Vermont: A Study of Independence

by Rowland Evans Robinson

The troops fled across the bridge in silence to the eastern shore, and an hour later the garrison of Mount Independence began moving out. So far, the doleful work of evacuation had progressed with such secrecy that the British were unaware of any movement. Just then a French officer of the garrison, zealous to destroy what he could not save, set fire to his house. The sun-dried wooden structure was ablaze in an instant, lighting up with a lurid glare all the works of the place, the hurrying troops, the forest border with ghastly ranks of towering tree-trunks, the bridge still undulating with the tread of just-departed marching columns, and the slow throb of waves pulsing across the empty anchorage and breaking against deserted shores.

All was revealed to the British on the heights of Mount Defiance, and this sudden discovery of their movements threw the Americans into great confusion, many hurrying away in disorderly retreat. But about four o'clock Colonel Francis of Massachusetts brought off the rear in good order, and some of the other regiments were soon recovered from the panic into which they had fallen.

At Hubbardton the army halted for a rest of two hours, during which time many stragglers came in, then St. Clair with the main body pressed on to Castleton, six miles distant. On that same day Hubbardton had already been raided by Captain Sherwood and a party of Indians and Tories. Of the nine families that composed the entire population of the town, most of the men had been taken prisoners, and the defenseless women and children left to whatever fate might befall them in their plundered homes, or to make their forlorn way through the wilderness to the shelter of the older settlements. To Warner was again committed the covering of a retreat. He was here put in command of the rear-guard, consisting of his own, Francis's, and Hale's regiments, with orders to remain till all stragglers should have come in, and then follow a mile and a half in the rear of the main army.

When the retreat of the Americans was discovered, General Frazier set forth in hot pursuit with his brigade, presently followed by General Riedesel with the greater part of the Brunswickers. Frazier kept his force on the march all through the hot summer day, in burning sunshine and breathless shade of the woods till nightfall, when, learning that the American rear was not far in advance, he ordered a halt till morning. Pushing forward again at daybreak, he came up with his enemy at five o'clock, and advanced to within sixty yards of the American line of battle, formed across the road and in the adjacent fields. Colonel Hale of New Hampshire, with Falstaffian valor, had prudently withdrawn his regiment, leaving Warner and Francis with not more than 800 men, to bear the brunt of the impending battle.

The action began at seven with a volley delivered by these two regiments upon the British, who returned it as hotly. The men of the Massachusetts border and the mountaineers of Vermont had no lead to waste in aimless firing, and held rifle and musket straight on the advancing columns of the enemy. Trained to cut off a partridge's head with a single ball at thirty yards, they did not often miss the burly form of a Briton at twice the distance, and their volleys made frightful gaps in the scarlet line. It wavered and broke. Warner and Francis cheered on their men, Francis still leading his regiment after a ball had struck him in the right arm. The British line closed up, and charged upon the Americans, throwing them into disorder till Warner rallied them, and checked the British advance. While the fluctuating chances of the fight favored the Americans, Francis fell, pierced by a bullet in the breast, and, seeing him fall, his men faltered and began to retreat. When Warner saw them scattering in disorderly flight, he was overcome with wrath. He dropped upon a log, and poured forth a storm of curses upon the fugitives.[71] But it did not stop them, nor, if it had, would it have availed to avert defeat. Riedesel came up with his Brunswickers, who had toiled onward in the burning heat for nine hours as bravely as if they were conquering the country for themselves. They at once engaged in the action, and the Americans were everywhere routed, fleeing across a little brook, and scattering in the shelter of the woods beyond it.

Collecting most of his regiment, with his accustomed cool intrepidity, Warner retreated to Castleton. The others made their way to Fort Edward. Hale in his retreat had fallen in with a small detachment of the enemy, to which he surrendered with a number of his regiment without firing a shot. Learning that he was charged with cowardice, he asked to be exchanged, that he might have an opportunity to disprove the charge, but he died while a prisoner on Long Island. St. Clair sent no assistance to his friends. Writing to General Schuyler of the affair, he said, "The rear-guard stopped rather imprudently six miles short of the main body," when in fact Warner remained at Hubbardton as ordered, while St. Clair himself advanced beyond supporting distance.

In this first battle of the Revolution on Vermont soil, the Americans lost Francis, an officer whose bravery was acknowledged by friend and foe, and whose early death was mourned by both. In killed, wounded, and prisoners, their loss was 324. The loss of the British force,—about 2,000 strong,—in killed and wounded, was not less than 183. Ethan Allen, in his narrative, sets the enemy's loss, as learned from confessions of their own officers, at 300. Among these was the brave Major Grant, who, while reconnoitring the position of the Americans from the top of a stump, was picked off by a Yankee rifleman. "I heard them likewise complain that the Green Mountain Boys took sight," Allen tells us.

Meanwhile Burgoyne was busy on the lake. By nine o'clock on the morning of the evacuation, the unfinished boom and the bridge were cut asunder; the gunboats and the two frigates passed these obstructions, and, with several regiments on board, went up the channel in rapid pursuit of the American vessels. At three in the afternoon the gunboats got within range of the galleys, not far from Skenesborough, and opened fire upon them. This was returned with some warmth till the frigates were brought into action, when the galleys were abandoned, three were blown up, and the other two fell into the hands of the enemy. Having neither the men nor defenses here to offer any effectual opposition, the Americans set fire to the fort, mills, and batteaux, and fled up Wood Creek toward Fort Anne. They were pursued by Colonel Hill with the Ninth British Regiment, upon whom they turned, and attacked furiously in front with part of their force, while the other was sent to assail his rear. Hill withdrew to an eminence, whither the attack followed so hotly that his complete defeat seemed almost certain, when a large party of Indians came up. They made the woods ring with the terrible warwhoop, which the British answered with three lusty cheers, and the uproar of rejoicing convinced the Americans that a strong reinforcement was at hand; whereupon they drew off, and, again marking the course of their retreat with conflagration by setting fire to Fort Anne, retired to Fort Edward. On the 12th, here also St. Clair joined the main army under Schuyler, after a weary march over wretched roads.

England was exultant over the fall of famous Ticonderoga. The king rushed into the queen's apartments, shouting, "I have beaten them! I have beaten all the Americans!" and such was the universal feeling in the mother country. In America was as universal consternation, which only found relief in storms of abuse poured upon St. Clair and upon Schuyler, who, as commander of the northern army, received his full share of blame, though both had done the best their circumstances permitted.

Yet it proved not such a disaster to the Americans, nor such an advantage to the British, as it then appeared to each. Burgoyne was obliged to weaken his army by leaving an eighth of it to garrison a post that proved to be of no especial value to him, when, after a rapid and an almost unopposed advance to the head of the lake, he began to encounter serious hindrances to his progress.