From Political Magazine (1780), i. 743, with a memoir of Burgoyne. There are modern engravings of this likeness in Moore's Diary of the Amer. Rev., i. p. 513; and in Lossing's Field Book, i. 37.—Ed.
Carleton, as active as his adversary, had built at St. Johns a flotilla of "thirty fighting vessels." When Arnold discovered the superiority of the enemy's fleet in vessels and guns to be more than double his own, and that they were manned by picked British sailors, he fell back and formed line of battle between Valcour's Island and the western shore of the lake. In this disadvantageous position he was attacked, October 11th, by Captain Pringle, of the British navy, with thirty-eight vessels and boats, mounting 123 guns. Though the crews of Arnold's flotilla were landsmen, he maintained a desperate fight from eleven in the forenoon until dark, when, availing himself of the obscurity of a thick fog, he escaped with part of his vessels, unobserved, through the enemy's fleet; but, owing to adverse winds and his crippled condition, he was overtaken on the 13th off Split Rock, where he was again attacked. Some of his flotilla escaped and some were captured, but he himself, after fighting four hours, ran his remaining vessels ashore, set them on fire with their flags flying, and escaped with their crews through the forests to Ticonderoga. General Carleton now advanced to Crown Point, of which he took possession October 14th, and pushed a reconnoissance to within sight of Ticonderoga. When Carleton's boats appeared, Gates made an effective display of his garrison, whereupon the British general fell back to Crown Point, which he evacuated, and, it being too late for further active operations, he retired to Canada.
BURGOYNE.
From Andrews's Hist. of the War, London, 1785, vol. iii. Fonblanque gives a likeness painted by Ramsay at Rome in 1750, and this is repeated in Gay's Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 567. Reynolds painted him in 1766 (Fonblanque, p. 86). J. C. Smith (Brit. Mez. Portraits, ii. 710) records a picture by Pine. Cf. Jones's Campaign for the Conquest of Canada, p. 194, and the illus. ed. of Irving's Washington, iii.—Ed.
The enemy had scarcely departed when Schuyler applied himself with tireless assiduity to prepare against a new invasion during that winter or in the coming year. He continually pressed upon Congress and Washington the wants of his department in men and munitions of war. In every way he tried to conciliate the Indian tribes; and he lost no opportunity of gaining information of the enemy's designs and movements.
Burgoyne, after the battle of Bunker Hill, had suggested to Lord Rochefort, Secretary of State for the colonies, that, as there was "no probable prospect of bringing the war to a speedy conclusion with any force that Great Britain and Ireland could supply", there should be employed "a large army of such foreign troops as might be hired, to begin their operations up the Hudson River; another army, composed partly of old disciplined troops and partly of Canadians, to act from Canada; a large levy of Indians and a supply of arms for the blacks, to awe the Southern provinces, conjointly with detachments of regulars; and a numerous fleet to sweep the whole coast,—might possibly do the business in one campaign."
The importance of securing the control of the Hudson, thereby to separate the New England from the Middle and Southern States, was eminently correct; but the proposed mode of accomplishing it was, as the sequel proved, entirely wrong.
Burgoyne, like many other Englishmen, had held American prowess in contempt, and ridiculed the enrolment of provincials as "a preposterous parade of military arrangement." His later experience probably changed his views, for when he had supplanted that noble soldier Sir Guy Carleton in the command of the British army in Canada, through "family support" more than from "military merit", he took good care to secure a strong and veteran force, commanded by officers of noted skill and long experience.