STRATAGEM OF ARNOLD TO RELIEVE FORT STANWIX—YAN YOST CUYLER—THE SIEGE PRESSED—INDIANS INTRACTABLE—SUCCESS OF ARNOLD’S STRATAGEM—HARASSED RETREAT OF ST. LEGER—MORAL EFFECT OF THE TWO BLOWS GIVEN TO THE ENEMY—BRIGHTENING PROSPECTS IN THE AMERICAN CAMP—ARRIVAL OF GATES—MAGNANIMOUS CONDUCT OF SCHUYLER—POORLY REQUITED BY GATES—CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GATES AND BURGOYNE CONCERNING THE MURDER OF MISS MC CREA.
Arnold’s march to the relief of Fort Stanwix, was slower than suited his ardent and impatient spirit. He was detained in the valley of the Mohawk by bad roads, by the necessity of waiting for baggage and ammunition waggons, and for militia recruits who turned out reluctantly. He sent missives to Colonel Gansevoort assuring him that he would relieve him in the course of a few days. “Be under no kind of apprehension,” writes he. “I know the strength of the enemy, and how to deal with them.”
In fact, conscious of the smallness of his force, he had resorted to stratagem, sending emissaries ahead to spread exaggerated reports of the number of his troops, so as to work on the fears of the enemy’s Indian allies and induce them to desert. The most important of these emissaries was one Yan Yost Cuyler, an eccentric half-witted fellow, known throughout the country as a rank tory. He had been convicted as a spy, and only spared from the halter on the condition that he would go into St. Leger’s camp, and spread alarming reports among the Indians, by whom he was well known. To insure a faithful discharge of his mission, Arnold detained his brother as a hostage.
On his way up the Mohawk Valley, Arnold was joined by a New York regiment, under Colonel James Livingston, sent by Gates to reinforce him. On arriving at the German Flats he received an express from Colonel Gansevoort, informing him that he was still besieged, but in high spirits and under no apprehensions. In a letter to Gates, written from the German Flats (August 21st), Arnold says, “I leave this place this morning with twelve hundred Continental troops and a handful of militia for Fort Schuyler, still besieged by a number equal to ours. You will hear of my being victorious—or no more. As soon as the safety of this part of the country will permit, I will fly to your assistance.”[59]
All this while St. Leger was advancing his parallels and pressing the siege; while provisions and ammunition were rapidly decreasing within the fort. St. Leger’s Indian allies, however, were growing sullen and intractable. This slow kind of warfare, this war with the spade, they were unaccustomed to, and they by no means relished it. Beside, they had been led to expect easy times, little fighting, many scalps, and much plunder; whereas they had fought hard, lost many of their best chiefs, been checked in their cruelty, and gained no booty.
At this juncture, scouts brought word that a force one thousand strong was marching to the relief of the fort. Eager to put his savages in action, St. Leger in a council of war offered to their chiefs to place himself at their head, with three hundred of his best troops, and meet the enemy as they advanced. It was agreed, and they sallied forth together to choose a fighting ground. By this time rumors stole into the camp doubling the number of the approaching enemy. Burgoyne’s whole army were said to have been defeated. Lastly came Yan Yost Cuyler, with his coat full of bullet holes, giving out that he had escaped from the hands of the Americans, and had been fired upon by them. His story was believed, for his wounded coat corroborated it, and he was known to be a royalist. Mingling among his old acquaintances, the Indians, he assured them that the Americans were close at hand and “numerous as the leaves on the trees.”
Arnold’s stratagem succeeded. The Indians, fickle as the winds, began to desert. Sir John Johnson and Colonels Claus and Butler endeavored in vain to reassure and retain them. In a little while two hundred had decamped, and the rest threatened to do so likewise, unless St. Leger retreated.
The unfortunate colonel found too late what little reliance was to be placed upon Indian allies. He determined on the 22d, to send off his sick, his wounded, and his artillery by Wood Creek that very night, and to protect them by the line of march. The Indians, however, goaded on by Arnold’s emissaries, insisted on instant retreat. St. Leger still refused to depart before nightfall. The savages now became ungovernable. They seized upon liquor of the officers about to be embarked, and getting intoxicated, behaved like very fiends.
In a word, St. Leger was obliged to decamp about noon, in such hurry and confusion that he left his tents standing, and his artillery, with most of his baggage, ammunition and stores, fell into the hands of the Americans.
A detachment from the garrison pursued and harassed him for a time; but his greatest annoyance was from his Indian allies, who plundered the boats which conveyed such baggage as had been brought off; murdered all stragglers who lagged in the rear, and amused themselves by giving false alarms to keep up the panic of the soldiery; who would throw away muskets, knapsacks, and every thing that impeded their flight.
It was not until he reached Onondaga Falls, that St. Leger discovered by a letter from Burgoyne, and floating reports brought by the bearer, that he had been the dupe of a ruse de guerre, and that at the time the advancing foe were reported to be close upon his haunches, they were not within forty miles of him.
Such was the second blow to Burgoyne’s invading army; but before the news of it reached that doomed commander, he had already been half paralyzed by the disaster at Bennington.
The moral effect of these two blows was such as Washington had predicted. Fortune, so long adverse, seemed at length to have taken a favorable turn. People were roused from their despondency. There was a sudden exultation throughout the country. The savages had disappeared in their native forests. The German veterans, so much vaunted and dreaded, had been vanquished by militia, and British artillery captured by men, some of whom had never seen a cannon.
Means were now augmenting in Schuyler’s hands. Colonels Livingston and Pierre van Cortlandt, forwarded by Putnam, were arrived. Governor Clinton was daily expected with New York militia from the Highlands. The arrival of Arnold was anticipated with troops and artillery, and Lincoln with the New England militia. At this propitious moment, when every thing was ready for the sickle to be put into the harvest, General Gates arrived in the camp.
Schuyler received him with the noble courtesy to which he pledged himself. After acquainting him with all the affairs of the department, the measures he had taken and those he had projected; he informed him of his having signified to Congress his intention to remain in that quarter for the present, and render every service in his power; and he entreated Gates to call upon him for council and assistance whenever he thought proper.
Gates was in high spirits. His letters to Washington show how completely he was aware that an easy path of victory had been opened for him. “Upon my leaving Philadelphia,” writes he, “the prospect this way appeared most gloomy, but the severe checks the enemy have met with at Bennington and Tryon County, have given a more pleasing view of public affairs. Particular accounts of the signal victory gained by General Stark, and of the severe blow General Herkimer gave Sir John Johnson and the scalpers under his command, have been transmitted to your Excellency by General Schuyler. I anxiously expect the arrival of an express from General Arnold, with an account of the total defeat of the enemy in that quarter.
“I cannot sufficiently thank your Excellency for sending Colonel Morgan’s corps to this army. They will be of the greatest service to it; for, until the late success this way, I am told the army were quite panic-struck by the Indians, and their tory and Canadian assassins in Indian dress.”
Governor Clinton was immediately expected in camp, and he intended to consult with him and General Lincoln upon the best plan to distress, and, he hoped, finally to defeat the enemy. “We shall no doubt,” writes he, “unanimously agree in sentiment with your Excellency, to keep Generals Lincoln and Stark upon the flank and rear of the enemy, while the main body opposes them in front.”
Not a word does he say of consulting Schuyler, who, more than any one else, was acquainted with the department and its concerns, who was in constant correspondence with Washington, and had co-operated with him in effecting the measures which had produced the present promising situation of affairs. So far was he from responding to Schuyler’s magnanimity, and profiting by his nobly offered counsel and assistance, that he did not even ask him to be present at his first council of war, although he invited up General Ten Broeck of the militia from Albany to attend it.
His conduct in this respect provoked a caustic remark from the celebrated Gouverneur Morris. “The commander-in-chief of the Northern department,” said he, “may, if he please, neglect to ask or disdain to receive advice, but those who know him will, I am sure, be convinced that he wants it.”
Gates opened hostilities against Burgoyne with the pen. He had received a letter from that commander, complaining of the harsh treatment experienced by the royalists captured at Bennington. “Duty and principle,” writes Burgoyne, “made me a public enemy to the Americans who have taken up arms; but I seek to be a generous one; nor have I the shadow of resentment against any individual who does not induce it by acts derogatory to those maxims upon which all men of honor think alike.”
There was nothing in this that was not borne out by the conduct and character of Burgoyne; but Gates seized upon the occasion to assail that commander in no measured terms in regard to his Indian allies.
“That the savages,” said he, “should in their warfare mangle the unhappy prisoners who fall into their hands, is neither new or extraordinary; but that the famous General Burgoyne, in whom the fine gentleman is united with the scholar, should hire the savages of America to scalp Europeans: nay more, that he should pay a price for each scalp so barbarously taken, is more than will be believed in Europe, until authenticated facts shall in every gazette confirm the horrid tale.”
After this prelude, he went on to state the murder of Miss McCrea, alleging that her murderer was employed by Burgoyne. “Two parents,” added he, “with their six children, were treated with the same inhumanity while quietly resting in their once happy and peaceful dwelling. Upwards of one hundred men, women and children, have perished by the hands of the ruffians, to whom it is asserted you have paid the price of blood.”
Gates showed his letter to General Lincoln and Colonel Wilkinson, who demurred to its personality; but he evidently conceived it an achievement of the pen, and spurned their criticism.[60]
Burgoyne, in a manly reply, declared that he would have disdained to justify himself from such rhapsodies of fiction and calumny, but that his silence might be construed into an admission of their truth, and lead to acts of retaliation. He pronounced all the intelligence cited respecting the cruelties of the Indians to be false, with the exception of the case of Miss McCrea. This he put in its true light, adding, that it had been as sincerely lamented and abhorred by him, as it could be by the tenderest of her friends. “I would not,” declared he, “be conscious of the acts you presume to impute to me, for the whole continent of America; though the wealth of worlds was in its bowels, and a paradise upon its surface.”
We have already shown what was the real conduct of Burgoyne in this deplorable affair, and General Gates could and should have ascertained it, before “he presumed to impute” to a gallant antagonist and a humane and cultivated gentleman, such base and barbarous policy. It was the government under which Burgoyne served that was chargeable with the murderous acts of the savages. He is rather to be pitied for being obliged to employ such hellhounds, whom he endeavored in vain to hold in check. Great Britain reaped the reward of her policy in the odium which it cast upon her cause, and the determined and successful opposition which it provoked in the American bosom.
We will now shift the scene to Washington’s camp at Wilmington, where we left him watching the operations of the British fleet, and preparing to oppose the army under Sir William Howe in its designs upon Philadelphia.