Band of Giants_The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence Read online

  Burgoyne resolved to execute the offending brave. Cooler heads prevailed. Such a penalty, the general was warned, would prompt the Indians to desert. On their way home, they would kill many more white settlers. Burgoyne, who needed a cloud of Indian scouts to feel his way through the forest, relented. He granted the warrior a pardon. In war, “we must wink at these things,” a British officer said about the murder.4

  The crime was one of hundreds of atrocities committed by Burgoyne’s native allies. Indians had butchered an entire local family just two days before the McCrea killing. Yet it was the girl’s fate that most ignited the imaginations of patriots. Americans were infuriated that she had been “scalped and mangled in a most shocking manner,” as Horatio Gates wrote, while “dressed to receive her promised husband.”5 Her lovely hair, said to trail to the ground, instantly found a place in settlers’ gossip and nightmares. Her death “caused quite an uproar” even among Burgoyne’s own troops. The event, an American captain noted, “added much to the numbers of the American Army.”6

  Although General Henry Clinton had earlier spoken of the need “To Gain the Hearts and Subdue the Minds of America,” British officers often acted in ways certain to do the opposite.7 Word of the incident, spread through lurid newspaper accounts, curdled the hearts and ignited the minds of settlers across the northern frontier.

  * * *

  John Stark was one who could understand Jenny’s plight. He had become intimate with violence long before he led his New Hampshire troops into the inferno at Bunker Hill. In his twenties—he was now nearly fifty—John and his older brother William, along with two companions, had traveled deep into the Indian country of northern New Hampshire to hunt. A band of Abenaki Indians had emerged from all sides and taken him prisoner. He could still remember the “sharp, hissing sound” they made, “as of a snake.” They had killed one companion and captured another—William escaped.8

  Back at their village, the Indians forced Stark’s friend, Amos Eastman, to run a gauntlet. Lines of young braves with sticks and paddles beat him severely as he stumbled between them. When urged toward the same punishment, Stark, who had known Indians from childhood, grabbed a paddle from one of the men and began swinging. He boldly swore he would “kiss” all their women. According to the often-told story, this show of impertinent courage impressed the tribe’s sachems. So did Stark’s refusal to labor in the fields, his shunning of “squaw’s work.” After holding him for several months, the Indians exchanged him for a ransom.

  Later, during the French and Indian War, Stark fought with the charismatic Robert Rogers. Rogers’s Rangers attacked Indian style, ambushing French war parties in the forest. Stark became Rogers’s right-hand man and acquired a reputation across the New England frontier as a fierce fighter. After playing a critical role at Bunker Hill, he led a regiment to Canada, faced the Hessians at Trenton, and battled the British at Princeton. Returning home to rest, he quite naturally expected a promotion for his strenuous efforts.

  Congress had other ideas. In February 1777 they handed out brigadier general commissions to several officers, but Stark was not among them. New Hampshire’s generalship was allotted to Enoch Poor, a younger man with less experience than Stark but more political clout. Stark could not ignore the implied insult. A month later, “extremely grieved,” he resigned from the Continental Army. “I am bound on Honour to leave the service,” he declared, “Congress having tho’t fit to promote Junr. officers over my head.”9

  Such fits of pique were common among officers in an army where favoritism and regional interests played a role in decisions about rank. Officers were forever parsing distinctions of precedence and merit. There was no avoiding this touchiness. Their individual sense of honor was what spurred them to fight—or to find quarrel in a straw.

  To some, the failure of an expected promotion was enough to drain their faith altogether. Stark’s brother William, initially a patriot, had joined the British after being passed over for promotion. The two never spoke again. Stark’s old leader Robert Rogers had also sided with the Tories and had briefly led a regiment of Queen’s Rangers against his countrymen. Stark, still committed to the cause, returned to his New Hampshire farm, to his wife, Molly, and to his lumber business. Like Achilles, he chose to brood in his tent.

  * * *

  Now the Champlain Valley, which Stark knew well from the French war, had become the route of an invasion that threatened all of New England. The blow that Benedict Arnold had deflected with last year’s delaying action was falling with full force on the northern frontier.

  John Stark could not ignore the threat. Burgoyne could easily pivot his eight-thousand-man army toward the east and rampage into New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The rebellion had originated in the New England colonies and could be extinguished there. In July, the New Hampshire General Court, the state’s legislature, named Stark a general of the state militia and authorized him to raise as many men as he could. So popular was he that 1,500 men reported for duty over the next six days.

  The new recruits were spurred on by more than just Stark’s popularity. The heartbreaking news of Jenny McCrea’s killing had been reported in graphic detail by almost every colonial newspaper. Settlers across the frontier were already primed for outrage by Burgoyne’s own statements. Before he captured Fort Ticonderoga, the British general had warned those in his path that cooperation was in their best interest. “I have but to give stretch to the Indian Forces under my direction,” he declared in a pompous proclamation, “to overtake the harden’d Enemies of Great Britain and America, (I consider them the same) wherever they may lurk.”10

  Burgoyne hoped that the natives’ reputation would make wanton violence unnecessary. He privately said that he wanted to “spread terror without barbarity.” It was a fine distinction. The inhabitants of the region knew far more about Indian raids than the general did. His proclamation enraged patriots. They could hardly believe that a British officer, a civilized man, would unleash on them a horde of what they considered ungovernable savages. The death of Jenny McCrea confirmed their fears and proved that Burgoyne was unable to protect even loyalists from the Indians under his command.

  * * *

  It had taken Burgoyne an entire month to move his expedition the twenty-two miles from Skenesborough to Fort Edward on the Hudson River. Like General Braddock a generation earlier, he was dragging a massive train of artillery and supplies along rutted forest trails, moving through territory that offered little food or forage. He was also bringing thirty additional wagons loaded with his fancy uniforms and fine china, his Madeira and champagne.

  Directed by General Schuyler, the rebels did everything they could to hamper his movement: they downed trees, diverted streams, rolled boulders onto roads. Burgoyne’s men, “almost devoured by musketoes of a monstrous size and innumerable numbers,” had to work like devils to remove the obstacles. The delay gave the patriots time to catch their breath.

  In early August, John Stark sent a thousand militiamen from New Hampshire to Manchester, Vermont, forty miles east of Burgoyne’s Fort Edward camp. They were to join other militiamen, along with those of Seth Warner’s Green Mountain Continentals who had survived the battle at Hubbardton, to oppose Burgoyne should he shift eastward. Stark ordered kettles, ammunition, bullet molds, cannon, wagons, and plenty of rum, “as there is none of that article in them parts where we are a going.”11 A few days later, Stark headed west himself.

  In Manchester, the flinty New Hampshire general was amazed to see the men he had sent ahead parading under the orders of Benjamin Lincoln, a Continental Army general whom George Washington had sent to aid Philip Schuyler’s efforts. Desperate for troops, Schuyler had directed Lincoln, a fat Massachusetts farmer, to bring the New Hampshire militia to join him on the Hudson to block Burgoyne’s path south.

  Lincoln was a political officer, five years younger than Stark. The steely-eyed veteran answere
d only to the New Hampshire legislature and would not serve under Lincoln or give up his troops. Lincoln recognized that Stark was “exceedingly soured and thinks he hath been neglected and hath not had Justice done him by Congress.”12 He diplomatically concurred with Stark’s plan to threaten Burgoyne from Vermont. Congress grumbled that Stark had become a rogue general, “destructive of military subordination.”

  Stark didn’t care. He marched most of his men twenty-five miles south, placing them directly east of Schuyler. They would camp near Bennington, a small town just over the New York border in southern Vermont.

  The patriots were still falling back—Schuyler’s men lacked tents and provisions, and they could muster only two artillery pieces. Burgoyne’s army, heavily supplied with cannon, continued to press them south along the Hudson River. “Desertion prevails,” Schuyler lamented, “and disease gains ground.”13

  * * *

  In late July 1777, Burgoyne faced supply problems of his own. Flour and meat had grown scarce. The expedition especially lacked horses. Hauling guns and wagons over rugged ground wore out draft animals. Burgoyne also wanted to find mounts for his corps of Brunswick dragoons. These German cavalrymen, unable to round up horses in Canada, had been marching south in their thigh-high boots and spurs. A cavalry arm would significantly increase British striking power as they proceeded into the settled regions to the south.

  A rumor reached British headquarters that the rebels had gathered horses and supplies at a depot near Bennington. A strike in that direction might prove very profitable. It would also discourage the New England states from sending troops to block his path south.

  On August 9, Burgoyne sent German colonel Friedrich Baum eastward with 1,200 men—half German dragoons, half loyalist militiamen—armed with several small cannon. More armed loyalists were expected to join him along the way. His goal was to brush aside any rebels that might be guarding the Bennington depot and to collect as many horses and supplies as he could. Although a fifty-year-old veteran, Baum knew little about fighting in America. When word reached him that as many as 1,800 rebel soldiers waited at Bennington, he showed no alarm. They were, he was sure, “uncouth militia” who would vanish at his approach.

  The withering summer heat slowed Baum’s march. He reached a mill about ten miles from Bennington on August 14. He scared off a contingent of rebels and found what he was looking for: seventy-eight barrels of flour and tons of wheat. He set a miller to grinding, posted a guard, and moved on, his hopes soaring.

  The rebels he had encountered were Stark’s scouts. They hurried back to report the enemy’s approach. Stark put the main body of his force on the road to meet Baum’s troops. The two small armies came in sight of each other four miles west of Bennington just as Baum descended from high ground and started across a bridge that spanned the sluggish Walloomsac River. Beyond it, the road continued across a flat flood plain toward the town. Seeing that Stark’s force outnumbered his own, Baum took up a defensive position along the river and sent a message back to Burgoyne, requesting reinforcements.

  The German dragoons climbed to the pinnacle of an adjacent hill and threw up rough earthworks. The loyalists who had accompanied Baum occupied some houses across the river and constructed another small fort on a rise there. The rest of Baum’s soldiers arrayed themselves near the bridge. Stark pulled back a mile and drew up a battle plan with the help of Seth Warner, who lived in Bennington. Warner was “given to few words and circumspect with strangers, but he knew the surrounding woods intimately.”14 He sent word for his battalion of former Green Mountain Boys to hurry down from Manchester. Stark’s own force consisted entirely of militiamen. Many officers, including George Washington, thought these citizen soldiers unreliable at best. They would soon be given a chance to prove themselves.

  * * *

  The next day, a heavy rain prompted Stark to hold off his attack. The wait was a nervous one, since he rightly suspected that a larger enemy force would be arriving soon. In spite of the damp, his skirmishers, firing through the trees, managed to pick off thirty of the enemy.

  Reverend Thomas Allen, a militia leader known as the Fighting Parson, complained to Stark that his volunteers were continually being called out but not given a chance to fight. “If the Lord gives us sunshine tomorrow and I do not give you fighting enough,” Stark promised, “I will never call on you to come again.”15

  In the morning, a warm drizzle softened the air. A German relief column led by Colonel Heinrich von Breymann was dragging two substantial 6-pounder guns along the muddy roads from the west. Baum now knew that he only need hold out a few more hours and the combined force could deal handily with the rebels.

  As the morning advanced, the rain slackened. The humid day was drenched in late-summer green. Stark sent a battalion of three hundred men around the hill to his right and another on a long hike across the plain, over the river and up the far side. He planned to lead a force against Baum’s center by the bridge himself. By noon, the day was brightening. Tropical humidity clogged the air. Most of the rebels stripped to their shirtsleeves. They tucked corn leaves in their hats or pockets to distinguish themselves from the loyalists. An intense, nerve-stretching quiet settled on the valley.

  The two flanking wings of Stark’s army, a total of 650 men, met in Baum’s rear at three o’clock. They burst out of the woods and attacked the Germans in their log and earthen redoubt. The dragoons fired back, blasting grapeshot from their small cannon.

  The enemy troops fought desperately. They “fired by platoons and were soon covered with smoke.”16 The rebels hid behind trees and picked off targets of opportunity. Then, with “the coolness of veterans,” the American militiamen rushed the improvised fort.

  “For a few seconds the scene which ensued defies all power of language to describe,” remembered one of the German survivors. “The bayonet, the butt of the rifle, the sabre, the pike, were in full play, and men fell, as they rarely fall in modern war, under the direct blows of their enemies.”17

  The militiamen prevailed. The dragoons gave way and ran for their lives down the hill.

  The whole valley was now quaking with the banging clamor of battle. Stark sent militiamen down a sunken road that allowed them to reach the loyalist redoubt without being seen. He led his own men toward Baum’s soldiers near the bridge. The struggle became feverish. Relentless. Stark, the Bunker Hill veteran, admitted the fight was “the hottest engagement I ever witnessed, resembling a continual clap of thunder.”18

  The fighting around the Tory fort was particularly vicious. John Peters, the leader of a loyalist brigade that had accompanied Burgoyne from Canada, watched one of the attackers fire and run at him with his bayonet. “Peters, you damned Tory,” the rebel screamed, “I have got you!” His bayonet stabbed into Peters’s body below his left breast just as Peters finished reloading. He recognized his attacker as “an old schoolmate and playfellow.” A half second of hesitation. “Though his bayonet was in my body,” Peters remembered, “I felt regret at being obliged to destroy him.” He fired.19

  A rebel named William Clement drove his bayonet into a Tory’s eye with such force that it stuck and detached from his musket as the man dropped dead. The sight so shocked Clement that he refused to touch the bayonet to retrieve it—his victim would be buried with the steel still jutting from his head.

  In less than two hours, the fight was over. Colonel Baum had been wounded and captured. Stark’s men had shot down many and taken hundreds more prisoner. As the ears of the patriots continued to ring, some sank down to rest, others scavenged for souvenirs. Many were reeling in the heat, having fortified themselves with rum throughout the desperate fighting.

  At this point, about four-thirty in the afternoon, Colonel Breymann’s relief column came marching up the road. They ran into a band of militiamen a few miles west of the battlefield. A hot firefight alerted Stark. He gathered as many of his spent sol
diers as he could and rushed up the road.

  Seth Warner’s troops had not reached the scene of the action until the fighting was winding down. Still fresh, they stormed toward the sound of the guns and slammed into Breymann’s grenadiers. Surrounding the Germans’ two field pieces, they managed to turn the guns around and fire them at the enemy. Twenty more Germans died in the fight and 140 fell prisoner before Breymann extracted his force and headed back toward the main army.

  Darkness forced Stark to call off the fighting. “Had day lasted an hour longer,” he stated, “we should have taken the whole body of them.”20 His raw militia force had beaten trained German mercenaries. They had scored a victory whose repercussions would echo down history. “Undisciplined freemen,” Stark would say much later, “are superior to veteran slaves.”21 George Washington praised the “great stroke struck by Gen. Stark.” A patriot proclaimed it “the compleatest Victory gain’d this War.”22

  Burgoyne still led a potent force, but he had, in one day, lost a thousand men he could not replace. Vermont, he worried, “abounds in the most active and rebellious race of the continent and hangs like a gathering storm on my left.”23

  The previous autumn, young Sally Kellogg had listened to the whiz of cannonballs as she and her family had rowed away from their home directly through Arnold’s Lake Champlain naval fight with the British fleet. They had taken refuge at Bennington. Now she witnessed the blood-soaked aftermath of another battle. It was “a sight to behold,” she wrote. “There was not a house but what was stowed full of wounded.”24