Burgoyne Surrenders - "The Generals In America Doing Nothing, Or Worse Than Nothing"

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Thursday, October 17, 2024, is the 247th anniversary of British Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga, New York.  The final days of his failed campaign are being remembered during "Siege Weekend" on October 12th and 13th at Saratoga National Historical Park, and a variety of other locations listed on the Saratoga 250 Events Page.  A month-long program of events, beginning with the Battle of Freeman's Farm, culminates on the 17th in a community remembrance of the surrender at 10:00 AM at Fort Hardy Park in Schuylerville, New York, Saratoga National Historical Park rangers at the site where Burgoyne surrendered about a mile south of Fort Hardy on Route 4, and at 6:00 PM, a "Surrender Day Benefit" in Saratoga Springs.  For those who like to plan ahead, 2025's commemoration of "Victory Season at Saratoga" is already on the Saratoga 250 website.

Looking back, one of the earliest images of Burgoyne's surrender appears to have been published in London in June of 1779.  The scene is one of a dozen in an engraving entitled "The political raree-show: or a picture of parties and politics, during and at the close of the last session of Parliament, June 1779" in the collection of of the Boston Public Library, accessed on the Digital Commonwealth website.  

In the surrender panel, British soldiers kneel to lay down their arms and colors as a victorious American army looks on.  In the foreground a British general, presumably Burgoyne, sits outside his tent with two wine bottles under his chair, and one leg up on a table which holds a punch bowl and playing cards.  The caption to the panel, "The Generals In America Doing Nothing, Or Worse Than Nothing", reflects the frustration felt by many in Great Britain over the lack of progress made to bring the rebellion in the North American colonies to an end.

The 2024 Surrender Day ceremony at Fort Hardy likely will include the event shown in a painting by John Trumbull, which captures the moment that Burgoyne offered his sword to American Major-General Horatio Gates.  Trumbull's painting, entitled "Surrender of General Burgoyne", was completed in 1821 based on sketches of the site he did in 1791, and portraits he painted in the 1790's.  This image, like others he did of Bunker Hill, Trenton and Yorktown, celebrates American victories during the Revolutionary War. 

There are some problems with both images - and the surrender commemoration.  Despite what the 1779 engraving shows, Burgoyne's army surrendered out of sight of the American army.  His British troops stacked their arms, rather than kneeling to ground them, and there has been some disagreement over what happened to the flags said to have been carried by the various British and German regiments which surrendered on October 17th.  With regard to Trumbull's painting, it's questionable whether the American flag was flown over Gates' headquarters at Saratoga, and if so, if this was the first time that it was flown as some have claimed.  

The Fort Hardy ceremony on the 17th will commemorate the surrender of arms which occurred there in 1777, as well as Burgoyne's surrender to Gates, despite that actually occurring down the road a ways at Gates headquarters.  The Fort Hardy ceremony likely won't include reenactors portraying each of the American officers Trumbull shows looking on, including Major-General Philip Schuyler standing behind the wheels of the cannon, clad in civilian cloths rather than a uniform, and to his right brigadier-generals John Glover and William Whipple, who would escort Burgoyne from Albany to Cambridge.  Instead, the 2024 onlookers will include the general public and local schoolchildren.

Regardless, none of these questions or details should cast a shadow on the 2024 celebration which recognizes the accomplishment of the Northern Army at Saratoga, where a combined force of Continental troops and militia defeated a British army, and in doing so changed the course of history.



For more on the Convention Army's 1777 march from Saratoga to Boston, see:
   General Whipple's Journal         Burgoyne in Albany                    Annotated Bibliography  
 

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