Burgoyne, John

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Burgoyne, John

BURGOYNE, JOHN. (1723–1792). British general, politician, and playwright. Born at Westminster on 4 February 1723, Burgoyne was educated at Westminster School and was commissioned into the third troop of Horse Guards in 1737. He sold out in 1741 but finally became a cornet in the First Dragoons in 1747. He became a lieutenant in 1745 and a captain in 1747. In 1751 he eloped with his friend's sister, Lady Charlotte Stanley, daughter of the earl of Derby. Burgoyne again sold his commission and traveled in France and Italy with his wife until 1755. The following year, reconciled with Lord Derby, he bought a commission in the Eleventh Dragoons. After distinguished service at St. Malo in 1758, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and ordered to recruit the new Sixteenth Dragoons, one of the two light horse formations whose creation he had championed. In 1762, as a local brigadier general, he demonstrated exceptional light cavalry skills with a fifty-mile march culminating in a dawn charge at Valencia d'Alcantara. The city fell, a Spanish regiment was annihilated, and booty and numerous of prisoners were taken. More importantly, he secured the Tagus Valley, thus saving Lisbon from Spanish attack. Burgoyne ended the Seven Years' War as a full colonel and with recognition as a capable commander. "Gentleman Johnny" was also very popular among his men and wrote a manual for officers. In the late 1760s he made a tour of inspection of European armies and argued strongly for the creation of a superior British cavalry arm. In 1769 he became governor of Fort William in Scotland and a major general in 1772.

He was also active in politics. In 1761 he had been returned for Midhurst in Sussex. With a deep respect for parliamentary supremacy and convinced that basic liberties were not at stake, he supported both the Stamp Act and the Declaratory Act. With the death of his patron in 1768, he lost Midhurst but contested Preston in Lord Derby's interest. The seat had generally returned Tories, not administration Whigs like Burgoyne, and the election was a violent one. Burgoyne went canvassing with a pair of pistols, the Tory mayor rejected over 600 of his votes on the grounds that they were not cast by freemen, and Burgoyne was only seated after appealing to Parliament itself. He was also fined one thousand pounds for his armed campaigning. In 1772 he chaired a committee that investigated Robert Clive's Indian fortune and two years later supported the Coercive Acts. Appealing for a military role in America, in 1775 he became the junior of the three major generals appointed to support Thomas Gage at Boston.

The characteristics Burgoyne would exhibit in America were already evident when he left London. He was essentially a cavalry man, addicted to danger, drama, and dash. His runaway marriage, his addiction to reckless gambling, amateur acting, and efforts as a playwright—his debut, The Maid of the Oaks, had appeared in 1774—all pointed in the same direction. When he reached Boston with the others in May 1775, Gage asked him to compose a last appeal to the rebellious colonists: the result was a florid, overwritten epistle to "the deluded multitude," which probably did no good at all. Here was an officer for dramatic postures, not to mention bold schemes and risks, on a scale that only Charles Lord Cornwallis could rival. He was not a man in tune with William Howe and Henry Clinton's penchant for method and caution.

BURGOYNE'S PLAN FAILS

Boston meant an uncongenially passive role for Burgoyne: even at Bunker Hill, his participation was limited to providing artillery fire from across the water at Copp's Hill. He filled in the time by writing numerous letters home criticizing Gage and writing a farce, The Siege of Boston. At last he successfully applied for home leave and on reaching London in November presented Lord George Germain, the new secretary of state, with a memorandum entitled "Reflections on the War in America." In this document he urged the seizure of New York City and an advance overland to Albany from Quebec via Lake Champlain. The idea was to isolate New England, still supposed to be the real seat of the rebellion, and to interrupt the American movement of supplies and men to and from the middle colonies. The underlying agenda was, of course, to provide Burgoyne with a glamorous independent command.

The New York City part of the idea was sound and appealed to Germain's own thinking. The city was centrally placed, had a good harbor, and gave access to a major inland waterway, the Hudson River. The Canada-Lake Champlain end of the scheme, however, had just a spurious plausibility that could have convinced only someone who had never been there. Canada had to have serious reinforcements in any case to see off the American siege of Quebec. From there they might as well be used to invade New York along the line used, in reverse, by Abercromby and Amherst during the Seven Years' War. Looked at on a large-scale map, it appeared simple. Such an analysis, however, took insufficient account of the physical difficulties of the route or of the ease with which it could be blocked, at least temporarily, by enemy forts, troops, and flotillas. Finally, it failed to appreciate the fact that the main American communications could be more easily severed by securing the Hudson through a modest advance from New York City.

The immediate need was to reinforce Sir Guy Carleton against the American invasion that had confined him to Quebec. Germain, unaware that the real danger had passed, sent Burgoyne with ten thousand troops embarked in fifteen ships. They arrived in the St. Lawrence opposite Quebec in fifteen ships on 5 May 1776, enabling Carleton to lead a reconnaissance in force that routed the few remaining besiegers. Burgoyne served under Carleton in the expulsion of American forces from Canada, culminating in the destruction of the American flotilla at Valcour Island on Lake Champlain on 11-13 October. Carleton now judged it too late in the season to attack Ticonderoga and prudently withdrew from Crown Point. Disappointed, Burgoyne again returned to Britain to press his ideas on the ministry.

His memorandum to Lord North, "Thoughts for Conducting the War on the Side of Canada," called for no less than eight thousand regulars and German mercenaries, two thousand Canadian laborers, and at least one thousand Indians. His own objective was to be either Albany or, preferably, Rhode Island via the Connecticut River. He also wanted St. Leger to provide a diversion on the Mohawk River. The orders actually sent out to both Howe and Burgoyne, however, made it perfectly clear that Burgoyne was to expect no direct help from Howe unless Washington himself moved against Burgoyne and that his objective was to be Albany, not Rhode Island or the Connecticut River. He was not given as many troops as he wanted—7,251 British and German regulars—and he was allowed to recruit only 150 Canadian workmen and 500 Indians. None of this caused Burgoyne, or anyone else, the least anxiety before he left London in March 1777. Everyone on the British side underestimated the numbers and effectiveness of the rebel militia that could be brought to bear in the upper Hudson wilderness. In Canada he found that Carleton had assembled a powerful flotilla on Lake Champlain but had not found adequate numbers of horses and wagons, a critical shortcoming for an army needing to draw almost all its supplies from Canada. Recruitment of Indians, Canadians, and Loyalists had been disappointing. Even now it did not occur to Burgoyne that he might have bitten off more than he could chew.

At Saratoga on 7 October 1777 he found himself engulfed by American forces totaling over thirteen thousand and compelled to surrender. His opponent, Horatio Gates, agreed that the British army should be repatriated on condition that it did not serve again in North America.

ASSESSING BLAME

Although the Continental Congress failed to honor this convention, Burgoyne was allowed to go home on parole, where he met a barrage of criticism. When he arrived on 13 May 1778, the king refused either to see him or give him a court-martial. He lost his colonelcy of the Sixteenth Dragoons and the Fort William governorship; in Parliament, questions were raised about the surrendered army, and it was suggested that Burgoyne should be sent back as a prisoner of war. His only supporters were the handful of Foxites, with their near-paranoid suspicion of executive power and urgent wish to embarrass the ministry.

Only now did Burgoyne begin to argue that he had absolutely inflexible instructions to reach Albany—so that the decision to persist rather than to retreat in good time had not been his to make—and had been given only half the troops he asked for. He also blamed Carleton for not supporting him properly and Howe for inattention to orders. He put this case quite ably to a parliamentary inquiry in 1779 and published it in State of the Expedition from Canada in 1780.

There is no doubt that Burgoyne was to some extent the author of his own misfortunes. There was something of the dashing cavalryman and gambler about his handling of the enterprise from beginning to end. A cautious, methodical general might have waited for more horses and better wagons, whereas Burgoyne was in the field within six weeks of arriving in Canada. Where a prudent commander might have withdrawn, Burgoyne crossed the Hudson. His attempts to shift the blame onto others are deeply unappealing. Yet the basic strategic decision belonged to Germain and the ministry and would probably have been taken even without Burgoyne's lobbying. He was certainly not the only candidate for the command. Carleton was slow to find land transport and resigned out of pique at not being given the command in June 1777. Howe's decision not to push up the Hudson was his alone. The actual balance of blame is unclear, and pursuit of it is probably futile. More important was the near-universal underestimate of the scale of the rebellion and the decision to fight a backwoods campaign far from British naval support.

A MORE LIBERAL POLITICS

The experience drove Burgoyne's politics in a liberal direction. The soldier who had championed the Coercive Acts and itched to draw his sword against the rebels now joined Fox and Sheridan in opposition to the war. In 1782 the former champion of Westminster's supremacy voted for the Rockingham ministry's grant of legislative independence to the Irish Parliament. His reward was to be made commander in chief and privy councillor in Ireland (as well as a colonelcy), a post he kept under the Fox-North coalition but resigned after the younger Pitt came to power in December 1783. He used his pen to satirize the Pitt administration and, in keeping with his earlier attack on Clive and the East India Company corruption, in 1788 he took part in the prosecution of Warren Hastings. Later still he was to welcome the French Revolution.

LITERARY WORK

Burgoyne also resumed his literary career. The Maid of the Oaks had already been taken up and expanded by David Garrick; and turned into a modest Drury Lane success. He wrote a libretto for an opera and translated another, Richard Coeur de Lion, from the French. Neither was a popular triumph, but a comedy, The Heiress, was received as an incisive representation of contemporary upper-class society. It opened with thirty performances at Drury Lane, ran through ten editions in a year, and remained popular in Britain and Europe for fifty years.

His wife died in February 1776, and he never remarried. However, he began a long affair with a married actress, Susan Caulfield, by whom he had four children between 1782 and 1788. The four were brought up in Lord Derby's household, and the eldest became Field Marshal Sir John Fox Burgoyne (1782–1871).

John Burgoyne died suddenly on 4 June 1792, probably from the effects of gout,. and was buried in Westminster Abbey on 13 August.