Andro Linklater - An Artist in Treason - The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson

John Biddle was in his fifties when Nancy and her younger sister, Lydia, were born, and perhaps because he was an elderly, doting father, he allowed them greater freedom than most Quaker girls enjoyed at the time. During the early months of 1777, they dressed more daringly, went to more parties, and each became attached to a man who was not a Quaker. After Wilkinson had begun to court Nancy, his friend and fellow medical student James Hutchinson, having returned from qualifying as a doctor in England, followed his example by wooing Lydia. Neither had achieved his object, however, by the time the snows melted in April and the new fighting season opened.

4

THE TRIUMPH OF SARATOGA

WITH CONFLICT LOOMING, Lieutenant Colonel James Wilkinson might have been expected to join his regiment at Morristown. Most ambitious officers would have welcomed the opportunity to command troops in battle. But his brief experience of regimental life only confirmed Wilkinson’s preference for the more genteel environment of a general’s staff. The chance to return to it came from his patron General Horatio Gates.

In March 1777, after a winter spent vigorously lobbying Congress, Gates was given command of the Northern Department in place of General Philip Schuyler. His appointment was a triumph for those New Englanders who, despite Washington’s supremacy, still clung to their faith in the militia. Gates remained their champion.

Once more in command, the general immediately invited Wilkinson to join him as chief of staff. “My young heart leaped with joy,” Wilkinson remembered, “so warmly had General Gates attached it to him, by his indulgence of my self- love.” Sooner or later, most of Wilkinson’s superiors recognized that his vanity, or self- love, was the key to his loyalty, but none secured it more firmly or indulged him more widely than Gates.

The decision to leave the main army for the Northern Department required the commander in chief’s permission. “I would to God, gentlemen could for once know their own minds,” Washington exclaimed in irritation, and although he allowed the move, he must have known that the young colonel was siding with the opposition.

The main weight of the British attack could be expected in the north. During the winter, Sir John Burgoyne had persuaded Secretary for the Colonies Lord George Germain to approve his strategy to isolate New England with its supply of money and manpower from the rest of the colonies. Their plan required a three- pronged advance on Albany, with the main thrust from almost nine thousand blue-coated Hessians and red- coated British troops under Burgoyne himself heading south for the Hudson Valley. An inveterate gambler, Gentleman Johnny’s confidence in the outcome was clear from an entry in Brooks’s club wagering book: “John Burgoyne wagers Charles Fox one pony [fifty guineas] that he will be home victorious from America by Christmas Day, 1777.”

To everyone, both American and British, it was obvious that the first line of defense would be the fortress of Ticonderoga, which commanded access to Lake George and the Hudson Valley. Gates, therefore, immediately sent Wilkinson to inspect its ability to withstand attack. Wilkinson’s report revealed a near-derelict fortress garrisoned by twenty-five hundred men, poorly led, laid low by illness and lacking in ammunition, uniforms, and morale. He recommended that either it be evacuated or its defense be put in the charge of a senior officer such as Arthur St. Clair, his brigadier at Trenton. But any attempt to prepare the fort for either defense or evacuation was aborted by the political generalship of Congress. At the beginning of June, it abruptly decided that, after all, General Schuyler should have command of the Northern Department, with Gates as his subordinate.

Wilkinson responded furiously. “They have injured themselves, they have insulted you, and by so doing have been guilty of the foulest ingratitude,” he told Gates on June 7. “The perfidy of mankind truly disgusts me with Life, and if the happiness of an amiable lady [Nancy Biddle] was not unfortunately too dependent upon my wretched existence, I should think I had lived long enough, nor would I want to breathe the air with Ingrates, assassins, and double- faced Villains.”

Even before this effusive tribute to their friendship arrived, Gates had rewarded his loyal aide by appointing him deputy adjutant general for the northern army, a post that required even senior officers to obey his commands. Wilkinson was overcome. “I am this day honoured by your affectionate letter with the inclosed commission,” he informed his general. “It wrung my heart and I dropped a tear upon it.”

Congress’s interference froze any decision about the defense of Ticon-deroga until Schuyler was again in charge. Although he confirmed St. Clair’s command, the weeks of inaction made certain that the fortress would fall for virtually nothing at all. In early July, British artillery occupied positions overlooking Ticonderoga, and St. Clair decided to evacuate the doomed position without further delay. Hundreds were captured on the lake and on land, but about two thousand troops escaped. With bleak ineptitude, Congress voted to court- martial both St. Clair and Schuyler for allowing the capture of a position it had rendered indefensible. By default Gates was once more put in charge of the Northern Department, the third change of command in five months.

Unaware of the vital role Congress had played in his victory, Burgoyne paused to celebrate before pushing slowly southward, “flushed with victory,” Schuyler reported, “plentifully provided with provisions, cannon and every warlike store.” His army of almost nine thousand professional soldiers was accompanied by more than fifty cannon and a baggage train of ammunition and food wagons, as well as officers’ wives with their tents, servants, and wardrobes. This was the classic European army, a gigantic concentration of firepower designed to smash an enemy in open ground. Meanwhile, it all had to be transported through forested, often marshy terrain blocked by trees felled by the retreating Americans.

As an advocate of defensive warfare, Gates could not have hoped for more appropriate tactics from his opponent than Burgoyne’s ponderous advance into unknown territory. Gates used the time well. Concentrating his demoralized force—Wilkinson reckoned desertion had reduced its numbers to about thirteen hundred militia and twenty-eight hundred regulars—at Stillwater near where the Mohawk River flowed into the Hudson, Gates set about rebuilding its confidence.

Whatever his weakness in battle, Gates’s organizational skills were superb, and in six weeks of apparent inactivity he transformed the morale of his beaten army. Plentiful supplies of food and ammunition were sent from Albany, and in camp his men had time to recoup their strength. He managed his militia forces with skill, rarely insisting on strict discipline, and dispensing with the flogging that professional soldiers thought essential to discipline— “these Mortals,” he once declared, “must be led and not drove.” Shrewdly, he issued proclamations to remind any militia in New York and New England who still hung back that a British victory would allow the Indians accompanying Burgoyne’s army to seize their land and scalp their families.

Gates’s brand of generalship produced immediate results. From “a miserable state of despondency and terror, Gates’ arrival raised us as if by magic,” Captain Udney Hay of Vermont testified a month after the general took command. “We began to hope and then to act.” Under Schuyler, the citizen-soldiers had been ineffective; under Gates, the Vermont militia delayed a diversionary attack through the Mohawk Valley until Arnold arrived with reinforcements to drive the attackers back, and in late August the New Hampshire militia destroyed a powerful foraging party sent out to find provisions for Burgoyne’s army. From then on Burgoyne would be short of food.