In the autumn of 1777, a British army came down out of the north woods expecting to cut the rebellious colonies in two, and instead marched into the fight that would decide the war. Along the wooded bluffs above the Hudson River in upper New York, General John Burgoyne met an American army that would not break. Over three weeks of skirmishes, waiting, and two savage battles, the invasion that was meant to end the rebellion was surrounded and swallowed. What happened there turned a distant colonial uprising into a cause that a great European power was finally willing to fight for.
Burgoyne's Plan to Split the Colonies
The British strategy for 1777 was bold on paper. General John Burgoyne would lead an army south from Canada down the Lake Champlain corridor toward Albany, driving a wedge along the Hudson River that would sever New England from the rest of the colonies. Early in the campaign it seemed to work, as the fall of Fort Ticonderoga sent a thrill of alarm through the American cause. But the deeper Burgoyne pushed into the wilderness, the harder the country fought back. Roads had to be hacked through forest, supply lines stretched thin, and the promised support from other British columns never fully arrived. By September his army of around 7,000 to 8,000 men was tired, hungry, and far from help, closing on an American force gathering on the high ground near Saratoga.
Freeman's Farm, 19 September
The first battle broke open on 19 September 1777 in the fields and woods of Freeman's Farm. Rather than wait passively behind their lines, aggressive American commanders pushed forward to meet the advancing British in the trees, where the redcoats' discipline in open order counted for less. Daniel Morgan's riflemen, deadly marksmen firing from cover, picked off officers and gunners and unsettled the British advance. Benedict Arnold, serving under the American commander General Horatio Gates, threw himself into the fighting and helped drive the pressure at the center. The British held the field by nightfall, but at a heavy cost in men they could not replace, while the Americans fell back in good order, stronger in spirit than before. Burgoyne had won the ground and lost the momentum, and every day that followed tightened the trap around him.
Bemis Heights, 7 October
For nearly three weeks Burgoyne waited, his position growing weaker as American numbers swelled and his own supplies dwindled. On 7 October 1777 he probed forward again toward the fortified American lines at Bemis Heights, and this time the counterblow was decisive. The American troops surged out against the exposed British force, and Benedict Arnold, riding into the thick of the action, pressed the assault against the British defenses until the line gave way. Burgoyne's men were driven back into their camps, their attack shattered. With his army bloodied, encircled, and cut off from any rescue, the British general had run out of options in the cold Hudson valley.
Surrender and a World-Changing Aftermath
Hemmed in and out of supplies, Burgoyne surrendered his army of around 6,000 men on 17 October 1777. The news raced across the Atlantic and landed like a thunderclap in the courts of Europe. For France, watching the American struggle and eager to strike at its old British rival, Saratoga was the proof it had waited for that the rebels could actually win. In 1778 France entered the war openly as an American ally, bringing money, a fleet, professional soldiers, and the weight of a global power. Historians widely regard Saratoga as the turning point of the American Revolution, the moment a colonial rebellion became a war Britain could no longer expect to win alone.