Страница 27 из 103
Saratoga Morning
Wearily, the British laid out plans for a new assault on the northern colonies. Major General Burgoyne was in charge of Britain’s Canadian-based army, but he and Howe failed to work out a plan for coordinating their two forces. Burgoyne led his army down the customary Lake Champlain-Hudson River route, while Howe was stalled by indecision. Finally, he decided not to support Burgoyne’s offensive but to leave a garrison under Sir Henry Clinton in New York City and to transport the bulk of his army by sea to attack Philadelphia. It was a fatal blunder.
Burgoyne’s operation began promisingly, as the American Northern army, suffering from lack of supply and disputes among its own commanders, fell back before the British advance. Burgoyne, popularly known as “Gentleman John,” was so confident of victory that he invited officers to bring wives and mistresses on the campaign. He staged sumptuous di
Trouble in the City of Brotherly Love
Despite the triumph at Saratoga, the news was not all good for the Americans. Howe took his army by sea and landed on upper Chesapeake Bay, 57 miles outside of Philadelphia, poised for an assault on that city. On October 4, 1777, Howe won Philadelphia, the American capital.
But what, really, had the British gained? An entire army, Burgoyne’s, was lost. Howe had paid dearly for the prize he now held. In contrast, the American forces remained intact, and the rebellion continued. Most important of all, the French were deeply impressed by the American victory at Saratoga, not the British capture of Philadelphia.
Viva La France!
As early as 1776, Louis XVI’s foreign minister, the Comte de Verge
A Hard Forge
Nations may disagree and fight one another, and they may agree and fight together, but nature takes no notice in either case. The winter of 1778 visited great suffering on the Continental Army, which was encamped at Valley Forge, Pe
Washington pursued Clinton through New Jersey, fighting him to a stand at Monmouth Courthouse on June 28, 1778. The result, a draw, was nevertheless a moral victory for the Continentals, who had stood up to the best soldiers England could field. If Monmouth was not decisive, it did mark the third year of a war in which the British could show no results whatsoever.
White War, Red Blood
The American Revolution was really two wars. Along the eastern seaboard, it was a contest of one army against another. Farther inland, the fighting resembled that of the French and Indian War. Both sides employed Indian allies, but the British recruited more of them and used them as agents of terror to raid and burn outlying settlements. From the earliest days of the war, the royal lieutenant governor of Detroit, Henry Hamilton, played a key role in stirring the Indians of the Indiana-Illinois frontier to wage ferocious war on Patriot settlers. Hamilton’s Indian nickname tells the tale: they called him “Hair Buyer.” In 1778, the young George Rogers Clark (1752-1818), a hard-drinking Kentucky militia leader, overran the British-controlled Illinois and Indiana region and took “Hair Buyer” prisoner. Even more celebrated in the western war campaign—albeit less militarily significant—was the intrepid frontiersman Daniel Boone.
Bloody though the Kentucky frontier was, conditions were even worse on the New York—Pe