The German Experience - "We Finally Reached Boston"

British accounts of the 1777 march of the Convention Army after the surrender at Saratoga are brief, with the exception the letters published by Ensign Thomas Anburey in 1789 under the title "Travels Through The Interior Parts Of America".  German accounts of the march are rich in detail, and describe not only where they went and when, but what they saw and did along the way.  In addition, a series of drawing available online through The New York Public Library Digital Collection by Hessian Captain Friedrich von Germann show us what various German regiments looked like before the Saratoga campaign started, such as this soldier from the Brunswick Regiment von Specht.  

German accounts of the 1777 march range from the memoirs and letters of its commander, to the brief diary entries of one of his soldiers, and include one kept by a woman, the wife of Major-General Friedrich Adolph Riedesel, the commander of General Burgoyne's German troops.  

On October 21, 1777, General Riedesel wrote to the Duke of Brunswick from Albany, New York: "Your serene Highness will see from this most humble report in what kind of a sorry situation our fine American maneuvers have placed me and the royal troops..."  While the purpose of Riedesel's letter was to describe the events of the campaign and explain what led to Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's defeat, he concluded with a brief description of the surrender, and indicated that the following day: "On October 18th the troops marched to Stillwater in 2 columns, crossing the river there on the morning of the 19th and thence via Kinderhuc [sic] to Springfield, the English however, via Kinderhuc to Northampton...". [1]  

What is titled as Riedesel's Memoirs, Letters and Journals During His Residency in America was published by in Albany, New York in 1868.  While this work includes accounts of preparation for the march and the surrender, including saving the German colors and his soldiers' distress over surrendering their cannon and muskets, and offers some detail concerning the march, it is difficult at times to tell what is an actual quote, versus what has been written by the editor.  Regarding the march for example, it reads: “On the 20th, the two nationalities of the royal army separated; the English regiments going to the left, across the Green mountains toward Stockbridge, and the German troops across the green woods. The latter crossed the Hudson this day, and marched, under the escort of a militia regiment, commanded by Colonel Ried, to Schaticoke.”, a description of events that appears to be at odds with - though more accurate than - Riedesel's account in his October 21st letter to the Duke of Brunswick. [2]

Another account from Burgoyne's German troops, The Specht Journal, was translated by the late Helga Doblin and published by the Greenwood Press in 1995.  This work, subtitled "A Military Journal of the Burgoyne Campaign" is the translation of a journal thought to be kept by the regiment's adjutant, Lieutenant Anton Adolph Heinrich Du Roi.  It covers the period from the regiment's departure from Germany in 1776 through November 9, 1777, two days after its arrival at Winter Hill, and includes a highly detailed day by day account account of the march of the Brunswicker von Specht Regiment from Saratoga to Cambridge. [3]

Several descriptions of the march of the German column are included in Letters From America 1776-1779, as translated by Ray Pettingill, and publish in 1924.  These letters, which describe the march in similar detail as seen in the Specht Journal offer us insight such as the American escort "... consisting of six hundred men...". [4]  Pettengill notes the letters in his work which were originally published in Germany in the eighteenth century were used in 1884 by Edwin Lowell in The Hessians and Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, and translated by William Leete Stone for inclusion in 1891 in Letters of Brunswick and Hessian Officers During the American Revolution, but both works were incomplete and contained errors.  

Claus Reuter's, Brunswick Troops and Saratoga provides us another perspective on the march, through the diary of a common soldier, Brunswick Grenadier Johann Bense.  While Bense's entries from October 17 through November 7, 1777, are brief, he not only confirms where he and his comrades were most days of the march, but illustrates the difficulties they endured, noting that ten nights he slept "in the woods" (and one night in "an old cellar hole", and another in "a leaking old stable"). [5]

Two other journals kept by German's who served in the Saratoga campaign, but did not march with the Convention Army in 1777, provide insight on the area the Convention Army marched through.  One, the Journal of Du Roi The Elder - Lieutenant and Adjutant In The Service Of The Duke Of Brunswick , 1776-1778, translated by Charlotte S. J. Epping and published in 1911, documents Du Roi's service with the Prinz Friedrich regiment experiences in Canada and during the Saratoga campaign through August of 1777, as well as the 1778-1779 march of the Convention Army from Cambridge to Virginia.  

Another, An Eyewitness Account of the American Revolution and New England Life, also translated by Helga Doblin and published in 1990, is the journal kept by Brunswick Dragoon Company Surgeon Julius Friedrich Wasmus, who was captured at the Battle of Bennington.  Although Wasmus didn't march with the Convention Army, he did ride from where he was being held prisoner to meet them for a day in Brookfield. [6]  His detailed observations during the time he was held in captivity provide additional insight on life in Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War. 

In addition to the voices of these German soldiers, we also have the account of a woman, wife and mother, Baroness Frederika Charlotte Louise Riedesel, who published her journal in 1800, which has been republished including an edition edited by Marvin Brown in 1965 under the title Baroness Riedesel and the American Revolution, Journal and Correspondence.  Baroness Riedesel account of the campaign includes her experiences at the surrender, and on the march.

While the experience of Baroness Riedesel and her three children (and her husband) was not the same as that of the wives and children of the common soldier, she did experience the danger of the final days of the campaign firsthand, as well as frustration over how she was treated on the march, including being robbed of many of her possessions while in Albany, and an inability to obtain what she considered appropriate food and quarters for her and her children.

While some of the difficulties that she faced were inherent in a three week journey that in 1777 would have been made through sparsely populated areas, others were an expression of the hostility many New Englanders felt towards Burgoyne's "foreign troops".  When the German column of the Convention Army arrived in Cambridge on November 7, 1777, one resident would write to her friend: "... on Friday [Nov. 7th] we heard the Hessians werto make a Procession in the same rout, we thot we should have nothing to do with them, but View them as they Passd. To be sure the sight was truly Astonishing, I never had the least Idea, that the Creation producd such a Sordid Set of Creatures in human Figure—poor dirty emaciated men, great numbers of women, who seemd to be the beasts of burthen, having a bushel basket on their back, by which they were bent double, the contents seemd to be Pots & kettles, various sorts of Furniture, children peeping thro gridirons & other utensils. Some very young Infants who were born on the road, the women barefoot, cloathd in dirty raggs Such Effluvia filld the air while they were passing, had they not been smoaking all the time, I should have been apprehensive of being Contaminated by them." [7]  A marker on the Saratoga National Historical Park battlefield, a part of which is pictured here, illustrates what wives and children on the 1777 march may have looked like, based in a large part no doubt on this description - right down to the pipe.

Regardless of how the Germans actually looked when they arrived in Cambridge, Baroness Riedesel would note with some relief that after three weeks on the road since the surrender: "We finally reached Boston." [8]

Next Week: Burgoyne’s Camp Kettle - “Captured October 17, 1777, In The Battle Of Saratoga[?]” 

Last Week: The British Experience - “Two Hundred Miles From Saratoga To Boston”

For more on the Convention Army's 1777 march from Saratoga to Boston, see:

   1777 March Blog Home             Overnight Stopping Points        Towns and Villages Along the Way 

   General Whipple's Journal         Burgoyne in Albany                    Annotated Bibliography 

[1] Saratoga National Historical Park, "Barron Riedesel's Letter to Duke of Brunswick October 21, 1777" (transcribed and translated by Julie K. Snell, 1948), 1, 8.  Riedesel, writing from Albany, was unaware that the Convention Army had split into two columns on October 20th, shortly after crossing the Hudson River, and that only his German troops (and four days later Burgoyne and his escort) would pass through Kinderhook.
[2] General Riedesel, Memoirs, Letters and Journals During His Residency in America, 192.

[3] Specht Journal, 101-110.

[4] Pettingill, Letters From America, 122.

[5] Bense, "Diary of Johann Bense", Brunswick Troops and Saratoga, 75-80.

[6] Wasmus, An Eyewitness Account of the American Revolution and New England Life, 89-90.

[7] Hannah Winthrop to Mercy Otis Warren, Nov. 11, 1777, accessed online through the website of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

[8] Baroness Riedesel, Baroness Riedesel and the American Revolution, Journal and Correspondence, 68.