The 1777 March of the Saratoga Convention Army

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....

Did Brigadier-General James Brickett of the Massachusetts Militia embarrass himself as an officer and a gentleman during the Revolutionary War?  Several sources would have you believe that he did, but I question the accuracy, motivation or intent of each. Brickett, unlike Brigadier-General John Nixon , has a well documented connection to the 1777 march of the Convention Army following Lieutenant-General John Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga on October 17, 1777.  Brigadier-General John Glover, who was assigned the overall responsibility for getting the prisoners to Boston, confirmed this in a statement he made to Massachusetts officials in 1780, noting:  "That Brigadier General James Brickett, was appointed to the Command of About five Hundred Militia, Detached from General Gates Army, to Guard a Division of the Convention Troops, from Saratoga to Cambridge, in October 1777...." [1] An assessment of Massachusetts officers written before the Saratoga campaign is especiall...