Saratoga

by David Garland

  Proudfoot could see what he meant. As he gazed around the camp, he could sense a confidence he had not felt at Hubbardton. The militiamen wore a bewildering variety of dress—loose coats of every possible color, homespun shirts and vests, garments that fastened below the knee, buckskin breeches, or long linen trousers. Calfskin shoes, ornamented with buckles, were the favored footwear, and Proudfoot noticed that nearly everyone wore a broad-brimmed hat with a round crown. Each man carried a powder horn, a bullet bag, and a flask of rum.

  "No two of them seem to have the same gun," Proudfoot said.

  "As long as it works," said Stark, "I don't care what weapon they carry. The Germans will face British, French, Spanish, and American muskets. There're even a few Kentucky rifles."

  "But no bayonets."

  "A handful."

  "That's where the enemy does have the advantage."

  "Only if they get close enough to use them," said Stark. "The same goes for their dragoons. They're used to fighting on horseback with sabers. It's a fearsome way to die. We need to keep those swords at bay."

  "How many horses have they collected along the way?"

  "Not nearly enough to put those dragoons back in the saddle. The Indians captured some horses at Cambridge, but when Colonel Baum refused to pay for them, they killed the animals outright."

  "The dragoons must have been livid at that."

  "Fit to bust with fury, Ezekiel. Cavalrymen hate to walk, especially if they have to carry those heavy sabers."

  "They may well find horses between Cambridge and here."

  "Let them," said Stark, gazing around his weird assortment of men. "I have no fears. The enemy may look much more like an army—but our militia will fight like one."

  Jamie Skoyles had neither seen nor heard of Elizabeth Rainham for days, but he was able to gauge how things stood between her and Harry Featherstone by studying the latter's behavior. The major was brusque and detached, spurning any company and refusing every invitation to an evening of cards. When the occasion presented itself, he took out his anger on the lower ranks. A rift had clearly been opened between him and Elizabeth. Judging by the way Featherstone glowered at him whenever they met, Skoyles could see that he was being blamed. He hoped for an opportunity to speak alone to Elizabeth but it was denied him. Returning from a patrol with Brigadier Fraser, he learned that he would not even remain in camp.

  General Burgoyne sent for him. Skoyles was relieved to find that his commander had recovered his characteristic buoyancy. He detected a faint smell of alcohol on his breath when Burgoyne spoke.

  "I've an assignment for you, Skoyles," said the general.

  "Indeed, sir?"

  "Since you expressed some worries about Bennington, I've decided to send you there." He handed a letter to Skoyles. "Deliver these orders to Colonel Breymann and translate anything that he does not fully understand. Colonel Baum has asked for reinforcements. You are to accompany them to Bennington."

  "Does that mean Colonel Baum is in difficulties?" asked Skoyles.

  "Not at all," replied Burgoyne airily. "He is holding a position near the town where some fifteen hundred or so rebel militia have gathered."

  "That's almost twice as many as the colonel has at his command."

  "Do not presume to teach me arithmetic, sir. I can count. The real difference between the two forces is one of character, not number. Our men are battle-tried professionals; theirs are ignorant farmboys who scarcely know which end of the musket the ball comes out of."

  "You're being unfair to them, sir," said Skoyles. "Some of those men have to shoot game in order to eat. They know how to hit a target."

  "So do we—especially with our artillery. I've ordered Breymann to take two six-pound cannon with him. The rebels have nothing to compete with those."

  "May I ask a question, General?"

  "Of course."

  "Why send a German corps instead of a British one?"

  "Question of pride, man," said Burgoyne with a touch of arrogance. "I wouldn't send my own troops on a secondary action like this when I have Brunswickers here. It's exactly the kind of mundane exercise for which they're well fitted."

  "Must it be Colonel Breymann who is dispatched?" said Skoyles. "It's common knowledge in the German camp that he and Colonel Baum are anything but friends."

  "All the more reason they should fight beside each other. That's the way to forge a bond. There's no room for petty differences in combat." He snapped his fingers. "Give my compliments to Colonel Breymann and deliver my orders."

  "Yes, General."

  "One moment," said Burgoyne as the other man turned to go. "I know that you had doubts about this whole expedition, but it seems to have been a signal success. Baum has not only found enough horses to mount his dragoons, he is sending hundreds of oxen back to camp. I hope you'll have the grace to admit that you were wrong."

  "I do so without hesitation."

  "When you reach Baum, give him my congratulations."

  "I will, sir."

  "That is all."

  Skoyles paused. "May I ask who is in command of the rebels?"

  "Does it matter?" asked Burgoyne complacently.

  "I think so, General."

  "Well, I don't. We have the measure of their best commanders. Whoever is in charge at Bennington, he and his men will be swept contemptuously from the field and you, Captain Skoyles—be grateful to me for this—will be there to witness their humiliation."

  Ezekiel Proudfoot had never seen such carnage. Wherever he looked, men were lying dead or suffering from horrific wounds that condemned them to a slow and agonizing end. The crackle of gunfire was constant, underscored by the booming of cannon and the neighing of injured horses. Smoke hung over parts of the battlefield like a pall. Though he carried a sketchbook, he found it difficult to know on which piece of action to concentrate, and he resorted to drawing whatever caught his eye at any particular time, abandoning one place to rush to another in search of a new subject. At Hubbardton, he had remained stationary on the ridge. Bennington, he soon discovered, was a very different battle.

  Colonel Baum had made a strategic error, unwisely dispersing his forces among several locations. His dragoons commanded the position on a stone-covered hill behind a log breastwork, and 150 loyalists were sent across a river to build a breastwork there. The rest of his army was scattered piecemeal, taking what cover they could find. General John Stark was quick to exploit the folly of the enemy commander. Troops from the New Hampshire militia circled to the right of the dragoon redoubt while a force of Vermonters worked its way around to the left to take on Baum's rear guard. With Stark at its head, the main American assault hit the redoubt itself, lapping around the base of the hill and enveloping the Germans.

  The loyalists, Canadians, and Indians soon lost their nerve. After holding their positions for a short while, they took to their heels and fled the scene, several of them cut down by rebel bullets as they did so. All the action now shifted to the hill, and Proudfoot got as close to it as he dared. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered, the Germans did not give in. In spite of their heavy casualties, they held their position for two hours until their ammunition ran out, a fact signaled with dramatic suddenness by the explosion of their reserve wagon.

  Leaping up, Colonel Baum drew his sword and ordered his men to cut their way out with their cavalry sabers. Within a minute of issuing the order, he was dropped to the ground by a musket ball. The loss of their leader deprived the Brunswickers of the urge to fight on. Raising their arms, they walked forward in an attitude of surrender. Proudfoot saw them coming down the hill under armed guard. Now that the fighting had at last stopped, he had a subject for his next engraving.

  Captain Jamie Skoyles had heard the faint sounds of battle in the distance and he encouraged Colonel Heinrich Breymann to make more speed. It was a request that he had made at every stage of the journey. The march from Fort Edward had been painfully slow. With nearly six hundred men and two cannon mounted on carts, Brey
mann had, for the most part, managed no more than half a mile an hour. Continuous rain pelted them, mud clutched at their feet, and they had great difficulty hauling their carts uphill. Crossing a river ate up even more precious time as the men had to wade through the water in single file. When the ammunition carts overturned, there were more delays.

  What maddened Skoyles most of all was the German addiction to marching in formation. Every so often, they would pause to dress ranks as if appearance were more important than making progress toward the beleaguered force of Brunswickers. There was a worrying lack of urgency about the whole expedition. When Skoyles tried to complain, he was firmly admonished by Breymann, a curt individual with a well-earned reputation for bullying.

  One of the other officers confided to Skoyles that, in his orders, Burgoyne had said that he was sending the reinforcements out "in consequence of good news received from Baum." How the awkward situation in which Colonel Baum found himself could be construed as good news, Skoyles did not know, but at least he was able to understand why Breymann was so unhurried. In conveying no sense of crisis, Burgoyne had unwittingly slowed the relief column down. With reluctance, Skoyles was forced to entertain serious doubts about his commander's judgment yet again.

  They were miles from Bennington when the shooting was first heard and—to Skoyles's relief—they did quicken their step a little. The sounds of conflict grew steadily in volume as they got closer, and they were all struck by the intensity of the fighting. Gunfire was unceasing. The cries of dying men and the anguished neighing of horses soon reached their ears. Then they heard a massive explosion, far louder than that from a single cannon. Shortly after that, the noises gradually faded away, to be followed by an eerie silence.

  Riding with a battalion of light infantry and grenadiers, Skoyles had to quell the impulse to kick his horse into a gallop. Desperate as he was to get to Bennington, he realized that one man could make no difference on a battlefield. Only the arrival of a sizable force would have any impact. Breymann did not disguise their approach. He ordered the band to strike up so that everyone would know that they were coming. To the captured Brunswickers, the music had a decidedly hollow ring to it. Reinforcements had come too late.

  The battlefield was a sorry sight. Scattered across the hill were the uniformed bodies of dozens of German soldiers. More corpses lay in the other positions that had been taken up. Hundreds of prisoners were being marched away through a taunting crowd. General John Stark had inflicted something close to a massacre. While his rustic rifleman had beaten a professional army with their daring, accuracy, and mobility, those same men had now lost all discipline. With so many dead soldiers on the ground, the temptation for plunder was too great to resist. Weapons were being seized, jackets stripped from their owners, money, watches, rings, and anything else of value snatched by the scavengers.

  Skoyles looked on with disgust. Desperately sorry for the loss of so many Brunswickers, he blamed Breymann for not arriving in time to save them and rebuked himself for his failure to make the colonel move at a faster pace. But his real fury was reserved for Burgoyne, who had treated the call for reinforcements as a polite request rather than an urgent summons. In telling Breymann that he was responding to good news from Baum, he had effectively condemned a large number of people to death. For an instant, Jamie Skoyles felt ashamed to be wearing a red coat.

  Battle was joined again in a number of places. Many of the militiamen were too busy drinking their rum to take much interest, but Stark quickly assembled the rest, and he was strongly supported by Colonel Seth Warner and the Green Mountain Boys. Skoyles was with the grenadiers who took up a position near the river and opened fire. They were too far away from the enemy for their volley to have any effect, but they reloaded smartly and fired again. Their main problem was one that they shared with Baum's men. Rebel soldiers did not stand still to return fire. Shooting from behind a tree, they would race to another hiding place in order to reload. And because their rifles had a longer range, they could pick off the grenadiers at will.

  Having no men under his direct command, Skoyles could do little more than ride up and down the line to offer encouragement. When his horse was shot from beneath him, he rolled on the ground until he collided with a grenadier whose whole face had been shot away. Grabbing the man's musket, powder horn, and ammunition bag, Skoyles took his place among the others and shot at the first target that presented itself. The odds were heavily against the Germans, but they refused to give ground. Skoyles was proud to fight beside them.

  The battle raged on into the evening and shadows began to fall. German resistance was fierce, but Skoyles knew that the outcome was never in any doubt. The enemy had more men, more ammunition, and a better knowledge of the terrain. In John Stark, they had a far better leader than Colonel Heinrich Breymann, who lagged at the rear trying to bring his artillery into action, a feat that was made impossible when the horses pulling the cannon were shot. When Skoyles exhausted his supply of musket balls, he took some from a wounded grenadier, continued firing, and had the satisfaction of bringing down more attackers.

  The end, however, was in sight. Weary, embattled, and running out of ammunition, the reinforcements could hold out no longer in the fading light. Breymann finally accepted defeat and decided to parley. He gave the order to the band, and they beat out the appropriate drum call. But the untrained Americans did not recognize the signal and continued to fire regardless. They could not be stopped. It was a clear demonstration that each side was fighting a different battle. While the Brunswickers adhered to the rules of engagement, the rebels improvised wildly. The drum call was meaningless to amateur soldiers. All that Colonel Breymann could do was to order a retreat. Abandoning their cannon, their carts, their dead, and their wounded, the Germans fled ignominiously from the field.

  Skoyles fired a last deadly shot before joining them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was not until the following afternoon that the routed army limped back into camp at Fort Edward. Fatigued, downcast, and soaked to the skin by the rain, the Germans were a pitiful sight. Many carried injuries and wore bloodstained bandaging around heads, arms, or legs; all of them were nursing their wounded pride. Of the dragoons who had fought with Colonel Baum, a mere nine had survived, the rest were killed or captured. In all, some nine hundred men had been lost at Bennington, nearly all of them regular soldiers. Those who watched the bedraggled men trudge back into camp realized, with a jolt, that almost a sixth of Burgoyne's army had disappeared.

  Colonel Breymann reported first to General Riedesel. It was left to Captain Jamie Skoyles to give an initial account of the disaster to General Burgoyne and Brigadier Simon Fraser. He met them at the house where his commander had set up his headquarters. Though he tried to be as objective as possible, there was a degree of implied criticism in Skoyles's report. Burgoyne was quick to allocate blame.

  "Colonel Breymann was clearly at fault," he said. "His army was too slow and ponderous. He was leading a force of tortoises."

  "We knew that before he left," Fraser pointed out. "That was why I opposed the notion of sending the Germans. British soldiers would have got to Bennington in half the time."

  "That may be true, sir," said Skoyles, "but the importance of speed was never impressed upon Colonel Breymann. He believed that Colonel Baum was in no danger and therefore took his time. In that sense, he was only following orders."

  "Baum must be censured here," Burgoyne decided, eager to shake off any responsibility for issuing the wrong orders. "His dispatches were full of optimism. They did not call for immediate reinforcements."

  "Too small a force was sent in the first place," Fraser argued.

  "It's easy to say that in hindsight, Simon."

  "According to all the evidence we have, the rebels were able to put almost two thousand soldiers in the field. Colonel Baum had no chance."

  "He should have managed. His folly lay in advancing too close."

  "Colonel Baum and his men fou
ght with outstanding bravery," said Skoyles, keen to give them their due. "I've spoken to the handful of dragoons who managed to escape. They all praise their commander. The causes of their defeat were a shortage of ammunition and the superior number of the enemy. When it comes to false optimism," he went on, "the person we should single out here is Colonel Skene."

  "I couldn't agree more," said Fraser.

  "It was on his flawed advice that the Germans were sent to Bennington in the first place. Colonel Skene gave the impression that they would be sure to find an endless supply of horses, cattle, and new recruits—not to mention a magazine with only a light guard on it. Instead of bringing in more loyalists," said Skoyles with emphasis, "this misbegotten expedition has lost the ones that we already had."

  "I could not foresee that, Captain," said Burgoyne. "Skene told me that Tory sympathies ran high in this part of New England."

  "Rebel sentiments dominate, General. That's obvious from the speed with which the militia was raised and from the vigor with which they fought. It was one of the most distressing things we witnessed," Skoyles recalled. "When we reached the battlefield, we saw loyalist prisoners being dragged off, tied to a horse in pairs, and jeered at by their captors."

  "They'll get no mercy when they're returned to their localities," said Fraser sadly. "Each and every one of them will be hanged."

  "Nothing is served by dwelling on that," said Burgoyne testily. "The reality is that no army can get through a campaign without sustaining losses of some kind. We are still in good shape and of good heart. Albany is within striking distance."

  "Do we have news of Brigadier St. Leger?" asked Skoyles.

  "He is besieging Fort Stanwix."

  "And you expect the fort to surrender?"

  "Of course."

  "We should take nothing for granted, General," Fraser suggested.

  "The last dispatch was more than encouraging."

  "I'm pleased to hear that," said Skoyles."

  "And there's more good news for us," Burgoyne continued, seeking to divert attention from the tragic events at Bennington. "Congress has finally had the sense to replace General Schuyler."