There was no victim ripe just yet for sacrifice in that quarter. There remained Burgoyne. He could incontinently be wiped from off the face of the earth, or, to speak more correctly, removed from the chess-board. That done, and done quickly; then the next! Extrication by retreat was now no longer possible; Burgoyne was hopelessly entangled. His bridges were burned; he had to get through to Albany, and thence to New York, with destruction as his sole alternative. Six weeks before (June 17) he had set out on his southward movement, four days after Howe had crossed from New York into New Jersey for his "two weeks' fooling." On the 5th of July Burgoyne occupied Ticonderoga; on that day Howe, his "two weeks' fooling" over, was loading his army on the transports anchored in New York Bay, and Washington was observing him in a state of complete. and altogether excusable mental bepuzzlement. What move on the board had the man in mind? Clearly, his true move would be up the Hudson; but why load an army foot, horse and artillery on ocean transports to sail up the Hudson? The idea was absurd. But, if Albany was not Howe's destination, what other destination had he in mind? At length, July 24, he put to sea, disappeared in space. In the interval Burgoyne had made his irretrievable mistake. Hitherto his movement had been in every respect most successful. Winning victories, capturing strongholds and supplies, he had swept on, forcing the great northern barrier. He had now the choice of two routes to Albany. He could go by water to the head of Lake George on his way to Fort Edward, capture it and in ten days be in Albany; or he could try to get there by constructing a military road through the woods. He elected the latter, plunging into "a half-wilderness, rough country of creeks, marshes and woodland trails." Beside removing obstructions and repairing old bridges, he had to build forty new; and one of these "was a causeway two miles long across a swamp." To withdraw was now impossible; the victim was nearing the sacrificial spot. He occupied the hastily evacuated Fort Edward on the 30th of July. On that same day "the people living at Cape Henlopen, at the entrance of Delaware Bay, saw the ocean covered with a vast fleet of nearly three Fisher, II. 65; Trevelyan, Pt. ш. 123. hundred transports and men-of-war" (Fisher, II. 18). It was Howe's armament. He was not bound for Albany! From that moment, strategically and for immediate purposes, he was for Washington as if he did not exist. He might go where he willed to go; he was outside of the present field of vital operation, — clean off the chess-board. Did Washington see his opportunity, and quickly avail himself of it, Burgoyne was now lost hopelessly lost. He might indeed get to Albany; but Washington could get there "fust with most men." Washington had now twelve thousand men. A large portion of them were militia, and the militia were notoriously unreliable whether on the march or in battle; as Washington expressed it, under fire they were "afraid of their own shadows"; and so, teaching them how to cover the ground rapidly and well was mere waste of time. They would, of course, have had to be left behind to occupy the attention of the enemy. There would remain probably some eight thousand marching and fighting effectives. Schuyler had forty-four hundred men with him when (July 30) he abandoned Fort Edward, and the militia were pouring in. A month later Gates, who relieved Schuyler in command, had seven thousand (Fisher, II. 89). Here was a force fifteen thousand strong, if once united, and Burgoyne, when he emerged from the wilderness, could muster less than five thousand. It was the opportunity of a lifetime; unfortunately, Washington did not so see it, failed to take full advantage of it. Instead, he had recourse to those half-way measures always in warfare so dangerous. The possibility of such a move on the part of his adversary had indeed occurred to Howe, and, apparently, to him only; so, just before sailing from New York, he wrote to Burgoyne, congratulating him on his occupation of Ticonderoga (July 5), and added: "Washington is awaiting our motions here, and has detached Sullivan with about twenty-five hundred men, as I learn, to Albany. My intention is for Pennsylvania, where I expect to meet Washington; but if he goes to the northward, contrary to my expectations, and you can keep him at bay, be assured I shall soon be after to relieve you.' 1."1 The letter containing this extraordinary assurance of support did not reach Burgoyne until the middle of September. It lends a 1 Fiske, The American Revolution, I. 308. touch of the grotesque to the situation. Washington might with perfect ease have effected a junction of his own army with that under Schuyler, and crushed Burgoyne, three weeks before Howe's missive reached him. That, as Commander-in-Chief, Washington had ample authority to undertake such a diversion without previously consulting Congress or obtaining its consent thereto, did not admit of doubt. The question had already been raised, and it had once for all been settled; "all the American forces were under his command, whether regular troops or volunteers, and he was invested with full powers to act for the good of the service in every part of the country." The conditions were now exactly those prefigured by Charles Lee the year before at Boston, when he said to Washington: "Your situation is such that the salvation of the whole depends on your striking, at certain crises, vigorous strokes, without previously communicating your intention." 1 When Howe was descried at the mouth of the Delaware (July 30), Washington was still in central New Jersey, in the neighborhood of the Raritan. Clinton, with some six thousand men only, in New York was looking for reinforcements, which did not reach him until October (Fisher, II. 100). Meanwhile he was powerless for aggression. He could be safely disregarded. Albany was only one hundred and fifty miles away; if taken leisurely, a pleasant ten days' summer march. It was a mere question of shoe leather, and in all successful warfare shoes are indeed a prime factor. So much is this the case that when, some thirty-five years later, Wellington, attending to every detail which contributed to the effectiveness of his army, was preparing for that final campaign in the Peninsula which culminated one month later in the complete overthrow of the French under King Joseph, directed and dry-nursed by Marshal Jourdan, at Vittoria, it was prescribed that every British infantry soldier should carry in his knapsack three pairs of shoes, with an extra pair of spare soles and heels (Fitchett, III. 358). Such an ample provision of foot-wear would in the summer of 1777 have probably been beyond the reach of Washington's Quartermaster-General; but, shortly before, shoes sufficient it is said for twenty-five thousand troops had 1 N. Y. Hist. Soc., Lee Papers, IV. 262. arrived safely at Portsmouth, sent out with other munitions of war by French sympathizers (Fisher, II. 10). New England, moreover, was then a community of cordwainers, and the coarse cowhide foot-wear of the period could, if called for, have hardly failed somehow to be forthcoming. In any event, the march of one hundred and twenty-five miles towards Chesapeake Bay actually made at that time was in degree only less destructive of sole leather than one twenty-five miles longer to Albany. As to the operation from any other point of view, it was exactly the experience and discipline the Patriot army stood most in need of. As every one who has had any experience in actual warfare knows, there is nothing which so contributes to the health, morale and discipline of an army as steady and unopposed marching over long distances. In our own more recent experience Sherman's famous movements through Georgia and the Carolinas afforded convincing illustration of this military truism. Nothing, on the other hand, is so bad for the morale and physical health of a military force, especially one hastily levied, as long hot-weather tarrying in any one locality. For instance, at the very time now under consideration, while Washington was waiting near the Falls of the Schuylkill for Howe's movement to reveal itself, we are told that the sanitary arrangements of the Patriots were "particularly unfortunate," and in the "hot August weather a most horrible stench rose all round their camp" (Fisher, II. 18; Greene, I. 440). Had Washington, straining on the leash, broken camp and set his columns in motion for Peekskill on the Hudson during the first week in August, by the 20th of a month of easy marches he would have joined Schuyler, and the united armies, fifteen thousand strong, would have been on top of Burgoyne. At that time Gates had not yet assumed command of the Northern Department (Fisher, II. 88). Lincoln and Stark were wrangling; and Schuyler was issuing orders which both refused or neglected to obey (Ib., 80). The battle at Bennington was fought on August 14. Out-flanked, surrounded, crushed by an overwhelming superiority of force, his enemy flushed with victory, Burgoyne's camp everywhere searched day and night by rifle-bullets, while cannon-balls hurtled through the air (Trevelyan, Pt. III. 189-190), a week at most would have ... sufficed; the British commander would have had to choose between surrender or destruction. Events would thus have been precipitated seven weeks, and the early days of September might have seen Washington moving south on his interior lines at the head of a united army, flushed with success and full of confidence in itself and its leader. Rich in the spoils of Burgoyne, it would also have been a force well armed and equipped, especially strong in artillery; for, indeed, even at this interval of more than a century and a quarter of time, it leads to something closely resembling a watering of the American eyes and mouth to read at once the account of the parade of Washington's so-called army through Philadelphia on its way to the Brandywine during the latter days of August, 1777, and the schedule of the impedimenta turned over by the vanquished to the victors at Saratoga fifty days later. Of the first Fisher says (II. 19): "The greatest pains were taken with this parade. Earnest appeals were made to the troops to keep in step and avoid straggling. To give some uniformity to the motley huntingshirts, bare feet, and rags, every man wore a green sprig in his hat. . . . But they all looked like fighting men as they marched by to destroy Howe's prospects of a winter in Philadelphia." This authority then unconsciously touches the heart of the strategic blunder in that march being perpetrated by adding: "With the policy Howe was persistently pursuing, it might have been just as well to offer no obstacle to his taking Philadelphia. He merely intended to pass the winter there as he had done in Boston and New York." Mr. Fisher does not add that this half-organized, half-armed, half-clad, undisciplined body twelve thousand strong was on its way to measure itself in pitched battle against eighteen thousand veterans, British and German, perfectly organized, equipped and disciplined, in an effort doomed in advance to failure, an effort to protect from hostile occupation a town of not the slightest strategic importance! It was in truth a very sad spectacle, that empty Philadelphia parade of victims on the way through a dark valley of death and defeat to Valley Forge as a destination. The cold, hard military truth is that the flower of that forceeight thousand of the best of the twelve thousand-should then have been at Saratoga, dividing among themselves the |