The Surrender of Burgoyne: Gates and Saratoga

At length the 13th of October arrived, and, as no prospect of assistance appeared, and the provisions were nearly exhausted, Burgoyne, by the unanimous advice of a council of war, sent a messenger to the American camp to treat of a convention.

General Gates in the first instance demanded that the royal army should surrender prisoners of war. He also proposed that the British should ground their arms. Burgoyne replied, "This article is inadmissible in every extremity: sooner than this army will consent to ground their arms in their encampment, they will rush on the enemy, determined to take no quarter." After various messages, a convention for the surrender of the army was settled, which provided that "the troops under General Burgoyne were to march out of their camp with the honors of war, and the artillery of the intrenchments, to the verge of the river, where the arms and artillery were to be left. The arms to be piled by word of command from their own officers. A free passage was to be granted to the army under Lieutenant-General Burgoyne to Great Britain, upon condition of not serving again in North America during the present contest."

The articles of capitulation were settled on the 15th of October; and on that very evening a messenger arrived from Clinton with an account of his successes, and with the tidings that part of his force had penetrated as far as Esopus, within fifty miles of Burgoyne's camp. But it was too late. The public faith was pledged; and the army was indeed too debilitated by fatigue and hunger to resist an attack, if made; and Gates certainly would have made it if the convention had been broken off. Accordingly, on the 17th, the convention of Saratoga was carried into effect. By this convention five thousand seven hundred and ninety men surrendered themselves as prisoners. The sick and wounded left in the camp when the British retreated to Saratoga, together with the numbers of the British, German, and Canadian troops who were killed, wounded, or taken, and who had deserted in the preceding part of the expedition, were reckoned to be four thousand six hundred and eighty-nine.

The British sick and wounded were treated with great humanity, and Gates showed much delicacy of feeling in his intercourse with his captives, avoiding every indication of triumphant display. Congress long refused to carry out the provision for the transportation of Burgoyne's men to Europe, though Gates was in no sense responsible for this. The news of the victory was received with the utmost joy and enthusiasm throughout America, and produced a radical change in the attitude of the Europeans. France, in particular, at once consented to the treaty, which had been long delayed, and the negotiations towards which had been almost broken off by the preceding tidings of the victorious march of Burgoyne towards Albany.