And yet the events since that time, which Arnold could not foresee
or foreknow, rather than the concomitant circumstances of that
time, which Arnold saw and knew, have proclaimed him Traitor. And
had the results been otherwise, had not his own mad efforts helped
turn the tide at Saratoga, Arnold might now be known as a shrewdly
diplomatic young officer who, influenced by a beautiful Tory
wife and seeing the cause of the Colonists desperate, had timely
transferred his allegiance to the British army and bravely helped
along the conquering cause of the mother country.
And Major Andre sleeps in honored rest in old Westminster Abbey;
while the man twice wounded in battle, the hero of Ticonderoga,
Quebec, and Saratoga sleeps in an unhonored grave having as
epitaph indelibly traced upon surrounding air and earth and water
and sky--Arnold the Traitor.
GENERAL FRAZER.
General Frazer was mortally wounded in the engagement which took
place October 7th. He died in camp the following day. The Italian
historian Botta gives the following account of his burial. “Toward
midnight, the body of General Frazer was buried in the British
camp. His brother officers assembled sadly around while the
funeral service was read over the remains of their brave comrade,
and his body was committed to the hostile earth. The ceremony,
always mournful and solemn of itself, was rendered even terrible
by the sense of recent losses, of present and future dangers, and
of regret for the deceased. Meanwhile, the blaze and roar of the
American artillery amid the natural darkness and stillness of the
night came on the senses with startling awe. The grave had been dug
within range of the enemy’s batteries; and while the service was
proceeding, a cannon ball struck the ground close to the coffin,
and spattered earth over the face of the officiating chaplain.”
There is something painfully pathetic in the scene thus presented
to the imagination. War has no respect for the rights of the living
or the dying or the dead.
SURRENDER.
On the 13th of October, 1777, General Burgoyne, besieged by
overpowering numbers on the heights of Saratoga and seeing that his
army was facing disease and famine, and being unable to establish
communication either with Lord Howe or with General Clinton--opened
negotiations with General Gates as to conditions of surrender.
At first General Gates demanded that the royal army should
surrender themselves prisoners of war. Burgoyne refused.
It was later agreed upon that “the troops under General Burgoyne
were to march out of their camp with the honors of war, and the
artillery--of the entrenchments, to the verge of the river, where
the arms and the 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.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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