VT250: The Battle of Hubbardton – The Rear Guard Action That Saved America

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Transcript

[00:00:06] Speaker 1: Hey, welcome everybody.
[00:00:07] I'm Shawn Harrington.
[00:00:08] I'm the curator for the Manchester Historical Society
[00:00:11] and it's really, really happy to see everybody here.
[00:00:15] I have some prepared things I just wanted to read.
[00:00:18] Tonight's Vermont 250th lecture is brought to you
[00:00:20] by the Bennington Regional 250th Anniversary Committee,
[00:00:24] the Manchester Community Library, thank you, Paige,
[00:00:27] and the Manchester Historical Society.
[00:00:30] During my talk that I had on July 1st, you know,
[00:00:34] I talked a little about Seth Warner
[00:00:35] and his army making the difficult journey back here
[00:00:38] to Manchester following the Battle of Hubbardton.
[00:00:41] And tonight we're going to get to zoom in on, you know,
[00:00:43] that very battle and the crucial real -guard action
[00:00:46] that preceded their arrival
[00:00:48] and the only revolutionary war battle
[00:00:50] that was fought entirely on Vermont soil.
[00:00:53] To guide us, you know, we're incredibly fortunate
[00:00:57] to have Dr. Bruce Venter here, his award -winning book,
[00:01:01] The Battle of Hubbardton, which is right here,
[00:01:02] which he'll actually, if you'd like to purchase a copy after,
[00:01:05] I'm sure he'd be happy to sell to you.
[00:01:09] His book is recognized as a definitive work on the battle
[00:01:13] and it was named one of the 100 best books
[00:01:16] on the American Revolution and it was extensively cited
[00:01:19] in the Pulitzer Prize, winning Rick Atkinson
[00:01:22] in his recent history of the Saratoga campaign.
[00:01:25] So Dr. Venter is a national leader in public history.
[00:01:28] He's the President of America's History, LLC,
[00:01:30] known for its premier history conferences
[00:01:33] and he serves on multiple boards,
[00:01:35] including the Saratoga County 250th Commission
[00:01:38] and the Lake George Battlefield Park Alliance.
[00:01:41] As Dr. Venter notes, with the 250th anniversary
[00:01:44] just around the corner, this is a perfect time
[00:01:46] to kind of revisit the 1777 campaign.
[00:01:50] So please give a warm introduction to Dr. Venter.

[00:01:56] Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Shawn.
[00:01:58] And Shawn was the first one to buy a book.
[00:02:01] And so I inscribed it as best wishes
[00:02:06] and thank you for a great introduction.
[00:02:08] And he did a great introduction, thank you very much.
[00:02:11] So you're able to keep the book, I'm not gonna retrieve it.
[00:02:15] This is the cover for the book
[00:02:17] and I think most of this audience probably remembers
[00:02:22] going to the drive -ins in the day
[00:02:25] with your parents or something like that.
[00:02:27] And drive -ins were famous for having
[00:02:30] these subliminal messages by popcorn and soda
[00:02:34] and it was buried somewhere in the screen there.
[00:02:37] So this screen is telling you to buy the book afterwards.
[00:02:40] How's that?
[00:02:41] Now I have to tell you that I'm very pleased to be here.
[00:02:47] I did have a good friend who was gonna be here.
[00:02:51] His name's Eric Schnitzer.
[00:02:53] I don't know if you've ever heard of him
[00:02:54] but he is the chief historian down
[00:02:57] at the Saratoga Battlefield Park.
[00:03:00] And Eric knows everything there is to know
[00:03:03] about the Saratoga campaign.
[00:03:05] And he was gonna come to my talk tonight
[00:03:07] and he sent me an email today and he said, yesterday,
[00:03:11] and he said, I got reassigned.
[00:03:13] He said, I have to do a military staff ride
[00:03:16] for the United States Space Force,
[00:03:20] officers of the Space Force.
[00:03:22] So apparently Burgoyne's campaign was out of this world.
[00:03:26] I don't know but he's not here tonight.
[00:03:29] That's too bad.
[00:03:31] Anyway, I'm gonna talk about the Battle of Hubbardton tonight
[00:03:35] and I also wanna compliment Paige and her staff
[00:03:38] because I sent like an author photo
[00:03:42] to be put in the promotional materials.
[00:03:45] And when I looked at the website today,
[00:03:47] it brought it up the library website,
[00:03:49] not only was my picture there
[00:03:51] but the AI has taken effect.
[00:03:54] And so I have the Battle of Hubbardton,
[00:03:57] the battlefield in back of me
[00:03:59] and then Pittsburgh Ridge in back of my head.
[00:04:02] So I'm just thrilled to see that.
[00:04:04] This is just wonderful.
[00:04:05] There's a new high here for me
[00:04:07] in terms of marketing my talks on Hubbardton.
[00:04:14] So the book has the title of,
[00:04:17] the subtitle, The Rear Guard Action That Saved America.
[00:04:21] And of course, if you're a publisher,
[00:04:22] you want that kind of a subtitle
[00:04:24] because people will really buy the book.
[00:04:26] It'll fly off the shelves.
[00:04:28] And I took a lot of heat from my friends
[00:04:30] in the history field.
[00:04:32] They really got on me because they were,
[00:04:35] you're really going way out there, Bruce.
[00:04:38] So when I do the talk,
[00:04:39] I changed it to the action that saved the Northern Army
[00:04:44] because I really believe that's what happened here
[00:04:47] on July the 7th, 1777.
[00:04:51] So why write a book about the Battle of Hubbardton?
[00:04:55] Well, this book came out about 2015.
[00:05:00] And before that, there was a booklet
[00:05:03] that you could buy at the Battlefield Park.
[00:05:06] How many have been to Hubbardton Battlefield?
[00:05:10] Isn't it great?
[00:05:11] It's pristine.
[00:05:13] No shopping malls like in Virginia,
[00:05:15] you know, impeding on the battlefield.
[00:05:18] It's just great there.
[00:05:19] And the site director there at the time,
[00:05:22] his name was Carl Fuller.
[00:05:25] And they had a book by a Colonel Williams.
[00:05:29] And, but it had gone out of print.
[00:05:31] And the state was not going to reprint the book.
[00:05:35] And I said to Carl, I said, gee, I can write a book for you.
[00:05:38] Then you can sell it at the visitor center.
[00:05:40] And he thought it was a great idea.
[00:05:42] So he had been born on the property.
[00:05:45] His family had had a farm there
[00:05:47] on the Hubbardton Battlefield down below Monument Hill.
[00:05:51] And he took me all around,
[00:05:53] took me up into the saddle where the,
[00:05:56] you know, the British came through
[00:05:58] from Ticonderoga and everything.
[00:06:00] And it just, it worked out great.
[00:06:01] So I wrote the book and it's great
[00:06:03] because they sell it at the battlefield
[00:06:06] and the other sites, Mount Independence
[00:06:07] and Chimney Point and like that.
[00:06:10] They do a great job for me on the book.
[00:06:13] So what, what am I trying to do with this book?
[00:06:17] Well, I think I've,
[00:06:19] it's, the book is more comprehensive
[00:06:20] than Colonel Williams' monograph
[00:06:23] because Colonel Williams started right at the battle.
[00:06:28] And I go back and I start with Burgoyne coming down in June
[00:06:32] of 1777 from Canada with his army.
[00:06:37] And then I proceed to talk about the capture
[00:06:40] of Fort Ticonderoga, which I'm going to do tonight.
[00:06:43] I've got a new interpretation on Simon Frazier's leadership.
[00:06:47] He is the main British commander at Hubbardton.
[00:06:50] I dispel the myth of the Grenadiers climbing
[00:06:54] up Mount Zion.
[00:06:56] And I'm going to talk about all of these points.
[00:06:59] I have a new interpretation of Frazier's,
[00:07:02] the action on his right flank,
[00:07:05] a new interpretation on the death of Colonel
[00:07:07] Ebenezer Francis
[00:07:08] who was an American at the battle.
[00:07:12] I use some German sources in the book
[00:07:14] that were overlooked by some previous writers.
[00:07:17] And I have a new interpretation
[00:07:19] of Hubbardton's impact on Burgoyne's campaign.
[00:07:25] So let's get started.
[00:07:26] Here are the protagonists in the story of Hubbardton.
[00:07:31] Man on the left is John Burgoyne.
[00:07:33] Some of you maybe have heard him called Gentleman Johnny.
[00:07:37] That was not prevalent during the American Revolution.
[00:07:40] He was not called Gentleman Johnny.
[00:07:43] That is something that came afterwards,
[00:07:46] a playwright dreamed that up
[00:07:48] when he wrote a play called The Disciple, I think it was.
[00:07:53] And so Burgoyne is 55 years old.
[00:07:56] He is, previously he had been a cavalry commander
[00:08:00] in the British Army.
[00:08:01] He is a good friend of King George III
[00:08:04] and the secretary of war for the colonies,
[00:08:08] Lord George Germain.
[00:08:10] He will present a, oh, he has been in the colonies now
[00:08:14] since the beginning of the war, basically.
[00:08:16] He's sent over by the king along with General Howe
[00:08:20] and General Clinton to help General Gage in Boston.
[00:08:23] General Burgoyne will watch the Battle of Bunker Hill
[00:08:27] from Cobbs Hill in Boston.
[00:08:30] And then he will be with Guy Carlton
[00:08:33] who is the governor of Canada
[00:08:37] in the beginning part of the American Revolution.
[00:08:40] And Burgoyne will be with Carlton when he sails
[00:08:43] down or up,
[00:08:45] depending on, you know, the, the lakes flow
[00:08:47] from South to North, Lake George and Lake Champlain.
[00:08:51] But anyway, he will sail down with Carlton in 1776
[00:08:56] when Carlton fights the battle of Valkorre Island
[00:09:00] and defeats Benedict Arnold.
[00:09:02] But that's a whole other story
[00:09:03] we're not gonna talk about tonight.
[00:09:05] So he's second in command to Carlton.
[00:09:07] He goes back to England and he has a great plan.
[00:09:10] He wants to convince the king
[00:09:12] to give him the British Army, not Carlton,
[00:09:15] and come down and subjugate the colonies.
[00:09:19] Man on the right is Philip Schuyler from my
[00:09:22] hometown, Albany.
[00:09:24] He's a Dutchman.
[00:09:25] He is very wealthy.
[00:09:26] He's a landowner.
[00:09:28] He's a merchant.
[00:09:29] He is the commander of the Northern Division.
[00:09:33] He's a major general.
[00:09:34] He's one of the first four major generals
[00:09:36] that is, that are appointed by the Continental Congress.
[00:09:40] And he serves under General Washington.
[00:09:43] He's a very good friend of General Washington
[00:09:45] as a result of his service in the American Revolution.
[00:09:49] He will be in command of the Northern Army until August
[00:09:54] when he's replaced by General Gates,
[00:09:56] who ultimately defeats Burgoyne
[00:09:58] at the Battle of Saratoga.
[00:10:01] This is a map from the book.
[00:10:04] And it's essentially what Burgoyne had in mind
[00:10:07] when he presented his plan to the king.
[00:10:10] He was gonna lead an army down from Canada.
[00:10:13] General Howe, who is now the commander -in -chief
[00:10:16] in the colonies, is supposed to come up from New York City,
[00:10:21] a city that had been captured by the British in 1776,
[00:10:25] and a smaller force under Barrisa Ledger
[00:10:29] is going to come in from the Mohawk Valley,
[00:10:32] Capture Fort Standwick,
[00:10:33] and they're all gonna meet in Albany.
[00:10:36] Burgoyne is gonna bring the champagne,
[00:10:38] his favorite drink,
[00:10:40] and they will in effect control the Hudson River
[00:10:44] and the Lake Corridor and separate New England
[00:10:47] from the rest of the colonies.
[00:10:50] Over in England, they thought that the whole center
[00:10:53] of rebellion was Boston and New England,
[00:10:57] and they thought if they eliminated that problem,
[00:10:59] everybody else would fall into place.
[00:11:02] That would never happen, of course,
[00:11:05] and not just because Burgoyne didn't capture Albany.
[00:11:08] Most of the other colonies were committed to the war.
[00:11:13] So Burgoyne comes down from Canada
[00:11:15] with an army of about 9 ,000 men.
[00:11:18] 7 ,000 of them were regulars.
[00:11:21] Half of the regulars were his own British redcoats.
[00:11:23] The other half were German hirelings
[00:11:26] from different principalities.
[00:11:29] You've probably heard the term Hessians.
[00:11:31] There's a small unit of Hessians in Burgoyne's army,
[00:11:35] but principally, they're made up of Brunswickers
[00:11:38] from the, come on in,
[00:11:41] from the principality of Brunswick.
[00:11:44] England is hiring troops from these principalities
[00:11:48] to fight in the British army
[00:11:51] in order to augment their own forces.
[00:11:53] Burgoyne will also have loyalists.
[00:11:57] These are Americans who are loyal to the king.
[00:12:00] He will have about 400 native allies,
[00:12:04] and he will also have some Canadians along.
[00:12:07] And so his first objective is for Ticonderoga,
[00:12:10] which is on the left.
[00:12:12] On the right is Mount Independence.
[00:12:15] And if these photos were together,
[00:12:18] it would probably look a little better,
[00:12:20] but you have to put another bit of water there in between.
[00:12:26] And the Americans are holding Ticonderoga
[00:12:28] since it was captured by a Vermonter.
[00:12:32] Anybody want to tell me who it was?
[00:12:34] Ethan Allen, right?
[00:12:37] Who captured the fort on May 10th, 1775.
[00:12:43] The Americans have Ticonderoga
[00:12:45] and they have Mount Independence.
[00:12:48] Most of their army is over there.
[00:12:50] They have barracks, hospitals.
[00:12:52] They have a horseshoe battery.
[00:12:55] They have a small fort over there.
[00:12:57] And that's primarily where the Americans are.
[00:13:01] You have to imagine there's not a tree left
[00:13:04] on Mount Independence in June and July of 1777.
[00:13:14] The commander at Ticonderoga
[00:13:16] is Major General Arthur Sinclair.
[00:13:19] He's 34 years old.
[00:13:21] He has relieved another American general
[00:13:24] in the month of June.
[00:13:26] The previous general was
[00:13:28] Matt Anthony Wayne.
[00:13:30] Maybe some of you have heard of Matt Anthony Wayne.
[00:13:33] So Sinclair gets up there and what does he find?
[00:13:36] He finds that the American troops are in disarray.
[00:13:39] There's not enough troops to defend Ticonderoga
[00:13:45] and Mount Independence.
[00:13:47] It takes about 10 ,000 men
[00:13:49] to defend these installations properly.
[00:13:55] Sinclair has about 2 ,500,
[00:13:58] maybe 2 ,800,
[00:14:00] made up of continental soldiers,
[00:14:02] continental regiments and militias,
[00:14:05] mostly from New England.
[00:14:07] And the militia troops are coming in
[00:14:09] for a few months taking off.
[00:14:11] Coming in, those new ones coming in taking off.
[00:14:14] So he's in a bit of a quandary
[00:14:16] because he's going to be surrounded by 9 ,000 men.
[00:14:23] This is Lieutenant William Twiss.
[00:14:27] He is Burgoyne's chief engineer on this campaign.
[00:14:33] And how many have been to Ticonderoga?
[00:14:38] Good, I knew that.
[00:14:40] All right, right next to Ticonderoga
[00:14:43] is a large mountain called Mount Defiance.
[00:14:47] It was called Sugar Hill at the time
[00:14:51] of the American Revolution.
[00:14:53] And it's about 850 feet above the water line.
[00:14:58] And it's not fortified by the Americans
[00:15:01] for a simple reason.
[00:15:02] They don't have enough troops
[00:15:04] and there's no water source up on top there.
[00:15:08] It's pretty much rock.
[00:15:10] And so that piece of real estate is open.
[00:15:16] And Twiss will look at that and say,
[00:15:18] wow, if I could get some guns up there,
[00:15:21] I could probably hit the fort and hit Mount Independence.
[00:15:25] And that's exactly true
[00:15:26] because the Americans the year before
[00:15:30] when they were headquartered at Ticonderoga,
[00:15:33] they actually did a practice run
[00:15:35] and they shot a cannon from the fort
[00:15:38] up to the top of Mount Defiance and they hit it.
[00:15:41] So if you could hit it almost to the top,
[00:15:44] certainly coming down,
[00:15:45] you're gonna be able to make it difficult for troops
[00:15:49] in Fort Ticonderoga or on Mount Independence.
[00:15:53] So Twiss goes to
[00:15:56] General Phillips
[00:16:00] who is Burgoyne's second in command.
[00:16:03] Major General Phillips is an artillery expert.
[00:16:07] You see that he has a blue uniform
[00:16:09] rather than a red uniform.
[00:16:11] That's because he's in the British artillery.
[00:16:14] That's the color of their uniforms.
[00:16:17] And so he has won a great reputation
[00:16:21] as an artilleryist in Europe,
[00:16:23] especially during the Seven Years War,
[00:16:26] which in America was called the French and Indian War.
[00:16:30] And most books about the Saratoga campaign
[00:16:33] will have this quote from General Phillips,
[00:16:37] where a goat can go, a man can go,
[00:16:39] and where a man can go, he can drag a gun behind him.
[00:16:43] Now we have no documentation that he ever said that, okay?
[00:16:48] But his biographer said,
[00:16:50] if he didn't say it, he should have said it
[00:16:53] because that's the kind of guy he was.
[00:16:55] And so General Phillips sees Twiss's idea and says,
[00:17:00] yes, within 24 hours they build a road up Mount,
[00:17:04] I'm gonna call it Mount Defiance,
[00:17:06] up Mount Defiance and they put two 12 pounder cannon up there.
[00:17:12] The day before that,
[00:17:13] we have some British light infantry
[00:17:15] up on top of Mount Defiance with some Indians
[00:17:19] and they build some campfires,
[00:17:21] which allows the Americans to see smoke
[00:17:24] on top of the mountain.
[00:17:25] They don't have anybody up there,
[00:17:27] so it's gotta be the enemy up there.
[00:17:29] And so Sinclair and his subordinate commanders
[00:17:33] will have a council of war and decide to evacuate the fort.
[00:17:39] They send a note down to Skyler saying, it's untenable,
[00:17:42] we gotta get out of here.
[00:17:44] Skyler was not on the ground at the time,
[00:17:46] but he concurred with the decision.
[00:17:49] Both Skyler and Sinclair will be court -martialed
[00:17:53] for giving up Ticonderoga,
[00:17:55] but they will be exonerated later.
[00:18:01] Another one of Burgoyan subordinate commanders
[00:18:04] is Simon Frazier.
[00:18:06] He's 48 years old.
[00:18:07] He's a Scotsman.
[00:18:09] He is a veteran of the wars in America.
[00:18:13] He was in the French and Indian war.
[00:18:15] He was at Quebec with General Wolfe.
[00:18:18] He was in that British attack on the plains of Abraham.
[00:18:22] And this quote is from a letter that Burgoyan wrote
[00:18:27] back to Lord Germain.
[00:18:28] And that's what Burgoyan thought of Brigadier Frazier.
[00:18:33] He really liked him.
[00:18:34] He thought he was very competent.
[00:18:36] Frazier had been, his family had been involved
[00:18:40] in the unpleasantness of Culloden in 1745.
[00:18:46] And he had lost some of his land.
[00:18:49] His family had lost their lands up there.
[00:18:51] And he's hoping that if he does a good job in America,
[00:18:55] he'll be restored and he'll be called Lord Love It.
[00:19:03] Now, Frazier's unit is called the Advanced Corps.
[00:19:09] In the Advanced Corps, there's his own regiment
[00:19:13] of the 24th foot.
[00:19:15] There are two battalions of a light infantry battalion
[00:19:20] and a grenadier battalion.
[00:19:22] And in a British regiment at the time,
[00:19:26] there were 10 companies.
[00:19:28] And you had a grenadier company, a light infantry company,
[00:19:32] and then eight other companies called the Hat Companies,
[00:19:36] the guys that wore the tricorn hats.
[00:19:38] The grenadiers, of course, were the largest men
[00:19:40] in the regiment.
[00:19:42] They were the shock troops.
[00:19:44] The light infantry were the younger guys, the agile guys,
[00:19:48] the guys that could go out on skirmish lines and like that.
[00:19:52] In the revolution at this time,
[00:19:55] the British army had decided to take the companies
[00:19:59] from each regiment,
[00:20:01] the grenadier company
[00:20:03] and the light infantry company,
[00:20:06] and put them together as battalions.
[00:20:08] So you had a light infantry battalion of
[00:20:12] about eight companies
[00:20:13] and you had a grenadier battalion
[00:20:16] of about eight companies.
[00:20:18] So Frazier is going to be commanding these
[00:20:20] it's called the Advanced Corps.
[00:20:23] The commander of the grenadiers is John Dyke Auckland.
[00:20:28] He's a man that can't wait to kill rebels,
[00:20:33] if I could characterize it any other way.
[00:20:35] He does not truck with these rebels at all.
[00:20:38] And so he's anxious to get into the fight
[00:20:41] and he's a veteran of the British army.
[00:20:44] He will be slightly wounded at Hubbardton.
[00:20:47] He will be seriously wounded at Saratoga
[00:20:51] in the second battle on October 7th.
[00:20:55] He'll get a bullet through both of his legs,
[00:20:57] like the calves of his legs.
[00:20:59] And he will have to return to England.
[00:21:01] He will no longer be able to be in the army.
[00:21:03] Unfortunately, the next year he fights a duel in 1778
[00:21:08] and unfortunately it's early in the morning.
[00:21:12] It's very cold out and damp.
[00:21:14] He gets a cold, gets pneumonia and dies.
[00:21:18] So he's in these great battles of world history in a sense,
[00:21:22] Saratoga, but he dies after a duel.
[00:21:26] The commander of the light infantry battalion
[00:21:31] is Alexander Lindsay.
[00:21:33] He is the Earl of Balcaris.
[00:21:35] He is about 26 years old.
[00:21:38] And this will be his first fight.
[00:21:40] This is a quote that he wrote down after the campaign
[00:21:45] and he characterizes, I think, the Americans very well here.
[00:21:57] After the fort is captured,
[00:21:59] Simon Fraser wants to set out immediately
[00:22:03] after retreating American army.
[00:22:06] Now, when Burgoyne came down to capture Ticonderoga,
[00:22:10] the British units were on the west side of the lake.
[00:22:14] The German units are on the east side of the lake.
[00:22:18] This is the commander of the German units
[00:22:21] of Baron Friedrich von Redesell.
[00:22:24] And Redesell commands about 3 ,000, 3 ,500 Germans
[00:22:29] and their job was to block the Americans
[00:22:33] from getting off of Mount Independence.
[00:22:36] But unfortunately, he has to navigate a body of water
[00:22:40] called East Creek on the east side of the lake
[00:22:43] and he's not able to get to the Americans
[00:22:45] before they escape Mount Independence.
[00:22:50] So the Americans, when they see the smoke,
[00:22:54] they decide to evacuate.
[00:22:55] They evacuate on, excuse me, July the 5th, 1777.
[00:23:01] And they take a 20 -mile hike on a military road
[00:23:04] that has been built the previous year
[00:23:07] when the American commander was General Gates at the fort.
[00:23:12] And they come down to a place called Hubbardton.
[00:23:17] And their mission is to get down to Castleton
[00:23:21] from Castleton to link up with the rest
[00:23:26] of the American army
[00:23:27] that has sailed from Fort Ticonderoga to Skiensboro.
[00:23:31] I'm not gonna get into a lot of detail
[00:23:33] about that part of the operation,
[00:23:36] but essentially when Sinclair's army
[00:23:40] left Mount Independence, he sent about 200 bateau
[00:23:44] down Lake Champlain, south on Lake Champlain
[00:23:47] with wounded men, sick men,
[00:23:52] women, children,
[00:23:55] medical supplies,
[00:23:57] five real galleys,
[00:24:02] and they're escaping down to Skiensboro,
[00:24:05] which we would call Whitehall today.
[00:24:07] And I've got something really special at the end for you
[00:24:10] about that part of the operation.
[00:24:14] So the commander at Hubbardton is going to be Seth Warner.
[00:24:23] When Sinclair gets to Hubbardton,
[00:24:25] he leaves Seth Warner at Hubbardton as a rear guard.
[00:24:32] Sinclair will march to Charleston,
[00:24:36] excuse me, Castleton.
[00:24:38] I was reading something on Charleston today.
[00:24:41] Down to Castleton,
[00:24:43] Sinclair will find out
[00:24:46] that Skiensboro has been captured by Burgoyne.
[00:24:50] As I said, Burgoyne followed the Skiensboro people down.
[00:24:56] Colonel Pierce Long was a commander
[00:24:58] of the Americans on Lake Champlain,
[00:25:01] and Burgoyne will follow him and he'll capture Skiensboro
[00:25:06] and destroy what's left of the American forces there.
[00:25:10] So Sinclair can't go to Skiensboro.
[00:25:12] So he has to go from Castleton to Rutland,
[00:25:16] and then from Rutland to Fort Edward,
[00:25:20] where he will meet up with the rest of the American Army
[00:25:23] under General Schuyler.
[00:25:25] That is a quote from a 19th century biography
[00:25:32] of Seth Warner, Seth Warner's 34 years old.
[00:25:35] He is the right man for this assignment,
[00:25:39] the rear guard assignment,
[00:25:40] because he had done it the previous year in Canada
[00:25:43] when the Americans couldn't take Quebec.
[00:25:48] They were forced to retreat.
[00:25:50] Seth Warner was the man who commanded the rear guard
[00:25:54] from Montreal on down.
[00:25:58] It's also a green mountain boy, right?
[00:26:01] Yeah, he captured Crown Point after Ethan Allen
[00:26:05] captured Fort Ticonderoga.
[00:26:08] This is a picture of modern day military road
[00:26:12] coming off of Mount Independence.
[00:26:15] And that's a quote from a book by a fellow
[00:26:18] that studied the military road for like 30 years.
[00:26:21] Excellent book, very hard to find.
[00:26:23] His name was Wheeler.
[00:26:25] And basically, that's what he thought
[00:26:28] the road would have looked like.
[00:26:30] Now, when Frazier gets over on Mount Independence
[00:26:35] from the Ticonderoga area,
[00:26:38] he will settle off immediately on the 6th of July
[00:26:43] to try to harass Sinclair's
[00:26:49] army, all right?
[00:26:50] But he doesn't take any extra ammunition.
[00:26:55] He doesn't take any artillery.
[00:26:57] He doesn't take any medical supplies.
[00:26:59] He doesn't take any surgeons with him.
[00:27:02] He only has 850 men,
[00:27:06] the Light Infantry Battalion,
[00:27:09] the Grenadier Battalion and two companies
[00:27:12] of his own 24th Regiment of Foot, 850 guys.
[00:27:16] And he's marching at a breakneck speed
[00:27:19] trying to catch up with the Americans.
[00:27:21] The Americans are at Hubbardton.
[00:27:23] They know he's coming.
[00:27:24] They leave Seth Warner as a rear guard
[00:27:28] and they continue with the rest of the army,
[00:27:30] under Sinclair, marching towards Castleton.
[00:27:35] That's another picture of the military road today
[00:27:38] that actually I took when I was doing research on the book.
[00:27:42] So things haven't changed.
[00:27:45] Now, early in the morning, the Americans,
[00:27:48] I don't know whether this thing works or not.
[00:27:54] Oh yeah, right here, the Americans are gonna fire
[00:27:58] on the British coming over what we call the saddle.
[00:28:02] Sergeant Hill has a saddle and it goes down like this
[00:28:06] so you can march right through it.
[00:28:09] And that's what the Americans did
[00:28:11] and that's what the British are doing.
[00:28:14] And so the Americans are here.
[00:28:17] Let me set the stage for you here.
[00:28:19] This is Seth Warner's men are here on the road,
[00:28:23] the Castleton Road, getting ready to evacuate
[00:28:27] as a rear guard and continue to march.
[00:28:31] This is Monument Hill.
[00:28:32] If you've been to the battlefield,
[00:28:34] you know where it is.
[00:28:35] That was not called Monument Hill at the time of the battle.
[00:28:39] In this area here below Monument Hill,
[00:28:43] in the little valley of Sucker Brook,
[00:28:46] are about 300 stragglers and sick.
[00:28:52] These are walking wounded.
[00:28:53] These are guys that are sick.
[00:28:55] Some of them may even be inebriated.
[00:28:58] I know you find it hard to believe
[00:29:00] that any American soldiers would be inebriated
[00:29:03] but some of them were in 1777 anyway.
[00:29:08] And so the Americans have a couple of companies here
[00:29:10] from each of these regiments,
[00:29:12] Hale and Francis and Carr's Regiment,
[00:29:15] protecting these stragglers.
[00:29:17] Warner says, I'm gonna take an extra day.
[00:29:20] I'm gonna wait from July the 6th to July the 7th.
[00:29:24] I'll move on the 7th.
[00:29:26] Well, he's gonna be too late
[00:29:27] because as I said, Frazier is coming through the saddle.
[00:29:31] He's got his two companies of the 24th foot out in front
[00:29:36] and he's gonna hit Sucker Brook
[00:29:37] and he's gonna hit these units here
[00:29:40] and send them running, send them running.
[00:29:45] The Americans will end up capturing this whole
[00:29:48] camp of sick.
[00:29:50] Warner has all his men on the road ready to march
[00:29:54] when the British come through the saddle.
[00:29:57] And so his men are facing south
[00:29:59] and he has to right face them to go up Monument Hill.
[00:30:03] And what's gonna happen is these three regiments,
[00:30:08] Warner's Green Mountain Boys
[00:30:11] and Francis's men and Titcom from the second New Hampshire,
[00:30:17] they're gonna come up the hill on once the east side,
[00:30:28] Frazier is gonna come here on the west side.
[00:30:34] And that's what happens.
[00:30:36] They come to the top of the hill
[00:30:38] and it's almost like two freight trains coming up like this
[00:30:41] because Seth Warner didn't defend the crest,
[00:30:45] the military crest of the hill
[00:30:46] because he was getting out of there.
[00:30:48] His job was just to be a rear guard
[00:30:51] and to follow the rest of the army.
[00:30:53] He didn't expect a battle that day.
[00:30:56] He was just giving those stragglers a little time
[00:30:58] for some rest and recuperation before they moved out,
[00:31:03] but he's too late.
[00:31:04] The British are very aggressive.
[00:31:06] Frazier himself will take command
[00:31:08] of the Light Infantry Battalion
[00:31:10] because Alexander Lindsey, it's his first battle,
[00:31:13] he's a young guy.
[00:31:15] And so he will be in the forefront of the attack
[00:31:19] coming up here against these American units here
[00:31:23] on Monument Hill and they push them back.
[00:31:27] They push them back to a large fence
[00:31:29] on the other side of the Castleton Road
[00:31:32] on a farm called from Mr. Sucker.
[00:31:38] And the
[00:31:41] last unit is the Grenadier Battalion.
[00:31:47] They come down, they capture all of these men here
[00:31:49] and then follow up and they cut Warner off
[00:31:52] from the Castleton Road.
[00:31:55] And then some of the Light Infantry
[00:31:57] also come around on their right
[00:31:59] and get near Pittsburgh Ridge.
[00:32:04] Let's sell it, Kevin, sorry.
[00:32:08] Now, a lot of the early literature
[00:32:11] on the campaign and the Battle of Hoverton
[00:32:15] always said that the Americans went up Mount Zion
[00:32:19] and it's a beautiful place.
[00:32:21] It's a wonderful escarpment right there.
[00:32:24] But if you go to the battlefield,
[00:32:26] you can see that it's way too far away
[00:32:28] for the Grenadiers to have captured it.
[00:32:31] There was a British volunteer with Frazier
[00:32:35] who after the war wrote an account
[00:32:38] and he said that the Grenadiers climbed up this hill
[00:32:42] and then got on the other side of the Americans.
[00:32:46] Absolutely untrue.
[00:32:48] I do a whole chapter on why that's incorrect.
[00:32:53] Essentially, the man's name was Ann Berry
[00:32:56] and he was a plagiarist and he was a blowhard
[00:33:00] and he has been, it's just,
[00:33:04] nobody believes him anymore.
[00:33:07] In the beginning, a lot of people did believe him
[00:33:10] because he was there, but he made all this stuff up.
[00:33:13] So this is the battlefield right here.
[00:33:16] This is Monument Hill.
[00:33:17] You can see even in this picture, way too far away.
[00:33:20] Muskets are accurate at 80 yards.
[00:33:22] That's probably almost a mile away.
[00:33:25] Just didn't happen.
[00:33:26] So if you ever read anything that the Grenadiers
[00:33:29] were on Mount Zion, you know it's not true.
[00:33:33] I was very lucky the day I was at the doing this research.
[00:33:37] I found a veteran of the battle and I took his picture.
[00:33:42] So he said, so what's going on now
[00:33:46] is this is going on to, we're 7 a
[00:33:50] .m. to 8 .30 now.
[00:33:52] The Americans are being pushed back to this log fence
[00:33:58] that's owned by farmer Selick right here.
[00:34:01] His house right there.
[00:34:02] And the Americans are putting their forces
[00:34:05] behind this log fence.
[00:34:07] Now, at this
[00:34:09] point, some of this firing
[00:34:11] is like 60 yards apart.
[00:34:13] And so it's becoming very, very deadly
[00:34:16] for both the British and the Americans.
[00:34:19] At this point, Colonel Francis,
[00:34:22] who even bergoying in a letter back to London
[00:34:25] said that Colonel Francis was killed.
[00:34:29] I understand he was very highly regarded by the Americans.
[00:34:33] So even bergoying knows his reputation.
[00:34:36] But Francis is gonna be killed right here.
[00:34:39] Warner is going to bring his men over
[00:34:42] and refuse his left flank.
[00:34:45] And Auckland with the grenadiers has cut off the road
[00:34:49] and he is coming up this little hill here
[00:34:51] to try to outflank Warner.
[00:34:56] At this point in the battle,
[00:35:01] our friend General Radicell, who has been following Frazier.
[00:35:07] When Frazier started out with the 850 men,
[00:35:10] he said, send the rest of my advance corps with me.
[00:35:16] And bergoying doesn't do it, he decides not to.
[00:35:21] The reason he decides not to, as I said earlier,
[00:35:24] the Germans are already over
[00:35:26] on the east side of Lake Champlain near
[00:35:29] Mount Independence.
[00:35:31] They are the closest troops to support Frazier.
[00:35:35] So 1100 men of
[00:35:39] Radicell's corps
[00:35:42] is going to go and follow Frazier.
[00:35:46] Frazier's upset about this.
[00:35:48] He wanted his own advance corps troops
[00:35:50] because he could command them.
[00:35:53] If you paid attention to the slide earlier,
[00:35:55] you saw that Frazier was a brigadier.
[00:35:59] He's a major general.
[00:36:01] If he gets on the field, he's gonna be the commander.
[00:36:05] And Frazier is gonna have to report to him.
[00:36:08] Frazier wants to run this whole show by himself
[00:36:11] because as I pointed out earlier,
[00:36:14] he took his men immediately,
[00:36:15] didn't care about extra food or ammunition.
[00:36:17] He wanted to get on the road and get the Americans
[00:36:20] because he thought he could beat them.
[00:36:23] So he's gonna show up with a company of Jaeger.
[00:36:29] Now the Jaeger are a very special unit
[00:36:32] in the German troops.
[00:36:34] They are, Jaeger means woodsman or marksman.
[00:36:38] They're especially recruited from
[00:36:40] the hunting woods of Germany.
[00:36:44] And they carry a short barrel rifle
[00:36:46] with a bayonet on it.
[00:36:48] They are crack shots, crack shots.
[00:36:51] He's got 100 of these Jaeger.
[00:36:56] He also has 80 Brunswick Grenadiers.
[00:37:03] Radicell is gonna save the day.
[00:37:05] He's gonna come up on the rear of the British troops,
[00:37:09] but he's gonna bear to the left
[00:37:11] and get up on top of Monument Hill
[00:37:14] and hit the Americans on their right flank.
[00:37:18] And that will cause everything to fall apart.
[00:37:21] The Germans come in with their hunting horns
[00:37:23] and their drums and their singing hymns.
[00:37:28] And everything is just, it's a big show.
[00:37:31] And the Americans say, what is going on here?
[00:37:33] They think maybe there's thousands of Germans
[00:37:36] coming after them, but they're just those two companies.
[00:37:39] But they're enough to be able to stop the Americans
[00:37:44] from making any movements towards the American law,
[00:37:48] towards the British line.
[00:37:50] And Warner at this point will say,
[00:37:57] let's rally on Manchester.
[00:38:00] And we're here.
[00:38:01] But that's what he says.
[00:38:04] They are gonna go up over Pittsburgh Ridge
[00:38:08] and get to Manchester.
[00:38:10] And that's where he will rally his troops
[00:38:13] from this combat.
[00:38:18] That's a picture of the monument at Hoverton.
[00:38:23] Now, some people will always said in the past
[00:38:25] that Colonel Francis was buried under there.
[00:38:29] He wasn't, he was buried near that fence
[00:38:31] because General Radicell in his memoir
[00:38:34] talks about finding Francis and burying him.
[00:38:39] This is the most important part of the Battle of Hoverton
[00:38:44] because it's the casualties that the British incurred.
[00:38:49] If you look at it, they had 218 casualties total.
[00:38:56] But if you look at the top line,
[00:38:59] almost 200 out of 850 men were casualties,
[00:39:04] either killed or wounded.
[00:39:06] Why is that important?
[00:39:08] Because this is the cream of Burgoyne's army.
[00:39:12] The advance corps had the battalion of light infantry,
[00:39:16] had the battalion of grenadiers.
[00:39:18] And so it was very important to keep those troops
[00:39:22] in good shape, but they're gonna be lost at Hoverton.
[00:39:25] And Burgoyne has a very difficult time
[00:39:28] reinforcing his army
[00:39:30] once he leaves Canada.
[00:39:32] Guy Carlton, who was the governor,
[00:39:34] as I mentioned earlier, is not cooperating with Burgoyne
[00:39:38] because he wants, he wants to be the commander
[00:39:41] and that's not happening.
[00:39:43] So the British are really,
[00:39:46] even though they have a tactical victory at Hoverton,
[00:39:49] they are not gonna be well off
[00:39:53] with the loss of this number of troops.
[00:39:56] The Americans, their casualties are a lot less,
[00:39:59] even though you have that big number over there,
[00:40:02] 238 captured.
[00:40:03] Those are the guys down in the valley there
[00:40:06] of the Sucker Brook that are either walking wounded
[00:40:12] or they're very sick or they're inebriated.
[00:40:17] So they're captured and they'll be sent over to Ticonderoga
[00:40:22] and be prisoners of war over there.
[00:40:25] So this is why I think Hoverton is a very important battle
[00:40:30] in the whole scheme of the Saratoga campaign
[00:40:34] because Burgoyne loses troops that cannot be replaced easily.
[00:40:41] This is one of my favorite quotes that I found
[00:40:44] in doing a research, it's from William Digby.
[00:40:48] And he said, they found a lot of stuff on the battlefield.
[00:40:52] They found a lot of this paper money and stuff like that
[00:40:56] that could have been of use later on.
[00:41:00] And what he's talking about is if they had kept
[00:41:02] that American money when Burgoyne surrenders,
[00:41:05] they all become prisoners of war.
[00:41:07] They're never exchanged, they're never sent back to England.
[00:41:11] What happens is they're sent to Boston
[00:41:13] and from Boston they end up in Charlottesville, Virginia.
[00:41:17] So if they had taken heed of that money,
[00:41:20] maybe it would have been a good idea.
[00:41:24] Now I mentioned earlier that I didn't spend much time
[00:41:27] with the other part of the American retreat
[00:41:30] under Colonel Pierce Long.
[00:41:34] And Burgoyne chased him himself.
[00:41:36] He was in one of his frigates
[00:41:38] and he also had his gunboats and some of his regiments.
[00:41:42] And they came south on Lake Champlain
[00:41:45] and they got to Skeensboro.
[00:41:47] And I have a very rare image of one of those gunboats
[00:41:52] that I'm gonna share with you tonight.
[00:42:00] That's Sally in a gunboat.
[00:42:04] Not on Lake Champlain,
[00:42:06] on Lake George.
[00:42:07] Anyway, thank you very much.
[00:42:17] I can answer questions if you want, I'll try.
[00:42:23] Now I have very poor hearing.
[00:42:26] So, and my wife thinks I should get a hearing aid
[00:42:29] so you have to speak up.

[00:42:42] Speaker 3: It's in so many different places and there's the mic.
[00:42:47] And I just don't really understand,
[00:42:49] were they mercenaries, were they paid?

[00:42:51] Speaker 2: No, we don't call them mercenaries.
[00:42:53] I don't need that, I got this.
[00:42:56] No, don't call them mercenaries.
[00:42:58] They were hired, but they were not hired individually.
[00:43:04] The Prince of, before Germany was a country,
[00:43:07] you have to picture the map of Germany
[00:43:10] with all these little principalities.
[00:43:12] Everybody was a prince over there.
[00:43:14] Hesse Hanau and Brunswick and Hesse Castle.
[00:43:19] And what they do with these princes would make money
[00:43:22] by selling their army to another country.
[00:43:27] And in this case, in a revolution, George III,
[00:43:30] who was actually descended from Germans in Hanover,
[00:43:34] would purchase through contract armies
[00:43:38] from parts of Germany.
[00:43:40] And so, the deal is the king with the prince,
[00:43:44] the men had nothing to do with it.
[00:43:46] They were just paid as though they were in the army,
[00:43:48] whether they were in Germany,
[00:43:50] or principality,
[00:43:52] or in America.
[00:43:53] So, does that help?

[00:43:56] Speaker 3: Yes, very.

[00:43:57] Speaker 2: And what happens is that a lot of Germans
[00:44:00] came from Hesse Hanau.
[00:44:03] And so, when they came over here,
[00:44:05] and a lot of them fought under General Howe,
[00:44:08] which is happening at the same time as Saratoga,
[00:44:13] General Howe is down near Philadelphia.
[00:44:17] He's gonna capture Philadelphia,
[00:44:19] and he defeats Washington at Brandywine in Germantown.
[00:44:23] And he's gonna have a lot of Hesse Hanau troops with him.
[00:44:27] And so, the Americans start calling
[00:44:29] all the Germans Hessians.
[00:44:32] And we have to be careful about that,
[00:44:34] because primarily in the Saratoga campaign,
[00:44:38] they are Brunswickers.
[00:44:40] Black, I can't pronounce it.
[00:44:41] But anyway, they're Germans,
[00:44:44] but I mean, they're from Brunswick.
[00:44:49] You read the book already?

[00:44:52] Speaker 1: You mentioned that St.
[00:44:54] Clair and Warner were court -martialed
[00:44:56] and then exonerated.
[00:44:58] Can you enlighten us a little bit more
[00:44:59] on that process of what happened to them?

[00:45:01] Speaker 2: Yes, I'll tell you.
[00:45:04] The Continental Congress was incensed
[00:45:08] that we gave up Ticonderoga,
[00:45:10] that they gave up Ticonderoga.
[00:45:12] They thought that was the Gibraltar of the North.
[00:45:15] That was gonna hold up.
[00:45:17] But there was not enough men to defend it.
[00:45:20] And even Washington, if you read the letters
[00:45:23] between Washington and Schuyler,
[00:45:26] Washington, of course, Washington had
[00:45:27] never been up here.
[00:45:29] He thought, no reason why we should give up Ticonderoga.
[00:45:33] Don't give it up.
[00:45:34] And I think, it was John Adams said that,
[00:45:38] we're not gonna be able to hold a position
[00:45:40] unless we start shooting some generals.
[00:45:43] I'm paraphrasing it, but it is in one of his letters.
[00:45:47] And so what happens is Washington wasn't keen
[00:45:51] on court -martialing Schuyler,
[00:45:54] but the Continental Congress wanted it to happen.
[00:45:58] And so like anything else,
[00:46:00] Washington has to set up the review board.
[00:46:03] And this happens like a year later, 1778.
[00:46:09] And they go before a board.
[00:46:11] It's like a court and they provide information.
[00:46:15] In fact, there's a lot of information I used in the book
[00:46:18] from Sinclair's court -martial.
[00:46:21] They had very detailed information about what happened
[00:46:24] and why he decided to do what he did
[00:46:27] and that he had the buy -in of his immediate subordinates,
[00:46:31] the three other generals at the fort.
[00:46:33] They all said, we gotta get out of here.
[00:46:35] And so both of the men were exonerated.
[00:46:38] You're gonna love this one.
[00:46:40] Immediately after Schuyler is found innocent,
[00:46:44] he resigns his commission and becomes
[00:46:49] a member of the Continental Congress from New York.
[00:46:52] Is that great or what?
[00:46:54] But he will stay loyal to General Washington.
[00:46:58] And in the years of 78, 79, 80, he will continue to help.
[00:47:04] He does a great job with native allies,
[00:47:07] keeping the Iroquois or the Hadashoni
[00:47:11] sort of neutral in some ways.
[00:47:14] He gets the,
[00:47:21] senior moment,
[00:47:23] the Unitas.
[00:47:24] He gets the Unitas to stay with the Americans
[00:47:28] while some of the others like the Mohawks
[00:47:30] and the Seneca's are fighting for the British.
[00:47:33] So Schuyler fulfills a job
[00:47:38] even though he doesn't have rank any longer.
[00:47:40] It's because he's a true American.
[00:47:44] Man back here somewhere.
[00:47:45] Yes, I wondered if these men who were treated
[00:47:51] from Mount Hope ended up at the Battle of Bennington.
[00:47:59] Did some of the men from Hubbardton end up
[00:48:02] at the Battle of Bennington?
[00:48:03] Yes, absolutely yes.
[00:48:05] Yes, I talk about that in the book.
[00:48:08] And they retreated over to Pittsburgh Ridge,
[00:48:13] got to Manchester, and then eventually
[00:48:15] some of them will work their way down
[00:48:18] to fight under General Stark at the Battle of Bennington.
[00:48:23] Seth Warner is the best example.
[00:48:26] He comes up as Stark is attacking
[00:48:30] Colonel Baum
[00:48:32] at Bennington or Willumsack if you prefer.
[00:48:36] And certainly, Warner will participate in that battle
[00:48:41] very heroically.
[00:48:43] Unfortunately, Seth Warner's constitution
[00:48:46] is not strong after so many years on campaign.
[00:48:51] The rigors of Canada and then the Saratoga campaign
[00:48:55] in Bennington, he will die very early.
[00:49:00] I believe it was 1784.
[00:49:02] So he never writes a report on the battle.
[00:49:06] And so most of the sources are gonna be British sources
[00:49:10] in terms of what happened there.
[00:49:12] But he's a great guy, great guy.
[00:49:17] He should be proud that he was in Vermont.
[00:49:23] No other questions.
[00:49:24] Okay, I'm done. Thank you very much.