The Present Situation Justifies a Capitulation

– British General John Burgoyne 

Beginning in 1775, British military strategy had envisioned a quick end to the war by using Canada as a base to drive into New York state to divide the more radical New England colonies from the more moderate southern colonies, with the expectation that the rebellion would wither. To accomplish this, the British predicate pincer strategy called for a multi-pronged attack on New York, with three separate armies converging near Albany, including John Burgoyne’s Canada Army. While on paper the pincer strategy appeared to be an elegant and decisive way to end the American Revolution, it failed miserably, resulting in the surrender of John Burgoyne’s army in October 1777 to American forces under General Horatio Gates, with Benedict Arnold ironically making a critical contribution. Historians agree that the Battle of Saratoga marked a turning point in the war, not just because of the destruction of Britain’s Canadian Army, but also because of its critical role in getting French support for the United States. 

The Architecture of the British Plan

British strategy aimed to isolate New England—the perceived center of rebellion—by gaining control of the Hudson River corridor. In 1777, the British sent forces in a pincer movement to cut off New England, approaching Albany from three directions: 2,000 troops under the command of Barry St. Leger were sent southwest from Montreal, down the St. Lawrence River, then east towards Albany, but were stopped by Patriot forces at the Siege of Fort Stanwix in August 1777. General John Burgoyne led an invasion army of 7,200 to 8,000 men southward from Canada through the Champlain Valley, hoping to meet British forces marching northward from New York City led by General William Howe. 

However, the success of the military operation depended not merely on force, but on a chain of predicate conditions—predicates—each of which first had to be satisfied for the closing movement to succeed. The three prongs were not independent; they were interdependent. Remove any predicate from the chain, and the pincer could not close. It was a strategy of extraordinary power when every condition was met, and of extraordinary fragility when any one of them was not. The British plan depended on a series of predicates that never materialized. In short, General Burgoyne’s army was left alone and isolated, resulting in its surrender.

The Predicates Begin to Fail

The western prong failed first. The western advance led by St. Leger was driven back at Fort Stanwix and Oriskany, and he retreated on August 22, which Burgoyne did not yet know as he continued pressing south. Then General Howe, rather than marching north to meet Burgoyne near Albany, turned his army toward Philadelphia. Despite being notified of Howe’s intention to abandon the New York campaign entirely and invade Pennsylvania, Burgoyne considered himself bound by his orders to press on to Albany. Even before reaching Saratoga, Burgoyne’s decision to continue advancing without support from Howe and St. Leger left him vulnerable to precisely the type of encirclement he had intended to impose on the Americans. 

Even before Burgoyne’s army reached Saratoga, it was already weakened by a costly detour caused by German Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, who took a force of 800 men to forage and who was defeated by Colonel John Stark and 1,500 militiamen on August 16, 1777, at the Battle of Bennington. Burgoyne lost nearly 1,000 men as a result. 

In addition, the American scorched-earth policy hindered the British advance south. As historian Rick Atkinson writes in his book, The Fate of the Day, The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston 1777-1780, quoting from a German officer: “All the fields of standing grain were laid waste. The cattle were driven away and every particle of grain, as well as every morsel of grass, carefully removed.” Local militia forces also joined the American ranks, increasing their numbers. 

As Burgoyne’s army was slowly marching south, the Americans were taking advantage of St. Leger and Howe’s failure to meet up with him by erecting formidable defenses on Bemis Heights, just south of Saratoga overlooking the Hudson. The American fortifications were engineered by the Polish officer Thaddeus Kościuszko, who had studied construction, mapmaking, and other engineering skills in Warsaw. He eventually made his way to Philadelphia, where Congress commissioned him as a Continental colonel. Washington, who would misspell his name eleven different ways, described “Cosieski” as “a gentleman of science & merit . . . deserving of notice.”

Freeman’s Farm: A Pyrrhic British Victory

On September 19, at Freeman’s Farm, American forces—particularly those under Benedict Arnold and Daniel Morgan—engaged Burgoyne’s advancing columns. While the British held off the Americans, their losses were great. Nearly 600 British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or captured, and more than 300 Americans had been killed, wounded, or captured. Burgoyne wrote to his superiors in London that by the end of the battle, the British were “masters of the day,” but they had never come close to breaching the American line built by Kościuszko. It was a victory that made their ultimate defeat more certain, not less. 

The three-week stalemate that followed only worsened Burgoyne’s position. Patriot militia forces continued to arrive, swelling the American army. Meanwhile, Burgoyne’s supplies dwindled, and his men were confined in the wilderness with nowhere to go. Also during this time, General Gates wrote a letter to Congress but failed to mention Arnold’s performance at Freeman Farms, even though it was described as “the very genius of war.” The oversight enraged Arnold, who told Gates, “I know of no reason for your conduct unless I have been traduced by some designing villain.” Gates stripped Arnold of his command, but fortunately for the Americans, he was reappointed before the decisive battle in which Arnold’s heroism was to prove critical. 

The Battle of Bemis Heights: The Pincer Closes — on the British

By October 7, Burgoyne had no more room to maneuver. His army had dwindled to perhaps 5,000 combat-ready troops, and he estimated that he had two weeks of supplies left. He gambled on one more attack. On the morning of October 7, 1777, 1,500 men under the command of General Simon Fraser led an unsuccessful assault on the American position, and Fraser was killed by American sharpshooters. Arnold led a successful American counterattack and was seriously wounded in his left leg. 

The British position worsened hour by hour. They had suffered 1,000 casualties in the fighting of the preceding three weeks; American losses numbered fewer than 500. The next night, after burying General Fraser in the redoubt, the British began their retreat northward. However, they had waited too long. Burgoyne told his officers that, “The present situation justifies a capitulation upon honorable terms.” Burgoyne surrendered his entire army on October 17 in Saratoga. 

In describing the victory, Gates wrote that if by its loss “Old England is not taught humility, then she is an obstinate old slut, bent upon ruin.” The victory for many Americans “confirmed God’s superintending Providence,” and many were convinced that the war would not last even five more months. Burgoyne was vilified upon his return to England and blamed for the loss at Saratoga. British General Henry Clinton wrote, “Burgoyne’s disaster has greatly changed the face of affairs in America” and “God only knows how this business will end.” A century later, George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga made him that occasionally necessary part of our British system, a scapegoat.”  

The Diplomatic Reversal: A Second Predicate Pincer

The strategic consequences of Saratoga extended far beyond upstate New York. As Rick Atkinson wrote: “The battle shattered British pretensions in New England, weakened the empire in Canada, and in all thirteen states demoralized loyalists and inspirited rebels. Perhaps most tellingly, the American victory commanded admiration in Versailles and other European capitals.” In other words, a second predicate pincer had been quietly forming: the Americans needed French naval power and financial resources; France needed proof of American viability before committing. Saratoga supplied that proof. 

The Lesson of the Predicate Pincer

What makes Saratoga so instructive, in any field where complex plans depend on linked conditions, is the clarity with which the British failure illustrates a principle: a predicate pincer is only as strong as its weakest predicate. Howe’s defection to Philadelphia was known to Burgoyne before he committed to the final advance. St. Leger’s retreat was not — yet both failures were foreseeable risks of a plan that assigned equal weight to three independent actors with divergent priorities and no unified command.^[1]

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Editor’s note: The author is an intellectual property litigator based in New York.

[1] Sources: Rick Atkinson, The Fate of the Day, The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780; American Battlefield Trust; Encyclopedia Britannica; Wikipedia, “Battles of Saratoga”; George Washington’s Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia; Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce; Edmund Morgan, cited in multiple historical sources. Casualty figures and troop strengths per American Battlefield Trust and Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia.