation of my profession, or produced pardon within my own breast, had I not advanced, and tried a battle with the enemy.85 It is a credit to Burgoyne’s leadership that his well-trained professional army, which included elite regiments with traditions of battles and campaigns going back centuries,86 was still intact after the depriv-

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ations and hardships it had suffered and looked forward to a fight with the enemy.87 An officer who served in the expedition later asserted: It is impossible for any army to have been in higher spirits than they were at that time [when they crossed the Hudson], or more desirous of coming to an engagement with the enemy … I think that General Burgoyne’s character would not have stood very high with the army, this country, or the enemy, had he halted at Fort Edward.88 On 13 and 14 September 1777, Burgoyne’s army crossed the Hudson on a floating bridge made up of boats chained together and marched to Saratoga.89 At that point, as Julius Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon, the die was cast.

Chapter 13

Dangerous Allies Several months before Burgoyne’s army set out from Canada on the Saratoga campaign, the decision was made in London to employ Native American tribes as fighters, scouts, and foragers, and also to terrorize the colonists.1 The British decision makers disagreed on the question. Germain wanted to use every means available, including Native Americans, to win the war. Carleton, who, unlike Germain, had experience with the tribes during the French and Indian War, thought, presciently, that they would be difficult to control and that their inevitable depredations would stiffen the Americans’ willingness to fight.2 It was entirely predictable that they would scalp and torture their captives, including non-combatants, and that American newspapers would seize upon their atrocities as propaganda to stimulate patriotic zeal and hatred of the British. Nevertheless, Burgoyne went along with the decision; he knew that if he did not use the Native Americans, they would offer their services to the American rebels. Once the Revolutionary War began, both sides enlisted Native American tribes as allies. The Americans were first. Almost immediately after hostilities began in 1775, they employed Native Americans as auxiliaries against the British in the siege of Boston; and a year later the Continental Congress authorized George Washington to enlist Native American fighters.3 The British were quick to follow. Until the beginning of the American Revolution, Native Americans were accustomed to thinking of the British as a single nation. When that nation split into two warring camps, the Native Americans were

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forced to make difficult decisions. On the whole they tried to remain neutral, but both the British and the Americans placed heavy pressure on them to choose a side; any meeting of a Native American tribe with one side was met with hostility by the other. The outbreak of the war created an unwelcome threat to the Native Americans’ existing arrangements with the British. After years of dealing with the white man, they had adopted many features of European life. Trading with the British created close ties of interest, though not friendship. An historian of the Iroquois tribes writes: With the increasing white encroachments on Indian lands and the consequent depletion of game animals, as well as the changing way of life of the Indians as they adopted many European items of dress and economic life, there was an increasing dependence of the Indians on the whites to supply these necessities, especially as Indian culture was as yet incapable of making and repairing guns, axes, hoes, and kettles, spinning cloth, and producing other materials that had become a necessity to the red man’s way of life.4 In May 1777, shortly after he arrived in Quebec to begin preparing for the expedition, Burgoyne informed Lord Germain, the secretary of state for America, that he was recruiting Native American fighters.5 He soon found this more difficult than anticipated. Hoping to enlist 1,000 before beginning the campaign, he had to be satisfied with about 400.6 The Native Americans’ reluctance to enlist was due partly to their wish to remain neutral, and partly to the fact that they had no real cause in the war, except that it provided an opportunity for plunder.7 Some of the Native Americans that Burgoyne initially enlisted in Canada came from semi-domesticated tribes around the St Lawrence River.8 Later, they were joined by more warlike tribes of the Six Nations of the Iroquois: the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras. These men were ferocious fighters, known for torturing prisoners. Occasionally the Iroquois would adopt a captive as a member of the tribe, but in most cases the prisoner faced a horrible death. 9

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The assistance the Native Americans were expected to provide was less as soldiers than as terrorists, whose barbarity, the British hoped, would cow the Americans into submission. An American later gave a plausible explanation of Burgoyne’s attitude toward the use of Native American allies: “While, on the one hand, he attempted to mitigate the natural ferocity of the Indians, he endeavoured, on the other hand, to render them an object of terror to those who persisted in resistance.”10 On 21 June 1777, nine days after his army began its journey from Canada into upstate New York, Burgoyne met with his Native American allies at his camp on the west bank of Lake Champlain. There he laid down some rules of conduct that illustrated his concern about the decision to take them on as allies: I positively forbid bloodshed when you are not opposed in arms. Aged men, women, children, and prisoners must be held secure from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict. You shall receive compensation for the prisoners you take, but you shall be called to account for scalps. You will be allowed to take the scalps of the dead when killed [in warfare], but on no account … are they to be taken from the wounded or even the dying; and still less pardonable, if possible, will it be held to kill men in that condition … Should the enemy dare to countenance acts of barbarity towards those who fall into their hands, [you may] retaliate.11 The leader of the Iroquois replied that they would comply with the rules, but it is doubtful that the Native Americans could make any sense of them, let alone follow them. Julius Frederick Wasmus, a surgeon attached to Burgoyne’s German troops, wrote in his diary that three days after the meeting Native Americans attached to the army captured six rebels and scalped all of them alive; and on 1 July they captured two rebels and scalped them.12 By the time Burgoyne captured Fort Ticonderoga in early July, he no longer had any illusions as to whether he could control his Native American allies, writing to Germain:

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[I]t is not possible to draw [the Native Americans] from the plunder … If … they are indulged, [like] spoiled children … they grow more unreasonable and importunate upon every new favour; were they left to themselves, enormities too horrid to think of would ensue, guilty and innocent, women and infants, would be a common prey.13 Wasmus noted in his diary that, while the rebels also employed Native Americans, these Native Americans were “very much afraid of our Savages. Orders were given today that no sutler [i.e., a person who sold provisions to the army] was to sell rum to the Savages … This is very good, for when the Savages are drunk, they scalp both friend and foe.”14 Two weeks later, Wasmus wrote that some Native Americans had captured a nineteen-year-old American, had bound him hand and foot, and were about to start a dance before scalping him, when some German soldiers from an English regiment came upon the scene and rescued the young man, who by then was half dead from fright.15 On 17 July, another 1,800 Native Americans, many of them from the Iroquois tribes, joined Burgoyne’s army. According to Wasmus, the Mohawks were the most dangerous: “The other Savages, who had been with our army, stepped aside in fear while looking at them with frightened eyes.”16 Two days later, Burgoyne, accompanied by several of his officers and a guard detachment of fifty soldiers, met the newcomers at their camp. He was greeted by La Corne St Luc, a Frenchman who lived with the Iroquois tribes and had gained their confidence (he had been director of Indian affairs in Quebec before France ceded Canada to the British in 1763). An elaborate ceremony followed. The Native Americans placed themselves in two rows opposite each other. St Luc led Burgoyne through the rows to a chair in a large arbour, while his officers took their seats on trees that the Native Americans had cut down. Once everyone was seated, the oldest Native American shook hands with Burgoyne and spoke to him in his own language, which St Luc interpreted. He said they had come from as far away as 3,000 miles, as soon as the snow and ice permitted. They were there to show their loyalty to the British king and would do as he wished.

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Speaking in French, Burgoyne replied that some disloyal subjects had started a rebellion, and that the king regarded them as children whom he wanted to chastise, not destroy. He then repeated the instructions he had given to the Native Americans a month earlier. They had permission to scalp soldiers they had killed in battle but not prisoners or wounded persons; they would be paid for any prisoner they brought in alive; and they were not to harm old people, women, or children. Following Burgoyne’s speech, the chief led the Native Americans in a war song and dance, whereupon Burgoyne (despite his previous order not to sell rum to the Native Americans) presented them with a barrel of rum. Wasmus described the scene in his diary: M. St. Luc came first in a green dress, which was trimmed on the seams with silver fringe; he danced in front of the general with much pleasing deportment in the Savages’ fashion while singing a war song … Their singing is partly harmonious and rhythmical; at times, however, it resembles the howling of wolves or dogs. They make their music on a round vessel made of tin or wood over which a hide has been stretched; one of them hits the vessel on top with sticks, a few on the side. They carry this type of drum around the circle along with a horn on which they blow while having clubs and wooden swords in their hands.17 Soon after leaving the camp, the Native Americans lost two men who were shot by American sharpshooters. Wasmus writes that, following Burgoyne’s directive, they went to him and asked for permission to take revenge. Their request was specific: they would roast and eat two of the first three rebel prisoners they took, and after the third had witnessed it they would send him back to the rebels to tell his comrades what he saw. It is not known how Burgoyne responded or whether the Native Americans got their revenge.18 Fear of the Native Americans seized the countryside through which Burgoyne’s army passed. On 13 July, Wasmus wrote in his diary: “Last night 29 deserters [presumably from the American forces] came to us and asserted that many more would like to join us but abstained

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for fear of the Savages.” And three days later he wrote: “Last night, a few more deserters came to us also asserting that many Royalists are staying in the wilderness, who, for fear of falling into the hands of the Savages, are in hiding.”19 The most consequential of the Native Americans’ atrocities was the murder and scalping of Jane McCrae.20 She was an eighteen-year-old American whose father, a clergyman, had died. Her brother, a Patriot, had fled south to escape Burgoyne’s invading forces. Miss McCrae continued to live in the neighbourhood of Lake George, probably because she was engaged to marry Captain David Jones, an American serving in Burgoyne’s army. According to most accounts, Jones, concerned for his fiancée’s safety, hired two Native Americans who were attached to the army to bring her safely to his camp; he promised them a barrel of rum if they did. The Native Americans brought her most of the way to the camp but, eager to receive the reward, got into a dispute as to which one of them would bring her to Captain Jones. In a rage lest the other get the rum, one of them killed McCrae, either by shooting or tomahawking her, scalped her, and presented her scalp to the horrified Jones.21 Jane McCrae’s murder quickly became a cause célèbre. As soon as he heard about it, Burgoyne went to the Native Americans’ camp and demanded that they give up the murderer for trial and execution. St Luc, the Frenchman, who knew the Native Americans and their way of thinking, urged Burgoyne to pardon Jane McCrae’s murderer. He said the Native Americans were unhappy at the restraints that Burgoyne had placed upon them, to which Burgoyne replied, “he would rather lose every Indian in his army than connive at their enormities.”22 But Burgoyne reluctantly pardoned the man after St Luc told him that if the execution took place, the Native Americans would either join the rebels or return to their homes, massacring every settlement they passed on their way.23 The McCrae affair illustrated Burgoyne’s dilemma as no other event could. Since he was unable to control the Native American fighters, continuing to use them as allies made him an accomplice in their atrocities, but if he refused to do so they might well have gone over to the enemy or committed even worse offences. Moreover, he had

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given the American colonists a powerful propaganda weapon. On 14 August, an American newsletter claimed, improbably, that Native Americans allied with Burgoyne’s army had scalped 700 men, women, and children on the banks of Lake Champlain during the early phase of the campaign.24 Later in the Saratoga campaign, when Burgoyne complained to the American General Horatio Gates that some British prisoners of war had been mistreated, Gates, with real or feigned anger, offered his own inflammatory version of what actually happened: that the famous Lieutenant General Burgoyne, in whom the fine gentleman is united with the soldier and the scholar, should hire the savages of America to scalp Europeans, and the descendants of Europeans; that he should pay a price for each scalp so barbarously taken, is more than will be believed in Europe until authenticated facts shall … confirm the truth of the horrid tale. Miss McCrae, a young lady, lovely to the sight, of virtuous character and amiable disposition, engaged to an officer of your army, was, with other women and children, taken out of a house near Fort Edward, carried into the woods, and there scalped and mangled in a most shocking manner.25 In England, opponents of the war used the Native Americans’ depredations to buttress their arguments. The statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke gave a rousing speech in the House of Commons parodying Burgoyne’s instructions to his Native American fighters. He said that Burgoyne had asked these savages to pick up their tomahawks but not to harm any living man, woman, or child, though he would pay them for scalps of the dead. Burke supposed that there was a riot on Tower Hill in London, where the king kept a menagerie of lions and hyenas, and that the keeper of the zoo was ordered to open the gates and tell the animals to step out but not to hurt anyone. The House shook with deafening applause; even Prime Minister Lord North, who strenuously supported the war against the American rebels, was overcome with laughter.26

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Burgoyne had other problems with his Native American allies. They stole the army’s horses, which were essential for towing artillery and supplies. On 2 August Burgoyne issued an order forbidding anyone from buying a horse from a Native American.27 And despite their warlike nature, they were not much use to him as fighters. They had no stake in the war. In the Battle of Bennington, the Native Americans fled as soon as the firing began. Many deserted, either to return to their homes to help with the autumn harvest or simply because, after the American victory at Bennington, they saw the British as losers in the war. Burgoyne was dismayed when, two months into the campaign, the leader of the allied warlike tribes announced that they would return home.28 Their decision was probably due to a need to harvest their crops and a lack of good opportunities for plunder. After his surrender at Saratoga, Burgoyne told the American General Philip Schuyler that he would have given all of his Native Americans, provincials, and volunteers for fifty British troops, and that he valued them at less than one-half a farthing per cartload.29 Nevertheless, there were instances when members of Burgoyne’s army showed respect to their Native American comrades in arms. When a Native American chief was killed in battle against the rebels, a procession of sixteen German dragoons carried a symbolic musket to place on his grave and followed by firing three volleys into the air.30 Employing Native Americans as allies turned out to be a huge mistake. In summing up the reasons for his surrender at Saratoga, Burgoyne gave “the total defection of the Indians” as one of them, but there was a different and bigger reason why employing them became an important factor leading to his defeat. Strategists agreed that the rebellion could be suppressed only if a large portion of the populace remained loyal to Britain.31 In modern parlance, it would be necessary to win their hearts and minds. The atrocities perpetrated by the Native Americans could not have better served the rebels’ cause, by tarnishing the British and their actions in North America with barbarity. It is unlikely that any British general could have successfully used Native American fighters in the war, but Burgoyne was especially illequipped for the task. High-minded and humane, he knew better than

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any other high-ranking officer in the British army how to wring devotion and dedicated service from his soldiers by treating them with firm discipline, but as thinking men. Native American tribes were different; neither threats nor cajolery could impose upon them the discipline and loyalty that he knew how to get from European troops. Despite their adoption of European tools, clothing, and weapons, culturally the Iroquois still lived in the Stone Age. Whether or not Burgoyne understood this, he was powerless to bend them to the large purposes of his expedition from Canada. The notion then current in British government circles that Native American terrorism could help win the war was misguided. Instead of intimidating the Americans, it inflamed their patriotic passions. Throughout the colonies, newspapers expressed and stimulated horror at the atrocities, which in many cases were exaggerated or simply untrue, and particularly at the very real murder of Jane McCrae. Burgoyne’s early assessment that the Native Americans would be useless turned out to be an understatement.

Chapter 14

The Saratoga Campaign After Crossing the Hudson

Once arrived on the west bank of the Hudson, Burgoyne’s army made camp on high ground near the small town of Saratoga.1 Eleven miles to the south, an American army consisting of regular troops and militia, under the command of General Horatio Gates, erected defensive fortifications to stop Burgoyne’s march southward to Albany.2 After waiting five days on account of heavy rain, Burgoyne attacked on 19 September 1777. It was the first of the two battles of Saratoga.3 It was also the first major battle that Burgoyne fought in his career. Burgoyne’s battle plan was a classic manoeuvre, called an enfilade by the military. The British–German army would advance on the Americans in three columns. The right-hand column, under the command of Brigadier General Simon Fraser, would swing two miles to the west (away from the river), cross a deep, densely wooded ravine, and attack the American left flank, hoping to roll up the American line. Meanwhile, the centre column, commanded by Burgoyne, would attack the American centre; while the left column under generals Phillips and Riedesel, with the bulk of the artillery, would advance along the west bank of the Hudson to protect the road to Albany and be ready to support Burgoyne’s column. With his three-pronged offence, Burgoyne hoped to envelop and destroy the enemy.4 Burgoyne’s plan might have been successful if the Americans had co-operated by remaining quiet until the British completed their flanking movement. Although the three columns accurately coordinated

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their manoeuvres, the American General Benedict Arnold persuaded Gates to allow him to attack while the three British columns were still spread out. When Fraser’s men on the British right flank crossed the ravine, the Americans were ready for them. The battle resolved itself into a murderous slugfest lasting over four hours, in which the British and German soldiers were greatly outnumbered. During the battle, fresh troops continually reinforced the Americans, while there were no reinforcements to replace the British and Germans who fell. Burgoyne, on horseback and conspicuous in his bright red uniform, was in the thick of the battle. A soldier wrote in his diary: General Burgoyne … behaved with great personal bravery, he shunned no danger; his presence and conduct animated the troops (for they greatly loved the general); he delivered his orders with precision and coolness; and in the heat, fury, and danger of the fight maintained those true characteristics of the soldier – serenity, fortitude and undaunted intrepidity.5 Burgoyne’s soldiers admired him for his bravery, but willingness to risk his life is not always a virtue in a general. Marshal Maurice de Saxe, the great eighteenth-century commander and scholar of the art of war, called it a mistake for the commander of an army to personally engage in a battle: “Relieved from the hurry of the action, he will be able to make his observations better, will preserve his judgment more free, and be in a capacity to reap greater advantages from the different situations of the enemy’s troops during the course of the engagement.”6 It may be that Burgoyne was trying to relive his heady experience of fifteen years earlier when he led a cavalry regiment in Portugal. Meanwhile, Gates directed the American forces from his headquarters two miles behind the battle lines. American sharpshooters, armed with rifles, sat in the branches of high trees in the rear of their own line and picked off those whose tabs on their uniforms identified them as officers. Whether by luck or because his men surrounded and protected him, Burgoyne was unharmed. The British artillery was highly effective and probably pre-

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vented the army’s complete destruction; but American marksmen soon targeted the gunners, killing or wounding most of them, including their commanding officer, and killing all the horses that hauled the guns. When the British retreated, they had to leave the guns behind, to be captured by the Americans.7 Burgoyne, who believed in the physical and psychological efficacy of cold steel, repeatedly ordered the men to charge the enemy with their bayonets. All of these charges failed except when, at the end of the day, they drove the rebels from the field.8 As in the Battle of Huberton in July, success came at a terrible cost to an already depleted army. Over 500 British and German soldiers were killed, wounded, or taken captive in the battle; in one regiment, two-thirds of the men were casualties. The American losses were about half as many.9 In the formal terms of eighteenth-century warfare, the British won the First Battle of Saratoga: when the fight was over, they were masters of the battlefield. But, as in other battles of the Revolutionary War, the Americans, with their virtually unlimited reserves available to replace their losses quickly and their refusal to admit defeat, ended up relatively stronger than they were before the action. After he surrendered a month later, Burgoyne admitted to Lord Germain that “no fruits, honour excepted, were attained by the … victory.”10 Although Burgoyne briefly had the rebels on the defensive, he failed to pursue them, perhaps because of the losses suffered in the battle and the weariness of the survivors. As night fell, the horror continued, even increased. Severely wounded men were left on the field because any attempt to rescue them ran the risk of being killed by American sharpshooters. The groans and cries of the wounded continued throughout the night, disturbing the sleep of the survivors encamped nearby. The cries from the wounded were mixed with the howls of the wolves that came out to eat the flesh of the dead and dying men.11 Burgoyne might have renewed the fight the next day had he known that the Americans were running out of ammunition and were in disarray because Gates and his second-in-command, Arnold, were bitter enemies.12 Having lost a substantial part of his dwindling army and

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failing to break through the defences of his tenacious enemy, Burgoyne decided to pause. Two days after the battle, a glimmer of hope appeared. A messenger from General Henry Clinton in New York arrived at Burgoyne’s camp with a coded message. The reader will recall that Clinton had disagreed vigorously with Howe’s decision to take his army to Pennsylania; he believed that the war would be won or lost in the north, the heart of the rebellion. Howe had left Clinton in command of a British garrison of 7,500 troops to defend New York from any attack by Washington’s army.13 Until he received reinforcements from England, Clinton did not believe he could spare troops for a foray up the Hudson to help Burgoyne. Clinton’s message told Burgoyne that reinforcements from England were expected to arrive in New York and that Clinton would begin his strike up the Hudson on or about 22 September. Burgoyne sent the messenger back with a reply stressing the importance of creating a diversion to force Gates to detach troops from the army facing Burgoyne. He added that he intended to wait where he was until 12 October.14 Clinton never received the message. According to Roger Lamb, a soldier in Burgoyne’s army, the messenger was given Burgoyne’s reply inside a silver bullet and was told to swallow the bullet if he was captured. Apparently thinking the British had already taken Fort Montgomery, one of the forts on the Hudson Highlands, the messenger announced himself there and asked to be taken to General Clinton. Little did he know that the Americans still held the fort and that, by a fatal coincidence, it was commanded by George Clinton, a general in the American army, who was also governor of New York State, not the British General Henry Clinton. When brought before the general, the messenger realized his mistake and swallowed the bullet. He was forced to take an emetic, causing him to vomit up the bullet containing Burgoyne’s message. The Americans hanged him as a spy.15 For the next two weeks, the two opposing armies camped on the battlefield, nearly within cannon shot of each other, so close that they could hear each other’s voices. At night, the Americans harassed the British troops by constant firing. Burgoyne later recalled:

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By being habituated to fire, our soldiers became indifferent to it, and were capable of eating or sleeping when it was very near them: I do not believe either officer or soldier ever slept during that interval without his cloaths, or that any general officer, or commander of a regiment, passed a single night without being upon his legs occasionally at different hours, and constantly an hour before day-light.16 Meanwhile, on 18 September, the day before the First Battle of Saratoga, the Americans had captured the British flotilla on Lake George, effectively cutting Burgoyne’s communications with Canada and making retreat much more difficult.17 The situation was becoming increasingly desperate, as the army was running out of food. On the same day, Clinton sailed up the Hudson with 3,000 troops, and four days later he overcame the American fortresses on the river.18 He had not planned go farther up the river than that, his intention being only to force Gates to take the pressure off Burgoyne, not to attempt to join forces with him. But when a messenger arrived from Burgoyne informing him that his army would run out of food by 20 October and that the rebels had made retreat to Canada virtually impossible, Clinton changed his plans. He sent General John Vaughan with 1,700 troops up the river to try to relieve the pressure on Burgoyne; but when this force arrived at Kingston, fifty-six miles south of Albany, they found large numbers of armed rebels on both sides of the river and turned back. By then it no longer mattered: Burgoyne had already begun surrender negotiations with the American General Horatio Gates.19 The consequence of Clinton’s vain effort to relieve Burgoyne was that it encouraged Burgoyne to remain where he was, when he might have tried to retreat to Canada when retreat was still possible. During the eighteen days – 19 September to 7 October – that elapsed between the two battles of Saratoga, the American forces grew in numbers, while Burgoyne’s army, now down to fewer than 4,000, was weakened from wounds and lack of food and hospital supplies. On 3 October,

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Burgoyne reduced the army’s bread (or flour) ration to one pound a day “in order to lengthen out the provisions.”20 On the same day, still expecting relief from Clinton, Burgoyne announced to his army that he had every reason to believe that they would soon receive help from “powerful armies,”21 an exaggeration of Clinton’s force, which Burgoyne perhaps believed necessary in order to give his troops some hope. Two days later, Burgoyne held a council of war, at which two of his generals, Riedesel and Fraser, advised him to retreat; still hoping that Clinton would arrive in time to force Gates to relieve the pressure, Burgoyne rejected the advice.22 He later gave an additional explanation for this decision: If he retreated he would leave Gates’s army free to operate against Howe in Pennsylvania. Four days after the surrender, he wrote to Germain: “A critical junction of Mr. Gates’s force with Mr. Washington might possibly decide the fate of the war; the failure of my junction with Sir Harry Clinton, or the loss of my retreat to Canada could only be a partial misfortune.”23 In short, Burgoyne was suggesting he was willing to sacrifice his army for Howe – and for Britain. When he wrote these words he was angry, exhausted, and struggling to justify his conduct to his superiors in London. It is impossible to know whether it was actually one of his reasons for deciding not to try to retreat to Canada after the First Battle of Saratoga, or whether it was a later rationalization. Still hoping that assistance from Clinton was on the way,24 Burgoyne decided to throw down most of his remaining chips in one final wager. He would probe the American line in force to see whether he could still force a passage to Albany. In the early afternoon of 7 October, Burgoyne and his three most senior officers, generals Phillips, Riedesel, and Fraser, led a “reconnaissance in force” of 1,500 British and German troops, supported by ten cannons, against the left (western) side of the American line. Before they could implement their plan, they were met by a hail of bullets from Americans emerging from the surrounding forest. Twelve thousand Americans attacked on all sides. In less than an hour the British and Germans were forced to retreat in order to prevent being cut off from their camp. After that, the main effort of Burgoyne and the other commanders was to rally the troops

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to execute an orderly withdrawal. A rout was avoided, but six of the ten cannons had to be abandoned because all of the horses had been killed and most of the artillerymen killed or wounded.25 The Americans, led by General Arnold, pursued the retreating army and attacked their camp. Fighting from entrenched positions, Burgoyne’s men were able to repulse them, wounding Arnold in the leg. In this final phase of the Second Battle of Saratoga, Colonel Breymann, who had led the unsuccessful attempt to relieve Colonel Baum at Bennington, was killed. The night put an end to the action.26 The 7 October battle was the final disaster for Burgoyne and his army. Well over half of of the British force engaged in the battle were casualties: 278 were killed, 331 wounded, and 285 taken prisoner. Among the dead was one British general, Simon Fraser, who was shot by a sharpshooter as he was rallying his fleeing soldiers to turn around and fight. He was buried the next day under one of the British fortifications of their camp; the British officers were incensed that the Americans “kept up a brisk cannonade during the whole of the funeral service.”27 The Americans lost an estimated 30 killed and 100 wounded in the battle.28 Major John Acland, the commander of a battalion of British grenadiers, was wounded in both legs and taken prisoner in the 7 October battle. His wife, Lady Harriet Acland, who accompanied the army, persuaded a British army chaplain to go with her to the American camp to join her husband. Carrying a letter from Burgoyne to the American General Gates asking him to treat her well, she and the chaplain set out down the Hudson in a rowboat, accompanied by her maidservant and the major’s valet. Once they passed the American lines, they were challenged by an American sentry on the bank of the river, who refused to let them come ashore. After a night out in the cold they eventually were allowed to land and were received hospitably by Gates at his headquarters, where Lady Acland was reunited with her husband. He recovered and arrived back in British-occupied New York in January 1778, in an exchange of prisoners.29 After the Second Battle of Saratoga, Burgoyne knew that his only remaining options were to surrender or to retreat north to his camp

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at Saratoga and wait, still hoping that Clinton would arrive in time to save him. He decided to retreat, by night to reduce the chance of an enemy attack. Burgoyne later described his army when it arrived at Saratoga at daybreak on 9 October: [It was] in such a state of fatigue, that the men for the most part had not strength or inclination to cut wood and make fires, but rather sought sleep in their wet cloaths upon the wet ground under the continuing rain, and it was not till after day-light that the artillery and the last of the troops … took a position upon the heights and in the redoubts formerly constructed.30 The Baroness Riedesel and her three young daughters continued to share the hardships suffered by Burgoyne’s army. Her diary provides a picture of Burgoyne in the last days before the surrender. At one point during the retreat the baroness asked the army’s adjutant general to let Burgoyne know there were wounded officers who had had nothing to eat; and although the army was driving cattle along with it, none of the animals had been slaughtered for food. Within fifteen minutes Burgoyne came to her “and thanked me very pathetically for having reminded him of his duty. He added, moreover, that a general was much to be pitied when he was not properly served nor his commands obeyed.” He then ordered that provisions be distributed to the wounded officers.31 The baroness was soaked to the skin and had no place to change her clothes when she arrived at Saratoga that morning. She writes that General Phillips told her that Burgoyne had halted because he was tired and invited her to join him and the other generals for supper. It is hardly surprising that Burgoyne looked forward to an evening’s relief from the horrors of war, but the baroness was something of a puritan and disapproved of his hedonistic side. She wrote: “He spent half the nights in singing and drinking and amusing himself with the wife of the commissary, who was his mistress, and who, as well as he, loved champagne.”32 We do not know whether the night after the army’s retreat to Saratoga was such an occasion, but it is easy to imagine Burgoyne, hope of victory all but gone, deciding that there would be no

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harm in a last bit of revelry before he had to face the reality of the next day. Although there still seemed to be a possibility of help from Clinton, Burgoyne’s army was reaching the end of its endurance. Starving, thirsty – even water was difficult to obtain at Saratoga – and utterly exhausted, the army was down to 3,500 effective soldiers, fewer than half the number who had set out from Canada in June. Burgoyne told a council of his generals on 12 October that his best intelligence informed him that they were surrounded by an American force of 14,000 men west of the Hudson, armed with artillery; another corps of 1,500 at Fort Edwards on the other side of the river blocked the army’s only practical path of retreat. Nevertheless, the council resolved to retreat by night, leaving the artillery and the baggage behind.33 The next day, Burgoyne convened another, larger council, this one consisting of all the officers commanding regiments or above. Now realizing that the situation was hopeless, Burgoyne asked the council “whether an army of 3,500 fighting men, and well provided with artillery, were justifiable, upon the principles of national dignity and military honour, in capitulating in any possible situation?”34 The council unanimously voted “aye.” Burgoyne then asked: “is the present situation of that nature?” Again, the vote was unanimously in favour.35 Negotiations between Burgoyne and Gates began at once. A treaty, which they called a Convention, was signed by the two generals on the evening of 16 October. The Convention granted Burgoyne and his army generous and honourable terms. They would have free passage to Great Britain, on condition of not serving again in North America during the war. While in America, Burgoyne’s troops would receive the same rations as Gates’s own army and would otherwise be treated with respect and humanity. The officers were permitted to wear their side arms. The army would march to Boston, where they would board ships provided by General Howe, the British commander in New York.36 As we will see, the events that unfolded tell a very different story.

Chapter 15

The Captive Army “It was a glorious sight to the see the haughty Britons march out and surrender their arms to an army, which, but a little before, they despised,” went a letter from Albany in a rebel newspaper a week after Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga.1 The gloating in the American press was understandable, but the atmosphere at the surrender ceremony was different. A British officer was impressed by the gravity displayed by the victorious American soldiers: I never shall forget the appearance of [the American] troops on our marching past them. A dead silence universally reigned thro’ their numerous columns, and even then they seemed struck with our situation, & dare scarce lift up their eyes to view British troops in such a situation. I must say their decent behavior during the time (to us so greatly fallen) merited the utmost appreciation and praise.2 Setting a tone of sombre civility, General Horatio Gates, the commander of the American army, accorded the defeated British the traditional honours of war. The two opposing armies stood at arms on the plains of Saratoga, Gates’s force of 16,000 facing the remnants of Burgoyne’s army: 3,500 British, German, and Loyalist soldiers, the weary, tattered survivors of an army of over 7,000 that had set out from Canada four months earlier.3 It was one of the saddest days in Lieutenant General John Burgoyne’s life, the obliteration of a successful military career. Yet he was a professional soldier; despite the humiliation, exhaustion, and anger he

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felt, he would conduct himself in a style befitting his rank and station. He dressed with care for the surrender ceremony in his regimental uniform, bordered with gold; his hat sprouted plumes. Guided by Lieutenant Colonel James Wilkinson, Gates’s adjutant-general, Burgoyne approached the American headquarters on horseback, followed by his officers in order of rank, beginning with the British General William Phillips and the German General Friedrich Riedesel. Burgoyne dismounted and approached Gates, who was waiting outside his tent. The two commanding generals were a study in contrast, the taller Burgoyne in his scarlet uniform overshadowing Gates’s unassuming figure. Burgoyne raised his hat and spoke first: “The fortune of war, General Gates, has made me your prisoner,” to which Gates replied: “I shall always be ready to bear testimony that it has not been through any fault of your Excellency.”4 The two generals disappeared into Gates’s tent to discuss the final arrangements for the surrender. When they emerged, they stood for a few minutes in silence, then General Burgoyne handed his sword to Gates, who promptly returned it to him. The officers of the defeated army then marched their men to the bank of the Hudson to stack their weapons for the last time. This concession by Gates enabled the humiliating ceremony to be performed out of the sight of the American troops; it was so important to the British officers that, without it, they would have opposed the surrender.5 Gates offered Burgoyne private passage to England on a government ship. Burgoyne declined the offer as “unacceptable.”6 He would not abandon his troops in their grimmest hour. After the surrender ceremony, Baroness Frederika Riedesel, wife of General Riedesel, entered the American camp with her three young daughters. They had accompanied Burgoyne’s army throughout the campaign and had endured its hardships. The baroness recalled that “a good looking man advanced towards me, and helped the children from the [carriage], and kissed and caressed them; he then offered me his arm, and tears trembled in his eyes.”7 The man was General Philip Schuyler, whom Congress had blamed for the American surrender of Fort Ticonderoga in July and had replaced him by Gates as the commander of the American forces. Schuyler had come up from Albany, thirty-five miles to the south, to

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congratulate Gates on his success.8 Now he ushered the baroness into Gates’s tent, where she found the commander-in-chief in friendly conversation with Burgoyne and Phillips. Burgoyne told her, “You may now dismiss all your apprehensions, for your sufferings are at an end.”9 Schuyler invited the baroness and her children to dine with him in his tent, while the other generals dined with Gates. Delighted to relax after the privations she had endured and to escape the “large company of gentlemen,” she accepted the invitation. She wrote: “He entertained me with excellent smoked tongue, beef-steaks, potatoes, good butter and bread. Never have I eaten a better meal … As soon as we had finished dinner, he invited me to take up my residence at his house, which was situated in Albany, and told me that General Burgoyne would, also, be there.”10 Although he had to stay at Saratoga to take care of his private affairs, Schuyler sent a senior officer to Albany to tell his wife to expect the arrival of their guests. Schuyler sent Baroness Riedesel and her children to Albany in his own carriage, while Burgoyne, Riedesel, and several other senior officers made the trip on horseback with an armed escort.11 Mrs Schuyler received her guests cordially in the large yellow-brick Schuyler mansion. It was a fine place to recover from the horrors of war. Built fifteen years earlier on the steep west bank of the Hudson, the mansion looked down over the river, whose green shores sloped to the water’s edge, its willow-fringed islands lying out in the stream.12 Burgoyne was given a large apartment in the house consisting of several rooms, with several mattresses spread on the floor for his officers to sleep around him. One day, they were disturbed by the Schuylers’ mischievous nine-year-old son, Philip Jeremiah, who burst into the room and seeing so many English soldiers, shut the door behind him and shouted, “you are all my ‘prisoners.’”13 On another occasion, when Schuyler’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Margaretta, gave Burgoyne a tour of the grounds of the estate, he asked her what he might send her from England. Although she shook her head and refused the offer, he sent her a pair of diamond shoe buckles when he got home to London.14 The Baroness Riedesel was impressed by the Schuylers’ kindness to Burgoyne. During the military operations a few days before the

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surrender, he had ordered the destruction of Schuyler’s Saratoga estate, including the burning of his mansion, barns, granaries, and stables.15 The baroness wrote that even Burgoyne was quite overwhelmed by Schuyler’s magnanimity. She reported that he asked Schuyler: “Is it to me, who have done you so much injury, that you show so much kindness?” To which Schuyler replied, “that is the fate of war. Let us say no more about it.”16 Burgoyne responded that he thought the destruction necessary to save his army.17 He later explained to the House of Commons that he had not destroyed Schuyler’s property out of malice: during the final battle, a large column of Americans had approached the British lines, protected from British artillery by several buildings, and for that reason Burgoyne had ordered them burned.18 Three days after the surrender, Burgoyne, weary and pain-ridden by gout, sat down at a desk in the Schuyler mansion to explain to Lord Germain in London the reasons why he had surrendered: a series of hard toil, incessant effort, stubborn action; till disabled in the collateral branches of the army by the total defection of the Indians; the desertion or timidity of the Canadians and Provincials, some individuals excepted; disappointed in the last hope of any timely co-operation from other armies; the regular troops reduced by losses from the best part of 3,500 fighting men, not 2,000 of which were British; only three days provisions upon short allowance in store; invested by an army of 16,000 men, and no apparent means of retreat remaining, I called into council all the generals, field officers, and captains commanding corps, and by their unanimous concurrence and advice, I was induced to open a treaty with Major General Gates.19 Burgoyne was eager to get the first word in quickly because he knew he would inevitably be criticized, perhaps court-martialled, once he returned to England. At least in his own mind, he was not responsible for the failure of his expedition, and the terms he extracted from Gates were generous. He had no reason to believe that either the Continental

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Congress in Philadelphia or Lord North’s government in London would refuse to ratify the Convention agreement. On the same day, he poured out his anger and sense of abandonment in a letter to his nieces in England: I have been surrounded with enemies, ill-treated by pretended friends, abandoned by a considerable part of my own army, totally unassisted by Sir William Howe. I have been … under perpetual fire, and exhausted with laborious days, and sixteen almost sleepless nights, without change of clothes, or other covering than the sky. I have been with my army within the jaws of famine; shot through my hat and waistcoat; my nearest friends killed round me; and after these combined misfortunes and escapes, I imagine I am reserved to stand a war with ministers who will always lay the blame upon the employed who miscarries.20 As a professional soldier and seasoned politician, Burgoyne could predict the storm he would encounter once he returned to England. The civility displayed by Gates at the surrender and by Schuyler in Albany offered no hint of the misery that still awaited him and his captive army in America. The Convention treaty called for Burgoyne’s army to be repatriated to England, on condition of not serving again in North America during the war. They were to sail from Boston on transports provided by General William Howe, the commander-in-chief in British-occupied New York City.21 While waiting for the transports, the soldiers were to be quartered in Boston or as close to Boston as possible, to avoid delays getting to the transports when they arrived; meanwhile, the officers “are to be Quartered according to Rank.”22 The Convention Army, as it was called, began its 200-mile march to Boston immediately. The troops were surprised and gratified by the kindness they received from many of the inhabitants along the line of march.23 They were informed they would be quartered in the nearby town of Cambridge while they awaited transport to England.

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The Convention Army began to arrive in Cambridge on 6 November; Burgoyne and his senior officers followed one or two days later. While en route to Cambridge, Burgoyne sent an express rider ahead to Major General William Heath, the American military commander in New England, with a formal demand that quarters for himself and his officers be made ready for his arrival. Heath ordered his quartermaster to “strictly adhere to the Convention” and specifically to obtain proper housing for Burgoyne and his generals and field officers.24 When Burgoyne arrived in Cambridge he found that no housing arrangements had been made. The local population chose to disregard the terms of the Saratoga Convention that protected the Convention Army. Not a single Cambridge householder offered Burgoyne even a temporary asylum. Burgoyne and his second-in-command, General Phillips, wandered around Cambridge without a place to stay until they found rooms at a high price in a gloomy inn. Their baggage was dumped on Cambridge Common.25 Burgoyne recounted to the president of the American Congress the treatment he and other officers had received in Cambridge: After being pressed into Cambridge through bad weather, inconvenience and fatigue, without any preparations made to receive the superior officers, I was lodged in a miserable public-house; and, in ill health, obliged to partake with MajorGeneral Phillips two very small dirty rooms for ourselves, our aid-de-camps [sic], and the staff of the army then present.26 From the time of the Convention Army’s arrival in Cambridge, its relations with the townspeople, perhaps the most solid Patriot community in America, was one of blatant hostility. Baroness Riedesel wrote that when she walked on the Cambridge streets women spat at her.27 For their part, the prisoners, largely members of elite British regiments, saw no reason to behave submissively toward their captors and did not try to hide their contempt for the Americans.28 They had fought bravely in every battle of the campaign and, at least in their view, had been forced to surrender only by overwhelming numbers, exhaustion, and lack of supplies. But to see 300 proud British officers,

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who had been defeated in the war, strutting around their town, their side arms glittering on their belts, could not fail to arouse bitterness in the citizens of Cambridge. It hardly mattered to them that the Saratoga Convention permitted the paroled officers to move about freely wearing their side arms.29 The troops were assigned barracks situated on the barren hilltops that lay between Cambridge and Boston. The barracks were erected without foundations; they had no windows, just holes in the walls. To make matters worse, the soldiers had no winter clothing; expecting a short, successful summer campaign, Burgoyne had ordered his troops to leave behind in Canada their blankets, coats, leggings, and all baggage that could be spared during the summer months.30 The excess baggage of officers who disobeyed the order had been sent back to Canada early in the campaign.31 The crowding of the prisoners in their crude barracks was severe. One army sergeant wrote: It was not infrequent for thirty or forty persons, men, women, and children,32 to be indiscriminately crowded together in one small, miserable, open hut. In the night time, those that could lie down, and the men who sat up from the cold, were obliged frequently to rise and shake from them the snow which the wind drifted in at the openings.33 Burgoyne insisted on compliance with the terms of the Saratoga Convention; Heath supported him, urging a committee of the Massachusetts legislature to take action, describing “the unhappy and disgraceful situation of General Burgoyne and his officers,” but the committee did nothing. The town of Cambridge set up its own committee, which ruled out any housing for the British officers, even in the uninhabited houses on “Tory Row,” which the government had seized after Loyalists had abandoned them earlier in the war.34 On 11 November, Heath was able to offer Burgoyne two vacated houses in Cambridge. After examining them, Burgoyne described the houses as “exceedingly inconvenient, the one in point of size, and other in being deficient in every article of furniture, that to occupy either would

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make my condition worse than it is.”35 Burgoyne wrote to Gates on 14 November: “The only prospect that remains to me personally is that I shall be permitted to occupy a House without a Table, Chair or any one Article of Furniture for the price of an hundred and Fifty pounds sterling.”36 Before moving in, he had to apply for a loan of eighteen chairs, three small tables, as well as other furniture and household items. Three days later, Burgoyne informed the Congress that the rent he was required to pay was “a larger sum for an unfurnished house out of repair, than would have been required for a palace in the dearest metropolis of the world.”37 Despite the provision of the Saratoga Convention that the officers of the Convention Army be “quartered according to rank,”38 the junior officers, numbering about 300, were offered no housing and had to fend for themselves. Their only recourse was to squeeze into the already overcrowded, windswept barracks assigned to their men.39 Tireless in looking after the well-being of his officers and men, Burgoyne wrote to Heath, a week after he arrived in Cambridge, that he had visited the barracks himself and agreed with his officers that “the Quarters allotted to them would not be held fit for gentlemen in their situation in any part of the world.”40 Four days later, he wrote to Gates complaining that “the officers are crowded into Barracks six and seven in a Room of about ten feet square and without Distinction of Rank.”41 Frustrated in his efforts to obtain proper shelter for the Convention Army from the local governments, General Heath turned to Harvard College, whose long winter recess lasted from early December until March, when the college would normally be virtually empty. The Massachusetts Council unanimously recommended to Harvard that “one or more buildings of the College be allowed to Burgoyne’s officers”; but the Harvard faculty, displaying the same obstructive tactics as the Cambridge townspeople, voted to allow some students to stay during the long break and then used this as a reason for their refusal to provide housing to any of Burgoyne’s officers. As a result, neither the deserted Tory mansions nor the largely unoccupied halls of Harvard were made available.42 The tribulations of the Convention Army highlight the fact that although its officers and men were, in fact, prisoners of war, they were

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required to pay for their own upkeep. Having learned that the British officers possessed a sizable amount of gold coin, their guards shamelessly exploited them, regarding them as a reliable source of cash. Food and other necessities were sold to them at four times the price at other nearby places. Heath refused to take the depreciated bills, issued by the Continental Congress, that Burgoyne offered him, telling him that the Congress had resolved that the troops’ debts be paid in food or in coin.43 The captive British regiments had fighting traditions going back more than a century. Several of the officers were noblemen, sons of great landed families, men of wealth and fashion, members of London’s most exclusive clubs.44 They took the humiliation and privations inflicted on them in stride and found ways to alleviate their misery. At one point, the officers tried to organize a horse race with the few horses they still possessed. It is unlikely that Heath permitted this, but a foot race most likely was run, two miles up Massachusetts Avenue from Harvard Square, with plenty of betting on the result.45 General Riedesel and his wife and children received better treatment than did the British officers. During their first three weeks they found cramped refuge in the Boston home of a fellow German, but after that they were able to move to what the baroness described as “one of the most beautiful houses of [Cambridge], which had formerly been built by the wealth of the royalists.”46 To celebrate her husband’s birthday, she invited all the generals and officers of the Convention Army to a “ball and supper.”47 Given the stressful situation they were in, it was probably a boisterous and well-lubricated occasion. As the captivity of the Convention Army stretched on and the Congress in Philadelphia delayed ratifying the Saratoga Convention, physical abuse was added to the soldiers’ sufferings: some of the guards began attacking them physically on the smallest provocation and sometimes without provocation. On 9 January 1778, Burgoyne accused Colonel David Henley, an officer in charge of guarding the prisoners, of mistreating British soldiers and demanded that he be punished. Heath, who steadily insisted on protecting the rights of the British prisoners, suspended Henley from his post and ordered a court of inquiry to

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investigate Burgoyne’s charges. When Burgoyne, dissatisfied, objected and asked that Henley be tried by a court martial, Heath agreed.48 Heath also acceded to Burgoyne’s request to act as prosecutor, rather than delegate the task to a junior officer. The court martial, composed of American officers, began on 20 January 1778, the court consisting of three American officers. Burgoyne opened the trial by telling the court: I confess I am too selfish to resign to any brother-officer the pride and gratification of standing in the front for the defence of men – faithful comrades of honour and misfortune – who have fought bravely under my orders, who have bled in my presence, and who are now exposed to oppression and persecution by the abuse of a treaty signed by my hand.49 Burgoyne, who had no formal legal training, conducted himself in a highly professional manner, making opening and closing statements to the court, calling twenty-three witnesses for the prosecution, and cross-examining the defence witnesses. In a time of stress, privation, and humiliation, he showed that his solicitude for the officers and men who served under him was real. The testimony of the prosecution witnesses covered forty-three pages of the transcript. The first witness Burgoyne called was a British soldier of the Convention Army, who testified that one of his fellows, a Corporal Reeves, probably drunk, defied Colonel Henley, announcing that he hoped to fight again against the Americans. Henley rose to the provocation, calling Reeves a rascal. Reeves replied that he was no rascal, but a good soldier. At that, Henley ordered one of the guards to run Reeves through with his bayonet. When the guard refused, Henley took the guard’s musket from him and thrust at Reeves, the bayonet wounding him in his chest. When Henley tried to stab him again, one of the British soldiers who was watching the fracas threw up his arm and stopped him. A surgeon who treated Reeves testified that if the wound had been an inch away it would have killed him. Other witnesses testified to physical attacks on British prisoners. One stated that Henley stabbed another soldier through his left arm

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and into his left side with his sword, because he thought the soldier did not leave the barracks fast enough when ordered to. Others testified that the stabbings were entirely unprovoked. Although Henley was not present at some of the other incidents of abuse by the American guards who served under him, he did nothing to stop the abuse or punish the abusers. Henley chose not to take the witness stand and subject himself to cross-examination; he confined himself to asking witnesses a few questions. After Burgoyne summed up the evidence and demanded that Henley be punished, the court acquitted him, finding that the charges were not supported.50 Despite the verdict, Burgoyne’s willingness to personally defend his troops must have boosted their morale in a very discouraging time for them. A German who attended the trial noted: “General Burgoyne has once more proved himself a great pleader – has even caused the entire court to shed tears.”51 As fall turned to winter and no word came from Congress permitting the Convention Army to embark for Europe, the troops’ suffering increased. Burgoyne and other commanders of the Convention Army wrote to General Guy Carleton in Canada requesting that a ship be sent with the clothing and baggage that they left in Canada. General Riedesel reported to Carleton that the officers and men were in “the greatest distress” for the lack of necessities.52 In April 1778, Heath was finally able to report that a ship bearing “clothes and necessaries” was about to arrive in Boston. Heath ordered that the ship was “not to be molested or impeded … by any frigate or privateer belonging to America – the same being under contract between his Excellency Lieut. General Burgoyne & the honorable Major General Heath.”53 As the months wore on, the officers and men of the Convention Army continued to wait for Congress to ratify the treaty and for their repatriation to Europe. Rumours circulated in Cambridge that the troops of the Convention Army were to be exchanged for American prisoners being held by the British in Canada. On 11 April, Phillips requested Carleton that the American prisoners be sent to Boston on the ships containing clothing for the troops.54 But there was to be no prisoner exchange.

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Neither Burgoyne nor any of the officers serving under him was aware that Congress had voted on 8 January 1778 to suspend the embarkation of the Convention Army, thus repudiating the Saratoga Convention.55 Its decision was made with the approval of General George Washington, who argued that, even though the British soldiers agreed not to serve again in America, they might replace troops now in Europe who could be sent to America.56 Congress excused its disavowal of the treaty on the flimsiest of pretexts. In a letter to Gates on 14 November 1777, complaining of the lack of housing in Cambridge for his officers and men, Burgoyne had written that, as long as things continued as they were, “the public faith is broke.”57 A chief advocate for rejecting the treaty was Henry Laurens of South Carolina, who had recently succeeded John Hancock as President of the Congress. He suspected that General Howe had no intention of allowing the Convention Troops to return to England; once they had embarked on transports, they would be diverted to New York or Delaware, where they would again take up arms against the Americans. Laurens had no proof that Howe was guilty of this treachery, and it was not until the twentieth century that such proof was discovered. One month after the surrender at Saratoga, Howe, in Philadelphia, wrote to Burgoyne, in Cambridge, giving him secret orders to divert the troops to New York. It is unclear whether Burgoyne ever received the letter; even if he did, he had no opportunity to act on Howe’s plan because the Americans never allowed the troops to board transports.58 If Burgoyne had had the opportunity, there is no way of knowing whether his duty as an army officer to obey orders would have prevailed over his moral principles.59 Although Burgoyne’s letter to Gates in which he used the words “the public faith is broke” was a private communication, not an official protest, Gates turned it over to the Congress, who adopted the position that those five words meant that Burgoyne and the British government considered themselves no longer bound by the treaty, and so Congress was no longer bound by it.60 A second reason given by Congress for renouncing the treaty was that the British had failed to fulfill its obligation to turn over supplies and equipment; but General Gates conceded that, although there were some irregularities, they

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were not enough “to justify our charge of their having violated the Convention.”61 The most likely – and unspoken – reason why Congress renounced the Saratoga Convention and continued to keep the soldiers of the Convention Army prisoners for the rest of the war was that it hoped to use them as bargaining chips to gain recognition of the United States as a sovereign nation. For the time being, Congress decided to keep its action secret, its president writing to General Heath on 14 January: “Good policy dictates that we should keep the Court of Great Britain from a knowledge founded on authentick [sic] accounts of the Act of Congress of the 8th as long as we can fairly do so.”62 As late as August 1778, nearly a year after the surrender at Saratoga, the senior officers of the Convention Army were still waiting to find out whether Congress was going to ratify the treaty.63 Meanwhile, Burgoyne, having concluded that he could do nothing more for his officers and men, had obtained permission from the Americans to return to England on parole. Burgoyne embarked from Rhode Island on 15 April 1778, arriving in England the following month. There he would attempt to defend his actions in America and protect his reputation. On 15 October 1778, almost exactly a year after the signing of the surrender treaty, Congress voted to send the entire Convention Army to Charlottesville, Virginia, a distance of over 550 miles from Cambridge and many miles from the sea. The Americans were worried that, if the prisoners remained in Cambridge the British might try to rescue them with a strong force from its garrison in Rhode Island or possibly by a commando raid from the sea. Furthermore, General Heath was having difficulty feeding the prisoners and the contingent that guarded them on the limited supplies available in Massachusetts.64 Thus began a trek for the Convention Army that was to last until the end of the war five years later. The troops received the order to leave Cambridge in November 1778. Soon after they left, snow began to fall. Men lay out in the open with only a blanket apiece on snow eighteen inches deep. They crossed the Hudson at Fishkill, New York,

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to avoid going close to British-held New York City.65 A German officer described a night during the trip to Virginia in his diary: The roads were covered by a glazed frost; and a cold piercing wind drove the snow and rain into the faces of the marching troops. Being very much weakened by their previous privations, they were unable to reach their designated quarters for the night, and therefore halted at midnight in a wood, where they bivouacked in their drenched clothes, without straw upon which to lie down. It was an awful night of storm and tempest … The prisoners endeavored to shelter themselves as well as they could, from the blowing gale and the falling snow and rain, by taking refuge in the deep crevices of the rocks and the dense thickets.66 The Convention Army, reduced by illness, death, and desertion, reached Charlottesville in January 1779. There they lived for several weeks in the woods, in roofless, doorless, windowless log huts. The troops remained in Charlottesville until November 1780, when Congress, fearful they might be rescued by Loyalists in the area, decided to move them to Maryland, where they had no shelter until they had built huts to live in. In March 1781, they were marched to Lancaster, Pennsylvania; but after nine weeks they moved again, this time to York, Pennsylvania, where they remained for another two years.67 During this time, there were several exchanges of prisoners, but Congress, following its policy of treating the Convention Army as political hostages, refused to include these men in any of the exchanges. By the time they reached York, the soldiers’ uniforms were in tatters; most had no blankets. After years of starvation rations, lack of shelter, and overcrowding in the limited accommodation available, hundreds of the prisoners and the wives and children who accompanied them came down with fevers.68 A British army corporal recalled that “our men … died like rotten sheep.”69 Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, expressed his sense of shame at the treatment of the Convention Army: “I cannot help feeling a most thorough mortification that our Congress should have

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permitted an infraction of our public honour.”70 He frequently entertained some of the British officers at his Monticello home.71 Even after General Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, on 19 October 1781, and the opening of peace negotiations, the Convention Army remained prisoners. Many had escaped and blended into the countryside; some of these found American wives and became farmers. Others were not so fortunate: they were recaptured and were imprisoned in jails or prison ships. Persons who assisted escaped prisoners were fined or subjected to public whipping, with persons providing information leading to conviction receiving part of the fines.72 Most of those who successfully escaped remained loyal to their army; if they were able they made their way to New York, still in British possession.73 In 1782, only 470 men were left of the Convention Army, still imprisoned at York, out of the 3,500 who surrendered at Saratoga five years earlier.74 After the Treaty of Paris officially ended the war on 3 September 1783, British officers marched these soldiers to New York City, the last British outpost in the colonies, while others arrived singly or in small groups. British transports carried the remnants of the Convention Army from New York to Britain or Canada. On 25 November 1783, the Americans finally took over the city.75 Back in England as a prisoner of war on parole, Burgoyne bitterly told the House of Commons: “The army was lost by the noncompliance with the treaty on the part of the Congress, and that violation of faith no man will ever be found to justify.”76 His aim now was to justify his conduct in the Saratoga campaign; the aim of the government was to prevent him from doing so.

Chapter 16

The Politics of Saratoga When news of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga reached England on 2 December 1777, it was met with bewilderment, shock, and anger. Never before in living memory had British arms suffered so humiliating a defeat. Even before Burgoyne returned to England five months later, Saratoga was the subject of political contention. It is worth recalling that the campaign plan that led to the surrender had been approved by Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the American Department, and by the king, who had written that Burgoyne’s force from Canada “must join Howe” coming from New York.1 But Germain, in a decision that defies understanding, had given Howe permission instead to take his army in the opposite direction to capture Philadelphia, without informing either Burgoyne or Howe of the other’s movements. Now Lord North’s Tory ministry, and especially Germain, were determined to pin the sole blame for the surrender on Burgoyne. There were many in England who had not only opposed the government’s unyielding policy toward the American colonists but also believed the war was being mismanaged. Charles James Fox, the leader of the Whig Opposition, and his principal ally in Parliament, the statesman-philosopher Edmund Burke, believed the war to be unwinnable and furthermore loathed the idea of a conflict that set Englishman against Englishman. They advocated conciliation with the colonists, even if it meant acceptance of many of their demands.2 It also happened that Fox and Burgoyne were friends who drank and gambled together at Almack’s Club (renamed Brooks’s Club in 1778).

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The Earl of Shelburne, leading the Opposition in the House of Lords, began the attack on the government on 11 December, directly accusing Germain of bringing about the disaster of Saratoga.3 But the most sustained assault came in the House of Commons from Fox, one of the most singular figures in the history of British politics. In private life he was a reckless gambler, a heavy drinker, and a notorious rake; but in Parliament he was a reformer, a brilliant orator, and an effective political leader, a fighter against corruption and the slave trade, and an advocate of expanded voting rights.4 Now he brought his formidable rhetorical powers to bear on the ministry’s conduct of the American war. In March 1778, Fox denounced Germain for his role in the Saratoga debacle. He attacked Germain personally, reminding the members of the House of his “well known cowardice” during the Seven Years War.5 As mentioned in an earlier chapter, Germain, in command of a British army in Europe, had been convicted by a court martial for disobeying the orders of a senior commander and was judged unfit to hold any military office. Nevertheless, the young King George, taking a liking to Germain, had brought him into the cabinet and put him in charge of suppressing the American Revolution. Fox said he was disgusted by Germain’s attempt to save his own reputation at the expense of Burgoyne’s.6 The failure of Burgoyne and his men, he said, did not come from lack of professional skill or neglect of duty, “but merely because they were employed in a service, in which it was impossible for them to succeed.”7 Burgoyne arrived in London on 13 May, his status that of a paroled prisoner of war. It is probable that in the eighteenth century prisoners of war were treated more humanely than at any other period, before or since.8 It was not unusual for a wartime commander to set a prisoner free if he gave his parole (i.e., word) that he would not fight against the country of his captors and would return to captivity if ordered to do so. Although the Americans could call Burgoyne back at any time, it was unlikely they would do so: it suited George Washington for Burgoyne to stay in England. Washington shrewdly observed that, once in England, Burgoyne would exaggerate American strength in order to justify his own conduct.9

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Fox took a coach to a London suburb to meet Burgoyne as he approached the city. Fox hoped that the defeated – some said betrayed – general would join the Opposition. Burgoyne had been an active politician for over a decade; even during military campaigning he kept his seat in the House of Commons. Although a Whig, he had generally supported the measures and policies of Lord North’s Tory government. Burgoyne was angry that, owing to the incompetence and wilfulness of others, he had suffered immense hardship in the campaign and the humiliation of surrender and imprisonment, and was now under attack in his own country. From his perspective, the chief reason why his expedition in America had failed was Howe’s cavalier desertion of him and his army. Burgoyne accepted Fox’s offer of support, but, not knowing what the king’s attitude towards him would be, he was not ready to publicly defy him by joining the Opposition. In earlier years the king had admired him as one of his finest officers and had treated him as a friend: when Burgoyne left on his first visit to America in 1775, the king had inquired about the health of his wife, and the two men would be seen riding together in Hyde Park.10 Now his belief in the king’s affection – and his own affection for the king – combined with his ingrained loyalty as a career army officer, made him keep his options open, at least for as long as he thought the king would support him.11 From the day Burgoyne arrived in England, the government was determined to silence and discredit him. Germain, who wanted to avoid at all costs any probe into his own management of the war, suggested to King George that Burgoyne’s conduct be investigated.12 Germain wanted a private investigation that he controlled; neither he nor the king wished an open inquiry. On 14 May Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of the forces, suggested to the king that Burgoyne be placed under arrest.13 This did not happen, but when Burgoyne asked to see the king, his request was denied, most likely at Germain’s prompting.14 Burgoyne demanded a public court martial before a panel of senior army officers, which would give him an opportunity to clear his name; but this too was denied, on the stated ground that some of the material witnesses were in America.15 Stonewalled by the king and his cabinet, Burgoyne had one remaining resource: he was a member of Parliament. On 28 May he rose to

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speak in a crowded House of Commons. Members of the government tried to exclude the public, but Burgoyne urged that they be allowed to stay and hear him.16 He briefly described the campaign, resting his defence largely on his argument that his orders to advance to Albany were “positive, peremptory and indispensable,” leaving him with no discretion to alter them.17 It was a dubious claim, which he all but abandoned two years later.18 He attacked Germain for sacrificing him in order to evade responsibility for his own acts.19 Finally, he asked for an open parliamentary inquiry. At that, Alexander Wedderburn, the solicitor general, declared that Burgoyne, a paroled prisoner, had no right to sit in the Commons. His motion to exclude Burgoyne from the House was defeated by a vote of 105 to 53.20 Having failed to gag Burgoyne, the government now played its last card: it would banish him from the country. On 5 June Lord Barrington, the war minister, informed Burgoyne that the king had ordered him to return to America to be with his army.21 Burgoyne refused. Writing from Knowsley Hall, the country seat of his nephew, the Earl of Derby, he claimed he needed more time to restore his health (he suffered from gout and perhaps other ailments), and to spend a winter in America “is in probability to doom me to the grave.”22 He was in England, he wrote, to negotiate on behalf of his soldiers being held as prisoners in America; but “they would not derive material consolation from my return in disgrace.” Furthermore, he required “a vindication of my honour [and] a full and proper trial.”23 In the spring and summer of 1778, neither the British government nor the American Congress had ratified the Saratoga Convention, the surrender treaty that guaranteed that the officers and soldiers of Burgoyne’s army would be allowed to return home; meanwhile, they remained prisoners in America. Burgoyne urged the government to do more to help his captive army. He did not know that the American Congress had already repudiated the Saratoga Convention. On 14 December 1778 he pleaded in the House of Commons that these soldiers “deserved the most grateful treatment from their country, for however criminal their General might have been, they had done everything that could be performed by men.”24 For himself, he asked to serve his

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country in the war against France in any capacity, even as a volunteer (France had become an ally of the United States soon after the Saratoga surrender), but that too was denied on the ground that he was a prisoner of war.25 In contrast to its hostile attitude toward Burgoyne, the North ministry had little interest in inquiring into Howe’s actions in America. In April 1779 government supporters in the House of Commons defeated an attempt by the Opposition to investigate Howe’s conduct of the war.26 Meanwhile, attacks on Burgoyne continued. Richard Rigby, a prominent politician and supporter of the government, accused Burgoyne of “having by his rashness sacrificed an army, and compelled English soldiers to pile their arms in the face of a despicable enemy, an undisciplined militia, and had left them to their fate, while he himself was enjoying the luxuries of London.”27 Burgoyne replied sarcastically that the only luxuries he enjoyed were “to see himself disgraced without a hearing, to hear the most abominable falsehoods circulated against him, to be denied a share in the defence of his country.”28 King George suspended the banishment order, leaving Burgoyne in a curious limbo: he was at once a prisoner of war out on parole, a general out of favour with the government but determined to exculpate himself, and a member of Parliament. On 10 May 1779, Isaac Barré, an Irish member of Parliament who opposed the government’s American policies, moved that a committee be appointed to conduct a parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the Saratoga campaign.29 The motion carried by a large majority, over the protests of Lord North and Germain. Here at last was Burgoyne’s opportunity to vindicate himself. Using his privilege as a member of Parliament, Burgoyne conducted the hearings, which lasted from 20 May to 3 June. He called as witnesses General Guy Carleton, who had been commander-in-chief in Canada in 1777, and all of Burgoyne’s principal officers in the Saratoga expedition. Only absent were the three generals who served under him: Fraser had been killed in the Second Battle of Saratoga, and Phillips and Riedesel were still prisoners in America. Burgoyne questioned the witnesses, as did members of the committee. The witnesses testified to the battles that were fought and the difficulties encountered. Every

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one of them gave Burgoyne his unqualified support, an unusual tribute to a defeated general. A report of the hearings, including a transcript of the testimony and Burgoyne’s conclusions of fact, was published the following year.30 Burgoyne summarized his defence in the conclusions of the report: a plan of a junction between Howe’s army and Burgoyne’s northern army in Albany was formed in 1776; in February 1777, Howe altered the plan and proposed instead to capture Philadelphia; Germain and the king approved the deviation from the original plan; Burgoyne’s orders to march to Albany allowed him no latitude; Germain knew, or ought to have known, that the garrison Howe left behind in New York when he took the main body of his army south was not strong enough to overcome the American defences on the Hudson and join Burgoyne in Albany; Burgoyne learned before setting out from Canada that Howe had been permitted to take his army south to Philadelphia, but he assumed that Germain would countermand this and order Howe to join Burgoyne as originally planned.31 In fact, Germain had made no mention of Burgoyne’s northern expedition in his dispatches to Howe until it was too late for Howe to change his plans.32 While the report damned Howe for abandoning Burgoyne, and Germain for permitting this to happen, Burgoyne glossed over his own failings. Arguably, he had implied discretion to deviate from his orders to advance to Albany, once Howe had shown that he had no intention of joining Burgoyne there. Burgoyne’s claim that he expected Germain, at the last minute, to withdraw his permission for Howe to go south, and to order Howe advance to Albany, as the original plan dictated, looks a lot like a later rationalization of his own conduct. Still, many historians agree that Howe’s stubborn decision to capture Philadelphia instead of joining Burgoyne at Albany was a wilful mistake that dwarfed all the other misjudgments and blunders that led to Saratoga.33 If Howe had followed the original plan and joined forces with Burgoyne at Albany, there would have been no surrender and none of its consequences would have occurred. Having failed to silence Burgoyne, the government reopened its drive to force him to leave the country. On 24 September 1779, Charles

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Jenkinson, who had replaced Barrington as minister of war, informed Burgoyne that his refusal to comply with the king’s earlier order that he return to America was a “neglect of duty and disobedience of orders.”34 Such an accusation was a public slap in the face, which Burgoyne could not accept in silence; nor did he wish to. Two weeks later, he resigned the colonelcy of his regiment and his sinecure as governor of Fort William that King George had given him in 1759, significantly reducing his income. He kept only his rank as an army lieutenant general, in order to remain eligible to be court-martialled.35 In resigning, he did not hide his anger: “[The ministry] are now very systematically desirous of burying my innocence and their own guilt, in the prisons of the enemy, and removing, in my person, to the other side of the Atlantic ocean, the means of renewing parliamentary proceedings which they have reason to dread.”36 Burgoyne’s response was addressed to the king’s ministers, not to the king; he refused to believe that the order to send him back to America came from the king himself. He was mistaken. In fact, King George was responsible for the order; he was enraged at Burgoyne’s criticism of the ministry and his refusal to obey the royal order to return to America, and bent on punishing him.37 But, given his own refusal to have the whole affair aired by a court martial, there was nothing he could do. The consequences of Saratoga were momentous. On 8 January 1778, a month after news of Burgoyne’s surrender reached Europe, the French foreign minister informed Benjamin Franklin, the American envoy in Paris, that his government wished to enter into an alliance with the United States. On 6 February France officially recognized American independence and declared war on Britain. On the same day, representatives of France and the United States signed a commercial treaty and a military alliance. A year later Spain joined France in the war against Britain. What had begun as an attempt by Britain to hold on to its North American colonies had metastasized into a global war.38 When news reached India that Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga and France had declared war on Britain, the admiral of the French fleet in the Bay of Bengal destroyed or captured all British

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shipping in the area.39 For the first time in the eighteenth century, Britain was fighting a war without allies. According to the historian Gordon Wood, “putting down the rebellion became secondary to Britain’s global struggle with the Bourbon powers, France and Spain.”40 Isolated and faced with three enemies, the king and his cabinet were shaken in their resolution to suppress the American colonists. On 13 January 1778 – three months after Saratoga – the king wrote to Lord North that, since an offensive land war would require an additional 40,000 men, “a Sea War is the only wise plan.”41 The war was to continue for three more years, but American independence was all but assured. Although he was living in England, Burgoyne remained legally a prisoner of the Americans on parole. A series of events would soon change his status. In August 1780, a British frigate intercepted an American ship on the high seas and captured Henry Laurens, the former president of the Continental Congress, who had been appointed ambassador to the Netherlands. The British found that Laurens was carrying documents showing that he had negotiated a treaty for the Dutch to enter the war against Britain. He was charged with treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Infuriated at Laurens’s incarceration, the Continental Congress in April 1781 voted to end Burgoyne’s parole and to order his return to America. Unwilling to return to captivity, Burgoyne reached out to his friends. Among them was the Duchess of Choiseul, whose husband was the French diplomat that the Burgoynes had known in France two decades earlier. The letter he penned to the duchess described his situation and asked for help – perhaps she might put in a good word with France’s American allies.42 Burgoyne also asked his friend Edmund Burke to intervene on his behalf. Burke, who had earned the Americans’ friendship for his support of their cause, wrote to Benjamin Franklin in Paris. He described Burgoyne as a great military man of a generous and humane character who was being persecuted by the British government as well as by the Americans as a result of “some unusually artful intrigue”;43 and he

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wrote that he addressed Franklin “not as Ambassador of America but to Franklin the Philosopher, my friend and the lover of his species.”44 As a result of Burke’s letter, negotiations began for an exchange of prisoners. The notion that Burgoyne would be exchanged for Laurens was dropped – there were difficulties because Burgoyne was a military officer while Laurens was a civilian – but on 2 February 1782 Burgoyne was exchanged for 1,047 American prisoners in British hands. Burgoyne remained in England, but now he was a free man.45 Neither Howe nor Germain was ever called to account for his contribution to the disaster of Saratoga. To the contrary, both became peers of the realm: one by inheritance, the other by royal favour. A parliamentary committee did inquire into Howe’s conduct, but the king dissolved Parliament before the committee had drawn up its report, and nothing further was done.46 Howe became the 5th Viscount Howe in 1799 when he succeeded to the title of his older brother, Admiral Richard Howe, who died childless. Germain, who years earlier had been declared unfit to serve in the military,47 became a peer in his own right – as the younger son of a duke he had the courtesy title of Lord Germain but he was not himself a peer – when George III named him the 1st Viscount Sackville. All of this mattered in eighteenth-century England: peers not only enjoyed enormous prestige but were entitled to sit in the House of Lords, which, much like the United States Senate, at the time played a key role in enacting legislation. It also had a double function as the only court in which a peer or peeress could be tried and as the nation’s highest appellate court. The support that Germain and Howe received from the king can be explained by the fact that both were members of noble families. Despite his marriage to a daughter of the Earl of Derby, Burgoyne was a commoner. But, now a free man, he was ready once more to enjoy life and continue to pursue his interest in the theatre.

Chapter 17

Man of the Theatre In the years that followed Saratoga and its bitter repercussions, the theatre was central to Burgoyne’s life. He wrote three dramatic works, which were performed successfully at London’s Drury Lane theatre, as well as prologues and epilogues for plays written by others. Beyond that, he enjoyed going to the theatre and socializing with theatre people. He was a close friend and colleague of several actors and managers, including Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the celebrated playwright and politician who succeeded David Garrick as Drury Lane’s manager in 1776. And there can be little doubt that Burgoyne was attracted to the grace and comeliness of the actresses. He might well have echoed Samuel Johnson, who told Garrick that “the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.”1 In the summer of 1780, Burgoyne retreated to Knowsley Hall, the Earl of Derby’s country home, to write the libretto for a comic opera, The Lord of the Manor, with a plot adapted from a French play.2 “These scenes,” he wrote in the preface, “were written … in the country for mere amusement – to relax a mind that had been engaged in more intense application.”3 While he liked to pose as a country gentleman who tossed off plays as a kind of hobby, the truth was he was no longer an outsider to London’s theatre world. The Lord of the Manor was his second dramatic work performed at Drury Lane, London’s principal theatre, after The Maid of the Oaks in 1774.4 As a member by marriage of a noble family and a high-ranking army officer, Burgoyne was familiar with the behaviour of the upper classes and with military life, including its unsavoury aspects; and he made full use of his experience and observations when he wrote The

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Lord of the Manor. The plot is thin, a standard love story in which true love, at first frustrated, in the end triumphs. But the tale has a moral. Sophia, the heroine, expresses the play’s central theme when she tells Annette, her sister, that “insincerity and artifice may … be the vices of fine folks in courts and cities; but in the rural scenes … the tongue and the heart go together in all countries alike.”5 Perhaps the most interesting character in the play is Captain Trepan, a repulsive recruiting officer or, as he calls himself, a skin merchant. At heart, Burgoyne was a reformer: In Parliament, he had attacked the corruption of the nabobs of the East India Company in Parliament; now, in a romantic comedy, he exposed the army’s callous recruiting practices.6 Trepan describes how he goes about his work: Suppose new regiments are to be raised – I am applied to … How are skins now? – how many may you want? – five hundred – Why, your honour, answers I, those that are fit for all use, that bear fire, and wear well in all climates, cannot be afforded for less than ten pounds a piece – we have an inferior sort that we sell by the hundred – I’ll take half and half, says my employer … and they are all on ship-board in a month.7 In the preface to The Lord of the Manor, Burgoyne disclaimed any intention of impeding army recruiting by his description of its vicious practices: “They who think the fallacies and frauds of recruiting dealers about the town necessary evils, which ought to be connived at, as contributory to the military strength of the nation, are ignorant of facts, or blind to consequences.”8 The Lord of the Manor was performed several times during the next three seasons and was performed at Covent Garden in 1812.9 When The Lord of the Manor opened at Drury Lane on 27 December 1780, the role of Sophia was played Elizabeth Farren,10 who was just beginning her reign as Drury Lane’s queen of comedy.11 She was to become a close friend of Burgoyne, both professionally and in his private life, and, after his death, a substitute mother to his children. Born in 1759 to an apothecary and his wife who abandoned their business to

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become strolling players in English provincial theatres, Farren quickly rose to success as an accomplished actress, who conquered audiences by her beauty, charm, and talent for comedy. When she made her debut on the London stage at the age of eighteen, the actor Tate Wilkinson called her “the arch and attractive Miss Farren,”12 while the playwright Richard Cumberland spoke of her “exquisite” acting style.13 A newspaper writer swooned – in verse – to express his admiration: When Farren’s loveliest form I view’d, A form that’s so divine! Her charms, ye godd’s my heart subdu’d, Which heavenly charms outshine.14 Farren and Burgoyne’s nephew, the 12th Earl of Derby, were central figures in one of the most talked-about scandals of the eighteenth century. For this, we must go back to the fête champêtre that Burgoyne organized and managed in 1774 for his nephew, Lord Stanley, to celebrate his marriage to Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, the daughter of the Duchess of Argyll. The marriage was not a success: even at the time of her wedding, Lady Elizabeth seems to have been in love with another man, John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset.15 Lady Charlotte, Burgoyne’s wife, was in the habit of exchanging gossipy letters with the Duchess of Argyll; and on 7 October 1773 – nine months before the wedding – she wrote: “I hear the D. of Dorset pass’d thro’ Preston [where Lady Elizabeth may have been paying a visit to members of Lord Stanley’s family] on his way to Scotland. I fancy I smell a rat.”16 It’s not clear why Lady Elizabeth went ahead with the wedding anyway. Even in an era of loose sexual behaviour by the upper classes, Dorset was notorious as a libertine. He had left the country before her wedding to Lord Stanley, and perhaps Lady Elizabeth believed that he was no longer interested in her. It was said that he returned from abroad to attend the fete just to upset her.17 By 1778, four years after the wedding, the smell of a rat had become unmistakable. It was rumoured that the marriage between Lord Stanley (having succeeded to the title of Earl of Derby on the death of his

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grandfather, he will be referred as “Derby” from here on) and Lady Elizabeth was over, and that she would marry Dorset.18 In December, she left her husband, but he refused to divorce her, either out of spite or because he wished to avoid the unpleasant publicity and gossip that would accompany a divorce. (Under English law of the time, it was virtually impossible for a wife, let alone one who had left her husband for another man, to get a divorce.) Dorset soon dropped Lady Elizabeth, but Derby was adamant: his refusal to either divorce his wife or take her back left her a pariah in London society. Derby brought their three children (one of whom may have been Dorset’s child) to Knowsley Hall and refused to allow any contact between them and their mother.19 Meanwhile, Derby was indulging his passion for horse racing. He kept one of the best stud farms in the country; and in 1780 he founded the Derby, a race for three-year-olds at Epsom near London, which forever linked his name to the world’s most famous horse race, as well as to its namesake race in the United States, the Kentucky Derby.20 It was around this time that Derby met Elizabeth Farren, the leading lady in The Lord of the Manor. It was fashionable for elite hosts and hostesses to hire professional actors to coach them and their guests in amateur theatrical productions, staged in their spacious homes. The Duke of Richmond, a theatre lover – and incidentally a strong supporter of the American cause – appointed Farren to preside over amateur theatricals at his London mansion.21 It is quite possible that Burgoyne, who had encouraged Derby, his young nephew and protégé, to share his interest in the theatre, helped arrange such an event, and that Derby met Farren there.22 It did not take long for Derby to fall in love with her and begin a courtship that would last eighteen years. To avoid gossip and scandal, Farren made sure that there was always someone, usually her mother, present as a chaperone when she was with Derby.23 His devotion to Farren – and supposed celibacy – became proverbial in London society: “I have no letter from you these ten days,” wrote Horace Walpole to a lady, “though the east wind has been as constant as Lord Derby.”24

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A month after Lady Elizabeth, Derby’s first wife, died of tuberculosis on 14 March 1797, Elizabeth Farren made her farewell appearance on the Drury Lane stage; and less than a month after that, Farren became the second Countess of Derby.25 She may have been the first English actress ever to marry into the nobility, but she was accepted by society: ten days after the wedding she was presented to the Queen.26 Sometime around 1780, four years after his wife died, Burgoyne, too, became attached to a young woman: he met an actress and singer of twenty-three named Susan Caulfield.27 Unfortunately, very little is known about her. Playbills of the New Theatre of Blackburn in northern England list a Mr Caulfield and a Mrs Caulfield as members of the cast of plays by Burgoyne, David Garrick, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, among others, performed over a period of two months during the spring of 1787. Some of the playbills note that Mrs Caulfield not only acted but also sang a song.28 The two Caulfields may have been brother and sister; in the eighteenth century unmarried actresses were often styled as “Mrs.”29 It is possible, but by no means certain, that she is the Susan Caulfield who was Burgoyne’s mistress. The relationships among Burgoyne, Derby, Caulfield, and Farren make it highly likely the two women knew each other: both were actresses, Caulfield was Burgoyne’s mistress, Burgoyne’s nephew Derby was courting Farren, and Farren played leading roles in Burgoyne’s plays.30 Possibly it was Farren who introduced Caulfield to Burgoyne.31 Caulfield and Burgoyne’s relationship continued until his death in 1792. Between 1782 and 1788 they had four children whom he acknowledged as his own, but they never married. The oldest was a boy, John Fox Burgoyne, named after Charles James Fox, the political leader who was Burgoyne’s friend.32 But Caulfield herself seems to have disappeared from history almost without a trace. With one exception, any correspondence between her and Burgoyne has been lost or destroyed, nor is she mentioned in any other correspondence that I have found; and neither of them is known to have kept a diary. Burgoyne’s friends and acquaintances who knew about their unmarried relationship may have feared that to acknowledge the presence of Caulfield in Burgoyne’s life would harm their reputations and those of their children.

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Moreover, any public mention of Caulfield might have been seen by Derby’s family as disrespectful to the memory of Lady Charlotte. A short letter Burgoyne wrote to Caulfield in 1785 does provide evidence of his affection for her. He addresses her as “My dearest Sue” and writes that he has sent her “a pheasant and a brace of Partridges – both will keep, but particularly for a week if you chuse [sic] it.” He apparently refers to her career as a singer: he tells her “to tune your song at your work.” Finally, in a postscript he gently chides her for overeating: “Fie! Fie! To get such colds and pains in the stomach by feasting. If you did but take such care as I do!”33 There is no record of Burgoyne, Caulfield, and their children living together as a family; it is likely he continued to live alone in his house on Hertford Street, Mayfair, while he established Caulfield and the children in a separate residence, probably nearby.34 He meanwhile pursued an active social life at Brooks’s Club, the homes of fashionable hostesses, and at the theatre. Burgoyne’s five-act comedy The Heiress opened at the Drury Lane theatre on 14 January 1786.35 Partly adapted from a French play,36 it was his most successful work; it ran for thirty nights, which was considered a successful run at the time. Burgoyne dedicated the play to his nephew, the Earl of Derby, and a leading role was played by Elizabeth Farren. The Heiress offered audiences an amusing picture of how class and money governed elite English society, framed by an expression of Burgoyne’s belief in the importance of decency and honesty in human relations. A character who clearly is the author’s mouthpiece states the closing lines of the play: “I have ever believed self to be the predominant principle of the human mind … to reward the deserving, and make those we love happy, is self-interest in the extreme.” Burgoyne’s wit and his understanding of human strengths and frailties light up The Heiress. Each character is well defined, and the play is laced with humour. He takes pokes at lawyers who use obscure language, the intricacies of the class system, and the pretentiousness of a French hairdresser named Chignon (French characters were a popular target for satire). What we also see is Burgoyne’s innate conservatism: the established upper classes, and especially the nobility, are decent,

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law-abiding people, while those who aspire to join them in the upper reaches of society are not. In The Heiress, Lord Gayville, a decent but essentially clueless – and penniless – young man, is looking for a wife with enough money to support his aristocratic station in life; but he falls in love with a young woman, Miss Alston, whom he meets while taking a walk: in modern terms, a pickup. Gayville’s friend, Clifford, and Gayville’s sister, the well-read and gracious Lady Emily (played by Elizabeth Farren in the play’s premiere performance) are fond of each other, but neither of them has any money. Alscrip is an unscrupulous and lecherous nouveau riche businessman, whose daughter, the eponymous heiress, is looking for an aristocratic husband. Unsurprisingly, it all ends happily. Miss Alston, the young woman whom Gayville loves, turns out to be Clifford’s sister Harriet; and Alscrip gained his wealth by thievery from Clifford’s grandfather. Once these facts are revealed, the law strips Alscrip of his ill-gained fortune and awards it to Clifford and Harriet. Now Gayville marries Harriet, the woman he loves. Clifford and Lady Emily marry, bound by “virtue, love, and friendship,” and also, needless to say, by money. Miss Alscrip, no longer an heiress, marries Blandish, an opportunistic social climber; though both are now poor, they are clearly meant for each other. A scene in which the bluestocking Lady Emily instructs the socialclimbing Miss Alscrip on how fashionable people talk illustrates Burgoyne’s skill as a humorist as well as his class prejudice:

LE: Sure you must have observed the drop of the lip is exploded

since Lady Simpermode broke a tooth … It is to be called the Paphian mimp. MA: I swear I think it pretty – I must try to get it. LE: Nothing so easy. It is done by one cabalistical word, like a metamorphosis in the fairy tales. You have only, when before your glass, to keep pronouncing to yourself nimini-pimini – the lips cannot fail taking their plié. MA: Nimini – pimini – imini, mimini – oh, it’s delightfully infantine [sic] – and so innocent, to be kissing one’s own lips. LE: You have it to a charm.37

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Burgoyne, who loved to write verse, could not resist including a sentimental song in the play, rendered by Miss Alston/Harriet. If the words seem flat on the page, their rollicking anapest rhythm38 comes to life if read (or sung) aloud. Here are the first lines: For tenderness framed in life’s earliest day, A parent’s soft sorrows to mine led the way; The lesson of pity was caught from her eye, And ere words were my own, I spoke in a sigh. After its initial run, The Heiress continued to be performed in London and Dublin for many years.39 Burgoyne sold the copyright to the publisher Debrett for £200, the most that had been paid for a comedy at that time.40 It was translated into French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and acted in Paris and Stuttgart.41 Horace Walpole, who seldom had a good word to say about Burgoyne, wrote: “Burgoyne’s battles and speeches will be forgotten, but his delightful comedy of The Heiress still continues the delight of the stage and [is] one of the most pleasing domestic compositions.”42 Walpole believed the play owed its success to the fact that Burgoyne, unlike many other playwrights, was personally familiar with the high social scene that it portrayed.43 Interestingly, one of the male characters is played by a “Mr Caulfield” and one of the female characters by “a young Lady.” She is the only member of the cast who is anonymous. Could Mr Caulfield be Thomas Caulfield and the young lady his sister Susan Caulfield, and Burgoyne’s mistress? Burgoyne wrote one more play, a three-act musical piece, Richard Coeur de Lion, which opened at Drury Lane on 24 October 1786.44 He adapted it from a French opera of the same name by Michel-Jean Sedaine. Richard, which Burgoyne called “An Historical Romance,” contains a number of songs, the music written by the popular composer Thomas Linley. The story of Richard is very loosely based on an episode in the life of King Richard I of England, known to history as Richard the LionHearted. Richard spent most of his short reign (1189–99) crusading in

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the Middle East or fighting in wars in Europe; in one of these wars he was taken prisoner by Duke Leopold of Austria and held in a castle in Germany.45 In the play, Matilda, a young woman who is in love with Richard, disguises herself as a boy and leads an army that rescues Richard from captivity.46 Richard, Burgoyne’s only excursion into historical romance, lacks the social satire and sharp characterizations that enliven his other plays. Nevertheless, according to biographer De Fonblanque, it was a great success.47 This may have been due to its patriotic fervour – clearly expressing Burgoyne’s own feelings – during a period when Britain was in a more or less constant state of hostility with France. When Matilda, in disguise, asks one of her rescuers whether he is British, he says, “Yes, I am, Sir, and an enemy to slaves of course; in love, or out.” Matilda replies, “Glorious nation!” As the play ends, the Richard thanks his rescuers: And when to my native England I return, so may I prosper in my subjects’ love, as I cherish in the memory of my sufferings here – a lesson to improve my reign – compassion should be a monarch’s nature – I have learned what ’tis to need it – the poorest peasant in my land, when misery presses, in his King shall find a friend. During these years, Burgoyne was what today would be described as a socialite, celebrity, or man about town. He had many friends, perhaps the most eminent of whom was the political philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke. Burke was a supporter of reform of the laws that denied civil rights to Roman Catholics; his home in Mayfair became a target of the mob in the worst insurrection in London’s history, the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of June 1780. Burgoyne moved Burke’s family and possessions into his own nearby home on Hertford Street, saving them from harm.48 Burgoyne, too, supported reform of the antiCatholic laws, advocating that Catholics be made eligible to enlist in the army; one must assume that the Gordon rioters did not know this, for they left his house alone.49

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Burgoyne was a member of a group of aristocrats, artists, and politicians known as the Devonshire House Circle, who were habitués of the grand Piccadilly home of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.50 According to Georgiana’s biographer Amanda Foreman, “the people who gathered around Georgiana … shared an attachment to the Whig party, a worldly attitude, a passion for the theatre, and a love of scandal.”51 It was a milieu that suited Burgoyne perfectly; the conversation was always stimulating and several of his friends, including Burke, Charles James Fox, Garrick, and Sheridan, were members of the group.52 The absence of any mention of Susan Caulfield by memoirists, letter writers, or biographers suggests that she did not accompany him to this or his other social gatherings. Burgoyne liked to attend the after-the-theatre suppers that Elizabeth Farren gave at her home on Green Street in Mayfair, which was rapidly becoming London’s most fashionable neighbourhood. Her mother presided and “all the pleasantest people in London” were there.53 Doubtless, her suitor, Lord Derby, was one of them. Burgoyne was also a regular visitor to a mainly literary gathering at the home of the actress and poet Mary Robinson on Clarges Street near Hyde Park. He was said to be a particular admirer of Robinson, one of the most beautiful – and promiscuous – actresses of the day.54 Burgoyne wrote a poem to her; a couple of stanzas give the flavour: When on thy lovely perfect face, The sportive dimpled smile we see; With eager hope the cause we trace, And wish to share each bliss with thee. … Oh! Who can gaze upon that lip, That coral lip of brightest hue; Nor wish the honied balm to sip, More fresh, more sweet, than morning dew?55 Throughout his life, Burgoyne liked to write occasional verse, and much of it had an erotic quality. In an epilogue he wrote in 1787 for a

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new production of Arthur Murphy’s comedy The Way to Keep Him,56 he expressed his delight in feminine charms: No Rainbow silks then flaunted in the wind; No Gauzes swell’d before; nor Cork behind. No Diamonds then with all their sparkling train, No Rouge, nor Powder e’en a single grain … These were good years for Burgoyne, which helped soften the stigma of Saratoga. He tasted success as an author; he fathered four children by Susan Caulfield; and he was accepted in the highest reaches of London society. And yet Saratoga lingered; it may have accounted for his failure to be admitted to the Club, a literary and artistic group that has been described as “a constellation of talent that has rarely if ever been equalled.”57 Its members included the writer Samuel Johnson, the painter Joshua Reynolds, the historian Edward Gibbon, the economist Adam Smith, the playwrights Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith, the actor David Garrick, and the political leader Charles James Fox. James Boswell, Johnson’s biographer, proposed Burgoyne for membership and Reynolds seconded the motion. Admission to the Club required a unanimous vote, and three members reportedly blackballed Burgoyne.58 It is possible the blackballers considered his talents as a dramatist insufficient, but the Club had admitted several members with far fewer accomplishments than those of Burgoyne at around the time it rejected him.59 More likely it was the ignominy of his surrender at Saratoga thirteen years earlier that kept him out of the Club. The author of The Heiress, who wished to be accepted as a colleague by literary and artistic giants, may have taken this new setback stoically, but still with disappointment.

Chapter 18

Last Days The last twelve years of Burgoyne’s life were full of incident and activity. Although suffering constantly from the painful disease of gout, he remained involved in politics, the theatre, and his social life. His urbane presence was well known to many in the House of Commons, Brooks’s Club on St James’s Street,1 the London playhouses, as well as fashionable drawing rooms. The one kind of social occasion Burgoyne spurned was the royal reception. King George III, who plainly wanted him out of England, snubbed Burgoyne at one of his royal levées, perhaps because he had failed in his effort to banish the defeated general from England; Burgoyne stopped going to them, saying he didn’t want to “intrude myself upon the royal displeasure.”2 In 1782, Burgoyne’s fortunes took a turn for the better, ironically caused by another surrender, one at least as consequential as Saratoga. In October 1781 the British General Charles Cornwallis’s army of 8,000 men capitulated to an American–French force at Yorktown, Virginia, effectively securing American independence, although the war would drag on for several more months.3 The news of Yorktown reached England on 25 November; four months later the House of Commons forced the resignation of Prime Minister Lord North, who had guided Britain’s North American policy throughout the war. The king at first refused to recognize that the war was lost, writing to Germain a month after the news of Yorktown reached England that he would “not allow any unnecessary delay to arise … for conducting the War in [North America].”4 But he had no choice but to accept North’s resignation and the formation of a new government headed by the liberal Marquess of Rockingham as prime minister, and

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Burgoyne’s friends Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke as cabinet members. The so-called Rockingham Whigs had opposed the war and so made an enemy of the king, who now perversely heaped honours on the two men primarily responsible for Britain’s harsh, and ultimately unsuccessful, policy that led to American independence.5 North received a valuable sinecure and a knighthood, inspiring a Frenchman to ask: “Why give it to him? Is it for having lost America?”6 As noted earlier, Germain, the minister for the colonies, was raised to the nobility as Viscount Sackville. With the fall of the North ministry, the king restored Burgoyne to royal favour, appointing him to the Privy Council, an advisory body with largely ceremonial functions but one that commanded much prestige. Much more important, Burgoyne, still holding the rank of lieutenant general, was appointed commander-in-chief of the armed forces in Ireland. It was a critical military post. Ireland, a country with a large Catholic majority but ruled by Britain and a minority of Protestant landowners, seethed with insurgency that could burst into rebellion at any time. France exploited the unrest by threatening invasion.7 Nevertheless, Burgoyne’s brief time in Ireland turned out to be a period of relative calm. The appointment helped restore his reputation and, not least, brought him a substantial income. His mistress Susan Caulfield may have joined him in Ireland.8 After a few months in Ireland, Burgoyne asked the ministry for permission to return to England in order to take the waters at Bath. Permission was granted in January 1783, but for “no longer than is necessary for your recovery.”9 It is unclear whether he made the trip, but if he did he was back in Ireland three months later, when the king turned down his request for another leave of absence.10 Burgoyne finally resigned his Irish command in December 1783, over the objections of Lord Northington, the lord lieutenant of Ireland, who wished him to remain commander-in-chief in order to deal with a likely Catholic rebellion.11 Burgoyne wished to return to the theatres, clubs, and elegant salons of London; but he had a more serious reason for resigning. He believed that remaining as commanderin-chief would place him in an impossible position: if there were a rebellion in Ireland he might be required, as a military commander,

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to carry out government policies that he would feel obliged to oppose in Parliament.12 His resignation came at a significant financial cost: not only was he giving up a salary and a pension, but he had a debt of £500 that was coming due. He asked Nathaniel Day, an old army friend, for a loan, insisting that if he borrowed the money he would give Day, as security, the diamond the Portuguese king had awarded for his service in the 1762 Portuguese campaign.13 It seems that Day had helped Burgoyne financially once before; in his will, Burgoyne bequeathed £2,000 to Day “in remembrance of his generous present when I resigned my commission in 1779.”14 It is not known whether Day loaned Burgoyne money four years later or whether Burgoyne’s estate was sufficient to enable the £2,000 bequest. During the next few years, Burgoyne was active in Parliament, making his views known on two sensitive matters involving the army. Having been an army officer since he was fifteen, he regarded the military as something akin to a sacred calling: it should be protected from outside pressures and, at the same time, its members should adhere to the highest standards of conduct. A Scottish nobleman who was also an army officer had been removed from his command for having voted in Parliament against the government. In a debate in the House of Commons in 1789, Burgoyne argued that the military should be shielded against political reprisals. Specifically, he proposed the creation of a unified ministry of defence to replace the scattered division of authority that existed at the time and was a contributing cause of the loss of the American colonies.The new ministry would be responsible for all military matters and would presumably be insulated from political pressures.15 It was not until 150 years later that Parliament acted on Burgoyne’s proposal: Britain united its armed forces in a Department of Defence in 1946.16 Another parliamentary debate in which Burgoyne played a prominent part concerned the illegal execution of an Indian by a British army officer, who claimed in his defence that he was justified because he was following orders. Burgoyne would have none of it. The military rule requiring obedience to orders, he said, is limited to lawful commands.

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As a military man proud of his calling, he proclaimed that military justice is subject to a higher law: There is another law upon which the military establishment of this country has also the glory to stand: the law of humanity … If I am ordered to march to inevitable destruction I must obey, because it may be expedient to sacrifice a part to save a far greater part, when no other means will do it; but if I receive an order in which the service of a soldier is debased, an order that my conscience revolts at … my idea of obedience ceases, and gives place to a principle more forcible and more just.17 One has to wonder whether Burgoyne, as he spoke these words, was thinking of his own futile expedition that ended at Saratoga, which he justified as a sacrifice of his own army to save Howe’s army from destruction.18 Burgoyne’s return to England brought him back to the issue of the corruption by the British rulers of India, a matter in which he had been deeply involved a decade earlier.19 In 1783 Fox introduced a bill in Parliament that would have drastically altered the relationship between the East India Company and the government. The bill was an attempt to bring the Company under government control by transferring management of its affairs to a board of commissioners appointed by Parliament.20 Burgoyne vigorously supported the bill in the House of Commons. Recalling his classical eduation at Westminster School, he cited Virgil’s Aeneid to denounce the corrupt Company employees, comparing them to the scoundrels Aeneas met when he went down to Hell. Stirred by his rhetoric as well as that of Burke and Fox, the House passed the bill by a large majority, but when it was presented for approval by the House of Lords the king announced that he would consider any peer who voted for it as his enemy. The Lords rejected the bill decisively.21 Undeterred by the defeat, the parliamentary reformers of the East India Company turned their attention to Warren Hastings. Having begun his career in India as a clerk for the Company, Hastings had

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risen to be governor of Bengal. Unlike many of the other British rulers of India, he was a highly civilized individual who respected and admired Indian culture; he made it his business to learn Hindi and Urdu, the main Indian languages, and he supervised a codification of Indian law that was based on the customs and traditions of the country rather than on English law.22 But despite his personal affinity for India, Hastings was unable or unwilling to eliminate the corruption that pervaded the East India Company and impoverished the Indians.23 Like many other Company officials, he accepted huge “presents” from Indian rulers and returned to England a rich man.24 In 1788 the House of Commons, under Burke’s leadership, impeached Hastings for corruption and oppression on a “staggering” scale.25 Impeachment under English law consisted of two steps: first, the House of Commons impeached by bringing serious charges against an official, similar to an indictment in a criminal case; and, second, the House of Lords tried the impeached person.26 After the Commons impeached Hastings, it selected managers to prosecute him. Burgoyne, along with Burke and Fox, were among those chosen. The trial before the House of Lords was held in Westminster Hall, the eleventh-century building where the principal English courts sat until the nineteenth century. The trial was a major social as well as a legal and political event. People came in droves to Westminster Hall, not with a serious purpose of learning the guilt or innocence of a leading political figure, but chiefly to attend a spectacle where the brilliant orator Burke would perform. Tickets to attend were difficult to come by, but Fanny Burney, the novelist and diarist, was able to obtain two. She went there in February 1788 with her brother, James Burney, a retired sea captain who had sailed with James Cook on two of his famous voyages of exploration. They arrived early at Westminster Hall and spent nearly three hours in social conversation before being seated. Then, just before the trial began, one of the managers, whom Fanny Burney did not know, came over and greeted her brother: “Captain Burney, I am very glad to see you.” James answered, “How do you do, sir. Here I am, come to see the fine show.” At this, the man turned around without a word and abruptly walked back to the managers’ box.

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Fanny asked James who he was, and when James told her it was General Burgoyne, one of the managers, she was outraged at her brother’s behaviour: “A manager! And one of the chargers! And you treat the business of the Hall with such contempt to his face!”27 To Burgoyne the reformer, the impeachment trial was serious business; he resented hearing it treated as a show. The impeachment trial went on for seven years, ending in Hastings’s acquittal in 1795, three years after Burgoyne’s death. By that time one-third of the Lords who had been present at the beginning of the trial had also died. Burgoyne’s encounter with James Burney shows that, despite his normally composed demeanour, he could react with indignation to a perceived or actual slight. In 1784, when he ran for re-election in Preston, a political opponent named Elton, who wanted to embarrass him, was in the barroom of an inn with his friends, where Burgoyne also was sitting. Elton asked Burgoyne’s servant to take a valuable watch over to Burgoyne and ask him to tell them what time it was. Not understanding the point of the joke but sensing that it was probably intended to humiliate him, Burgoyne pulled out two pistols, placed the watch and the pistols on a tray, and asked who in the room was the watch’s owner. When Elton remained silent, Burgoyne said: “Since the watch belongs to none of you gentlemen it remains my property.” He then made a gift of the watch to his servant.28 In 1791 he had a quarrel with his old friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. Burgoyne believed that Reynolds had broken a promise to include a painting by a friend of Burgoyne’s in an exhibition at the Royal Academy. He wrote Reynolds a five-page angry letter but then wasn’t sure he wanted to send it. He put the letter in his desk drawer. Finally, he sent it, but with a postscript: “After having kept this letter for five days unfinished, I now confess I wrote it in anger, but upon reflection, I set too high a value on your talents and your virtues not to be placable.” Reynolds accepted it with good grace, remarking that the body of the letter came from the gout, and the postscript from his friend.29 Reynolds was right: gout may have influenced his personality and his actions. During the last two decades of his life, Burgoyne was seldom

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free of the disease. Twice after he returned from America, as well as on other occasions, he visited the fashionable spa resort of Bath in western England to socialize but mainly in the hope that drinking and immersing himself in its mineral waters would lessen the pain caused by the disease. In the eighteenth century, gout was generally considered “a disease of the better sort, a celebrity complaint … fit for a man of quality.”30 To suffer from the disease was regarded as an emblem of good birth and breeding. Indeed, Burgoyne’s gout placed him in good company. King George III was crippled by the gout; prime minister William Pitt suffered from it, as did literary giant Samuel Johnson, historian Edward Gibbon, actor-manager David Garrick, diarist Horace Walpole, founder of Methodism John Wesley (who claimed he had cured himself of it several times), and many other eighteenth-century notables.31 Gout is caused by the build-up of uric acid in the blood. Excessive uric acid forms into sharp crystals, which collect in a joint and make the area around it hot, red, swollen, and extremely painful. It occurs most commonly in the joint at the base of the big toe, but it can also show up in other joints in the feet as well as in the hands and knees.32 The disease has customarily been thought of as a disease of the wealthy, because uric acid is formed from foods high in purines, a substance found in red meat and fortified wines such as port and madeira. Modern medical science, however, has discovered that gout can strike any person at any time; it is especially likely to occur in persons with a family history of the disease.33 A man who loved food and drink – he grew stouter as he aged – Burgoyne may have been an excellent candidate for gout, but it is impossible to know what caused him to have the disease. Gout seldom causes death, but uric acid deposits may cause other ailments, including kidney problems.34 The circumstances of his death make it unlikely that Burgoyne died of gout, as many of his contemporaries and later biographers believed.35 He remained active socially and as a writer for the theatre until the very day he died. In April 1792, he wrote an epilogue in verse for The Fugitive, a play by Joseph Richardson, which opened at the Haymarket Theatre that month.36 And he attended a play on the last evening of his life.

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Accounts of Burgoyne’s death, like those of his birth, differ. What seems most likely is that on 3 August 1792, after a two-day visit to Charles James Fox near London, he returned to his home at Hertford Street, Mayfair. That evening he went to the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, where a new play was on the calendar: The Surrender of Calais, by George Colman, who, besides being a playwright, was the owner and manager of the theatre.37 One can speculate that Burgoyne wanted to see Surrender because, like his own most recent work, Richard Coeur de Lion, it proclaimed British patriotism: the play dramatized an episode in one of England’s wars with France during the Middle Ages.38 Ironically, Burgoyne, who is known today principally for his surrender at Saratoga, spent the last evening of his life witnessing a play about a surrender, albeit in this case a British victory. After the play, Burgoyne returned to his home, where he died either during the night or early the next morning. We do not know what caused his sudden death; that it was the chronic but rarely fatal disease of gout seems improbable, given that he was leading a normally active life until the day he died. It would seem that the cause of death was a sudden traumatic event, such as a stroke, heart attack, or aneurysm. We will never know. It is also unknown whether Susan Caulfield was with him when he died.39 He was sixty-nine years of age. In the seventeen-page will he had handwritten nine years earlier, Burgoyne acknowledged the paternity of his and Caulfield’s four children; he bequeathed sums of money to his servants, and mementos to his nieces and a few others. To his nephew the Earl of Derby he left what must have been his most valuable possession, the large diamond that the king of Portugal had given him after the successful campaign in 1762. Burgoyne left the income from the sum of £4,000 to Susan Caulfield, the principal to be distributed on her death in equal amounts to their four children. But this latter provision could not be carried out; after his creditors had been paid, very little was left for Caulfield and the children.40 As the notice of his death ruefully observed: “He has died richer in esteem than in money; in the saving or securing of that he had no talent.” The notice continued: “Of all the gay, the witty, and the fashionable, who eagerly sought his acquaintance, and whose minds were impressed by the elegance of

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his conversation, and the variety of his talents, very few were present to drop the tear over departed genius.”41 Following Burgoyne’s request in his will, the funeral was private. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in an unmarked grave next to his wife Charlotte. Only five persons attended: four men and a woman – the newspapers did not identify them. One can guess that the woman, who was described in an obituary as being in a state of “convulsive agitation,” was Susan Caulfield. The men might well have included some of his closest friends: the Earl of Derby, Charles James Fox, Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to think of any other individual who is known for a single event, but whose life encompassed such a variety of incidents and who had such an abundance of talents and interests. A failed general but a brave soldier and leader of men, a successful playwright, and a reforming politician, he was also a socialite, a delightful conversationalist, a patriot, and a gambler in London’s exclusive clubs. His resilience after the disaster of Saratoga was admirable; even more admirable was the unerring moral compass that guided him throughout his life.

Epilogue Burgoyne is remembered today as the man who “lost” America. His other roles – dashing cavalry colonel of the Seven Years War, satirical London playwright, reformer member of Parliament, gambler in the clubs on St James’s Street, conversationalist who graced London society for over thirty years – have been largely forgotten. A century after his death, George Bernard Shaw tried to correct the narrow legacy that history gave him. Recognizing Burgoyne’s “talent, artistic, satirical, rather histrionic, and his fastidious delicacy of sentiment, his fine spirit and humanity,”1 Shaw gave him a cameo role in his play The Devil’s Disciple, as well as the nickname of “Gentleman Johnny,” which has stuck.2 The Devil’s Disciple is set in upstate New York a few days before the surrender at Saratoga. It is ironic that it was in 1897, the high point of British imperialism, that Shaw chose to write a play about one of the worst defeats in the history of British arms. It was the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the sixtieth anniversary of her accession to the throne, when kings, presidents, and prime ministers from all over the world assembled in London to honour her and the British Empire.3 Shaw’s Gentleman Johnny is the human face of British imperialism. He is ruthless in dealing with rebels but always polite. Shaw’s Burgoyne is willing to execute Richard Dudgeon, an American patriot, in order make an example of him and terrorize the rural population of upstate New York; but he invites the condemned man first to join him for lunch.4 Burgoyne has the best lines in the play; although his part is small, he often steals the show.5 His lines in the play are full of Shavian witticisms. When Dudgeon asks that, rather than be hanged like a dog, he be shot like a man by a firing squad, Burgoyne replies that hanging would be more humane:

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Have you any idea of the average marksmanship of the army … If we make you up a firing squad … half of them will miss you: the rest will make a mess of the business and leave you to the provo-marshal’s pistol. Whereas we can hang you in a perfectly workmanlike and agreeable way. Let me persuade you to be hanged.6 The lines are almost guaranteed to get a chuckle, but it is unlikely that the historical Burgoyne would have disparaged to an outsider the skill of the men who served under him, however much he might have criticized their marksmanship to their faces. The connection between Burgoyne and the Stanley family continued for generations. The four young children he had with Susan Caulfield would have been left in poverty if Burgoyne’s nephew, the 12th Earl of Derby, had not stepped into the breach. Moved by his strong bond of family and his friendship with Burgoyne, he offered to take responsibility for the children’s maintenance and education. This act of generosity and love made it possible for Burgoyne’s son, John Fox Burgoyne, and his son, Hugh Burgoyne, to have distinguished military careers and for Burgoyne’s daughters to make genteel marriages. But Derby’s generosity had a cost: Caulfield had to give up custody of her children to Derby. We do not know how she felt about the bargain; more than likely she reluctantly consented in order to assure them a better future than she could provide. Burgoyne’s three daughters spent the first years after his death at the Oaks, Derby’s estate near London. These were lonely years for them. While Derby kept busy with horseracing and courting the actress Elizabeth Farren, Burgoyne’s children were largely left to themselves and the servants.7 In 1797, five years after Burgoyne died and immediately after Derby’s estranged first wife died and he married Farren, Derby sent the girls to Knowsley Hall, his grand country residence over 200 miles away in the north of England. The place was bursting with children, including Derby’s two grandchildren from his first marriage, and eventually his three children by his marriage to Farren,

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now the Countess of Derby.8 The countess formed a warm attachment to Burgoyne’s children.9 Knowsley must have been a happy place in those years. Just as Burgoyne had been a substitute father to Derby after his father died in 1771, Derby took on the role of father to Burgoyne’s children. Like most other girls in elite families, Burgoyne’s daughters did not receive a formal education, although they likely were given lessons by a governess or tutor;10 but Derby guided the education of Burgoyne’s son, John Fox Burgoyne, with care. After a year in Cambridge living with a private tutor, John Fox entered Eton at the age of eleven, where he remained for three years. He spent his holidays at the Oaks or at Derby’s London home in Grosvenor Square. These were the days when Derby was courting Elizabeth Farren, and he would take John Fox with him to the theatre whenever she was performing. After the play, they would greet Farren at the stage door and take Farren and her mother in his carriage to her home.11 Burgoyne had wanted his only son to be a naval officer. He wrote in his will that he thought the navy to be the most promising career for a young man in his son’s circumstances, but he did not want his son to be forced into a navy career against his will.12 Perhaps Burgoyne preferred the army for his son but believed he would lack the financial resources to purchase an army commission. He might also have feared that the taint of Saratoga would be a handicap for his son in an army career. Following in his father’s footsteps, though not his stated wishes, John Fox Burgoyne chose the army. He entered the Royal Military Academy at fourteen and two years later was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. During a long and distinguished career, John Fox fought against the French in Malta and Spain in the Napoleonic Wars; against the Americans in the War of 1812; and, at the age of seventy-two, as an adviser to the British commander-in-chief in the Crimean War against Russia in the 1850s. On his retirement in 1868, he was promoted to field marshal, the highest rank in the army.13 Despite what seemed to be a highly successful career, John Fox Burgoyne never achieved anything like the celebrity of his father. He lacked his father’s self-confidence and outgoing personality. John

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Fox’s childhood as a poor relation of a noble family may have given him a certain timidity and distrust of his own powers.14 The Duke of Wellington, his commander in Spain, observed: “If Burgoyne only knew his own value, no one would equal him.”15 That was never said about his famous father, who certainly knew his own value. The connection between John Burgoyne’s descendants and the Stanley family continued for eighty years after Burgoyne’s death. George Wrottesley, who married John Fox’s daughter, dedicated his biography of his father-in-law to Edward Stanley, the 15th Earl of Derby, the great-grandson of Burgoyne’s nephew, the 12th earl. The dedication, dated 1 January 1873, reads: “This record of a brave and honourable life is dedicated in grateful testimony of the rare kindness and generosity displayed by his ancestor towards the orphan whose career is traced in its pages.” During this time, the Stanley family had risen to national prominence. Whereas the 12th Earl of Derby is known to history only for his interest in horseracing,16 his grandson, the 14th earl, was one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers: he was responsible for the Reform Act of 1867, which for the first time gave the vote to urban workingclass men. His son, the 15th earl, served as the nation’s foreign minister in the ministry of Benjamin Disraeli. A possible explanation for the eminence of these nineteenth-century aristocratic politicians lies in genealogy. Lord Strange, John Burgoyne’s friend and brother-in-law, was arguably the only eighteenth-century member of the Stanley family with conspicuous political ability and intellectual heft. He died in 1771 before he could inherit the earldom, but his granddaughter, Charlotte Hornby, married her first cousin, the 13th Earl of Derby. Thus, their eldest son, who became prime minister, combined the dna of Lord Strange through both his parents. Hugh Burgoyne, John Fox Burgoyne’s son and John Burgoyne’s grandson, was the family’s military hero. Whether or not he was aware of it, Hugh Burgoyne followed his grandfather’s wish by choosing the career of an officer in the Royal Navy. At the age of twenty-one he was the senior lieutenant on a British warship in the Sea of Azov in 1855 during the Crimean War. Hugh Burgoyne led a landing party,

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which, although confronted by a superior enemy force, set fire to a Russian supply and ammunition depot and then safely reboarded his ship. For this he received the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military decoration.17 Hugh Burgoyne died sixteen years later when the ship he commanded capsized in a gale off the coast of France. His valour would certainly have gained the applause and admiration of his patriotic grandfather. The Burgoyne that Shaw created in The Devil’s Disciple comes to life convincingly on the stage. Seeing the role performed by the great actor Philip Bosco, as it was when I attended the play in 1988, is a delight. But, amusing and accurate as Shaw’s creation is in most respects, it misses the sheer strength and seriousness of the historical Burgoyne. Beneath his smooth surface was a core of steel, tempered by humaneness. His tolerance, decency, and belief in the power of reason, not to speak of his sociability and hedonism, made him a worthy representative of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment – and a person of interest to us today.

Notes Introduction 1 Bibliography of Burgoyne. Call no. nygb Fam 2008-680 (1948) (nypl ). 2 The Rev. Sydney Smith, quoted in Roy Porter, London: A Social History, 178. 3 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, 859 (entry of 20 September 1777). 4 Porter, London: A Social History, 178. 5 Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 122, 463–4. 6 The novel, published in 1962, is Showell Styles, Gentleman Johnny. 7 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes. 8 F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne. 9 Paul Lewis (pseud.), The Man Who Lost America (1973); Lauran Paine, Gentleman Johnny (1973); James Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga (1976); Gerald Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga (1979); Richard J. Hargrove, Jr, General John Burgoyne (1983). 10 Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 339. 11 Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 1:396. 12 Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 3. 13 David T. Pottinger, “John Burgoyne: Politician, Dandy, and Man of Letters,” 39. 14 Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 266–9.

Chapter One 1 Before the reform of the English calendar in 1752, the year officially began on 25 March, so that Burgoyne’s birth date is sometimes given as 1722 or 1722/23. 2 Gerald Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 5. Several Burgoyne biographers state that he was born in a house on Park Prospect, but a map of London made a few years after Burgoyne’s birth shows no street of that name. John Rocque, Map of London in 1741–45, in Walter Besant, London in the Eighteenth Century. 3 Geoffrey Holmes and Daniel Szechi, The Age of Oligarchy, 133.

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4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Notes to pages 11–14

Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus (2003). Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World , 14. Elaine Chalus, Elite Women in English Political Life c.1754–1790, 3. John of Gaunt was a younger son of King Edward III (1327–1377) and the father of King Henry IV (1399–1413). He was the Shakespearean character who makes the famous speech glorifying England: “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” Richard II, 2.1.40–68. William Dobson, Parliamentary Representation in Preston. George Wrottesley, Life and Correspondence of Sir John Fox Burgoyne, 1. This was true, for example, of the father of the eighteenth-century actor and theatre manager David Garrick. Ian McIntyre, Garrick, 9. Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 6–7 (quoting a letter written in 1823 by Lady Elizabeth Warburton, Burgoyne’s niece, to Caroline Parker, Burgoyne’s illegitimate daughter). Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 303–4. Ibid., 303–5; De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 6–7. Ibid., 7. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 5, 300. Ibid., 6, 300. Burgoyne’s father died in 1768. Ibid., 53. Burgoyne’s previous biographers differ on the question of his paternity. De Fonblanque flatly denies the story. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 5–6. Others have taken a more measured view. For example, Lunt writes that, “on balance,” he believes the story of Burgoyne’s illegitimacy to be untrue, but that “there is some reason to assume” that his mother was Bingley’s mistress. James Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 7. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 4–5. The diarist, letter writer, and gossipmonger Horace Walpole wrote to a friend that Burgoyne was “a natural son of Lord Bingley.” Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 5. G.F. Russell Barker and Alan H. Stenning, The Record of Old Westminsters: A Biographical List of All Those Who Are Known to Have Been Educated at Westminster School from the Earliest Times to 1927, 1:143. Ibid., passim; John D. Carleton, Westminster School: A History, 29. Frederic H. Forshall, Westminster School: Past and Present, 228, 231. Carleton, Westminster School: A History, 29. Richard Cumberland, Memoirs, 42–3. John Sargeaunt, Annals of Westminster School, 170, 174.

Notes to pages 14–19

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27 28 29 30

Carleton, Westminster School: A History, 31. Cumberland, Memoirs, 40. Sergeaunt, Annals of Westminster School, 123. Ibid., 173. John Field, The King’s Nurseries: The Story of Westminster School, 50–1. 31 Burgoyne to Lord Germain, 20 October 1777, John Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlvii. 32 The sentence structure involves two separate clauses whose connection is implied but not grammatically linked.

Chapter Two 1 Saul David, All the King’s Men, 14; Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 22; James Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 9–10. 2 H.C.B. Rogers, The British Army in the Eighteenth Century, 53. 3 Anthony Bruce, The Purchase System in the British Army, 1660–1871, 5, 29–34, 166. Generals and most colonels – the highest army ranks – were appointed by the king. 4 Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, 689. 5 Bruce, Purchase System, 5. 6 Ibid. 7 Richard Holmes, Redcoat, 161. 8 Bruce, Purchase System, 33; Edward E. Curtis, The British Army in the American Revolution, 159–60. 9 Curtis, British Army in the American Revolution, 160. 10 Rogers, British Army in the Eighteenth Century, 54; Gerald Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 9. 11 Rogers, British Army in the Eighteenth Century, 55; Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, 451. 12 Rogers, British Army in the Eighteenth Century, 57–8. 13 Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 9; Gerald Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 13; Richard Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 22; Max Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga, 5. But two of Burgoyne’s early biographers state that he did not join the army until 1744, when he was twenty-one. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 8; F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 6. 14 Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 9, citing The Army List of 1740, reprinted by Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, special no. 3 (May 1931); Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 351.

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Notes to pages 19–20

15 Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 10. Mintz gives an estimate of about £1,200. Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga, 5. 16 Barker and Stenning state that Burgoyne became a cornet of dragoons on 14 July 1743. G.F. Russell Barker and Alan H. Stenning, The Record of Old Westminsters: A Biographical List of All Those Who Are Known to Have Been Educated at Westminster School from the Earliest Times to 1927, 1:143; Hudleston says it was on 23 April 1744. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 351. 17 Howson suggests that Burgoyne’s promotion to lieutenant may have cost him nothing because it was to fill a vacancy. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 14; Mintz asserts that the promotion was “exempt from the purchase requirement because its incumbent had acquired it through seniority.” Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga, 6. 18 Lunt states that Burgoyne served in that war “and was presumably present at the 1745 battle of Fontenoy” in what is now Belgium, in which the British were defeated by the French, but he provides no supporting documentation. Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 11. Howson states that certain information “suggests” that Burgoyne was at Fontenoy, again without providing any source. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 14. A third biographer, Hargrove, denies that Burgoyne took part in the war. Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 24. 19 Although the earls of Derby had once held the title of Lord Strange, it had passed to another branch of the family. Nonetheless, James Smith-Stanley preferred to be known by that title. Millard Cox, Derby: The Life and Times of the 12th Earl of Derby, 21. James Stanley changed his name to Smith-Stanley when he married the heiress Lucy Smith. Ibid., 22. 20 Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 20 (they became “the best of friends” at Westminster School); Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga, 5 (“a close bond sprang up between them”). 21 William Pollard, The Stanleys of Knowsley, 94–5. 22 Cox, Derby, 27–8; J.J. Bagley,The Earls of Derby, 133. 23 Cox, Derby, 102. 24 Bagley, Earls of Derby, 139. 25 Cox, Derby, 18. 26 Lunt writes that Burgoyne’s regiment was “supposedly” stationed at Preston but cites no source. Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 12–13. 27 Ibid. 28 Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 15. For an example of Lady Charlotte’s outspokenness, see Brian Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer, 38 (“Is it not

Notes to pages 21–2

29

30

31

32 33

34 35 36 37 38

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that we must be so very fond of the French that we must even imbibe their vices”). Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 15, 301. There is no foundation for the oft-repeated assertion that the couple eloped in 1743, when Lady Charlotte was only fifteen. odnb , Burgoyne, John. Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 23. Lunt writes that Lord Strange was in on the secret, because he later played an important part in reconciling his father to the marriage, but gives no source for either assertion. Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 13; Howson writes that Strange approved of the marriage and tried to mollify his father but likewise does not supply a source. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 15. In his 1875 biography of Burgoyne, De Fonblanque states that “letters and private papers that have been preserved in the family afford touching proofs of Burgoyne’s deep and unaltered affection for his wife after the lapse of many eventful years.” De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 9. Unfortunately, these documents were since lost or destroyed. But two letters of Burgoyne, which this author has seen and which will be described later in this book, as well as a private memorandum he wrote, attest to the strong bond between them. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 15 (no source provided for the amount). Previous biographers differ on this question, but none provides a source. Mintz and Lunt both say the earl cut them off with nothing. Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga, 7; Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 13. Howson says he promised to cut them off without a penny. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 15. Cox and Hargrove say he gave Charlotte “a small dowry” but refused to see either of them. Cox, Derby, 3; Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 23. De Fonblanque says the Derby family “resented” the marriage but soon became reconciled with Burgoyne. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 9. Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England, 49. De Fonblanque suggests, but does not assert, that this was the reason. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 9. Perhaps he was reluctant to accuse Burgoyne of being a gambler and a debtor. Burgoyne sailed for France to avoid his creditors. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 15; Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 13–14; Cox, Derby, 2–3 (no sources given). Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, 139. Jerry White, London in the Eighteenth Century, 452.

194

Notes to pages 22–6

39 40 41 42

Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield, 270. Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer, 35. Personal knowledge of the author. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 10; Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 24; Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 17. Daniel Baugh, Seven Years War, 31; Margaret Trouncer, A Duchess of Versailles, 9. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 77. The historian Parkman agrees with Burgoyne, describing Choiseul as “vivacious, brilliant, keen, penetrating; believing nothing, fearing nothing; an easy moralist, an uncertain ally, a hater of priests; light-minded, inconstant; yet a kind of patriot, eager to serve France and retrieve her fortunes.” Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, 3:240–1. Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, 4:107. Trouncer, A Duchess of Versailles, 9; W.R.H. Trowbridge, Daughter of Eve, 9–10 (“I never met a man who created such an atmosphere of goodhumour and contentment around him as he.”). Baugh, Seven Years War, 31. Roger Soltau, Choiseul, 8–9. Ibid.; Trouncer, A Duchess of Versailles, 10. De Fonblanque writes that the Burgoynes and the Choiseuls “went together on a tour of pleasure into Italy” (Political and Military Episodes, 9), but that does not seem to be the case. It is more likely that, since the duke was arriving in Rome in his capacity as French ambassador, he and his duchess travelled in style with a large retinue. Trouncer, A Duchess of Versailles, 9–17. Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 10. John Fleming, Robert Adam and His Circle, 118. Ibid. Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 15. Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer, 37–8. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 18. John Fleming, “Allan Ramsay and Robert Adam in Italy,” Connoisseur 137 (1956): 78–84. Alastair Smart, Allan Ramsay: 1713–1784, 122. Fleming, “Allan Ramsay and Robert Adam in Italy,” 171–2. He became a captain in the 11th Dragoon Regiment on 14 June 1756. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 351; De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 11. Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga, 7.

43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Notes to pages 27–32

195

Chapter Three 1 Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 8–14. 2 Burgoyne was promoted from the rank of captain to that of lieutenant colonel on 10 May 1758. F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 351. 3 Gerald Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 27. 4 Britain’s other allies were Prussia and Portugal, while France’s allies were Austria and Spain. Russia began as an ally of France but switched sides during the war. 5 France, the dominant power in Europe, could raise an army of 300,000, whereas Britain could raise only 80,000. Baugh, Seven Years War, 14. 6 Ibid., 307. 7 Marlborough’s second-in-command was Lord George Sackville. Under the name of Lord George Germain, he would be the war minister whom many blamed for the failure of Burgoyne’s 1777 expedition that ended at Saratoga. Journal of the Campaign, 46–7. 8 Ibid., 46–53; Baugh, Seven Years War, 308. 9 Journal of the Campaign, 40. 10 Ibid., 81. 11 Ibid. 12 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 12. 13 Journal of the Campaign, 99. 14 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 13–14. 15 Journal of the Campaign, 99. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 28–9. 18 Ibid., 81. 19 Ibid., 82.

Chapter Four 1 2 3 4 5 6

F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 351. Max Mintz, The Generals of Saratoga, 5–6. H.C.B. Rogers, The British Army of the Eighteenth Century, 45. Ibid. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 9–10. Shute Barrington, The Political Life of Viscount William Wildman, 55–62. Italics in original. It is unclear what threats Burgoyne made, since his letter to Barrington has not been found. 7 Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 16.

196

Notes to pages 33–41

8 Ibid., 18. 9 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 19–20. For more on Burgoyne’s view that military officers should be proficient in French, see Ira D. Gruber, Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution, 18. 10 The Belle-Île campaign is described in detail in William Smith, An Authentic Journal of the Expedition to Belle Isle; Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 526–32; and De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 23–6. 11 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 23. 12 Ibid., 24. 13 Smith, An Authentic Journal, 31. 14 His full name was Emmanuel-Armand de Vignerod du Plessis de Richelieu, duc d’Aiguillon. 15 The friendly treatment Burgoyne received from French officers on his mission brings to mind the same theme, in this case between French and German officers, in Jean Renoir’s great 1938 film about the First World War, La Grande Illusion. 16 Burgoyne may not have known that two years earlier d’Aiguillon had been appointed commander of a French force planning to invade Britain. The invasion never took place because in November 1759 the British destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of Quiberon Bay. Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 435–6. 17 Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, 4:107. 18 Burgoyne to Lady Charlotte Burgoyne, 11 May 1761, from the camp before the Citadel of Palais (dc ). 19 Ibid. 20 Smith, An Authentic Journal, 36. 21 Ibid., 42. 22 Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 531. 23 See chapter 7. 24 Smith, An Authentic Journal, 30. 25 Ibid.

Chapter Five 1 In his 665-page history of the Seven Years War, Daniel Baugh devotes just eight pages to the Portuguese campaign. Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 590–8. 2 McHugh and Kirby, “The Portugal Campaign 1762,” 27.

Notes to pages 41–4

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3 Baugh, Global Seven Years War, 592. 4 A.D. Francis, “The Campaign in Portugal,” 32. 5 Count Wilhelm von Schaumburg-Lippe, Memoire of the Campaign in Portugal in 1762, 1. 6 McHugh and Kirby, “The Portugal Campaign 1762,” 27. 7 Baugh, Global Seven Years War, 590, 592. 8 McHugh and Kirby, “Portugal Campaign,” 26. Buckram is “coarse linen or other cloth stiffened with gum or paste.” Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus, 2003. 9 Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe 1756–1763, 406–8. 10 F.B. O’Callaghan, ed., Orderly Book of Lieut. Gen. John Burgoyne, xiv. 11 Count Lippe Memoir, 8. 12 Francis, “The Campaign in Portugal,” 33–4. 13 Burgoyne’s dispatch to Lord Bute, in De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 41; Burgoyne Orderly Book, xiii–xvi. 14 Burgoyne’s dispatch to Lord Bute, in De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 41. 15 Baugh, Global Seven Years War, 596. 16 I.e., he would show no mercy. Burgoyne’s dispatch to Lord Bute. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 41–2. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Gentlemen’s Magazine 32 (1762): 443. 20 Extract from the orders of the day, Gentlemen’s Magazine 32 (29 August 1762): 498. 21 Burgoyne’s Orderly Book, xv. 22 Gentlemen’s Magazine 32 (1762): 443. 23 Francis, “The Campaign in Portugal,” 35–6. 24 Szabo, Seven Years War in Europe, 406–8. 25 Burgoyne’s Orderly Book, xvi. 26 Extract from the orders of the day, Gentlemen’s Magazine 32 (29 August 1762): 498. 27 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 42. 28 See chapter 10. 29 Francis, “The Campaign in Portugal,” 36–8; McHugh and Kirby, “Portugal Campaign,” 30; Count Lippe Memoir, 24. 30 Szabo, Seven Years War in Europe, 406–8. 31 Baugh, Global Seven Years War, 597-8; Burgoyne’s Orderly Book, xvii–xviii. 32 Francis, “The Campaign in Portugal,” 36.

198

Notes to pages 44–8

33 The United Service, a Monthly Review of Military and Naval Affairs 4 (Philadelphia: L.R. Hamersley, 1881): 564–5. 34 John Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 4–5.

Chapter Six 1 F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 20–1. While Hudleston does not provide a source for this story, it is consistent with other selfpromoting actions by Burgoyne. 2 Ibid., 351. 3 The painting is in the Frick Collection in New York. 4 Walter Sichel, Sheridan, 79 and 79fn2. 5 Jerry White, London in the Eighteenth Century, 338–9; Jessica Richard, The Romance of Gambling in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel, 188. 6 J.C.D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832, 107. 7 Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, 296–7. 8 Clark, English Society 1688–1832, 107. 9 John Timbs, Club Life of London, 116. 10 Clark, English Society 1688–1832, 108. Brooks’s was founded on Pall Mall under the name of Almack’s; it changed its name to Brooks’s in 1764 and moved to St James’s Street in 1778. Roy Porter, London: A Social History, 178; John Timbs, Clubs and Club Life, 71–2, 76. 11 E.J. Burford, Royal St. James’s, 147. 12 George Otto Trevelyan, The Early History of Charles James Fox, 463; Percy Colson, White’s, 1693–1950, 40. 13 Trevelyan, Early History of Charles James Fox, 463. 14 Letter dated 16 October 2018, to the author from Jeffrey Knight, a current member of Brooks’s Club. 15 James Granville Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens, 121. 16 Porter, London: A Social History, 178. 17 Andrew Steinmetz, The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims, 2:180–1. 18 Ibid. 19 B.C. Walpole, Recollections of the Life of the Late Honourable Charles James Fox, 45. Fox, who was one of the winners that evening, proposed that an annuity of £50 a year be settled on the unfortunate man, to be paid out of the club’s general fund. The members unanimously agreed and a resolution was passed that any member who was completely ruined would get a similar annuity. Ibid. 20 Arthur Lee, who in 1775 was in England serving as a confidential agent for Massachusetts, called Burgoyne, among other slurs, “an abandoned

Notes to pages 48–51

21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

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and notorious gambler,” but this was the kind of inflamed rhetoric that American revolutionaries were using at the time. James Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 68–9. Steinmetz, The Gaming Table, 1:99, 103–4; David Schwartz, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling, 101. (“From 1643 to 1777, thirty-two [French] royal decrees made gambling ‘a crime to be sternly punished. Yet gambling only grew.’”) Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 59, 346 (quoting from Letters of Junius, Letter 34, 12 Dec. 1767). For an example of how this accusation has been repeated without any qualification or caveat, see George Billias, “John Burgoyne: Ambitious General,” in Billias, ed., Washington’s Opponents, 154–5. “Junius” was the pseudonym of the anonymous author of a series of letters published in the 1770s in The Public Advertiser, many of them attacking the king and his ministers. Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield, 256. Professional gamblers, who lived on their winnings at dice or cards, could be members of White’s unless they had a reputation for cheating. Timbs, Club Life of London, 1:113. Colson, White’s, 40–1. Donna Andrew, Aristocratic Vice: The Attack on Dueling, Suicide, Adultery, and Gambling in Eighteenth-Century England, 185. Quoted in ibid., 188–9. Edward Barrington de Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 120, 122. Ibid., 390. Ibid., 122. Ibid., 463. Brian Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer, 64, 67, 109. Because Irish peers could not sit in the House of Lords, Palmerston was eligible to be elected to the House of Commons, where he served from 1762 until his death in 1802. Palmerston’s son, Henry John Tempole, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, served as a distinguished nineteenth-century prime minister. Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer, 35. Ibid., 61. Broadlands later became the property of Lord Louis Mountbatten, a member of the royal family, who served as Britain’s last viceroy of India. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 38.

200

Notes to pages 51–8

40 Ibid., 44–5. The couple’s daughter, Caroline of Brunswick, was to marry – and be divorced by – her first cousin, King George’s eldest son, who became King George IV. 41 Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England, 117. 42 Ibid., 113. 43 Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer, 52. 44 William Pitt to Burgoyne, 1 July 1766. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 56. 45 Ibid. 46 Burgoyne to Colonel Ellyott, 9 September 1766. Ibid., 60. 47 Burgoyne to Chatham, 21 August 1766. Ibid., 57–9. 48 Burgoyne to Colonel Ellyott, 9 September 1766. Ibid., 61. 49 See chapter 2. 50 See chapter 7. 51 “Observations and Reflections upon the Present Military State of Prussia, Austria, and France,” in De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 62–82. 52 Chatham to Burgoyne, 14 December 1766. Ibid., 83. 53 Ibid., 65–7. 54 Ibid. 55 Irish Catholics began to be accepted in the army in 1775. Edward E. Curtis, The British Army in the American Revolution, 52. 56 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 69–77. 57 Ibid., 77–80. 58 Ibid., 81–2. 59 Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 28. 60 Blake Pinnell, “Something for Nothing – Georgian Sinecures,” History Today 43, no. 8 (August 1993). 61 Burgoyne to an unidentified recipient, 28 Jan. 1764. ma 9144 (ml ). 62 I am indebted to Professor Andrew O’Shaughnessy for this observation. 63 Gerald Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 47, 303. 64 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 85–6; Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 28.

Chapter Seven 1 Geoffrey Holmes and Daniel Szechi, The Age of Oligarchy, 41. 2 George Billias, Washington’s Opponents, 151. 3 Edward Porritt, assisted by Annie G. Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons: Parliamentary Representation before 1832, 1:4.

Notes to pages 58–63

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4 Women over the age of thirty did not gain the right to vote until 1918. 5 A potwalloper was “a voter living in an English borough before the Reform Act of 1832 and qualifying for suffrage as a householder by the boiling of his own pot at his own fireplace.” https://www.merriamwebster.com. 6 Society of the Friends of the People (Great Britain), State of the Representation of England, Scotland, and Wales (1793), 5, 8. 7 Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 27; Billias, Washington’s Opponents, 151. 8 As noted in chapter 4, Williams was killed in the Belle Île campaign. 9 William Dobson, Parliamentary Representation in Preston, 12–13; Winifred Proctor, “The Preston Election of 1768,” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 111 (1959): 97–9. 10 Richard Harrison, “Parliamentary Elections and the Political Development of Newton, Preston and Wigan 1689–1768” (PhD dissertation, University of Lancaster, August 1996), 80–1. 11 Ibid., 138. 12 Ibid. 13 Encyclopedia Brittanica, 11th ed. (1911): 11:77. 14 Harrison, “Parliamentary Elections,” 91. 15 In 1767, there were 1,043 Catholics living in Preston. Ibid., 83. Since Catholics tended to favour the Tories, their exclusion benefited Burgoyne and the Whigs. 16 “Substance of Colonel Burgoyne’s Speech in the King’s Bench,” London Magazine, or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer 38, 678–9. 17 Harrison, “Parliamentary Elections,” 138–9. 18 “Substance of Colonel Burgoyne’s Speech,” 679. 19 Ibid. 20 Dobson, Parliamentary Representation in Preston, 7–8. 21 Proctor, “The Preston Election of 1768,” 102. 22 Ibid., 102–3. 23 Harrison, “Parliamentary Elections,” 93–4. 24 Proctor, “The Preston Election of 1768,” 109. 25 Ibid., 111. 26 Harrison, “Parliamentary Elections,” 93–4. 27 Dobson, Parliamentary Representation in Preston, 12–13. 28 Harrison, “Parliamentary Elections,” 286. 29 Ibid. 30 Dobson, Parliamentary Representation in Preston, 9; Letter from R. Bradley to George Kenyon, 9 May 1769, Lancashire Archives ddke / hmc/1271.

202

Notes to pages 64–8

Chapter Eight 1 Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 124. 2 Gilbert and Sullivan, Iolanthe, act 2. 3 J. Steven Watson, The Reign of George III, 1760–1815, 154–5; De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 91–3. 4 Ibid., 93. 5 Ibid. 6 Watson, The Reign of George III, 155. 7 The Royal Marriages Act remained in force until 2015, when it was replaced by legislation that required only that the first six persons in the line of succession to the throne obtain the monarch’s approval of their marriage in order to remain in the line of succession. The new law also changed the rules of succession to eliminate gender discrimination: under the new rule, an older sister has priority over her younger brother; until then, a younger brother trumped his older sister. 8 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 93. 9 Nicholas Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain, 167–8. 10 Ibid., 38, 54. 11 Ibid., 62. 12 The word nabob was derived from the Hindi word nawab, meaning a governor or nobleman. 13 Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 9. In the summer of 1772 a new play, The Nabob, by Samuel Foote mocking these persons was produced at London’s Haymarket Theatre. Soon after the play’s first performance, two members of the East India Company, armed with cudgels, arrived at Foote’s home with intent to harm him. Foote charmed them into putting down their clubs and staying for coffee and dinner. Norman S. Poser, The Birth of Modern Theatre, 133. 14 Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 54; R.J. Minney, Clive, 262. 15 Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 44. 16 Lucy Sutherland, The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics, 230. 17 Ibid., 231. 18 Ibid., 232. 19 Ibid., 222. 20 Ibid., 221. 21 Sutherland writes that “all the Burkes … were reduced to the verge of ruin.” Ibid., 193. See also Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 54.

Notes to pages 68–72

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22 As one of those schoolchildren in the 1930s, this author was taught that “Clive of India” was a hero in Britain’s rise to world power, along with James Wolfe, whose capture of Quebec from the French in 1759 brought Canada into the British Empire. 23 Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 294–6. 24 Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 10, 43. 25 Ibid., 45. 26 Roy Porter, English Society in the 18th Century, 123. 27 Under the bill, a governor general, nominated by Parliament, would be the administrator of Bengal; and a majority of the Company’s board of directors would have to be approved by the government. Sutherland, East India Company, 272–4. 28 A. Mervyn Davies, Clive of Plassey, 483. 29 Sutherland, East India Company, 256; Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 58. 30 Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 58. Davies, Clive of Plassey, 483–5. 31 Sutherland, East India Company, 248. 32 St. James’s Chronicle, 10 July 1773. hs 74/1661/58 (bl ). 33 Minney, Clive, 264. 34 John Watney, Clive of India, 203. 35 Minney, Clive, 276–7; Watney, Clive of India, 204–5. 36 Minney, Clive, 276. 37 Dirks, Scandal of Empire, 18.

Chapter Nine 1 J.J. Bagley, The Earls of Derby, 142. 2 It is unclear why Burgoyne addressed the letter to Lady Mary, his sisterin-law, rather than to Lady Charlotte, his wife. Perhaps Lady Mary was closer than Lady Charlotte to their father; or perhaps Lady Charlotte had already tried, without success, to persuade the earl to allow the trip. Another possibility is that Burgoyne’s wife was incapacitated by the illness that led to her death in 1776. 3 Burgoyne was not the only knowledgeable person who believed at that time that London would be the ruin of a rich but immature young man; Chief Justice Lord Mansfield was another. Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason, 156. 4 Burgoyne to Lady Mary Stanley, ca 1772 (dc ). 5 The Duke of Hamilton had died in 1758, and Lady Betty’s mother had subsequently married the Duke of Argyll. Thus, Lady Betty was the daughter of the Duke of Hamilton and the Duchess of Argyll.

204

Notes to pages 72–5

6 Gentleman’s Magazine 44 ( June 1774): 263–4. 7 Millard Cox, 12th Earl of Derby, 2. The Oaks may have belonged to Lady Charlotte, Burgoyne’s wife. David M. Little and George M. Kahrl, eds, The Letters of David Garrick, 3:959n1. In the eighteenth century, any property owned by a married woman was legally the property of her husband. Poser, Lord Mansfield, 338, citing Ringsted v. Lady Lanesborough, 99 Eng. Rep. 610, 613 (1783). 8 Cox, 12th Earl of Derby, 2. 9 Daniel O’Quinn, “Diversionary Tactics,” 135. 10 Lady Elizabeth may have played the part of the eponymous maid. Peter Thomson, Introduction to English Theatre, 120. 11 Suzanne Bloxan, Walpole’s Queen of Comedy, 41; Ian McIntyre, Garrick, 521. 12 O’Quinn, “Diversionary Tactics,” 137. 13 Nick Bunker, An Empire on Edge, 310–11. 14 Gentleman’s Magazine 44 ( June 1774): 263–4; Bunker, An Empire on Edge, 310–11. It was said that Lord North went to the party only after finding he could not assemble a quorum in the House of Commons because so many members had gone there. Bloxan, Walpole’s Queen of Comedy, 41. 15 Gentleman’s Magazine 44 ( June 1774): 263–4. 16 Ibid. 17 As noted in chapter 2, Burgoyne’s biographer Howson asserts, without citing any sources, that in the 1750s Fragonard and other French artists were “frequent and welcome guests” at Burgoyne’s house in Rome. Gerald Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 18. 18 Bloxan, Walpole’s Queen of Comedy, 41. 19 Gentleman’s Magazine 44 ( June 1774): 263–4. 20 Daniel O’Quinn, Entertaining Crisis in the Atlantic Imperium, 49. 21 O’Quinn questions whether the masque was actually performed at the fete. Ibid., 62. The libretto has been lost, but the expanded version that was performed at Drury Lane Theatre later that year is described below. 22 Gentleman’s Magazine 44 ( June 1774): 263–4. 23 O’Quinn, Entertaining Crisis in the Atlantic Imperium, 61–2. 24 Burgoyne did not know at the time of the fete that he would shortly be serving as an army general in North America. See chapter 10. 25 The Coercive Acts consisted of the Boston Port Act, the Administration of Justice Act, the Quartering Act, and the Quebec Act. 26 Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution, 37. 27 Brian Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer, 128. 28 See chapter 17.

Notes to pages 75–80

205

29 Norman S. Poser, The Birth of Modern Theatre, 101–2. 30 Charles Robert Leslie, Reynolds, 2:99. 31 Burgoyne to David Garrick, 7 November 1774. Morgan Library, ma 9145. This author came across Burgoyne’s letter by accident when doing research for another book. The letter led him to first think of writing this biography. 32 John Burgoyne, The maid of the oaks: a new dramatic entertainment. As it is performed at the Theatre-Royal, in Drury Lane (Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1777), passim (Gale ecco Print Editions); Allardyce Nicoll, History of English Drama, 3:241. 33 The music was composed by F.H. Barthélemon. Nicoll, History of English Drama, 3:241. 34 Even in 2021, Brooks’s still barred women from membership, and White’s did not allow women (other than staff members) on the premises; if a member of White’s wished to take a woman to dinner, he had to go to nearby Boodle’s, a club that enjoyed reciprocal privileges with White’s. Personal knowledge of the author. 35 Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, 49, 87, 163. 36 Elaine Challus, Elite Women in English Political Life c. 1754–1790, 3. 37 Thomson, Introduction to English Theatre, 159. 38 Little and Kahrl, Letters of David Garrick, 3:963n5. 39 David Garrick to Frances Abington, 26 September 1774. Ibid., 3:962. 40 As mentioned in chapter 8, a nabob was typically an Englishman who made an immense fortune in India through corruption and, returning to England, used his fortune to advance himself politically and socially. 41 McIntyre, Garrick, 521. 42 Nicoll, History of English Drama, 3:241; McIntyre, Garrick, 522. 43 Nicoll, History of English Drama, 3:201n1. 44 McIntyre, Garrick, 529. 45 Thomson, Introduction to English Theatre, 121.

Chapter Ten 1 2 3 4

Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History, 26. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 42. In 1774 Burgoyne voted against repeal of the tax on tea, the tax that led to the Boston Tea Party. John Fortescue, Correspondence of King George III, 3:95. 5 Daniel O’Quinn, “Diversionary Tactics,” 134–5.

206

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Notes to pages 81–7

Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 117. O’Quinn, “Diversionary Tactics,” 134. Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke: The First Conservative, 78–81. Andrew O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, 91. F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 351. See chapter 4. Burgoyne’s private memorandum. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 120–1. Ibid., 129. Ibid., 132. Ibid., 122. Speech of a General Officer in House of Commons, 20 February 1775. Fox, sasb – Rare Book Collection. Call No. kf 1775 (nypl ). Burgoyne to the King, 18 April 1775. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 133–4; emphasis in the original. The Baffling of Burgoyne (nyhs ) e 233.e 39 1913. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 135n2. Ibid. Burgoyne to a friend, date unknown. Ibid., 197. Burgoyne to General Hervey, date unknown. Ibid., 140. Burgoyne to a friend, June 1775. Ibid., 198. Burgoyne to Lord North, 14 June 1775. Ibid., 137. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 183; Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield, 142, 308–9, 317–18. Burgoyne to Lord Rochford, Secretary of State for the Colonies, June 1775. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 142. Edward Lascelles, Fox, 61. Burgoyne to Lord Stanley, 25 June 1775. Douglas R. Cubbison, Burgoyne’s Papers, 147–50. J.W. Fortescue, War of Independence, 12. Richard Holmes, Redcoat, 302. Saul David, All the King’s Men, 225. H.C.B. Rogers, The British Army of the Eighteenth Century, 156. Maldwyn A. Jones, “Sir William Howe: Conventional Strategist,” in George Athan Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 47. Burgoyne to Lord Palmerston, 25 June 1775. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society [1914], 287–9. Brendan Manley, “Letters Reveal British Pessimism over American Revolutionary War,” Military History ( July 2010): 8. Burgoyne to Lord Rochford, 1775. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 152.

Notes to pages 87–94

207

37 Charles Robert Leslie, Reynolds, 2:98–9. 38 Lee to Burgoyne, from Philadelphia, 7 June 1775 (nyhs ). Lee’s phrases “scheme of universal despotism” and “this is the last asylum of persecuted liberty” foreshadow Thomas Jefferson’s assertions a year later in the Declaration of Independence that the British king had “a design to reduce [the colonies] under absolute despotism” and “the establishment of an absolute tyranny.” 39 Burgoyne to Lee, 8 July 1775 (nyhs ). 40 Lee to Burgoyne, 11 July 1775 (nyhs ). 41 Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World, 191–4. 42 Wood, Redcoat, 60. 43 Abigail Adams to John Adams, 25 July 1775. nypl database “People of the Founding Era: A Biographical Resource.” Abigail Adams’s contemptuous opinion of Burgoyne differs markedly from that of a contemporaneous American writer, quoted by his nineteenth-century biographer De Fonblanque (Political and Military Episodes, 1–2n1): Burgoyne appears to have been a humane and honourable man; a scholar and a gentleman; a brave soldier and an able commander. Some of his sentiments have a higher moral tone than those in common with men of his profession, and have probably procured him more respect than all his battles. 44 Ibid., 188. 45 Holmes, Redcoat, 289–90. The text of the play has been lost. 46 A vaudevil, sung by the character at the conclusion of a new farce called the Boston blockade. [Five eight-line verses]. Boston: Printed by John House, 1776 (nypl ). 47 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 188. 48 Ibid., 198. 49 Wood, Redcoat, 78. 50 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 208–9. 51 Stephen Brumwell, Turncoat: Benedict Arnold and the Crisis of American Liberty, 56–62. 52 Germain to Burgoyne, 1 March 1776. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 213. 53 Burgoyne to Rev. John Stanley, 23 December 1776 (ml , ma 8886). 54 Ibid. 55 Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, 91. 56 Ibid., 32. 57 Germain to the King, 10 December 1776. Fortescue, Correspondence of King George III, 3:405–6.

208

Notes to pages 94–8

58 Kevin J. Weddle, The Compleat Victory: Saratoga and the American Revolution, 46–8; De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 217–18; George Stanley, For Want of a Horse, 14; Paul H. Smith, “Sir Guy Carleton: Soldier Statesman,” in George Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 122. Hudleston argues that Carleton was right in declining to attack Ticonderoga, in view of the strength of the American defenders of the fort. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 109; Weddle disagrees, asserting that, had Carleton used a smaller, yet still adequate, fleet, he might have begun his campaign much earlier. Weddle, The Compleat Victory, 33.

Chapter Eleven 1 Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, 12. 2 Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution, 75; H.C.B. Rogers, British Army in the 18th Century, 153–4; Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 240. 3 Wood, American Revolution, 74; Geoffrey Holmes and Daniel Szechi, The Age of Oligarchy, 309. 4 William Willcox, “Too Many Cooks,” 57. 5 Mark Boatner III, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, 1033. 6 Richard Cumberland, Character of the Late Lord Viscount Sackville (London: Printed for C. Dilly, 1785), 3–4. 7 Gerald Brown, The American Secretary, 1. 8 Richard Cumberland, Memoirs, 201, 202. 9 Until 1770, Germain was known as Lord George Sackville. He changed his name after inheriting the property of the widowed Lady Betty Germain. In 1782, he regained his original surname when King George III honoured him with the title of Viscount Sackville. Geoffrey Treasurer, Who’s Who in Early Hanoverian Britain, 223–5. He will be referred to here as Lord George Germain, which is how he was known in the 1770s. 10 Brown, American Secretary, 1; Edmond Fitzmaurice, Life of Shelburne, i, 355; O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, 169; Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War 1754–1763, 444. 11 Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 544. 12 Brown, American Secretary, 11. 13 Ibid., 15–16. 14 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, Appendix C, 485. 15 Ibid., 483–6. 16 Willcox, “Too Many Cooks,” 77. 17 George Billias, “John Burgoyne: Ambitious General” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 178.

Notes to pages 98–103

209

18 John Burgoyne, The Dramatic and Poetical Works of the Late Lieut. Gen. J. Burgoyne, including a Sketch of His Life, 16–17. 19 Rogers, British Army in the 18th Century, 34–5. 20 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, Appendix C, 486–7. 21 Edward Stanley, For Want of a Horse, 13. 22 Paul H. Smith, “Sir Guy Carleton: Soldier-Statesman,” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 103, 108, 121–2; Stanley, For Want of a Horse, 17–18. 23 Ibid. 24 George Athan Billias, “John Burgoyne: Ambitious General,” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 170–1. 25 Maldwyn A. Jones, “Sir William Howe: Conventional Strategist,” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 64. 26 Ibid., 43–9. 27 Ibid., 59. 28 The plans for a British invasion from Canada had been widely discussed in London and were actually published in Montreal, especially after Carleton’s foray in 1776. American agents in these cities no doubt passed the information on to General Washington. Edward Lascelles, Fox, 69; F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 135–6. 29 Richard Ketchum, Saratoga, 80–1. 30 Rogers, British Army in the 18th Century, 165–6; Ketchum, Saratoga, 81. 31 Jones, “Sir William Howe: Conventional Strategist,” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 65–7. 32 Clinton was the son of a British admiral who was stationed in New York for several years. William B. Willcox, “Sir Henry Clinton: Paralysis of Command,” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 74. 33 Ibid., 73–8. 34 Ketchum, Saratoga, 262. 35 Ibid., 87. 36 Stanley, For Want of a Horse, 19. O’Shaughnessy states that Germain could hardly be blamed for Howe’s decision to attack Philadelphia and to go by sea, because Howe changed his plans so late that he left Germain with a fait accompli. O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, 178. This is debatable. Germain responded to Howe on 18 May approving Howe’s new plan. Howe sailed for Philadelphia on 23 July and claimed he did not receive Germain’s reply until 16 August, when it was too late for him to return. But Clinton, who remained in New York as Howe’s deputy, believed that Howe received the letter before 30 July, when Howe might have had time to return and come to Burgoyne’s assistance. Jane Clark, “Responsibility for the Failure of the Burgoyne Campaign,” 554–5. Most

210

37 38 39 40

41 42 43

Notes to pages 103–8

important in judging Germain’s conduct is that he did not act as if he was faced with a fait accompli. Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 64. Ibid., 68–70. Clark, “Responsibility for the Failure of the Burgoyne Campaign,” 549. Ketchum, Saratoga, 87. There seems to be no truth in the much-told story that a letter from Germain to Howe ordering him to co-operate with Burgoyne never got sent because Germain was in a hurry to leave his office for a weekend in the country. Ibid., 86. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 6. Ibid., 139. Ibid., 118.

Chapter Twelve 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

H.C.B. Rogers, The British Army of the Eighteenth Century, 32–3. Edward Curtis, The British Army in the American Revolution, 50, 98. Ibid., 50. John Tokar, “Logistics and the Defeat of Gentleman Johnny,” Army Logistician 32, no. 4 ( July/August 2000): 46. The British General Bernard Montgomery said that a commander must “take infinite pains [and] prepare for every conceivable contingency.” When the American General William Tecumseh Sherman took his army on its famous march through Georgia he wrote that “for 100 days not a man or horse has been without ample food, or a musket or gun without ammunition.” Brian Holden Reid, The Scourge of War, 237, 330–1. George Athan Billias, “Burgoyne: Ambitious General” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 148–9; Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 4–5; Daniel Baugh, Seven Years War, 592; McHugh and Kirby, “The Portugal Campaign,” 27. Richard Holmes, Redcoat, 241–2. Curtis, British Army in the American Revolution, 7. Holmes, Redcoat, 228. Testimony of Captain Bloomfield, an artillery officer with Burgoyne’s army. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 70. J.F. Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 64. Burgoyne to Germain, 11 July 1777. State of the Expedition, xx. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 72. John A. Tokar, “Logistics and the Defeat of Gentleman Johnny.” Ibid.; Riedesel, Letters, 125. Riedesel’s accounts of jovial evening parties in which Burgoyne and other officers drank large quantities of champagne

Notes to pages 108–12

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

211

come entirely from the diary kept by the strait-laced baroness and should be taken with a grain of salt. But it’s unlikely that she made the whole thing up. Reid, Scourge of War, 87. Billias, “John Burgoyne: Ambitious General,” 171. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xxvii–xxviii. John Burgoyne, The Dramatic and Poetical Works of the Late Lieut. Gen. J. Burgoyne, including a sketch of his life, 17. Frederika Riedesel, Letters, 94. Mark Wishon, German Forces and the British Army, 130. Kevin J. Weddle, The Compleat Victory, 132; David, All the King’s Men, 165–6. Riedesel, Letters, passim; Ketchum, Saratoga, 291. Ketchum, Saratoga, 90. David, All the King’s Men, 20, 165. Curtis, British Army in the American Revolution, 11n24. Burgoyne’s adjutant and secretary refused to take the question of women accompanying the army seriously. When asked about it later at a parliamentary hearing, he replied: “I know very little of their beauty or their numbers.” Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 87. See also Robin May, The British Army in North America, 18; David, All the King’s Men, 20, 165. Ketchum, Saratoga, 128–9; Curtis, British Army in the American Revolution, 142. Burgoyne’s Orderly Book, 17. Weddle, Compleat Victory, 100, 102. Burgoyne to Howe, 2 July 1777. Douglas R. Cubbison, Burgoyne and the Saratoga Campaign, 205. Burgoyne to Lord George Germain, 19 May 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xi. Mount Defiance was also known as Sugar Loaf Hill. Venter, “Desperate Hours,” 32–41; Weddle, Compleat Victory, 117. St Clair and his superior officer, Major General Phillip Schuyler, were tried by an American court martial for abandoning Fort Ticonderoga. Both were acquitted. Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 59; Weddle, Compleat Victory, 124. Burgoyne to Lord Hervey, 11 July 1777. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 247. Book of Proverbs 16:18. Fred R. Shapiro, ed., The Yale Book of Quotations, 66. John Fortescue, Correspondence of King George III, 3:471–2. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 253.

212

Notes to pages 112–17

41 Tokar, “Logistics and the Defeat of Gentleman Johnny.” 42 Ibid. 43 Testimony of the Earl of Harrington, Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 48; Venter, “Desperate Hours.” 44 Testimony of the Earl of Balcarras, Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 27. 45 Venter, “Desperate Hours.” 46 Testimony of the Earl of Harrington, Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 74. 47 Ibid., 58. 48 Burgoyne to Germain, 11 July 1777. Ibid., xiv. 49 Venter, “Desperate Hours.” 50 Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 60. 51 Burgoyne to Germain, 11 July 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xxi. 52 Andrew O’Shaughnessy asserts that Burgoyne was “hedging his bets by blaming his orders for his decision to advance.” O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, 153. 53 Jane Clark, “Responsibility for the Failure of the Burgoyne Campaign,” 545. 54 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 5. 55 F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 351. 56 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 12. Burgoyne also mentioned, as a reason for taking the land route, that it would free up boats for bringing the expedition’s provisions, artillery, and ammunition on the lakes. Ibid. 57 See, for example, Ketchum, Saratoga, 240–1; Billias, “John Burgoyne,” 176–7. 58 Venter, “Desperate Hours.” 59 Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 62. 60 Ibid. 61 Burgoyne’s Orderly Book, 47–60; Tokar, “Logistics and the Defeat of Gentleman Johnny”; Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 65. 62 Curtis, British Army in the American Revolution, 15. 63 Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 57; George F.G. Stanley, For Want of a Horse, 23, 34. 64 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 108. 65 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 August 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlvi; Billias, “John Burgoyne,” 175–6. 66 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 August 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlvi. 67 Stanley, For Want of a Horse, 38. 68 Burgoyne to Colonel Skeene, 14 August 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xxxix.

Notes to pages 117–23

213

69 Wishon, German Forces and the British Army, 114; Comtois, “Battle of Bennington,” 57. 70 Wishon, German Forces and the British Army, 130. 71 Comtois, “Battle of Bennington,” 57. 72 Ibid., 60. 73 Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 71-3. 74 Comtois, “Battle of Bennington,” 61. 75 Douglas R. Cubbison, Burgoyne and the Saratoga Campaign: His Papers, 107. 76 The Americans renamed it Fort Schuyler. It was on the present-day site of Rome, ny . 77 As usual, Shakespeare provided an apt observation: When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions. Hamlet, act 4, scene 5, 78–9. 78 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 100. 79 Testimony of Lt. Col. Kingston, Burgoyne’s adjutant. Ibid., 78. 80 Burgoyne to Carleton, 29 July 1777. Ibid., xlii–xliii; Weddle, Compleat Victory, 140. 81 Ibid., 114–15. 82 Dudley Pope, At Twelve Mr. Byng Was Shot, 286–7. 83 Shapiro, ed., The Yale Book of Quotations, 792. 84 See chapter 5. 85 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 15. 86 Stanley, For Want of a Horse, 26. 87 Testimony of Captain Harrington. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 51. 88 Ibid. 89 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 October 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlvii.

Chapter Thirteen 1 Letter from Lord George Germain to Sir Guy Carleton, 20 March 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition from Canada, vii. 2 Kevin J. Weddle, The Compleat Victory, 28. 3 Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution, 79–80, 100. 4 Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution, 88. 5 Burgoyne to Germain, 14 May 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition from Canada, x. 6 Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution, 117.

214 Notes to pages 123–9

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27

Ibid., 150. Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country, 72. Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution, 18. Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 244n1. Ibid., 489–90. Julius Frederick Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 55, 57. Burgoyne to Germain, 11 July 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition from Canada, xx. Interestingly, Burgoyne had applied the same metaphor of spoiled children to the rebellious American colonists in a speech in the House of Commons in 1775: “I look upon America to be our child, which I think we have already spoiled by too much indulgence.” De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 117. Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 57–8. Ibid., 62–3. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 63–4. Ibid., 64. Wasmus’s account of this incident should be viewed with some skepticism. The Iroquois tribes may have sometimes practised cannibalism at the time of the American Revolution, but “the old ritual cannibalism had now been transformed into more humane outlets,” such as the eating of a roast ox. Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution, 19, 21, 68. It is also possible that the Native Americans made the threat but did not actually intend to eat anyone. Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 62. Some historians spell her name McCrea. Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 66fn28; Roger Lamb, Original and Authentic Journal, 145–6. Lamb, Original and Authentic Journal, 145–6. Ibid. There are revisionist accounts that McCrae was not killed by a Native American but rather by a jittery American sharpshooter. See, for example, http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/jane-macraemurdered-on-the-way-to-her-loyalist-lover/. However, Burgoyne had no reason to accuse Native Americans of something they had not done; he needed them as allies. He would certainly have been relieved to learn that the murder could be pinned on an American rebel rather than one of his Native American allies, but he never suggested that that was the case. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 244n1. Lamb, Original and Authentic Journal, 155–6. Robert Murray, Edmund Burke, a Biography, 263. Wasmus, Eyewitness Account, 67.

Notes to pages 129–34

215

28 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 100. 29 Benson Lossing, Schuyler, 2:384. A farthing was one-quarter of a penny, the least valuable English coin. 30 Mark Wishon, Germans in the British Army, 122. 31 H.C.B. Rogers, The British Army in the 18th Century, 153–4.

Chapter Fourteen 1 The town is now called Schuylerville; it is eighteen miles east of the present city of Saratoga Springs. 2 The architect of the earthworks was the Polish patriot Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who enlisted as a colonel in the colonial army. Richard Ketchum, Saratoga, 354. 3 The two battles of Saratoga took place in the same general area. The engagement on 19 September is often referred as the Battle of Freeman’s Farm, while the one on 7 October has been called the Battle of Bemis Heights. Following the example of the military historian Mark Boatner, I refer to them here as the First and Second Battles of Saratoga. The two battles are sometimes called Stillwater. Mark M. Boatner III, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, 971. 4 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 51, xlviii–xlix; Ketchum, Saratoga, 356–8. 5 Roger Lamb, Original and Authentic Journal, 161. 6 Maurice de Saxe, Reveries, or, Memoirs Concerning the Art of War, 223. 7 Ketchum, Saratoga, 364. 8 Testimony of the Earl of Harrington. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 52. 9 Ketchum, Saratoga, 371. 10 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 October 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlix. Burgoyne was no doubt thinking of the statement often attributed to King Francis I of France after a catastrophic defeat in battle: “All is lost save honour.” Fred R. Shapiro, ed., The Yale Book of Quotations, 285. 11 Ketchum, Saratoga, 370. 12 George Stanley, ed., For Want of a Horse, 51. 13 Ketchum, Saratoga, 257. 14 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 October 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlix. 15 Lamb, Original and Authentic Journal, 162. The story must have been told to Lamb some time after the supposed event, but he entered it in his journal under the date 21 September, the date he apparently believed it occurred.

216

Notes to pages 135–9

16 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 124. 17 J.W. Fortescue, War of Independence, 87. 18 William B. Willcox, “Too Many Cooks,” 80–1. Clinton’s quick capture of the American fortifications suggests that if Howe had not taken his army south he might have done the same thing in August or early September and prevented Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga. The combined armies of Howe and Burgoyne might then have defeated Gates and changed the course of the war. 19 Willcox, “Too Many Cooks,” 86. 20 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 October 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlix; Burgoyne’s Orderly Book, 125. 21 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 37. 22 Stanley, For Want of a Horse, 57. 23 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 October 1777, Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlix–l. 24 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 17. 25 Ibid. 26 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 October 1777, Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, l–li. 27 Testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Kingston, Burgoyne’s adjutant general. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 82. 28 For a detailed description of the battle, see Ketchum, Saratoga, 392–407; Kevin J. Weddle, The Compleat Victory, 307–28. 29 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 127–9; Ketchum, Saratoga, 410–11. 30 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 129. 31 Frederika Riedesel, Letters and Journals Relating to the War of the American Revolution, 126–7. 32 Ibid., 125. 33 Minutes of a Council of War, held on the Heights of Saratoga, 12 October 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, lv–lvi. 34 At the time of the surrender, Burgoyne had 3,499 men under arms (1,905 British and 1,594 German); Gates had 13,216 men present and fit for duty and another 3,875 in the rear and on the flanks of the British–German army. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 84–5. 35 Minutes and Proceedings of a Council of War, consisting of al the general Officers and Field Officers, and Captains commanding Corps, on the Heights of Saratoga, 13 October 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, lvi–lvii. 36 The full text of the Articles of Convention can be found in Burgoyne’s Orderly Book, 144–8.

Notes to pages 140–4

217

Chapter Fifteen 1 Rivington’s New York Gazette, 26 October 1777. The surrender took place at the site of the present-day village of Schuylerville, ny . 2 Don R. Gerlach, “The General, His Lady, and ‘Gentleman Johnny’ Burgoyne,” New York History 52, no. 1 ( January 1971): 10–11, citing the impressions recorded by British Lieutenant William Digby in “Some Account of the American War between Great Britain and Her Colonies” (bl , Additional Manuscripts 32413/95-96). 3 Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 310. 4 Benson Lossing, The Life and Times of Philip Schuyler, 2:378–9. 5 Council of War, 13 October 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, lvi–lviii. 6 Samuel Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers in Cambridge, 1777– 1778,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, 1926, 35. 7 Gerlach, “The General, His Lady, and ‘Gentleman Johnny’ Burgoyne,” 11. 8 Lossing, Life and Times of Philip Schuyler, 2:378–9. 9 Frederika Riedesel, Letters and Journals Relating to the War of the American Revolution, 135. 10 Ibid. 11 Georgina Schuyler, Schuyler Mansion, 31. 12 Ibid., 3. The Schuyler mansion still stands. It has been preserved as a museum but its surroundings have changed. It sits in a blighted neighbourhood, the Hudson no longer visible, the view from the mansion blocked by abandoned factories. 13 Gerlach, “The General, His Lady, and ‘Gentleman Johnny’ Burgoyne,” 19–20; Schuyler, Schuyler Mansion, 31–2. 14 Gerlach, “The General, His Lady, and ‘Gentleman Johnny’ Burgoyne,” 19. 15 Schuyler, Schuyler Mansion, 28. 16 Riedesel, Letters and Journals, 136–7. 17 Lossing, Life and Times of Philip Schuyler, 2:384. 18 Gerlach, “The General, His Lady, and ‘Gentleman Johnny’ Burgoyne,” 13–14. 19 Burgoyne to Germain, 20 October 1777. Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, xlvii. 20 Burgoyne to his nieces, 20 October 1777. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 316–17. 21 Saratoga Convention, Art. 2. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 308; F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 208.

218

Notes to pages 144–50

22 Saratoga Convention, Arts. 4 & 7. 23 Lossing, Life and Times of Philip Schuyler, 2:382. 24 Samuel F. Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers in Cambridge 1777– 1778,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society (1926), 25–6. 25 Ibid., 26. 26 Ibid. 27 Riedesel, Letters and Journals, 139–40. 28 Richard Sampson, Escape in America, 89. 29 Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 18–19; Saratoga Convention, Article 11. 30 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 72; Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 18. 31 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 73. 32 As stated earlier, a number of women accompanied Burgoyne’s army, including officers’ wives as well as laundresses and camp followers. Some of the women were accompanied by their children. Richard Holmes, Redcoat, 99; Robin May, British Army in North America, 18. 33 Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 33. 34 Tory Row is now Brattle Street. 35 Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 27–9. 36 Ibid., 31. 37 Ibid. 38 Saratoga Convention, Article 7. 39 Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 33. 40 Ibid., 35–6. 41 Ibid., 30. 42 Ibid., 37–53. 43 Ibid., 64, 75. 44 Ibid., 57. 45 Ibid., 60. 46 Riedesel, Letters and Journals, 138–9. 47 Mark Wishon, Germans in the British Army, 120. 48 Sampson, Escape in America, 94–5. 49 Henley Court Martial (Call no. kf 1778 , nypl ), 6–7. 50 United States courts: Court Martial (Henley). Proceedings of a court martial, held at Cambridge (Manuscripts and Archives Division, nypl kf 1778). 51 Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 34. 52 General Riedesel to General Carleton, 25 March 1778, Letters from officers of the British Army. See also Burgoyne to unknown person [perhaps

Notes to pages 150–4

53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73

219

Carleton], 4 April 1778; General Phillips to Carleton, 9 April 1778 (bl. Add ms 21834: 1778). Letter dated 12 April 1778, from General Heath “to all whom it may concern.” William Heath papers 1777–82 (nypl . Folder. Research call no. MssCol 4444). Phillips to Carleton, 11 April 1778. Letters from officers of the British Army (bl . Add ms 21834: 1778). Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 73. Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America’s Revolutionary War, 435. Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 70–1. Jane Clark, “The Convention Troops and the Perfidy of Sir William Howe,” American Historical Review 37, no. 4 ( July 1932): 721–30, quoting a letter from Howe to Burgoyne dated 16 November 1777, which, Clark writes, “has just been found in the Sir Henry Clinton Papers at the William L. Clements Library” at the University of Michigan. Burgoyne later asserted in the House of Commons that an officer’s duty to obey orders is not unlimited. See chapter 18. Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 71–2. Sampson, Escape in America, 83–4. Batchelder, “Burgoyne and His Officers,” 73. General Phillips to General Carleton, 26 August 1778. Letters from officers of the British Army (bl . Add ms 21834: 1778). Sampson, Escape in America, 101–2. Ibid., 108–9. Riedesel, Letters and Journals, 145n*. The intrepid Baroness Riedesel and her daughters accompanied the army to Virginia. They arrived in Charlottesville in February 1779 after a hazardous three-month journey. Eventually they learned that they could go to New York, where her husband and the British General Phillips were to be exchanged. The exchange did not take place until the autumn of 1780. The Riedesels spent two years in Canada and arrived in England in September 1783, almost six years after the Saratoga surrender. Riedesel, Letters and Journals, 149, 167, 182, 219. Sampson, Escape in America, 146, 163. Ibid., 170–1. Ibid., 171. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point, 435–6. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America, 159. Sampson, Escape in America, 173–5. Ibid., 186.

220

Notes to pages 154–8

74 Sampson, Escape in America, 184, 192. 75 Ibid., 182. 76 Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 132.

Chapter Sixteen 1 Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, Appendix C, 486–7. 2 Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke: The First Conservative, 78–82; John Derry, Fox, 75; Christopher Hobhouse, Fox, 92–3. 3 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 346. 4 Linda Colley, Britons, 244, 246. 5 Hobhouse, Fox, 104. 6 Ibid., 92–3. 7 Robert Jones, Literature, Gender and Politics in Britain, 86. For defences of Germain, see Gerald Brown, The American Secretary, 131–7; Kevin J. Weddle, The Compleat Victory, 31 (“Germain was very good at his job. He was dedicated, energetic, capable, loyal, smart, and he endeavoured as much as possible to support his generals in the field”). 8 H.C.B. Rogers, The British Army of the Eighteenth Century, 98. 9 Richard Sampson, Escape in America, 97. 10 Richard J. Hargrove, Jr, General John Burgoyne, 88; James Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 118. 11 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 353. 12 Germain to the King, 13 May 1778. John Fortescue, Correspondence of George III, 4:141. 13 Amherst to the King, 14 May 1778. Ibid., 4:142. 14 Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 351. 15 Ibid. Reply to Burgoyne’s Letter to His Constituents, 20. 16 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 352. 17 Ibid. 18 “I by no means put my defense, in passing Hudson’s River, solely upon this reasoning” (i.e., that there was no latitude in his orders). Burgoyne, State of the Expedition, 5. 19 Ibid., 356–7. 20 Fortescue, Correspondence of George III, 4:156–7. The vote suggests that Burgoyne had many supporters in Parliament. Another possible reason is that a majority of the Commons had no desire to resurrect a bitter conflict of a decade earlier, when they voted to exclude the radical politician John Wilkes, who three times was elected to Parliament. Watson, The Reign of George III, 131–43.

Notes to pages 158–62

221

21 Barrington to Burgoyne, 5 June 1779. Burgoyne’s Letter to His Constituents, App. 1, 21. 22 Burgoyne to Barrington, 22 June 1779. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 357–60. 23 Ibid., 359. 24 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 373. 25 Ibid., 374n2. 26 Lord North to the King, 30 April 1779. Fortescue, Correspondence of George III, 4:330. 27 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 373–4. 28 Ibid., 374. 29 Ibid., 375. The city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is named for Barré and for John Wilkes, another member of Parliament who supported the American cause. 30 Burgoyne, The State of the Expedition from Canada. 31 Ibid., 133–40. 32 Ibid., 138–9. 33 See, e.g., Jane Clark, “Responsibility for Failure,” 555; William B. Willcox, “Too Many Cooks,” 63; Jones, “Howe: Conventional Strategist” in Billias, ed., George Washington’s Opponents, 60. 34 Charles Jenkinson to Burgoyne, 24 September 1779. Burgoyne’s Letter to His Constituents, App. 4, 26. 35 Burgoyne to Jenkinson, 9 October 1779. Ibid., 32–3. 36 Ibid. 37 The king wrote: “The whole tenour [sic] of Lieut.Gen. Burgoyne’s conduct since his return from America has been so very contrary to military obedience, that I am very far from clear what lenient measures He has left me room to employ without a total subversion of Military Discipline.” The King to Lord Amherst, 12 October 1779. Fortescue, Correspondence of George III, 4:456–7. 38 John Luzader, Decision on the Hudson, 69. 39 Steven Watson, The Reign of King George III, 314–15. 40 Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution, 80. 41 The King to Lord North, 13 January 1778. Fortescue, Correspondence of George III, 4:15. 42 Draft of letter from Burgoyne to Madame La Duchesse de Choiseul, 24 July 1781. Archives of Knowsley Hall. Burgoyne planned for the letter to be carried to the duchess by a Mr Stanley, probably his deceased wife’s uncle, the Reverend John Stanley. It is not clear whether it was sent or whether the duchess ever received it.

222 Notes to pages 162–6

43 Burke was probably referring to Germain. F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 302. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.; see also Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 313–14. 46 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 351fn1. 47 See chapter 11.

Chapter Seventeen 1 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, 143. 2 The French play was Silvain by J.F. Marmontel. The music was composed by William Jackson. Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English Drama, 3:201, 241. 3 Burgoyne, The Lord of the Manor, Preface, iv. It is likely that he wrote it at Knowsley Hall, the Earl of Derby’s estate, where members of his wife’s family lived and where he could be assured of the seclusion he needed for the creative effort. 4 As described earlier, Burgoyne wrote The Maid of the Oaks in 1774 for the celebration of his nephew’s marriage; and during his first visit to America the following year he wrote The Blockade of Boston, which was performed for the British troops in that city. F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 88. 5 The Lord of the Manor, act 2, scene 1, 20. 6 It was the practice of colonels commanding regiments to hire recruiting officers “who often pocketed £5 for every soldier who took the king’s shilling.” Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, 119. 7 The Lord of the Manor, act 3, scene 1, 39. 8 Ibid., Preface, iv–v. 9 Kalman A. Burnim and Andrew Wilton, eds, Pictures in the Garrick Club, 243–4. 10 Richard Cumberland, Memoirs, 320n1. 11 Petronius Arbiter, Memoirs of the Countess of Derby, 14–15. 12 Tate Wilkinson, Memoirs of His Own Life, 1:121. 13 Cumberland, Memoirs, 321. 14 Morning Chronicle, 14 September 1785, reproduced in Suzanne Bloxam, Walpole’s Queen of Comedy, 59. 15 He was a cousin of Lord George Germain. 16 Mrs Burgoyne to the Duchess of Argyll, from Kensington Palace, 7 October 1773. The Duke of Argyle, ed., Intimate Letters of the Eighteenth Century (New York: John Lane, 1910), 1:177.

Notes to pages 166–8

223

17 Bloxam, Walpole’s Queen of Comedy, 41, 42. 18 J.J. Bagley, The Earls of Derby, 146–7; Amanda Foreman, Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, 67. 19 Ibid. 20 “Edward Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 21 Arbiter, Memoirs of the Countess of Derby, 19. 22 Ibid.; Bagley, The Earls of Derby, 148; Bloxam, Walpole’s Queen of Comedy, 38. 23 Ibid., 40. 24 Walpole to Miss Mary Berry, 14 June 1791. Letters of Horace Walpole, 252. 25 Arbiter, Memoirs of the Countess of Derby, 5–7. 26 “Elizabeth Farren,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 27 The records of the Church of St George the Martyr in Queen Square, London, show that a Susanna Caulfield, the daughter of John and Susanna Caulfield, was baptized on 26 June 1757. The records of the church of St James, Clerkenwell, London, show that Thomas Caulfield, with the same parents as Susanna’s, was baptized on 24 December 1769. Email dated 26 June 2020 to the author from Moira Goff, librarian of the Garrick Club. I am indebted to Ms Goff for her help, which was not limited to locating these items. One of Burgoyne’s biographers calls Caulfield “an actress well known and highly esteemed in the West End [London’s theatre district] for her charming performances in popular comedy.” Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 239. It seems unlikely that Caulfield was well known, since there is no mention of her in any memoir or other document that I was able to find on the London theatre of the period. 28 Copies of the playbills were kindly sent to me by Mary Painter at the Blackburn Central Library. A playbill for a performance of Burgoyne’s play The Heiress is reproduced in Gerald Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 283. 29 A historical dictionary of London theatre people contains an entry for an actor named Thomas Caulfield, born in 1766 (not 1769, as stated in the baptismal record). The entry notes that “the Susan Caulfield who was the mistress of General John Burgoyne … may have been [emphasis added] Thomas’s sister.” Highfill, Burnim, and Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 3:117. Ms Goff was unable to find any other reference to Susan Caulfield in the library’s large collection of theatrical materials.

224

Notes to pages 168–71

30 Richard Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 239; F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 306n*; James Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 328 (Caulfield was “reputed to have been a friend of Elizabeth Farren”). 31 Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 239. While both of these guesses are plausible, it is unlikely they met during the production of The Lord of the Manor, as one biographer asserts. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 282. Caulfield was not a member of the play’s cast. Burgoyne, The Lord of the Manor, Dramatis Personae, xvi. 32 In addition to John Fox, there were two girls, Maria, Caroline, and one other child about whose sex the biographers disagree. Hargrove and Lunt say Burgoyne’s fourth child was a boy; Hargrove says he was named Edward. Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 240; Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 313, 314n. Cox, a biographer of Derby, says Burgoyne and Caulfield had a boy and three girls. Millard Cox, Derby, 99. 33 Gaillard Hunt, ed., Fragments of Revolutionary History, 162–3. 34 It is not known where Caulfield and the children lived during the 1780s. One of Burgoyne’s biographers asserts, without giving a source, that he lodged Caulfield in a room on Queen Street in the London district of Soho. Howson, Burgoyne of Saratoga, 282. There was a Queen Street in Soho in the eighteenth century, but it is unlikely that Burgoyne expected Caulfield to live with their four children in a single room. Map of London in 1741–45 by John Rocque, accompanying Besant, London in the Eighteenth Century (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1903). There was, and still is, a Queen Street in Mayfair a few blocks from Burgoyne’s home on Hertford Street, where Caulfield and children might have lived. 35 Nicoll, A History of English Drama, 3:241. The edition of The Heiress referred to here was published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. 36 The play was Diderot’s Le père de famille. Nicoll, A History of English Drama, 3:241. The Heiress may have been “touched up” by Sheridan. William LeFanu, Betsy Sheridan Journal, 204. 37 The satire was almost certainly directed at the affected dialect used in the social circle of the Duchess of Devonshire, of which Burgoyne was a member. Foreman, Georgiana, 44–5. 38 In poetry, anapest is a poetic metre, or “foot,” consisting of two short or unstressed syllables followed by one long or stressed syllable. Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 48. It is sometimes used to capture the rhythm of the hoofs of a galloping horse, for example, in Robert Browning’s poem How They Brought the Good News from Aix to Ghent.

Notes to pages 171–5

225

39 Foreman, Georgiana, 44–5. 40 In 1857, it was referred to as “one of our most popular and celebrated comedies.” David Pottinger, “Burgoyne: Dandy, Politician, Man of Letters,” 43. 41 Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 401n3. 42 Ibid., 401. 43 Pottinger, “Burgoyne: Dandy, Politician, Man of Letters,” 42–3. 44 Nicoll, History of English Drama, 3:241. The edition of the play described here is the one performed at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, twelve years after Burgoyne’s death. London: Barker and Son, 1804. It was republished by Wentworth Press, an imprint of Creative Media Partners, support.creativemedia.io. 45 Barratt, The Restless Kings, 194, 201. 46 Opera lovers will recognize the similarity between the plot of Richard and that of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, whose libretto was based on a 1798 French play by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly. In Fidelio, as in Richard, a young woman in love with a wrongly held captive cross-dresses to rescue her lover. 47 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 400–1. 48 Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke: The First Conservative, 100. 49 See chapter 6. The rioters destroyed the house and possessions of Chief Justice Lord Mansfield, another proponent of Catholic reform. Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield, 360–75. 50 Pottinger, “Burgoyne: Dandy, Politician, Man of Letters,” 38–9. 51 Foreman, Georgiana, 44. 52 Ibid., 44–6. 53 Bloxam, Walpole’s Queen of Comedy, 70. 54 Paula Byrne, Perdita, 257. 55 Ibid. 56 Bloxam, Walpole’s Queen of Comedy, 80–2. 57 Leo Damrosch, The Club, 135. 58 Pottinger, “Burgoyne: Dandy, Politician, Man of Letters,” 38. 59 Damrosch, The Club, 274.

Chapter Eighteen 1 When William Pitt was elected prime minister in 1784 at the age of twenty-three, Burgoyne was one of the wags at Brooks’s who authored a poem mocking him:

226

Notes to pages 175–8

A sight to make surrounding nations stare, A kingdom trusted to a schoolboy’s care. Horace Walpole, Letters, 284n1. 2 Burgoyne to Lord Sydney, 20 October 1784. Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 439. 3 Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution, 85. 4 The King to Germain, 23 December 1781. John Fortescue, Correspondence of King George III, 5:321. 5 North was made Warden of the Cinque Ports, a post dating back to the Middle Ages that had become ceremonial; and a member of the Order of the Garter, the most prestigious knighthood in the monarch’s power to award. 6 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 411n2. 7 In 1796, thirteen years after Burgoyne left Ireland, a French army of 15,000 unsuccessfully attempted an invasion; and two years later there was a full-scale Irish rebellion against British rule. Crane Brinton, A Decade of Revolution, 240–1. 8 An earlier biographer of Burgoyne asserts, without citing a source, that Susan Caulfield joined Burgoyne in the summer of 1782 in Ireland after the birth of their first child. James Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 314. 9 Thomas Townshend, Home Secretary, to Burgoyne, 27 January 1783. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 426. 10 Lord North to the King, 4 April 1783; the King to Lord North, 4 April 1783. Fortescue, Correspondence of King George III, 6:333–4. 11 Lord Northington to Burgoyne, undated. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 431. 12 Ibid., 433. 13 Ibid., 436n1, 437. 14 Ibid., 436n2. If Day made a loan to Burgoyne in 1783 it is unclear whether Burgoyne gave Day the diamond as security; in his will, written at about the same time, he left the diamond to the Earl of Derby. It is of course possible that Burgoyne gave the diamond to Day as security for a loan and that Day returned it when the loan was repaid. 15 Ibid., 457. 16 The United States united its army, navy, marine corps, and air force in a Defense Department in 1947. 17 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 459–60. 18 See chapter 14. 19 See chapter 8.

Notes to pages 178–82

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38

39

227

Lucy Sutherland, The East India Company, 388–9. Ibid., 404–5. Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield, 174. Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody, 284–5. “Hastings, Warren,” ODNB, cited in Poser, Lord Mansfield, 175. Nicholas Dirks, The Scandal of Empire, 84. The United States Constitution follows this two-step procedure: the House of Representatives impeaches and the Senate, after a trial, convicts or acquits. U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Secs. 2 & 3. Mme. D’Arblay (Fanny Burney), Diary and Letters, 3:447. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 89; F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, 309. De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 461–2. Roy Porter and G.S. Rousseau, Gout: The Patrician Malady, 72. Ibid., 78, 81, 107, 126, 127. The caricaturist James Gillray made a horrifying etching of an inflamed toe, attacked by gout, which is pictured as “a ferocious demon who assails it with fire, teeth and forked finger – a vicious tail being reserved for even greater agonies.” Richard Godfrey, James Gillray: The Art of Caricature, 226–7. Scott Litin, ed., Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, 983–4. Ibid. “[H]e was seized with a sudden attack of gout, under which he sank.” De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 462. Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English Drama 1600–1900, 3:196. The London stage, 1660–1800; a calendar of plays, entertainments & afterpieces, together with casts, box-receipts and contemporary comment. Compiled from the playbills, newspapers and theatrical diaries of the period (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968 [v. 1, 1965]), 1468, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015012284389. An English army under King Edward III besieged the northern French city of Calais for several months in 1347 until it surrendered. England occupied Calais for two centuries until it in turn surrendered to a French army in 1558. The play was about the 1347 surrender. Burgoyne’s previous biographers disagree on this: Lunt has Caulfield with him: “The end when it came was swift, and Susan Caulfield was at his bedside.” Lunt, John Burgoyne of Saratoga, 327, while Hargrove does not: “The following morning [4 August] he was found dead … in his bed.” Richard Hargrove, General John Burgoyne, 263.

228

Notes to pages 182–6

40 De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 463–5; George Wrottesley, Life and Correspondence of John Fox Burgoyne, 2:2–3. 41 Gentleman’s Magazine, August 1792, quoted in De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 466.

Epilogue 1 George Bernard Shaw, Notes to The Devil’s Disciple, in The Devil’s Disciple (Stilwell, ks : Digireads.com Publishing, 2007), 82. 2 Two subsequent biographies of Burgoyne bear that title: F.J. Hudleston, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne (1927); Lauran Paine, Gentleman Johnny (1973). A novel based on Burgoyne’s life also has that title. Showell Styles, Gentleman Johnny (1962). 3 Rudyard Kipling wrote a prescient poem to celebrate the Jubilee but also to warn against excessive British pride: Far-call’d our navies melt away – On dune and headland sinks the fire – Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget. (Recessional) 4 Shaw may have got the idea of inviting a condemned man to lunch from W.S. Gilbert. In The Mikado, the eponymous Mikado asks three condemned characters: “Now let’s see about your execution – will after luncheon suit you? Can you wait till then?” The Mikado opened in London in 1885, twelve years before The Devil’s Disciple. Shaw also seems to have “borrowed” from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In Shaw’s play, Dudgeon’s hanging is scheduled for noon, and a British officer tells Burgoyne: “nothing remains to be done except to try him.” In the trial scene in Alice, the king shouts repeatedly: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” 5 Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 1:396. 6 George Bernard Shaw, The Devil’s Disciple, act 3, p. 62. 7 George Wrottesley, Life and Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir John Fox Burgoyne, 1:4–5. 8 J.J. Bagley, The Earls of Derby, 150. 9 Wrottesley, Life and Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir John Fox Burgoyne, 1:5.

Notes to pages 186–8

229

10 Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England, 343–4. 11 Wrottesley, Life and Correspondence, 1:4. 12 Edward De Fonblanque, Political and Military Episodes, 465. 13 “Burgoyne, Sir John Fox, baronet,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 14 Wrottesley, Life and Correspondence, 1:5. 15 Ibid., 2:462. 16 Most of the eighteenth-century Stanleys could be said to resemble W.S. Gilbert’s noblemen who, throughout the Napoleonic Wars, “Did nothing in particular, / And did it very well.” Iolanthe, act 2, lines 97–8. 17 Dispatch from Admiral Lord Lyons, 5 June 1855. London Gazette, 24 February 1857. The Victoria Cross is the British equivalent of the American Congressional Medal of Honor.

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Index Abington, Frances, 77–8 Acland, John, 109, 137 Adam, James, 24–5 Adam, Robert, 5, 24–5, 72–3 Adams, Abigail, 209n43 Adams, John, 89 Almeida, Portugal, 41, 43 American Revolution, 3, 49, 122–3 Amherst, Jeffrey, 157 Andrews, Randle, 62 Anne (Queen), 12 Arkwright, Richard, 62 army commissions, 17–18 Arnold, Benedict, 91, 132, 137 artillery, 107 Austrian Empire, 5, 53–4 Barré, Isaac, 159 Barrington, William Wildman Barrington, Viscount (Lord), 32, 81–2, 158 Battle of Huberton, 133 Battle of Plassey, 68 Baum, Friedrich, 117–18 Belle-Île, France, 31–4, 36–7 Bengal, India, 67 Bennington, Vermont, 117–18 Benson, Harriet, 13 Berlin, 53 Bingley, Baron (Robert Benson), 12–13 Blockade of Boston, The (Burgoyne), 89–90, 224n4 Bosco, Philip, 188 Boston Tea Party, 80 Boswell, James, 5, 174 Breymann, Heinrich, 118, 137

Britain: and democracy, 63; and France, 172; imperialism, 184; political power of, 4, 10–11; and Saratoga, 95–6, 104; societal changes in, 11 British military: formation of Department of Defence, 177; logistics, 105, 107; military activity, 7, 28–30, 37, 41, 64; in Portugal, 41. See also Convention Army British War Office, 7 Bunker Hill, 84–6, 100 burgages, 58–9 Burgoyne, Charlotte, Lady (Stanley): death, 92–3, 183; friendships, 26; letters of, 20, 50–2; marriage, 4, 20–2, 24, 34–6, 49–50, 82–3; as a mother, 51–2; social life, 50–1; travels of, 22–5 Burgoyne, Charlotte Elizabeth, 25, 51–2 Burgoyne, Hugh, 185, 187–8 Burgoyne, John: artistic depictions of, 25–6, 46; biographies of, 7–8, 174, 192n18, 195n33, 229n39; criminal action against, 63; gaps in historical record, 7–9; on North America, 81; personality, 54, 65, 180; reliance on family connections, 6; writing about, 7–8, 46 – government career: about, 3; debate participation, 15, 177–9; India and the East India Company, 66–7, 69–70; and military career, 64, 157; Preston election, 58–60; promotions, 115; resignation, 161; support for, 222n20; voting history, 5, 65, 80, 207n4 – letters: in archives, 8; to Caulfield, 169; to Charlotte, 35–6; to Duchesse de

242 Index Choiseul, 223n42; to extended family, 144; to Garrick, 3–4, 75–6; to Gates, 137, 147, 151; to General Hervey, 84; to Germain, 113–14, 124–5, 136, 143, 216n13; to Heath, 147; to King George, 82–3; to Lee, 87–8; to Lord Barrington, 32; to Stanley, 85, 92–3; to Temple (Lord Palmerston), 86 – life: banishment and court proceedings of, 158–63; birth, 10, 191n1, 191n2; children, 186–7, 226n32; death, 181–3, 186; debt, 177; education, 13–16, 22–3; family, 11; friendships, 19–20, 23, 26, 38; language skills, 22–3, 26; in London, 5; marriage to Charlotte, 20–2, 24, 35–6, 49–50, 82–3, 92–3; in Portugal, 40; as a prisoner, 162; relationship with Caulfield, 168–9; relationship with Reynolds, 180; relationship with Schuyler, 143; relationship with Stanley family, 71–2, 185; reputation and legacy, 3, 6, 46, 48, 69–70, 79, 81, 88–9, 132, 155, 184, 188; residences, 169; romance, 4, 8, 20–2, 50; after Saratoga, 174; sickness, 175, 180–1; silencing of, 157–8; social life, 3, 5–6, 22, 47–8, 56–7, 164–5, 171–3; travels, 5, 22–5 – military career, 31–7; in America, 81–6; army of, 107–8; Canada, 97, 105; commission, 17; court appearance, 149; directives given, 133; early, 18–19; at Fort William, 57; versus government career, 64; in Ireland, 176–7; loss of army, 134; and Native Americans, 122–6, 129–30; negotiations with Gates, 139; in Portugal, 39–45; as prisoner of war, 154; promotions, 81, 91, 99–100, 115, 194n17, 197n2; raids on French Coast, 30; relationship with troops, 4–5, 15, 109; resignation, 161; route of army, 106; Seven Years War, 27–9; surrender at Saratoga, 140–1, 143–6, 155; at Ticonderoga and

Saratoga, 93–4, 111–12, 115–21, 129–33, 135–8; victories, 46; views on war, 87, 90, 109, 133; weakening of army and supplies, 135–6, 139; women, 220n32, 221n66. See also Convention Army; Saratoga, New York (1777); Saratoga Convention – theatrical career: The Blockade of Boston, 224n4; The Heiress, 169–71; The Lord of the Manor, 164–5; The Maid of the Oaks (Burgoyne), 4, 72–9, 164; Richard Coeur de Lion, 171–2, 182; after Saratoga, 164; and his social life, 164 – travels: to America, 81–3, 92, 162; to Cambridge, Massachusetts, 144–5; to Canada, 93, 103, 105; to England, 152; to France, 195n36; to London, 114–15; return to London, 96; travels, 52–6, 70, 72 – views: on artillery, 107; on warfare, 87, 90 – writings of: on Austrian army, 55; The Blockade of Boston, 89–90; on French army, 55–6; The Maid of the Oaks, 4, 72–9; poetry, 34, 49, 173–4; on Preston election, 60–1; on Prussian army, 54–5; self-reflexivity in, 78; theatrical work, 79, 89–90; writing career, 3 Burgoyne, John (1st baronet), 12 Burgoyne, John (14th-century ancestor), 11 Burgoyne, John (senior), 12 Burgoyne, John, Sir (cousin), 17 Burgoyne, John Fox, 168, 185–7 Burgoyne, Robert (16th-century ancestor), 11 Burgoyne family, 11–13, 17 Burke, Edmund, 5, 75, 81, 128, 162–3, 172, 176, 179 Burneston, Anna Maria, 12–13 Burney, Fanny, 179–80 Burney, James, 179–80 Byng, John, 120

Index 243 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 145–6 Canada, 86, 91–3, 97–8, 107–8, 135, 211n28. See also Carleton, Guy Carleton, Guy, 86, 93–4, 122, 150, 159 Catholicism, 11–12, 172, 202n55 Caulfield, Susan, 168–9, 182–3, 225n27 Caulfield, Thomas, 225n29 Cayugas, 123 Challus, Elaine, 77 Charles I, 12 Choiseul, Étienne-François, duc de, 5–6, 23–5, 36, 39, 196n44 Choiseul, Louise Honorine Crozat, duchesse de, 23–5, 162 class system in England, 33, 169 Clinton, George, 134 Clinton, Henry, 82–3, 99, 102–3, 119–20, 134, 211n32, 218n18 Clive, Robert, 68–70 coded messages, 134 Code of Instructions, 32 Coercive Acts, 74 coins/currency, 148 Coldstream Guards, 27 Colman, George, 182 Connell, Brian, 22 Continental Army, 98 Convention (Burgoyne and Gates). See Saratoga Convention Convention Army, 150–4, 158–9 Cornwallis, Charles, 154, 175 Cumberland, Richard, 14–15, 96, 166 d’Aiguillon, Emmanuel-Armand, duc, 35–6 Day, Nathaniel, 177, 228n14 debt, 22 Declaratory Act, 80 de Fonblanque, Edward, 7, 13, 22, 172, 192n18, 195n31, 209n43 Derby (Lord Stanley), 166–8, 173, 185–6 Devil’s Disciple, The (Shaw), 8, 184, 188 Devonshire House Circle, 173–4

Dirks, Nicholas, 67 disease, 22, 153, 175, 180–1 Dresden, 53 Drury Lane (theatre), 3, 75–6, 164–5, 169 Dudgeon, Richard, 184 East India Company. See India and the East Company education, in England, 13–15 elections, 58–63 Elliott (Scottish couple), 26 England, 13–14, 33, 58–60, 163 erotic verse, 3, 173–4 Falkland Islands, 64–5 family, 4, 6, 51–2 Farren, Elizabeth, 165–9, 173, 185–6 Fort Edward, 116–17, 119, 139 Fox, Charles, 47 Fox, Charles James, 5, 155–7, 174, 176, 182, 200n19 France, 5, 8, 23, 28–30, 33–8, 64, 159, 161, 172, 197n5 Franklin, Benjamin, 161–3 Fraser, Simon, 112, 131, 136–7, 159 French people, 22–3, 33 Gage, Thomas, 82–6 gambling, 22, 46–9, 76–7, 155, 200n10, 201n25 Garrick, David, 3–5, 73, 75, 174, 181 Gates, Horatio, 6, 93, 128, 131–2, 135–6, 139–42, 151–2 Gentleman’s Magazine, 61 George II, 31, 97 George III, 46, 57, 64–6, 88–9, 97, 163, 175, 181 Germain, George: about, 7; and Burgoyne, 94, 113–14, 124–5; disobedience, 96–7; and Howe, 104, 155–6; name change, 197n7, 210n9; promotions, 176; service in Revolutionary War, 99–102 Gibbon, Edward, 5, 174, 181

244 Index Gillray, James, 229n32 Goldsmith, Oliver, 174 Goldsmith, Sheridan, 174 gout, 175, 180–1 guns, 107 Hamilton, Elizabeth, Lady, 72, 74 Hancock, John, 151 Hargrove, Richard, 8 Harvard College, 147 Heath, William, 144–6, 148–50 Heiress, The (Burgoyne), 169–71 Henley, David, 148–50 Henry VIII, 11–12 hms Cerberus, 83 Hodgson, Studholme, 35 Hoghton, Henry, 60 Howe, Richard, 83–4, 102–3, 163 Howe, William: and Burgoyne’s army, 114–15, 119–20, 160; and Gage, 86; legacy, 163; service in Revolutionary War, 82–4, 90–1, 98–104, 134, 211n36 Huberton (now Hubbardton, Vermont), 112–13 Hudleston, F.J., 7, 46 Hudson River, 114, 116–17, 119–21, 135, 152–3 impeachment, 179 India and the East India Company, 66–70, 161, 165, 178–9 Iroquois, 123–5, 130, 216n18 Italy, 8 Jefferson, Thomas, 153–4 Jenkinson, Charles, 81, 160–1 John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 11 Johnson, Samuel, 174, 181 Jones, David, 127 Joseph I, 44 Kipling, Rudyard, 230n3 Knowsley Hall, 19–20, 164, 224n3 Kosciuszko, Tadeusz, 217n2

Lamb, Roger, 134 Laurens, Henry, 151, 162 Lee, Arthur, 200n20 Lee, Charles, 43–4, 87–8, 100, 209n38 Leicester, Peter, 60, 63 Lepy, Signor, 73 Lippe (commander for Burgoyne), 45 London, 5, 8, 47–8 Lord of the Manor, The (Burgoyne), 164–5 Loutherbourg, Philip James de, 73, 78 Loyalists, 98 Lunt, James, 8, 194n18, 194n26 Maid of the Oaks, The (Burgoyne), 4, 72–9, 164 Marlborough (commander), 3 Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of, 30 marriage in British society, 21, 66 McCrae, Jane, 127–8 men, role in British society, 11 Mes rêveries (Saxe), 22 Midhurst, England, 58 military system, 17–18, 31 Mohawks, 117–18, 123, 125 Montgomery, Bernard, 212n5 murders, 127 Murphy, Arthur, 174 Native Americans, 122–7, 129–30, 216n23 New Theatre of Blackburn, 168 Nicoll, John, 14–16 North, Frederick, Lord, 65–6, 68–9, 73, 128, 155, 175, 206n14, 228n5 Oneidas, 123 Onondagas, 123 O’Quinn, Daniel, 74 Palais, France, 34–5, 37 Palmerston, Henry John Temple (Lord), 25 Palmerston, Viscount, 50–1, 201n33 patronage system, 19

Index 245 peace treaties, 44 peerage system, 163 Pembroke, Edward, 47 Pennsylvania, 153 Phillips, William, 109, 131, 145, 150, 159 Pitt, William, 28, 53, 181, 227n1 poetry, 226n38 Pombal, Marquis of, 39, 41 Porter, Roy, 11 Portugal, 39–45 Portuguese campaign, 39–40 Preston, England, 59–63 primogeniture system, 12 prisoners of war, 156. See also Convention Army prisons, 22. See also Convention Army Privy Council, 176 Prussia, 5 Ramsay, Allan, 25 Reeves (Corporal), 149 Revolutionary War. See American Revolution; Convention Army Reynolds, Joshua, 5, 46, 75, 174, 180–1 Richard I, 171–2 Richard Coeur de Lion (Burgoyne), 171–2, 182 Riedesel, Frederika von, Baroness, 137–8, 141–3, 145, 148, 221n66 Riedesel, Friedrich von, 109–10, 113, 131, 136, 148, 159 Robinson, Mary, 173 Rockingham, Charles WatsonWentworth, Marquess of, 15, 175–6 Rockingham Whigs, 176 Royal Marriages Bill, 66, 204n7 Saratoga, New York (1777): consequences and aftermath of, 161–3; context of battle, 95–6; defeat at, 6, 129; description of, 15, 110–13, 115–21; first battle at, 133–5; geographical area of, 217n3; second battle at, 137–8; supplies at, 139

Saratoga Convention, 139, 144, 146–8, 151–2, 158 Saxe, Maurice de, 22, 132 Schaumburg-Lippe, Wilhelm von, 41 Schuyler, Philip, 116, 141, 213n35 Senecas, 123 Seven Years War, 26–8, 33, 52, 68, 83, 96–7, 156 Shaw, George Bernard, 8, 184 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 5, 164 sinecures, 56–7 Six Nations of the Iroquois, 123 1661 Resolution (House of Commons), 62–3 Skenesborough, 116 Smith, Adam, 174 Smith-Stanley, Edward (Lord Stanley), 4, 27, 71–4. See also Derby (Lord Stanley) Smith-Stanley, James (Lord Strange), 19–20, 27, 46, 59, 62–3, 71, 187, 195n30 Spain, 39–44, 64–5 Stamp Act, 80 Standish, Frank, 60, 63 Stanley, Edward (11th Earl of Derby), 4, 19–20 Stanley, John, 92–3 Stanley, Lord. See Derby (Lord Stanley); Smith-Stanley, Edward (Lord Stanley) Stanley family (earls of Derby): about, 4; and Burgoyne, 11, 19, 185; and Burgoyne’s children, 187; position in society, 19–20, 59, 187; and Preston election, 63; and Strange’s death, 71–2 Stark, John, 117–18 St Clair, Arthur, 111, 213n35 St Leger, Barry, 118–19 St Luc, La Corne, 125 Strange, Lord. See Smith-Stanley, James (Lord Strange) suffrage, 63, 203n4 Sulivan, Laurence, 67

246 Index Surrender of Calais, The (Colman), 182 Sutherland, Lucy, 69 taxes, 80–1 Temple, Henry, 50 theatre, 72–9 Ticonderoga, 93–4, 111–12 Townshend, Charles, 46 Treaty of Paris, 154 Tuscaroras, 123 Twiss, William, 111 typhus, 22 United States Constitution, 229n26 Valencia de Alcántara, Spain, 41–3, 46 Vaughan, John, 135 Vickery, Amanda, 21, 51–2 Villars, Claude Louis Héctor, duc de, 24–5 Voltaire, 120 voting rights, 58–60. See also suffrage

Walpole, Horace, 13, 23–4, 67, 73, 171, 181 Walton, Izaak, 46 Walton Club, 46 War of the Austrian Succession, 19 Warren Hastings, 178–9 Washington, George, 89 Wasmus, Julius Frederick, 124–6 Way to Keep Him, The (Murphy), 174 Wedderburn, Alexander, 158 Wellington (commander), 3 Wesley, John, 181 Westminster School, 13–16 Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 223n29 Wilkinson, James, 141 Wilkinson, Tate, 166 Williams, William Peers (Sir), 38, 58–9 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 49 women, 11, 63, 77, 206n7, 207n34 Wood, Gordon, 74, 80, 162 Wrottesley, George, 187 Yorktown, Virginia, 175