When retired he continued writing plays, which Walpole stated would become immortal! General John Burgoyne. Historical Figures of England. US Patriots and Founders. Portrait Year. Portrait Age. He eloped with the daughter of the Earl of Derby. However, the money was soon used up and Burgoyne had to sell the captaincy before departing to France in financial exile. After seven years in France, the Earl finally warmed up to Burgoyne and helped him acquire a captaincy in the 11th Dragoons.
He also helped to form the first two British light horse regiments and was given command of one of them. Despite his reputation as a gambler and actor, Burgoyne was regarded as an exemplary politician. During his service in Parliament, he began his career as a playwright and in , his first dramatic play began production. That same year, he was promoted to the rank of Major-General. In May , Burgoyne was sent back to the colonies and stopped the American invasion at Quebec. A British regiment had already been marched to Rutland, more than fifty miles into the interior of Massachusetts.
Heath now ordered the rest of the Convention troops to follow. They were there just long enough for several of the officers to get thrown into jail for brawling with the local inhabitants when they received astonishing news. Congress had finally heeded the howls of complaint from the citizens of Massachusetts and resolved that the Convention troops would henceforth reside in Charlottesville, Virginia, remote from all then-existing British bases.
Before they left Massachusetts, the British had to settle all their accounts with General Heath. The officers also had to pay their individual bills. This caused a temporary panic. Heath charged the Convention Army twenty thousand dollars a week for food and fuel and in obedience to explicit orders from Congress would accept only hard money. The British squawked mightily over this, but Washington wryly pointed out to Heath that it was only fair to make them pay in coin because they refused to accept Continental paper in any of their transactions with the American army and were busily counterfeiting American money to increase its already disastrous depreciation.
With Washington providing a heavy guard when they approached New York, the Convention Army made its long march without any notable incidents and with surprisingly few desertions. Only British and German troops vanished—an impressive contrast to the 1, British and Germans who disappeared during their stay in Massachusetts.
In Pennsylvania the line of march passed through York and Lancaster counties, heavily peopled by German immigrants. Here many of the Brunswick soldiers deserted. But on the whole the Germans did not get a very warm reception from their excountrymen.
Throughout most of the march the weather was relatively mild. Their problems were small compared to those of the common soldiers. Never have I seen men so discouraged and in such despair. If populous Massachusetts found it difficult to accommodate the Convention Army, it is easy to imagine its catastrophic impact on the rural economy of Charlottesville.
The situation inspired an avalanche of protests to the state government, and Governor Patrick Henry considered the possibility of breaking the army into smaller groups and scattering them around the state. But the idea of further movement was dropped, and the problem of quartering the officers was solved by giving them a parole that permitted them to live anywhere within a hundred miles of Charlottesville.
The men, meanwhile, went to work and finished the barracks themselves. They filled in the cracks in the walls and roofs with the bright orange clay that abounds around Charlottesville. In the spring they planted gardens and began raising chickens.
In fact, the American militia guards were soon barred from the performances in order to prevent riots. The officers were fortunate in having Jefferson for a neighbor. Mazzei, a physician and merchant, was returning to Europe, and he sold off every stick of furniture in his house before handing it over to the Riedesels.
Soon the Jeffersons and the Riedesels were exchanging polite notes and travelling back and forth between their houses for dinner parties and musicales. One young English captain named Bibby later recalled how he and his friends would visit Monticello and almost invariably find themselves pressed into an impromptu musicale, those who could play performing on instruments and others joining in the singing.
Bibby said that Jefferson was one of the best amateur violinists he had ever heard. General Phillips was less contented with life. He was living at Blenheim, a semiabandoned plantation that in recent years had been used as a shelter for plantation work parties.
He decided to build a new house for himself—as Riedesel eventually did, after Colle almost collapsed in a windstorm. But the British agent in Fredericksburg, to whom Phillips sent his golden guineas to buy American dollars, expended the precious hard cash on counterfeit money produced by the British in New York. Meanwhile, the American commissary broke down almost completely.
For thirty and forty days, at different periods, there was nothing to eat but Indian cornmeal. Under these conditions desertions soared. Some soldiers sneaked away to the mountains and married local women, and a few others were persuaded to slip away and join an American privateering venture; but most of the deserters were escapees determined to reach the British base in New York.
At one point the distraught American commander at Charlottesville, Colonel Theodorick Bland, informed Jefferson that no fewer than Convention troops had vanished in the past fortnight. Officers, meanwhile, began deserting in more gentlemanly fashion. More and more of them began getting permission to extend their parole to New York, where they could personally appeal to Sir Henry Clinton to be exchanged. Once it became evident that there would be no mass exchange on the basis of a cartel, it was each man for himself.
Whoever had the most influential friends in New York or London had the best chance of obtaining his freedom. Phillips and Riedesel were equally anxious to escape by the same route. Finally, late in , both the British and the German generals received permission to abandon their men and head for New York. Eventually both were exchanged and returned to active commands. A German and an English colonel were left in command of the troops, whose situation continued to deteriorate. Then, in mid, the British army began making strong probes into Virginia, moving with ease up the tidal rivers.
Alarmed Americans suddenly realized that a strong force might easily push through the thinly populated center of the state and rescue the Convention Army. So, in the fall of , the Convention Army was ordered onto the roads again.
By now it had dwindled to 1, German officers and men and approximately 1, British—less than half the total surrendered at Saratoga. About eight hundred British troops were marched to Fort Frederick in Washington County, Maryland, and the remaining four hundred to Fredericktown. Once more they met a by now familiar pattern of inadequate barracks, little fuel, and scanty rations. Another factor in reducing their numbers was the abundance of stills around Fredericktown, which created cheap liquor that killed off dozens of the soldiers.
In May, , Congress decided to move the Convention troops once more. It considered ordering them to march back to Massachusetts, but this plan was defeated by vigorous protests from that state. Pennsylvania was selected by Washington as a compromise, and the British troops, now numbering perhaps a thousand, were marched to Lancaster, which was already entertaining eight hundred prisoners of war.
The Conventioners were forced to camp in a stockade on the common, and putrid fever was soon raging among them. With a considerable time lag—often as much as three months—the German troops followed the British from Virginia to Maryland and then to Pennsylvania, where they were settled in York. After almost four years they were being separated from their men. Lieutenant Anburey said it was more painful than the moment when they commanded the men to pile their arms and abandon them on the plain of Saratoga.
Little more than a month later, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, and the remnants of the Convention Army were blended as prisoners of war with this far larger mass of troops. On February 18, , Congress empowered Washington to begin negotiating with the British to exchange prisoners. Negotiators met intermittently for the next seven months at Elizabeth, New Jersey, but settled nothing.
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