BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 4.7.23//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:The American Revolution PBS Documentary Episode 4 DTSTAMP:20251118T053533Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:590-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":troy@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n The American Revolution\n\n A Film By\n\n Ken Burns\, Sar ah Botstein &\; David Schmidt\n\n\n\n Conquer by a Drawn Game (January 1777 – February 1778)\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n VIDEO\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n \n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n Announcer: Major funding for \"The American Revoluti on\" was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.\n\nMajor funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein\, t he Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment\ , and by Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A . Schwarzman\, and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional support was provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations\, the Pew Cha ritable Trusts\, Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling\, the Park Foundat ion\, and by Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, The Michelson Foundation\, Jacqueline B. Mars\, the Ki ssick Family Foundation\, Diane and Hal Brierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine Debs\, The Fullerton Family Charit able Fund\, and these additional members.\n\n\"The American Revolution\" w as made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting \, and Viewers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n\nAnnouncer: The American Revoluti on caused an impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenui ty\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of histo ry and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nBank of America.\n\n[Musket fire] ♪ Voice: Mankind have ever b een so prone to yield implicit obedience to that authority to which they h ave long been accustomed that there are few examples of resistance\, unles s the wanton abuse of power has rendered it necessary.\n\nWhen this is the case\, the feelings of the man and the patriot are awakened\, and both th e peasant and the statesman are urged to struggle even in blood.\n\nNo suf fering which Britain can inflict will reduce America to submission.\n\nThe thunder of their artillery may lay waste the cities\, but the spirit of t he people is unconquerable.\n\nMercy Otis Warren.\n\n♪ We think about th e kind of anticolonial\, insurgent uprisings\, independence movements of t he 20th century\, and think of those as being sort of the Third World figh ting back against the sort of imperial colonial powers.\n\nYou don't alway s recognize the fact that the United States actually started that.\n\n♪ Voice: England is the natural enemy of France.\n\nShe is an enemy at once grasping\, ambitious\, unjust\, and perfidious.\n\nThe invariable and most cherished purpose in her politics has been\, if not the destruction of Fr ance\, at least her overthrow and her ruin.\n\nCharles Gravier\, Comte de Vergennes.\n\nNarrator: The Comte de Vergennes\, the French foreign minist er\, was determined to avenge his country's humiliating defeat in the Seve n Years' War.\n\nHe had already persuaded Louis XVI to open French ports t o American merchants for the selling of American goods and the buying of F rench ones\, and even to provide some funds with which the Americans could purchase guns and ammunition\, provided they did so in secret.\n\n♪ Wom an: The French needed to reorganize their army.\n\nThey were reforming the ir navy.\n\nSo they did start to send clandestine weapons\, they started t o send money\, they started to send uniforms to the \"insurgents\" in Amer ica because they didn't want to have an open warfare against the British a t the time\, yet.\n\n♪ Narrator: At the end of 1776\, the Continental Co ngress had sent 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin\, the most widely admired Am erican on earth\, to try to talk France into providing much more help.\n\n Franklin understood that the Americans could not compete with the British Army and Navy unless France entered the war\, and that the French would no t dare do so unless the Americans showed that they could win.\n\nThe last time he had heard from America\, prospects did not look bright.\n\nThe \"D eclaration of Independence\" had proved American seriousness\, but the inv asion of Canada had been a disaster\, and British forces had defeated Wash ington on Long Island\, then driven him out of New York City.\n\nAfter a s ecret meeting with Vergennes in Paris in January of 1777\, Franklin promis ed that if France and its ally Spain were to join the Americans\, Britain would be reduced to a state of \"weakness and humiliation.\"\n\nBut contin uing reports of American defeats were not encouraging\, and Vergennes refu sed to meet again.\n\nHe also feared that the thirteen former colonies wou ld never come together as a nation.\n\nPublicly\, Franklin remained optimi stic\, but privately\, he was anxious for better news from home that might persuade the French to join the American Revolution.\n\nVoice: Those who live under arbitrary power do nevertheless approve of liberty and wish for it.\n\n'Tis a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind\, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own. \n\n[Franklin] ♪ Narrator: Though Benjamin Franklin did not yet know it\ , George Washington's army had stunned the British and lifted Patriot spir its by taking the garrison at Trenton\, New Jersey\, on the day after Chri stmas 1776.\n\n[Officer shouts command] Voice: Though the rebels seem to b e ignorant of the precision\, order\, and even of the principles by which large bodies are moved\, they possess some of the requisites for making go od troops\, such as extreme cunning\, great industry\, and a spirit of ent erprise upon any advantage.\n\nThough it was once the fashion of this army to treat them in the most contemptible light\, they are now become a form idable army.\n\nLieutenant William Harcourt.\n\n♪ Narrator: But now the British were on the move again.\n\nGeneral William Howe sent General Charl es Cornwallis and some 9\,000 redcoats and Hessians to recapture Trenton a nd trap the rebel army against the Delaware River.\n\nWashington decided t o fight rather than retreat.\n\nTo do otherwise\, he said\, would be to de stroy the \"dawn of hope.\"\n\nOn January 2\, 1777\, he posted 1\,000 men along the road from Princeton\, a college town twelve miles away\, with or ders to slow Cornwallis' column until evening.\n\nThe Patriots contested e very inch of ground as they fell back through Trenton to join most of Wash ington's army arrayed on the south side of the Assunpink Creek.\n\nAt dusk \, when the advance guard of Cornwallis' column started across the lone st one bridge over the Assunpink\, American artillery opened up on them with what Henry Knox proudly called \"great vociferation.\"\n\nThree times\, th e redcoats tried to cross the bridge.\n\nThree times\, American fire hurle d them back.\n\nPerhaps one hundred Americans would be killed or wounded b efore darkness fell\, but the British lost three times as many.\n\nCornwal lis called a halt.\n\nHis forces still outnumbered Washington's\, and the creek was fordable upstream.\n\n\"We'll go over\,\" Cornwallis reportedly told his commanders\, \"and bag him in the morning.\"\n\nWashington ordere d a small detachment to stay on their hillside that night\, tending campfi res and banging entrenching tools to make the enemy believe they were digg ing in.\n\nMeanwhile\, the rest of his army would slip silently away\, fol lowing unguarded back roads to get behind Cornwallis and attack his rear g uard at Princeton.\n\nAt dawn\, two British regiments on their way to rein force Cornwallis saw Americans marching toward them.\n\nThe British \"were as much astonished\,\" Patriot General Henry Knox would write to his wife Lucy\, \"as if an army had dropped perpendicularly upon them.\"\n\n[Canno nfire] The British fired their cannon\, then charged with fixed bayonets.\ n\nThe American Commander\, General Hugh Mercer's\, horse was shot out fro m under him.\n\nHe fought with his sword as long as he could before being mortally wounded by British bayonets.\n\nHis men began to fall back.\n\nWa shington once again galloped to the front\, ignoring the bullets flying al l about him\, exhorting his men to stand and fight.\n\nOne of his aides co vered his eyes\, fearful of seeing his commander shot from his saddle.\n\n Man: He's really lucky.\n\nBullets are going all around him\, everybody el se is dying\, he's never scratched.\n\nHe assumes he's never going to be k illed.\n\nNow\, there's probably a lot of people in war that assume that a nd they get killed.\n\nAnd we never hear about them.\n\nHe doesn't believe in God in the total Christian sense\, but he believes in Providence.\n\nP rovidence.\n\nHe really thinks the gods\, or God\, is on our side and his side.\n\nNarrator: Washington's men held.\n\nVeteran Continentals joined t hem.\n\nNow it was the Americans' turn to charge.\n\n[Soldiers shouting] \ "I never saw men\" look \"so furious as they did\,\" one remembered.\n\nVo ice: The fate of this extensive continent seemed suspended by a single thr ead.\n\nBut happy for us\, happy for unborn millions\, that we had a gener al who knew how to take advantage\, and by a masterful maneuver frustrated the designs of the enemy.\n\nLieutenant Samuel Shaw.\n\nMan: George Washi ngton was no military colossus.\n\nHe was no Frederick the Great or Napole on.\n\nHis natural instincts\, I think\, were to preserve the Americans in tact so they could fight another day.\n\nBut this caution was occasionally complemented by boldness.\n\nFor the most part\, Washington saw his prima ry task as holding the Continental Army together\, because it represented the rebellion.\n\nWithout the Continental Army\, there would be no United States.\n\nNarrator: Seventy Americans had been killed or wounded in the B attle of Princeton\, but the enemy had lost another 450-- killed\, wounded \, or captured.\n\nBy the time Cornwallis realized Washington had fooled h im at Assunpink Creek that morning\, it had been too late to catch him.\n\ nAnd when he and the rest of his army reached Princeton that evening\, Was hington and his army had vanished again.\n\n♪ Voice: Everyone was so fri ghtened that it was completely forgotten even to obtain information about where the Americans had gone.\n\nBut the enemy now had wings\, and\, it wa s believed\, had flown to the mountains of Morristown.\n\nCaptain Johann E wald.\n\nNarrator: Morristown\, New Jersey\, a tiny village in the heart o f the thickly forested Watchung Mountains\, would be Washington's winter h eadquarters for the next five months.\n\nIt was out of reach of the Britis h Navy but well suited for raiding British outposts and for keeping an eye out for a British advance from New York.\n\nMost of the troops who had of fered to stay after Trenton went home as soon as their reenlistment was up .\n\nBy the end of January\, Washington had fewer than 3\,000 Continentals in his camp.\n\nBut encouraged by Patriot victories at Trenton and Prince ton and angered by the excesses of British occupation\, New Jersey militia men now rallied to him.\n\nVoice: They are actuated by resentment now.\n\n And resentment coinciding with principle is a very powerful motive.\n\nJoh n Adams.\n\nNarrator: Whenever British foraging parties ventured from thei r outposts\, Patriots attacked them... [Musket fire] at Maidenhead and Qui bbletown\, Bound Brook and Drake's Farm\, Piscataway and English Neighborh ood\, and at least 50 other places.\n\nThat winter\, more British and Hess ian troops were killed fighting over forage than would fall in battle.\n\n Voice: The British lost men who were not easily replaced.\n\nThe rebel los s was soon repaired by drafts from the militia.\n\nIt inured them to hards hips\, and it emboldened them to look a British or a Hessian soldier in th e eye\, whose very face would make a hundred of them run after the Battle of Brooklyn.\n\nJustice Thomas Jones.\n\nNarrator: And now New Jersey Loya lists found themselves the targets of vengeful Patriots.\n\nAt Morristown\ , Patriots hanged two Loyalist officers\, and got 33 of their men to enlis t in the Continental Army by threatening to hang them\, too.\n\nGeneral Ho we's hope of pacifying the state had brought civil war instead.\n\n[Musket fire] If one thinks of this as a British Empire and British subjects\, wh o are contending for their rights\, right\, then it's a civil war.\n\nThen it's family against family\, sometimes brother against brother.\n\nIt's h ard to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.\n\nThis is a p redicament that is incredibly fraught and incredibly difficult for people to sort out.\n\nWoman: This inability to really figure out who is the enem y here is a problem.\n\nThey're marching through the countryside\, and the y don't know.\n\n\"This farm\, is this farm-- are these Loyalists?\n\n\"Ar e there rebels in there?\n\nAre they going to shoot at us out of the windo w\,\" which does happen.\n\nWho do you trust?\n\nNarrator: The frequent at tacks forced the British to abandon most of their New Jersey outposts.\n\n Winter would end in frustration and failure.\n\nVoice: The next will be a trying campaign.\n\nAnd as all that is dear and valuable may depend upon t he issue of it\, let us have a respectable army\, such as will be competen t to every exigency.\n\nGeorge Washington.\n\nNarrator: Spring was coming. \n\nArmies would soon be again on the move.\n\nAnd Washington wanted to be ready for whatever the British were planning next.\n\nCongress had come b ack to Philadelphia\, but while they were in exile in Baltimore\, it had b ecome clear that expecting delegates to make instant decisions about the b attlefield was impractical.\n\nThey had voted to grant General Washington total control over his army for a period of six months and authorized him to imprison without trial suspected Loyalists or anyone who refused to sup ply his army.\n\nSome delegates had feared that affording Washington such powers would make him a dictator\, betraying the principles for which they were supposed to be fighting.\n\nGeneral Nathanael Greene sought to reass ure them.\n\nVoice: I can see no evil nor danger to the states in delegati ng such powers to the general.\n\nThere was never a man who might seem mor e safely trusted\, nor a time when there was a louder call.\n\n[Greene] ♪ Narrator: Most of Washington's new recruits signed on for three years and a ten-dollar bonus\, but those who signed up for the duration of the w ar were promised a twenty-dollar bonus\, and 100 \"free\" acres of Indian land when the war was over.\n\nMan: When we think about what was offered t o the Continental soldier\, Indian land at the end of it all-- that land h asn't been taken\, ceded\, bought.\n\nThat land is still Indian land\, rig ht?\n\nIt tells you that the entire Revolution is premised on the future p ossibility.\n\nNarrator: These soldiers were different from the men who ha d rallied after Lexington and Concord.\n\nMost of them had been farmers an d artisans\, propertied men with taxes to pay\, creditors to appease\, cro ps to sow and harvest.\n\nFrom now on\, the Continental Army would be made up predominantly of the poorest of the poor-- jobless laborers and landle ss tenants\, second and third sons without hope of an inheritance\, debtor s and British deserters\, indentured servants and apprentices\, felons hop ing to win pardons for their service\, immigrants from Ireland\, and immig rants from Germany\, or their descendants who had never learned English.\n \nJohn Adams had worried that only \"the meanest\, idlest\, most intempera te and worthless men\" in America could ever be persuaded to serve more th an a year.\n\nBut victory would be impossible without them.\n\nWhen patrio tic speeches and free rum failed to attract enough recruits\, some states instituted drafts.\n\nNames were drawn from a hat.\n\nMarried men were exe mpted.\n\nPropertied draftees wanting to avoid service could hire substitu tes at fees to be negotiated with their replacements.\n\nEpping\, New Hamp shire\, managed to avoid sending any of its men to war by paying men from neighboring villages to go.\n\nSouth Carolina advertised for \"vagrants an d idle disorderly persons.\"\n\nThousands of African Americans\, enslaved and free\, served alongside Whites in units from New England all the way s outh to Georgia.\n\nSome volunteered\, some were drafted.\n\nMany stood in for their gun-shy enslavers.\n\nConnecticut and Rhode Island would later promise enslaved recruits their freedom when the war ended.\n\nFrom 1777 o nward\, the American Revolution\, begun in part to defend the interests of property-owners\, would be fought mostly by men who owned little or no pr operty at all.\n\n♪ Voice: Montreal.\n\nTwo deserters from the rebel cou ntry informed me that my property had been seized\, and that my wife and t he children had been turned out of my house and sent off through the woods \, snowstorms\, and bad roads.\n\nJohn Peters.\n\nNarrator: To escape pers ecution and fight for his king\, the Vermont Loyalist John Peters had fled to Canada in 1776\, leaving behind his wife Ann and their six children.\n \n[Knock on door] After his defection\, Patriots seized his home and evict ed his family.\n\nCarrying their infant son\, Ann Peters managed to get ev eryone all the way to Lake Champlain\, where they were spotted by a Britis h boat and carried north to a rendezvous with John.\n\nThey were \"naked a nd dirty\,\" he remembered\, but safe.\n\nIn the weeks that followed\, Joh n Peters began to recruit American Loyalists for a new regiment-- the Quee n's Loyal Rangers.\n\nHe would command it\, and his now-15-year-old son\, John Jr.\, would be among the first to sign up.\n\n♪ Voice: The smallpox has made such headway in every quarter that I find it impossible to keep it from spreading through the whole army.\n\n[Washington] Narrator: As fre sh recruits made their way into the Continental Army camps\, some carried with them smallpox\, the scourge that had threatened the army from the beg inning of the Revolution.\n\nWashington had always resisted ordering inocu lation\, because it took men out of action for weeks.\n\nBut now he decide d to run the risk.\n\nVoice: I have determined not only to inoculate all t he troops now here that had not had smallpox but shall order the doctors t o inoculate the recruits as fast as they come in.\n\n[Washington] Ellis: T he British troops were less vulnerable to smallpox because they had been e xposed more to it in Scotland and Ireland and England.\n\nWashington made a decision that to serve in the Continental Army\, you had to first underg o inoculation.\n\nAnd that was probably the single most important military decision he made.\n\nNarrator: Private Joseph Plumb Martin reenlisted and received his inoculation that spring along with 400 other Connecticut rec ruits at a Continental Army supply depot at Peekskill in the Hudson Highla nds.\n\nHe had been just 15 when he first joined the Connecticut militia.\ n\nAfter enduring combat\, cold\, hunger\, and a bout of near-fatal illnes s\, Martin had decided he'd had enough and left his militia regiment in De cember.\n\nBut life on his grandparents' farm soon bored him\, and when lo cal draftees thought he might be talked into serving in their place in the Continental Army\, they began bidding against one another.\n\nVoice: I th ought I might as well endeavor to get as much for my skin as I could.\n\nI forget the sum.\n\nThey were now freed from any further trouble\, at leas t for the present\, but I was again a soldier.\n\n[Martin] Narrator: By th e middle of May\, Washington's force at Morristown had grown to nearly 12\ ,000 men.\n\nVoice: There is a clock calm at this time in the political an d military hemispheres.\n\nThe surface is smooth and the air serene.\n\nNo t a breath\, nor a wave.\n\nNo news\, nor noise.\n\nJohn Adams.\n\n♪ Voi ce: By what means\, may I ask\, do you expect to conquer America?\n\nIf yo u could not effect it in the summer\, when our army was less than yours\, nor in the winter\, when we had none\, how are you to do it?\n\nYou cannot be so insensible as not to see that we have two-to-one the advantage of y ou\, because we conquer by a drawn game and you lose by it.\n\nThomas Pain e.\n\n♪ Narrator: In London\, Lord George Germain\, the secretary of sta te for America\, was embarrassed by how long the war was taking and concer ned about growing opposition to it in Parliament.\n\nGermain found the set backs at Trenton and Princeton \"extremely mortifying\,\" thought Sir Guy Carleton's failure to capture Fort Ticonderoga the previous autumn inexcus able\, believed the Howe brothers' repeated offers of pardons to rebels \" sentimental\,\" and insisted they instead force Americans to undergo what he called \"a lively experience of losses and sufferings.\"\n\nConway: Run ning of the war largely comes down to Lord George Germain\, who is coordin ating and orchestrating military operations from Britain.\n\nIn logistical terms\, fighting a war 3\,000 miles from the home islands was a major ent erprise in the days of sailing ships.\n\nChristopher Brown: When the Briti sh government gets information about what's happening on the ground\, they 're already weeks out of date.\n\nAnd then they're issuing orders for thin gs that will happen two to three months in the future.\n\nYou can think ab out what that means for actually making decisions.\n\nNarrator: General Jo hn Burgoyne\, a dashing favorite of the King\, had persuaded Germain to pl ace him in charge of an army in Canada\, promising to succeed in a second invasion of the Colonies\, where General Carleton had failed.\n\nVoice: I do not conceive any expedition can be so formidable to the enemy or so eff ectual to close the war as an invasion from Canada by Ticonderoga.\n\n[Bur goyne] Narrator: Burgoyne proposed a three-pronged attack.\n\nHe would lea d an army south to seize Ticonderoga and then move on to take Albany\; to the west\, a smaller diversionary force would advance via Lake Ontario and the Mohawk River Valley\, rallying support among Indians and Loyalists as they went\; finally\, Sir William Howe was to lead his army up the Hudson from New York to complete the juncture of the three forces\, isolating Ne w England.\n\nGeneral Howe had other plans.\n\nVoice: I am fully persuaded the principal army should act offensively to get possession of Philadelph ia\, where the enemy's chief strength will certainly be collected.\n\nThe rebels are at present buoyed up by hopes of assistance from France.\n\nIf that door were shut by any means\, it would\, in my opinion\, put a stop t o the rebellion.\n\n[Howe] ♪ In 18th-century European wars\, the capture of an enemy's capital city usually brought the war to a close.\n\nOf cour se\, America had no capital city in the sense of Paris in France or London in Britain.\n\nBut it did have Philadelphia\, which was seen as the polit ical headquarters of the rebellion.\n\nHowe became obsessed with the captu re of Philadelphia and the defeat of Washington's army.\n\nNarrator: Becau se Lord Germain had failed to reconcile the two incompatible strategies\, his two commanders-- Howe and Burgoyne-- would plan two distinct campaigns in which neither would support the other.\n\nThere would be no rendezvous on the Hudson.\n\nBut Burgoyne was so sure of success that even before he set sail\, he had bet the opposition leader in Parliament a sizeable sum that he would \"be home victorious by Christmas Day\" 1777.\n\nVoice: If t he frenzy of hostility should remain\, the messengers of justice and of wr ath await them in the field\, and devastation\, famine\, and every concomi tant horror that a reluctant but indispensable prosecution of military dut y must occasion.\n\n[Burgoyne] ♪ Narrator: By the time he reached Quebec \, Burgoyne had convinced himself that thousands of Native Americans would join his army.\n\nIn fact\, no more than 500 men answered his call-- Moha wks\, Algonquins\, Abenakis\, and Wyandots-- drawn from seven villages alo ng the St.\n\nLawrence River.\n\nThey joined him for many reasons: to seek the honors of war\, to receive British goods in payment of their service\ , and out of an eagerness to settle old scores with the hated people they called Bostonians.\n\nMan: The Hudson River Valley\, the Mohawk River Vall ey\, the Adirondack Mountains\, Lake Champlain\, and up to the St.\n\nLawr ence River Valley\, that's been the battlefield for the colonial powers fo r centuries.\n\nAnd our people were swept up in it\, and a lot of what hap pened had more to do with what kings and queens in Europe were deciding.\n \nA major chess tournament happened here\, and we were the pawns.\n\nNarra tor: On June 20\, 1777\, Burgoyne's enormous army began moving south on La ke Champlain.\n\nScores of birch bark canoes paddled by Native Americans c ame first.\n\nThey were followed by Royal Navy warships and 200 bateaux ca rrying more than 6\,500 British and German regulars\, Loyalist troops\, an d French-speaking Canadians\, along with a number of children and hundreds of women.\n\nFort Ticonderoga\, on the west side of the lake\, was Burgoy ne's first target.\n\nIt was now linked by a floating bridge to a separate hilltop fortification on the east side called Mount Independence.\n\nDete rmined to take both outposts\, Burgoyne sent forces down each side of the lake by land.\n\nHe expected he would have to mount a full-scale siege\, b ut a British officer quickly spotted a fatal flaw in the rebel defenses.\n \nAbout a mile southwest of Ticonderoga stood a hill that overlooked both forts.\n\nIt remained undefended.\n\nIf British guns could be hauled to th e high ground\, both Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence would be comp letely exposed.\n\nWhen astonished Patriots spotted redcoats peering down from the hill on the afternoon of July 5th\, American General Arthur St.\n \nClair ordered both fortifications abandoned.\n\nThe next morning\, Briti sh troops raised the King's colors above Fort Ticonderoga.\n\n♪ The Amer icans fled in two directions\, with Burgoyne's men right behind them.\n\nA fter hours of tramping in the heat\, those Patriots heading east called a temporary halt at a tiny deserted frontier settlement called Hubbardton.\n \n[Bugle music] Voice: The morning after our retreat\, orders came very ea rly for the troops to refresh and be ready for marching.\n\nSome were eati ng\, some were cooking\, and all in a very unfit posture for battle.\n\n[M usket fire\, men shouting] Then there was a cry: \"The enemy are upon us!\ "\n\nEbenezer Fletcher\, 2nd New Hampshire.\n\nNarrator: Ebenezer Fletcher was a sixteen-year-old from New Ipswich\, New Hampshire.\n\nAs the menaci ng line of redcoats moved closer\, firing volleys as they came\, the 2nd N ew Hampshire fired back and then began to seek cover.\n\nVoice: Many of ou r party retreated into the woods.\n\nI made shelter for myself and dischar ged my piece.\n\nBut before I had time to reload it\, I received a musket ball in the small of my back and fell with my gun cocked.\n\n[Fletcher] Na rrator: Elsewhere\, the fighting intensified.\n\nIn the fierce combat that followed\, the Americans more than held their own against some of Britain 's best-trained professional soldiers.\n\nIn the end\, the British won\, b ut they were too tired to pursue the retreating Americans.\n\nThough in gr eat pain\, Ebenezer Fletcher decided to escape\; he slipped away into the forest\, eluded hungry wolves and bands of Loyalists\, and eventually made it home to New Ipswich\, New Hampshire.\n\nOnce he healed\, he would retu rn to serve out his three-year enlistment in the Continental Army.\n\n♪ Voice: It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods o r no god.\n\nIt neither picks my pocket\, nor breaks my leg.\n\n[Thomas Je fferson] [Bell ringing] Narrator: Most of the revolutionaries belonged to Protestant denominations\, but there were Catholics and Jews among them\, too\, as well as Muslims\, whose faith had crossed the Atlantic on slave s hips.\n\nCentral to the philosophy of some of the most influential creator s of the United States was their belief in a Supreme Being but one who did not interfere in the affairs of men or distinguish between faiths.\n\nThe y were deists\, and they believed it was each individual's responsibility to lead a virtuous life\, which could only come from tolerance and a lifet ime of learning: the pursuit of happiness.\n\n♪ Man: The revolutionaries believed that the American people would have to be educated.\n\nWithout e ducation\, there could be no virtue in the populace\, and without virtue i n the populace\, the government would fail.\n\nRepublics are based on auth ority coming from the bottom up\, not like monarchies from the top down.\n \nSo you require an educated\, virtuous-- they use that term over and over \, drawing it from antiquity-- virtuous population to sustain a republican government.\n\nVoice: Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York have long subsisted without any established religion at all.\n\nThey have made the happy discovery that the way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.\n\nLet us\, too\, give this experiment fair play.\n\nT homas Jefferson.\n\n♪ Voice: To Lord Germain\, I have the honor to infor m your Lordship that the enemy were dislodged from Ticonderoga and Mount I ndependence\, and were driven\, on the same day\, beyond Skenesborough on the right and to Hubbardton on the left.\n\nGeneral John Burgoyne.\n\n♪ Narrator: The armies had been moving at a dizzying pace.\n\nBurgoyne's for ces had reached Skenesborough by July 9th\, but they had now outrun their gigantic supply train.\n\nBurgoyne decided to send his guns by water\, sou th on Lake George.\n\nBut his men were to march through the woods to Fort Edward on the east bank of the Hudson just 23 miles away.\n\nGeneral Phili p Schuyler\, commander of the Continental Army's Northern Department\, sen t axmen into the woods to slow Burgoyne's overland advance.\n\nHe would le t the forest fight for him.\n\nThe narrow path between Skenesborough and F ort Edward ran along a twisting stream called Wood Creek.\n\nThe Americans felled trees every few feet on both sides of the road so that their tangl ed branches made the path impassable\; they also destroyed some 40 crude b ridges that crossed and recrossed the creek and used boulders to flood the boggy ground that surrounded it.\n\nIt would take Burgoyne's men three ex hausting weeks to turn the path into a road their wagons could navigate.\n \nAnd he was still a long way from his main objective--Albany.\n\n♪ Voic e: O the American war!\n\nI heard\, I saw\, I felt\, smelled\, and tasted its woes for ninety-two long months: famines\, sores\, sicknesses\, plague s\, battles\; houses ransacked and burned\; towns depopulated\; gardens ma de graves.\n\nRoger Lamb.\n\nNarrator: Among the men in Burgoyne's army wa s Irish-born Corporal Roger Lamb\, who kept his memories alive in watercol ors and in print.\n\n♪ By now\, 400 more Native Americans from the Great Lakes-- Fox\, Menominee\, Ojibwe\, Potawatomi\, Sauk\, and Ho-Chunk-- had joined Burgoyne.\n\nHis Indian allies attacked retreating Patriot forces. \n\nIn one instance\, they killed 22 men and scalped their corpses to terr ify those sent out in search of them.\n\nVoice: This strikes a panic in ou r men which is not to be wondered at\, when we consider the hazards they r un by being fired at from quarters\, and the woods so thick they can't see three yards before them\, and then to hear the cursed war whoop\, which m akes the woods ring for miles.\n\nGeneral John Glover.\n\nNarrator: Settle rs were attacked\, too\, with little regard for their loyalties.\n\nA youn g woman named Jane McCrea\, on her way to meet her Loyalist fiancé\, was killed.\n\nAnd when her scalp was brought into Burgoyne's camp\, he threat ened to hang the perpetrator.\n\nDeloria: We don't really know much about Jane McCrea.\n\nShe seems to have had reddish-brown hair and been an avera ge person.\n\nBut very quickly\, Jane McCrea becomes a blonde and she has very long\, beautiful hair.\n\nAnd she's pure and fair.\n\nAnd she's been plucked out of life right in her prime.\n\nDarren Bonaparte: It was just t oo captivating and tragic and scary a thing.\n\nThat became part of the pr opaganda aspect of the war.\n\nIt was used against us.\n\nDeloria: What ha ppens is the American propagandists are not simply attacking Indians\; the y're using it to attack the British themselves and British policy.\n\nIt's that the British sponsor Indian warfare that kills Jane McCrea\, and that becomes a very\, very powerful piece of cultural argument.\n\nNarrator: H undreds of Patriot soldiers continued to flee southward.\n\nBy the end of July 1777\, most of what was left of the American forces in the area had w ithdrawn to Saratoga\, a small cluster of houses north of Albany.\n\nVoice : To General Washington\, our army is weak in numbers.\n\nI foresee that a ll this part of the country will soon be in their power unless we are spee dily and largely reinforced.\n\nGeneral Schuyler.\n\nNarrator: Washington had been shocked to learn of Ticonderoga's fall\, but he also shared Natha nael Greene's view that \"General Burgoyne's triumphs \"may serve to bait his vanity and lead him on to his total ruin.\"\n\nTo try to bring on that ruin\, Washington took a calculated risk and sent some of his best office rs north-- General Benedict Arnold\, whose \"conduct and bravery\" he grea tly admired\, as well as Colonel Daniel Morgan and his sharpshooting front iersmen from Virginia.\n\nVoice: General Washington is certainly a most su rprising man\, one of nature's geniuses\, a heaven-born general if there i s any of that sort.\n\nThat a Negro-driver should\, with a ragged banditti of undisciplined people\, the scum and refuse of all nations on Earth\, s o long keep a British general at bay-- it is astonishing.\n\nIt is too muc h.\n\nNicholas Cresswell.\n\nNarrator: Burgoyne remained confident he woul d capture Albany.\n\nHe assured Lord Germain that the obstacles the Patrio ts were placing in the path of his army were merely acts of \"desperation and folly.\"\n\nHe had once hoped to join forces with General Howe on the Hudson River\, but Howe was already headed for Philadelphia.\n\n♪ Man: G eneral Howe can't go overland through New Jersey because the Americans are strong enough that they could really harass the column that he has to sen d down there.\n\nSo\, he decides to send his force by ship.\n\nNarrator: W ith favorable winds\, it should have taken the fleet a little over a week. \n\nBut winds died or blew the wrong way.\n\nLightning storms split masts and ripped sails.\n\nWater and provisions ran low.\n\nInstead of trying to sail up the Delaware River under Patriot guns\, the British would go stil l further south and approach Philadelphia via the Chesapeake Bay.\n\nVoice : I wish we could but fix upon their object.\n\nTheir conduct is really so mysterious that you cannot reason upon it so as to form any certain concl usions.\n\n[Washington] Narrator: When Washington finally got word that th e British had entered the Chesapeake\, he realized where they were headed and hurried his army to defend Philadelphia.\n\n♪ Voice: I think there c an be no doubt that Howe aims at this place.\n\nHe gives us an opportunity of exerting the strength of all the middle states against him\, while New York and New England are destroying Burgoyne.\n\nNow is the time.\n\nNeve r was so good an opportunity for my countrymen to turn out and crush that vaporing\, blustering bully to atoms.\n\nJohn Adams.\n\n[Crows cawing] Nar rator: By early August\, General Burgoyne was in trouble.\n\nHe had reache d the Hudson at Fort Edward\, but he was still 50 miles from Albany.\n\nHe would press on\, but to do that\, he needed more provisions.\n\nWhen he h eard that only a handful of militia were guarding a sizable rebel depot at Bennington\, he ordered nearly 800 men-- British\, German\, Native-Americ an\, French-Canadian\, and Loyalist troops-- to seize it.\n\n[Bagpipe musi c] The men spoke at least five different languages.\n\nTheir commander\, L ieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum\, was certain his disciplined forces had nothing to fear from what he called \"uncouth militia.\"\n\nBaer: Baum doe s not know English.\n\nHe doesn't really know the terrain.\n\nThere is som e confusion about where they're going\, who they're dealing with.\n\nThey go out towards Bennington\, and they are met by a large number of American s that had assembled there that they just had not anticipated.\n\nNarrator : There were far more than \"a handful\" of militiamen\; some 1\,800 New E nglanders and New Yorkers were waiting for them.\n\nFour miles west of Ben nington\, Colonel Baum spread his force in a wide arc with two strong poin ts-- a hastily-built redoubt atop a forested 300-foot hill in the center\, manned by British and German troops\, and a second redoubt on a less loft y hill defended by John Peters\, who had led his Queen's Loyal Rangers sou th from Canada back to near his old home in Vermont.\n\nOn August 16th\, a t 3:00 in the afternoon\, the Patriot commander\, John Stark of New Hampsh ire-- a hard-fighting veteran of Breed's Hill\, Trenton\, and Princeton-- sent his men forward.\n\n[Musket fire\, soldiers shouting] Narrator: The G ermans were quickly outflanked and outnumbered.\n\nBaum urged his dragoons to try to cut their way out through the swarming militia.\n\nMoments late r he fell\, mortally wounded.\n\nMeanwhile\, in and around the Loyalist re doubt\, old friends battled one another.\n\nVoice: As the rebels were comi ng up\, I observed a man fire at me\, which I returned.\n\nHe loaded again as he came up crying out\, \"Peters\, you damned Tory\, I have got you.\" \n\nI saw that it was a rebel captain\, Jeremiah Post\, an old schoolfello w and playmate and a cousin of my wife's.\n\nHe rushed on me with his bayo net\, which entered just below my left breast but was turned by the bone.\ n\nThough his bayonet was in my body\, I felt regret at being obliged to d estroy him.\n\n[Weapon fires] Colonel John Peters\, Queen's Loyal Rangers. \n\n[Musket fire] Narrator: All afternoon\, the battle went back and forth .\n\nThe Patriots eventually prevailed.\n\nWounded and with his son by his side\, John Peters led the survivors of his regiment back to Burgoyne's A rmy.\n\nFew of Colonel Baum's men escaped death\, injury\, or capture.\n\n Prisoners were packed into the Bennington Meeting House\, many badly wound ed.\n\nVoice: They were in all stages of suffering\, and some were dying.\ n\nSome of their fellow soldiers who were less seriously wounded would go to a dying comrade\, and\, kneeling by his side\, would clasp their hands\ , bow their heads\, and swaying their bodies up and down\, would mutter pr ayers in their own language.\n\nAnd when death came to him\, they would pa ss to another.\n\n[Woman] Narrator: At Bennington\, Burgoyne had lost near ly 15% of his army\, and he had accomplished nothing.\n\nAssurances about the near universality of Loyalist sentiments were dead wrong.\n\nVoice: Th e country now abounds in the most active and most rebellious race of the c ontinent\, and hangs like a gathering storm upon my left.\n\n[Burgoyne] ♪ Voice: Resolved that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes \, alternate red and white\, that the union be thirteen stars\, white in a blue field\, representing a new constellation.\n\n[The Flag Resolution] ♪ Narrator: During a short meeting devoted mostly to fiscal matters\, t he Continental Congress had called for a new flag to represent their new c ountry.\n\nBut two years later\, the committee of Congress overseeing the Army still regretted that there was as yet no \"national standard.\"\n\nSo me militia companies and privateers designed their own banners and had the ir wives and daughters make them.\n\nAlthough artists often included the S tars and Stripes in their postwar romantic renderings of Revolutionary eve nts\, it is not known ever actually to have been flown by the Continental Army above a battlefield\, nor does anyone know who made the first one.\n\ n♪ Voice: We know the Indians now to have the highest notions of liberty of any people on Earth-- a people who will never consider consequences wh en they think their liberty likely to be invaded\, though it may end in th eir ruin.\n\nGeorge Croghan.\n\nNarrator: The Haudenosaunee was a centurie s-old union comprised of the Six Nations-- Seneca\, Cayuga\, Onondaga\, Tu scarora\, Oneida\, and Mohawk.\n\nEach was allowed to act in its own inter est\, but they were expected to act together in matters affecting them all .\n\nThey likened their confederacy to a \"great longhouse.\"\n\nThe Senec as were the keepers of its western door\, the Mohawks--the eastern door.\n \nAt the center was Onondaga\, where representatives met around the Great Council Fire.\n\nMan: Normally you hammer things out until everybody says\ , \"OK\, this is what we will do.\"\n\nAnd that had endured\, right?\n\nBa ttered and bruised and bombarded through colonial wars and all the rest of it.\n\nThat had endured.\n\nAnd then the Revolution occurs.\n\n[Cannon fi ring] Bonaparte: For us\, the Mohawk people\, it was survival.\n\nPeriod.\ n\nAnd you didn't know which side was going to be the best choice.\n\nWe k ind of gravitated mostly to the British because they had kind of won our r espect\, beating the French\, and pretty much having our interests when th ey dealt with the regular colonists.\n\nVoice: The disturbances in America give great trouble to all our nations.\n\nThe Mohawks\, our particular na tion\, have on all occasions shown their zeal and loyalty to the Great Kin g.\n\nThayendanegea.\n\nNarrator: No Mohawk man identified more closely wi th the British than Thayendanegea\, who was also known as Joseph Brant.\n\ nHis sister Molly had married the British superintendent of Indian affairs \, and her connections helped Brant make his name among the English.\n\nHe had fought for the Crown in the French and Indian War at 15\, attended an English mission school\, and\, in 1776\, traveled to London\, where he re affirmed his people's loyalty to Britain in an audience with King George I II.\n\nMany of the Indian people in this time are kind of anonymous to us in some ways because we don't have accurate representations of them\, but one of the major exceptions is Joseph Brant\, who had his portrait painted not once but many\, many times.\n\nThis is the 18th century.\n\nNot just anybody got their portrait painted.\n\nTo have your portrait painted multi ple times was unusual.\n\nI think he controlled his space.\n\n\"I confound your stereotypical images of savage Indians.\"\n\nNarrator: Brant had fou ght against the Patriots at the Battle of Long Island\, then began traveli ng from town to town within the Six Nations\, urging the young men to join him.\n\nIt was imperative\, he told them\, to \"defend\" our \"lands and liberty against the rebels \"who\, in a great measure\, began the rebellio n to be sole Masters of the Continent.\"\n\nBut suspicious of the way Bran t seemed to move between the Indian and British worlds\, more traditional leaders resented this minor chief's ambition to lead them into war\, and p referred to hold back until it seemed clear Britain was headed for victory .\n\nAnd so\, when Brant assembled his armed Volunteers\, only a handful w ere from the Six Nations.\n\nPerhaps 80% of them were Loyalist settlers di sguised as Indians.\n\n♪ In early August\, Brant's men were with British forces as they initiated the second part of Burgoyne's grand scheme to se ize the Hudson and cut off the New England states.\n\nThey started by layi ng siege to Fort Stanwix\, a Patriot outpost far west on the Mohawk River\ , a crucial meeting place that connected the Great Lakes with the East.\n\ nThe British had believed the fort was only thinly defended and in disrepa ir.\n\nActually\, it was held by some 600 Continental soldiers\, and they had been strengthening the fortifications at the urging of some Oneidas\, who made their homes in the valley and did not share Joseph Brant's enthus iasm for the Crown.\n\nThe American Revolution was about to plunge the onc e-united Six Nations into a civil war of their own.\n\nCalloway: Many Onei das were closer to the Americans.\n\nSome are intermarried.\n\nOneida peop le were\, in many cases\, surrounded by American colonists.\n\nNarrator: W hen an 800-man Patriot militia column commanded by General Nicholas Herkim er reached Oriska\, an Oneida settlement on Oriskany Creek just eight mile s from the embattled Fort Stanwix\, sixty Oneida chiefs and warriors joine d them.\n\nThey were ready to fight alongside their White neighbors and he lp thwart the British invasion.\n\nJoseph Brant and his men were waiting f or them\, alongside hundreds of other Mohawks\, Senecas\, and Loyalists.\n \n[Woman singing in Native American language on soundtrack] On the morning of August 6\, 1777\, as Herkimer's long column filed into a ravine and be gan splashing across a stream\, Loyalists fired from above\, while hundred s of Native Americans allied with the British ran down among the startled men\, wielding tomahawks\, clubs\, and scalping knives.\n\n♪ Bonaparte: It was a slaughter.\n\nIt was horrific what happened.\n\nAnd even the Nati ve people who survived the war said they'd never experienced anything like that.\n\n♪ Narrator: Perhaps as many as 400 Patriot militia lay dead\, including some 30 of their Oneida allies.\n\nAlmost 100 of the British for ces had been killed or wounded\, 65 of whom were Indians.\n\nThe Mohawks a nd Senecas were accustomed to warfare that yielded far fewer casualties\, and were stunned.\n\nVoice: There\, I have seen the most dead bodies all o ver it that I never did see\, and never will again.\n\nI thought\, at the time\, the bloodshed a stream running down on the descending ground.\n\nAn d yet some living crying for help\, but have no mercy on to be spared of t hem.\n\nChainbreaker.\n\n♪ Bonaparte: We look back on the Battle of Oris kany as one of those points where the Longhouse seemed to be burning-- the all-time worst-case scenario\, where we're actually killing each other in combat.\n\nFor what?\n\nFor what?\n\nFor somebody else can claim our land ?\n\n[Musket fire] Narrator: Fort Stanwix continued to hold out.\n\nBritis h artillery proved too light to damage the fort's reinforced walls.\n\nThe n word came that General Benedict Arnold and a large force of Continentals were on their way to break the siege.\n\nBritain's Native American allies decided to go home.\n\nThey wanted time to mourn their dead.\n\nWithout t hem\, the cause was lost.\n\nThe British withdrew their remaining forces a nd returned to Canada.\n\nThe other army Burgoyne had once hoped would mee t him at Albany would not be there.\n\nMeanwhile\, General Horatio Gates\, the new commander of the Continental Army's Northern Department\, was met hodically gathering his forces near the village of Saratoga to stop Burgoy ne.\n\n♪ [Horse clopping] Voice: Philadelphia is the asylum of the disaf fected.\n\nThe very air is contagious.\n\nThe Quakers in general are wolve s in sheep's clothing.\n\nAnd while they shelter themselves under the pret ext of contentious scruples\, they are the more dangerous.\n\nPhilip Schuy ler.\n\nNarrator: Philadelphia may have been the place where the Patriots were trying to form a national government\, but its citizens were deeply d ivided.\n\nI think one of the really great examples of the difficulties of any kind of sort of neutral place is what happens to the Quakers over the course of the war.\n\nThe Quakers are famously pacifist.\n\nAnd that's no t good enough in Revolutionary America.\n\nNarrator: When the first annive rsary of American independence was celebrated in the city that July\, Patr iots had called upon homeowners to place candles in their windows as a sym bol of fidelity to the cause.\n\nThomas and Sarah Fisher's home on Second Street remained dark that evening\, and suffered fifteen broken windows.\n \nThe Fishers were Quakers and therefore officially neutral.\n\nTheir fait h\, one believer explained\, held that \"setting up and putting down of ki ngs and governments is God's peculiar prerogative.\"\n\nPatriots routinely raided their shops and warehouses to supply the Continental Army.\n\nBut the Fishers were defiant: they would not accept Continental money or pay a ny tax that supported the war\, and they refused to denounce King George I II.\n\nOn August 23rd\, the Fishers rode out to Stenton\, Sarah's family's country estate near Germanton.\n\nVoice: On the road\, we heard the disag reeable news that Washington's army is to march that way.\n\nWe met number s of wagons and light horsemen\, and\, on our getting to Stenton\, found G eneral Washington's bodyguard had taken possession of our house.\n\nThey b ehaved civil\, were very quiet.\n\nAnd Washington appeared extremely grave and thoughtful.\n\n[Sarah Fisher] ♪ Narrator: On August 24th\, Washingt on paraded his men through the streets of Philadelphia.\n\nHe hoped to per suade its citizens that his army would be able to defend them.\n\nMany in the crowd cheered\; others remained stone-faced.\n\nAmong the officers rid ing alongside Washington that day was a Frenchman\, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier-- the Marquis de Lafayette.\n\nCongress had just m ade him a major general.\n\nHe was just nineteen years old.\n\nVoice: The welfare of America is intimately bound up with the happiness of humanity.\ n\nShe is going to become the deserving and sure refuge of virtue\, of hon esty\, of tolerance\, of equality\, and of a tranquil liberty.\n\n[Lafayet te] Woman: Lafayette comes without a word of English but just with a sense that the American continent is the continent on which he will make his na me\, on which he stakes his glory\, and with a willingness to essentially do anything that needs to be done for the sake of American independence.\n \nNarrator: Europe was momentarily at peace\, and Lafayette was just one o f many young officers-- from France\, Bavaria\, Prussia\, and Poland-- all eager to show what they could do on the battlefield in the New World.\n\n But Lafayette stood out.\n\nHe was so rich\, he bought the ship in which h e and a dozen other would-be officers had crossed the ocean.\n\nThe young man's military experience was minimal\, but his father had been killed by British artillery when he was two.\n\n\"To injure England is to serve my c ountry\,\" he said.\n\nAnd he was determined to become a real major genera l\, commanding a division of his own.\n\nde Rode: To George Washington\, L afayette was interesting.\n\nHe had personal money with him that he could invest to buy uniforms\, to buy supplies.\n\nHe had a very important netwo rk at the French Court because he was\, himself\, from a very powerful fam ily.\n\nSo\, if he could advocate for the cause of the American Revolution in France\, it could create very important support from Versailles.\n\nNa rrator: Washington liked him from the first\, but would not consider givin g him a command until he had seen how he fared in battle.\n\nUntil then\, he said\, Lafayette was to join his staff\, to consider himself part of hi s military family.\n\n♪ Voice: I feel in a most painful situation betwee n hope and fear.\n\nThere must be fighting and very bloody battles\, too\, I apprehend.\n\nWhy is man called humane when he delights so much in bloo d\, slaughter\, and devastation?\n\nEven those who are styled civilized na tions think this little spot worth contending for\, even to blood.\n\nAbig ail Adams.\n\n♪ Narrator: On August 25th\, after five miserable weeks at sea\, General Howe's 16\,000-man army finally began to disembark near the mouth of the Elk River in Maryland.\n\nAtkinson: This is in the middle of the summer.\n\nIt's broiling hot.\n\nThese men have been on the ships for weeks.\n\nThe horses are dying by the scores.\n\nBut they disembark at th e head of the Chesapeake Bay.\n\nAnd now they're looking for the Americans .\n\nVoice: Almost every movement of the war in North America is an act of enterprise\, clogged with innumerable difficulties.\n\nA knowledge of the country\, intersected\, as it everywhere is\, by woods\, mountains\, wate rs\, or morasses\, cannot be obtained with any degree of precision.\n\nGen eral William Howe.\n\nNarrator: To block the enemy's advance on Philadelph ia\, George Washington interposed his 14\,000-man army along Brandywine Cr eek\, some 30 miles west of the city.\n\nThe bulk of his force guarded Cha d's Ford\, prepared to face Howe's army in the open.\n\nWashington made su re his men understood what was at stake.\n\nVoice: If the enemy is overthr own\, the war is at an end.\n\nOne bold stroke will free the land from dev astations and burnings.\n\nIf we behave like men\, this campaign will be o ur last.\n\n[Washington] Narrator: General Howe\, now encamped near the vi llage of Kennet Square\, was eager for a climactic battle\, too.\n\nHe did n't think he could end the rebellion at one blow\, but if he could destroy Washington's army and then seize Philadelphia\, he would surely make that objective much easier.\n\nHis plan was to divide his army and flank Washi ngton's\, just as he had on Long Island the previous summer.\n\nA little l ess than half his force\, commanded by the German General Knyphausen\, was to move toward Chad's Ford and keep Washington's army pinned down there\, braced for an all-out attack.\n\nMeanwhile\, the rest of General Howe's f orce\, led by General Cornwallis and Howe himself\, would move north as qu ietly as possible to attack the right flank of the rebel army.\n\nThat att ack was to be the signal for Knyphausen at Chad's Ford to storm across the Brandywine.\n\nIf all went as planned\, General Howe would be able to tra p Washington's army between the two forces.\n\nWashington\, again\, misrea ds the ground.\n\nHe has made tactical errors earlier in the war at the Ba ttle of Long Island\, and he makes another one at Brandywine.\n\nHe believ es that there are no fords up Brandywine Creek that the British can get ac ross securely to outflank the Americans.\n\nThat's not true.\n\nThere are fords up there.\n\nThe British find them.\n\nThe British are well-informed .\n\nThere are a number of Loyalists who are acting as guides\; they're pr oviding information about the terrain\, about the topography\, about\, \"H ere on the map is where you can get around these American positions.\"\n\n ♪ Narrator: At daybreak on September 11\, 1777\, Generals Howe and Cornw allis set out on what would be a twisting seventeen-mile march to get behi nd the Americans.\n\nA dense morning fog screened their movements.\n\nGene ral Knyphausen and his column began moving east soon after\, along the Gre at Post Road toward Chad's Ford.\n\n[Cannon and musket fire] Forward eleme nts of the American Army had felled trees across the road.\n\nRiflemen hid den in the woods fired into the enemy's ranks.\n\nAmerican guns across the creek lobbed shells among them.\n\nBut by midmorning\, Knyphausen's men h ad driven the American advance troops back across the Brandywine\, ready t o storm across the creek when the signal was given.\n\nAt his headquarters \, General Washington was unsure what was happening.\n\nAnd so\, he settle d in for what he believed would be an all-out frontal assault across Chad' s Ford\, just as Howe wanted him to.\n\nMeanwhile\, Howe and Cornwallis' m en had waded across two waist-deep fords far upstream and marched for hour s in intense heat without a break.\n\nThe weary British and German troops halted on the bare slopes of Osborne's Hill to rest.\n\nThey stayed there long enough for Washington to finally learn of the coming attack on his fl ank and order three brigades to leave their positions along the river and form a defensive line at another hill on which the Birmingham Meeting Hous e stood: John Sullivan's men from Maryland and Delaware\, William Alexande r's from Pennsylvania and New Jersey\, and Adam Stephen's Virginians-- som e 3\,000 soldiers.\n\n[Cannon and musket fire] At around 4:00 in the after noon\, Howe ordered his much larger force forward in three perfectly disci plined columns.\n\nAmerican marksmen fired into them from an apple orchard .\n\nAmerican artillery tore through their ranks.\n\nThe redcoats kept com ing.\n\nSullivan's brigade broke and ran\, but the others held firm.\n\nVo ice: There was a most infernal fire of cannon and musketry\, the most ince ssant shouting.\n\n\"Incline to the right!\"\n\n\"Incline to the left!\"\n \n\"Halt!\"\n\n\"Fire!\"\n\n\"Charge!\"\n\nThe balls plowing up the ground .\n\nThe trees crackling over one's head.\n\nThe branches riven by the art illery.\n\nThe leaves falling as in autumn by the grapeshot.\n\n[British s oldier] [Soldiers shouting] Man: A battle like Brandywine saw suffering at every corner.\n\nIt was a hellscape in so many different ways.\n\nCannonb alls ripping through the forest\; splinters killing men\, just taking off arms\, legs.\n\n[Cannons firing] Narrator: The outnumbered Americans were driven back five times\, and five times managed to surge forward again bef ore they finally broke.\n\nHad General Nathanael Greene and his reinforcem ents not raced some four miles in less than forty-five minutes to cover th eir retreat\, it might have become a rout.\n\nBack at Chad's Ford\, the so und of the fighting on Birmingham Hill had been the signal for General Kny phausen to send his army streaming across the Brandywine.\n\nThe remaining Patriots could not hold.\n\nWashington ordered a retreat.\n\n♪ Night fe ll.\n\nGeneral Howe lamented that if he had more time\, he could have brou ght about the rebel army's \"total overthrow.\"\n\nAtkinson: The Americans \, only by the grace of darkness\, get away.\n\nThe British can't chase th em any further in the dark.\n\nIt's a serious defeat for the Americans.\n\ nIt is going to open the gateway toward Philadelphia.\n\n♪ Voice: We exp erienced another drubbing.\n\nBut we did\, I think\, as well as could be e xpected.\n\nI saw not a despairing look\, nor did I hear a despairing word .\n\nWe had our solacing words always ready for each other: \"Come\, boys\ , we shall do better another time.\"\n\nSuch was the spirit of the times.\ n\nCaptain Enoch Anderson.\n\n♪ Narrator: The spirit of the times was no t universal\, as Washington's beaten army stumbled through the dark.\n\nHu ndreds of men melted away into the countryside and headed home\, making an accurate count of casualties impossible.\n\nBut more than 1\,000 American s are thought to have been killed\, wounded\, or taken captive during the Battle of Brandywine\, roughly twice as many casualties as the British had suffered.\n\nVoice: Our Americans\, after holding firm for considerable t ime\, were finally routed.\n\nWhile I was trying to rally them\, the Engli sh honored me with a musket shot\, which wounded me slightly in the leg.\n \nBut the wound is nothing.\n\nThe ball hit neither bone nor nerve\, and a ll I have to do for it is to lie on my back for a while.\n\nMarquis de Laf ayette.\n\n♪ [Waves breaking\, ship's rigging creaking] Voice: I needed all my courage and tenderness to keep my resolution of following my husban d.\n\nBesides the perils of the sea\, I was told that we would be exposed to be eaten by the savages\, and that people in America lived upon horse f lesh and cats.\n\nBaroness Friederike Riedesel.\n\nNarrator: When German G eneral Friedrich Adolph Riedesel left Europe in 1776 to join General Burgo yne's northern campaign\, he had left his pregnant wife and two small daug hters at home.\n\nBut as soon as she could\, after her third daughter was born\, Baroness Riedesel crossed the Atlantic with all three girls.\n\nIn mid-August\, she caught up with her husband and Burgoyne's army at Fort Ed ward.\n\nVoice: In the beginning\, all went well.\n\nWe cherished the swee t hope of a sure victory and of coming into the promised land.\n\nAnd when on the passage across the Hudson\, General Burgoyne exclaimed\, \"The Eng lish never lose ground\,\" our spirits were greatly exhilarated.\n\n[Baron ess Riedesel] Narrator: On September 13\, 1777\, two days after Washington 's defeat at the Battle of the Brandywine\, General Burgoyne's army in New York began streaming across the Hudson near Saratoga on a bridge of boats covered with planks.\n\nOfficers and men\, women\, children\, horses\, ca ttle\, wagons\, field-pieces-- it took three days for it all to cross.\n\n Waiting for them some 10 miles south of Saratoga were General Horatio Gate s' 6\,900 Continentals and 1\,300 militia\, dug in along Bemis Heights\, a broad plateau anchored on the right by the Hudson River and sheltered on the left by craggy wooded bluffs.\n\nColonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko\, a Polish volunteer for the Americans\, had chosen the site and laid out brigade en campments\, breastworks\, and artillery emplacements all along the Heights for 3/4 of a mile.\n\nPatriot cannon commanded the river road to Albany.\ n\nOfficers had a clear view of the rough terrain across which the British would have to march-- deep ravines and dense woods\, broken here and ther e by half-cleared farmers' fields.\n\nMost of Burgoyne's Native scouts had left him by now\, so while he knew the Americans were somewhere ahead of him\, he had no way of knowing how many they were or precisely how they we re positioned.\n\nOn September 19th\, he resolved to find out and then try to drive through the rebel lines.\n\nHe divided his force into three colu mns.\n\nScottish General Simon Fraser\, with nearly 3\,000 troops\, set ou t to pinpoint his enemy's flank\, hoping to locate high ground from which to fire on the rebels.\n\n2\,200 soldiers under German General Riedesel ap proached along the river road.\n\nBurgoyne himself led the middle column-- some 1\,700 soldiers--to assault what he guessed was the center of the Am erican lines.\n\nWatching from Bemis Heights\, General Gates was content t o wait.\n\nThis was his first battlefield command\, and he was a careful\, cautious man.\n\nBoth Fraser's and Riedesel's columns stalled\, but Burgo yne's men managed to make it through the forest to a clearing named Freema n's Farm\, where General Benedict Arnold and Daniel Morgan's riflemen went out to engage them.\n\n[Musket fire] Atkinson: General Burgoyne asks for reinforcements.\n\nRiedesel\, who's a very fine commander\, immediately se nds some reinforcements up from the river to hit the Americans in the Amer ican right flank.\n\nAnd this successfully stops the American momentum.\n\ nThis First Battle of Saratoga\, the Battle of Freeman Farm\, it's a draw\ , basically.\n\nYou can say that the British have been successful in that they have held onto the ground\, but for the most part\, it's inconclusive .\n\nNarrator: Burgoyne had not located the main rebel positions on Bemis Heights\, and had lost 591 men\, nearly twice as many as the Patriots had lost\, and\, unlike General Gates\, Burgoyne had no realistic prospect of replacing them.\n\n♪ Voice: I was an eyewitness of the whole affair and shivered at every shot\, for I could hear everything.\n\nI saw a great num ber of wounded.\n\nAnd what was still more harrowing\, they even brought t hree of them into the house where I was.\n\n[Baroness Riedesel] ♪ Woman: Imagine what a battlefield looks like after a battle.\n\nIt has a lot of bodies.\n\nIt has a lot of blood and gore.\n\nAnd it was the job of women to go in and take care of those bodies\, to clean them up\, to identify th em\, if they could\, to see over the burial of bodies.\n\nPart of the work of war is dealing with death.\n\nVoice: Although we repulsed them with lo ss\, we ourselves were much weakened.\n\nThe bodies of the slain were scar cely covered with the clay.\n\nAnd the only tribute of respect to fallen o fficers was to bury them by themselves\, without throwing them in the comm on grave.\n\nSo destruction comes with rapid wings\, and ruin rushes on li ke a whirlwind to sweep the best officers\, and sometimes almost entire ba ttalions\, from their strongest foundations.\n\nRoger Lamb.\n\n♪ Voice: Harassed and exhausted by perpetual change from bad to worse\, my poor aff licted mother consented to go beyond the mountains to Winchester.\n\nIt wa s indeed a new world to us-- rude and wild as nature had made it.\n\nBetsy Ambler.\n\n♪ Narrator: Betsy Ambler and her family from Yorktown\, Virg inia\, had been on the move since the war began\, trying to find a place t hat suited her mother's frail health and was safe from the British.\n\nFor decades\, Winchester\, Virginia\, in the Shenandoah Valley\, had been an important waystation on the Great Wagon Road that settlers followed throug h the backcountry from Philadelphia to the Carolinas.\n\nBecause it was so far inland\, Winchester served new purposes: it was a relatively safe pla ce for storing military supplies and materiel\; a safe haven for refugees\ ; and a place to house prisoners of war.\n\nSuspected Loyalists were often exiled to Winchester\, too.\n\nVoice: We not unfrequently made acquaintan ce with agreeable men who were condemned to banishment in this dreary plac e on account of \"disaffection\,\" as it was called\, to the great cause o f liberty.\n\nAmongst those proscribed\, genteel Quakers from Philadelphia were numerous.\n\n[Ambler] Narrator: One of those Quakers was Sarah Fishe r's husband Thomas.\n\nAs British troops advanced on Philadelphia\, Congre ss and the local authorities had convinced themselves that he and seven ot her wealthy Quakers were communicating with the enemy.\n\nThey had them ar rested\, and when they again refused to swear allegiance to the new govern ment\, loaded them into wagons and sent them off under guard to Winchester .\n\n♪ Now alone in Philadelphia\, Sarah Fisher had two small boys to ca re for and was nearly eight months' pregnant.\n\nVoice: I feel forlorn and desolate\, and the world appears like a dreary desert\, almost without an y visible protecting hand to guard us from the ravenous wolves and lions t hat prowl about for prey\, seeking to devour those harmless innocents that don't go hand-in-hand with them in their cruelty and rapine.\n\n[Fisher] Narrator: Her husband's only crime\, Sarah Fisher said\, was that he saw h imself as a subject of Britain.\n\nBut she was cheered to see that rebels and their sympathizers\, including all the members of the Continental Cong ress\, were now fleeing the city in fear of the enemy's approach after the American defeat at Brandywine.\n\nVoice: People in very great confusion\, some flying one way and some another\, as if not knowing where to go or w hat to do.\n\nWagons rattling\, horses galloping\, women running\, childre n crying\, delegates flying\, and altogether the greatest consternation\, fright\, and terror that can be imagined.\n\n[Fisher] ♪ Narrator: George Washington still hoped somehow to keep the British from occupying Philade lphia.\n\nHe ordered General Anthony Wayne and his Pennsylvania division t o attack the rear of the advancing army.\n\nBut local Loyalists alerted Ge neral Howe that Wayne and his men were camped near the Paoli Tavern\, and he sent 1\,700 soldiers to deal with them.\n\n♪ As they approached throu gh the woods on the night of September 20th\, they were ordered to remove the flints from their muskets for fear someone's gun would go off and aler t the sleeping rebels.\n\nThey fixed bayonets and exploded out of the tree s with what a British officer remembered: \"such a cheer as made the wood echo.\"\n\n[Sound of musket fire\, bayonets stabbing\, soldiers shouting] Voice: The light infantry bayoneted every man they came up with.\n\nAnd th e cries of the wounded formed altogether one of the most dreadful scenes I ever beheld.\n\nEvery man that fired was instantly put to death.\n\nLieut enant Martin Hunter.\n\nNarrator: At least 53 Patriots were stabbed to dea th\, and more than 200 were wounded or captured.\n\nAmericans would rememb er it as the Paoli Massacre.\n\nWashington gave up hope of holding Philade lphia.\n\n♪ Six days after the massacre\, September 26\, 1777\, General Cornwallis led 3\,000 victorious British troops into Philadelphia.\n\nVoic e: About 10 o'clock\, the troops began to enter.\n\nA band of music played a tune\, which I afterwards understood was called \"God save Great George Our King.\"\n\nThen followed the soldiers\, no wanton levity\, or indecen t mirth\, but a gravity well becoming the occasion on all their faces.\n\n Sarah Fisher.\n\nNarrator: General Howe\, with 8\,000 more troops camped i n Germanton\, made his headquarters at Stenton\, Sarah Fisher's country ho me that had only a few weeks before been occupied by George Washington.\n\ nAt Brandywine\, General Howe had repeated the tactics that had won the Ba ttle of Long Island.\n\nNow Washington hoped to repeat his successful surp rise attack on Trenton by hitting Howe at Germanton in early October.\n\nW ashington's plan was ambitious and complicated.\n\nSuccess would depend on dividing his 11\,000-man force into four separate columns to undertake mi les-long marches at night on poorly marked roads so as to arrive simultane ously on the town's northern and western edges at precisely 5 A.M.\n\non O ctober 4th.\n\nThen\, at dawn\, they were to storm into town on four diffe rent roads.\n\nIt would be the first time during the Revolution that Washi ngton dared hurl his army against the main British force.\n\n[Musket fire] John Sullivan's and Anthony Wayne's columns swiftly swept aside British p ickets north of the town.\n\nWayne's men found themselves face-to-face wit h the British Light Infantry\, the same soldiers who had massacred so many of their comrades at Paoli just two weeks earlier.\n\nVoice: Our people p ushed on with their bayonets and took ample vengeance for that night's wor k.\n\nThe rage and fury of the soldiers were not to be restrained.\n\n[Gen eral Anthony Wayne] Narrator: The Americans continued to push the British back through the town\, driving them from one fenced yard to the next.\n\n Voice: Fortune smiled on our arms.\n\nThe enemy were broke\, dispersed\, a nd flying in all quarters.\n\nWe were in possession of their whole encampm ent.\n\n[Wayne] Narrator: In the face of the advancing Americans\, British Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Musgrave ordered half his regiment-- between 10 0 and 120 soldiers-- to duck inside the largest house in Germanton\, the h ome of Benjamin Chew\, the Loyalist ex-chief justice of Pennsylvania.\n\nI ts walls were two feet thick.\n\nMusgrave directed his men to block the do or and ground-floor windows with furniture.\n\nDownstairs\, his men were t o bayonet anyone who dared try to enter while others fired into the passin g rebels from the upstairs windows.\n\nAtkinson: Washington is advised\, \ "Bypass them.\n\nGo around them.\n\nIsolate them.\n\nKeep the momentum goi ng.\"\n\nNarrator: But Henry Knox insisted that the house had to be taken right away.\n\n\"It would be unmilitary\,\" he said\, \"to leave a castle in our rear.\"\n\nWashington agreed.\n\n[Cannons firing] Artillery blew in the front door and damaged statuary in the garden\, but bounced harmlessl y off the walls.\n\nContinentals from New Jersey repeatedly stormed the ho use and were cut down on the lawn and front steps.\n\nAs the siege at the Chew House went on\, the bulk of the American force streamed past\, contin uing to drive the British back.\n\nA Patriot victory seemed likely.\n\nVoi ce: About this time came on perhaps the thickest fog known in the memory o f man\, which\, together with the smoke\, brought on almost midnight darkn ess.\n\nIt was not possible to distinguish friend from foe at five yards d istance.\n\n[Elias Dayton] Narrator: When the men who had penetrated the f arthest heard the furious gunfire still coming from the Chew House\, they believed the enemy had somehow gotten behind them.\n\nNow it was the Patri ots who began to fall back.\n\nGeneral Cornwallis himself led the countera ttack.\n\nHis troops freed Musgrave's men from the Chew House and drove th e Americans back along the roads they'd followed into town.\n\nThe British had won...again.\n\n♪ Voice: I rode over the battlefield\, and with sur prise and admiration approached the house\, which the brave Colonel Musgra ve had defended.\n\nDuring the battle\, some thirty defenders were killed and wounded.\n\nI counted seventy-five dead Americans.\n\nThe rooms of the house were riddled by cannonball and looked like a slaughterhouse because of the blood splattered around.\n\nThere\, the entire English army was sa ved.\n\nJohann Ewald.\n\nFor the Americans\, what had been a sure victory- - it looked like they were going to drive the British back into Philadelph ia--becomes a fairly significant defeat.\n\nWashington gets away again\, b ut there are hundreds of casualties.\n\nThe British capture quite a few Am ericans.\n\nAnd what had been a glorious morning turns into a very grim ev ening.\n\nNarrator: Reporting to Congress\, Washington tried to put the be st face he could on his humiliating defeat.\n\nVoice: Upon the whole\, it may be said the day was rather unfortunate than injurious.\n\nWe sustained no material loss of men and brought off all our artillery\, except one pi ece.\n\nThe enemy are nothing the better by the event.\n\nAnd our troops\, who are not in the least dispirited by it\, have gained what all young tr oops gain by being in actions.\n\n[Washington] He is very good at\, I thin k\, the key tactic for an insurrectionary force\, which is living to fight another day\, and successfully plays a long game of just not being crushe d.\n\nEllis: Washington's not a great field commander\, but he's resilient \, and he understands the kind of war he's fighting.\n\nAt some point\, he reaches the insight-- and it's a basic insight-- he doesn't have to win.\ n\nThe British have to win.\n\nHe only has not to lose.\n\n♪ Voice: The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different\, the re was so great a variety of religions\, they were composed of so many dif ferent nations\, their customs\, manners\, and habits had so little resemb lance\, their intercourse had been so rare\, and their knowledge of each o ther so imperfect that to unite them in the same principles of theory and the same system of action\, was certainly a very difficult enterprise.\n\n John Adams.\n\n♪ Narrator: After fleeing Philadelphia\, the Continental Congress reconvened in a small county courthouse in York\, Pennsylvania.\n \nThe delegates had taken just 27 days of discussion the previous year to declare American independence\, but it would take them 526 days to fashion the Articles of Confederation.\n\nThey were meant in part to demonstrate to France that the thirteen former colonies could act effectively together \, but the result was not a government.\n\nWoman: They needed to have a wa y to pay for wars\; they needed to run wars.\n\nThey needed to possess Nat ive lands\; they needed to redistribute those lands.\n\nBut the Articles h ad so much political compromise that it wasn't a functional centralized go vernment.\n\nNarrator: By design\, the Articles of Confederation were weak and constrained.\n\nEach state remained a more or less independent republ ic jealously guarding its own sovereignty and freedom.\n\nCongress had no power to tax\, which meant it couldn't pay the soldiers in the Continental Army.\n\nAnd before the Articles could even become operative\, they neede d to be ratified by all the states.\n\nThat would take another 39 months.\ n\n♪ Voice: The armies were so near that not a night passed without firi ng.\n\nNo foraging party could be made without great detachments to cover it.\n\nI do not believe either officer or soldier ever slept during that i nterval.\n\nGeneral John Burgoyne.\n\nNarrator: For eighteen days after th e Battle of Freeman's Farm near Saratoga\, the American and British armies strengthened their defenses and skirmished constantly but remained precis ely where they had been when the shooting stopped.\n\nMeanwhile\, Loyalist refugees continued to stream into the British camp\, forcing Burgoyne to reduce rations by a third.\n\nDesertions\, especially among German troops\ , rose so fast that Baron Riedesel promised his soldiers ten guineas for e very would-be deserter they brought back and five guineas if he had to be shot for resisting.\n\nAt 11:00 in the morning on October 7th\, Burgoyne l ed some 1\,500 men out of his camp and formed a long\, thin line across tw o unharvested wheat fields just west of Freeman's Farm\, redcoats on the r ight\, Germans in the center\, elite British grenadiers on the left.\n\nWh ile some of his men harvested the wheat his encampment desperately needed\ , Burgoyne and several of his officers climbed onto the roof of a log cabi n with spyglasses\, trying to see if there was a way around the rebel left .\n\nTall trees blocked them from seeing anything useful\, but Americans p atrolling the no man's land saw them.\n\n[Musket fire] Shots were exchange d.\n\nFrom Bemis Heights\, General Gates now ordered Daniel Morgan's corps and Brigadier General Enoch Poor's brigades to attack the British on both flanks.\n\nBritish General Fraser was killed.\n\nThe redcoats crumbled.\n \nThen Benedict Arnold galloped onto the battlefield.\n\nHe seemed to be e verywhere\, leading a charge against the British center\, racing between t he armies through a swarm of musket balls to rally another regiment so tha t they could sweep the defenders from two fortified cabins.\n\nHe urged th e exhausted men on to seize a redoubt manned by some 200 German grenadiers .\n\nVoice: You cannot conceive how men looked.\n\nAnd at first it appeare d to me that if the order came for us to march\, I could not do it.\n\nNat haniel Bacheller.\n\nNarrator: But when Arnold gave the order\, Bacheller and his comrades climbed to their feet and moved forward again\, shouting as they rushed toward the front of the redoubt.\n\nArnold rode around it\, forced his way inside\, and demanded that its defenders surrender.\n\nMos t did surrender or fled\, but one fired a musket ball that shattered Arnol d's left leg\, the same leg that had been wounded at Quebec two years befo re\, and killed his horse\, which fell on him.\n\nUnable to move\, Arnold continued to shout orders until the fighting died down and he could be car ried from the field.\n\n\"Arnold was our fighting general\,\" one of his m en remembered.\n\n\"He was as brave a man as ever lived.\"\n\nPhilbrick: I think it's safe to say that Benedict Arnold should be regarded as the her o of Saratoga.\n\nIt was really an aggressive move at the end that sealed the victory for the Americans.\n\nNarrator: The British stumbled back to S aratoga\, carrying their wounded with them.\n\n[Cannons firing] Voice: Oct ober 10th--Saratoga.\n\nA frightful cannonade began\, principally directed against the house in which we had sought shelter\, probably because the e nemy believed that all the generals made it their headquarters.\n\nAlas!\n \nIt harbored none but wounded soldiers or women.\n\nWe were finally oblig ed to take refuge in a cellar.\n\nMy children laid down on the earth with their heads upon my lap.\n\nMy own anguish prevented me from closing my ey es.\n\nEleven cannonballs went through the house\, and we could plainly he ar them rolling over our heads.\n\nOne poor soldier\, whose leg they were about to amputate\, had the other leg taken off by another cannonball in t he very middle of the operation.\n\n[Baroness Riedesel] [Cannons firing] N arrator: Militiamen continued to stream into Gates' army\, its numbers now swollen to 17\,000.\n\nBy October 13th\, the Americans had Burgoyne's arm y completely surrounded.\n\nVoice: Every hour\, the position of the army g rew more critical and the prospect of salvation grew less and less.\n\nEve n for the wounded\, no spot could be found which could afford them a safe shelter.\n\nThe sick and wounded would drag themselves along into a quiet corner in the woods\, and lie down to die.\n\nGeneral Riedesel.\n\n♪ Con way: Saratoga was a body blow to the British.\n\nIt was clear that all of the old assumptions\, that the British Army was a professional force that would sooner or later prevail over the amateurish Americans\, all those as sumptions were undermined.\n\nThe amateurish Americans had actually beaten the British.\n\nFor the British\, this was not just a military defeat\; i t was a psychological blow of very considerable proportions.\n\nNarrator: That afternoon\, Burgoyne gathered his staff.\n\nThey were trapped\, witho ut food or forage.\n\nThey voted to begin negotiations with General Gates. \n\n♪ For three days\, messages flew back and forth between the camps.\n \nVoice: During the time of the cessation of arms\, a soldier in the 9th R egiment named Maguire came down to the bank of the river with a number of his companions\, who engaged in conversation with a party of Americans on the opposite shore.\n\n♪ Maguire suddenly darted like lightning from his companions\, and resolutely plunged into the stream.\n\n[Water splashing] At the very same moment\, one of the American soldiers\, seized with a si milar impulse\, resolutely dashed into the water from the opposite shore.\ n\nThe wondering soldiers on both sides beheld them eagerly swim towards t he middle of the river\, where they met.\n\nThey hung on each other's neck s and wept.\n\nThey were brothers.\n\nOne was in the British and the other in the American service\, totally ignorant until that hour that they were engaged in hostile combat against each other's life.\n\nRoger Lamb.\n\n ♪ Narrator: On the morning of October 17th\, Gates' generous terms were accepted.\n\nHe and Burgoyne met between their respective lines and shook hands.\n\nBurgoyne presented his sword to Gates-- who handed it back\, as dictated by military custom.\n\nTo his dying day\, Burgoyne would blame ot hers for his defeat-- Lord Germain\, General Howe\, his Loyalist German an d Native allies-- everyone but himself.\n\nVoice: All the army gave up and surrendered themselves prisoners of war to our men.\n\nSuch a thing was n ever heard of.\n\nSuch a sight was never seen before\, so many men giving in to us.\n\nExult\, oh\, Americans and rejoice and praise the Lord\, who hath done wonderful things for you.\n\nEzra Tilden.\n\nNarrator: An entire British army had been forced to lay down its arms-- one lieutenant genera l\, two major generals\, three brigadiers\, 350 commissioned and staffed o fficers\, 5\,900 other ranks\, and some 600 women and children.\n\nAlong w ith them\, the Americans seized 30 artillery pieces\, 60 wagons\, 1\,500 s words\, 3\,400 bayonets\, and 4\,600 muskets and rifles.\n\nBurgoyne's Can adian and Loyalist auxiliaries were to be permitted to make their way nort h to Canada\, while more than 6\,000 British and German prisoners were to be marched to Boston and sent home from there to Europe\, pledged never to return.\n\nBut when they got there\, they learned that Congress had refus ed to ratify Gates' agreement with Burgoyne.\n\nAfter months housed in mak eshift camps\, they were sent south.\n\nVoice: I never had the least idea that the creation produced such a sordid set of creatures in human figure- - poor\, dirty\, emaciated men\, great numbers of women\, who seemed to be the beasts of burden\, and children\, some very young infants who were bo rn on the road.\n\nHannah Winthrop.\n\nNarrator: The prisoners would event ually be marched more than 600 miles to Charlottesville\, Virginia\, and s till later to other camps in Virginia\, Maryland\, and Pennsylvania.\n\nMa ny died.\n\nHundreds escaped.\n\nSome would rejoin the British army at New York\; others joined the Continental Army or simply disappeared into the populace.\n\nBy the time the remaining prisoners from Saratoga were releas ed in 1783\, only a few of the 6\,000 would be left.\n\n♪ [Distant bird cawing] Voice: Everything is almost gone of the vegetable kind\, butchers obliged to kill fine milk cows.\n\nOne woman walked two miles out of town only for an egg.\n\nSuch is the dreadful situation we are reduced to.\n\nS arah Fisher.\n\nNarrator: At first\, Philadelphia Loyalists had welcomed B ritish troops into their city.\n\nBut as it grew colder that autumn\, home owners would be forced to take officers into their homes\, whether they wa nted to or not and\, as Sarah Fisher wrote\, there were soon \"very bad ac counts \"of the licentiousness of the English officers deluding young girl s.\"\n\nSarah Fisher felt especially isolated and alone\, but she soon gav e birth to a baby daughter\, whom she named Hannah\, after her late mother .\n\nAmerican patrols made foraging in the surrounding countryside dangero us for British troops.\n\nProvisions grew increasingly scarce.\n\nPrices s oared.\n\nGeneral Howe had to find a way for the Royal Navy to ferry food\ , supplies\, and equipment up the Delaware River to Philadelphia.\n\nAmeri can forces occupied two forts--Fort Mifflin on Mud Island\, and Fort Merce r at Red Bank on the New Jersey side.\n\nFor weeks\, the British worked to destroy them.\n\nThe besieged Americans\, Thomas Paine wrote\, had nothin g \"to cover them but their bravery.\"\n\nJoseph Plumb Martin had been amo ng the last Americans to evacuate Fort Mifflin.\n\nVoice: Every private so ldier in an army thinks his particular services as essential to carry on t he war he's engaged in\, as the services of the most influential general.\ n\nAnd why not?\n\nWhat could officers do without such men?\n\nNothing at all.\n\n[Distant explosions] Great men get great praise\, little men nothi ng.\n\n[Martin] Narrator: Both forts fell.\n\nThe Delaware was now open to British shipping.\n\nHowe's army could safely spend the winter in Philade lphia.\n\nIn December\, George Washington would lead his army into winter quarters\, a hilly\, wooded\, remote place northwest of Philadelphia calle d Valley Forge.\n\n[Distant bell tolling] In France\, Benjamin Franklin ha d heard little of what was happening in America for seven long weeks.\n\nT hen\, on December 4th\, a rider clattered into his courtyard\, shouting he had important news.\n\nFranklin hurried out to greet him.\n\n\"Sir\,\" he asked\, \"is Philadelphia taken?\"\n\n\"Yes\, sir\,\" the courier answere d.\n\nFranklin\, dejected\, turned to go back inside.\n\n\"But\, Sir\,\" t he rider said.\n\n\"I have greater news than that.\n\n\"General Burgoyne a nd his whole army are prisoners of war.\"\n\nJust a few months earlier\, F ranklin had written that only \"a small matter\" would be needed to bring France into the war with Britain.\n\nClearly\, the surrender of an entire British army was a large matter.\n\nThe Comte de Vergennes\, the French Fo reign Minister\, whose newly rebuilt navy was now ready for war\, saw the victory at Saratoga and the former colonies' tentative steps toward formin g a central government as the best evidence so far that a French-American alliance might defeat the British.\n\nLouis XVI agreed.\n\n\"America is tr iumphant\,\" he said\, \"and England beaten.\"\n\nAlan Taylor: Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga is a crushing blow\, and it impresses the French.\n\ nBut the French are also impressed by George Washington's survival.\n\nHe' s still hanging in there.\n\nHis army is still fighting.\n\nThe British ma y force their way into Philadelphia\, but they have not destroyed Washingt on's army.\n\nde Rode: It's quite a risk to send your army to fight with a n army that might never win.\n\nBut there's more to the story\, because th e French are not just waiting for the victory.\n\nThey're waiting for thei r own army to be ready.\n\nFinally\, their navy was ready\, their army was ready.\n\nThey were strong enough again and felt confident that this was the right moment to join the rebels.\n\nNarrator: In Paris\, on February 6 \, 1778\, French and American commissioners would sign two treaties.\n\nTh e first recognized the independence of the United States of America and es tablished commercial relations between the two countries.\n\nThe second\, the Treaty of Alliance\, promised full support for the American cause from the French Army and Navy\, as well as its Treasury.\n\n♪ Schiff: The im portance of the French alliance\, just in entirely practical terms\, we're talking about what would today be $25 billion to $30 billion in aid.\n\nW e're talking about a war effort that the colonies could not have provided for themselves.\n\nAnd the idea that a foreign power bankrolled that effor t and that it would have impossible without them\, that's the chapter we d on't like to think too much about because our sense of our independence is that it's something that we achieved on our own.\n\nNarrator: Although it would be nearly three months before the news crossed the Atlantic\, an up rising among British subjects in North America was about to ignite another global war.\n\n♪ ♪ Announcer: Next time on \"The American Revolution\ "... Winter at Valley Forge.\n\nVoice: This army must inevitably starve or disperse in order to obtain subsistence.\n\n[George Washington] Announcer : Alliances are formed... Colin Calloway: The new United States represents an existential threat.\n\nAnnouncer: and the French enter the war.\n\nKat hleen DuVal: Britain knows that Spain and the Netherlands may be next.\n\n The stakes are big in this war.\n\nAnnouncer: When \"The American Revoluti on\" continues next time.\n\n♪ Announcer: Scan this QR code with your sm art device to dive deeper into the story of \"The American Revolution\" wi th interactives\, games\, classroom materials\, and more.\n\n♪ Announcer : \"The American Revolution\" DVD and Blu-ray\, as well as the companion b ook and soundtrack\, are available online and in stores.\n\nThe series is also available with PBS Passport and on am*zon Prime Video.\n\n♪ Announc er: The American Revolution caused an impact felt around the world.\n\nThe fight would take ingenuity\, determination\, and hope for a new tomorrow to turn the tide of history and set the American story in motion.\n\nWhat would you like the power to do?\n\nBank of America.\n\nAnnouncer: Major fu nding for \"The American Revolution\" was provided by The Better Angels So ciety and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Fo undation and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.\n\nMajor funding was also pr ovided by David M. Rubenstein\, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation\, the Lilly Endowment\, and by Better Angels Society members: E ric and Wendy Schmidt\, Stephen A. Schwarzman\, and Kenneth C. Griffin wit h Griffin Catalyst.\n\nAdditional support was provided by The Arthur Vinin g Davis Foundations\, the Pew Charitable Trusts\, Gilbert S. Omenn and Mar tha A. Darling\, the Park Foundation\, and by Better Angels Society member s: Gilchrist and Amy Berg\, Perry and Donna Golkin\, The Michelson Foundat ion\, Jacqueline B. Mars\, the Kissick Family Foundation\, Diane and Hal B rierley\, John H.N.\n\nFisher and Jennifer Caldwell\, John and Catherine D ebs\, The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund\, and these additional members. \n\n\"The American Revolution\" was made possible with support from the Co rporation for Public Broadcasting\, and Viewers Like You.\n\nThank You.\n\ n\n\n\n URL\n\n https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode- 4-conquer-by-a-drawn-game/\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251119 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR