Riedesel was a gallant soldier, and his wife a fair and fascinating young woman at this time. They had not been long married when the war in America broke out, and the wife's love for her husband was such as to impel her to dare all the hardships of the journey and join him in the foreign land. Her letters and journal, which give a lively and vivid account of the perils of this undertaking, and of the pleasures and difficulties that she experienced after she had succeeded in reaching her dear spouse, supply what is perhaps the most interesting human document of those long years of war. The baroness landed on the American continent at Quebec, and travelled amid great hardships to Chambly, where her husband was stationed. For two days only they were together. After that she returned with her children to Three Rivers. Soon, however, came the orders to march down into the enemy's country. The description of this journey as the baroness has given it to us makes, indeed, moving reading. Once a frightful cannonade was directed against the house in which the women and the wounded had taken refuge. In the cellar of this place Madam Riedesel and her children passed the entire night. It was in this cellar, indeed, that the little family lived during the long period of waiting that preceded the capitulation made necessary by Burgoyne's inexcusable delay near Saratoga. Later the Riedesels were most hospitably entertained at Saratoga by General Schuyler, his wife and daughters, of whom the baroness never fails to speak in her journal with the utmost affection. The journey from Albany to Boston was full of incident and hardship, but of it the plucky wife writes only: "In the midst of all my trials God so supported me that I lost neither my frolicsomeness nor my spirits...." The contrast between the station of the Americans and of the Germans who were their prisoners, is strikingly brought out in this passage of the diary: "Some of the American generals who were in charge of us on the march to Boston were shoemakers; and upon our halting days they made boots for our officers, and also mended nicely the shoes of our soldiers. They set a great value upon our money coinage, which with them was scarce. One of our officers had worn his boots entirely into shreds. He saw that an American general had on a good pair, and said to him, jestingly, 'I will gladly give you a guinea for them.' Immediately the general alighted from his horse, took the guinea, gave up his boots, put on the badly-worn ones of the officer, and again mounted his horse." The journey was at length successfully accomplished, however, and in Massachusetts the baroness was on the whole very well treated, it would seem.