etween the Americans and Burgoyne's
forces included two engagements, which are often spoken of
as the Battles of Saratoga, also as the Battles of
Stillwater or of Bemis' Heights, from the local names.

The first of these actions, that of September 19, 1777, in
which Gates, with Morgan and Arnold under him, commanded the
Americans, was indecisive. Under the same commanders the
Americans (October 7th) won the decisive victory which
Creasy describes. His opening statement shows the modern
English sentiment concerning the American Revolution, and
this feeling finds its correlative in the gradual change of
tone on the part of American writers.

The war which rent away the North American colonies from England is, of
all subjects in history, the most painful for an Englishman to dwell on.
It was commenced and carried on by the British ministry in iniquity and
folly, and it was concluded in disaster and shame. But the contemplation
of it cannot be evaded by the historian, however much it may be
abhorred. Nor can any military event be said to have exercised more
important influence on the future fortunes of mankind than the complete
defeat of Burgoyne's expedition in 1777; a defeat which rescued the
revolted colonists from certain subjection, and which, by inducing the
courts of France and Spain to attack England in their behalf, insured
the independence of the United States, and the formation of that
transatlantic power which not only America, but both Europe and Asia,
now see and feel.

Still, in proceeding to describe this "decisive battle of the world," a
very brief recapitulation of the earlier events of the war may be
sufficient; nor shall I linger unnecessarily on a painful theme.

The five Northern colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
New Hampshire, and Vermont, usually classed together as the New England
colonies, were the strongholds of the insurrection against the
mother-country. The feeling of resistance was less vehement and general
in the central settlement of New York, and still less so in
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the other colonies of the South, although
everywhere it was formidably strong.

But it was among the descendants of the stern Puritans that the spirit
of Cromwell and Vane breathed in all its fervor; it was from the New
Englanders that the first armed opposition to the British crown had been
offered; and it was by them tha