Battles of Saratoga (1777): Turning Point of the Revolution

The Battles of Saratoga were two engagements fought in upstate New York on 19 September and 7 October 1777, ending with the surrender of General John Burgoyne’s British army on 17 October. The campaign destroyed a major British force invading from Canada and is widely regarded as the turning point of the American Revolutionary War. Its most important result came in Europe: news of the victory persuaded France to recognise the United States and enter the war as its ally.

Background: Burgoyne’s plan

After failing to end the rebellion in 1776, the British government looked for a strategy to win the war in 1777. General John Burgoyne, a soldier, politician and playwright who had served in Canada, proposed an invasion from Quebec down the line of Lake Champlain and the Hudson River to Albany. Control of this corridor would, it was hoped, cut New England off from the other colonies.

Lord George Germain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, approved the plan. A smaller force under Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger would advance eastward from Lake Ontario along the Mohawk Valley, while General William Howe’s main army in New York was expected to cooperate. But Howe chose instead to move by sea against Philadelphia, and the instructions sent to him left the need for cooperation unclear. Burgoyne would receive little help from the south.

Burgoyne’s advance

Burgoyne set out in June 1777 with an army of around 7,000 to 8,000 men: British regulars, German troops from Brunswick and Hesse-Hanau under Baron Friedrich Adolf von Riedesel, Canadians, Loyalists and several hundred Indigenous warriors. On 6 July 1777 he took Fort Ticonderoga without a fight after the Americans under Arthur St. Clair found British guns placed on the commanding height of Mount Defiance and withdrew. The news caused shock in Congress.

The advance then slowed. American troops felled trees and destroyed bridges along the wilderness route south of Skenesborough, and it took Burgoyne’s army until 30 July to reach Fort Edward on the Hudson. The killing of a young woman named Jane McCrea by warriors attached to his army was used by Patriot leaders as propaganda and helped bring militia flocking to the American side.

Two setbacks in August weakened Burgoyne further. On 16 August a detachment sent to seize supplies was crushed near Bennington by New England militia under John Stark. In the Mohawk Valley, St. Leger besieged Fort Stanwix and fought the bloody Battle of Oriskany on 6 August, but withdrew on 22 August when rumours of a large relief force under Benedict Arnold reached his Indigenous allies.

Meanwhile Congress replaced Philip Schuyler with Horatio Gates as commander of the Northern Department on 19 August. Gates entrenched his army on Bemis Heights, a line of bluffs above the Hudson about 10 miles south of Saratoga, with fortifications laid out by the Polish engineer Tadeusz Kościuszko. Burgoyne crossed to the west bank of the Hudson on 13–14 September, cutting his own line of supply back to Canada.

The battles of Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights

On 19 September Burgoyne advanced in three columns to try to turn the American position. Around midday his centre column met American troops at a clearing known as Freeman’s Farm. Riflemen under Colonel Daniel Morgan, expert marksmen with long-range rifles, picked off British officers and gunners, and the fighting swept back and forth across the field for several hours.

The British held the ground at the end of the day, mainly because Riedesel’s German troops arrived on the American flank late in the afternoon. But the price was high: British losses were about 600 killed, wounded and captured, roughly twice those of the Americans. Burgoyne dug in and waited for news of a relief expedition from New York.

That help came too late. Sir Henry Clinton captured Forts Clinton and Montgomery in the Hudson Highlands on 6 October, and British raiders later burned Kingston, but they never came close to Burgoyne. In the American camp, Gates and Arnold quarrelled bitterly over credit for the first battle, and Arnold was relieved of his command.

In the second battle, with supplies running low, Burgoyne sent a reconnaissance in force of about 1,500 to 1,700 men against the American left on 7 October. Gates responded with a strong attack. Morgan’s riflemen and other units struck the British flanks, and the British line gave way.

Brigadier General Simon Fraser, one of Burgoyne’s ablest officers, was mortally wounded while trying to rally his men. Benedict Arnold, despite holding no command, rode onto the field and led American attacks, first against the Balcarres redoubt and then against the Breymann redoubt on the British right, which was taken. Its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich von Breymann, was killed, and Arnold was badly wounded in the leg. British losses that day ran to several hundred, against perhaps 150 Americans.

Surrender

On the night of 8 October Burgoyne began to retreat northwards in heavy rain, but moved slowly and halted near the village of Saratoga, today Schuylerville. American forces, swollen by militia to well over 15,000 men, surrounded his exhausted army of fewer than 6,000. After negotiations, both sides agreed terms known as the Convention of Saratoga on 16 October.

On 17 October 1777 the British and German troops marched out and laid down their arms at a place now called the Field of Grounded Arms. About 5,800 to 5,900 men surrendered. Under the convention they were to be shipped to Britain on the promise not to serve again in North America. Congress, fearing they would simply replace other troops, found reasons not to honour the terms. The “Convention Army” was held as prisoners in Massachusetts and later Virginia and Maryland until the war’s end, and many men deserted or settled in America.

Consequences: France enters the war

News of the surrender reached Paris in early December 1777. The French government of Louis XVI, which had been giving secret aid to the Americans since 1776, now judged that they could win. On 6 February 1778 France and the United States signed treaties of commerce and alliance, described in our article on the Franco-American alliance. Britain and France were at war by the summer of 1778. Spain joined France against Britain in 1779 and the Dutch Republic became involved in 1780.

In Britain, the defeat prompted Lord North’s government to offer the Americans almost everything they had demanded before 1776, short of independence, through the Carlisle Peace Commission of 1778. Congress rejected the offer. The war had become a global conflict, and French sea power would later prove decisive at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781.

Within the American army, Gates’s fame briefly rivalled Washington’s, and some critics of Washington looked to Gates as a possible replacement during the winter of 1777–1778, when the main army was suffering at Valley Forge. Arnold, who received little credit, became increasingly embittered.

Key people

John Burgoyne (1722–1792), nicknamed “Gentleman Johnny”, was a popular officer and a successful playwright. After his return to Britain he defended his conduct before Parliament and blamed the lack of support from Howe, but he never again held a field command in America.

Horatio Gates (c. 1727–1806), a former British officer who had settled in Virginia, commanded the American army. His cautious, defensive approach suited the situation, though critics argued that subordinates did most of the fighting. His reputation later collapsed after his defeat at Camden in 1780.

Benedict Arnold (1741–1801) and Daniel Morgan (1736–1802) were the most aggressive American field commanders in both battles. Simon Fraser (1729–1777) led Burgoyne’s advanced corps and died of his wounds on 8 October.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1777, June: Burgoyne’s army sets out from Quebec.
• 1777, 6 July: The British occupy Fort Ticonderoga.
• 1777, 16 August: John Stark defeats a German detachment near Bennington.
• 1777, 19 August: Horatio Gates replaces Philip Schuyler in command.
• 1777, 13–14 September: Burgoyne crosses the Hudson at Saratoga.
• 1777, 19 September: First Battle of Saratoga at Freeman’s Farm.
• 1777, 7 October: Second Battle of Saratoga at Bemis Heights.
• 1777, 17 October: Burgoyne’s army surrenders.
• 1778, 6 February: France signs treaties of alliance and commerce with the United States.

Myths and memory

The battlefield is preserved as Saratoga National Historical Park, established in 1938. One of its best-known memorials, the Boot Monument, shows a cavalry boot and a general’s epaulette. It honours the leg wound suffered by “the most brilliant soldier” of the Continental Army without naming him, because Arnold later betrayed the American cause. The tall Saratoga Monument at Victory, near Schuylerville, has niches for statues of Gates, Schuyler and Morgan; the fourth niche, intended for Arnold, was left empty.

A popular story credits the rifleman Timothy Murphy of Morgan’s corps with the shot that killed Simon Fraser. The tale appears in later accounts rather than contemporary records, and historians treat it as uncertain.

Why it matters

Saratoga turned a rebellion into an international war that Britain could not afford to fight everywhere at once. By bringing France into the conflict, it gave the United States the money, troops and naval power that would make independence achievable within four years.