New England
States, very imperfectly disciplined, and armed only with muskets and
fowling-pieces, without bayonets or side-arms. On the other side Baum
had the most highly disciplined troops of England and Germany under
his command, well armed and equipped, and he was moreover strongly
intrenched with artillery well placed behind the breastworks. The
advantage in the fight should have been clearly with Baum and his
regulars, who merely had to hold an intrenched hill.

It was not a battle in which either military strategy or a scientific
management of troops was displayed. All that Stark did was to place his
men so that they could attack the enemy's position on every side, and
then the Americans went at it, firing as they pressed on. The British
and Germans stood their ground stubbornly, while the New England farmers
rushed up to within eight yards of the cannon, and picked off the
men who manned the guns. Stark himself was in the midst of the fray,
fighting with his soldiers, and came out of the conflict so blackened
with powder and smoke that he could hardly be recognized. One desperate
assault succeeded another, while the firing on both sides was so
incessant as to make, in Stark's own words, a "continuous roar." At the
end of two hours the Americans finally swarmed over the intrenchments,
beating down the soldiers with their clubbed muskets. Baum ordered his
infantry with the bayonet and the dragoons with their sabers to force
their way through, but the Americans repulsed this final charge, and
Baum himself fell mortally wounded. All was then over, and the British
forces surrendered.

It was only just in time, for Breymann, who had taken thirty hours to
march some twenty-four miles, came up just after Baum's men had laid
down their arms. It seemed for a moment as if all that had been gained
might be lost. The Americans, attacked by this fresh foe, wavered; but
Stark rallied his line, and putting in Warner, with one hundred and
fifty Vermont men who had just come on the field, stopped Breymann's
advance, and finally forced him to retreat with a loss of nearly one
half his men. The Americans lost in killed and wounded some seventy men,
and the Germans and British about twice as many, but the Americans took
about seven hundred prisoners, and completely wrecked the forces of Baum
and Breymann.

The blow was a severe one, and Burgoyne's army never recovered from
it. Not only had he lost nearly a thousand of his best tr